इस एपिसोड के बारे में
Dr. Michelle Griffin, CEO of Griffin Resources, joins Nikki to talk about what it means to work with clients instead of just for them. They cover AI tools, Gen Z in the workforce, a $3M embezzlement case, plagiarism, business ethics, and why the real grind behind any business stays invisible until someone finally looks.
Website: griffin-resources.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michelle-griffin-phd
Fully Timestamped Show Notes
**[00:00:00] Dr. Michelle Griffin introduces Griffin Resources**
PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, CEO of Griffin Resources, outsourced HR, payroll, recruiting, and leadership coaching for small to mid-sized businesses. Approximately 80 clients across the US, including some international companies.
**[00:01:00] Building a recruiting team through delegation**
Dr. Griffin dislikes recruiting personally. She convinced a former colleague to join as a contractor after pandemic layoffs. That person now runs the entire recruiting department. The team was built because clients asked for it, not because it was the plan from the start.
**[00:03:00] Running a company while finishing a PhD**
Expected passive income from hiring people to do the work. Instead ended up running a company full time and attending school full time simultaneously. Chose to hire for every new skill clients requested rather than learn everything personally.
**[00:05:00] The VA distinction: working with vs. working for**
Dr. Griffin draws a firm line between working for someone (task execution) and working with them (guidance, expert pushback, teaching). A VA plugs A into B. An operations expert tells you why that sentence cannot go out and what it looks like if it does.
**[00:07:00] Internal presence with clients**
Griffin Resources typically gets an internal email address and operates inside the client's ecosystem. Clients often do not realize the support is outsourced. This structure creates long-term relationships. Most clients at their size stay for many years.
**[00:09:00] The "how high" problem: not just executing on command**
Dr. Griffin coaches her team not to run and do something the moment a client says jump. Being the expert means researching, guiding, and giving feedback before executing. Doing otherwise gets the client in trouble and the firm in trouble.
**[00:13:00] Standing up to executives on FLSA compliance**
A CEO wanted to pay salaried exempt employees overtime for a project. Dr. Griffin explained that treating exempt employees as non-exempt reclassifies them. She proposed a bonus structure instead, ran it by the payroll team and attorneys, and gave the CEO what he actually wanted, just legally.
**[00:15:00] Refusing discriminatory terminations**
Has directly pushed back against executives wanting to fire employees after learning about health conditions, disabilities, or neurodivergence. Has stood firm in those rooms, even through heated arguments. These are not suggestions. They are refusals.
**[00:15:30] Copyright and plagiarism in client work**
A client tried to take another person's video scripts and rebrand them. Dr. Griffin called it what it was: plagiarism, illegal, and a problem she was not going to help with. She redirected the client toward making the content their own.
**[00:17:30] Self-plagiarism in doctoral work**
Writing a 360-page dissertation while managing a business. Turnitin scanned for self-plagiarism throughout the entire body of prior work. Every repeated idea had to be rewritten. Graduated in 2023, just as AI hit the market.
**[00:19:30] AI in video editing: what works and what does not**
Dr. Griffin uses Descript for word-level editing on her full-length videos. Auto-edit AI tools produce cuts she considers unusable. She keeps the editing manual until the video is done, then runs the finished product through Opus Clips for short-form content selection.
**[00:21:00] Phone editing tools: the CapCut conversation**
Nikki tried CapCut and hates it. Phone-based editing makes precision impossible. Desktop editing with full screen access is the only way to do the work accurately. Both acknowledge this may be a preference shaped by how they work, not a universal truth.
**[00:23:30] When AI editing makes the speaker look intoxicated**
Dr. Griffin's team used AI to edit an internal onboarding video. The result made her eyes look partially closed in a way the original footage did not show. The words also stopped aligning with mouth movements. Descript was the recommended fix.
**[00:27:00] Social media as the new marketing infrastructure**
Traditional ads and radio have largely been replaced by accessible video content for small business owners. Dr. Griffin built 90 percent of Griffin Resources through LinkedIn networking, especially during COVID. Posting came later, after the social team was established.
**[00:29:00] Two lanes of podcasting**
Nikki describes the over-invested podcaster who builds a studio and burns out before the money arrives, versus the sustainable approach where good equipment is a byproduct of existing meeting infrastructure. She is in her third season. The guest who lectures her to sleep still occasionally gets through.
**[00:31:00] What makes content worth listening to**
Authentic connection over divisive positioning. When the goal is to bring people together, the work tends to last. When the goal is to tear people apart, eventually the audience figures it out.
**[00:32:00] The influencer myth**
Kids are naming influencer as a career path. Dr. Griffin and Nikki both push back: social media is a grind, not a windfall. The perfect life online is manufactured. The one-pan cooking video used a lot more dishes. The highlight reel hides the math.
**[00:38:00] Generational job turnover patterns**
Boomers: stayed for pensions. Gen X: the unmonitored generation, figured things out independently, thrives in the right workplace. Millennials: discovered that job-hopping every two years produces better salary growth than loyalty. Gen Z: leaving at three to six months, often before finishing the learning curve.
**[00:44:00] Gentle parenting without consequences**
Children raised without experiencing consequences arrive at the workforce expecting things to ease up when they stop being enjoyable. The employer absorbs the cost. Dr. Griffin is direct: the problem is the parent, not the game.
**[00:46:00] Life skills gaps in the newest workforce**
Employers report incoming workers who do not know how to address an envelope, use a stamp, write a check, or sign their name in cursive. Professional language norms are also collapsing: shorthand from personal messaging is appearing in business communication.
**[00:49:00] AI is not the threat: the real workforce question**
A company that fires the people running the AI to save money will not be in business much longer. AI is a partner to the employee. It helps people do more, faster, with less overhead. The pattern throughout history is the same: industries shift, jobs transition, some disappear and others emerge.
**[00:51:00] Historical parallel: horses to cars**
The United States took roughly 20 to 25 years to transition from horse-and-carriage to automotive infrastructure. Blacksmiths, stable workers, and innkeepers did not vanish. They transitioned. There are still blacksmiths. The same pattern applies to every technological shift.
**[00:54:00] Using AI ethically and effectively**
Dr. Griffin pits Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude against the same question to compare outputs. She uses AI for spelling, grammar, and tone rather than source-based research. She has seasoned her ChatGPT with her own voice so the output does not sound robotic. She is clear on the line: enhance your work, not steal someone else's.
**[01:01:00] Mental health and client delivery**
Dr. Griffin mentions being in a very dark place mentally during the early period with her longest-running client. The work still got done. The client still got deliveries. No one knew. She notes this without drama, as a fact of how the work often operates.
**[01:04:00] Follow-through as the real test of ownership**
Wanting to own a business is not sufficient. The follow-through to actually do it when it is hard, boring, or unglamorous is what separates businesses that grow from those that stall. If the passion is not there to sustain the grind, working for someone else is a valid and respectable path.
**[01:05:00] Fraud, embezzlement, and the hands-off owner**
Dr. Griffin describes the patterns she sees across roughly 10 percent of her client engagements: personal expenses run through the company, misclassified business expenses, and in the most serious cases, payroll manipulation and offshore diversion. The conditions for theft are created when owners delegate and step back without retaining any visibility.
**[01:06:00] The hospital chain embezzlement case**
Griffin Resources took over payroll for a hospital chain client and noticed money missing. Benefits invoices showed as paid in the books but funds were going elsewhere. The investigation revealed the controller had been funneling money to offshore accounts. Approximately 1 million was found initially; the FBI ultimately identified 3 million total. The controller fled the country. The CFO and CEO faced consequences.
**[01:08:00] Trust and oversight in bookkeeping**
Dr. Griffin does not handle her own books because her brain locks up around her own finances. She has a trusted friend who does it. But she is clear: that level of trust does not exist in most workplaces. Business owners need enough knowledge of their own books to catch what is wrong.
**[01:10:00] Social media careers done right**
If social media is the direction, do it well. Pay attention to what is working. Do not copy someone else's content word for word. Be enough your own that you are not riding someone else's momentum. And do not fake it.
**[01:12:00] Knowing yourself before choosing a direction**
You have to know who you are before you can decide what you want to do. If that takes longer, fine. Go work somewhere else while you figure it out. The idea that you need to know by 18 is not accurate, and the pressure to choose before the self is formed creates a lot of the downstream chaos in the workforce.
**[01:13:00] College debt and the trades conversation**
Nikki paid off undergrad at 35 and still carries school debt from her PhD. Dr. Griffin notes that trades can produce six-figure incomes without a degree. College makes sense for specific career paths. For everything else, the debt-to-outcome math often does not work.
**[01:20:00] Masking emotions in HR**
Nikki describes moving room to room in her corporate HR days: one conversation involving a terminal illness, the next a performance review, the next a board presentation. Learning to not let one room follow you into the next is a skill developed out of necessity, not comfort.
**[01:21:00] Alignable meeting and the fraudulent stock**
Dr. Griffin describes a group networking meeting where someone began pitching a stock investment. As the person spoke, she recognized the elements as insider trading. She went quiet. Her friend texted her: "Fix your face." After the meeting, the friend looked it up. The stock had been flagged and locked by the Trade Commission as fraudulent. Her face told the truth before the research confirmed it.
