0226: Avoid Becoming the Next Kodak with Author & Speaker Philip Zimmerman

Hi, this is Philip Zimmerman. Unleashthemillennials.com and you're listening to EA interviews.

EA interviews, episode 226, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority effect interview. What is going on in the world? What's going on with this generation? What's going on with the next generation? Business has changed fundamentally over the years. I mean, now more than ever or online. But there's still business offline and leadership values have changed. So what do we do? What do we do? That's why I'm excited to have author and speaker Philip Zimmerman on the show talking about unleashing the millennials and developing the leadership of the next generation. I'm going to bring them up right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit gener business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Philip Zimmerman. Philip, how are you feeling today?

I am doing fantastic, Mario. And yourself?

I'm feeling great. And I love what you're speaking on because so many people think, I hear it from the boomer generation, that the millennials are all over the place and the millennials think that the boomers are just whatever, they're too radically different, this and that. And I don't believe either of those to be true. And I want to know your take on it. What's happening with leadership through the decades and how is it fundamentally different than it used to be?

I'd love to address that with you. And we will get into that as this discussion continues.

So tell me, what inspired you to write your book in the first place?

I was doing a doctoral leadership program for a institute of leadership I was developing for a high school I was teaching at. And I encountered in literature review information about the millennial generation, which was very shocking to me. I was teaching them in the high school seniors and they were having very difficulty entering the workforce and they were being vilified by their boomer employers and they themselves hated what they were doing and just continued to search for other jobs. When I saw that I was also concurrently taking a coaching program as part of this doctoral program, I was in or organizational leadership. And I decided to take what I was learning in the classroom, take what I was learning in my, in my studies, and actually opening a coaching practice to help My business associates that I used to work with when I was in business, before I got into education, and help them guide their millennial talent to actually take over their companies. That's the main focus is that help them, one, communicate with their millennial talent, and two, prepare them to take over their companies. So that's kind of why I started the business.

And what have you found has been the biggest.

What have you found has been the biggest benefit of being able to teach the millennials stuff from the previous generations?

I think the biggest benefit is really to recognize that the differences between millennials and boomers is a very real difference. It is. It is significantly different. Now.

How big of a difference? In what ways would you say, you know, we all.

We're all human and there's all. We all have, actually, we all want the same thing. Millennials and boomers really all want the same thing. So when the millennials say they want, you know, work, life, balance, flex, time, great benefits, you ask a boomer. They want those same things. Except we never knew we could ask for it, so we never did. We just put our head down and did what we needed to do to keep a job. And when the millennials came in the workforce asking for those things up front, it offended a lot of boomers. But the reason why they were able to do that is that while boomers were being raised, we were the way we were educated and trained by both our parents and our teachers in the classroom was an authority figure, basically the teacher or the principal or the. The people in authority in government. And there was a lot of respect that you had for these authority figures and a fear that you had from these authority figures of punishment for getting out of line. And the millennials were really educated in a much different environment. The teacher in the classroom was not the expert. The resources available on the Internet and through other sources were really where the experts were. The teacher became a facilitator of information. So there was this understanding by millennials that we work together to gain information, disparate parts of information. We put it together as in a team and move forward. And so when they enter the workforce, the idea of. I mean, the idea of flex time. And boomers assumed you're at work when you're at your station, right? Work occurs at a particular location at a particular time. Millennials were raised at work occurs wherever you are. It could be in a coffee shop, it could be at home. In my book, I have a part of a chapter devoted to this of the millennials got it right. And one of the parts I had in the book was the millennials wanted this opportunity to do flex work and work from home. Remote working, we're now calling it remote working. And the pandemic forced that. And the biggest, because I try to tell my boomer employers that I work with that it really is possible for them to go and work wherever they want and you won't lose productivity. And that's the one thing that all of my boomer friends and businesses that I work with have expressed, is that while they've allowed these remote workers to go as a result of the pandemic and now they're working remotely, they have not seen a loss in productivity. And they were shocked. In fact, most of them said that probably only half their staff will be returning after the pandemic is finished. Because there really is a desire of some of their staff to remain remote, which is fine with them because they save on rent, save on office space. And for the talent that's remote, there is more of a freedom that they feel in their position. Doesn't work for everybody, but there's a large portion of the workforce that's not coming back into a workplace. They're still going to do their work, but they're not going to be doing it in a workplace for per se.

I, I agree and I've, I'm seeing the good in this because I've been telling people for 10, 15 years the way you can leverage the Internet and do some of these things. A lot of what's hit mainstream now is nothing new to us in marketing and especially the technology side and, you know, video just in general. But I've, I've even heard of some stories where there's not only, not a loss of productivity, some are seeing increases because there's, you know, if you're like a typical eight hour day, if you can do it in three or four hours.

What do you do those next three or four hours? It's actually, I've had experts on the show and they've talked about where most people do two to two and a half hours of actually productive work and the rest is just kind of in there. And, you know, you know, if you want to talk about the efficiency of it, it's a very exciting time because all of the, we've never had this opportunity before, even 10, 20 years ago. So what are you seeing as far as the boomers are, Are they more adjusting to it now or is it because they're open minded or is it because out of necessity?

I think it's out of Necessity. But they're also seeing that this lack of. There has not been a drop in productivity. That's been the thing that has really shocked them. And I've tried to express to them it is. I said, the reality is. Really depends on what are your expectations for engagement, productivity, and loyalty of your employees. And if they're expressing whatever you have, whether they're in the office or out of the office, what is your expectation for engagement? If they're providing that engagement in the material that they're dealing with, or whatever their job is, whether they're in the office or out of the office, what does it matter if they're being. What is your productivity and desire for them? What's your expectation? I would say I just have my. The people I work with just write down what is your expectation for engagement, productivity, and loyalty. If they're working in the office and just measure them on that same expectation remotely. And they've all come back and said, philip, this is really strange, but it's all being met. But where they feel this loss is. They feel the loss at the. Well, this is how it's expressed. The millennials are missing the community, right? Because when we're in the office, everybody's kind of together. And you can kind of talk to Bill or to Jane, and you can have group, real easy to do groups where, you know, when you're online and stuff, it's difficult. And I said, I can. I can. I can see that. And we had another person on the call, and he finally said, you know, the route that really gets me, he says, is that my problem is I can't walk in on them. And we were like, what are you talking about? He said, well, you know, I like to go down the hall and step in somebody's office and just check up on them, see how they're doing. He said, I miss that. I don't get to do that. And one of the things I'll tell your listeners that I came up with for them, and they're actually implementing it, told it to my daughter, who's a physician, and she's in charge of a large group, and she's actually doing it as well, which was in Zoom. If you have Zoom, you can also do it Microsoft Teams and other products. But I like Zoom, the unlimited package, where I get a lot of people on, and I can just leave Zoom on. I just said, just open up a Zoom room that everybody who's working in a particular group or team just goes in the Zoom room and just puts her video on. No Video and their mic on mute. And when you want to say something or enter into a room, you just come into the zoom room like everybody else is already there, and ask them what they're doing and let them turn their camera on, start to talk. And it's actually worked out to be pretty, pretty efficient. They're trying to get that idea of community. That's really what they're missing more than anything is just from the boomer perspective, is the ability that. Because people aren't working unless I see them working. So that's the mindset we have. I'm a boomer, and I was raised in that mindset, and I can tell you it's a very real mindset.

But in regards to the what in this idea of millennial, who they are is just when I said that they're different and you said, how are they different? Let me just briefly share with you very quickly what has happened. And this is what you're seeing in the streets, really, all over the country of all this political foma. But really the rioting of the streets and the idea of socialism and all this kind of stuff coming into our truly, into our common vernacular right now in the media, really, in our country, is a result of who the millennials really are. They were raised in a totally postmodern culture. I won't go into all the details of it, but modern philosophy, which is all boomers are raised into this idea of what's called modern philosophy. Part of Western philosophy ended in 1947 after World War II, and the seat of modern philosophy at that time was in Germany and in France. And of course, those were both decimated by World War II. And nobody really picked up after the. Because all the philosophers were either killed or dispersed. And so nobody really picked up and said, well, we need to continue modern philosophy. And so this idea of postmodern after modern philosophy entered in, which is really an anti philosophy, and just the difference between the two is pretty stark for the. The boomers are raised. There is a. There is something called truth, and there is a right way to live. So there is a truth and there's a right way to live. Millennials were totally raised in a culture that said, there is no such thing as truth and there is no wrong way to live. So that difference there is a right way to live versus there is no wrong way to live. It doesn't sound like it's that different, but it's hugely different.

That's a big difference.

So that. So that's a philosophical difference has to do with Truth and justice. What is true? What is justice? And so this whole idea of social justice reform and everything else, and the reason why boomers are pushing it back against it is because we have a sense of what justice is, and we have a sense of what truth is. For the millennial generation, this is just generically, not necessarily each person in the millennial generation, but on a broad basis, they don't really have an understanding of something being true. True, right. They have their own truth, but they don't. There's something universal. They don't have that concept. And because of that, they have no universal concept of justice. Justice is whatever I get. I discovered that in the classroom. That's what got me started in doing the leadership program and everything else was discovering the idea of. I had a student tell me one day after getting caught, cheating, plagiarizing on it on a sign, but that it was okay to lie as long as you didn't get caught, it didn't hurt anybody else, and you got what you wanted. And I said I couldn't believe that my classes, that I was teaching it. And I asked, how many of you believe this, that it's okay to lie as long as you don't get caught, it doesn't hurt anybody else, and you get what you. What you were after. And virtually, I think I taught 87 students that day. 84 of the 87 students raised their hand. And I was just, this is just, this is not right.

And how long ago was this? And what was the median age?

It was seniors in high school. So they were 17, 18 years old. And this was six, six years ago. And that's what prompted me really into. Wow. Studying the generation and developing a leadership program, because I knew that that type of thinking was way off from what. And so I thought. What I thought to myself was when these people enter the workforce and if their ideas for justice and it has to do with the idea of both truth and justice, if justice is getting whatever they want, as long as they don't get caught and it doesn't hurt anybody else, what does justice mean in the workplace? So does justice mean that when they, you know, they're trying to make a friend with. Make a friend at another company, and to make a friend in another company, rip off your own company. That. I mean, there's whole kinds of issues, ethical issues that come into play. And so I was trying to find out what was the basis of that. And then the other, the other. That's an age change. That's a philosophical age change. The second One that went along with it. And so you get these two ages together is just what's causing all this that's happening. And.

We will see a significant change globally in the next 15 to 20 years. You wouldn't recognize the next 15 to 20 years today if you were to see it, because change is going to.

Be global, good or bad. Where are we going with this?

Well, it just depends. It really just depends.

Oh, you're just saying you don't know the outcome. You're just saying there's going to be a major shift one way or another.

And it could either be good or it could be bad. I mean, you look at. In other words, we don't know how the Egyptians built the pyramids. We do see the pyramids out there, right. We have no idea how they built them, especially the Great Pyramid. If you went on the line and just Google what the unique things about the Great Pyramid in Giza are, you'd be shocked by what it is. It's actually oriented to true north, not magnetic north. It's the exact center. Center of land mass on the Earth. There's. It takes into account of the idea of PI and there's all kinds of stuff associated. There's stars. It's lined up with. How'd they do that? You know, 3,500 years ago, 4,000 years ago, when they built that thing? Well, we had no idea how they did that. So where did that technology go? Where did that understanding go? And we're entering a time right now where that. I think that's going to occur. In the next 15 to 20 years, we're going to enter a time where will we still use computers? Will we even know what they are? Will we know what a textbook is? Or will we, I mean, they're talking about. Anyway, it's.

I'll expand on that briefly in a moment. But the reason for that is that we had three other changes. And this has to do with going from an industrial age model of our business to what's called the connected age model of our business. And it impact three areas. One is the economy, how we make and buy things, how we buy things, money exchange money and economics. We used to buy and sell local, now it's all global and done on the Internet, which brings.

And it used. And I'll even say this, it used to be with money. I mean, now you got people doing Bitcoin and electronic currency.

The, the. My. My estimate is that.

If. Depends on who the, who the president is. After this election, I'll be decided sometime within the next week. Hopefully within the next week.

I'm convinced that if China has its way, you know, they're already converting all of their currency into their own. They have their own form of bitcoin right now, and they're going to make it so that if you want to buy and sell things from China, you have to use their currency because they're after becoming the global currency and it's going to all be Bitcoin and eventually. And the millennials are going to go for it. I mean, why would you ever.

How long do you. How long do you think before everything, like physical cash is phased out, if it gets to that?

Well, it depends on the United States. The United States, the only one, can hold it back. I would say within 10 years, the whole. We will have a one world currency. Within 10 years, global currency. They tried it in the Obama administration. They were all ready to go with it, but it just wasn't time. And so they didn't do it.

But you think by 2030, cash won't exist?

I think cash won't exist. And we'll have a global currency and there'll be no debt. There'll be no global debt. That's how they're going to do it. They're going to go to a global currency by eliminating global debt.

It's like the largest. But that would be literally be the largest bailout in history.

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, they're talking about bailing out all student loans. So, you know, you elect us, we're going to forgive all student loans. We got $2 trillion worth of student loans. You know, how do you just forgive $2 trillion worth of student loans? It's the same way. I mean, you have. It's kind of off topic, but it is really part of the topic because this is what millennials are having to deal with. This is the whole thing that.

So let me pause you right here, because I saw you holding back on what you were saying, and I'm sure you saw me smiling.

If you want to go there, feel free. I actually want to. And I want to dive deeper with the pyramids. Say whatever you want, because this is fascinating and I think it's what everyone's thinking. My show, you. At least. Mine is at least. If you want to say, I'm giving you permission right now, feel free. Whatever you're comfortable with. I was like, how do I ask? But I mean, we're already 80% of the way there. We might as well just.

I'd want to know the pyramids when you brought that up. I'm like, okay, this is fascinating because from what I recall, just on that real quick, they were using slave labor and they were building it up and doing one row at a time, and never happened.

Never happened.

Okay, so what was it then? How did they.

But no one knows. I mean, they have. Some people think it was levitation. They were using levitation.

Devices from an extraterrestrials. I mean, there's all kind of theories out there.

And the same thing, like you were talking about the mathematics on all that stuff when you said, where did it all go? That's a fascinating question.

Yeah, where did it all go? I mean, because you have all the hieroglyphics written in the pyramids, which are not giving an indication how they actually did it. I mean, otherwise, you would think that they would put all that into the pyramids, right? They have all this religious stuff in the pyramids, but they don't really say how they actually put all this stuff together, who actually built this thing? And that's the evidence we have in the world that something. Then you go to the Mayans, right? Mayans are pyramid builders. They've got a timekeeping system, the Mayan clock, famous Mayan clock. We're all supposed to end in 2007 or something like that. But they have a clock that was. Is. Is. Is kept by a calendar with rocks, right? You know, they turn these rocks and it's the most accurate timekeeping device known to man until the atomic clock was invented, like in 1953 or something like that. It was more accurate than anything other than an atomic clock.

Which I just have to throw this out here, the whole daylight saving time concept.

There was this stuff thousands of years ago, and the best we can do is twice a year say we can't get it accurate. So just change all the clocks back. That's like arbitrarily after this interview, being like, I don't like what time it is, I'm going to change it, right?

And so what you have is you have two different cultures separated by great oceans or whatever, the Mayan Indians in South America or Mexico, and you have the Egyptians, the pyramids in Egypt. And yet both of them, they just. The people disappeared, while the Egyptians didn't disappear, they remained. Their technology disappeared however they did it. Same thing with the Mayans. The mines just walked off in the woods. And so I say in my book is, you know, are we gonna. Are we still gonna remember what computers are by 2040? Or will. Or will we even live in our cities anymore? Right? Because of what's coming. This, this change that's coming with AI and with. Oh my gosh, this. I mean there's some very scary things coming, some very exciting things coming with the studies that they're currently.

Let me finish this other part because it all ties into this. Feel free to get to where it's going. And so the reason why again, the millennials are so different than the boomers.

Technology is the next area. When I was trying in my book, I was trying to remember what the first computer was that I had in my office back in the day. And it was an IBM something I just remember on the desk. And yes, two floppy drives, they probably.

Had the same one. I'm picturing it right now, black on the front. The floppy goes here, had a giant knot button on it. There was no towers or anything.

They were just that. That floppy drive held a. What? Both floppy drives held a whopping 136kcal KB information, which is less than 2A2 page PDF today. That was the memory capacity of the computer. Well, so then you. Then we hit. So we had to learn the computer, right? We had to learn in dos. I remember Repro, my machine would crash. I just reload DOS and start over. We had WordPerfect was the word processing package where we didn't have a mouse. Didn't till Apple came out with a mouse. And so then we had to constantly be learning new programs and new systems. And then we had servers came in and then group servers came in and then Microsoft came out with their programs and then they came out Windows. Oh my gosh, Windows and Apple now competing. So then you had Internet came in in the late early 1990s because I remember I had a business I was involved in. We had our first website in 1992, I think, or 93. So exciting. Slow over the telephone lines.

28, 8. I remember that dial up.

Oh yeah, yeah. But anyway, we had to learn all that stuff. Okay. We stopped learning technology probably in about 2010. I'm just telling you the flat out boomers, we just stopped learning it. We just got dog tired of it. And so we just stopped learning. So when the iPhone came out 2007, we got the iPhone because it was kind of cool technology. We didn't want to learn it. We just use it for the telephone. Right. And anything else. But I mean the millennials were raised on this. They get the iPhone and they figure out what everything does. So we have a generation in the workplace that's in charge of everything that is tired of technology. They refuse to even acknowledge what technology does. And they have a workforce that's totally digitally native. And that's where there's big disconnects coming in, because boomers can't admit that they are unwilling to learn what they need to learn unless they're forced to technologically to make their business advance. And at the same time, they're holding back their millennial talent, who has all the wherewithal technologically to take their business to unbelievable places if they would just be given the opportunity. But the boomers are just kind of holding out till retirement. 2025, probably about 95% of the boomers will be retired or hit age 65. The last of them hit age 65, 2027. Right now, the 50% of the workforce is millennial. By 2025, globally, 75% of the workforce is going to be millennial. So they're going to do what they want to do, what they're going to want to do, because they're going to be in charge of it all. So we just have five short years left. But that technology was the second piece, and the third piece was the reason why they're different. In this whole idea of the industrial age, of the connected age, is education. How were millennials taught? Millennials were taught, I would say, 180 degrees differently than boomers were taught in the classroom. Boomers were taught. Rose, in college, you had a teacher at the front. You just. You did your own work. You kept your eyes on your own paper. If you got caught cheating, got a zero, no cooperation amongst the students unless you had teacher approval. For the melendos is totally the opposite. Teacher is a facilitator. The resources are on the Internet. You share, share, share. You know, what about Bobby? He never does all his work. Well, you know, if Bobby doesn't want to do any work and you have him on your team and you let him do that, well, that's your thing. But as far as the teacher is concerned, Bobby's just part of the team. So they have to learn on the team who's going to work and who's not going to work. Believe me, millennials know when they get into your workforce who the workers are and who aren't the workers and who they recognize. A lot of the workers, who the workers are not are the boomers. They're recognizing that pretty quick that the boomers aren't really doing anything. They're kind of telling everybody else what to do, but they have no idea.

Even though they're in the leadership. And Authority position.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so now I can see how that would be offensive if you're being insubordinate and just blatantly not listening. But it's an interesting dynamic with the. And I'm thinking of even when I was in groups and schools and stuff, and you, you have. There's always the overachie. I don't even want to say. I don't even like that word. Overachiever. It's like, so if you do anything that's required, you're now an overachiever. Because everyone out the bar is so low anyway. There's always the people who want to do more. There's the people who are kind of just there. And then you have people trying to do the least. But so they're just totally cool with it. Now, let me ask you this. Are they as cool in the workforce with it as they are in the classroom?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. In fact, what. What? You know, a lot of times.

So it's the habit in the culture. Not that there's more on the line for it.

Yeah, it's the. It's just how they were raised and educated. I mean, you know, boomers always had the clown in the classroom. Everybody's got the clown in the classroom. Right. The millennials have the clown in the classroom.

A lot of times I've heard of.

That person is actually the smartest person in the class. And they're just bored because they're going at such a slow pace, you know, because they learned this stuff two years ago and they're having to repeat it. And so they're. They're bored and they're stuck in a classroom for eight hours. And so they have to be there for eight hours.

I'm glad this is getting recording.

When they get in the. When they get in a group environment and they're there, and then they're able to actually do what they know how to do. Oh, my gosh. It's unbelievable. So you'll find when you put a millennial team together. So how I present this to. So anyway, you have a philosophical age change. Get a business model age change. Those two combined together is what's going to. I call it a millennium change cycle that's coming. And this is global. This has happened globally. It's going to change everything as soon as the millennials get in charge. And Gen Z behind them is the only thing that's going to keep the millennials in line. We talk about that a little bit, but because millennials have some pretty strict. I mean, they're some pretty crazy ideas, and rightly so. Rightly so. So.

As they enter the workforce, what I'm trying to do is help employers.

Unleash their millennial talent, they call it, and save the world. Because the reality is that they're going to be the ones who are going to make very difficult decisions in the next five years on what to do with technology, especially when AI comes in the workforce. So I tell my boomer friends, I say, okay, this is what you do. You find your problem that you're working on in your business doesn't have to be necessarily your top priority, but I would make it, if it could, your top priority problem that you just haven't been able to solve. Bring your top three millennials in your office and explain to them exactly what it is that you're trying to accomplish and how you envision accomplishing it. And then give them the task to come up with something. Give them three or four days to come up with something, and inevitably, within a day and a half or two days, they will come back with a solution that you weren't expecting. And more often than not, they'll actually have an app on their phone that they did. So one of the persons in their group developed a dummy app, although they're trying to hook it up because it works so well, right? To show you what you can do. And the reality is the issues that boomers see today of whatever it is that they're trying to accomplish, whether it's in marketing or developing client relationships or mining a data mine full of material of data. You know, how do we even approach this data? I got reams full of data. I don't even know how to approach it. They not only know how to approach it, they know the tools to use to approach it, and they know the how to assimilate the tools that is being used with Internet devices to put it. Actually put it on the Internet through a mobile device, run it through some.

OCR so you can use it digitally instead of having to go through boxes.

So what I tell the boomers is that this is the time to do your institutional knowledge transfer. You've got guys that are 58 to 65 years old walking around your office that have a wealth full of not just knowledge about your company, but how business is operated. Take get them with your millennial talent and let's start them downloading what they know about your business and business in general in an organized fashion, and let the millennials start to run the company. And you just. You'd be amazed at what, what will happen. And the boomers are typically, well, there, you know, they' Kick me out the door. I'm gonna be. I said, they're not gonna kick you out the door unless you don't do anything. I mean, if you, yeah, if you're dead weight, you know, you should kick yourself out of the door. But the idea is that you have now provided them institutional knowledge that they're now going to innovate and you get to be part of the sh. Sharing of the excitement of actually seeing something, done with it. Because if you would have walked out the door without sharing that information, it would have been gone forever. No one would have.

Yeah, it's just lost. And you're not going to, no matter what tech and what app, whatever, whatever, whatever. You're not going to get 20, 30 years of knowledge and experience without 20, 30 years of knowledge and experience. And I think that's what's lost. As much as I love the tech, I would not trade it in a second for the relationships, the people and all that. And I feel if you don't have that, which is the glue, I think it's great. When I'm looking for talent and I hire people on my team, I'm like, do what you want. I go, here's the due date and it might be seven to ten days from now. I don't care when you're working on it, if it's a Monday, Tuesday, morning, noon, night, whenever, just here's the due date, get it done. And I love giving that flexibility and that freedom because I enjoy it myself. But at the same point, you know, writing algorithms and scripts and all this while it's needed.

You'Re still going to have the sales front, the interfacing, the relationships, whether it's on Zoom or in person. So I get what you're saying with the excitement, but it's also scary because you might just, you know, if you have that mindset where you can take from anyone and there's no consequences, oh yeah, you're gonna not even get through the door, let alone be in a lawsuit or self implode the whole thing. However, if you know the constraints to work within and you truly believe it, I mean, you could tell anyone the framework or whatever, but if they just feel, well, I'm smarter than you and they have this arrogant air about them, you can still, you know, you might get get through for a few years, but you'll have eventually collapse at 10 years down the line.

You do need to know the new ways to do stuff. Though you can't. I mean, I had clients even 10 years ago, and I asked him, I go, how many? Basic marketing question when we're running a campaign, I go, how many clients do you have? How long have they been with you? Where are the results? You know, just baseline the whole thing. He goes, and I'll never forget, he goes, I got 30 years of names, emails, phone. He had no email list. Basic 101. If you don't have an email list, you're toast. And this is 10 years ago. He goes, I got 30 years of all the data on all the customers. I go, can you send me a password to the database so we can look through it? And he's like, what database? I go. When he said I have all the emails, I'm thinking, well, in a system, because anything else is just absurd. And he goes, they're all in a box in the back. I go, okay, well, forget everything else. For step we were going to discuss today. Here's our goal for this week. Because I coach on a weekly base. You know, step one, one week, move to the week two and everything. Don't overwhelm anyone. But I was like, terry's going to hate me. You're going to love me in about 30 to 60 days from now. And I go, we need to get all that crap off paper and put it into where we can do stuff with it. And she, the. His assistant, Terry, and she's great. She literally had to go through like 30 years of paperwork and then get all the emails from the paper, put them into the system. I go, we can't do anything if it's in a box at literally your office. But once it's online, you know the world at the world's your new marketplace.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So if you don't know those, those soft skills, I think is what people call them, or even hard skills, whatever. If you don't have that competency, yeah, you're technically toast. However, if you're just going to act like.

It'S more dangerous to have the wrong mentality, I'll leave it with that. That's why I can surmise it.

You know, the, the, the thing that I've both in the literature and I've experienced personally with just telling people what, how to. How to test this out. So my first question, when I meet with a boomer client, maybe we haven't met before, I said, when was the last time a millennial, a new millennial employee walked into your office? And of course, they're a manager and owner Typically business owners. I said, when was the last time a millennial, brand new on the job walked into your office and asked you what you were doing?

Almost to the person, they all start laughing and they'll say, like, well, it just happened, like last week, or what was that all about? You know, they just start going all these stories of these people just walking in their office, wondering who are they and what are they working on? And I said that the, that comes from the idea of teamwork. And the millennials were not taught. They were taught to always go to the best source for information. So you don't waste your time with the teacher. You go out on the Internet and find the expert. Well, you're the expert in the company, so they're coming right to you to find out from the expert himself what they're working on, which will give them an idea. Do they want to work with this company or not? Be quite honest, sweetie. And so I said that, that, you know, that that's what's happening. And the next question, once they find out what you're working on, they're going to ask you, why are you doing that? And I said typically, that then they'll also ask that same question. When you give them something to do, you say, here, here's a, here's a go fill out this permit application, or here's a marketing plan. I want you to go write something on this marketing plan. The first question they're going to ask is, why? And you're like, well, because I said so. Well, no, no, like, why are we doing it? Well, because the clients asked us to do it. We have the job and I'm telling you to do it. That's why. And so then they typically go back to their desk and they're really frustrated because you didn't listen to them, right? You didn't answer their question. Their question why? Has nothing to do with what we think. Why is, I'm saying, from a boomer perspective and a lot of Xers as well, the why question has nothing to do with why that needs to be done. They know why it needs to be done. They know you have a job and this is what the job entails. They want to know what's the fundamental underlying reason for this being done at all, much less why you're doing it. They know why you're doing. But why is this even task, even a task at all? And then the question, next question, though, once they get that answered, then they're going to say, well, how are you doing it? And then they're going to, you're going to say, well, this, you go fill out the paperwork. You go on this program and here's the data that you enter. They say, no, how are you doing it? And so then again, you just type.

The.

Manager gets very frustrated with them. They're not asking how they know how to do it, they've been taught how to do it. What they're asking is how are you doing it? What is it? Here's the why and how are you? How are you accomplishing the why? Because what they're looking for is the absolute fundamental reason for something to do. I'll give you a permit application as an example. Cut it short. Why do we have to do this water permit application? Well, they passed something called the Clean water Act in 1972 and ever since then we've had to pass, fill out these permit applications. Well, why, why did they pass the Clean Water Act? Well, there was some pollution in some river bodies that were making people sick. And so they were afraid that industry was polluting and farmlands pollute and that kind of stuff. Oh, that's interesting. Why was that happening? Well, because we're fertilizing, industry's making stuff. It just keeps on the why keeps on going until you finally get to the idea of protecting the environment and human health. Oh, that's why you're doing it. We're doing a water permit to protect human health and the environment from something that happened in 1972. Well, this is 19. Oh, this is 2020, almost 2021. What has changed in the last 50 years that would, that, would, that this is why we're doing this. Do we still have to do this? In other words, I mean, have we not gotten better? Are we still doing this 50 years later from something in 1972? And then the how is we'd fill out all this paperwork and so they want to figure out how can they meet the same reason why this law was passed in 1972. This underlying reason, not how it morphed over time. The last 50 years. We're actually going to accomplish the why part and the how we're going to do it. We're going to use technology that nobody touches anything. All this, all this, it totally gets done from the laboratory. As soon as they send the test analysis into the lab, AI takes it over, takes the results, plugs it in wherever it's supposed to go, and either gives you a flag or a pass and your permit's done.

There is no more handing of paper. People looking at overviewing. It's all done by AI.

That's what. That's what.

So that human interaction is completely removed from it. And it's totally.

Wait, it's because of what you're talking about. If I can do this in 15 minutes, as opposed to sitting at my desk working on this for four hours just trying to come up in my brain of how to restate this word, these words in my following this format, oh my gosh, what a bore. I could just write one program, one time to write the report, and the AI will take care of the rest. Write the report every time, Every time it gets this result. This is what it says, Boom, done.

See, And I see the efficiency as being a pro to that. But conversely, now you have the machines making the decisions over.

You know, not. Maybe permits are a little bit more cut dry. Are you following the rules or not? But I, I still think there's a fair degree, maybe not even with permits a lot. Most everything in life, there's always the context and, you know, the two sides of the story where, you know, you look at, I've went through this, you're looking at someone's resume. I'm like, oh my gosh, they're going to be the, you know, the, the star, all class winner. And then you talk to him and you're like, really?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So how do you think AI is going to combat that?

Well, that. Well, that, that's the whole, that's the whole, that's the whole part of the whole issue is that you do have a human component who's going to control the AI and what the AI is doing.

And the millennials are going to be the ones who are going to have to deal with this. And so what I, what I try to tell the people I work with, you know, that I say, well, as you get your millennials and they're involved in this, in your organization, you got on this what I call a next generation leader initiative, where you're training, you're doing this institutional knowledge transfer with your millennial talent. You take your top millennial talent and you put them on a team. I call it a millennial dream team. And they have really three tasks. First task is to review everything that you're doing in your organization and find out any inefficiencies based upon today's standards, just as what you were talking about today. They have a. So they have a box full of files that has value, that's in a box full of files that you need to get an electronic format, because anything in that Electronic format in the next five years is going to be discarded. It's just because when millennials take over, if they don't know it's in the box, they never knew it was in the box and they're just moving on.

My even realized stuff. We used to be in a box. You know, when you were talking about those diskettes. Not, not even floppy disk diskettes. They held so little information. And then there was the. The flat. No, not floppy disk.

Yeah, floppy disk. Yeah. The disc got the thin one that was like a. More of a Frisbee. Then we got the hard disk. And I remember those. And those were somewhere around 1.44 megs. And if I were to look, I mean, we're pushing 15 to 20 megs a second. I know we're both using 4K cameras. I can't. You know how many disks it would take to even. It wouldn't even be possible. So I've seen people share this before. It's like, who knows what this is? And it's a cassette tape. And I remember those. It's what I did my first recordings on, just commenting on TV shows. And, you know, I saw this one where it's like, oh, my car came with an iPad holder. No, I. IPhone holder.

Yeah.

And it was a cassette. They scratched up the screen because they thought it's where you put the phone just as a holder. And it was a cassette player. I mean, so to your point of if they don't realize stuff was in boxes or you have archive files or, you know, when you say go to the file cabinet, just go on, well, what drive is it on? No, I mean the physical one that you spend hundreds and thousands of dollars for and probably even have a room at the office where you just kept files. I mean, it's kind of weird even thinking about it, but I'm familiar with it.

It's all changing. So. And that's part of when they. When they come to take over. When they come. When. When they get in a leadership position, if they don't know about it, they're not going to. Not going to deal with it. So the information is just lost. So that's the first thing is to have them go through the company and find out, talking to people, what's really important that you want to keep and make sure that you put systems in place to archive that and put that digitally somehow in your system. The next thing they do is they look at what they're currently doing and how can they do what they're doing better with technology how can technology make what you're currently doing better?

I'll use permitting as again as an example. How can we use technology to help us do our permitting better?

So they come back to the executive team and they say, this is where we can improve our technology. This is where our technology is old. We need to upgrade our technology, and this is the technology that's coming sooner on the horizon. We need to put some money in the bank, because when this becomes available, we need to implement it. So that's the second thing they do that. Those two things will take them probably two months for the first one, another two months for the second one. Then, then you start, because those are the two easy ones. And then you got to go with a hard one, which is to take this now that they've proven themselves and proven to you that they know what they're doing and they know your company. Right. They know your old data and what that needs to be done with it. They know how you're currently doing what you're doing and what needs to be done with it. You give them the next task, which is take what we're, what we're doing, find out the fundamental why of why we're doing it, and invent the disruptive business that will put us out of business.

How could we possibly do the same thing we're doing and meet the need, whatever the need is that we're trying to meet in a different way that will put us out of business and allow them to develop the disruptor? Because the disruptor is coming, because the millennial talent is working on a disruptor, even though they're not necessarily working in your organization, somebody's always trying to think of a better way to do something. And as soon as they find out that you're making money doing what you're doing and they come up with a better way to do it, they're not going to be no hesitancy to start it and get some financial backing. And suddenly you find yourself up against a wall not being able to compete. And so the idea of developing this disruptor is to recognize what's coming so you can develop to build into your own organization a sustainability plan, a resiliency plan if the disruptor does in fact happen to manifest itself. And actually a transition plan if in fact they come up with a disruptor that actually works. Right. And if this ever got out, we'd be out of business, is to go ahead and launch the disruptor while you're still in business, recognizing.

Yeah, because then you have the corner on the market instead of the competition. And what you're saying about getting the financial backing, I think it's easier now more than ever. There's so many angel investors and online this and people who have been doing it 20, 30 years with the adventure 40 now with the advent of computers and just, you know, Silicon Valley startups and all that. The culture of it. I mean, 50, 100 years. Well, 50 isn't that far, but 75, 80 years ago, I mean, can you imagine in the. Come on, math, 20, 60, 1930s, 1940s. Well, the depression was going on, so there was definitely no one just handing out money. But you know what I mean, the culture even in that generation shifted from where would you even get a loan short of being Ford or Rockefeller or having millions in personal income to begin with, that they know you were good for it. So I think it's kind of exciting how people can take over. And like you're saying the millennials, there's all these opportunities. But I think it's so important that, you know, the, the core values, you know, whether it's an advanced society or not, it's all going to come back down to that leader, those leadership principles. If you don't have good core values, it's not going to work.

And that's what I. In this, this Next Generation leader initiative. The idea being what part of what you want to teach is your core values of the organization. So you take your top millennial talent, including a lot of your. You want to do this with all your millennial talent, in fact, your entire talent base, because we're all postmodern in some way, no matter your age. Is it? Is it? It's not your vision statement. It's not your mission statement. Those things are. Because most people aren't living up to their mission or their vision because they were developed 40 years ago or 30 years ago or 20 years ago. And the millennials might have read them, but they say they're not doing it. And so it doesn't, it doesn't bode well for you, but everybody's got core values that were also developed during this time when mission and vision was coming out. This idea of values is. I tell them that they would have their executive team actually define what each of those core values are. Excellence, integrity. People. We value our people. What does that mean by definition and what does it look like by example, that the executive team has to come up with this and then to start teaching your talent? This is what we mean by excellence. This is what we mean by valuing Our people. And if you don't see this demonstrated within our company excellence in valuing our people and whatever else the core values are, then we want to know about it. So it lets the talent know that there is an expectation for.

Meeting a standard. And that standard is the core value versus saying, lying, cheating, stealing, whatever, and you could have that as part of your core values. We value not stealing from the company above your honesty or integrity. That allows them to start communicating internally using core values. So everything that they would discuss core values have to fit into this somewhere. Well, here's a proposal. This is going out to a client. Well, does the proposal meet our excellence standards? Yes, it does. And this is why.

Is the core value fair to everyone that we're dealing with? Is it fair with our clients and fair with us? And they're again, whatever is fair, how you define fair.

And again, that's just this idea of trying to re establish truth and justice, the ideas of truth and justice in the millennials. And this is why I say that I'm not sure if the next 15 or 20 years are going to be good or bad, but I do know that they're going to be the ones who are making the decisions. And if they don't have a good idea of what is truth and a good idea of what is justice, then sometimes the decisions may not necessarily be good for everyone. It would be good for them who are making the decisions because they're getting what they want, but the rest who are affected by their decisions, it could be really bad.

Yeah, it's always good when you get the end result. But if you have to burn through 99 other people in the process, well.

You know, that's the communist playbook, which is the ends justify the means. So if you got to kill 60 million people to get everybody to get in line as Mao did, you just kill 60 million people. And, and nobody's going to complain because anybody who complains, they just joined the 60 million people. So people can do. We can do some pretty bad things. And the technologies that is coming out can allow that to happen very rapidly. And the technologies that are coming out also are not. Because it's technology. It's not, you know, this is technology. I was in my book, I was had a whole section on this of the, not necessarily the dark side of what could happen, but I did have some dark side stories of what could happen. And I was talking about military application of AI and I just gave two or three examples in the book. And my editor that was reading my book called Me up and said, phil, do you have to take those? You have to take these sections out. And I said, why?

Yeah, why?

I said, they're not graphic or anything. She said, they scared me to death. She said, I literally had to stop reading the book. And she said I couldn't even. I couldn't even do whatever I was doing the rest night. Just thinking about what I said, this is. I didn't write about the bad stuff. I mean, just go to YouTube. This stuff's available on YouTube. It's all over the place. And she said, I don't want to even think about that. She said, you're going to scare your readers to death. I said, you know, and so I took it out because, well, now I'm.

Curious what it is. And it's. It's like you. It's a fine line. I mean, even what you say in an interview or something. I was thinking about this more. More now than ever. It's like, what would you really rather have be completely. You know, that whole ignorance is bliss. And, you know, everything's great because you, you know, I never saw it coming. Or at least go, here's the reality now. If we don't do something 10 or 20 years from now, it would be exponentially worse. I mean, it's that whole boil a frog thing. Just slowly turn it up and, you know, when did this happen?

Wow. We know our president has a way with words and he's boastful at times, but when he says our military has things that are unbelievable, believe me, we have things that the Chinese and the Russians are dying for to get, because it's unbelievable. Just go on the Internet, look up AI, military application of AI, and you'll get a lot of results. What's actually available.

But that, that's just one area. The whole idea of, you know, the. What is the mind and what is the brain? And, you know, part of what, the. What the millennials are after, because remember, part of this discussion is what. What is the why and what is the how? Millennials are going to be the first generation to unlock the.

Pandora's box, which has been kept by the academic elite in our colleges and universities.

And you're not talking about the podcasting station Pandora, the music station.

No, no, no. This is. This is. This is the. The. The academic elite in the universities, globally, in the scientific community have been withholding.

The. The. The discoveries over the last hundred years in science and mathematics and applied physics.

Now, they've been using them, but they've been withholding them from the public of what the, what the implications of what they have discovered are. And they've continued to teach students an outdated 1880s or you know, 1790s to 1890s, that 100 year worldview or perspective of the discoveries in science from that 1890 perspective as opposed to a 2020 perspective.

And millennials are going to be the first generation because they, because this whole idea of truth and justice is they don't believe anything is that they're going to encounter this description of what they're, what they're seeing in science and the description given about why it is this way. And they're going to laugh. And they are already laughing. You know, they're just cracking up saying this, are you kidding me? The genetic code which is, you know, the odds of the genetic code coming into existence by random mutation is impossible. In fact the scientists have already said is impossible, had several said that that's where the founder of DNA said it was an alien transplant. They call it panspermia. Richard Dawkins also said panspermia was the how we got genetic material on the Earth. It never evolved here, but it evolved somewhere else. But you never hear that in the mainstream. You're always taught, you know, to star winning evolution, all this kind of stuff. They're going to be the ones to open these doors to these and unlock these secrets. This whole idea of zero point energy, this is something that I'm most recently been investigating. Absolutely fascinating that the, that the energy that's available just around us. You know we talk about gravity, you know, what is energy? No one knows what energy is. We know what energy does and we can describe it, but no one knows really what it is. No one knows what gravity is. We can describe its function. What we have mathematical principles, don't want.

To be testing it.

But we don't know, we don't really know what it is and how it works. But the forces, but they do know that there's this, at the most subatomic physics level there is this thing that they're discovering that these entities charges come into existence and go out of existence. It's like well where did they go when they disappear? Because they're right here now. They're not there and then they're back here again and then they're not here. That's the, what they call this area of zero point energy where this, where this energy is going in and out, this flux of energies coming in and out of existence. And if you can figure out a way to harness that energy, that's the energy that's running the entire universe, and they are coming up with ways to harness this. And so that's the stuff that millennials are going to get hold of. And they're just going to. They're going to investigate it. They're going to say, why are we going to keep this secret? We can solve the energy crisis.

Same thing with global debt. I mean, you know, the. I like to tell my millennial kids and their friends that I'm part of the boomer generation that just lied to you about everything. Right? We lied to you that you can have it all. We lied to you that evolution was real. We didn't know any different. That's what we were taught. So we just continued the lie. We lied to you that we live in a closed system universe where.

These things can't happen because it violates one of the laws of entropy or whatever that, you know, they can't. Energies need to create it nor destroy it. Unless you have an open system where the energy is coming from somewhere else. It's not being created or destroyed. It's still there, you know, anyway, they're going to take. They're going to throw all those. Those things off and start to really discover some pretty amazing, amazing things. And that's what I'm saying. We're not going to.

So I'm hearing a lot of the next 15, 20 years is going to be very exciting and fun because, yeah, you know, there's. You've mentioned some things that I've even thought about, whether it was in school or after or whatever. And, you know, the pyramids, like you said, like I said when you mentioned it, were just, you know, what was the deal with those? And I've heard probably three to five different stories on it, and it would be cool to have a definitive. All right, here's, you know, the whole thing with Pluto. I grew up, you know, Pluto was a planet. Now it's not. I'm like, no. Same thing with like, the park near my house. That it was one name for like a hundred years and then they changed it something else. And none of us acknowledge it, but it's like on a deeper level, who. There's just some person creating the names and the stories that everyone else just believes in the narrative, but at the end of the day, it's still just a person doing it. What's the, what's the main cause of it? Because it might be science fact or it might be science fiction. It's, you know, why is Einsteinium called Einsteinium? Well, because of Einstein.

Right? It's a, you know, that we were talking about. Fine. We talked about financing finances earlier and that this is another biggie. It's just, you know, the.

Boomers and millennials want the same thing. We absolutely would. They want the exact same thing. They're just going to do it. Right. The boomers haven't been. Have we haven't been able to do it because we don't have the authority or we haven't given ourselves the authority. It's this example on global, global finances. I think I heard that Ireland's, Ireland has the highest debt ratio of any country in the world. That's the last I heard. I think their, their debt to GDP was something like 10,000. Something ridiculous. 10,000. So it would take them 10,000 years.

Of just team and break even.

They're going to pay their debt with whatever they made for the next 10,000 years. And that doesn't include the interest on the debt. That's just to pay off the debt.

They're never going to catch up. That's the whole idea. So you have these countries in the world, there's many more of them. They're never going to catch up on their debt. Portugal is another one. They're always going to like going into default. How come we haven't heard about them going into default lately? Well, because the world banks working with them and all this of kind stuff holding up their debt.

Yeah. When you mentioned the bitcoin and they're just going to reset everything.

It's like, oh, there's going to reset everything. They're going to go to the World bank and they're going to get over all the big banks in the world. Say we're going to have, we're going to reset party. Everybody goes back to zero and it all goes to bitcoin.

But the interesting thing with that is just like with the bailouts and all of that stuff going on, if you don't have the right mindset and culture, the people who got in those positions in the first place, I'm converting, pretty confident. Like with 99.9999-9999% certainty, they're just going to go back into it. It's like the whole thing with winning the lottery. If you have someone that's not. If you have someone not trained on money and you give them $10 million, probably gonna have a real nice car with a.

Totally agree. Except bitcoin could be traced.

Electronic currency could be traced. So there's not going to be any graft, there's not going to be Any payola under the table.

They can't take.

So now it's arguably a better system because you can't steal from it or you can't cheat with it. And I'd like to think over the last 150plus years, no one's ever done anything illegal or immoral with money, but, well, that's a lie.

It's all traceable. So they say, okay, if you have a lot of debt but you have no assets, well, we're going to give you a little bit of assets to start off with, because everybody's starting back at zero. So we're going to give you a little bit to survive, but not a whole lot. If you have a whole lot of assets, you're going to get a whole lot of. It's not going to be bitcoin. It'll be whatever China or the United States or the global system comes up with. But, so if you have a lot of assets, they'll give you a lot of. They'll give you a lot of the bitcoin or whatever the current currency is.

Yeah.

And then you just start. Everybody starts, and you make it level so that everybody's kind of back where you were before when you had this idea of debt and currency and all this kind of stuff. But the debt's gone. So everybody there, nobody owes anybody anything, and then they just start over. And that's all one currency. It just totally makes sense. I mean, just totally makes sense. And so the millennials are going to go with what makes sense. They're not going to be. They're not thinking about, well, this is why we haven't done it for the last 300 years. That's industrial age thinking. That's the way we've done it for the last 300 years. Connected Age thinking is. Is how can we creatively innovate this so we never have to do what we've done for the last 300 years?

How can you do it better, faster, more efficient?

Yeah, that was just stupid. We let the whole globe get into debt. How stupid is that? We're not paying for it. You think the millennials are going to say, okay, we're going to voluntarily jack up our own tax base to 60% to pay for all this debt that the government has accumulated over the last 30 years of wasteful spending? They're not going to do that. They're just going to say, well, the economist said we need to have hyperinflation to get rid of it. No, we don't. We just go to a global currency and, well, they'll take care of it right there. What would you rather, hyperinflation or global currency? Well, I think we'll go with the global currency. That's just their mindset again. This is. They're not thinking the way that most people would think. Be thinking. So.

Wow. Well, I'm glad that you're addressing the issue, because there definitely is one. I have one more question for you before we thank our sponsor, and it is. I feel like we already went here and I went to a pull this up about 25 minutes ago because we already covered six or seven typical wheel of whatever things.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I'm not going to ask about the pyramids or any of that. We definitely touched on it. I'm still interested. We could go three, three hours on that alone. But with all the talk of millennials in your book and what you're doing, I want to ask you right now, if you had to choose someone right now as a leader, who would you pick for the millennial leader right now? Someone. I don't even know the cutoff. Someone under 30, someone between 20 and 30, or 18 and 30.

Let's go with adults as far as age group familiar, 39 to 22. 2239 is probably where they, where they fall in there.

All right, so who would be the best millennial leader you think right now.

Is a person or just as a.

As an example, let's go with, let's go with like CEO or.

I mean, if you want to say prime minister, go for it. But like a CEO or someone to run, a governor, state business. Who do. Just who do you really. Who really impresses you as a millennial leader right now?

I tell you, Clay, check who's running for Congress in Baltimore and.

And how old he came up with.

That's a. So woman.

How old is she?

She's African American. She's the one that put out the pretty crazy commercial to run for Congress. She's probably.

I would say 20. Between 29 and 32. That'd be my guess.

Okay.

She is. And the reason why I say that she would be one of those examples, because she has totally put herself out there.

You have to be bold in a non politically correct position. And she's stating the truth. She's stating the facts and putting it all out there and letting the chips fall wherever they lie. And that's really what you want to find in your millennial leaders, is someone who will be truthful and honest with what they're seeing, not what you're Expecting them to see or what you're hoping that they see, but they really communicate back to you what they really are seeing and why. That's why this is unacceptable. We're not going to accept this anymore. Within your own organization, that's the hardest and that's why they have to be. It's difficult because you don't want to give up control of your organization. The reality is you're losing control of your organization, even if you still own it in five, as little as five years, when the millennials take over and they're going to quit and go somewhere else or they're going to take over your company is to allow them to take over your company. So find that person within your organization that tells it straight and has a good head on the shoulders and seems to be a responsible individual, and then approach them with the very simple question, which is, what do they want to do with their career path? Where is their career path? They see their career path taking them and then find it.

Once you find, make sure they got that ambition to be around another five or 10 years.

If you had, if we gave you the opportunity to accomplish that in our organization, what would that look like for you? What position would you see? Because they're not really position oriented. More than anything, those titles, while they're, yeah, they like titles, but they're really not into titles. But you can say, you can use a title of what position you would really like to see yourself in. In our organization, where would the top position be? And allow them to say where they think that their top position would be. And if you see them actually at a higher level, you've got to be always be careful of Peter Principle, which is, you know, you're always promoting somebody higher than they.

Really capable of achieving at that current time. Try to avoid that, but also encourage them that if there's something that you think they can actually reach higher, just to let them know that they could reach higher.

Don't hold them back.

Don't hold them back. And I'm going to help you get there. Right. I'm going to help you. Perfect. We're starting today. We're starting today. And they will take.

They will take others with them. So you elevate one and then they'll take others with them and your whole company will change for the better, for the future.

The last part of that, I'll just share a quick story with you. Meeting with one of my boomer friends who gave me an awesome opportunity with his organization and he didn't really want to do what I was doing, what I was offering, but we were friends, and so we had good conversations. He called me back a year and a half later and said, okay, you gotta. We gotta go do this today. I said, well, like, why is it so necessary? Gotta do it today. And so we started that day, and we built up something pretty phenomenally in the organization. This is the story behind. He said, I went to a sales meeting and he's early 60s and said, I sat with the oldest person in the room, for the client was 35 years old, and he had four direct reports sitting with him in the room. And the oldest one of those was probably 29. And he said, these are the people who are giving us this work. He said, while I could talk to them, he said I couldn't relate to them and they couldn't relate to me. And he said he came to realize that if he doesn't get somebody 35 years old in front of that client within the next six months, they're going to lose that client. Because the millennials are going to give work to people that they know and trust. And the people that they know or trust are typically their age. And they're, you know, they have a. They have a wariness about boomers. They, like, boomers were their parents. But are we good for them in business? They're not necessarily so sure. It just says, we're not necessarily so sure about them. Right. That runs both ways.

I think everyone has something of value. And like I said, there's a lot of wisdom, you know, you can't get. I remember one of my first clients, the one that I've had over 10 years now. I remember, I go, when did you start your company? And this was just at the table. We were talking in person, and it was really to just close on a deal and help him. And I'll never forget, he started his company the year I was born.

And.

I had just. I was in my young twenties at the time. And I said, well, I've been doing business more than half my life, which is true. I think I would have been like 24 at the time. In like, some six months. 24 and some change. I started my first company when I was 12. And so it was fun to say, I've been doing business more than half my life. And he's like, half of what you know. And there was that dichotomy. It was fun to joke around about it. But the reality is I have the utmost respect for people that, you know, you've had a business longer than I've been alive. Why wouldn't you, my, why wouldn't I want to learn from someone like that? Not just be like, oh, you're old and outdated. I, I think that's whatever there is.

There, there, there is, there is a, there is a, the idea of value, of respect. But if you think about it, when did you start your company? 12 years old. I started my first company when I was 20, 28, multimillionaire at age 32.

If you look at anybody who's done anything of significance in the world, they're typically between the ages of 18 and 32. Look at all the artists, all the music that you listen to today. I mean, every once in a while you'll listen to an oldie but goodie. You know, they're still around. You know, the spinners are still around. They're 70 years old, but when they first came out with their music, you know, they were in their teens and early twenties. Same thing. You have these teams, you have these early 20s to early 30s in talent in your company that they are in their highest level of engagement, productivity and loyalty.

Yeah. The ambition and the creativity is through the roof.

Unbelievable. It's just to let them go, let them do what they know how to do before they go out and start their own company and compete with you.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Like I started my own company and competed with the people that I work for.

Yeah. Like you were saying earlier, it's like whoever's the boredest in the classroom, it's like, let them run wild. But I'll say that with a caveat of you need to understand, respect and I'd say love people. Otherwise it's like we could go off on that, but we're going to thank the sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why you should visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having an idea and a possibility to actually.

Getting my book published. Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one.

Or Mary Alice, what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable.

John Cody.

I've worked with Mario over the phone.

And online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to.

Go with promoting my books.

Rocio, there's no way in the world.

I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner.

I can't make a higher recommendation than.

To work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now. And and I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com and we are back with the Imperfect Extron. Philip, are you ready to take imperfect action?

I am. I am.

All right, so these are 60 second answers. Rapid fire, real quick. First one, what is the fastest path to the prophets?

Fastest path to the prophets is truly unleashing your millennial talent and allowing them to innovate. Creatively innovate what it is that you're trying to do.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Biggest problem that they have is their lack of development, alignment, development and advancement of their millennial talent. Easiest way to fix it is either do internal coaching or external coaching to align your talent with their career path, provide them development and encourage their development and advance them quickly.

Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Best way to maximize customer lifetime value is relationships.

As we were discussing, especially as you've been mentioning earlier, this whole idea of relationships and.

Nothing beats that. Nothing beats the handshake. Although Covid no more handshakes. But nothing beats the personal touch. And you can't do it over zoom or video conferencing. You have to get there. You have to meet them in person. People give work to the people they know and trust. And trust comes through a relationship.

Excellent. Well, I have a couple more questions, but what are some books you'd recommend to Expert Authority World that have made an impact on your life?

The Bible. That's the number one. For myself personally.

Nothing's going to top that.

I mean, you know, the, the really from, from, from my perspective, I read a lot of business books and I read a lot of scriptural books or you know, faith based books.

Understanding the Times. I'll give you that. That's the best. So it's like a textbook. But if you want to find out about Worldview and what's happening in our world today. Understanding the Times by Summit Ministries. It's a very dry read, but oh my gosh, it'll open your eyes.

Well, I appreciate those. I have not heard of the second one, but I also believe in the Bible and Scripture and it's my number one mention as well.

Where would you like people to learn more about you?

Unleash the millennials.com Unleash the millennials.com is my book website. Books available on Amazon. There's a paperback and Kindle ebook. And then I have a coaching business engineering leadership design company and so that's engineeringleadershipdesign.com either one of those gets me.

Excellent. Well, Ivan, thoroughly enjoyed this. It's been very intriguing, interesting, and I love that we could just go deep with some of the questions because.

I know sometimes you want to hold back and be PC and all that, but I'm glad you opened up on some of this stuff. So thank you.

You're very welcome. And anytime you want to get together with the talk about the pyramids or something like that, more detail. It's quite an interesting adventure.

Excellent. Well, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating book business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com to get started. Now, once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.