Full Transcript for Most CEOs Know Less About Their Employees Than LinkedIn Does | Jason Averbook

sits. You spent some years in the bay close to where I'm at during that PeopleSoft run. And now you're back in Minneapolis. What's something about the Bay Area that you still miss? Wow, Jeff, it's really interesting. I try to find greatness everywhere I am. been blessed to live all over the world and travel all over the world and I try to find greatness wherever I am. If the first thing that came to mind when you asked me that question is the innovator's mindset is so is such a spark in the Bay Area that whether you go to a coffee shop or whether you go to a a restaurant, you're gonna end up guaranteed in an interesting conversation with someone who has a unique passion and a unique love for something they care about. And that that could be in the form of a company, it could be in the form of a mission, it could be in the form of a foundation. But there there's something unique about the Bay Area where people don't just phone it in. Now, like we could debate all day long whether that's because of cost of living. I think greatness surrounds itself with greatness. And I I would say that that part of the world is one of the greatest parts of the world, of course. And this is a dumb statement when it comes to innovation and innovators first kind of thinking. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think about relocating and traveling and I go back to that. What will your surroundings be? Who will you be interacting with on a day to day basis? The more I travel, the more I do appreciate it. And I I'm happy when I I come home just I love it here. If it's a beautiful it's a beautiful place also, don't get me wrong. But the the if you have energy I mean Leapgen, a company that you mentioned earlier, Leap and Leapgen stood for love, energy, audacity, and proof. If you love what you do, you have energy. If you have energy, you can do the audacious. And your goal is to continue to prove value. So i if you're living in a place that has that kind of frenetic energy, which I find find every time I go to the Bay Area, to be honest with you, like the sky's the limit as far as what you can accomplish. Yeah, absolutely. Now by the way, by the way, for those people that don't live in the Bay Area, I think that tra I think you can travel with it. I I think it I think there's a there's a value in in being immersed in it. But once you're immersed in it, I don't think you can't duplicate it. So w where I live in Minneapolis, I've tried to duplicate it with various groups that I've started to foster that kind of thinking. I spend a lot of time in Charleston, South Carolina, where I teach at the College of Charleston, where I've started groups like that. So I think one of the missions of people that have the opportunity to live in the Bay Area is to take that energy and spread it as well. So I don't think it should be just limited to that area. Great perspective. So kind of going back to those early years when you You launched this app in HR Tech and then two weeks later your CEO signed a deal to rewrite the entire stack in Lotus notes instead of Windows. And so you you resigned and you were twenty-three then and looking back at your history then, was that the right call? All of us look through our careers and as someone now who gets an opportunity to mentor a lot of people, we all look through our careers and look at those moments and say, Would I have done that again? Was that the right thing to do? et cetera, et cetera. From a future of my personal career, it is great. I mean I could not have made a better decision like that. From a how I did it, I was twenty three, Jeff. So I I was a hot headed twenty three year old that was really pissed that someone made a decision like that and therefore I quit the next day and never looked back. Did I burn bridges? Yes. Do I wish I did it differently? Yes. Not for the reason that I did it, which was to get out of that environment and to really focus on something that I firmly believed in, but from a humanity standpoint, I wish I didn't cause a little bit of the reciprocal damage to relationships that I did, which now I've gone back to heal, but back then I caused some damage. One thing that that locks in for me is as someone who spent a lot of time in a career long term at a company and which I appreciated my trajectory and the work that I did there. But I think what AI gives you the capability to do is if you do have a passion to do something, take a little risk and make a pivot, that opportunity is greater than it ever was now. If you take the the combination of the internet, which connected us, and then you combine that with AI, which connects us with intelligence, like it is the best time for ever. And I mean I we'll see what's next to be an entrepreneur. I I truly believe that and that's why I teach entrepreneurship. People are like, Well, do you have something against big companies? I said, I don't have anything against big companies. Like there's not big companies are great for people that are stable, that struggle with change, that don't like a lot of change, that are at various points of their life where the risk aversion is not in their persona. etc. etc. et cetera. But if you do have a spark and you do have an idea that you can't execute where you're at, there is no doubt that this is the best time ever to go out on your own and prove your vision through. And even if you don't prove it through, what you'll learn from it will make you a better employee back inside one of those big companies that you can get those jobs all day long. Right. I just made that sound very simple. By the way, and it's not anywhere near that simple. But I guess my point is is that you have X number of breaths in your life and if you waste them wondering what if, it's gonna be a regret. I like it. And this it's not for everybody. And sometimes it's easier said than done, but a new opportunity is unlocking and that's gonna shape r not only the workforce of the future, but a lot of things

around us. And the tool that you build, it's important because I do think it's a valuable tool. And I like to think of what the workforce of the future will look like. And I began this show with kind of this concept in mind. There's a lot of noise out there that a lot of us are gonna be replaced by AI, but We're not really seeing that so far. My gut is there's gonna be a tremendous amount of innovation. So two things on the two things on what you just said. So, first of all, AI is not gonna replace us. I'm still gonna be Jason Averbrook. Does that make sense? It's not gonna replace my skin. It's not gonna replace my eyes. It's not gonna replace my family. Like AI is going to change our jobs. AI is gonna change how we work. AI is gonna change how we think. AI is gonna change what our outputs and what our outcomes are going to be able to be. But it's not gonna replace us. Does that sense? I hope that's fair. There is a lot of noise out there that AI is gonna replace the workforce. You're not gonna have a job in the future. It's gonna be able to do everything that you do. So I agree that it's not gonna replace you as a human. I do think that we'll definitely augment and change things that we do in terms of tasks that we do, how we complete them, how we work. So our jobs are gonna change. ⁓ And the sooner and by the way, that's what those executives we hear are signaling. Now, how it comes across, it's going to replace us. It's going to we're going to lose our jobs. Like, those are very nuanced type statements to me. And if if people got nothing else from this episode, I hope that it's a interesting discussion on this topic. AI is going to replace your job. Done. That is guaranteed. The job that you have today is going to be replaced by something different because of AI. There's no jobs that are no jobs, no jobs that that's not true for. So that means if you don't take agency to upskill, to learn, to think different, etc. etc., then you maybe you won't have a job. But that statement is true. AI will replace your existing job. You you will need to augment your skills. You will need to change your workflows. You'll need to change maybe you'll change career paths. All those things are to be determined. But what I argue in my thought process is that you will still have stuff to do as it relates to business and a job and performing functions. What that looks like is changing dramatically. And I think a lot of ways, in a lot of ways, again, in a good way. So that that's my perspective. No, and Jeff, and I and I completely agree with you by the way, that I mean, we are in agreement there that but and you control whether you'll have a job or not. Sure. I think there's way too many people that are taking the the posture that I'm gonna put it in the hands of a company to determine whether I'm gonna have a job or not. Or I'm gonna put it in the hands of an educational institution as to whether I'm gonna have a job or not. I wrote a piece yesterday, I know this

is published in the future. But I wrote a piece on August 11th of 2026 called You Own Your Syllabus. It it is your job to make yourself relevant. It is not your company's job to make yourself relevant in this shift. So I completely agree with you. And at the same time, I want people to not get scared, but to say your job is going to change. And thank God, because most of you do jobs. That aren't leveraging your strengths. And we could go into a whole nother discussion about that, Jeff. The other thing that I just wanted to say, and I said there were two things, is we from now to next, now to next is my new company that Jess and I have found. We've partnered with technology organizations like Savo and Aerist to bring their products into how we deliver services to clients. So we haven't developed the technology. What we've done is we're leveraging technology to make sure that we can hear and listen to where people are at today, what their fears are, what their kind of wounds are when it comes to this concept of job change, and then think about how do we move them along to get them to a better spot. So to me, that is a a world that we call service as a software instead of software as a service. Where we're developing our services with software as the platform, and we're partnering in this case with two organizations, Savo and Aerist. Yep. Makes sense. And and the so the tool that we discussed before that as it relates to voice interactions with people and replacing the traditional surveys, the though that that system, if you will, could be applied to other Areas of work andor personal. I know there's school that's involved in that. So maybe just tell us a little bit more about that and what the reception of it has been. Because when you discussed it initially, I liked the thought process in it, and it started the wheels cranking. You could actually apply this to other things that we all deal with in our daily workflows. Surveys have always been a bit broken. And people, humans, have survey fatigue. We get surveyed after every flight. ⁓ we get surveyed after every time we go shopping. For goodness sakes, we get surveyed when we go to the bathroom. How did you find the bathroom? Happy face, sad face. You've seen those little things. I'm always afraid to touch them even because of it. Especially if they're in the bathroom. I probably wouldn't recommend that to anyone. Yeah, exactly. So what we found and people are always asking me, Jeff, for what are good use cases of AI? What are good use cases? So a very powerful use case is to take what I will call a deterministic survey, which is a survey of one to five, or multiple choice, or smile face, sad face. If we go back to the bathroom or movie theater thing, and all of a sudden start to say, now that I have technology that can understand the spoken word, can hear. Can translate back into true insights and outcomes, the richness of the survey or the richness of the tool and what your output can be is so much more powerful than a one-to-five or a smile face versus a sad face. I can actually say how I'm feeling. I can say what I liked and what I didn't like instead of just a three. So my abil and Jeff, you're spot on. That I mean we're using this tool for employees to understand how employees are doing on their maturity levels of AI. We're using this tool to understand how people are feeling about the culture and if the culture is ready to make a big change. But this same the same tooling will be used in a very short period of time, if not already, by airlines. How is your flight? Like, hey, I'm gonna call you and talk to you about it. When it's gonna be an AI bot, it's gonna be voice. A lot of us are still gonna hang up because we don't wanna get bothered. But guess what? The when I do interact, it's going to be the output is gonna be much more rich. A customer experience survey when it comes to going shopping. Hey, just give me a thumbs up or thumbs down, cool. But at the same time, if you'd like to tell me more, talk to a voice. And guess what? I can do thousands. of listening sessions simultaneously in parallel. Where in the past, I would hire a consulting firm to do with hundreds of consultants to schedule interviews, hear the things, maybe capture them, right or wrong, in their notepad, and then turn it into a PowerPoint deck. That then I'd read out to someone and I'd say, you know what, that's old data now. We don't really care. So all that being said, relevance, narrative, depth of content, the power of the spoken word is so much greater than anything I could do in a Likert scale. Right. The quality, the richness is absolutely as you described it, key and critical. And you can do such a more of an analytical deep dive versus one through five, happy, sad, agreed. My mind. always goes towards efficiency as well too. And I just think about those days when I when I would get those employment surveys via email, which I always generally avoided. But and I just thought about it because I was like, what is the real value behind this? And also how much time does this gonna take me? You're already flooded and overwhelmed and inundated with emails in the workplace. And so again, I just think of a tool like this in itself and and what again that future looks like. And I get excited because if you can take those mundane tasks away from me, do it, please. Yeah, and I add to that that unfortunately a fool with a tool is still a fool. So the tool itself helps a lot. But if I don't actually take action on what I hear, then guess what? The tool is just a tool. So That's the other component of this that I that's so important to call out is in the past so much survey data hasn't been acted upon. Which is what gets people sick of filling out surveys because they're like, it doesn't really matter, nothing's gonna change. So if I can then take this rich data and prescribe actions based on a leader, based on an employee, based on whatever type of person it is,

then guess what? My insights turn to action and I can do it in a loop instead of in the past where for the most part we did the survey, we read out the results, and then nothing happened. Yep. A lot of the companies you built or been involved in or HR tech related. And I was just thinking through again, like back to our original call where you mentioned you're getting feedback from the people that about things that are maybe broken, like employment surveys. And that's how you've gone about identifying and building businesses. Tell us a little bit more about that. What's your strategy as an entrepreneur when you go about thinking about what's that next project that you want to do, what you want to build, et cetera. In our pre-call, you talked about yourself getting into the pickleball business in the Philippines. Right. Now, when you think about an entrepreneur, th what an entrepreneur has to be great at first is seeing a signal. Seeing a signal. And whether that signal is, wow, there's a lot of people in the Philippines that are bringing pickleball back from the US and are looking to play pickleball, or whether the signal is my at the time 17 and 14-year-old son sitting at the kitchen table with me, going into Chat GPT for the first time, saying, Wow, this is gonna change the way I write papers forever. Both of those things are signals. And the goal of entrepreneurship, and the and one of the key fundamentals that I try to teach, is always be looking for signals. So every company that I've started, or and actually I shouldn't even say it like that, even products that I built at PeopleSoft back in the day, they were products that a signal informed. So guess what? Everyone wanted a portal. What did we do? We built a portal. Hey, there was a moment in time where everyone said they wanted to get rid of performance reviews. What did we do at Marcus Buckingham Company? We talked about how to reinvent performance management. Right now, the signal that's blaring is that we're all gonna have to work differently. Which we just talked about a few minutes ago. Now to next is built to help move organizations and people. From where they are now to where they need to be next. I'm oversimplifying again entrepreneurship. But I do believe that it starts with signal, it takes sharp, sharp execution, and it takes a lot of pivoting. Because the signal is almost never clear the first time you hear it. Right. When you jump into one of these endeavors, too, which is the valuable Lesson learned in a company when you have a job, things are structured. Entrepreneurship and start building businesses, things are a little unclear. You might have a plan, and then as you mentioned, you have to pivot. And what you thought was what things were going to look like in the short term didn't play out the way that you expected. And so you had to change things, which is different than that traditional work path of sit down, do spreadsheets all day, do these tasks and functions. And so one thing again, related to the audience here that I think is valuable when we when we're talking about hiring and the future of work and what that looks like, it's important to highlight the need to have that entrepreneurial mindset. Ultimately trying to figure out what's next, what tools can be leveraged and/or unified, or what systems or processes might you need to consider. AI can augment some of that, it can help teach you some of that, but that critical thinking component that you need. Again, is my argument that is the differentiator for us to have in the future, whether you're an entrepreneur, an HR leader, talent acquisition, you're you're gonna need to have that critical thinking mindset. My takeaway from that, Jason, is just you're the I think the future is an entrepreneur. We we will all need to be some level of entrepreneurs to evolve here. Things that you identified are why AI is not going to replace us as humans. Those what what I'm I use a lot of times in in working in the academic space, durable skills. A durable skill, critical thinking, curiosity, wisdom, agency. That when you say what does someone need in the future of the workplace or future of work, which we call the now of work, that's what it is. Because when knowledge is all of a sudden democratized What will differentiate me are those durable skills. And the more that you can get on a stage and practice those skills, by the way, that's experimentation as well. And a lot of humble pie saying, I was wrong. Which by the way, that takes a lot that that that that takes a stage to practice on. Cause that's not easy to do. Those types of things are the things that make a great entrepreneur, but they also make and will be what makes a great entrepreneur, which is that entrepreneurial mindset within companies. I think the last thing I'll shut up on this because I know you had another question, is that I think it's the number one thing killing big companies right now. Is they're they're trying to work towards 2030. They have 2010 org charts. They have 1990s processes and they have a bunch of people that are confused in that 40 year gap. And what when people are confused, what they usually do is fall back to what they know. And what we end up with is with inertia. So that entrepreneurial spirit, I like if I find someone with an entrepreneurial brain or entrepreneurial brain, I grab them off the street as fast as I can. Because I need them. Well ⁓ But just as an example, there's a lot of organizations right now who are trying to do things like workforce planning. They're trying to say, hey, based on what's happening with AI and what's happening in the world, what does my future workforce need to look like? Right. Unfortunately, most companies don't even know what they have. The most data they have on their people is their name, their address, their department, their salary. If you ask most CEOs, LinkedIn knows more about their people than they do. And that is sad. Because guess

what? That means your competition knows more about your people than you do. And all of a sudden I'm doing workforce planning based on a resume that I may have captured five, ten, fifteen years ago. I haven't kept asking people, what are you doing to learn on your own time? What skills are you gathering? Like maybe I've given them some tools and say, hey, if you get time, go out and fill this in. But most people don't, because I don't see any value in doing it. So I'm trying to do workforce planning with a terrible data set. That to me is 2030 planning with a bunch of 1990s processes. I'm still capturing people's resumes and never updating them as they grow with the company. I'm still doing performance reviews once a year. All of that stuff is broken. And the speed and the compression. Of the cycles of how work is working today don't match those things I do once every year, three years, five years, ten years. What my mind goes to, and I know this isn't easy answer and it's probably multifaceted, but what's the solution? The solution is to br is to push reset. And once again, I made that very I sound very easy. I was with a CHRO yesterday of a major, major retailer that's getting rid of job descriptions, that's getting rid of job codes, that's getting rid of position numbers, and basically the only way she's looking at people is them speaking into a computer, saying what they want to be when they grow up. What their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, and the tool is matching them to roles that might be good fits for them going forward. So she's basically turning what is it today, go online, look for a position. If you find something you like and you're qualified for, apply for it, which is a terrible way, because it's like shopping through a list of five thousand things hoping to find something, to now saying, Guess what? I know. That there are people that a lot of humans would be great to work here. I'm not gonna let a machine basically weed them out. I'm gonna make sure I find out what their strengths are and see if there's a spot for them. And to me, whether they whether you believe in that or not, Jeff, that's the kind of resets and the trials that we're gonna need in order to push the business forward. No, I'm excited by that actually. Yeah, and I I didn't know that That was out there. And I've brought on a wide range of guests that are trying to solve this problem of hiring and recruiting and talent. And there's a lot of approaches. And there's obviously a wide range of different roles and functions that are needed out there. So I don't know that there's a one size fits all, but I do know that the traditional system of hiring and recruiting is currently broken, along with a lot of other things that have been broken by a lot of these tools and advancements. We talk about a lot is just. resumes. So if AI is creating your resume and then AI is reviewing your resume, then AI is creating your job description. What is the human aspect of it?

How do we know that Jason actually is the right person andor has the right skills when his goal really is just to win this interview? And so how does he go about winning the interview? He goes about getting his AI to say exactly what it needs to in order to get him in that position. And and that's just a broken system. Again, I think The traditional hiring process has always been very subjective. I'd argue, Jason, because I've interviewed thousands and have been with many hiring managers that thought they were great at it. There's not a lot of people that are, but I do like that idea which you mentioned, ⁓ that conversation you had, which is a more creative approach to it. And so yeah, always open and interested in hearing more. Well, I mean, the the way we're gonna do all of this is to realize that we're shifting. And and one of the problems I have with a lot of the vendors in the space today, and as an investor and ⁓ advisor on boards, I struggle with this a lot as I'm kind of the pain in the butt in the meetings. But all you're doing is taking the way it's always been done and using some new technology to make it faster. So you're you're you're taking the dysfunctional and making it faster. And what I love about the the model I just shared with you, which is just one out of many, is that Instead of me having to learn how to interact with a machine, I want the machine to learn from how I want to work. So instead of us being a slave to an applicant tracking system or a recruiting system or a learning system or a payroll system, make that system the slave to my brain rethinking and rewiring how I want to work. And the sooner we do that, the better we're all going to be. We've been slaves to software. The the challenges in the traditional model right now is that it's the least path of resistance. So that type of innovation is great. And I'm there too. But ultimately it's a humbling experience when you say, I want to redesign everything. And everybody's like, I just want to make a small augmentation and sell my business for a couple million and be on my way, which is the mindset of many entrepreneurs. And then again, you talk about those executives, they want to keep their job, they want to make their bonus. So doing Brand new exciting things are is is sometimes thought of as reckless. But I enjoy those individuals. They just seem to be a little bit more limited these days, but love those solutions. In my own personal opinion, anyone that's not willing to reset right now is mi has missed the window to sell. Yeah. You basically took seventy five to eighty percent of the valuation off your business. If you want to sell it today, cool. Sell it to me, 'cause I'll rewire it and make it a lot more profitable. I love this. Is your thought that we will adapt and change those practices in the short term, or do you think there's gonna be a lot of pain before we get to that type of transformation where people are really saying, even think of home buying, right? Think of b traditional ways of buying cars. All these experience could be automated or leveraged in such a different way. I I just recently was on that trip to the Philippines, which again is like a humbling experience for me as well to see how things operate and function over there. And I just again I look at it and I go, is it going to change? And when is it going to change? And it sounds like your argument is that it's absolutely going to change, needs to change, and and it will in the short term. It's changing. The interesting thing about this is that unlike past technology shifts, DOS to Windows, you brought that up earlier in my career, where all of a sudden, okay, the difference was I had to use a mouse. Windows to client server. Is it stored under my desk or is it stored in the server room? Client server to cloud. Nothing stored on premise. It's all in the cloud. Those are all A B kind of switches. The shift from where we are to where we're going is not an A-B switch. It's an always on switch. These changes are already happening. And guess what? They're happening whether your employees are starting them in Skunkworks projects or whether the enterprise is sponsoring them. And guess what? In small businesses, they're the reason small businesses right now are speedboating past big businesses is because guess what? They don't have any of that debt. That mindset debt, that change debt that you're bringing up. That ⁓ if we change that then I gotta talk to Jeff. Well let's talk to Jeff. Jeff hasn't worked here for five years. ⁓ man, well then why are we not gonna do it? ⁓ it's gonna be too hard. Let's wait till next year. Next year you're not gonna be alive. So those are is it gonna happen? Yes. Is it happening? Yes. There are gonna be companies and people that will win. There will be companies and people that will lose, just like what happened with Blockbuster and Radio Shack. I I think what you're talking about is just much more of a massive scale though. than than want to offer a few different companies and but it but but yes but it takes it t this isn't top down either necessarily. It takes people, it takes people with agency to start those changes and to model that behavior so the rest of the people do it. So it is happening. Yeah yeah I mean good news it's happening. It's not happening on a s way that's spread equal, but good news it's happening. The question is is how much friction is there to make it happen? And do you wanna hang out in that friction or do you wanna go somewhere else where there's no friction? To me that's the biggest question from an individual standpoint right now. So do you think there's gonna be a lot of disruption in terms of these solopreneurs or smaller companies that are going to displace a lot of these larger companies that have kind of ha traditional practices or processes that they've been following? Do you think that's the reality? Or do you think alternatively they will decide and make that shift in

order to remain competitive? What's so hard sorry I get so passionate about this. What's so hard is that you have to keep the lights on and transform at the same time. That's what's so hard for these businesses. So let me take a a large bank, for example. Sure. A large bank, there are you familiar with the financial services firm Ramp. No. Nope. Okay, so Ramp does all of our travel and expense for now to next. They give our th we have they have all of our credit cards, er all of the receipts are controlled based on my phone, et cetera, et cetera. There's no reason that some big banks Can't do that with the exception of the change of how they work today to get to that point is gonna take a long time, a lot of pain, a lot of bringing customers along, and a lot of technical debt that they have to overcome. So for me, as a new business, I'm not going to Bank of America. I'm going to Ramp. Why? Because they've already rethought. So that's already happening. It's I mean it's already happening over and over and over and over and over. For those of you that I mean, it's already happening in the AI space. Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT launched as a web tool. Then they came out with the desktop tool, ChatGPT Work. Grokbot was introduced, which is ten times better than ChatGPT Work. Grok has already surpassed ChatGPT. And and that's why I'm talking about the compression of cycles is so short today. Before we go from it might take 30 years to transform. Today it's taking three months. Where we're going, I have a family member who's struggling with cancer, unfortunately. And it it's it it's a cancer that ten years ago had about a three month life cycle to a cancer that now has a 30 year life cycle. And that's all because I mean It's all because of AI. It's all because of data and research. So i I guess I I guess my point, sorry, I'm rambling. I don't want people to think this is not happening. It's happening before of before our eyes. Yeah. It's just a question of is it changing our jobs in a radical way? It's gonna be harder for us to see because all of a sudden we just start did spell check change our jobs radically? Yep. Open for debate. Right? The i is AI changing our jobs? Yes, it already is. It's just a question of w to what impact? So going back to that original question of like what does the future look like? Does so do solopreneurs displace large enterprises? You mentioned Ramp as an example. And as I thought it through as you were talking about it, and what is the future of Ramp looks like? Well, odds are Bank of America will just buy them at some point. So that that is likely what's happening. And I think there's a lot of opportunities like that where and hopefully for for the better, that what if they do, when they do make those acquisitions, they do adopt. those processes and and I that I think that's probably the likely trajectory instead of them just failing and folding as an organization. But I do think in the interim, right, there will be some companies that that don't adopt quick enough to your point and and do fail. Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. And at the same time, I think that there are a lot of big companies like a I I'm not gonna pick on it. I d I didn't mean to call it a brand of a bank. I think there's a lot of big companies that are realizing that they don't have they've got a too much technical debt. And B that they have a long ramp in front of them where they could just be a cash cow. For the next 10, 15 years and then figure out how to go off into the sunset. I think there are other CEOs driving companies who are like, we're gonna transform our business. I think that's a very intentional strategy that you see different companies taking right now. Yep. Valid point. Like it's I mean, let's just take Apple, for example. Apple can't be too radical. Like Apple hasn't come out with anything new in a long time. Well they have a new C they have a new CEO now though, so maybe that changes. Yeah, yeah, but that's what I'm saying. There are CEOs that will decide and boards that will decide the trajectory of those companies. What I'm saying is it's very hard to innovate and meet if you're a public company, meet your quarterly numbers at the same time. Because you're spending you're trying to spend your way to something new, and in the meantime It's hurting your bottom line. Lots of change coming, absolutely. And I and I think we're just in that period right now, whether you're an employee, entrepreneur, just in your own personal life, there's that gap between companies haven't caught up and there's so much innovation going on. So I think not only an exciting time, but again, just a time with a lot of opportunity. And and and and there's a and it's a lot of fear. I mean, there's a we call it wounds of change. It change you have to look at change as a strategy, not the enemy. You have to look at change as your strategy, not the enemy right now. A, which is once again easier said than done. That's what we should call this episode easier said than done. And then the second thing I'll just say is that we have to realize it's 2026 outside of work. Ask yourself what year does it feel like inside of work? Right. That's your gap. That's your gap. And a lot of companies will say it feels like 2000. I work with companies every single day who are say they're still Trying to recover from COVID. Like the we have to pick up our pace. When the rest of the world moves faster, companies have to move faster. I'm looking forward to you you fixing the home selling andor buying process next, Jason. Hope you do that, because that, along with other things that are broken out there, definitely need to be disrupted. There aren't enough of us, which is why it's so exciting. It's it's it's why it's so exciting. It's such an exciting time for people to take an idea. And bring it to life. Love this conversation. Didn't get through many of the questions we have, which is totally fine. But I I definitely think there's a lot of value baked into this. But is there anything else that you wanted to say today that we didn't get a chance to get into? You know, the biggest thing I just want to make sure that people understand is that we're in a we are in such an important moment for humanity around learning. Like everyone has to be. building their own syllabus as I said earlier. And everyone has to be dedicated to learning. Like I literally I I I was telling someone last night at dinner, like, well I spend eight to ten hours on my day job, I probably spend two to three hours a day learning. And they're like, well, isn't your company providing that time for you to learn? I'm like, no. Companies can't afford that. There's so much change every single day that if we don't dedicate ourselves to building our own learning habits different than in the past, because things didn't change fast in the past. Like we're gonna struggle as people. Keep and keep disrupting. I love it. I love it, Jason. I think the world needs more people with that that message and and that level of creativity that is don't take the status quo for what it is. Consider everything is changing, not only changing a little bit, but significantly. And how do you get ahead of that? Well, and that's why Jeff, I give people like you a lot of credit. Anyone who's willing to put their voice out there, anyone who's willing to travel to the Philippines and find a new business, like you're creating jobs, you're creating value, you're creating knowledge every single day. And we need more people like that in the world. You as well. Appreciate it, Jason. Where can people follow your work and stay connected with what you're building? All the channels, just Jason Averbrook, LinkedIn, Instagram. X as well as you know now to next.ai. Perfect. And everything that we got in today is also in the show notes, along with where to find Jason's Substack, his new book that's coming out this fall. Jason, thanks again for helping the audience stay unlocked and don't be a stranger. Jeff, you are doing amazing work. Keep it up and happy to come anytime.