The Future Of Work! | Biz to Biz Podcast

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the biz to biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the John Elway of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about the future of work, what that will look out like in the next 5 to 10 years, even in the next 2.

Yes, it's changing rapidly.

It's definitely changing. COVID had a lot to do with that. It's been— nothing's really changed for me. But yeah. Anyway, how are you doing, sir?

I'm doing well. Tonight starts football season. Hence we broke out the football.

The, the— what is this?

The 1972 Miami Dolphins undefeated season signed football. Yeah.

Do you guys have, uh, emotional damage because you haven't been to the— what, to the Super Bowl since then?

Yeah, it's been pretty sad that we haven't been. We went to the Super Bowl with Dan Marino, and then we got our butts kicked in by San Fran.

What year was that, '82?

In the '80s. And then the Dolphins never went ever again. Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl.

In fact, I was 2 years old. The only reason why I know this is because my uncle, Uncle Jerry— shout out to Uncle Jerry, you're the man. Um, I'm gonna have to get a picture that I got to show you, this picture of him. Anyway, he has every Super Bowl on VHS.

Wow, that's cool.

So when I was a kid and I would spend if I had to go and spend the weekend over there or whatever, it would just be like a Super Bowl marathon. I could watch, go back to like, I don't even know, whenever, you know, I can't remember.

Probably the VHSs and the cassettes.

Whenever the VHS started, he had the Super Bowl.

So the other day, Joe Montana came out and he said Dan Marino was, he thought was one of the greatest quarterbacks. That was nice. Who? Joe Montana. Thought that, that Dan Marino—

I think he's being polite.

Whatever, he said it.

Joe Montana was probably, in my opinion, growing up in the '90s, like, watching football was— well, they had a more favorite dude.

The Dolphins had like the most prolific offense.

And then yeah, Mark Duper.

We had Mark Duper, Mark Clayton.

We have Mark Clayton.

Yeah, they were the two fastest guys in the NFL at the time. They would just run past everybody. We had tight ends that could catch the ball. We had no running game whatsoever. The running game was, in the '70s, we had it all. We had—

Yeah, I mean, it did.

I mean, Bob Griese did something.

'70s is 50 years ago.

I know.

Gotta relax.

Bob Griese did nothing. He handed the ball off to Larry Zonka, Jim Kick, and Mercury Morris, and they ran over everyone in the NFL behind Larry Little, who was a massive guard.

I don't mean to talk too much mess to you because the Packers— I mean, I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Shout out, you know, we don't have an NFL team in Milwaukee, but we do have a team in Green Bay, Wisconsin. So Green Bay Packers, the trophy that everyone goes to get is named after who? Vince Lombardi, the head coach of what?

The Packers. Yes.

Legendary, legendary. The state of legends, Wisconsin. Anyway, uh, yeah, Green Bay went through a terrible streak when we had Don McCowski, bro. Oh my God. Well, we would get destroyed.

We're hoping that maybe we have Tua, McDaniel.

I don't think Tua is going to make it this season.

Well, we have Maybe I'm not the only person, and I'm not happy because Mike White got injured, the backup who came from the Jets, got replaced by Aaron Rodgers, and then the only thing left behind him is the third-string quarterback.

I, I hope Aaron Rodgers does something out there because, I mean, when he said that the Packers wasn't like putting people around him that, you know, like And then all, all that he's doing now is going to get all his old receivers, right? What were you really talking about?

I don't know.

I mean, we had Randall Cobb, Jennings. I don't even— the list goes on and on. Yeah, I was like, the only— the one thing that I always say we always lacked in Green Bay since I can't even remember the lad, uh, what was his name? Started anyway, uh, a running back. We haven't had Edgar Bennett. That's like the last running back Green Bay has had, in my opinion.

No, that's the problem with most teams. They can't put it all together, or they have it all together, then there's injuries. I think with the new rules with the concussion and all that in the NFL, I think they definitely need to expand the rosters. They need bigger rosters.

Well, that'd be good for athletes. Yeah, but they give more of a— excuse me, I mean, I know they got a big practice squad too.

So like, yeah, but it's limited because, you know, like the— like you get 2 or 3 guys injured, then you got to take guys off the practice squad.

Those guys make $10,000 a week.

Yeah, but then you got to go find other guys and they're not in shape or ready, and then more guys get injured. Yeah, then you got And then you're putting guys into the game that aren't, haven't worked out with the team. It's, that's why they need to expand the roster. They need to expand the rosters at least 10 players. Yeah.

Anyway, man, we could go into a whole NFL podcast.

We could have a whole NFL podcast.

Uh, this week's going by like a fricking snail. We had the day off for the holiday. Yeah. It's only Thursday. I feel like it's been Thursday all week. Um, Let's get into my, uh, yeah, we're— my house is done painted. They painted my house this color of a creamsicle.

Um, oh man, that's the Florida—

I know, it's the, you know, Florida coral, Caribbean.

Yeah, Caribbean coral vibes.

I don't have a problem with it. My kids are— they are thick. It's hilarious because when I showed them the creamsicle box, now they can't— they can't stop.

Can't stop.

Okay, but anyway, The future of work. What do you think? I think the future of work is going to be nuts by 2030.

I mean, I listen to— what's the guy now? I'm going to not remember the guy's name. Mike, the guy, the work, the Dirty Work guy. What's that guy's name? Dirty Jobs.

Yeah, Dirty Jobs.

So he— so I was listening to him, you know, and, and I was listening to— he was on another show, and then they were talking about AI and work, and they were talking about how in factories you know, when they brought in robotics and all that, you know, into factories, how that changed how factories work.

Thousands of people lost their jobs, right?

And then they're— now they're talking about the same thing could possibly happen with all this AI, which I— all right, but I'm not—

it's supposed to happen, right? How do you evolve, right?

You have to evolve. Things evolve and change.

So I like— we went from starting fires with sticks and stones Right.

But I want to finish making my point.

But we got to evolve.

But then the other problem is, is that we have a need for tons of other jobs and nobody wants to do those jobs anymore because everybody's being told, oh, you must go to college and all that.

No one wants to do those jobs, bro, because the pay rate hasn't increased.

So what I'm talking about—

people aren't doing those jobs anymore.

I know, but I'm talking about even college kids. I know, but I'm talking about plumbing, electricians, air conditioning.

They took that out of the— we talked about that on a podcast before. They took that out of high school.

They got to put it back in high schools because there's a major shortage. When you want to get trades—

you talking about?

Yeah, when you want to get something done at your house, man, you got to call 10 people before you find a guy that—

and it's going to be expensive and you don't— you—

yeah, and you don't know what their experience level is and all of that. That's got to change. But, you know, work— the other thing is, is You know, like a lot of companies started, you know, putting people to work at home and then they wanted to bring people back to the office and then people shrunk their offices. I mean, we drive around our area, we're in the middle of an office area.

I would call it an industrial complex because nothing's being built, but there's just office buildings. We're surrounded by office buildings.

They call it the business— it's the Cypress Creek Business Corridor.

That sounds like a great way to explain it.

And it's just office buildings, warehouses, tons and tons of office buildings.

2 years ago when I started, this place was a super, super ghost town.

Oh yeah, well, it's tons of people closed up businesses at the time, people.

And then about a year ago it got really busy again.

Yeah. And then now it's kind of like Well, I think a lot of people started to—

the hybrid thing.

They— yeah, no, but they moved. Like, they reduced their office space and they have— like, I talked to one of our—

I agree, that's smart.

I talked to a client recently and they were telling me, they said, oh yeah, we had 6 floors in an office building, now we have 1 floor. And then they moved to a new spot, they have 1 floor. And only 10 people have an office. Everybody else has to go on a website, schedule time for the office or schedule time for conference rooms and things like that, meeting rooms to come in and do their meetings. And he said the young people want to come in and work in the office. And most of the other people are comfortable working at home. But they also did a big shift where They bought a company in the Philippines. I'm not a big— in a big agreement with that, where they employing about 300 people now that are doing work that they said nobody wants to do.

Well, no one wants to do it because you want to pay them $7 an hour.

They get paid a lot more than that. So one of the— they're the highest paid, one of the high— they said they're one of the highest paid employers in the Philippines.

I'm, I'm not talking about in the Philippines. I'm talking about it in America.

Well, no, it's not $7 an hour.

Those types of jobs, yeah, bro, come on, man.

It's an office job.

Yeah, how much?

$12? No, like they were paying like $20 an hour or more.

In what economy? No. I mean, in what state? Whatever, I mean, we could get into it.

Whatever, let's not get into pay. I'm just saying that people have shifted to where, listen, we get calls from companies that want to do telemarketing for us. One guy's in the Philippines, one guy's in India, one guy's in Pakistan. We got one guy today, he's from Jordan. I mean, Jordan, I never even got a phone call from there before. And all these different countries trying to sell us, you know, services, you know, virtual. The new thing is like virtual assistant, hire virtual assistants. And these virtual assistants are all over the world or all over the country. And that's like a big changing thing. It's like a new thing now. Like we got a company now, trying— we got a couple of them that— one we're already doing credit card processing for, one just applied the other day. What's their business? Supplying virtual assistants.

I don't— I mean, that's not new, bro.

No, I'm saying it's growing. Not saying it's new, not new. It's— I'm saying it's a growing industry, virtual hiring, having companies that find you.

Again, that's because people— I mean, this is This is, you're a business owner. I'm a business owner. So I look at this as two ways. One, the businesses are trimming the fat, right? And so they're, it's all about operating as lean as possible. Yes. Right? So the problem with that is you're taking jobs away from qualified individuals that are in your community and you're hiring people outside of the community for cheaper, right?

In some cases, not in all cases.

Okay.

Right, right.

I agree. But, you know, again, yeah, you're helping your business, but you're, you're not helping the greater scheme of things. That's true, right?

Yeah.

Also, I understand the business owner side of it. Because we're trying to run as lean as possible and the people in our community can't work for what we can pay them.

That's also part of the problem.

That's a main part of the problem right now in America is people would rather go work for themselves for $10, $15 an hour and do the hustle and do what it takes rather than go work for a job and make $15 an hour, pay taxes on that, right? Have to whatever all the other stuff.

And the other—

and you come home with a really shitty paycheck.

Well, the other problem is, is that you have rent, you know, property taxes, everything is expensive. No, no, but I'm saying that's caused rents to go up. And rents to go up like in office spaces. And it's very hard. There's a lot of big empty office spaces. Yeah, but there's not a lot of small empty office space like 2,000, 3,000 square feet. You can't even find that. If I wanted to go rent 10,000 square feet, I could go get a great deal on 10,000 square feet. But I don't have the need for 10,000 square feet. But I'm saying to go to— if you want to have a small business, and have an office is very hard today because you can't go find something.

That's why most people are operating right out of their house, right? They're turning their garages into their office.

They're being forced to do that. Yeah, because of the— because, you know, these people that own the— I was reading a story where this company Rackspace bought a mall and now they're going to move out of the mall because when COVID came, their employees all wanted to go work at home. And then they, a lot of them relocated outside of this, the city, wherever they are in Texas. So now they're going to move everything out of that building to a smaller building outside of the city where more of their employees live so that they can have an office closer to where the employees move to, because a lot of employees moved out of the city into the suburbs.

Yeah, that's like the one investment group that's literally building, trying to build a city in San— outside of San Francisco, right?

There's like 3 or 4, there's 3 or 4 projects that are trying to get done in California where company went and bought property and they want to put up an office building. No, they just city and house. No, they want to build an office building.

They want to build a city, right? They want to build their own city and it's going to be for their employees, the people like, because I mean, I understand, you know, trying to get a house, you can't afford that in San Francisco, Oakland, wherever, you know, right?

So they want to make it affordable for their employees.

Yeah. Smart. I think that's going to pop up all over the country.

And, you know, like where my daughter lives in Cedar Rapids, there's a couple of big companies there, smart cities, and doing the same kind of thing where they moved in, they bought up all this one company, Collins Aviation. They merged with another company. They bought up all the empty office space in the corridor. That's right where my daughter's TV station is. And they bought up all the buildings over there, and that's all their offices. And then all their employees move from other states into the area, and it's much cheaper to live in Iowa than it is to live in Florida or New York or Chicago or wherever all these people were living. Yeah, no doubt, more affordable living.

I mean, the younger generation is, you know, they're more, they're more mobile, right? Like, they're not like me. I have small, not small, but I still have teenagers, so I can't just pick up and go, right?

No, but I'm saying if your job— like, let's say I move the office, I said, oh, we're going to move to North Florida, who wants to move? People might want to move because it's cheaper to live over there and give people a better living opportunity.

That's what's going on. That's a possibility.

That's what's going on. No, for sure. Large scale, it's going on. Yeah, but let's talk about like You know, and also, like, they're talking about taking empty office buildings and renovating them into apartments. They're talking about taking these empty hotels and turning them into apartments because there's tons of them.

There's tons of empty businesses. Yeah, why don't you just let the homeless in?

They're doing that in some cases too.

They are doing it in some cities and it's working.

Yeah, in some cities they're taking care of other people and not taking care of the homeless. We won't get into a whole discussion about that. But the other thing is, another thing that's growing big is like the whole contract worker gig economy, like people who, oh, I need someone to do this job for 5 days.

Again, that goes back to the employer.

I mean, no, I'm just saying it's a growing trend is what I'm talking about. Yeah.

I mean, we've been forced into that. Like, this is a, this is a touchy thing for me, man. Right. Because like, I'm, I, a contract worker as well still, right? So like, I mean, I'm not— we don't have insurance here in the office. I'm not throwing shots at you. I'm just saying, like, we don't, right? So like, there's, there's a lot of reasons why employer— employees rather, or people in general are saying, I don't want to work. It's like, we— there's no incentive if they have to do everything on their own. What is the real incentive of going to work for somebody? There isn't much anymore. Like, I mean, I'm in a different situation. Like, you know, I like what I do. I like where I work and shit. So I come to work every day. I'm lucky. And I'm blessed in that regard. Right?

Yes.

But I can wake up one morning and literally feel that I, you know what I'm saying? I understand that side of it in that way of thinking. Because it's tough. It's tough the way the world is. It's tough to be optimistic. It's hard to come and be striving to do your best work every day. Because it's so hard to live outside of what you're doing. And so like, you know, the contract worker thing, I'm all for it. But what does that really say about you know, like the infrastructure of the United States.

Well, look at how many people are employed in like the gig economy of Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, uh, Instacart. I mean, how many companies are out there that employ probably millions of people and who are working multiple jobs, right? Like, you see these guys who are doing Uber, they're doing Uber, they're doing Lyft, they're doing some Instacart, they're doing DoorDash, they're doing every one of those companies. Most of the people who do that. And then the other thing is like retail and restaurant is changing too. Uh, kiosks, self-checkout. Like I saw Trader Joe's came out and they said we're not gonna ever do self-checkout.

I like it.

And, um, so the other day, you know, I pay attention to self-checkout.

So, well, you know, Aldi's— Aldi's does self-checkout, so whatever Aldi's is doing Trader Joe's isn't doing okay. So, well, it's the same company.

So I want— oh, it is?

They're only—

yeah, I didn't know that.

They're brothers.

So I went to, uh, Target. I usually don't go there, but I was in the shopping center and I said, oh, let me go in Target, there's something I need in there. So I went in Target. So I went in Target, when I went to the self-checkout, I was a little shocked because the lines did like 2 cashiers with people in line, so I did the self-checkout. Went to self-checkout. They have cameras on you at self-checkout the whole time, up there, down there. Yeah, and there's like a TV screen and they can see you. And if you had a problem, you could actually talk to somebody through the self-checkout thing, because I asked the lady, I said, oh, can they talk to you? And she goes, yeah, if I'm busy and something's going on, they'll talk to you. They must have like AI watching it.

I'm sure they do.

And then live bodies And a live person probably can watch 100 of those cameras because they have one person. Oh yeah.

I mean, you're—

because there's an AI.

I'm sure when I was doing— when I'd see— I was just not too long ago as well at Target, and I thought the same thing. But I just imagine there's a guy in the security office monitoring those 5.

There's probably someone in an office not even anywhere near there, hundreds of miles away, and they're watching these monitors. And they're watching.

I'm going to ask, I got to ask now. I'm curious.

Well, I can tell you that we use AI. Let's say you're doing live streaming, right? So we have companies that do livestream and they livestream, let's just say, some suggestive material.

So that's different with what you're talking about.

I know, but I'm saying they use the same technology.

How do you know what technology Target is using?

Because I'm pretty darn sure they don't have one guy watching 6 people. They have one guy watching 10 stores. I'm serious. It's easy to do with AI. They're—

they know how many Target stores are there in America?

Probably thousands.

Yeah, I don't see one guy being— I see one guy watching each store.

I doubt it. I'd be— don't be shocked if they're doing that. It's inefficient. We can sell you some AI stuff to help you because I'm telling you, they look for certain things to move and all that.

What do you think work will look like in 2030? You didn't answer what it was going to look like.

It's gonna— it We might see, it depends how everything starts going in society. Are people gonna, you know, there's companies now pushing for back to work, come back to the office. I know myself, we're gonna be way, way more efficient working as a team in the office, okay? Rather than, oh, Justin, you come in 2 days a week and Samantha come in 1 day a week and, you know, and Sean come in a couple days a week and, you know, Anna go work at home. That's not going to be efficient. You're not going to get efficiency out of everything that's going on doing that. Being in the office, you gain a whole different level of efficiency and teamwork and camaraderie and all of that.

I think it's different for everybody. I don't know if there's a super equation of work, home. I know for a fact that as somebody who being home 2 days isn't enough, right? Like, it's just not enough. Like, America, that's what's wrong with America now. Like, we don't have— we don't take time for our mental health. There's so many things wrong with the way that this system is set up. Um, I, you know, I'm totally against it.

Listen, when I was a kid growing up, I remember you didn't go like Saturday and Sunday. There wasn't a lot of businesses open on Saturday and Sunday. I'm—

I remember that too. I mean, like, there wasn't a lot. What I'm saying is like the future of work in 2030, man. Like, I hope that it's like a lot more just easier for people to work. You know, like, I don't know how to make more money for everybody, but the wealth Gap and all this, that's, there's no incentive. Like, I get it, dude. Like, people are tired of working. Like, there's no real incentive. We talked about it the last podcast.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm not, I mean, I think the way that the people are working in 2030, I think that it's gonna go to more virtual stuff and less in-office. People are at restaurants, there's gonna be less and less need for people. There's gonna be no need for a person really at a restaurant. We're already watching, Robots cook everything for you.

Kiosks, robots. They got a robot making guacamole.

Everything will be pre-made. It'll be inside of your freezer. Exactly. So like, I don't see— I don't— I see that changing dramatically. I see grocery stores changing dramatically. I see them going more towards the way Aldi operates. Less people in the store. You know what I'm saying? Aldi operates great, in my opinion. Yeah. So I think that things are going to be super more automated. I think people are going to have to learn more trades. I think that's going to be a huge calling. I think that people who work in like our type of creative B2B type world, I don't think— I don't see much changing. Technology will change and we'll adapt to it and then use it as we see fit.

Right.

I mean, we're talking 7 years.

Yeah.

Not much is going to change, I don't think, unless there's some super breakthroughs. But I, I don't imagine it right now.

Yeah.

Other than that, I hope that we—

I think when—

I hope we figure out a way to make people feel like they're working for a purpose and not just to pay the bills. Because when I talk to all of the people in my age group, besides the ones who went to Harvard and Yale, and they're still broke too. But, you know, like the ones that are like at my level, we're all paycheck to paycheck. There is all of us just would rather buy an RV and move to North Dakota and start a community. And that's the, that's got to change. I don't know how to make that change. But the way that the money gets separated and then trickles down to us at the bottom is not fair. So the future of work, money, economics, that needs to change.

Well, the thing that needs to change is first is they got to get inflation down. So I mean, I sit there, I watch a thing on TV and they're talking about the— they were questioning some people in front of Congress and they're like, oh, you want to get rid of plastic? And they're like, The people were like, "Yeah, we wanna get rid of plastic." And like, "Okay, well, your glasses, they're made outta plastic. The front's made outta plastic. There's plastic in your clothing." So they just don't understand. You wanna find all, you know, you gotta keep the price of gas down in this country, okay? I've lived 63 years. I can tell you one thing. If the price of gas tomorrow went down to $2 a gallon, okay, the economy, it would take 3 to 4 months, the economy would improve drastically and all the prices of everything would come down. Your electric bill, how much you spend on gas. That's all great.

Hypothetics. Yeah, but I'm just saying that's not an answer.

I know, but I'm saying that's what needs to get done. But it's difficult because in a restaurant, what's going to happen? You're going to go have a self-ordering kiosk.

What's that?

Or robots. People are gonna go, they'll pay more money maybe to go eat at a restaurant that actually has waiters and probably cost you an arm and a leg to eat there.

Exactly.

But you know, we don't know how work is gonna change, but you know, more automation is gonna cause problems and we need to switch up the education system to take care of that, to get people to do these trade jobs. Like the guy Mike, the Dirty Jobs guy says, we need more people in these jobs that know how to do technical, know how to do technical type things. And people don't do those jobs. Like you call somebody, oh, I need help to wire some stuff in the office. I called 10 people, I couldn't find anybody. I mean, it's ridiculous. Well, end up doing it ourself.

I mean, yeah, the future of work is up in the air. And I think, uh, you and I both have a lot of different ideas of what that would look like. Um, but I don't know, you guys, you let us know what you think the future of work will look like in the next 10 years, or by 2030, let's just say.

Yeah, 2033, 10 years. What's, what's work gonna look like? Is everybody gonna be working at home? Like, what are we gonna all be doing? How's it gonna, how's it gonna all transpire? Maybe some industries will change and some industries won't change. Indeed.

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