J.R.: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of One Thousand Gurus where we share the stories and life lessons from people of all walks of life.. And I'm your host J.R. Yonocruz. 

So today my good friend and former dance teammate Alex Hung is back for his third guest appearance on the show. I think only four people have joined the three timers club and I was really excited to have him back.

This was such a riveting and intellectually stimulating conversation, one of the most quote-unquote cutting edge conversations since we heavily talk about AI, its effect on the workforce and the job market, some AI tools that we've been exploring both professionally and personally, and advice on how to navigate it moving forward into the future.

We also discussed some of his most engaging LinkedIn posts and it was focused on the topics of managing a productive workplace as a manager or a leader in a company. So for example we talk about toxic high performers, understanding work culture and etiquette and motivating your team.

At the end we have our final thoughts on where we think all this is heading and hopefully we leave you guys with less doom and gloom and a little bit [00:01:00] of optimism.

So overall this was such an S-tier conversation in my books and one that I'm excited to re-listen to and to circle back on when we have him back on the show for a follow-up conversation in the future.

So without further ado hope you enjoy this episode with Alex Hung.

Hello, and welcome back to One Thousand Gurus, Alex Hung. Welcome back to the show.

Alex: Good to be back. 

J.R.: Yeah, thanks for, thanks for being back, man. Cool. Yeah. Thanks for jumping on for this remote interview. So this is your third episode on the podcast. So your first one, your first solo episode was episode 34, recorded last April, almost a year ago, or actually a little bit more than a year ago.

And episode 47 was our K 10 reunion sort of episode, and that was back in July. And so now you're back here for this recording, and this is end of April-ish. So I think this'll come out, I think beginning of June. So it's about like a, like six, six-ish [00:02:00] weeks out. But yeah, so happy to have you back, man, what you've been up to.

Oh, I also saw you last month for your birthday in Anaheim. I just dropped by real quick, so it was nice to see you and caught up with some of the other kaba modern folks for a little bit, but yeah, which 

Alex: up. Well, thanks for showing up for my birthday. Really appreciate that. And dropping off an awesome gift.

In case anyone's curious, he dropped off some was it Hoge? No it was Umeshu. 

J.R.: Yeah.

Alex: Like a green tea umeshu. Mm-hmm. The plum wine. So good. 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, those are good. That's usually my default for any adults who I know, like alcohol. I'm like, okay, one of these is good because I would just drink this all day by myself.

Alex: Yeah. You don't get sick of it and it's not too sweet. So that's mm-hmm. That's how, you know, we're older. 

J.R.: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. What have I been up to since? So, I think there's been a lot of change for me, at least in my career in the last six to eight months, mostly around the rise of ai, how that's [00:03:00] affected.

Me and my business that I work at. And also I had a change in my job as well. 'cause I, for a long time I was the chief of staff at my company and that was mostly supporting the CEO, doing special projects, overseeing the people, the operations, the strategy. And it was a little bit less defined. It was kind of just whatever the business needed.

But now it's shifted. I'm now in charge of revenue which is really sales marketing. And I've continued to be in charge of HR still, which has sort of taken a backseat to everything else. So just with those responsibilities, there's been a lot of things that we've tried to grow and grow the business.

I think AI has affected how businesses are run nowadays. And you kind of wanna stay ahead of it. You don't wanna fall behind. And we're, yeah, we're trying to stay competitive, so there's [00:04:00] just been a lot of challenges and, and things that we've been trying to keep up. 

J.R.: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And I think we'll get into the nuts and bolts. I think the general overview of the questions I have are. You know, what tools you've been using, how you've been using it personally, professionally in your company, and your general thoughts on how you've seen the landscape change in your field.

And I guess in general. And then also I wanted to, I brought in some of the LinkedIn posts that you've been making the last few months, which I think they were pretty thought provoking. And so I, I kind of linked a couple of these that we'll might dig into if you're interested, but those are, that's kind of like the direction of where we might go, but of course we'll see where it takes us.

I dunno if you had any jumping off points that you had, but I'm just curious, like what specifically tools are you using or leveraging and like how are you using them? 

Alex: Sure. So I think the earliest tool that I use, probably most people have started with chat, GBT. [00:05:00] So you start with chat BT. Before it was just you ask questions, it's like a better Google, right?

And that's great because you don't have to go through each page and try to find the best answer. I think most of us started that way, but where it kind of started changing a lot, and it was kind of forced upon us by our founder, was when agents started to come about, this was probably around January timeframe, is when agents and specifically Open Claw came about.

So Open Claw is an open source agent that you could install and you could connect it to any LLM or large language model. It could be it could be Chet Bt, it could be Claude, it could be whatever, perplexity, Gemini, whatever it is that you want, and. That's a tool that I've been experimenting with at first with an agent, just trying to figure out what are the capabilities of ai.

[00:06:00] And it was actually kind of a bitch to install. It was really difficult. It's not like you click download and then you install and then it just goes I actually had to get another agent to help me install the agent. So there's something called VS. Code or Visual Studio Code that you have to then connect your LLM to, to help you like fix all the problems to, I think they called it like doctoring, like you doctor the problems from the installation to help it work.

And the biggest thing is every time you hit the update button on open claw, it breaks. So then you need the doctor thing, you need vs code again to fix it again. So it'll work again. So. Point is it was really hard to get set up and that's why I'm not surprised why adoption wasn't so widespread at that point because it was so new.

There's still like a, there's a barrier of entry. So I'm glad that I was able to kind of get through it. [00:07:00] It took me a couple days to figure it out. But once I got it up and running, I just wanted to test well, what is this about? Like what's the difference between an agent and a chat? Yeah. And I wanted to know what the limitations were to, and just to make it more of a summary the things that it was good at, as long as it's connected to.

Like a specific platform through an API, let's just say your Gmail, you connect your Gmail through an API, which is like a direct connection. And you ask it like, okay, well, I want you to send me a notification of how many emails I got from this person, and then suggest for me what replies I should give it.

If you just told it to do that for you, it could do that for you every day. That, that it's really good at, you know, checking things that it has a direct connection to. But if you were to say, this is at least at that point with the language models that we have if you were to say, I want you to go look through several webpage and get me some information or help me click buttons and [00:08:00] help me log in and enter something in, it's really bad at that.

Like it can't impersonate you to go and. Do something without explicit instructions. Like it's not good at guessing. So this was like back in January. So that's kind of where I started. And then I like it's iterated on itself. And at this point, three months, four months later, our company has tried to have the whole entire company adopt AI at least like more than 50%.

And we've decided to go with Claude as our main language model to roll out, just 'cause it's a lot easier to set up, you know, get people in. So it's more easily digestible. It's more reliable. 

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: Yeah. 

J.R.: Okay. Okay. So just to back it up, for our audience who maybe doesn't have as much experience. So I use Claude personally.

I did start on Chad DT as well, and I think my workplace is also integrating Claude and I did some of the integrations for like my own Gmail and stuff like that. So I can have some context of how it works, but [00:09:00] could you explain the difference between going into Chad, GBT or Claude and typing in something versus the agent?

Like what is the actual what is the difference between that? 

Alex: Yeah. Where can I start? There's we could use Claude as an example. 'cause Claude has different products. There's Claude chat, which is, think of it like question and answer, right? You ask me questions, you could ask it to look up stuff and it'll give you an answer. It'll, it could even look through, files you up, update, do some analysis, sorry, not update, upload, do analysis, and then give you some stuff around that.

Then there's cowork. Which is also like an agent. That one is an agent. Claude Cowork is, if you think about, I want you to do something for me. It's not just give me an answer. I want you to go and do something for me. Mm-hmm. Go on another application, do something there and give me the output. So the agent, think agent is, they do something for you.

And then code is think of it like a [00:10:00] developer a software engineer. It'll build something for you. And typically it would be an app, probably website, something like that. So they have Claude Chat, they have Claude Cowork, and then they have Claude code. Mm-hmm. And then recently they also put out something called Clot design, which then you can design flyers, web pages.

J.R.: Oh, like a 

Alex: graphic 

J.R.: design Sort of, 

Alex: yeah, like image. Yeah. You think of it. Think of like things that you would use Figma for. I don't know if you're familiar with Figma? Mm-hmm. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: It's not great at like creating images. This is, we're probably gonna go down a bit of a rabbit hole, but like images, the winner for a long time was Nano Banana from Gemini.

It's the Google product and they're really good at making images. So when people were trying to make images, they would go on Gemini's, nano Banana use that apparently chat. BT is [00:11:00] now gonna put out their own image generator that's even better than nano banana. And I think it's releasing either today or tomorrow.

J.R.: Oh, interesting. 

Alex: So I'm really interested to see how good the quality of the images are gonna be for just generating that. But design those design are kind of the differences between each product. 

J.R.: Yeah. So what is the output of design? Is it like a Figma file or what is design output? 

Alex: I would say it's like.

Let's just give an example of a flyer. I wanna make a flyer. 

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: Right? But you don't know. You just kind of know what should go on it. So maybe you would go into a chat, GBT chat, or Claude Chat, and you'd say, oh, let's just ideate. Think about what's gonna be on the flyer. What information do you want?

You take that information and then you'd plug it into claw design, just copy, paste it, and then say, I want it to have this vibe, these colors, or this like feeling. And then it'll just throw something together for you. It'll format it, it'll pick the font [00:12:00] and it'll put it in something that you could consider.

And then once. They put it out there, you could edit it. You could say, oh, I don't like that color, or I don't like how big the font is. You could change the text and it'll just kind of do the heavy lifting for you and you just tweak it from there. 

J.R.: Mm. Okay. So it's kind of like what you can do in Canva, Canva's, ai, and also I use something called Gamma and it's like a presentation slash something creator, but it sounds the same where it's, okay, I'm trying to create a PowerPoint or a flyer or something, and then here are the parameters, and then it kind of spits out something.

Okay. I get, I get what you mean. 

Alex: So Claude, Claude out, Claude didn't have that before like slides. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: Claude didn't have slides. 

J.R.: But 

Alex: now you could create slides. I haven't tried it yet 'cause it just came out. Yeah. But I'm definitely putting some slides together with that. 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah. No, that's cool. Yeah, I used to, what I did was well, me personally, when I was creating some presentations for this podcast, I would have chat or Claude create something like a [00:13:00] kind of like an outline of what I want for this episode, and then put it give me a prompt to put into Gamma, and then Gamma's AI would spit out the presentation and then I'll spend like about an hour or so tweaking it and whatnot.

Yeah. But so now it's then instead of the integration, now it's just okay, now they have their own product and it's like straightforward into that. 

Alex: Yeah. The good thing is that because it's all in one Yeah. They kind of talk to each other. And the good thing about Claude, and the reason why we put all our people on Claude is organization is a lot better when you share things.

You share art facts, you could share skills, you could for projects yeah. For you could share projects and you could also, what is it? You could control the access and control aspects of things. Like how much access should someone get, what should they be allowed to do, not allowed to do.

It's just a lot easier to do that on Claw versus something like Open Claw. Yeah, that's like the vigilante that, that's very capable, but you don't know what it will do it. You don't know if it's gonna break. It's really unorganized and it's [00:14:00] unreliable, but it's super powerful.

Interesting. So that's kind of where Open Claw is as of right now. And there's so many clones of Open Claw now created by like I've heard of Kimmy Claw, Kimmy Claws from, I think Nvidia. I think Meta just their stock went up a bunch today because they just released like a, some sort of AI agent. I don't even know what it's called, but yeah, there's just so many competitors to that.

But Open Cloud was pretty much the first agent that hit the market. That was really big. 

J.R.: I see. I see. And then the other ones are kind of catching up and. Building off of that. 

Alex: Yeah. 

J.R.: Interesting. Okay, cool. So we mentioned Claude. Anything else, any other tools and or how else are you using it either personally or professionally?

Alex: Yeah. I think this is a great topic because you know how you use it. D different is different for every single person, and there's a lot of thought around everyone needs to adopt AI [00:15:00] and everyone needs to, I don't know, leverage it to be as efficient as possible. But there's like, okay, so it's important for our company because we think of it as helping you build efficiencies, right?

The way that we've done it is we actually rolled it out to all our people. We said, this is what it is. This is some idea of how you can use it, but we don't actually tell you how to use it. We're like, go experiment. Think of a problem that you have and just ask if it could help solve your problem.

And if it can't, then see if it could solve half your problem. Right. And so, in my opinion, that's probably the better way for people to figure out how to use it versus a manager that's the only one using it and building the solutions for their team because it's like a efficiency thing. If each person is trying to find solutions to their own problems, [00:16:00] you'll come to a lot more solutions faster than if your bottleneck by one person is building more creativity things for their own team.

Creativity. Yeah, that too. The other thing is, because we're rolling it out this way, I think we'll be able to see where the issues are within the organization a lot easier if 10 people are asking for the same thing to be fixed. 

J.R.: Oh, right. 

Alex: And 10 people, we see 10 people build almost the same thing.

Then we're gonna see, okay, there's overlap between the needs of this department and the needs of that department, but when leadership builds or buy, like they used to just buy programs. Right. Each department would just buy their own software. 

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: Then there's like redundancy around stuff. So, yeah, I think it's just a good way for us to also figure out engineering wise, what internal products should we put effort into?

And yeah, it's a great way to, to test the population, what's needed. 

J.R.: Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I like that. And it makes a lot of sense because [00:17:00] it's like a new toy, a new tool, and it's so open that it's, there's not just one way to use it. And so, like you said, if everyone's kind of experimenting and playing with it differently, we can come up with a lot more and better solutions.

And then where the overlap is, is okay, it seems like the demand for this, this, and this are higher, so maybe we should focus our efforts on kind of building something along those pipelines to help our team. Makes sense. 

Alex: Yeah. 

J.R.: Are there any specific things that, like you've built or leveraged or kind of that's helped you?

In your personal work. Yeah. Anything that's not proprietary, right. Anything that's like, okay, I've been using it for this sort of thing and it's helped me a lot. 

Alex: Yeah. Okay. So here's some examples of how people can use it. You could either do things to automate certain processes, like something that you have to do every day.

You go to this thing, you check for something and then you draft an email. Right? That's just something that's [00:18:00] repetitive. You could have the AI agent do that for, you call it Aron job. It's like a scheduled task mm-hmm. That happens at whatever cadence you want it to do. So that's like a good example of how it could just help you figure out your day.

So, for example, for me I manage the sales team and it's hard for them to. Get organized when there's just leads coming in and there's old leads that you still have to call and follow up and say, Hey, did you want a meeting? Did you want to talk about pricing? And you lose track of some of them. They're like, oh, did we book a call yet?

Did we not book a call? Did I email them yet? And so to make things easier, I connected my open claw to our CRM, basically where our data is for all of our leads. 

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: And I told it based on parameters to just lay out every day in order of priority who to call, call these people in this order, 

J.R.: and 

Alex: I'll tell you why.

Right? It's [00:19:00] like, these are the newest leads that you should have called yesterday. These are the leads that you that you emailed, but they never booked the meeting. So you need to follow up. And then there's like open deals that. Are really old that you really need to address. Either you close it out or you call them and just make a decision.

Or the ones that are kind of pending in the pipeline, right? So that's kind of the order of things of how do I structure my day, right? Mm-hmm. So if you're not taking a meeting, you just go back to that list every single day that's sent out to you automatically. You just go down. So that's one way that I've hopefully helped my team be more efficient.

'cause they're not looking around on, oh, what do I do next? Which dashboard do I look at? You know, which list do I look at? 'cause there's so many, you could look at it by contact, by deal, by company. It's like there's too many. 

J.R.: Mm-hmm.

Alex: So yeah I think that's been helpful, at least from the feedback that I've gotten from my team.

That's one example. 

J.R.: Yeah, that's, that makes a lot of sense. Like prioritizing your day, kind of skimming through [00:20:00] everything and giving suggestions on priority. So yeah, in my departments, like we're. The project management sort of department, and one way what we've been using our collude is basically to, you know, it's connected to our slack and so it has all the threads that everyone's in and there's like a million slack threads and then also our.

Our sort of project management system in like Jira, if anyone's familiar with that. But it'll compile, basically we have these weekly summary updates that leadership wants. And so let's say every Wednesday or Friday, they want a summary of each feature that we're working on. And so with a, just a single prompt or something that we can just run.

CLA to go through all of the slack and like Jira comments and updates, and then put an update in that feature, in that feature ticket, whatever. And then that goes out every week or something like that. But obviously it's not completely accurate, so everyone still has to go through and review it and tweak it and whatnot.

But even just that is such a huge game changer because if half your job is just sorting through [00:21:00] messages and figuring out what's relevant and the priority, and then having that done in like 10 seconds is such like a huge, oh wow. Okay. Well that was a lot of tedious work that I don't have to do anymore.

But I do like that it still encourages you because it's not perfect that you have to still use your brain and not just oh, just run this thing and I'm just gonna check out. It's like, no, you sought to know what's going on and make sure that it's accurate. 'cause it's really just pulling in everything.

It doesn't have a lot of context that you might have. So that's how it's been helpful in our sort of organization. 

Alex: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up actually, also because. There was this whole thought about does AI make you more stupid? Because it does stuff for you. But like you just said, you still have to check it.

It's not always a hundred percent Right. And the other problem is that it doesn't have context. So yeah, you just always have to double check to see if it's giving you the right thing and you have to course correct or else it starts to hallucinate, it starts to give you crazy things. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: So there's always that check.

J.R.: Definitely. [00:22:00] So here's a, I guess I have a couple examples and if you have any I would like to hear it, but, so in my personal life I've used Claude for cowork to go through my emails and it was my birthday recently. And so I've had all these birthday freebies and I would normally do this for the last 10 years manually in a spreadsheet of what the restaurant is, the freebie when it expires and location.

And so I would project manage, making sure to get everything before they expire. Claude now just spit out this whole spreadsheet for me with locations. And then I asked it to suggest me trips so I can do, oh, this block of four restaurants do that in one trip. And this trip you can do later. And this one is not urgent, but you can go over to this area or this city and get these three.

And so that was pretty cool. So now I'm going through and every week I'm like, all right, mark, these three is redeemed, mark, this one is not redeemed 'cause it's not worth it. And then it'll be like, congrats, you're like halfway through your your like, your free food freebie journey. And so I'm like, oh, this is nice.

So I told my boss about this and she was like, like laughing. She's like, man, you're just a project [00:23:00] manager, like in your own life, huh? I'm like, I'm doing what I'm meant to do, I guess. But it's been very, like that whole integration is just a micro example, but it's been very useful. 

Alex: That's so funny.

Your birthday maxing. 

J.R.: Yeah. No, a thousand percent.

Alex: Your birthday maxing is so hard. 'cause most people will be like, oh, I like one or two restaurants where you get a discount or like a free dessert. Yeah. But if you have three or four in one day, and maybe they give you like a three day grace period for your birthday.

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: That's crazy, man. But that's, that's so funny. 

J.R.: Yeah. So here's the thing, it's like, every year I've done this, it's like you have to be on email lists or to get the apps or something like that. And I get around 20 to 20 to 30 of these and obviously I can't redeem all of them, but I try to redeem as much as I can and like the values are pretty good.

So for example, like I'll go to Benihana every year and that's about a $30 gift certificate. McDonald's will give you like a free item or Starbucks obviously to the day of, but most of them will be within the week or within the month. But there are a couple that are only like a couple days before or after or Starbucks is the day [00:24:00] of.

But if you actually redeem them and they're not super out of the way and you actually want the things, it's a lot of like free money that they give you. Like even a thing at El Po Loco was like a 11 or $12 like freebie. I'm like, dang, this is a pretty good deal. So, yeah, just like 

Alex: maximizing it. So you can literally program an app called 

J.R.: Yeah.

Alex: Birthday month and you could collect revenue on partnerships. It's true with all of these companies that you're giving business to and advertisements. Yeah. And you can build in one day with cloud code. Probably. 

J.R.: You know that, that's a fantastic idea. No, I'll write that down. Noting note to self. So there's this Instagram that I follow, just quick tangent.

It's called like the freebie Guy or something. And so he's always spamming out all these, oh, dunking Donuts is doing a free coffee yesterday, which they did and I got and so he'll be sending these things out. But to your point, that is actually a good idea. If it's an automated way that people can just sign up and then it'll put them on all these lists and download the app so they can redeem it and then just spit out like the timeframe of like, okay, this, you have [00:25:00] 30 days.

Here's what you can redeem. Tell me what you wanna do. I can organize the trips and then you can go get it. It could be worth it. 

Alex: You already have half of it done. 

J.R.: I do, I do. I'm pretty much just doing it like, you know, half manually, half automated. So, anyways, proof of concept for this year and I'm, I only have two or three more items to get, but I'm like, dude, I actually am gonna ask for the value, like the total amounts of money that I've saved.

Yeah. Just 'cause I like this data. 'cause I like, I already have the data of like when of everything else, but anyways, that's just my own nerding out on it. 

Alex: Yeah, it makes you feel good. Like the high, the bigger the number, the more 

J.R.: Yeah. Of 

Alex: you 

J.R.: gained the 

Alex: system. Yeah, 

J.R.: exactly. I'm like, they are these businesses don't hear from me unless it's my birthday.

Like some of them like Krispy Kreme, I don't go to Krispy Kre, but like once a year I get three free donuts. That's a good deal. That's like, I don't know, at least five bucks or something like that. Yeah. Anyways. Yeah. Solid. Sorry, tangent. So anyways, what are your thoughts on my next question is the.

We talked about tips and [00:26:00] recommendations oh, how other companies are responding to ai. I guess more of a macro personal thoughts on the impact of AI on the workforce, society, work culture, or other companies. Do you have any jumping off thoughts? 

Alex: Yeah, I think what's been in the news a lot lately are all these big companies doing layoffs.

There's so many, and it seems like it's just getting more and more over time. 'cause they, the layoffs started,

well, it was before COVID, and then I think the layoffs went away and then now they're coming back. Mm-hmm. But everyone's doing these layoffs because they, they say, oh we need to make room for ai. Or ai, an AI agent is replacing these workers. And I mean, my opinion based on the experience that I've had is.

An AI agent doesn't really replace people yet, unless your job is extremely repetitive. 

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: Right. Your job has to be documented pretty narrow of [00:27:00] Okay. It just does this and it kind of has to fall in the sweet spot of where AI is right now for it to actually replace headcount. For us, we have not seen AI capable of replacing a full headcount because if you have to make any exceptions to decisions, to anything in any given situation, the AI is not gonna really know what to do with it, because it's not like it, it's not at the point where it's just self-learning all the time.

Yet you have to figure it out. So to me, for all these companies to lay off tens of thousands of people and say that they're replacing them with ai sounds ridiculous to me, especially right now. I don't understand how that's even possible. If they're just making room. For AI budget. Totally get it.

Yeah. You gotta spend on ai. Mm-hmm. But if it's to replace 'em with agents, that's ridiculous. The way that we're doing it is pretty different. We want to, instead of replacing people with [00:28:00] ai I think it makes more sense to focus on the opposite, which is increasing efficiency with ai, which I'm sure everyone's kind of seeing, right?

Yes. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: I think one, one, I'm slipping on the word falsehood. People think, oh, well AI makes my job easier and so I'm gonna be able to chill 'cause my agent's gonna do my job for me. Nah. That doesn't happen. I don't know about you, but my job has just gotten harder because now you know what you're capable of doing at what speed And for us to keep up with the speed that AI is working is kind of ridiculous.

And. One of the LinkedIn posts that I posted was about like, how much brain power you're using, right? Like problem solve, right? Problem solve like strategy versus 

J.R.: the tedious. Yeah, 

Alex: yeah. Like the complex problem solving part of your brain before you could just kind of chill and do a certain task and your brain is not running at a hundred percent.

But when you're problem solving constantly, 'cause that's what you're [00:29:00] prompting the agent or AI to do, your brain is also tired. So yeah we do want to focus on getting people to use AI to be more efficient. Hopefully they could handle more, maybe someone who handles 5,000 in revenue, they handle 10 or 20 now.

Or if you could only manage three people before, maybe you can now handle and manage 20 people. So that's kind of the way that we wanna think about it. But you're definitely not gonna be more chill with where the job market is going because of ai. I think it's gonna be more tiring for everybody. Yeah.

J.R.: Yeah, that makes sense. 

Alex: How's it been 

J.R.: for you? It feels like, no, I mean, I have the same thoughts and yeah, I agreed, like from what I've seen the capabilities personally and in, in my workspace, I'm like, no, I don't think this can replace anything. Yeah. It makes our output better or more efficient or cleaner, and it saves a lot of the tedious work, but the amount of work and like the necessary or the need for people is still very much there, at least where we're at [00:30:00] now.

And so I totally agree. The one thing that I was thinking of was like maybe it's more of a question, because with your example, it's like, okay let's say a spec, very specific example. Let's say I have a company and I have 10 accountants and they do a thousand units of work per day or whatever the number is, right?

If AI is allowing my 10 accountants to now do like 2000 units of work per day, then doesn't that mean that I could downsize my accountant so that they can all do more work? Because it's like a sort of tedious work given, you know, they need to overlook and everything, but because their output is more, I could theoretically by math reduce that headcount.

Alex: Yeah. It depends on how repetitive the work is. Right. I think for things like travel agents, accountants like executive assistants to help you schedule things. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: An agent can do all that. So if you had someone in that with that headcount, [00:31:00] those jobs are gonna be gone. Any like data entry, people gone.

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: Yeah, for sure. Gone. But if you're talking about can it replace a pro, a project manager,

J.R.: Right, right. 

Alex: Actually, I'm not sure. 

J.R.: Yeah, no, I mean, no, there's, there's some, there's some like nuance there. Not 

yet, 

Alex: but eventually, yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah. No, I totally agree. Yeah. I think it's more of like you just said, the level of the type of work is to the tedious sort of entry level work or the more creative cognitive thinking you need to actually think about the context and put things together.

AI is not there yet. Maybe in the future it can be, and even like I was seeing, I was watching some videos on some YouTube channels, like infographic show or something like that, where it's talking about how not some knowledge work, like let's say an a lawyer or how AI can pass the bar, right? And then so you're like, okay, so let's say a law firm has 10, 10 lawyers, but could you downsize and still maintain the output?

And I think companies can, maybe they'll make the, they'll do that math and be like, oh, we can save so [00:32:00] much money by firing half of our lawyers because now this AI or these agents can now replace or optimize our. Having less lawyers to do that knowledge work sort of thing. Obviously I'm just kind of throwing out thoughts, but did you have anything on that?

Alex: Yeah I do think that you could re, you could reduce your headcount because AI is kind of picking up the slack right. Of, of some of these repetitive things that take up a lot of time. 

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: But the thought is it would replace your headcount and you could downsize if everything remained the same in terms of output.

But the idea is you want to aim for more output. 

J.R.: Right. Of course.

Alex: So wouldn't you just want more output with the same amount of people you have? 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: Like if everyone is five x, then the more people you have, you have another five x of output. So I, I guess it also is a balance, right? It's a balance of do you have that much work to do?

Does AI catch up to kind of. [00:33:00] Handling that work already, and you just gotta decide, I guess, where you're at. But it just seems like companies are pretty premature in just deciding oh let's go ahead and get rid of these people without knowing, I guess, the impact. 

J.R.: Right. Or if it can actually replace or replace that sort of output.

Alex: Yeah. Like how do they know for sure if I get rid of 30,000 people and I only needed whoever has left, how do they know for sure they didn't need they maybe could only afford to let go of 10,000. They probably needed that other 20. I mean, how do you know? Right. It's all kind of a guessing game and they're like, oh, let's just figure it out.

It's probably more boast ba based around how much money they actually need to save. 

J.R.: Right. 

Alex: They're like, we just need to cut until we get to this number. 

J.R.: It's like a bottom line sort of thing. Not really seeing, to your point I agree. I've never been a CEO of a large company or anything like that, but I would imagine that I would do the same thing you're saying, which is like, okay, let's see the output increase first before we cut all these people.

And then [00:34:00] some of those companies that did all those mass layoffs and they try to rehire some people back and you're like, well, why did you just think, why don't you measure once or measure once and cut, measure twice, cut once or whatever, that sort of thing, instead of cutting and then being like, oh wait, let's un fire these people.

I'm like, don't you think them? So I think, I want to imagine that it's, the incentives are that they can get their bottom line or they can see like massive increases in profits just by cutting their workforce. And that's the motivation for doing it. Which again, is very dumb because now you're thinking with money instead of your brain.

But that's just my thoughts. 

Alex: Yeah. But that's what the investors want. That's what the Yeah. The shareholders want. And so that's what ends up happening. 

J.R.: Yeah. Shareholders are king. Yeah. 

Alex: Yeah. 

J.R.: I saw this other video, and again, I want your thoughts on this, but so you know how those entry level jobs that are being cut because they're tedious work that AI can do or agents can do, and traditionally the point was that those entry level jobs are how the new.

[00:35:00] Era, the incoming workforce, the recent graduates cut their teeth and get into the workforce, and then they kind of do those menial tasks and then they work their way up to like meaningful careers. But because you're cutting that out now, the generation that are trying to get into the market don't have a like a way in through the door.

And so now they're kind of in this place where they're stuck of like, okay, well, I mean I would love an entry level job that requires 10 years of experience, but also those jobs are being outsourced and even if I wanted the next job up, it's now crowded out because more qualified people are go also looking for those jobs because they're being outsourced.

So it's like how, where do we fit in? And it kind of sucks because that's like a downward spiral of now you have a whole generation of people trying to get work, but then now there's the affordability issue. And if people are less people are having work, then how can we afford with like taxes and everything, or social security, because there's less people paying in because less people have money or less people are making money.

And so if you're taking away these jobs, who's gonna. Input back into social security, and that's a whole other thing. But [00:36:00] yeah. So it's kinda like a mess. So it's like, so then how, if you guys are really big on investing into ai, how are you gonna take care of the people who can and are willing to work, but no longer have the positions to work?

Alex: Did your video answer that question? 

J.R.: Well, I, I don't, I don't remember. It was a very doom and gloom video. 

Alex: Oh yeah. So, so, so related to that video Yeah. There's another video. 

J.R.: Sure. 

Alex: That was like, this prophecy, this AI race of who's gonna build the best AI product there, it's like a path to destroying yourself.

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: And it mostly went arou. It went about like this. It was, the more AI you build, the better it gets, the more people it replaces. Mm-hmm. The people it replaces don't have a job, don't have money to spend. The economy declines. 

J.R.: Right. 

Alex: And then that means you're losing customers. 'cause people aren't spending money.

J.R.: Right. [00:37:00] They don't have money 

Alex: to spend on your 

J.R.: product. Yeah, 

Alex: yeah, exactly. So you're ruining your own business by iterating on AI and cutting people. But if you don't do it, someone else is gonna do it and you're gonna be outta business anyway. So this is super doom and gloom, but I mean, it makes sense.

This is probably where we're headed. I really don't know the solution in the future. I have no idea. And universal basic, like basic income. I don't really think that's gonna happen because, come on. '

J.R.: cause we, capitalism, we value money too much to give it away to other people. 

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. So, so then whatcha going do?

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: I think what's gonna happen is a lot of people are gonna just try and. Maybe entrepreneurship's gonna become bigger because no one's gonna hire you. You're just gonna have to figure out your own solution. You have a team of agents that are gonna be your employees that are gonna do things for you, manage every department, and you're just gonna build it on your [00:38:00] own.

See if someone wants to buy it. And maybe that's where it's headed, right? People aren't gonna try and work for these traditional type of companies, and they're just gonna start their own companies. Maybe this is the next wave. Either that or everyone's gonna become a carpenter. 

J.R.: Right. All the physical jobs, the technical crafts jobs.

Yeah. I was talking to, I was talking to my grandpa about this 'cause he's in the HVAC industry and so he's starting his own sort of company because he used to teach and now he is like a subcontracting and contracting and whatnot. But so the other side of it, and some people don't know this, that AI is just oh, this is tool that lives in the cloud, but there's always a physical aspect to these digital things.

And that's like the data centers and it's the resources that, that's being used up like the water and electricity and stuff like that. And so. I believe, and I could be wrong, that the demand for those technical jobs or those hands-on jobs to maintain these physical facilities and energy and cooling and [00:39:00] whatnot, will be pretty much in demand because you can't have all the AI computing power without these physical facilities to support it.

And therefore that's where the market, the job market's gonna shift is towards these sort of jobs. And, you know, some people have been saying the same thing too, but yeah that's like what I've heard. But I'm curious to know if you think, what do you think, and you just mentioned like maybe entrepreneurship, maybe everyone is now a freelance creative using these tools and builds something and maybe a bigger company buys it.

But do you have any thoughts or advice on how people can navigate this new landscape with AI?

Alex: Yeah I think in the short term, this is at least what I've been trying to do is we're seeing that AI is able to kind of cover for your shortcomings. Like for me I'm not technical, I'm not an engineer, but now with Cloud Code and with Open Claw, I could essentially build an app.

I'm actually building an internal app right now that's in a database that's supposed to house a bunch of [00:40:00] information that I used to have on many different spreadsheets. Okay. So, six months ago I wouldn't be able to do that. And it also, it would be like a des I would need a designer, I would need an engineer.

I would need someone who does layout. I would need someone who does you know, ui, ux. I mean, I would need a team of all these people and now I could pretty much do it all by myself. And so in general, I think it's good to try and move horizontally, right? Everyone used to just think, I just do my job.

I'm gonna do it really well, and I'm gonna excel in my career. It's not that it's not true. Some aspects of that is still true depending on your job. But I think we need to move horizontally and try to expand. So one example is, like I said if you're in marketing, maybe it's not good enough to just do content con content like copywriting.

You can't just be a copywriter, I'm sorry. But copywriting AI is like pretty decent at copywriting. If you prompt it right and you say stop sounding. So [00:41:00] ai, right? 

J.R.: Do it better. 

Alex: Yeah, do it better. But you can't just do copywriting. You have to like generate images. You have to probably start doing ads. You have to manage those ads.

You have to think about like other things in go to market, not just your one vertical. So I think if you go vertical sorry. If you go horizontal and you think about the associated tasks and jobs to the one that you're used to right now, that could kind of help you in the job market. At least at this point because you would be the person that manages agents that do the things that you're not super good at.

J.R.: Mm. 

Alex: Versus just being the person that just got laid off because an agent took over your job. 

J.R.: Mm, 

Alex: yeah. 

J.R.: I see. So like broadening your skill sets or learning how to use more tools in a horizontal way, meaning like not just your one skillset, so to speak, but like a jack of all trades sort of thing, so that you can now manage [00:42:00] agents more effectively.

Alex: Yeah. Mm-hmm. At least that's what's happening with me, even in sales, right? It's not just, oh I only do SDR stuff. I only filter calls that come in or do outreach. Right. You also do the full sale. You go from beginning to end, you close the deal as well, right? Like you probably have to start doing that in order for you to matter.

Yeah. Maybe even do onboarding, who knows? Right? You just have to expand upon your responsibilities. I think. 

J.R.: I like that. I think that's really good advice. So now I feel like that makes a lot of sense, especially if you're currently working. 'cause now you are, you're in the weeds, sort of so to speak, or you're in the trenches.

Do you have any thoughts or advice on, let's say students or people who aren't working yet, younger adults or late teens who are now coming up against that huge wall of like, how do I even start my life and get to the job market? What would you advise? 

Alex: Oh man, that's hard. 

J.R.: Are they, are they just Ed?

They're [00:43:00] just like, good luck, man. I have no advice. 

Alex: They're kind of ed. They're kind of ed. 

J.R.: Let's, let's, let's imagine let's imagine a creative solution as best as we can for we can give them something. 

Alex: So there is one, which is in school, there's a lot of direction and instruction on what to do, in what order, what good means and what bad means.

You know exactly how you're doing. I don't think, well, for one, the job market doesn't really work like that. Corporate America doesn't really work like that. For the most part. It is a lot more ambiguous than it is. And I think in school you're taught that you shouldn't fail, right? If you fail, then you fail.

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: And, you know, let's say you fail a course, I guess, like you might take it again, but that doesn't really happen often. But in work, let's say you're in business and you're trying something like, oh, I, I need to grow my revenue. You'll [00:44:00] try 20 things and 19 of them will probably fail, but they don't teach you like how to fail in school.

They just teach you not to fail. 

J.R.: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: And so I think probably the most important attitude and maybe lesson is just to learn that failure is necessary and you're gonna have to go through a lot of failure. To find the success and you have to keep going. 'cause the failure's not gonna stop. Mm-hmm.

It's just gonna it's gonna kill you if you don't, if you don't accept it, you know? But the things rarely work out perfectly the first time. Right. I don't know like what your experience is, but I, because the future is so unpredictable and we don't know how quickly AI is kind of affecting work lives and how it's gonna affect the job market and entry level people.

I think just deal with failure and try to find an alternative solution as often as you can. And if that [00:45:00] means pivoting careers, being an entrepreneur, you know, figuring out yourself. I mean, part of it is you used to go to work, be an intern to learn the job. Now you kind of just have to figure out the job.

Maybe you build something to showcase that you know what you're doing and then someone will hire you because you've already shown them you know how to do something. They don't have to train you on it. 

J.R.: I like that a lot. And I think that's a good thing because it's partially mindset or how you deal with failure is so key because in the old world it's, yeah, show up.

Like school will teach you, show up, get good grades, follow orders, follow instructions, and you'll be fine. And then you get a job and then 40 years later you retire, whatever. But now it's like you're saying you kind of need to build that resiliency or the ability to learn how to fail and move through that.

Build value, learn skills. And I always give the same advice to college students as what you just said, which is try doing the thing you wanna do, learn and build it yourself. And when you have a proof of concept, or you build a website or an app or whatever, that is infinitely [00:46:00] more interesting and hireable or valuable for an employer to be like, oh, this person is a self-starter.

They learn their own skills, they're passionate about this thing. They did it themselves rather than just oh, look at my resume, I got a all A's and blah, blah, blah, and I did all these clubs and the leadership. I'm like, okay, that's fine, but try doing the thing. Because with now all the technology and platforms we have, you could build a whole business yourself and show that, oh I'm a college student, but I built my own business.

Alex: And it has, you know, it does three figures in revenue per month, but it's something, right? And I think that's infinitely more valuable. I like that you brought up the, when you do something yourself, it shows that you care. And I kind of, it made me think about. I guess at least this is what I'm hearing about Gen Z right?

Gen Z. And it's probably gonna be even more extreme when Gen Alpha goes into the workforce. Gen Z doesn't particularly care when it comes to work, and they're like, oh, I'm just gonna do it my way. And they're not like really into it. I think a [00:47:00] struggle for our company is, I mean, in general, the best case scenario, everyone who's hired to do the thing, they just do the thing that they're supposed to do.

Mm-hmm. But then there's people that don't or they do the bare minimum. And there's only so much training and so much instruction and so many one-on-ones you could have with that person. And I think the main thing that we've had trouble with is you can't train someone to care. You can't train someone to have passion.

For something like you kind of either have it or you don't have it. And I just kinda wonder if the next generation of workers like Gen Z if they'll care enough to even stick it out at a job. You know? And if you do, great, you know, you would be the best people that I would wanna hire. But if you just don't care, I don't know how to teach you to care.

So maybe go do something that you do care about. I don't know what it would be, but 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: Yeah. Probably wouldn't be corporate America. 

J.R.: Right? Of course. If that's not your thing, there's a lot of opportunities out there, but [00:48:00] also don't complain, I guess if you find that it's hard 'cause everything is hard, right.

I was gonna say five years ago, you, we could make the joke and be like, oh, you don't like corporate America, I'm just starting OnlyFans or something. But even that is outsourced by AI now. There's so many 

Alex: Oh 

J.R.: yeah. There's those stories of I just saw maybe yesterday where it was like this medi med student from India, scammed a bunch of people because he made an AI girl uh, OnlyFans, but he asked Chad GPT okay, my, my OnlyFans AI generated girl is not making money.

What should I do? And it told him, you should niche down to MAGA conservative old white men. And he did it and he like made thousands of dollars per month. I'm like, damn, that's crazy. And it gives the reasons why you shouldn't aim for like liberals, but you should aim for conservatives and X, Y, and Z.

And then he tested it out and it worked. I'm like, that is insane. 

Alex: can you imagine? If he did it, anyone else can do it. And you all the content you look at is all gonna be fake content. So, I mean, going off of that, I [00:49:00] really hope that these companies that do manage content have some sort of identifier in the future that just at least tells you, yeah, is this AI generator or not?

Because 

J.R.: yeah, 

Alex: it would be nice to know, right? Maybe it doesn't make a difference when we're looking at it if we don't know. But it bothers us if we don't know. It bothers me if I don't know. 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah. 

Alex: Right. 

J.R.: It's like a transparency thing, right? Like part of us if we know that it's, well, we want to know what it is.

And if we don't get the transparency, it's kind of like when people have, you know, the affiliate links for something and the the regulations are like, oh, you need to disclose that you're an affiliate or something like that. It would make sense that we have some sort of AI tagged so that you can regulate so we know what's real and what's fake, especially in this age.

Because like to your point, people want to know what's real. 

Alex: I feel like half the stuff I see on Instagram right now are all AI generated.

J.R.: No, it is. And it's like, dude, I wanna I'm not interested so much stuff. I'm like, dude, why are you showing me this? Ads, just regular contents, just I'm like, fake [00:50:00] person, fake videos.

I'm like, who wants to see this? I guess some people who don't know wanna see it, but kind of sucks. 

Alex: Yeah. 

 Okay, last point on that. It's kind of a hard thing to do if you think about it, right? Let's just say your video, let's say your video, it's not AI content, but you use AI to edit the video.

To write it down, to edit the word. Yeah. If you use AI tools, I wonder if that would flag it, right? 'Cause most of the thing is you just wanna make sure that there isn't like an AI person that's on something or you like. Animate something with ai. But yeah, I just wonder if what would pass and what 

J.R.: actually no, that's a great point because I was thinking about that too, where it's like, let's say you have an artist, but they use an AI tool to do some sort of like thing that's repetitive.

Are you gonna say that's AI content? And the YouTube channel that I watched the infographic show after a certain point, the narrator was like, Hey, this is Josh. Because people are like, is this ai? But his voice is just so you know, good [00:51:00] that people think it's, and then also the, because it's like cartoon images or sort of like animations, but they're very transparent.

They're like, no, no, there's no AI generated content in this. Like, it's all real animators doing all this stuff. But so, so I get that. But the whole point of like, what about AI tools or like, let's say I use AI to do the transcript for this episode. I'm like, is that, is the AI generated content? I'm just like pulling out a transcript.

It's not creative work. It's more just so, yeah, I don't know. But that's a good point. 

Alex: Yeah, we'll see what they come up with. 

J.R.: So if you don't have any thoughts on that, I mean, we're kind of transitioning. The only other thing I wanna talk about was like these LinkedIn posts that you've been making, which I thought I, I mentioned in person were really interesting and you mentioned like becoming a thought leader or at least just putting your thoughts out there to propose on LinkedIn.

And I pulled a few of them that had the most, I guess, engagement or comments 'cause I thought they were all interesting. But I dunno if you want to talk about any of these, but I can kind of. Rapid fire through these. So the first one that I pulled was toxic high performers. You mentioned like the hidden cost of toxic high [00:52:00] performers and being a net drain in your organization.

I thought that was interesting. Very thought provoking. Second one, can I be myself at work? Which I think the main idea I got from it was aspiring to be your best self at work, while also balancing different sides based on the context because people feel like, oh, should I be fake at work? But at the same time, it's like there's professional.

So if I'm being professional, am I fake? But you are proposing that you can have the balance based on context and you're just trying to be your best self. And I think that's very valid. And then the last one was staying engaged in your company, which is people, I think you mentioned two points of engagement or what's important for company and or for employees.

And that's them wanting to have personal growth but also feel like they're on a winning team within your company. And if you can do those things, you'll have better retention. Do you have any thoughts that you wanna follow up on those? Because I think those are all interesting. 

Alex: We could start with the first one.

The first one was 

J.R.: the toxic high performers. 

Alex: Yeah. Toxic high performers. They get a lot more [00:53:00] slack than they probably deserve. It's also, 'cause I've seen this happen quite a lot. It's mainly when someone pisses people off in an organization. Let's say you have a meeting and this toxic high performer says something, or is like ultra critical about you.

Mm-hmm. Right. Not only are you not gonna perform for the rest of the day, most likely 'cause you feel like crap, you're gonna go talk to person B about your coworker and then they're not gonna work for as long as you're talking. And then that person is gonna spread some gossip to like three other people.

And then that's another three hours that no one is working. So. If you think about it, that's kind of the blast radius thing is if one person is a high performer, but they're always doing this, people are always talking about them, they're always rubbing people the wrong way. Then you have like HR coming and trying to mediate the problem, or the manager has to do it.

They're not spending that time doing something more productive. And over time it gets to the point where it's just not worth it. It's just really [00:54:00] not worth it. Mm-hmm. I think most of the time people have more longevity at work if they're just easier to work with than Yeah. If they're a high performer or not.

You could be fine. You know, you do your job, you're satisfactory, and you get along with everyone, everyone loves you, everyone's great. No one has complaints, but if you're the toxic type performer, you're probably gonna get kicked out in some way before that other guy. So anyway, that's the thoughts on that one.

The second one, 

J.R.: Can I be myself at work? 

Alex: Can you be yourself at work? This is kind of like the Yeah. People thinking that they have to be fake at work or they have to play the game or they have to sit on that like corporate lingo. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: Maybe like, have 

J.R.: to office politics. 

Alex: Yeah. Do you have to change who you are at work in order to fit in?

And to me it's more of like a, you shouldn't be changing yourself, but you should probably filter yourself to a degree. And just 'cause you filter [00:55:00] yourself doesn't mean that you're being fake. And it's just a matter of reading the room what's appropriate and what's not. Just 'cause you go into a library, which is just a building, you could yell if you want to, but you're not supposed to because the environment doesn't tell you that you should.

And so that's the same analogy is at work, there's like a certain expectation that you should be acting. And so you just say professional, and that doesn't mean that you're being fake. But yeah, maybe you should keep some of your opinions to yourself because this is not the place that you're supposed to give your opinions that just make people unproductive.

Right? We're all here to do a job and we're all here to be productive. So if your very strong opinion about something, I don't know, let's just say Trump, you have very strong opinions about Trump. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: Maybe you don't need to talk about them. Mm-hmm. Keep that to yourself. If you don't have to talk about them talk, 

J.R.: it's like social awareness, reading the room, or as [00:56:00] Hannah Kim mentioned, nun, where it's kind of like, 

Alex: yeah, nun.

J.R.: Yeah. Like I have a friend who she kind of struggles with this, where she's she's very, I don't know. Abrasive in her language and her thing is like, well, I just wanna be authentic because my friends from home or my real friends or whatever her close friends are, will accept her as she is. And she can have like vulgar language and stuff like that.

But obviously that type of person will rub a lot of people the wrong way. And it's not saying, oh, don't be yourself, but it's more just like. My advice was, I think wisdom is the ability to discern that you don't need to say everything that you feel or all your opinions, and that's not filtering, that's just wisdom.

Or, sorry, that's not, that's like censoring yourself. It's not censoring yourself. It's just wisdom to know that you don't need to say everything that's on your mind, if that makes sense. 

Alex: I don't know why, but this example came like if your wife asks you how she looks in a dress. It takes wisdom to not tell [00:57:00] her she looks fat.

J.R.: You're like, actually you do look a little bit fatter than before.

Alex: Yeah. Doesn't look so good around the butt area, you know? 

J.R.: Yeah, 

Alex: yeah. 

J.R.: Oh, this lighting is terrible. Like, 

Alex: that's wisdom right there. 

J.R.: No, exactly. It's all those with my girlfriend and I like when we made a lot of couple content, it's always the whole like, being in a relationship, you learn these sort of wisdom.

You learn wisdom of what to say, what not to say. Whereas someone who has not been in like a long-term relationship or has had relationships before, they don't have the NCI or the social awareness or the rules of you know, boyfriends, girlfriends or whatever partners of what to say, what not to say.

Yeah. So it's kind of, I think as it's similar right? In the professional space. 

Alex: Yeah. What was the third one? The third one was, yeah, 

J.R.: third one is like staying engaged at your company and people wanting personal growth and then wanting to know that their company is winning. 

Alex: Yeah, I think this topic came about because it's always hard to motivate [00:58:00] people.

I kind of said it earlier, right? It's hard to teach people to care, 

J.R.: right? 

Alex: But to a degree, you still have to still have to try, right? That's kind of what managers do. You motivate your team maybe they care, but you could help them care more. And the way to keep people motivated, obviously rewarding them with money is helpful, but it's always a short term thing.

And what came to mind is sometimes you can't just give people money. Like you just don't have budget. You just don't have money to give. Okay? So what do you do with a team that's not motivated if if you don't have money to give? I think that the next best thing is at least show them progress. Show them that things are getting better.

Maybe their work is getting better. Maybe we're seeing results and things are changing for maybe things are annoying to [00:59:00] them at work. Maybe I'm at least tackling the things that are annoying in their workday, right? So showing progress is pretty helpful for motivation, I think, if you can't give money.

And the other side of it would probably be some, something along the lines of inspiration, right? If you know where the company is going, if you know what the company is trying to achieve, maybe even just a team. If the team knows what the goals are, if you, if they're defined, then people know what they're working toward.

But what causes people to lose motivation is they're like, I don't know what I'm doing. What am I even doing here? Like what? What is the point of all this? Right? People ask these questions all the time, and if they know the answer, then at least they have something to work toward. So as much as possible I try to give the good and the bad with everything.

At least they know what's going on and what we're trying to do at all times. And hopefully, you know, people stay engaged and people stay motivated. 

J.R.: Yeah. I like that. It's kinda like having a vision or a purpose that drives everyone in the right direction [01:00:00] or the same direction. I've worked with companies where that was the same problem was the lack of transparency that people always put.

They're like, yeah, I don't know how my work ties into the larger picture of the company vision, and I don't know that my work matters. And I think that transparency. Alignment on vision is more important than people might realize. And to your point as well, it's like, growth. It's kinda like that Tony Robbins thing where it's, you know, people are happy when there's progress towards a goal, not just either landing at the goal, but it's like knowing that they're progressing towards something is always kind of like the calculus for happiness.

And I think that's a good point. I'd like to throw on a third thing in my study of organizations and leadership is recognition is another big thing that people can do in their organizations, especially as a leader or manager that does turn the dial for a lot of people because there's that saying, I don't know how true it is, but it's like people will die for recognition and or just feeling like they matter from their team or their leaders or whatnot.[01:01:00] 

I think that goes a long way. And to your point, if you don't have budget, I feel like you have enough. Energy to just tell someone that you appreciate them and or they did great work in X, Y, and Z. That goes a long way than trying to find the budget to throw 10 grand at them for a raise or something like that.

You know? 

Alex: It's a good point. Recognition is a very cheap alternative. It's very cheap that like it is underutilized. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: I think by many it's a good reminder that I should probably recognize more people more often. Yeah.

I don't recognize people quite enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just like, oh, that was good enough. It was cool. 

J.R.: Yeah. If you guys, well you guys won't get the reference, but if you listen to the episode 47, like I mentioned, we kind of go into that of how Hung was back in our college years. It's hilarious.

Yeah. But yeah, the only reason why I know that is 'cause I know in our team at work and even on my dance team that I direct, we kind of embed gratitude into our feedback loops. And [01:02:00] so with Agile, with Scrum, part of our retrospective is like kudos, gratitude to the people around us. And it's like a small thing.

And you can think of it as like a little hokey because it's like, all right, gratitude, like shout outs to people on your team who wants to go first. And it's like, oh, shout out to this person. You know, he helped me with this code thing or whatever. It sounds like very, it doesn't matter, but in reality, you do that over and over consistently.

Your team actually does improve performance when they feel safe and trusted and they feel recognized for the work that they do because a lot of times people will feel like their work is not recognized or acknowledged. And having these consistent cadence of recognizing our team does go a huge way. And so just to add on to, you know, your points, I feel like recognition does help.

Alex: Yeah, there actually is. So we have a weekly meeting, which is kind of ridiculous for most companies to have a weekly. Meeting with everybody on it. What do they do? Just updates. But it's only 30 minutes. It's mostly updates, but one section of it is just shout outs. It's just people who [01:03:00] wanna shout out people on their team, people that they work with, maybe a project that they just recently finished.

And we give space for that. And I think it, it does make a big difference, especially with the morale of the company, right? Like people are feeling a lot better about that. So yeah I think it is helpful. That's probably why we've kept it in for so many. Sure. Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah. I totally agree.

Okay. I actually, one lingering question. So on the first topic, toxic high performers is the advice to. Try to be more intentional with that calculus of, okay, net or profit from high performer, but then the drain, and so you kinda have to do that calculus of is this person worth it or is the advice just to do your best to identify those toxic red performer, high performers if you know that they exist and just try to get them out.

Or as a policy, try to find the right people or what is the prescription for that? 

Alex: I think if you have a toxic high performer, what most people or most [01:04:00] managers will try to do first is try to change their attitude, and that's probably not gonna happen. Right? So next thing that you do is you isolate them, you try your best to, mm-hmm.

To con confine the damage to just themselves. You put them on an island, you say, don't talk to anybody, just do your job and do it well. But then if that doesn't work, then you have to do the whole, okay, well are they helping me as a manager or are they not helping me as a manager? If they're still performing so well that their numbers are making you look amazing, or they're pushing code or whatever it is that they do, yeah, maybe it's worth it to keep them for a little bit longer.

But I think over time you might end up losing other team members and it's like, okay, well do you wanna sacrifice your whole team for this person or Yeah. Or what was 

J.R.: it worth it? 

Alex: Yeah. Yeah, 

J.R.: yeah. 

Alex: It's kind of like a case by case, I'd say, honestly. 

J.R.: Right, right. And also too, a worse situation is if that is, that person is an information [01:05:00] knowledge bottleneck, like they're the specialist on the one thing and you're like, great, our whole business model like revolves around this one guy and he's the worst person.

You're like, well, 

Alex: because he's cocky. He's so cocky. He knows Yeah, this person, this person that you're talking about, they know they're important and that's why they have a bad attitude. 'cause they're like I can afford to do that. 

J.R.: Mm. That's crazy. 

Alex: If people have to listen to me, I know everything. 

J.R.: Yeah.

Alex: And that's when if you are like my founder, you say, I don't give a shit. Get out. We'll figure it out. Either that or you hire someone and you force them to train them and then you kick 'em out. Mm-hmm. But that's the only thing that you could do. But that sucks. Honestly. That sucks. Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah.

Alex: Yeah. 

J.R.: I think that's kind of like a words of wisdom horror story sort of thing where it's, you have to be proactive with this sort of thing. Get the right people on the bus, like the culture, your team culture, your organization's culture, and try to remove those like in a process system way [01:06:00] that, that I'm thinking is try not to have those bottlenecks obviously, if you can.

If you can sort of make sure there's knowledge transfers and 

Alex: it's, it's hard in smaller companies it's so hard. 

J.R.: Yeah, of course, of course. 'cause everyone's wearing multiple hats. But I think it's and maybe that's tr, I'm trying to think of the advice is try your best to kind of spread out the knowledge, not have those bottlenecks, and then you're less at risk to having that sort of toxic employee that's a high performer.

And they know they probably did it intentionally, maybe, or maybe they hoard, like I've worked in an organization where they hoarded information, like they specifically want it to be the bottleneck and it's okay, you are a genius, so I'll give you that, but now we're all screwed because of that.

Alex: Yeah, that's good advice. 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that. Yeah. I think those are very good topics or things to think about, especially in the workplace and whatnot and you know, being a leader or manager. Any other thoughts? Otherwise, we're at the hour, we're past the hour, so we can start wrapping this up.

Do you think we left anything out?

Alex: No, not really. I think I'm just kind of thinking about [01:07:00] like where AI's going, but no one knows. Yeah. No one knows where it's going. We don't know where the job market's really going. So I think for you and I, we could just pray that we still have jobs in the future, but here's the having jobs in the future.

J.R.: I know, hopefully it's I don't know how, I don't know how you feel or what your stress level is. 'cause I know you're actively using AI and you're, you know, you're in this sort of ex, like this position you're in where you manage people. But me personally, I'm just like. I am gonna continue learning skills and develop my own skills and do my side stuff because I do want to learn and plant these seeds to eventually become other things that can be passion projects, their own businesses, my own coaching and consulting, et cetera.

And so I think as long as I know I'm focused on continuous growing and learning and leveraging new tools, I am, I feel okay. Not only that, but I'm, as a personal finance coach, I'm pretty solid on my finances. So I'm like, okay, worst case scenario, like [01:08:00] at least I have a good solid financial foundation. So I'm not worried too much, but that's just me.

And I know other people have different situations, so I feel for you, but that's why I feel okay. But I don't know how you feel in general with your own situation. 

Alex: At least with I'll just say my girlfriend, she has been extremely anxious about anything related to AI because. It affects her stability in the future. She doesn't know if she's gonna have a job. She doesn't know how many jobs are gonna be in replaced. She doesn't know if she's gonna be replaced, and I'm trying not to go down that route.

My attitude has been, I'm just gonna try my best to stay relevant and do what I can to stay relevant and sort of hope for the best. And if I can be more relevant than the next person that's doing the same thing and more effective and more, I don't know, a higher a better performer, hopefully I get the chance instead of somebody else.

But either way, this is it's tough, it's really tough. I do want to have a good attitude [01:09:00] about it because it is also exciting, but it's tough because it's just an unknown space. But I do wanna say, you know, even before we go to the gratitude stuff, I think I am very lucky to be in a position.

I guess shout out to my founder, Taylor Ho, and the company that he built, and allowing someone like me to even have the space to explore AI and try it. He kind of forced it down my throat, but like, hey it's been a great learning experience for me. Not everyone is exposed to it, even though he does it a little bit too much.

He's like literally telling me about AI news every damn day. Oh, there's this tweet. Oh, was it SpaceX just bought another AI company. Yeah. Come on. Every day. But I think it's good to, to have someone like that in your life that allows you to explore and allow you to fail and allow you to try things. And the biggest thing that he gets pissed about is if you didn't try [01:10:00] anything.

It's like for him, it pisses him off to be at the status quo.

So, yeah, I really appreciate just at least allowing me to be in this space. 

J.R.: Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, I like that. That's a great take. Okay, let's, well then let's wrap it up. Let's go into this. I mean, you already said you're grateful for that.

That's awesome. Do you have anything else you're grateful for as we wrap up? 

Alex: Girl, for you, man. Grateful to have you in my life. Thanks, man. To invite me onto a podcast and talk about this horrible topic. I'm just kidding. 

J.R.: Super horrible, super fun. Super fun, super horrible. My new is too good at, its at its job.

Ugh. 

Alex: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. 

J.R.: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you too, man. Any final ask from the audience or any final takeaways besides doom and gloom and just pray like the both of us. 

Alex: No. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Alex: Good luck. Not, not right now. Yeah. Just good luck. God, just be happy. I think it, it just revolves around like the anxiety of everything right now.

I think we [01:11:00] just have to find, yeah. Find things that give us peace, find things that make us happy. And it even for me, it's been I'm just so high strung every day. But I need to find a way to, to disconnect. So hopefully everyone has their version of how to actually disconnect and reset.

J.R.: Yeah. That's great. I like that a lot. A quick tangent, my friend and I were talking on a previous episode about what jobs will we have in an AI apocalypse? And I'm like, look, I'm just gonna lean into the comedy thing. I'm gonna make my village laugh. And, you know, that's, that's my only real skillset I have in an AI apocalypse.

So, we'll see. 

Alex: I do wanna say this, I'm fairly certain. AI is not gonna be good at jokes. 

J.R.: Ah, okay. See, I mean, I'm hoping the same thing. I'm, yeah, I can be the core gesture for 

Alex: my, for the second, your future career. 

J.R.: For my, for my matrix overlord. I'll try to make him laugh or whatever. 

Alex: Your audience, not even gonna be people, it's just gonna be agents.

J.R.: Yeah, exactly. [01:12:00] Make me laugh. Human. Yeah, I'll try my best. Yeah. 

Alex: Cool. 

J.R.: All right. Last thing where can people find you if they wanna connect and see what you're up to? I'll link your socials obviously, but 

Alex: yeah, link my socials. You can find me on LinkedIn. I've been posting more on there, just, I don't know, because the stuff that I it is the most appropriate outlet.

When you spend so much time thinking about work and work things, you're not gonna go post it on your Instagram 'cause none of your friends give a shit. 

J.R.: Right, right, right. 

Alex: Yeah. Like it's kind of an interesting outlet so far. Maybe, hopefully I'll continue, but yeah, you could find me there. You can find me on Instagram if I know you'll add do.

But yeah, 

J.R.: cool. Yeah, definitely check them out. I was, as I was scrolling Instagram, that was one of the reasons why I'm like, oh, I should have hung back on the show. 'cause I was like, oh, this is interesting. I'm also playing with AI and seeing your journey with it and all these interesting topics.

So yeah, I recommend that.

All right. I'll do my final sign off. Thanks Hung for being here. I really appreciate it. The best. You are one of my top guests who have been back three times [01:13:00] now, so you have that award, I think your second place. So I appreciate you. 

Alex: Wait, has, has someone actually been on the show more than three times?

J.R.: Yeah. Four. He just recorded on the last episode. 

Alex: Oh, 

J.R.: damn. My friend Aeden. Yeah, so he's at four. So, I only have like four people who are at three. So you've joined the that club of the magical three. I was telling him, I was like, if I asked you on more than twice, it's probably 'cause I like you. 'cause first time could be a fluke.

Second time. All right. Maybe you have something interesting to say. Third time I have to like you in order for me to want you back on for a third time. And so just a kudos to all of my three timers and above that I definitely like you guys as people in addition to, I like to hear what you guys have to think or have to say.

So I appreciate that.

Okay. Final, final sign off. Thank you guys for listening and I really appreciate it. Be sure to like, follow, subscribe, all that cool jazz and whatnot. Leave us five stars on whatever platform you're listening to. Reminder to always be kind to other people, especially yourself because I don't think AI can be kind yet.

It can be fake kind. And remember that you can always learn something from someone if you take the time to listen. So [01:14:00] thank you guys for being here. 

Alex: Thank you.