White Collar Workers Are About to Face Reality

0:00This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate seat. According to Indeed Data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, Terms and Conditions Apply. Last week, Dana and I talked about white collar jobs disappearing inside of 18 months. Little did we know that just 48 hours later, Centrini Research would leave a report forecasting or predicting what 2028 or two short years away might look like. That report got a lot of play on X. It has been, frankly, talked about by the Federal Reserve Christopher Waller brought it up. So this thing is going out there. But what I want to do today with Dana is break it down. What should someone do?

1:02I think there is a lot of fear, a lot of stress, and I just want to talk to at least in this very short video, what should a high school or college graduate do? What should a mid-level manager maybe call 40? And then what should an executive be thinking about? Because again, folks, at the end of the day, we care about you, and we want you and your family to be well. So Dana, lots of stuff going on. The Silicon Valley is all abuzz with this Centrini Research report. How do we get people hope about the future? Yeah, it was interesting. I was actually last night speaking at UC San Diego. And I had a, it was their school of management. One of the students, his final question to me was, so what job should I get out there going out into the world after the business school, what job should I look for? And I want to start, college grads are almost the easiest because you can do anything right now. You're not stuck in a career or an industry.

2:04It's very hard to switch industries. It's very hard to switch functions. And so my first advice to college grads, and if you're listening or you have kids who are college grads, the first thing is, what is their passion? You cannot change someone's passion and what they want to do every day. So that's the first thing you need to answer is, do they love working in numbers? Do they love talking to people? Do they love coding? What do they enjoy doing? Then the next thing to say is, is this job going to be very quickly displaced by AI or one of the fields that would be? If it is, and we can go through what fields will be, work for an AI company that is focused on that industry. So if you say you want to be a marriage counselor, and there's so many AI tools out there to help couples who are having problems or whatever it may be, go research and think about potentially working for one of the AI companies doing it,

3:06rather than going into the field itself. And so that's my advice to college grads. I'd love to hear from you, Michael. Your thoughts, anything I've missed there. Yeah, I mean, I just want to give a different one. I think that's an awesome way to start. I'll give one more avenue for folks is, again, I think sometimes we need to step back and look at the chess board. What is going on in the economy today? What does that mean? Baby boomers today own between 60 and 70% of small businesses today. And I don't think it's unfair to say that they're not looking at adopting AI at all, right? They're going to bleed this thing to the end and just, you know, and be comfortable. And they should, right? They're two years from the end. Why change anything now? What I would tell college graduates is to figure out, you know, where do I want to go? And, you know, if you want to go be a marriage counselor or whatnot, go and do AI companies great, but, you know, maybe you just want to cobble together a home services company. And you can go buy a painter in a AC and all of these things.

4:09And then you do what you do well and leverage AI. I think there is so much low-hanging fruit by not even adopting AI, but just adopting the internet, right? We're just talking.com right here. We're talking about bookings and service level agreement and all of that. So, you know, if I was an MBA student, I would be challenging them to build a small empire in the trades. Now, again, you're not going very likely not going to be the handyman, the painter that this. But you can, you could cobble together seller financing, SBA loans. And you could be building something that, you know, worst case has 10 or 15 years left on it before AI comes. So, to give them another avenue, that's what I'd be doing. Yeah, and I love that point because one of the centrenious quotes that they had is the company's most threatened by AI. Become AI's most aggressive adopters. Correct. And so, basically, if you're in the trades, they're not adopting AI as much

5:11because it's not going to completely displace their job. Poders, a thousand percent are. And so, and it may not be a hundred percent, but most of their job. And so, I like that because you can go into the trades. You can leverage AI for all the administrative stuff and really focus on the stuff that AI hasn't been able to do, which is loving request, handy work, general construction, all of that. Yeah, I would just, I would try to build an empire. Like, you know, like whatever city you're in, I would try to be, you know, in a decade, I would try to own three or four different services arms, probably buy them on seller financing, certainly with an SBA loan, maybe some seller seconds. And then you just lean into technology. And I mean, you're going to triple the business in no time, I think. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's talk about middle managers. Let's pretend they're, you know, 40 years old. They're either middle managers or subject matter experts. Because again, I think this is, this is a part of the economy that is frankly the highest paid. They've got decades of experience.

6:12They've seen some stuff. And they might be the most nervous, the most vulnerable. What are you telling those people? Yeah, executives are scared. And so what an executive is going to do is say to any mid-level management, your head count is axed overnight from what you had in 2025 to 2026, at least the growth side of it. You were not growing your head counts to use AI more. And so if you aren't leveraging AI and showing that you have 10x the output, you're at risk. And so you need to be very curious in how you build and structure your team on that mid-management side. Is anyone using AI, you're going to bring straight up to the top and say great, these people are really bringing way more efficiency to me and using AI in the right way versus those who are not. And so I think even in your interview process, like I ask now in every interview, how do you use AI in your day-to-day life? And I've had some 20, like, two-year-old, 23-year-olds who I'm talking to,

7:15who are like, oh, I just, I use Chatchee PT to help me with my emails. And I'm like, that's not good enough. If you're 22 years old, you should be wowing me on some unique, crazy use case that you found with Claude or with Grock that you could use. And if your answer is I use Chatchee PT, you have the same answer as the 70-year-old. And no offense, but like, you're already behind at 20. And so being able to really be curious, get your hamsterity, understand what you're doing every day with AI is going to be super important. Yeah, with this one, with mid-level managers or subject matter experts, I'm reminded of that story that goes two people are chased by a bear, one person stops to tie their shoes, the other one goes, what are you doing? It's not going to help you in the answers. I'm not trying to outrun the bear. I'm trying to outrun you, right? So again, that's where I see this going, right? Having lived through the .com era, the explosion up in the collapse after,

8:16I remember sitting in a boardroom, it was one of the worst days of my life trying to figure out what 10 people I'm going to let go. And at some point, you know, I'll just say it this way, what I think's going on today with a lot of companies and AI's, they're freezing headcounts. They're like, hey, I'm not going to fire any of you, but we're also not adding people. Yeah. I know that's bullshit long-term, right? There will be a hiccup in the economy, a recession somewhere, and it will not be an option. There will be layoffs again. So what I would be trying to do is not outrun the bear of AI but outrun the other people. And you know who they are. You know the people that are doing the work over their skis versus just showing up. At the end of the day, half the people out there look at their job as a prison and they're trying to do the minimum. That would not be me. I would not be coasting with what's coming. Because the other thing that's going to happen is the people that survive, you're going to get a raise. The subject matter experts who can take and leverage AI and then massage the output for even more value,

9:17those people are going to be crazy valuable, right? We're not talking 200 grand. We're talking 500 grand. Yeah. That's what's coming. Yeah. And I think that also, because there's so much unknown in 2026, 2027 and 2028, companies are not going to invest a lot in headcount. Because they're worried. They're worried about their stock price. They're worried about funding. And will they get any? Because they're potentially not an AI first company. And so there's going to be a lot more pressure than ever with that research study for those of you who didn't see it. What I love about it, and we do this at Hemling when we're launching a product, we actually put together a press release in three years, what does the press release say? Or in two years, what does the press release say? And the reason we do that is to give the vision of where this is going and where this product's going. And that's what this article does. It says, it's 2028 and unemployment's at 10%.

10:18And what I like about that is it's telling you, this is the picture that a lot of people are seeing. How are you going to make sure that you, as an employee, as a leader, are not contributing to that 10% of, well, I guess it would be 5% doubly what unemployment rates are today. Yeah, I love that. Well, let's close out on executives. We'll talk about these folks being, you know, VPs, EVPs, you know, top of the food chain folks. What's our advice for those, you know, set of individuals? You need to, one, completely hire differently. You need to hire those who are really leveraging AI. And some of it might be difficult decisions. I was talking to someone earlier this week who said, I think I need to let my CTO go. And the reason that he said that was essentially because the CTO wasn't leveraging enough AI.

11:19And that is really important because as an executive, if you're not, and you're not showing, you're the first one at the company to be adopting it, how does that trickle down to your entire team? And so you should be leading charge with that. Go research online, go take classes, just become curious on it. And then the people you hire should be people who are already implementing it if you are hiring. Yeah, when I think about the executives and having been one for a while, you have to remember what your job is. And I think hiring is number one. I think a lot of people miss that. So where you started, the second thing is, your job is to talk about the North Star, right? Where's the company going? And again, in a world of AI, there's obviously internal investments, but you also have to defend yourself, right? Because again, I think a lot of companies are going to be disrupted by, you know, competitors coming from nowhere. So part of your job is going to be protecting the moat or creating a moat, right? So part of its defense. And then the other one is, you know,

12:20are we, the question I would ask myself is, are we more likely to be acquired or are we more likely to acquire in the next 12 months? Because as a senior executive, I can promise you this. It is a lot better to be the acquireer than the acquired. And, you know, some of that should scare the shit out of you. Because again, if you're an EVP at the company that got acquired, you're out in 90 days. There's no chance you're going to be, you know, there's no chance you're surviving. They're going to take your salary and kick you out the window. Yeah. So that's what I'd be thinking about. Yeah, that's such a good point. I was, this was like a month ago. Someone was like, yeah, our company got acquired. And they're going to do a reorg, and now I'm going to be part of a new team. And my first response to her was, go, why aren't you looking for a new job? You should have been looking when you guys, when you found out there was a position. Yeah, yeah. Yes, let me tell you, when you're acquired, someone is doing math on the finance team to say, how can you create synergy? And so, yeah. Yeah, at the end of the day, you will not survive. You're, again, I've been a part of acquired and acquiring.

13:23And let's just say if you're a senior executive at the acquired, 95% chance you're gone. So don't be surprised. Don't just, don't be caught flat-footed. At the end of the day, let's try to close on a positive note. I still believe that AI will be a net positive. I do believe there will be more goodness coming. From AI, AI is a tool. There will certainly be disruption. There always is in the short term. But, you know, I may, you know, maybe too optimistic. But I see the plus side coming. What say you? Yeah, I'm very optimistic about it. I think from a job's perspective, people will start spending more time with humans because a lot of the administration has gone. I think, you know, new jobs will be created. People will have more time to enjoy their life. Go on hikes. Do experiences because of AI. And it's interesting because the US or, I guess, the world in general, I think is quite negative about the future versus the past.

14:28And I don't think there's a reason to be scared of it. But you definitely need to embrace that. Yeah, Dana, you're amazing. If somebody wanted to check out Hemlane, what do they do? Yeah, go to hemlane.com, ATM, L-A-N-E.com. And just mention one rental at a time, because you do get 20% off your first year with all of our paid packages. We also have all sorts of free tools, resources for finding and placing attendant managing the day-to-day. So, would love to take care from you. Yep, hemlane.com. Also, check out hemlane.com slash resources. If you are a new or want to be landlord, lots of stuff there. Never sleep on the resources tab. Dana, you're amazing. Talk next week.