Rolando Rosas 3:26
and a lot of money. Well, let me let you know what Dan for less than a cup of coffee. Businesses today can get the most cost effective, fast internet, as well as backup for unforeseen outages. You know, circuitloops.com does the heavy lifting for businesses when they need to find the most cost effective internet service. The best protection against those disasters is to have backup wireless internet so that you can keep your business running. You know, the internet is the lifeline of most businesses. And without it, money, cash operations just cease who wants to not be able to get an email or not be able to do that video conference. So go to circuitloops.com today for an instant quote on backup wireless, fast fiber in it. And best part about this Dan, is that it provides a personalized business proposal on that in less than 60 seconds. No other internet service out there can do that today for you. So go to circuitloops.com and go check it out. Let me introduce our guest today and welcome you to the show as well. On today’s podcast we have Dan Smolen. Dan Smolen’s, a communicator author and a thought leader who is nationally recognized for the future of work as well as meaningful work podcasting. He is the host on What’s Your Work Fit?and we’re going to ask him Have questions about that. It’s the first of a kind, engagement platform which brings together today’s business and workplace, through thought leaders, my hiring managers, career seekers, challenging the traditional notions of work, workplace, and work fit. Here’s the part that I like. Apart from all that he’s a native of New Haven, Connecticut. Oh, really. I spent some time in Connecticut. We share that in common. We also share another thing common. He lives now near the DC in the DC area, which is up the river from where I live in on the Virginia side. Let’s welcome to the show, Dan Smolen. And welcome Dan. Welcome to the show.
Dan Smolen 5:50
Okay, Rolando, I’ve got one question for you. Yeah, Sally’s Pepys, or more of the spot. I mean, what what? He was always man or a Pepys, man.
Rolando Rosas 6:01
Oh, man. It’s been, it’s been forever. You got me on that one. You’re going back to my high school years there.
Dan Smolen 6:07
So you’re so for, for anybody that’s not a native New Haven or New Haven style thin crust pizza is is in our blood. And when we go anyplace else, like Chicago, you know, where there’s deep dish, stuff like that. You just go into kartha Taqiyya. You just can’t handle it.
Rolando Rosas 6:31
Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m glad you brought up pizza because from New Haven, I lived in West Hartford for some time. And there was a really good pizza place where I can’t remember the the guy was the owner was Greek. Or no one of those Middle Eastern countries, but he would serve a pizza that was that wasn’t deep dish. It wasn’t New York style. It was somewhere in between, but he would cut it by the slice with a machete with it with a machete. Not a pizza roller but with a machete. And it was magnific I don’t think he was Italian. Because it wasn’t quite New York style. And in a new it wasn’t Chicago, somewhere in between just delicious stuff. But with a machete. Wherever you are, sir. Shout out big props to
Dave Kelly 7:18
you got to get that image out of my head.
Rolando Rosas 7:22
It was good stuff. So Dan. Yeah, let’s start with with with a with a question for you. I love how you You kicked it off with a question for me about Connecticut. But I want to ask you because this is a tech show. And we also talked to tech folks, what tech Are you geeking out on right now?
Dan Smolen 7:39
Well, this will be no surprise to Dave. I’m an old guy with hearing loss. And these bad boys are my connection to everything. They’re my Bluetooth enabled hearing aids. Oh, they were not they were not cheap. And they were available to me or I got them before the price of hearing aids got a little more affordable. But you know what, there is a huge segment of the workplace both men and women and not just old geezers like me who you know they’re gonna miss things and so hearing aids are going to be a must go to tech now here’s the really cool part. I can answer my phone with them. I can listen to podcasts like yours on them I can listen to iTunes or really anything else it’s my connection to the world so they’re really not a sign of a desperately growing old they are a sign of remaining relevant to me. And and I think more and more we’re going to see their utility become sexier in the workplace. Well,
Rolando Rosas 8:51
they’re getting they’re getting cheaper. We we work with a one of the brands that we work with owns has a division that at all they do they do hearing aids and they are expensive. They’re not a couple of 100 they’re a couple 1000 I mean, they they do all kinds of stuff to miniaturize them and make them tiny so I know that Yeah, and you know it’s it’s becoming a bigger need you know, I heard years ago somebody say you know, with all the earbuds and headphones and loud music that people listen to in the car over the and this is when I was a youngster you know people are going to need more and more hearing aids and the technology now that you said Bluetooth, connecting to your phone, making it much easier to communicate with your hearing. It’s a Bluetooth thing um, you would imagine even a TV screen that may have Bluetooth on it. It makes a life a lot easier. It’s awesome what technology can do.
Dan Smolen 9:44
Well I haven’t gone that far I haven’t connected my bluetooth to my monitor. I mean to my to my TV. Got a sound bar to kind of enhance that. But it pretty much does everything else I can adjust it for the kind of room that I’m in now. It Does have downsides? technologically speaking? They are radio transceivers. So you can get interference. Yeah, when I’m reheating a cup of coffee in the microwave, it’ll do. It’ll do weird things. It’ll also do weird things. If somebody driving by me has serious exon playing for whatever reason, it’s in that frequency. And again, it does weird things. But can I live without him? No. And like a lot of people in my misspent youth, I was surrounded by a lot of a lot of loud hifi equipment. You know, I think about that Jethro Tull show I saw when I was 14 years old, and I couldn’t hear for five days afterwards. So that probably was the start of it. But not unlike a lot of people, especially people that I deal with not only, you know, as listeners, but also as guests who as they get older, they suddenly can’t hear what their wife is saying. And that was my problem.
Rolando Rosas 10:58
Is that convenient? Or is that by choice?
Dan Smolen 11:01
No, that that is? That’s a cold, hard truth. I don’t want I don’t want to miss what my wife has to say. But I think a lot of people probably do. I am not that my wife is wonderful. And I want to hear everything she’s saying. And I’m tired of going what? Why, wait, what? Yeah,
Dave Kelly 11:20
you know, what I find interesting is I noticed in the newest release of Apple’s Apple’s newest release, they have different things in there monitoring noise, what am I looking for noise exposure levels, right. So you can kind of control that. And some, again, some of the brands that we sell their products, their products have kind of safety measures built into place so that it can attack Loud Sound spikes, so that the user is not exposed to that. And you know, those are all pretty important things. And I think I think more more technology is being introduced. And I think more people are talking about it, because it’s a, it is a serious condition, noise exposure, a loss or loss of hearing, and there’s ways to prevent it. So it’s nice to know that some of the hardware manufacturers and also the software manufacturers are kind of coming together to give you that you know that that readout, that information or that feedback, that hey, you’re exposing yourself to something dangerous here, you might want to take that into account and dial things down.
Dan Smolen 12:27
Indeed, indeed. Yeah, in especially with Gen Z. Gen Z has never known anything but digital media. And so
Dave Kelly 12:36
I thought you’re gonna say bad music.
Dan Smolen 12:40
I like what my daughter listens to generally speaking, but it’s it’s the fact that they’ve, they’ve always had headsets, or earbuds and I know my daughter bride some way too high. And this generation is going to need is going to need hearing protection. And but it’s also going to, at some point need hearing enhancement, and I hear it’s going to be sooner than later. Unless behavior changes.
Dave Kelly 13:12
Well, you’re probably right.
Rolando Rosas 13:14
And you know, we had I don’t know if you can recall, Dave, we had Milton on from ebp man reviews, who was talking to us about that. And he had gone to the doctor, and he told us a story that the doctors tell them, hey, you know, you had a really big a minute paraphrasing here. You’d be careful with using that. And that’s probably why he was feeling some pressure on his ears. So he went to a different style of headset. He also tried, there’s a lot of development in the bone conduction technology. There’s a couple of manufacturers out there today that will essentially transmit that through vo conduction, so you don’t have to put things in your ear. But people like people like their air pods and whatnot. And it’s hard to convince them to wear something different because they look cool. And the cool people are using them right now. Right? That’s right. So but yes, a lot of technology developments bone conduction, big props, Dave to Milton at ebp man reviews if you’re watching.
Dave Kelly 14:09
Absolutely. And Dan, you know what? Love an opportunity to work with you to do some tests with your hearing aids and some of the UCC solutions that we have and maybe put together some some demos if you’re up for it.
Dan Smolen 14:22
Oh, absolutely. You know it my father’s generation hated wearing them because it told the world that they’re old and feeble. I look at it a different way. It enables me and you know what I’m, I’m, I’m not gonna lie to you. I’m gonna be 62 next year. I’m not old. I got a lot at all. I got a lot of life left in me and and I want to hear it and I want to enjoy it. So yeah, absolutely. Dave, let’s do it.
Rolando Rosas 14:50
Awesome. All right. We’ll make that happen. Dave.
Dave Kelly 14:52
So listen, our our audience likes a good story. And Rolando and I are meeting more and more people
Rolando Rosas 14:59
I swear I didn’t do it.
Dave Kelly 15:03
What is the what’s the I was gonna get really personal? What’s the one thing you’ve never told him? I’m just kidding. But so we’re working in we’re meeting with people now they’re starting their own businesses. So you know what, when you came into the scene, you were doing advertising and marketing, and you’re working, you’re working for, you know, an organization, but you moved off, and you started to do your own thing. So I’m curious, you know, tell us about that time in your life. When you decided, listen, I want to, I’m going to do things my own way. I want to work for myself. What What triggered that in you?
Dan Smolen 15:38
necessity, you know, I got laid off a few times. One time didn’t get me out of advertising. But the second one, pretty much did. And when it happened, I I figured I was going to try my hand at a startup. And I had this idea for methodology to make promotions get easier, more easily sent to consumers. This was a long, long time ago, like the mid 90s. And I went out and wrote a patent which got issued. And then I sat with it because I couldn’t get the company off the ground. I couldn’t get funding, it was a weird time. And right around that time, a woman that I used to work for decided to come to me and say, Would you like to work with me? And and start off doing headhunting executive recruiting. And so make a long story short, I did that for 20 years 13 of which, under my own shingle, and it was, it happened serendipitously, I wasn’t looking to become a headhunter. I mean, I never thought, I’d mean, I’d been recruited before in my career, but I never thought to be on the other end of that phone call. And it was a lot of fun. And I helped a lot of people. And I did that for 13 years until I didn’t any more credit for a pro tip. And so the pro tip is, when you get to a point where things no longer work, or something doesn’t seem right anymore, you make a pivot. And at that point, I decided, instead of continuing on with recruitment, which was getting harder, and really what was happening was my recruits weren’t as successful as they were even a year before. And I was like, Okay, I think the universe is telling me do something differently. And my wife said, Let’s do something different. And so instead of recruiting, I turned my value proposition into helping the people I used to recruit not the hiring managers, but the talent, the managers, the individual contributors, the workforce professionals. And at that point, I got into podcasting pretty heavily. And since 2018, forward, I have been communicating value propositions around helping people connect with work that’s meaningful, and that now has a work fit. Now, what’s a work fit? To my listeners out there a work that is what condition, what time of the day? What place? What set of circumstances, turn your work into a meaningful part of a day, doing other wonderful things, and not the all consuming time suck of a day, which was my career at my earliest point, when I was working 40 5060 7080 hours a week, making a lot of money and having nothing to show for it.
Rolando Rosas 18:43
What do you say and Dan, to those that are out there? You know, I’d love to get your thoughts on that. You say, you know, it sounds like you’re you’re an advocate for work life balance. Is that right? Or am I not getting that right from what you just said?
Dave Kelly 18:58
I don’t know if they like the word. I don’t know if the word balance is even used anymore
Dan Smolen 19:02
No balance. It’s not because balance assumes that work is 50% of the proposition, or 33% of the proposition if there’s two other counterbalances. Okay, I know some people are driven careerists and they are passionate and they love going at it all day long. And God bless him for it. You know what? Maybe you’re maybe you’re ahead and maybe you are a hunter sales person. And you are completely driven by making sales like Dave here.
Rolando Rosas 19:42
Not quite cracked the whip in the second Dave.
Dan Smolen 19:45
No if you’re a dragon slayer I mean, you just love the hunt. And you may do it 60 hours a week. You may not do it for very long, but you know you may love and maybe that’s your work that you know what more and more people special Surely, if they’re commuting into an office, they’re exhausted. And they want, they want to breathe air, that’s not the office, they want to have different kinds of experiences that include work, but aren’t all work. And they want to get away from the, the mentality that is so common in so many workplaces that, you know, when I’m there, someone owns my time and owns my agency. And I think a lot of people now especially coming out of the pandemic, they want something a little better, you know, they they like, adopting a pet. They liked being able to go to their kids softball game, or T ball game, and they’re really young, or, you know, going on a date in the middle of the day, just because it’s novel,
Rolando Rosas 20:52
or going shopping and get your hair cut. Absolutely.
Dan Smolen 20:56
Oh, getting your hair cut, okay, that’s a great story, Rolando. I had my boss and when I was in the agency space, great guy. We got so busy, he would keep canceling his hair cutting appointments, because something would roll up. And one day he came to me full of a lament saying, you know, my hairdresser wants to fire me. Because I keep I keep, you know, canceling at the last minute, nobody likes to do that. You want to get your hair cut, you want to go have lunch, you don’t want to be rushed. You probably don’t want to, you probably don’t want to commute that much either. Right? Right, right. You know, if you want to call it balance, sure that’s balanced. But it’s really something different. And it’s different for all people. It’s what you Rolando want for Workfit. It’s what you Dave want. It’s not what I want for you. It’s what you want for yourself. And that’s the really important thing. You mentioned Steve Cadigan. He’s all about that, too.
Rolando Rosas 21:55
Yes, yeah. And we had him on, we had a long discussion with him about that. You know, one of the interesting things that came out of that conversation was we’re talking about the mindset, if I were just kind of paraphrase the mindset here in the US of work is not the same as around the world. If you go to Germany, for example, we have the great fortune of working with with other colleagues around the world, and we have colleagues in Germany. And when they’re done the end of the day, that’s it, you know, they’ll go to a restaurant on a Monday or a Tuesday or Wednesday. And oh, a lot of people are at those shops and cafes in a lot of the other European countries were here people may kind of do that for lunch. But they may stay longer, like you said that maybe you’re that sales got your it’s common to go and see people’s hang out in the office past five o’clock. And in Germany, it’s frowned upon, you know, you’re done, you’re going to enjoy the rest of the day with friends, family, or colleagues somewhere, somewhere out rather than hanging out in the office to see who’s the last one out the door.
Dan Smolen 23:03
If you want to ruin mitigates and lunch in Germany, be the ugly American and ask your ask your friend what they do for a living. You don’t do that in Europe, you don’t do that in Asia, you probably don’t do that in Canada, but you can do it in the United States, because we are so obsessed with what the identity of our work means to us. But if you go into Italy, France, the United Kingdom, oh, gosh, Amsterdam, I was there a few years ago, you don’t talk about work to people that you don’t know. It’s considered really rude. And again, it’s why they call us Ugly Americans. Because it’s like, you’re ruining You’re ruining the moment, folks, you know, here comes a pro tip.
Rolando Rosas 23:51
Dan, tell us why folks that are traveling overseas don’t want to be Ugly Americans take it away.
Dan Smolen 24:00
Well, the biggest thing is that we Americans, if we’re not familiar with culture overseas, if we’re just going on a pleasure cruise or a trip somewhere and and you’re at Oktoberfest and you’re sitting next to some German, local and the first thing you say to Hans is say Hans, what do you do for a living? And they’re probably going to throw you out of the Oktoberfest or, you know, politely turn their head and ignore you. People in other countries, you know, if they want to know who you are, they want to know about your life. Tell me about your family. What what gets you excited about starting a day? You know, tell me about the art that you like, or the sport Oh, the sports teams that you like, oh, by the way, they really love. They really love Tom Brady. Go figure. But don’t talk about work. And you know what, that’s really the essence of what we’re trying to get to here which is a new level of humanity that gets us away from our hyper career focus. Because you know what, for 100 years, that’s how we defined ourselves. But we got to get away from that and really touch a more human side of ourselves to connect with life outside of work.
Rolando Rosas 25:15
I agree on everything.
Dave Kelly 25:16
I think things are changing here in this country. So I started learning about that 12 plus years ago, where different cultures you didn’t say, what, what do you do? What do you do? And I was at an event, I was at my wife’s high school reunion this past weekend, and I’m meeting a lot of people for the first time. So it’s like, a lot of the husbands are over here chatting, and we’re talking. And nobody asked anybody of what they did. And I thought it was great. And it was like, you know, what are your interests or your team’s? Your kids? What do you do in Southern New Hampshire? How do you know? Where do you stay when you’re at this area? Like no one was talking about work? And I it was such a nice feeling where it wasn’t you just you weren’t putting people in a box for oh, you’re a podcaster? Oh, you’re a mechanic? Oh, you’re this. And it was just a much more natural conversation. And it gave us a chance to actually learn about them, or each other as individuals and not Oh, you are a car salesman, that you know, Joe like this.
Dan Smolen 26:18
You know, Dave, I think people are exhausted, about talking about work. And you know what, it’s gonna get really bad. And then in the next couple of weeks with layoffs, if you’re a knowledge worker, you got a big old target on your forehead right now. And one of two things is happening. Your Overlord is saying get back into the office, return to the office. And once you’re here five days a week. Maybe they’re saying for three, but but others are at risk of being downsized in the fourth quarter of the year, right before Christmas time watch. So you know what people are kind of freaked out right now. And I hope the response that you got came out of joy. But I fear it came out of anxiety, because I don’t want to talk about work. Tell me, Hey, did you watch the football game in Germany on Sunday? I mean, that’s where it goes to right? Because people just are so easily triggered right now. They’re so easily triggered because they feel the hot, klieg lights on them right now thinking, Am I gonna get canned in the next couple of weeks before Christmas? Or, you know, it’s worked out really well here working in the Boston suburbs. They’re gonna make me come into the Back Bay now and have to fight the traffic on the mass bike or whatever. That’s what’s keeping people upper upper right now.
Rolando Rosas 27:43
Yeah, well, you know, you are teeing up the next thing I really wanted to dive into with you, you know, you wrote a book in 2010. Or I should say it was released 2010. But I would imagine that as you started putting that book together, somewhere in 2009, or even 2008, yes, showing us showing us a book for those that are watching on online. It during that time, that was during the great recession of the subprime mortgages, the bailouts, I’m sure there was some things that influenced your why you wrote that book in the motivations. And then today, like those nervous feelings that people have about work about being an ember, we’re not I don’t know if we’re technically there yet. But it’s certainly the layoffs kind of feels like we’re in it or about to get into it. Now we’re gonna say about folks that are feeling nervous about our current economic situation.
Dan Smolen 28:40
Well, let’s start with the book that I wrote, as you said, the around the time of the Great Recession of 2008 2009. You know, I was the canary in the coal and coal mine for that, really in fourth quarter 2007. I started a week with 14 Open wrecks, which was a record for me, that’s a lot of business. And I was doing it, I had some contract help at the time. And then at the, at the end of this particular week, they started I was down to two open wrecks. And by the end of the following week was down to one. And the reason is because I was the canary in the coal mine, they were shutting down recruitment, open wrecks for recruitment. And it was in the early stages of shedding people. Wow. And what I will tell you is that it was very, very painful. People that norm that really didn’t connect with their workplace angst, suddenly felt very vulnerable. And then people that got laid off. It took them a really long time to reconnect with similar kinds of work, because it just wasn’t available. The sub, the whole, the whole banking crisis, at that time really messed up the economy pretty badly. And it took people a long time to connect now. Out of those ashes, as you guys both know, came some really amazing startups that were fueled by an immediate need. Right? You know, I’ve got this blow up mattress, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna rent it out to people. So that I can make a few dollars on the side hustle. And that became a and b, that became Airbnb. And, and you know what I’m going to, I’m going to come up with a way for people who were idle and not working to drive around their communities and shuttle people from point A to point B, so they don’t have to drive or maybe they don’t have a car right now, maybe the cars in the shop, Hong Kong, Uber, Hong Kong, Uber, right. So it’s out of these times that I think we’re we’re not going to be as severe as 2008 or 2008 2009. But we are going to have layoffs and it’s going to this time, get people to connect with that joyfulness that they felt during the pandemic, when they weren’t schlepping into the office and paying a fortune out of pocket. They weren’t dealing with an obstreperous boss, or maybe a workplace that was so demand driven, and always changing focus. And so now that the the entrepreneurial stories, the green shoots that are going to come out of that are going to be solving some new problems, and I’m not really sure what they will be. But you know, what, Rolando, and Dave, there’s gonna be a handful, I guarantee you, you’re going to be investing in one day, as publicly traded companies, it’s bound to happen. Yeah, out of out of the midst of deep crisis comes wonderful opportunity. And then
Rolando Rosas 31:45
Google and Facebook were both started prior to obviously, prior to the Great Recession, but they were starting around that timeframe of the recession before that, on random.com. And the I see the huge difference between the.com Bust which I was also a part of getting laid off in 2002. January, so right after Christmas, what are you thinking, I’m got good mojo going and the axe came down. You know, we didn’t have back in 2002, the tools, the, you know, be able to jump on the podcast, be able to put your personal brand out there, there’s so many more ways to get connected, like you said, have meaningful work, and find a side hustle or become that. So solopreneur, I mean, that word is really taken off lately, where you can be a one man or one woman show and do your coaching thing, do your, you know, your passion thing, you can, you know, cook, or you can show the world what you’re about, or, you know, be that hunter of a salesperson and say, Hey, I blasted the quota out, you know, at my last job, you’re looking for somebody that wants to do that for you, you know, here I am. Here I am world just had just wasn’t around before.
Dan Smolen 33:03
Well, and and I think I was responding to that when you mentioned the book. So what tailoring Tailoring the Green Suit was, was an attempt to help people who were in traditional executive type roles, who suddenly felt the pull of altruism or the pull of doing rights. And around that time, it was in the it was in the run up to the 2008 election, when the notion of Green Jobs was coming about. Now, Green Jobs was really a term applied to turning blue collar jobs sustainable. You know, maybe maybe it was working to mitigate pollution, or to work in the field, installing solar arrays, that book that book I just showed you was written well in advance of the scale up of those economies. But but people were clamoring for that and when I was recruiting at the time, I got people that said, you know, my daughter and my son want me to want me not to do bad anymore. I need to do something good. Don’t do and I know what that feels like one time I had a tobacco client as a as, as a mainstay in my life. I never felt really good about it. Even though I paid me a boatload of money.
Rolando Rosas 34:23
Hey, let me tell you something. I worked. I worked. I was I was an account manager, area manager for for Altria. Philip Morris. Right. So if you had to be one of the others bit brown and Williamson or RJ Reynolds
Dan Smolen 34:37
Yeah, I mean, I mean, we would say you know, we’re better than the other guys but but but I understand the feeling of of of shame, if you will, can you tell your mother what you do for a living? Yeah, I work in an advertising business supporting, you know, a piece of business. I represent 13% of the billables in this agency, and I’m only 27 28 years old. I don’t know, I can’t, I still can’t get my head wrapped around that. But that was that was my that was my earliest stack. But you know, and it made an impression upon me and, and sit and after that point talking to people that said to me, you know, I’m tired of working in the subprime mortgage business or, you know, selling people things that I know they don’t need, and they’re racking up huge amounts of money on their credit cards. And I think the great recession started to unleash some of these feelings of longing, that are really steamrolling. Now, people coming out of the Great Recession, you know, what they want to, they want to have, I mean, it sounds cliche, but they want to have noble purpose in their lives. They want to feel good about the work that they do, yes, they want to be paid well, but at the end of the day, that they want their kids to be proud of them, you know, for for doing something that’s beyond the work, and maybe helping the world be a better place. So that book that I wrote many years ago, was sort of an attempt to speak to that. And now with the podcast, and with the live show, it’s really about helping people in real time, do that, you know, to start thinking about the things that they need to do to get to Nirvana in their lives of doing work that is both meaningful, but it’s a part of a day, that’s part of that that’s, that’s inclusive of a bigger part of life. That’s joyful. Right,
Dave Kelly 36:33
right. Dan, I want to ask, so people say future of work all the time. Now, everywhere I go, I’m always reading something about that. And I think the pandemic certainly kind of put that into hyperdrive. You know, the myth setting, I think a lot of us can see now where we have clearer predictions that we could make. But when you put that book out, whether some predictions for future of work that you made, that you you know, you just nailed it, or more. And were there any predictions for future of work where you just missed the mark completely?
Dan Smolen 37:06
Well, it’s a great question, Dave. I wasn’t thinking about venue, I wasn’t thinking about the workplace, per se, I wasn’t thinking about the fact that our whole notion of the clock would would come into question, I just thought that we would translate from working from a dirty job, so to speak to something that’s clean and noble and green, right. You know, maybe maybe you took your talent as a business manager or project manager working for a company that that built coal fired energy plants into solar arrays, or you know, wind turbine development or something like that, I was thinking more in terms of use the skills that you have to get into a better industry. Problem was like everything in my life, I was way too early on it, but I got people thinking about it actually sold a few copies, which was a lot of fun. What’s happening now is that it’s like the Twilight Zone, we’re blowing out all the dimensions that we’re used to, the biggest one is time. And you guys can speak to this a lot better than I can, because office automation. And the technology that we use, enables us to be present outside of the office, as well as we could be inside the office. When the pandemic hit in March of 2020. And I had just come back from podcasting convention, it never dawned on me that this MacBook Pro that I’m talking to you through would be my window to the world in real time and build a podcast for me, that really scaled, because I had a ready audience of people that were like, what, What The Teck? Okay, you know, what’s, what’s going on right now? I how do I make sense of this five alarm fire that I’ve got going on right now? I gotta be in zoom meetings all the time. How do I make it work? How do I light my room? What do I wear? You know, can I work? Can I wear pajama bottoms? That didn’t come up. But but how do I organize my time? And how do I? How do I deal with all the externalities of work, as I’m sitting here stuck in my apartment or in my, the home office in my home? And later on, it became hybrid and so forth and so on. So I think now this whole idea around technology wasn’t apparent to us. Back then when I wrote this book. I don’t know when did when did the iPhone come out in 2007? I’m trying to remember
Rolando Rosas 39:43
somewhere in that neighborhood, it was it was actually close somewhere in that recession timeline. That’s right.
Dan Smolen 39:48
All right. But there was there wasn’t full scale acceptance of it,
Rolando Rosas 39:51
and was actually ridiculed because at the time, Blackberry was the dominant smartphone, right with palm tree you And both of them, where are they today?
Dan Smolen 40:02
Yeah, BlackBerry, Blackberry is in a completely different line of business now. But this wonderful device that has way more technology than we sent the men to the moon in 1969. My wife uses it to do live shows on on Poshmark selling vintage clothing. She did want to seven o’clock this morning from that device. And it works perfectly well. The the video intro to my to my live show, I shot in movie mode on this. And it’s gorgeous. I record I’ve recorded remote interviews with that iPhone and a little snap on sure mic that I bought, which is broadcast quality. And oh, by the way, I’m ready to go. So we didn’t have these kinds of things back then, indeed, but we what we do now. And so the whole idea around technology is it’s a whole new ballgame. Dave? It’s a whole new ballgame.
Rolando Rosas 41:10
Well, that mean, you’re that’s what you talk about in your podcast that you just said, What’s Your Work Fit? that is the new ball game. And you know, the other side of the spectrum is that, so you’re talking about how individuals Yes, you can use that technology at your fingertips, so much more than you can do to get your personal brand out there. Because you know, is you’ve, you’ve you’re in this field. The other side of the spectrum is that a lot of middle managers and upper level managers are nervous to death about employees that are not physically in the office that they can’t visibly visibly see a walk over and you know, or pick up the desk, phone and call. And now I was looking at your LinkedIn events coming up, you’ve got a podcast coming up in that elutes that your boss may be spying on you. And I wanted to ask you, because, you know, employers do have the right to listen to conversations, which is had been happening for years. But now you’re not in the office. For those folks that are hybrid or remote. They’re at home or some satellite office. And middle managers and upper managers want to check in on you without having to call you and see what you’re doing. See if you’re actually working or doodly. What are your thoughts on that? And is it a bad thing that employees can monitor employee? Is it a bad thing that managers can monitor their employees remotely?
Dan Smolen 42:36
It’s an unfortunate thing. So why do I say that? So Rolando, we we’ve had a for for professional work for in office work, we adopted a 40 hour workweek probably 120 years ago, you know, when when people got hired out of the out of the farm and field, out of handcrafts to work in industrial environments on the line building things, or perhaps in offices managing things. And the idea of a clock became the religion, if you will, you know, a 40 hour week is what defines full time work to this day, yeah, to this day. And the idea behind it is that we have these measured, perfectly measured hours, and we have eight of them and anything beyond that as overtime. And bosses don’t like paying for overtime if they’re dealing with exempt exempt talent. But now we’re at a point where and this is a big focus of my work, gets credit for a protest. So we have to get away from this idea of hours worked and get more to a project management mindset of outcomes achieved. Now if you’re a project manager, you deal with beginnings, middles, and ends. And hopefully you get to the end, on budget on time, whatever. But some people get their work done sooner than later and other projects take longer. And also, and this is the really big thing. I deal with more and more people that work around the clock, especially creative people, creative people oftentimes are like cows, cats, you know, they’re there. They’re most active at three in the morning and I get the inspiration. They turn on their computer and they start doing their work and so forth.
Rolando Rosas 44:42
And that’s quiet at that hour. No dogs, cats or people.
Dan Smolen 44:48
My dogs are up at three o’clock in the morning. Gotta take them out. But think about that if we if we get to a point of project management, where teams collaborate And you’re a manager, who’s getting pressure from the C suite, your manager can say, hey, Rolando and Dave are doing the job. I don’t have to spy on them, hey, if they decide to go out and, you know, take their daughters to swim practice, God bless. Did they want to meet their meet their spouse for a quick lunch, that’s great, too. If they need downtime, just to kind of get a refresh, take a long walk, or maybe, you know, just two hours, I’ll be back, I promise I’ll get the work done. And they do. That’s okay. But the the surveillance software, the stuff that looks at keystrokes, the things that look at eyeballs, oh, his eyeballs are not looking at the screen or his eyeballs are not looking where they should be. Or it’s been a long time, since he, you know, did a keystroke while he’s in the bathroom right now. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s measuring somebody’s commitment to that clock. And I want to take that clock and smash it to smithereens. And I think a lot of people do. But I’ll tell you who’s gonna have a lot of trouble with that C suite. And the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, because it’s, it’s old and time honored. And every month, we look at productivity on the job, which is a function of hours worked, versus revenues achieved.
Rolando Rosas 46:23
And it’s been off the charts since the pandemic. And you know, Dan, if you’re following you mentioned Bureau of Labor and Statistics, they just released some numbers that showed that, for the first half of the year, it dropped at its greatest level in like the last 50 years, the biggest thing that happened in January, moving forward of this year, people started coming back to and trickling back into the office. Do you think that’s a coincidence, that people go back into the office, and that barometer that they use for productivity, which is probably outdated, still showed that productivity went down, because people probably didn’t have those freedoms to go walk their dog at two in the afternoon, or take a haircut, or maybe like you said, Work, whenever they decided to work, they had to be at that desk.
Dan Smolen 47:15
So let’s say, so let’s say you’re a program leader at, I don’t know, Deloitte Consulting, and you’re working on a team with I’m making this up, folks, I don’t have any interest in Deloitte Consulting. It’s a great company, but I don’t know anybody there. But let’s say you’re managing a team. And you’re managing a $30 million annual budget, or a rather 30. The bogey is $30 million. The revenue generated is targeted for 30 million, you’re gonna make that number. So does productivity change? If suddenly you’re working more hours? Does it go down? According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, I think it does. Now, here’s the dirty, ugly story that happens with productivity. And I had this happen to me, I told you about one of the times I got laid off, which is you know, I hustled, I brought in all this stuff. And then right before Christmas, I got it, I got my Christmas bonus, which is I got laid off on the 15th of December, which oh, by the way, is when a lot of companies do their Christmas parties are in the middle, right smack dab in the middle of December. Now, the company was publicly traded, guess what they did? They went on CNBC and talked about how they had all these productivity gains in fourth quarter, because it laid off all these people. Right? That’s where Nobel statistics become evil. And that’s why I want us to get away from this because you know what, with all the technology we have at our disposal, now, we can work at any time. I mean, that that that person who’s seeing their daughter at the swim meet, they’re checking their emails, they’re on Slack. They might be taking a phone call from a client. I mean, I always did that. My daughter was at swim practice. I was, I was placing candidates, because my office never closed, right? But, but it’s this idea that you have to be in the office and and be literally seen. That is ancient. And it and it makes old school managers feel good. Well, actually, it makes the C suite feel good, because it feels like they’re controlling things better. We have to get away from this sense of control. And I don’t want to sound like Like, like, I don’t know, like I’m dizzy or something. But but but to get to a point where we’re empowering people to do the job as they see fit. And you know, what, make them responsible for that $30 million. Bogey, hold it hold their feet to the fire. But if they’re smart and you’re hiring good people, let them figure it out. Let them figure out how to get to that point to the finish line. That’s Rolando is where I hope we’re gonna go. And maybe maybe all that surveillance software ends up filling up a desk drawer or something someplace.
Rolando Rosas 50:14
So so it’s you see it as a very unfortunate reality of where we’re at today to make C suite folks justify the numbers that they need to hit or their targets rather than actually real productivity with their employees.
Dan Smolen 50:31
Yeah, and I think it is coming from C suites, I don’t think it’s coming from the middle manager, the middle manager, that hiring manager, if you will, and they could be somebody who’s way up on the ladder, does feel stuck in between talent, and the C suite, the C suite doesn’t really want to know the line manager, if they can’t be bothered, they’re doing ones and zeros on spreadsheets. And hopefully, the ink is green and not red.
Dave Kelly 50:55
Well, in was so much talk about company culture, you know, people want to work for organizations that has a culture that they are attracted to. And if I think surveillance software creates an ugly culture, and it’s more, it’s more threatening, and it wouldn’t really open. It doesn’t, it doesn’t foster creativity, if it’s, Hey, everyone is watching. And, you know, and people are always finding a way to get around that type of monitoring. Whatever it might be, I saw something a couple of years ago, and someone had just something that was tapping a button on their keyboard or something. Right. And I just, it was like a meme. I’m like, what is that, and then I just read a little bit into it. And it’s, that was the result of monitoring software, finding a way to cheat the system, you’re cheating yourself, you’re cheating in your company, but to the person that’s looking at the data, that person is successful, I guess that person’s working really hard. And it’s just something that’s just knocking on a button on their keyboard, it’s a shame.
Dan Smolen 52:00
What you’re describing Dave is what a future guests of mine on the podcast calls productivity paranoia. And the idea behind productivity paranoia is you have to convince yourself that your people are present. And so you’re going to use that technology to spy on them. I’m sorry, that’s what it is. But you know, she said something very funny that people are going to interesting hacks, like putting boiling hot water in a coffee cup, so that the steamed rice rises in front of the camera, and it looks like they’re just that was, which I thought was hilarious. But it’s made, it’s made middle managers crazy, and made them unhappy in and they’re part of like, they’re part of my audience, too. I, I don’t just deal with the, you know, with the the individual contributors out there, I deal with the managers who they are suffering, those people are suffering because not only do they have to hit their numbers, blow out their buggies if they’re in sales, or Florida or, or, or develop, you know, increases in ROI. But they also have to manage a team to keep those team members happy and engaged in not quitting. How does productivity software like that help the equation? It Lord’s over people. And that’s not a good thing. And that’s why people are quitting.
Rolando Rosas 53:24
I agree with you, Dan, on that, you know, we’re definitely at a an inflection point here with how workers want their work to be meaningful, as well as a holdover from what you said about in the 100 year ways of working in America, which is, you know, 40 Hour Workweek eight hours a day, drive from suburbia to the office and back again, and people are sick of it. But I think that the works, the the employers that find a way to attract top talent will do it, because they people today are just flat out saying there was a poll done last year where 75% of Gen Z and Gen X would rather quit than go back to the office. And so they’re becoming a larger and larger portion of the workforce. They’re not the only part of the workforce, but they’re becoming an increasingly larger part of their workforce. And it does, at some point influence how managers as well as the seats, we eventually will need to take that into account where if you want top talent, and companies are on one hand, saying I’m going to give you as much time you want to work from home, and if you want to come into office, great if you don’t, that’s okay. As long as you get the work done, you know, we had a guest on last year Shane Howard, and we talked about this a lot. And he said basically that folks that want that type of work where their life means something to them. And work does too. But work isn’t like you said the Overlord. If I were to use your words, the overlord of my life is work. And over here, they’re going to pay me a little bit less. I’m going to work over here because now I have really them to breathe. I don’t have to jump in a car every day and drive an hour to work and drive an hour back. You know, we’ve been fortunate here, that Global Teck to be working virtually. I’ve been working virtually for 20 years before it was a thing. I would never go back into an office and force people back to work you know? What, for what purpose does that serve except I get to see I get to see socialize with the employees. Okay, but
Dan Smolen 55:45
but here’s the thing Rolando and YouTube Dave and I talked about this to Dave and pre interview. I’ve been I’ve been remote since 1995 96. A long time. To make it successful. I put on work clothes and shoes. I got into the mode of working or being focused, you know, I was like, okay, my commute is from upstairs to downstairs. But I transformed myself. I’m not wearing I’m not wearing a you know, a fleece hoodie and I’m not wearing jammie pants, I am dressed as if I’m going to meet somebody. I just put on that uniform, I get into that mindset, and I get really focused. You made it work. You guys make it work, because you are, are focused and intentional about it. Because if you weren’t, would be out, you’d be out of a job.
Rolando Rosas 56:43
Right? Yeah, we wouldn’t have a company. And you know that just I want to credit the folks that I when I first started talking, getting back to rewinding the clock a little bit. Yeah. You talked about tobacco when I started my career working for tobacco company, at Altria. And they allowed us to work from home most of the time, but it’s exactly what you just said, they wanted you to have that mindset when you are at home, you have things to do, you have work to get done, and you’re still being measured. And that’s the thing that I had to meet to this days. Like we’re talking about surveillance stuff, you’re still being measured, you still have projects to accomplish, you still have goals, those folks that are still able to do that, regardless how far they are from the office, if they’re hitting their numbers, and they’re hitting the goals. What does it mean? What Why do you need somebody to physically be in office, there’s really no need, and actually, Altria, for the longest of time. In terms of employee headcount profit per employee, headcount was near the top of all the public companies because they didn’t need big gigantic offices in every city. They could have very small, teeny offices, if you needed to go in and do something with a client, you needed a conference room, you could go there, you know, put your laptop and talk to your client, but you didn’t need gigantic towers in every city. And a lot of other companies like Procter and Gamble followed suit and a lot of others they were just ahead of the curve. And now more people are starting to see that it’s a good thing. It’s great for the bottom line, how many of these big companies are lost money due from the pandemic to Now up until these layoffs? All of them did ignore honestly Well,
Dan Smolen 58:30
yeah, you know, you just offered up the ugly truth of this which is in business you deal with really free marketeers if you will let the market decide with a little asterix until it comes to our people then we decide but but in all truth and you bring up some really good points and especially about your work at Altria we we have a lot of real estate right now that is that is rented, but not us. It’s one of my former guests said last year was 1.3 billion square feet of on used or vacant commercial space. Now that that that would be five chapters in a book because here’s the thing. A lot of these companies they had they held their leases out long several years. So that could hold the square footage price down and get get a frequency discount that’s not really working for them anymore, and they got all this real estate. And so to cost justify the expense, this is one of the drivers why they want people and they want that real estate to be used. But you know what people are gonna say, I don’t want to schlep into hours from New Haven, Connecticut. Actually, it’s two hours and 15 minutes now. From New Haven to Grand Central Terminal on the train that’s just on the train. I still have to get up at five o’clock in the morning to get to work by 839 o’clock in the morning. And then maybe not get home till eight o’clock at night. Start it all again the next day. That’s insanity. Absolutely. But if you’re running a big company and you’re not talking to people at the lower strata of your company to hear the pain that they’re going through, you’re gonna say, you’re gonna say, You know what they need to be in here. We’re spending a lot of money on this gorgeous office that by the way, you know, JP Morgan Chase is building a Glass Palace on Park Avenue that they they intended as their new headquarters.
Rolando Rosas 1:00:32
Well, that’s why the CEO, that’s why he said last year, if you’re not in the office by Fourth of July, or basically Eden’s basically said, we might get cut you out of the picture, right? You’re not here. And I was, and I don’t know if it was JP Morgan, or Goldman Sachs,
Dan Smolen 1:00:47
it was actually gold. It was actually Goldman Sachs, who said that
Rolando Rosas 1:00:50
the end, one of them said that if you can afford to go to go to a restaurant in New York City, and you want New York City wages, you can afford to come into the office, which is equating which what we’re talking about earlier, your work life and your personal life being equal, right? Where I don’t necessarily what I do on my own personal time, should not be your concern, what restaurant or at home, if I’m cooking, that should not be your concern. If I can go to work, I’ll go to work. If I have to work remote, I should be able to work from home.
Dan Smolen 1:01:23
But here’s the rub with that Rolando. They’re not coming into the city to go to the restaurants they used to go to Midtown is Midtown is sucking winds, still, there’s a lot of vacancies, a lot of businesses, a lot of hard working, small businesses are going under, because people have not returned. It’s just now that Metro North, the New Jersey Transit and Long Island Railroad are starting to show increases in ridership. Because the hammer is coming down and the economics, the economic calculations are changing whereby people are feeling threatened, they’re like, oh, gang, I gotta go, I can’t lose the job, I gotta go back in the office. So that’s part of what’s going on. But there’s going to be a still a formidable segment of that group that are going to say, at some point, I’m going to say, no moss, I’m done. And I’ll go do something else. You know, maybe I’ll maybe I’ll start my own company and work independently. Or maybe I’ll start now and start up some hide side hustles so that when the time comes, hopefully I can build it into something more formidable. We have a you know, we have options now that that we didn’t even have five years ago, to help people transition out of a company that they may be tolerating, and just paying them well, but you know, at the end of the day, it’s costing them a fortune out of pocket to commute. It’s robbing them of their time with loved ones and their pets and everything. And they’re exhausted at the end of the day, and they have nothing to show for it.
Rolando Rosas 1:02:50
It’s It’s crazy. It’s crazy. I mean, I live outside of DC, out towards Dulles area, Ashburn. And I have neighbors that do that commute every day. And I see how they look their faces when I see him in the afternoon, when they drive back or get off the train. And they look they they look just beat, they look beat down. And nobody out here is, you know, having to stamp out widgets like in a factory, right? Most of the folks that are out here, you know, their defense contractors, their government employees, their IT support, there’s IT security support, all people that use a laptop and a phone for work. A lot of those folks don’t really need to go unless you have some essential government job where you know, they’re in a classified environment, they gotta go in physically, I have a neighbor that does that. And he’s got to go in because that’s exactly the nature of job but 99% of the other folks around here have no real business having to jump on a train to go an hour in each direction.
Dan Smolen 1:03:55
My very close friend of mine has a GS 15 and works for I think the USPTO he’s fully remote now. You don’t have to be in the office. He was an IT guy. He doesn’t need to be in the office and actually that’s good because his family needs them to respond to things. But I you know, I’m laughing because you’re in dashboard. burnin. Just yesterday, they opened up the silver line or latest extension to the metro rail. And I’m wondering if people were actually going to use it from Loudoun County.
Rolando Rosas 1:04:25
Well, even even Yeah, you know, times, if this was five years ago, when we actually even 10 years ago, when they should have opened it up. It would have it should have been all the way out to Leesburg really, because there’s people that Loudoun now is Leesburg is not a sleepy town anymore. I know. The growth has gone all the way out to West Loudoun. And even if you go even further west, the border with West Virginia, alright, so people need that. If you had to go in when the traffic is still ridiculous from here, it’s even worse if you live in Leesburg because you’re driving vn further into get into Tyson’s or downtown DC. Yeah,
Dan Smolen 1:05:04
I know Leesburg very, very well.
Rolando Rosas 1:05:09
Wow. Then you know, you’ve we could spend another two hours talking to you about all the work fit type of situations and how people can get their side hustles going and how they can find better Nirvana in their in probably the new chapter of their lives. But what I want to know is folks want to get in touch with you they want to they want to check in you’re on your podcasts are getting a hold of you. How can they best do that?
Dan Smolen 1:05:38
Well, there’s a lot of different places, you can go to my website at Dansmolen.com. That’s dansmolen.com. There’s a place where you can listen to past audio podcasts and also the video podcasts. We have our YouTubes our YouTube stream there. Oh, there you go. There’s the website. So that’s one place you can go I am mostly on LinkedIn. Why am I on LinkedIn is because we’re that’s where all the careers are. So like you guys, I multistream across different, different platforms. LinkedIn is the biggest one, because people don’t have to click out of it to watch my live show, which is really great. And they get to ask live questions. So very soon, we’re going to be back to doing live shows, again, I think the right, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, we’ll be back with the show. And then hopefully, with more consistent, weekly show drops. You can you can find me on. We also have a LinkedIn page for What’s Your Work Fit where you can sign up and, and never be unaware of a future show coming down the line. And we’re also busy developing other new spins on things soon. So hopefully, in 2023 We’ll have new products coming out. And I just encourage your audience to come and take a listen. We’re it’s a it’s a fun show. We have a lot of fun. We get right to the meat of every issue. And our hope is to is to build help build a revolution. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but we want to help people. And we want to help people get to a place where work is a marvelous part of the day doing other wonderful things and not the all consuming time suck that it was for 120 years.
Rolando Rosas 1:07:36
Things have managed Yes.
Dave Kelly 1:07:38
Amen to that. Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate that. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, go check out our podcast series about the future of work and other related topics at circuitloops.com. We’ll see you then. Alright, see you then.
Outro 1:07:57
Thanks for listening to What The Teck? Be sure to check out our other episodes featuring awesome tech and amazing guests. Find them on circuitloops.com or wherever you consume your favorite podcasts.
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