Change Is Coming: How Smart Businesses Pivot, Adapt, and Thrive

AI is coming. We've had a few recent changes in federal government, I think. Is that the polite way to put it? We've seen some business owners, maybe with the. They need to learn how to pivot.

Yeah. Without taking it out on their employees, their spouses, their children, their pets. The barista that they get their coffee from.

I knew there was going to be a catch to this. Yeah.

How about we talk about that in our first episode?

Sounds good. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need the business fix. You were on a recent trip.

Yes.

It looked like fun. You were in a car that had no driver.

Yes. I was in Phoenix, Arizona, and I got to use the Waymo for the first time. Have you heard of Waymo?

Yes.

Yes.

Scary.

No. Because there were people on the trip that had done it before me, and I figured if they didn't die in a fiery death, it was okay for me to try it.

Good trip, though.

Very good trip. I'm an entrepreneur's organization, and so we do. We're in something called Forum. So they're six business owners. We all go together, took some tours of different businesses, did some fun things. We horseback rode. We think. What else do we. Oh, I. Indoor skydive.

Oh, very cool.

Yes. Mildly traumatic, but I had a good time.

I don't like heights, so if I. If I skydive, that'll be how I do it.

Yeah, exactly. It was a great time. There's a video of me with, like, it looks like I'm sucking on a vacuum. So super fun.

Glad to hear it. Glad to hear it. It's interesting because when you're out doing that, I'm like, lucky to feel like I leave the house in a lot of cases. And I'm like, okay, it's. It's. It's. It's March, it's Ohio. I'm not leaving the house. I'm just going to stay hunkered in and I'm going to work on the business, and that's going to be about it. Yeah. Speaking of which, AI.

Yes. Sounds so ominous.

It does.

But we're.

We're talking about it in Cont. We're. We'll probably end up doing an episode on AI Specifically.

Yeah.

I think there's enough in there for us to talk about that. Maybe, Maybe, just maybe. There's also been some slight changes at the national government level.

A few.

Right. Whether you like the administration. Hate the administration. As a business owner. Holy cow. Is there some adaptation that is needed for a lot of these executive orders. There's, I mean, just a whole different way of looking at things, I think. Why? Why do people need to adapt to this? Because I see a lot of people that are like, full steam ahead this the same direction we were going to. Into the wall repeatedly.

Absolutely.

From your perspective, that change, first off, what makes it hard for a lot of people and why do they need to embrace it instead of saying, look, let's just keep going on?

Okay. So I would say there are three big statements in dealing with whether it's the political pendulum or it's artificial intelligence changes. The first is that change is inevitable. Whether we like it or not, it's going to happen. Adaptability as a business is a competitive advantage. So that's the second. And resilience, which is how we respond and have. Flexibility is a skill, not a trait. So I'd say those three things are really important, especially as you're dealing with the political pendulum swinging back and forth. I mean, it's gone. Josh. I've heard people say, I'm going to go to jail because of this. I'm like, no, you're not. Your company's not going to let you. I've heard some people say, I'm just going to pretend and ignore. I'm just going to go live in my basement. I'm going to wait for four years. Like, we can't do that as business owners. We can't do that as leaders. So we really have to start thinking about, you know, what can we do to adapt.

Yeah, it's. It's interesting, too, because I've heard a lot of people say, like you, the. When you said the pendulum swinging, you never see it at the bottom. No, it seems to go this way, it seems to go that way. I mean, we'll. We'll do front and back here just to avoid any political content.

Doesn't stop in the middle.

You never see it in the middle. You see it at the ends, but you never see it in the mid. The adaptability piece and how that's a competitive advantage. Why do you think a lot of people don't see that?

I think oftentimes people think of extremes as it's a thunderstorm or it's a hurricane. I just need to weather it. I don't need to make any changes to it as opposed to. No, you just went from living in the middle of Ohio and you just dropped into the middle of Arizona, so it's not snowing anymore and cold, it's 85 and sunny and it's not going to change. It's just going to get hotter. So I think when you take it as a weather example, it makes it a little bit easier to understand, oh, this isn't something that tomorrow I'm going to wake up and it's going to be different. It's going to stay this way for a sustained period of time. So helping individuals, especially when we're business owners, to realize that it's not necessarily what is in the situation, but how I respond to it, that is so important. I think that oftentimes, especially in the short term, we think if I just ignore it, it's going to be okay. If I just think AI is going to get regulated and then I'm not going to have to learn about it. I'm like, no, they're not going to lock it back up in the basement. It's here. You've got to talk about it. Same thing with whether you agree politically with the new administration or not. You're going to be dealing with it for four years and at least for the first two years with some major changes. So, I mean, it's really just that understanding of how do we respond, how do we react? We don't have to like everything, but we do have to figure out how to run our businesses and if we have people, how to manage the people around it because they have emotions around it as well.

It's interesting you say that there was something that was, like, pivotal for me that changed how I thought about things. Working with a client, he sells trucks, and he just got off the phone with one of the truck manufacturers. He's like, I ordered 1100 trucks. They tell me they're going to send me 700 next year, right?

Yeah. It's a big difference.

Right. My eyeballs got about that big, like, oh. And I mean, they're paying me to do photos and video for them. And I'm like, oh. I'm like, that's like a 30, 30, like a 35% hit to business. And mind you, he just hung up the phone with him, just got that news, and he just shrugged his shoulders. He looked at me and he goes, that's moving target. And I mean, first off, I'm like, my. Once again, that same look you have on your face, I was like, what?

Huh? What?

It's, it's, it's moving target. That's. I mean, it changed counties. Yeah, but the way he handled that to me was just like, oh, crap. Yeah. No, everything in business is a moving target. And if we aren't Readjusting for it. Even if you think, there's my target and that's where I'm going for it, you may not see it. It may be moving towards you or away from you a little bit. It may not be upright, left, down, but it's still moving. It could be slow.

Yes. And how do you get, how do you get it to push forward in a positive direction?

Yeah, that to me, that was the biggest thing. I mean, seeing that it was this, it was this constantly moving thing, that it's that journey, not the destination. We are going that direction. We, we may have to take some twists and turns on the way there and we may think that direction is that direction.

Yes.

Even though it's not. Why do you think? I mean, as business owners.

Yeah.

We're maybe a touch stubborn, maybe maybe.

Wired a little different.

Correct, correct. Correct. I think everything's fine. It's not on fire. Do you think that stubbornness that allows us to be business owners is part of the thing that also kind of, I mean, cuts us off the knees?

Oh, I think it can, but I also think that it gives us the capacity to think differently. So especially for those of us that have been, I mean, if you've been in business for more, let's see, it's 2025, you've been in business for more than one. Yeah, the seven years. Okay. Because normally we have like a six year cycle. We have a six year economic cycle, eight year economic cycle. So if you've been in business for eight years or more, you've seen a positive and you've seen a negative, you've seen a down cycle. So if you've never seen a down cycle in business, and this is your first down cycle or first major change in administrative perspective. Because, you know, we had, I mean, 2020 to 2023, we kind of had some different things going on in the economy. We kind of had some additional stabilization. It really was. And so for a lot of people, when they normally would not have performed well, they had their best years ever. But that's sometimes what happens when you have some, whether you call it government interference or you call it additional market regulation, stabilization, whatever you want to call it. I think for some people, I'm being politically correct here. For some people, it sustained and didn't make them or cause them to have to make difficult business decisions. So now we're seeing sometimes business owners that have been in business for seven years or less. This is their first time of going, oh, this is different. I don't know if I Like this. I don't know if I want to have to make these types of decisions. So I think for those of us who may have been in the trenches for a while longer, we just go moving target, similar to what your business colleague said. And so yeah, it is. It's a moving target. You kind of figure out, you know, what do I need to do? How do I need to adjust? What are the things that I need to do? If I have employees with my people, there's nothing wrong with, you know, looking and saying, do I have all the right people in the right seats in my organization? Do I need to upskill? Do I need to look at moving in a different direction? Do I need to use the P word and pivot? But I think it's important. So having that mindset of this is a learning opportunity. It may not look the way that I had built in my five year business plan or my ten year business plan, or in my case my six month business plan.

The next three weeks.

The next three weeks. But this is what I need to do. Moving forward, looking at it as a shift, it's learning. There's no failure, there's just learning, there's just new information. What do I need to do to keep moving forward? I think it's important.

So here's a question, and we've talked about this. I mean, I don't want to say ad nauseam, but a fair bit. You're much more the CEO. You're much more the visionary type. I am much more the operations guy. I am much more the boots on the ground. Like, here's the minutiae of what's happening. Something that, like when we get these changes, I see, okay, what's the next step that I need to do? Like, okay, there's this little change. I'm going to make this little tweak from your vision. Like when you see these, I guess I have a two part question on that. How do you a say, okay, look, here's the next big thing that takes care of this. But with that do that in a way that isn't just taking wild swings at the next idea that comes along.

I mean, how do you not burn out your people with all your new ideas and your future forward thinking?

Well, that's a piece of how did.

You take everyone off? Right?

Because the, the, there's two pieces to that. To me, there's the, the need to, to pivot. That is difficult to say.

It is.

There is, there's the need to, to change your mindset or change what you're doing. But I've seen organizations too, where, I mean, once again, instead of this winding trail, this thing looks like a zigzag where someone, I mean, you gave a five year old an Etch A Sketch.

Yeah, very true.

So how do you moderate that? What, what thought process do you use to say, okay, look, we need to, we need to change 15 degrees, not change 115 degrees?

Yeah. I think some of it is when, when you're an entrepreneur, when you're a visionary and when you're leading people, not everybody's going to be able to move as fast as you can. And most of the time, the reason you're in the seat that you are is because you have moved faster and you're willing to take bigger risks than generally the people that you're paying to do a job. There's a reason why you're the CEO or you're the entrepreneur and they're the employee. But one thing that I would say as you're trying to make those big decisions and moving forward, is taking the perspective of you can see the vision as to where you want to go. But most people in an organization can only see two or three steps ahead at most. Yeah. Hand raised.

I may be guilty of that.

So building the, shaping the path, making sure that people understand this is the direction you're going. Because if I looked at most of my people today and said, look, we're going to double our size, but we're not going to do it with probably any employees, we're going to do it with technology. And most of the robots are going to be doing the majority of the work that you're doing. Now. I have a few that would say, oh my gosh, we're not going to have jobs at the end of this month. She's going to let us go. No, that's not true. Oh my goodness, what is she doing? But if I can say, look, I'm starting to model and work on some different types of technology within our organization. I'm spending so many minutes or so many hours a day learning this technology. And I want you to start thinking about it. Not that you have to have all of the answers and not that you need to understand that you're going to completely AI your entire workflow, that's probably not going to happen. But I need you to not be afraid of the fact that we're going to look at new things. Same thing. Like, I mean, I was thinking about this today and you know, when, when we had the introduction of, I don't Know, a fax machine, a copy machine.

Telephone, email, the dot matrix printer.

Yes, the ever all powerful Internet. These were major technological advances in office work and business that drove organizations forward. But I can only imagine, because I wasn't in business for some of those, I was in business. I was 16 when I had to train everybody in our organization how to use email. That was fun.

But did they ask if it needed a stamp?

Oh, they were so confused. That's a whole nother episode. All the things Chrissy's had to do on her road to CEO. But I think it's important to kind of think about as you're approaching some of these conversations, to empower your team and even empower yourself by. We're not going to be afraid of it, we're going to learn about it. And that doesn't mean that we're going to adopt everything, but it does mean that we're just going to be curious. So that's, that's part of where my perspective is. I look at this, I look at AI, I look at administrative changes at the federal level. It's just like any other business disruption and we just have to kind of take it and go, okay, well, what does the landscape look like tomorrow? What do I need to start working on and focus on to get us to the end of this week, to get us to the end of the month? And then as things start to stabilize, you can continue to plan a little bit more ahead, quarterly, maybe yearly. But I think we're in a space right now, Josh, where things are moving so fast on the tech level that we're going to have to kind of real time strategic plan. So if you're not used to thinking on your feet all the time. That's why I think a lot of small business entrepreneurs are going to thrive in this environment because we're used to things being different all the time.

Yes.

I think large corporations are probably going to struggle a little bit more with adoption. So we're going to see, you know, how do I continue to just stay relevant and keep my brain relevant as I'm continuing to grow and learn new things.

It's interesting you said you brought back up AI. I had a conversation with someone just earlier today who's like, I don't know if AI is going to be that big.

Really?

No, he started it that way and then he pivoted to like, yeah, but we went through the Internet and they said, look, the Internet's going to take your jobs. Then we went through other things and he says, they're Going to take your jobs. And I was like, look, my take on it is like with the AI stuff, I need to study it, I need to be up on it, I need to be using the tools because either if it does take off, I need to be on that train. If I'm not on that train, I'm not going to be able to grab a hold of it when it, Once it's up to 60.

Yeah.

Once it's flying, I'm not going to be able to. I'm not going to like, what was. It was Buster Keaton was famous for grabbing onto trains at like 15 miles an hour in the old, old movies back in the 1920s. Yeah. This is the marketing video reference guy. And me being the complete dork. I can see the concern look on your face. Yes.

Wow. Just pull that out of the air. Yeah.

But it's, you're not going to be able to grab onto that train. So if I spend some time on it now, I'm educated. If and when it does really change things and I feel like it already has changed things, but when it, when it exponentially changes things, then I think I'm, I'm already, I've got, I'm on board at least.

Yeah.

I'm hanging on. It may be kind of on the back of the car, but I'm not trying to catch up to a 70 mile an hour train that's moving past.

No. And perspective for me is, you know, there's, there's part of me that feels like we're in the middle of an arms race. And who can adopt AI fastest?

Oh, gosh, yes.

Who can find the best way to do things and some of it's ahead of regulation. But the other thing, when people are like, I don't think AI is going to take all of our jobs. Nobody said it was going to take all of our jobs. But I think it's going to eliminate the need for some of them. I mean, a great example is, I mean, Allstate Insurance, the giant insurance carrier.

Yep.

Has just announced and they don't do anything unless it makes fiscal sense. So very. They just don't. They have a reputation for being very good. They were the first to outsource internationally in their claims department and their underwriting compliance. And so now they made the announcement that their claims processing is all being done by AI. It's being responded to in AI and that that is customer facing. And they did it because research showed them when they were testing it that their AI bots were kinder, gentler and more reliable than their human compatriots. So to the point that, like, their customers liked the AI better. So they have eliminated, in essence, a whole department of people. It doesn't mean that they have let all of these people go. They're not going to hire new people and they're going to move them into other parts of the organization. So when people say, I don't think it's going to replace everybody, I agree. But I think it's going to change how people hire. And so I think it's really important, especially as a small business, because a lot of times as small businesses, we run on thinner margins. We need to make sure that we're just a little bit. We need to make sure that we're being good stewards of our resources and using people in the way that they can truly shine and make things relatable. Because not everything needs to be done by a human. And that's okay.

Yeah. It's funny. The analogy that I often use with AI is I feel that AI is going to do for a lot of knowledge, work what Henry Ford did for blacksmiths.

Oh, that's a good one.

Yeah. Because we do still have some blacksmiths. There are still people that love having their horses on Instagram. Correct. All over the Instagram. You can find them all over the place. Not far. The other piece to that is, is there still people that are using the metal trades in cars, body shop people. There's the dent wizards. It kind of similar in terms of that trade, in terms of metal forming, metal shaping. So the people found different jobs. Took some education, it took some evolution. I mean, a lot of blacksmiths ended up working in automotive factories or as mechanics, things of that nature. It took some adaptation. The thing that I find that's interesting is, is the ability for AI to speed up the efficiency and the amount of work.

Absolutely.

There are things that we would have that in the podcasting world it would take us three, four, or five hours to complete that we're now letting AI do, and we're checking. So we end up with 45 minutes in it instead of four or five hours. It's that type of efficiency that what it does is it change it. We now no longer need four or five people to do that. We need one.

Yeah.

So it changes. Where are those other people while they're doing other things. Now it's going to be very, very interesting to see how that takes. I know we're going to talk about AI more. And we've. We've. It's such a hot Topic, it's hard not to just perseverate on it.

Yes.

Not that either of us ever do that.

Not at all.

From an administrative standpoint, your world is largely HR and health care.

Yes.

Those seem to be changing so fast. Right, right. Have you even read the memo before it's ripped out of your hand and anyone stuck in. That's what I wonder in some cases, to me, what are you seeing that people that business owners need to be aware of for the immediate future, that's changing.

As far as from an AI perspective or from regulatory.

From a regulatory perspective and whether it be like, hey look, do we see inflation coming? Do we see this coming? Do we see that? I mean, what are the things that you see that you're like? I mean, I guess the best question is what are you thinking? Like, look, this is the stuff we need to look at over the next six months to a year.

So I would say there's probably three things and they're really commonsensical. Number one is immigration is a big topic right now within the federal government. Have your i9s correct in your organization. Make sure you're hiring and doing that processing correctly because E verify is a thing and you need to do it. You need to keep all of your i9s in a separate binder away from all of your other employee paperwork. So I mean as a small employer, it's probably something we don't usually think about, but you know, it makes sense just to have it done.

It's easy, it's, it's that five minute thing.

It is.

That can really screw you.

Yes.

Simple enough.

Yeah. I mean there's been a lot of changes on the DEI side. Like do we, do we have it? Do we not have it? I think what we're probably going to see as time goes on is there going to be some changes in, you know, how do we classify or talk about, you know, what diversity looks like or how we're going to hire? Follow the same rules that you've always followed. I mean that's the one thing that like they never changed. I mean we had a very big push on with, with diversity, equity and inclusion, but equal opportunity employment rules never changed.

Be a decent human, so just be.

A good human and hire the way you're supposed to. Don't look at somebody and go, you're this race or you're this gender or you're this whatever you identify as. And we only want X, we don't want Y, just don't do that. That's an easy thing to Say, don't discriminate in your hiring, no matter what.

Okay, that seems pretty simple.

Whether the pendulum swings one way or it swings the other way, to me, it's the same. It's the same message. So I know there's a lot of feelings and emotions around. Again, I've heard people say, I will go to jail over this. And I'm like, I don't think your employer, large corporate employer, is going to allow that to happen or is going to claim you if you decide you're going to. I think that's a problem for somebody who might make tires or take care of people's bodies. So just saying. And the third is something that we say all the time at Clarity, hr, which is making sure that your employees are classed correctly and that they're working the right hours that they're supposed to be work. So making sure your wage and hour is correct. Fair Labor Standards Act. At the end of the day, federal government would like everybody to be an hourly W2 employee. And I don't see say that and like come after me. No, I say it because that's what tax revenue is based on. So making sure your exempt people are truly exempt, your non exempt people are truly non exempt and you're keeping track of what those hours need to be. We did see a huge pendulum swing back with the rollback of Fair Labor Standards Acts. There was a court case in Texas that rolled it back to before any of the initial things took place from July of 2024. So we actually went way back in time at the beginning of this year and are continuing to figure out, you know, what does it, what does it need to look like, but just class your employees the right way.

What's a tip for someone to. What's three quick tips to give someone the. How to class their employees the right way? Because we know, we know there's a lot of people out there that are like, hey, you're a manager, so you get paid salary. And they're like, what am I managing? They're like your daily tasks. No, no.

So I would. First is if you don't know the answers, find a certified HR expert that can help you. I mean, that's shameless. Plug just maybe a few. Just a couple teams of them. The other would be one thing that's huge is like, everybody I have is a contractor. Like, do you tell them when to show up? Do you tell them exactly what to do? And are you their only person that they work for? Yes. Well, then they're an employee. They are not A contractor. So that's the other. The big thing is don't act like you're contractors that only work for you that show up at 8 and go home at 5 and have lunch from 12 to 1. Are independent contractors in your building.

They're not wearing your T shirt.

No, the hell they're not. You're their LinkedIn profile, it says they work for you. No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you have seen maybe a couple of those red flags.

Yes. And that's a huge red flag, especially if you're in the medical community. So you have like stnas, you have different types of individuals that are contracted workers, but they're only working for you. That is a problem.

Gotcha. Interesting. Well, we're going to do a segment of the show that is quick shock, quick shot topics, if I can say it. Yes. Something I. It's kind of interesting. One third of small businesses are experimenting with generative AI and a quarter of them are already seeing the upside according to a recent small business survey. Now, I know we talked about a little bit about this. To me, it is the. I mean, it's helped our business immensely. We're offering new tools that we're using for clients all the time. It's tools that we're building. Yes, they could build them also, but we've got the background and how to build this specific tool to this specific thing. But it's been huge for us. It's been absolutely huge. I would encourage anyone out there be part of the 1/3 that's using it. Please spend, spend the time now. Don't be like, how long ago was it? It was a long time ago when you were teaching people how to use email.

Yeah, it was a few decades.

Right. Don't, don't be the people that are learning how to use email at age 50. No, get, get into it now. Get into it now. That would be my thing. You had something on AI regulation? Possibly, yes. This is where. Lack thereof.

Well, it's an interesting spot because. Very much so. So if you, if you followed the current administration, there was a speech that was given by our vice president at. In Europe about pretty much like we're going to run full steam ahead as the United States with AI. And you know what? I'm okay. As we move forward with innovation, there's something like where I'm just like, we're not going to have regulations or we're thinking about having regulations. There's certain things that I think we are way ahead of where we probably should be from a regulatory perspective. And so the Question that I have is, do you run hard and fast and wait for them to put the wall up and then stop in front of it, hopefully not running into it? Or do you take a little bit of time to kind of figure out, you know, what's. What should we do? What shouldn't we do? Like, a great one is, you know, there are these new sales AI tools that can robocall, like, literally a billion people right now because there are no parameters on how many people you can call at a time.

I get a lot of those.

Do you think it's a good idea if you have people on the Do Not Call registry and then you accidentally call them or. Oh, by the way, there's all of these lovely regulations that we have against people or for people to protect them that are over the age of 65. So we got to be really careful in how we market and what we do. So I think that oftentimes you may have the best of intentions and trying to make sure that you. You get your product out and you hire all the robots to do the work for you, and it may be causing a problem. The other is, and this was interesting when deepsea came out, I got a lot of messages from people in one of the groups that I'm in, the entrepreneur groups of like, have you tried it? And I'm like, no. They're like, why? Why haven't you tried it? I'm like, I'm not trying that piece of software until I know that it's not going to violate the terms of my cyber protection policy.

Yep, yep. People aren't looking at that.

And that chat got really quiet really fast.

It's funny too, because the other thing is, is most of the tools, from my perspective, are pretty close. Some are better than learn how to use one tool really well. You don't need all the tools. Pick one.

Learn how to use it really hard for people that want to do all things like me. Right, okay, I'll just pick four.

I get it, I get it. The other thing that I'll, I'll say to that too. The Grok, the last version of Grok that was released where it would teach you how to make chemical weapons.

And we're. We're training it in real time to not do those things.

Corre little. We need to find some balance there. Speaking of other news, the one that both made you and I both cringe a little. LinkedIn has changed its algorithm recently. As you scroll, you've probably noticed it looks very different. Organic reach is down 65% from 2024, I found that very interesting. Posts with engagement in the first hour get 12% more re. Reach is what's being show. Carousels and PDFs perform approximately 1.9 times better than the median post. Video reach has dropped a little bit. LinkedIn is favoring some more text and graphics, which I found surprising.

Yeah, the things we hate doing.

Correct. Correct.

Thanks, LinkedIn. You said I would say I hate seeing the same like 12 posts that I've seen for the last two weeks. It's like if it got engagement, I have to see it 10 more times.

The other thing that they found is posting one or two times per day builds compounding growth. I don't want to see something Chrissy I love.

Because we need two jobs, right?

I love a lot of the stuff you post. I don't want to see it twice a day.

I'm supposed to post the exact same thing twice a day.

No, not the same thing, different things.

Then it gets so then you're that person. Do you remember when Facebook first came out and you're like, I'm getting my coffee, had lunch. Today is. And it started with your name is. And you had to create the sentence like, chrissy Myers is hoping that today is going to be a wonderful day, is looking forward to getting her life. Like, I don't want to do that anymore. That was dumb.

No, and with LinkedIn, I. I see this is going to be a problem because in a lot of cases, we're going to end up with people just posting AI garbage of just randomness. I've fought this with a couple of people that we've worked with and said, look, post quality stuff, it will get out there. It's one of the reasons why we do a lot of the video stuff. I'm going to get my shameless plug in also.

Yes.

With the podcast stuff. So you can get out there in front of people on a regular basis. But by golly, don't just post twice a day. Like, here's my coffee, here's my. Because first off, we don't want to see it. I will block that shit so quick that if I see your coffee on LinkedIn, I'm out. Oh, yeah, no, you wouldn't. I just, I worry that that hearing that is going to cause people to post garbage. And LinkedIn has been a great platform and there's been a lot of great information on it. I've really enjoyed it. Since the algorithm change, I have not liked it as much. I could be saying, get off my lawn, but yeah, well, and if you.

Have, my struggle has been lately those individuals and organizations that generally have really good content. I'm not seeing them anymore. No, I'm seeing the same networking post from I Love Goldman Sachs. 10,000 small businesses. But I've seen the same networking post and photo, like, 10 different times. It's in my feed every store, every day. I love you, Tammy, but it's every damn day. It is the same one.

That means we can tag her from.

Two to three weeks.

Yeah, no, we can tag her in this now. That's great, because tagging does help.

Oh, does it? Okay.

Tagging is still a key for LinkedIn. Tag the hell out of people, annoy them.

Oh, okay.

That's a big key. So, yeah, like our podcast here. I will tag you in this.

That's totally fine. And then maybe I'll actually see my feedback. That and the networking event that I missed three weeks ago for 10 KSB. And I'm like, gosh, I realize I should have been there. I was traveling. I couldn't be there. I know. It's like, I feel like the universe is mad at me. Like, you should have been. You should have been at this event.

Fomo. It is really playing into your fomo. Like, you missed this. It is now. You should. This is why you should have been afraid.

But there is part of me, too, Josh, that wonders if, like, in changing the algorithm, maybe somebody used AI to help with the algorithm. Because I look at the things that you're like, these are the things we have to do. Like, I don't feel like they. They rationally thought through this. Like, you must post one to two times a day. Your content must not be a video. It must be like, all of the things that we were doing even, like six to eight months ago. It's completely different.

And it's the. It's the stuff I don't see as much value in, because to me, carousels, in a lot of cases, I can see, like, if something comes out once a week, it can be educational. A lot of the carousels I see are, like six slides. Like, there's one thing, and there's six slides of fluff. And I'm like, why? Why? I just. I. I kept swiping left to get to something good. It was like Tinder. You're, like, swiping to get to something good, and it never happens.

No, no, because somebody. Somebody is telling their virtual assistant, I need you to do 12 carousels. I don't care what it says, But I need 12 carousels, because that's what I have to put in my algorithm. And then I'm going to hate you because I'm going to see your content all the time. I'm not going to learn anything. And I can't figure out how to hide you because that's the one thing. Like unfollow on whatever it is. LinkedIn, it's harder to unfollow and hide people.

It is. And then the, the per. You know who I'm going to blame for this? Gary Ve. Right now, we have. We have a similar opinion. I. I just. He. He screams all. He's unbelievably charismatic. He's an intelligent guy. He's been in the system for so long, though. Everyone wants to build the. The empire that Gary Vee has. And they don't realize you don't do the things that Gary V Does. I don't know about you, but I do things. Like in Pedal Stomper Productions, we do things differently than Warner Brothers.

Yeah. We kind of have to.

Right.

We're not, We're. We're not the same demographic.

Right.

Our client's a little different.

Different scale, different. There's a lot of things different there, but a lot of people are like, oh, hey, I want to be Gary V. So I'm going to do the same thing.

Yeah.

And it's difficult. I'm glad. I thank you for my being my therapist on that. You're welcome. That to me, I think that pretty well covers this week. Yeah. This was a good first episode. I thank you for being here.

Thank you.

This is. I think we're going to have a lot of exciting stuff. It's the. The business fix is the website.

Yes.

The Business fix dot com. We're going to have that. The social media. Make sure you leave us a review, please. Yeah. Chrissy says please. So you. You have to do that now. Subscribe. We would love to hear what you want us to talk about. I mean, I think we've proven that we can have some pretty good and interesting conversations and give us something to talk about. We will go out and do the research and come up with this next week. Next week or the following week. I don't know what it is yet, but we are talking about cash flow.

Yippee. How to pay our bills.

Yeah. Well, we said it earlier. We said, pay your damn bills, people. That was what. That's, that's how we talked about it. And how to make sure you get your bills paid. There's a gift that I love to share with people. It is. It's A Family Guy 1 It is Stewie beating up Brian. Because Brian owes to Stewie money, and he's like, where's my money, man? Where's my money? Where's my money? To me, the thing that I would like to end on is that strong businesses start with smart people and benefit strategies. Let's make sure yours are built to last. Yeah, we'll see you guys later.