The Hot Topic Knockout: Brad Farris Is Back and Nothing Is Safe

Brad Farris is back. And if you weren't here for the original run of the show under the old name Working Broken, here's what you need to know: Brad is one of the sharpest executive coaches working today, he was Nick's own executive coach for an extended stretch, and when the two of them get in a room together — even a virtual one — nothing stays safe for very long.

This episode opens with something genuinely useful: Brad's honest account of how the pressurization of the COVID era made him play small, and the moment earlier this year he decided that was over. How fear contracted his social circle. How his social circle contracting made things scarier. How that compounded until he realized this was not his best self — and what happened when he dropped it. He's traveling more, seeing people in person, landing bigger deals. The correlation is not a coincidence.

From there Nick and Brad play the first ever Hot Topic Knockout — a bracketed game where ten things the internet tells you to care about go head-to-head until only the one that actually matters survives. The bracket includes: Tim Cook's successor and the One Disney speech, tariffs being illegal, the end of entry-level hiring, the OpenAI bubble, middle manager burnout at a 10-year low, social media's big tobacco moment, Oracle's Larry Ellison doing what Larry Ellison does, macro economic signals and gas prices, and the cost of tokens.

Along the way they cover why Brad thinks you should go back to 1995 and be a generalist who meets people. Why the real crisis in organizations isn't at the middle manager level, it's at the top, where leaders are navigating fog with no clear destination. Why agile is a response to a goal, not a substitute for one. Why risk management with trust is the only thing that works now — and why American business is terrible at it. 

And OF COURSE what the winner of the knockout game actually is...

Trust-Made Growth®

Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com

Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com 

Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Well, welcome again to Dam's Given. This today is a podcast with our very own Brad Ferris. Some of you don't know Brad because you've joined us since Brad was with the pod originally. Originally, when the pod was under the old name, Working Broken, Brad and I here were here together every week talking about stuff that mattered. You guys, I freaking love Brad, and you're gonna love him too if you haven't known him before. And we're gonna do a fun thing today. So it's very important that you stick us through us because we're doing the first ever um hot topic critical information knockout game. So I'm gonna throw at Brad all the things that he's supposed to be thinking about, that the internet and LinkedIn and all of the silly places tell us we're supposed to be thinking about. And Brad, in his brilliant business coach brain, is gonna knock down the ones that matter. In the process, we talk about a bunch of different things about the relationship between marketing and sales and what's happening now and how to think about all of this weird headline stuff. And mostly we spend a lot of time just having a really good time reminding each other that being in this together is really what matters. So for those of you who were a part of the season one where Brad was a regular feature, you're gonna love to see him back again. And for those of you who are new, I think you're gonna love Brad when you get to know him. So without further ado, here is Brad and this episode of Dam's Given. Hey Brad, we're here. We're back like we never left. I mean, it's the old days all over again. Party like it's 2026. That's right. That's right. I mean, is anyone ever gonna say that? You know, in a hundred years and be like, well, yeah, 2026. That was a party.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

That was the year to party, right? Yeah. I mean, it's possible that 2027 it all just goes up in a puff of smoke, and then 2026 would have been the year to party. That that is always possible.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

I you know, I remember this is so bizarre, you know, being like a kid in like the evangelical Midwest. And I remember like people, my grandparents, so they would have been, I don't know, they got married like in the 50s, you know, post-World War II. And they would talk about that, like there was this, you know, there was sort of this apocalyptic thing of like, oh, we're gonna get married because who knows what, you know, uh, you know, threat of nuclear war and all of this kind of stuff. And I remember being a kid and a teenager being like, that is so dumb. Like, who could possibly believe that the the, you know, that the end of the world is imminent?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Who will who would believe that stuff? And here we are. This is what we do now. We are living under a nuclear cloud.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Um, as some have referred to it, the first part of the Cold War, and that the Cold War continues. Indeed. So, well, catch us up, Brad. I mean, for those people who are new to the podcast, maybe you weren't um, you know, listening to us when Brad and I were doing this together, which was a really, really fun time. Brad is uh a phenomenal executive coach. He was my executive coach for an extended period of time. He um unlocked all of the secrets of my mind. And uh we, you know, spent a lot of time sort of hashing through what the in some ways really this era where everybody's kind of waking up to like, oh, nothing works. Right. And and we, you know, we did that for a dozen episodes or so and realized, like, well, yeah, okay, we've concluded the this discourse, nothing works, you know, and now we need to have a different discourse. So um it does feel like everything's very fast moving, but yeah, catch us up on what you're learning and yeah, everything.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

So a a big it sort of jumping off of the nothing works, big reflection that I've been in this year is that um in some ways started during COVID, but over the last maybe five years, because of things that were going on in the world, you know, we were all living at home, we weren't talking to people, then there was uh all of the social unrest and political correctness, and and I was making choices that made myself smaller. That that was the realization that I came to this year is that uh there was just a lot of fear and uncertainty. And my reaction to that was to was to pull back and kind of be defensive and and make make myself have a smaller footprint in the world. And earlier this year, I came to the conclusion that that was not serving me. That I just don't want to live like that anymore. Yeah, yeah, good. And so that that was a real that was a moment where I was like, okay, I don't really care that the world is potentially on fire. We can't see the future, that we don't know what's happening. A leader's job is to have a point of view about the future, and even if the future is foggy, I need to know I where I think things are going, and I'm gonna move in that direction. And so, like, like there was just a big change of energy for me where I just kind of dropped all those stories about caution and and self-protection and and not getting in trouble, and and just started to do some stuff. And it's been really great. I'm really enjoying myself. I'm doing a lot more in-person stuff, I'm traveling a lot more. Um, and I'm landing bigger deals. So that's all fun.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I there's multiple things I want to dig into that that I think are applicable beyond you. But one, of course, just thank you for your transparency. That the first one is just I the correlation between sort of the pressurization post-COVID and sort of the the malaise of all of that, and that it triggered playing small. Like the world felt small, so you play. I don't think I've ever put those two things together, but I think that's like gold. I mean, I think lots of people, if they really listen to themselves well, that's a version of their post-COVID story.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. And and it it's natural, like if you think about Maslow's pyramid, which we know is not a pyramid and whatever, but it's still a useful construct. That when we're afraid, when when we're fearing for life and limb, we move down on the pyramid, and down on the pyramid is a more selfish version of ourselves, right? And so we kind of contract in. And that contracting in then reduced our social circles, which made things more scary. Like it kind of compounded on itself in a way that it's taken me at least a long time to realize like this is not working for me. This is not my best self.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah, I mean, this is uh always our official podcast disclaimer that um Maslow was a eugenicist. We do not endorse eugenics by any stretch of the imagination, but we will acknowledge that some ideas do make sense regardless. We we can separate the art from the artist per se.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

That's right. Um did you go see the Michael movie in terms of Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Like my son's my my son's really into Michael right now, so take that for what it is. Uh, but we will not be discussing Kanye West on the call. No. Um that's beyond the pale. Um so so I yeah, I mean, I think that sense of like turning inward and turning interior, and I don't know. I that all makes sense. I think the the playing small is just a certain sort of as a nuanced layer to that, I think. Yep, yeah and it's just it's interesting to watch culturally as people are trying, I think, to come out of that. Yes. And some of it is working and some of it's really weird. Yep. I've been writing a little bit about this. People who follow me in different places might be seeing, like, I've been reacting a little bit to sort of the substack efication of everything. Oh, I'm gonna come out of my shell now, and that means I'm going to write all the the 99 op-eds that I have in me, and I'm gonna call it a substack newsletter, and I'm waiting for the New York Times to call. And I'm like, as a person who reads the New York Times op-ed section regularly, I'm just not sure we need more of it.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

I, you know, and one of the things that actually for myself that I've been trying to learn is that there's a difference between being expansive and open and being an asshole. Right? Like that there's a lot of people who are like, yeah, I'm I'm not gonna play small, so I'm just gonna tell everybody what I think. And like you said, maybe we don't need that. But but the version for me of of opening up is actually opening up to just being opening up to possibility, opening up to, hey, let's have this conversation and see where it goes. But I can still do that with kindness and with curiosity.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Well, I it really gets to your second idea, which is this sense that, you know, the world is a fog, and I think in a longer conversation for a different day, but right, we can just sort of agree that the world being a fog is probably not going anywhere. I might be of the opinion that this is literally a decades-long scenario. Like we we we that the fog may outlive me. Um but that I I like this idea that you bring that you we don't turn into prediction markets or futurists, but we have to make bets. That's right. Right. And we have to do experiments and we have to try things because otherwise we're just again doing sort of sitting here commenting on the op-ed of the world as it passes us by.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

That's right. That's right. And how is go ahead. Well, the the way that I relate to that is that that that op edification or the the the substactification is like sort of a living in your head. And living in our head is a different way of playing small. Talking about the ideas in our head does not make us open and expansive. What makes us open and expansive is trying things and doing stuff and going out and meeting people and and making mistakes and getting messy and having people yell at you. Like all those things are a part of playing bigger.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yeah, I mean, I have been this is like autobiographical to a level that's uncomfortable, you know, like um it's so hard. I mean, as a person who just sort of like loves to swim around in the world of ideas, it is so difficult to move those ideas into pragmatic action. Yeah. To try things, to swing and you know, it just it um and I've been and as I've been trying to do my own work on that, and I want to talk a little bit about traveling and going places. Yeah. Because I'm just getting around to like, okay, well, let's go, you know, let's add some more travel back in, let's try, you know, uh physically see some more people. Yeah. Sort of a little challenging this spring with just some family schedules. But um with that in mind, it so because I've been more still kind of through the screen than you have, I think, even the last several months, it is very hard to really feel like you're embodying the work through a screen. Even if you're having conversations and you're you're not just sitting here sort of behind a keyboard, it's still there's a sense, there's just a fundamental, and I know that I'm not saying anything profound, it just I I've felt it to a level I haven't felt it before. There's just a sort of a fundamental disembodiment to the screen only way of showing up in the world.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Even last night, I saw two clients, one who I've worked with for about 18 months, I've never met her in person. The other one I've worked with for 14 years, but I haven't seen him in five. And like uh I know for that client that I had never met in person before, our relationships can be totally different online after just meeting each other once. And and the the one who I haven't seen in five years, like we have a long relationship, but seeing him in person and like, oh, I I really like this guy. Like there's a there's a sense of when we see each other in person that that there's an energy that we experience that we don't necessarily experience online.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

For sure. Yeah. I mean, I you and I are both heading out to some travel tomorrow. I'm getting on a plane to go to New York to see a client. And um, it was an impromptu decision. This isn't like some on-site that we planned. I we were literally on the phone call two weeks ago. We were trying to do some work together. And my client was like, Okay, well, where does that leave us? What's our next step? And I literally said to him, My next step is I gotta get on a plane. This, I can't do this thing that we're trying to do not across the table from you. Like, I just can't do it. And that was such a powerful feeling, to be honest. I know this for some of you for people who are listening, we're like, Oh, I'm doing this all the time. I'm on the phone, I'm traveling, I'm going to see people. Great, you're way ahead of us. You can, you know, skip this part of the of the episode. For those of us who are still waking up to this reality again, I mean, you you and I both had eras of extensive travel in the past. Tons, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

So it just took me a little bit to even be open to it again. Exactly. And and travel is way less fun even than it was 15 years ago. I I have not been on a plane that was less than full anytime this year, like no empty seats. And the thing that's interesting to me about what you just said is that when the pandemic hit, I had a real crisis of confidence. I was like, I am so used to influencing people in person and and in some ways using my body language and my size and standing up, and like, and I thought, I just don't know if I can do this online. And when I learned that I could do it online, I felt like that maybe freed me from ever having to go back in person again. But now Right, right. And but we're both experiencing no, there is another layer, right? There is another thing there.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah, I mean, I had all kinds of like mental fantasies of like how proud I was for my reduced carbon footprint, and all, you know, like we just build these narratives of like, oh, this thing that I'm accepting without consideration of reducing, you know, my FaceTime with people. It's amazing our ability to just sort of manufacture logic that goes, oh gosh, you're so smart. What a what a brilliant, thoughtful, authentic person you are to have come to these. You know what you should do? You should write a Substack about that.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Well, and I I might be making this transition too soon, Nick, but but one of the things that I was thinking about around this is that part of this is what's getting me to think about the limits of marketing and the value of sales or in-person business development. Because marketing was this promise of we're gonna lure people into our lair, right? That they're gonna come to us and we don't have to go out and see people anymore. We don't have to go out and meet people anymore. And we all talked ourselves into that fantasy for I don't know, seven, eight years, something like that. Yeah, yeah. And and it's it's things have changed, but I think it was always a fantasy, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

No, I think that's right. I mean, I think if you read, as I have done, if you read some of the really bright literature from people who have stayed in the marketing space, they came through the whole demand gen era, they were really recognized SEOs, you know, people who they're not having like online mea culpas. It's not quite like a Tucker Carlson kind of a moment, but they're ha they're like, they're they're acknowledging, like, hey, we really tried to make this work. We tried to make this idea that if you just had the right technology in the right places and the right software with the right data and the right whatever, then all of a sudden we could tell you which levers made you money. And you just push the levers, right? Like a little rat uh um tunnel.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

And you know, they're I think very intelligently saying it just didn't work. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

And the challenge was it appeared to work. It did and and it worked for some. I will say it worked for some, at least for a period of time. Like, like even when you talked to Jacob a couple, you know, episodes ago, he had a period when it was working great for him and then it stopped, right? And and I I know lots of other people who had Google-based businesses or Facebook-based businesses where it worked until it didn't.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Well, and I think we can't we have to interface that with, should just interrupt. Brett, I just miss talking to you. This is so fun. We might have to have you more on. We have interface that we have to interface that with, you know, the the Corey Doctoro Inchidification content. For those of unfamiliar, inshinification, great concept, framed up by Corey Doctoro. Basically, the idea that these platforms come out in the world and they go through stages. And the opening stage is they're really, really good to their customer or their user. We're not really customers because we're not paying. So Facebook, right? Facebook feels good at the beginning. Oh my gosh, it's so fun and it works and et cetera. And then they start abusing their user to then uh make it really, really good for their business customer. And they start scraping data and doing all these things and making the platform really, you know, uncomfortable and and unenjoyable, right? A really good example of that is right now is like Slack. God, have you when you open up Slack? It's just a noise factory. I'm just like, what am I even? I can't even find anything anymore. Well, and and they're even like the things that are noisy are them trying to help you clean up the interface. Stop, go away. It is like insinification on steroids. And so, and then eventually, and so then there's a very brief era of like arbitrage where if you're in the right place at the right time, you can make hay while the sun shines, so to speak. And then eventually the platforms turn on their business customers and try and squeeze, squeeze every last nickel out of them, and then they have to create the metaverse.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Um that's inevitable. That's just that's like the end of the story is always the same.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

The end game is always a disembodied. I just wanted to make sure a disembodied figure in virtual space with an oddly shaped head and no pants. That you know, you think this whole like, did it work, right? I think what we what we have to say is the working coincided with the people who happen to be on the platform doing the exact thing the platform wanted right as it was basically creating an addictive system for businesses. So if you happened to be buying ads on Facebook right as Facebook was perfectly aligned to screw over its users and maximize value to customers so that you would be obsessed with Facebook, man, you caught the wave, right? Yeah, yeah. And then the wave got more expensive and more and more expensive and more and more expensive and less and less effective. And I was with a client who was heavy into meta ads during that time period, and it was just like, well, but it's supposed to work. Well, by what? Who decided that I mean well, why would Facebook do this? I know why.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

I know why. I mean, their new thing is let us manage your ad budget. Like, sure, yeah. Well, just just charge the credit card whatever you want, and then but can I get on a little uh a little soapbox here? Because because don't come after me with your GEO. You know, like the we've all learned this lesson that yes, there's this window of time when things get better for you if you're playing the game, but but GEO, like there isn't even a G to EO. You know, there it's ever it's it's so universally different. And so we're at the asymptotic part of the curve where there's significantly more that you have to invest in order to get marginal returns back out. The the the LLMs are sending fewer and fewer visitors to sites, and so you're working harder and harder for fewer and fewer visitors, and this whole thing is just it's like I said, you're at the you're at the asymptote where there's just very marginal gains.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

I just don't understand why it wasn't really obvious to everyone. I mean, I do understand because they were financially incentivized not to think it this way, but why it wasn't incredibly evident to everyone that the LLM search thing was post-inshidification, that the LLM is the insidification of search. Bingo. That's a great way to look at it. Right. That for for the for the for the websites themselves, right? Yeah. Maybe you maybe you like it as a user, maybe it gives you helpful summaries. Like I'm not getting into that. I'm so tired of whether the summaries are helpful or not, whatever. Just it's so boring, you guys. I just want to just reiterate, it's not even about right or wrong or the water usage or whatever. All of that stuff is germane. So help me, God, it's so boring to talk about this.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Utah is building a data center the size of Manhattan. I don't care.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Um I mean, I care, but I don't, I don't like I I I there's nothing to talk about. I agree 100%. Yeah unless I'm in Utah, in the jurisdiction, like it just anyway. The the LLM search thing, as far as businesses were concerned, it's that it's just the next step to Google Zero.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

And Google Zero is minutes away, right? Like the we are minutes away from a world where there is no functioning underlayment of an internet. It is just a it is just a sea of old content. Or things that we're creating to feed to LM LLMs, right, right, or current content to sort of grab this grab the LLM with an agentic layer on it. Like that, that's it. Yeah, the apps are gonna be gone. You're gonna open your phone, no apps. It just it's all gonna be in the in the in the chat bot. And for businesses to think, we're the smart ones that are gonna solve for that. I'm like, oh come on, come on.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Well, and so so let's let's play this down the uh the pipe a little bit. Because I've really been thinking about this. All the stories about content and about positioning and narrow positioning and all of that, that came about when all of a sudden every business was competing against every other business in the world. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Preach, I'm ready for this sermon so much. I'm so ready.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

So we we suddenly were competing against everyone. And so, in order to differentiate ourselves, we narrowed down our target market and we created all this content that was about that target market, right? Now, no one is seeing any of that content. And in fact, we are not we are no longer competing against everyone in the world because the LLM isn't sending us to anyone. They're just trying to answer the questions. So here's my here's my wacky hypothesis. Let's go back to 1995. Let's be broadly positioned generalists and go meet people. And when we meet people, we can apply our generalist knowledge to the thing that they actually need and become the answer for their problem. Or serve them by either connecting them to the person who is the answer or serve them by solving their problem for them. Which in fact is what the LLMs are doing. LLMs are generalists and are giving good enough answers so that so that they don't have to send you to any kind of specialist.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yeah, this is, you know, preview of my book again here coming soon. This is so much of where my work has evolved and is heading. And and because I really believe we've got to, you know, we've got to reorient the way that we build organizations and we do leadership and and and we even create markets and economies because we're at the end of multiple eras, all ending at the same time. Just this stack up of all of these things that have sort of that the internet sort of brought into decline. And it's not the end of the world, right? This is what happens. Eras end. That's right. The challenge that we're in is all of them sort of coming to uh an interregna or an you know in inner interim period at the same time. And I read this phenomenal book called The Gutenberg Parenthesis. Um very academic book, but it basically explains the 500 years of print and all of the things that we created as a the ideas and the ways of being together we created as a function of print. Yes. And and the case that he makes in the book is that the internet pre-AI is the end of print. We tried to fill the internet with print. Yes. Right. And now that's done. Right. Right. And that print was this this sort of everything was the mind. The mind, the mind, the mind. Yes, yes. And I one of my uh uh theses coming out of that is it it really ties to your you know, 1995, go meet with people and make the case for your value. Is I really think value is back in the body. Yeah. It's it's really like it is a it's the only way, it's the only way we're gonna see each other, is we gotta be back in the body. Um, which is again going places and sales versus marketing and you know all the themes of today's and you know, this is also you're talking about the ending of all things.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Postmodernism came after this this knowledge and mind focus, where now we've decided that we can't know anything and things things aren't universal truths. And so the the when when we talk to I don't know, my kids, I don't know about your kids, they're very much about the their intuition, how they're feeling about things, astrology is back, all of those things. And and that is that move from the mind into the body or to the to the sensing, however you want to talk about that. Um and and that's why getting back in person is a thing that people want to do, as from my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Absolutely. I think all of it is connected. All of it is this, you know, I don't know how all this works. I'm not as woo-woo as I might appear. Like we but these themes emerge, right? You know, the these, you know, the the idea of the word or or an organization of words as the coherent format for truth, it's just it's it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Yeah, it's over.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Because uh a lying machine can put words in sequence in a believable way. So words in sequence is just not a meaningful and it can do it at volume. It can do it at at the most massive scale imaginable. So us binding up words in a way, you know, again, from a guy who's about to publish a book, please buy my book. Us binding up words in sequence and saying, This is truth, react to it, it's kind of over. Which I the implications of that, again, I think will outlive us. I don't know that we in our lifetimes will fully capture that, but I think we're in the middle of it. Okay, well, now that we've solved all the philosophical problems of the age, Brad, we're gonna we're gonna introduce a new game.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

I can't wait.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Um, I've been promising this game. Um, you're gonna be the first player, and it is Hot Topic Knockout, and we've touched on some things, but the way that Hot Topic Knockout works is very simple. I've picked We go to a mall and we find a nerd and we knock him out. That's that's a Gen X reference. All you youths, all of you youths who don't know what a mall is or don't know what a hot topic is. Malls are back, Nick. I know, I know's are back. I blame Stranger Things. Um Okay, so we're gonna go through. I brought I've come up with 10 somewhat randomly generated hot topics. Only I mix them around a little bit just so it's not, you know, it's more fun. Yeah. Um we're gonna we'll start with two, and all you have to do is pick which one actually matters. Okay. Okay. And so, and then that one goes on to fight another round, and then eventually we get through them. And so you we're gonna just gonna discuss whether, and these are all like in the zeitgeist, people are chatting about them, et cetera. So I'm with a pretty straightforward game. I don't know if I keep need to keep explaining for the seventh time. All right, so topic number one is transition change of big name CEOs at Apple and Disney. I kind of clumped those into one. Yeah, sure. Okay. So Apple, and the end of the Tim Cook era. Yeah. Supposedly huge deal. Everything's gonna change.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Josh DeMarrow, now the CEO at Disney. He just announced we're one Disney. Apparently they weren't before, but we're one Disney. I mean, you gotta love a brand new president who comes out and delivers a speech that feels like it came out of Chat GPT. We're one Disney. Um, and his big phrase from the shareholders meeting was we're gonna technically use all of the resources of technology to advance the monetization of our IP.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Oh my lord. Now there's a mission statement for you. Mickey Mouse warms my heart. It warms my heart to hear that they're gonna monop monetize their IP. I know.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Use all the technology available. So, you know, like I'm sure Bell is just like, oh, thank God, you know, everybody's feeling good. Berkshire Hathaway also has a new CEO. Yeah, that's true. But I forgot about Berkshire Hathaway, yeah. So new CEOs of aging uh monopolies, so there's that. Yeah, it's competitor in the first round is that apparently tariffs are illegal.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Um Nick, this is like the shortest midget contest here. Like, I don't well, we're just a first round. We're interested, but my my my answer is neither of these matter, but I gotta pick one. Which one matters? Tariffs are illegal. I'm gonna pick tariffs are illegal. Tariffs are legal. And there's actually money involved in that one.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Okay, tariffs are legal. All right. Tariffs are legal is now up against the end of entry level. Entry level's over. Uh entry level jobs are over, all the college kids are screwed. End of entry level. So tariffs are legal versus the end of entry level. Which one matters?

SPEAKER_00 28:58

So I'm gonna pick the end of entry level, not because I believe that story, but I think that there the story behind that is there is gonna be a restructuring of what corporations look like. I don't know what that looks like, but I think it is gonna be significant. And so that matters to me more than terrace or illegal.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Okay, so let's play with that for a second. When you say the story is not true, or it's what do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

It is evident that there is less entry-level hiring. And um I don't think that's because of AI. That there's a lot of reasons why there's less entry-level hiring. Um, but obviously, in order to have a middle level, you need entry-level people to grow into the middle level, right? And I actually think the bigger threat is around the middle level. I'm not sure that middle managers survive in the same way that they are today. Humans still connect people, like project management cannot be done by a robot. Humans get things done, humans force decisions, humans create agreement about where we're going and what we're doing. So there's always going to be a role for that middle manager, but I think it's gonna be substantially different from what it is right now. And so, because we don't know who we need for middle managers, we're we're halting the hiring of young people because we don't know what we're making them into. And so I think this is more about uncertainty.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Interesting. Okay, I'm gonna have you put just put that little manager thing in a box because we might come back to it. We might come back to it. Okay. So we pick the end of entry level to continue, although we don't actually believe in it. Um end of entry level versus the open AI bubble. The that open AI is on the sticks. It's it's not, you know, he's CEO's gonna have Sam Altman's gonna have to go. The latest data point is that they need a 1900% revenue growth in the next four years. 1900 revenue growth in the next four years to break even. Holy cow.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

So uh it's your open AI take of the day. Uh, so I have been a bubble believer for a while. Um all infrastructure over builds. And um so whether it's open AI or Oracle, like like there's a lot of candidates to me for the coming uh AI apocalypse. Um the the the thing that is interesting is that I've actually found some useful uses for AI recently that made me uh make me a little less bubble, a little less buying the bubble. But I don't think OpenAI has managed their business very well. Is there a reckoning there? There's for sure a reckoning there. Does it matter? Not the then the entry-level job situation. I would say no. Uh well, here's the thing it matters to the stock market. The stock market is gonna go nuts when when the bubble bursts, and that may have huge economic impacts. But in terms of like the history of the earth, I think that the entry-level hiring is more significant.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

Okay. I mean, that's part of the game, right? Is we have what by what, you know, by what do we even decide what matters? Short term, long term, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's worthy of our zeitgeistiness? Okay, so we're gonna let entry level move forward. I will say that if I was a polymarket guy, I'm not, but I if I was a polymarket guy, I would put like $10 on Sam Altman being out as as CEO. I I would before that that that line keeps going up on polymarket, but uh before it gets too hot, I might put a little money on that. Um that we don't endorse gambling. Um, please don't sue us or whatever. Disclaimers are required. Um 800 gambling if you have a problem. Yeah, exactly. Okay, now conveniently, the end of entry level is now up against something sort of related to what you said manager burnout. Okay, so we are at a 10-year low of middle manager engagement. I don't know what measurement that is. We'll just take it for what it is. 71 per se they say they have um a massive increase in stress, yeah, and 40 percent are considering quitting. Now, I don't know what they're gonna do. Perhaps that's what I was gonna say. Yeah. Perhaps they're gonna build, you know, a scheme of 19 or 20 or 2,000 AI agents all compiling on top of each other. Um, but what's what's the bigger deal? The youths being unemployed or middle managers and their burnout and the confusion of that role.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

All right, so before I said that youth hiring was really a problem with we don't know what we want in the middle management. I I think the burnout in middle management is that the senior management doesn't know where they're going either. We we started off talking talking about the fog, and this is something that I'm working with a lot on leaders right now is thinking about okay, the fog is not going away. We're not the we're not gonna sit and wait for the fog to clear. So then what? And part of this this playing bigger and and thinking about being more open and expansive is we can't just agile our way to greatness. We actually agile is a response to a a goal, uh something powerful that we're drawing people towards. And then agile is a way of getting ourselves there. Agile is not a way to manage and lead. And so the the crisis to me is in is actually at the top where people are not clear about where they're going or why they're gonna get there because they're just not sure about the future. And so, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

No, I mean I just 100% agreement. I mean, I think part of what's happening in organizational leadership, and I'm you're talking to people about this, I'm talking to people about this, is the ground is has been shifting for so long and and continues to shift. I mean, I was on the phone with a software leader today. Um, he was sharing with me some conversation with another software leader, and they were talking about a topic, which I won't share because it's on our list. They were talking about a topic that three months ago didn't exist.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

And it was a multi-million dollar topic. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the old sort of Jack Welsh, hyperengineer, managerial class way of looking at a business would say, well, you just limit the variables and you pick what you know and you bet on, you know, you do risk management and all this kind of stuff. And and and the the operating system coming out of the sort of neoliberal 80s really was about using structure and controls as a way to do risk management. Right. And the reality is where we are today, and I think where we're gonna be for a long time, is we're gonna have to do risk management with trust. And that's scary as shit for people because we're not good at it.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

And and it's it's experiments, it's it's things that are gonna fail, it's trying stuff, right? And and and the trust is what even the challenge, and I think this is what's going on with the middle managers, is um when the leaders start to fail at some things, because they are they're gonna, they're trying crazy stuff in a in a risky environment. How do you keep those middle managers on board, believing that they're that what they're doing and what they're working towards is gonna create a reward for them or anybody else? And and so that that's where the trust I think is really important, is like we're all in this together. And and this is something that American business is terrible at is hey, we're gonna find a way to make this good for you and for us. This can't just be good for us. And and the the inchidification idea, like we're there's way too much good for us, bad for you, even in the ranks of a corporate American business.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

I mean, I my my theory has been, and I have seen this more and more, is that most founders, people who've made it through, and you know, you're at three million or five million or ten million or whatever, they don't instinctively love shareholder primacy. They don't wake up every day and go, hey, this is all about the shareholders getting their money out. Like, that's not even if they have VC money, that's not what they wake up for. Yeah. And I think if pressed, nerf gun to the head, they don't actually even believe in it. Right, right. But it's this water they've been swimming in. It's what their MBA program taught them, it's what the stuff they like. And so there's just this like slippage consistently in the American system of how you build a business into shareholder primacy, of doing things that are all about just capital getting paid, even people even by people who don't want to flee that way. Right. Like that's right. We there's we're gonna it requires a whole again back to playing large, a whole nother level of energy to resist that slippage into that system. Yeah. So so in terms of knockout, I'm sticking with the entry level uh hiring. Entry level. The kids, the kids are not all right. We're gonna continue with them. Okay, on further just heartwarming news. Uh maybe next time we play, there'll be some good news. Uh further heartwarming news is just just general macroeconomic decay, gas prices, inflation above the rate of wage growth, and the lowest, least active housing market in years. Years. So uh yeah, that sounds fun.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Um so can I ask you about that, um, Nick? In your neighborhood is the housing market down? That's a good question. I don't pay that much attention to it. Um I will tell you in Chicago, I think it's just kind of medium. We still have multiple offers on every house that goes on the market. The inventory is low. Now that's because Chicago has had a depressed housing market for 15 years, and so we're we're we're cheap relative to the the national market. I know that fewer houses have changed hands nationally, but l locally it's that's not a thing. However, high gas prices generally are counter cyclical to home sales because people don't have money. They're spending money on on gas and food and goods and things like that that go up when gas prices go up.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Um so macroeconomic sad signals or kids with no jobs.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

So I will say boy, that's a tough one. I might have to go macroeconomic signals because here's where these things play in is the the AI apocalypse combined with the macroeconomic signals could lead to a really difficult economic situation for everybody. Equity values drop, you know, if if we get into either hyperinflation or or just you know a a recessionary economy, that a lot of things go bad. Because there's we've we've got a lot of houses of cards where people are buy borrowing against equity instead of selling because they don't want to pay the taxes. And you know, there's a lot of stuff there stacked up out there. Now, the thing I will say, I was at a a talk last night with a bunch of private equity guys. They are doing deal more deals this year than they've done in the last five. And they don't care about interest rates. They're like, there's money to be made out there. So I don't know that I buy the doom and gloom in the economy, but there are definitely some bad signals there.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Well, I mean, that gets to just a larger discussion of what is the economy. And, you know, I mean, like we, you know, the K-shaped economy and blah, blah, blah. But but but the the reality of that is it too is the lived experience, uh, you know, it's very easy for this to degrade into class warfare, but the relivance of a certain class experience of a you know, middle class and below is very different than people who are entertaining private equity offers. You know, it just it it it's a lot of different things. Well, but these things become hard to talk about, I guess is I think my point.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Well, and this is what I also say about, you know, when the when the tech bros are like, we're gonna eliminate half of all jobs. You eliminate half of all jobs, you got pitchforks and and torches at every data center. Like that that is not gonna happen. That's just not in a political reality. Yeah. And so so the that the bigger story to me, if you talk about the K-shaped economy, is when that does erupt into violence. Because it it can't continue, you can't continue to extract from a c a particular class for the benefit of another class without ending up in the French Revolution.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Yeah, yep. And off with their heads. Um okay, speaking of class warfare, yes, we're gonna bring in our friend because he was mentioned earlier, our friend Larry Ellison has now entered the chat. Now, I don't think he's gonna make it in the knockout, but we do so we're we're just calling this broadly Oracle problems. Yes, Oracle problems. So laying off a pregnant woman uh via email, a five fifty-eight billion dollar debt binge to pay for their data center build-out, and billions of dollars out the door to pay for Golden Boy David Ellison's purchase of Warner Brothers that they had to get backed by the Saudis to pay for. So how how just first before we we kind of know what who's gonna win here, but maybe Larry Ellison's gonna win. But how are we feeling about Larry Ellison today? How what's going on what's going on with the the the great man of Oracle?

SPEAKER_00 42:06

I mean, Nick, isn't this just rich white guys doing what rich white guys do? Maybe, maybe. I mean, I I I I I can't get my dander up about some billionaire like squandering his wealth on stupid ideas. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it, Larry. Hey, have at it. I mean, I don't care. I know. There are gonna be a ton of people who currently work in in organizations where they make good money and and have a productive life that are gonna have a hard time because Larry's an idiot. But that's been true for I don't know, I don't know, 220 years, maybe more than yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

It is interesting though. It does feel like we're entering a little bit into the season where and maybe it's the age of some of the folks. I mean, Larry's not young. Not young. But some of these guys, it is getting a little bit into silly season. It's like you you clearly are so wealthy, you don't even uh you don't even like this make any sense. Yeah. Yeah, like it doesn't anyway. I I have a little bit of a place in my heart to of sadness and anger and rage at David Ellison destroying Warner Brothers. But that I, you know, I assume we're gonna make gas prices and and macroeconomic signals go on.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:13

Um okay, for sake of time, we're gonna skip one that we kind of already talked about, but we'll go to a different one that kind of has a positive spin to it. Social media's big tobacco moment. So the social media platforms were found liable for the death of children um and influencing children and all of these kind of things. And again, don't DM me that I didn't get that exactly right. I'm not a lawyer. Um But all, you know, pundits of that class seem to say that this is the beginning of many more things coming where the platforms are gonna be held accountable. That may include the AI platforms who are literally talking teenagers into suicide and into mass shootings. Um yeah, are we finally gonna reckon with the terrible societal? Side effects of these things like we did with tobacco at once one time.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

Okay, so let's let's go there. What did the big tobacco moment actually do to big tobacco?

SPEAKER_01 44:11

I'm not so worried about that.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

I just meant I could go somewhere and have dinner and not be smoked at. Right. But what actually happened are we got warning labels on cigarettes and tobacco companies sold their tobacco internationally instead of in America. That's right. So so I don't really feel like there was some huge reckoning. And I don't think there's going to be some huge reckoning with social media. I mean, my kids already feel like the less time I spend on social media, the better. In fact, the less time I spend on the computer, the better. And so I think the problem is solving itself, uh, which is largely what happened with cigarettes also. So yeah, I don't think this is a I don't think this matters.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

I know. I I like to think of, you know, I like to sort of dream of sort of a uh, I don't know, some great legal 90s thriller moment in the courtroom scene. But at the end of the day, you're right. These the the lawsuits are always the lagging indicators. Like way, way, way, way, way lagging indicators. And the culture has moved.

SPEAKER_02 45:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Um Meta's gonna make money for years and years and years and years and years. But the New York Times piece came out this week of uh that got a lot of play about Meta as uh you know a zombie company basically living off of its own carcass for decades to come, but that the fundamentals of what made the company what it was is over.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

I think the fundamentals of what made the company what it was was over in 2014. Yeah. That was the last time it was fun or interesting to be on so on on meta platforms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:37

Okay. So we've still got macroeconomic singles. The very last one, you know, this is more of like is the broad more important than the narrow. So last one is the cost of tokens, GitHub co-pilot, going to user-based. Basically, you know, all of all of the underlayment that's creating the AI bubble and the AI infrastructure is burning money, right? This is the example of the leader. I the leader I told you.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

Major corporation, they went and took a bunch of people and did a big um, you know, code thing. Um, and they're and then they they got back in the CFO, like had a panic attack because they burned through one a million dollars in tokens in one day. Yeah. Yeah. So macroeconomic, is that is that the story that we or this sort of like disruption in the narrative of the of the AI revolution? I guess is maybe holding it.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

So here's where uh here's where the fog comes in, Nick, because I could tell one story that says insidification is coming, the tokens are gonna get more expensive, but not until once you put all your infrastructure into AI, then they jack up the rates so that you have to pay it, right? And pretty soon you're paying more for tokens than you would have for your entry-level person. That is one story. The other story is right now there's a bunch of Chinese models that you can buy for pennies on the dollar. And we're building data centers bigger than Manhattan, they have to sell those tokens to someone. It's actually possible that token costs are gonna go down in the future and not up. Now, if that happens, what happens to this huge investment? It all goes underwater, and now we're back to you know, recession or depression or whatever. I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen with that.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Yeah, it's it's interesting because um, you know, I I have heard this sort of like I heard heard somebody make the comparison that the token pricing, you know, sort of roller coaster, they made the comment of it's being similar to cell phone minutes, you know, in the early 90s. You know, it's like at one point it was this astronomical thing. Right. How good can cell phones be if it costs six dollars just to make one phone call and blah, blah, blah. And I like I kind of get that. I, you know, but again, then I then you've reinforced that the financial model of the whole thing doesn't really work, which is own consequences. The question I have about the China thing, and I raised this to somebody online and they didn't like it, um, is uh because I'm genuinely interested. I'm like, why so the last time we had a massive you know, global industry thing that had that was monopoly driven, had a ton of price risk for everybody, and the US decided, hey, we're just gonna build all our infrastructure around this thing. And then we found an uh an external international source for it that was cheap. And then that source was like, aha, suckers, basically, basically created the neoliberal wave that we're still suffering from now. Yeah. And that was the oil crisis of the late 70s. Right. So the US builds its entire system around oil, says, oh, well, U.S. oil is expensive. I know what we'll do. We'll buy it from the Middle East where it's cheap. So we buy it from the Middle East where the Middle East cheap. And the Middle East, not dummies, are like, I know, we're gonna jack up the price. Basically destroys the entire framework in America for broad-based prosperity. Says, oh, let's don't do that. Stop, you know, stop taking, stop, stop taking in taxes, stop building societal infrastructure, stop doing everything. We just got to get as much money as possible because oil, right? Yeah, right. And now we're doing it again. I know history repeats itself, but my gosh, the China, the China tokens thing feels like it's oil all over again to me.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Yeah, it could be. It it definitely could be. I don't know what to think about that either, Nick. I'm I'm gonna be honest. Uh right now, I'll take the price arbitrage. And, you know, the the the unstoppable force and the immovable object is the amount of capital that's going into US data centers. And, you know, if if that collapses, which again, if we overbuild infrastructure, what happens is the price of that collapses, then we get cheap tokens in America again. So I I don't know. I don't know. I'm not smart enough for that one.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

Okay, so we have we just we decide what you I think we took macroeconomics past social media, or did you pick social media? Yeah, took past social media. No, I took macro macroeconomics versus tokens.

SPEAKER_00 50:06

What's what what should we be caring about right now? I think macroeconomics is more likely to be real than than token cost. I think token cost has a lot of uncertainty around it, and macroeconomics, we know what the gas prices are.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

So yeah, okay. You guys, you heard it here. You send it to all your friends, share it on social media. We have decided that the only thing you need to be thinking about is gas prices right now. That's it. Everything else, secondary way downfield for that. Can I revise that, Nick?

unknown 50:35

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

The only thing that you should be thinking about is meeting people who can pay you money. That's the only thing that you should be thinking about. Not gas prices, not token costs, not whether big companies are hiring people, is where can you meet people who could be your future customers? That's the thing you should be thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting. I agree with you, of course. And I think in some ways this is all kind of sort of comes full circle to this idea of, you know, uh showing up in the world and living in uns with uncertainty and all of that. I do think it's interesting, and I didn't plan this. I did I have no idea what you were gonna pick. I do think it's interesting that that where we landed is something that is the most personal in some ways of all of it. Yeah. Or at least sort of universally personal. Obviously, no entry-level jobs is personal to the people involved. And I do think that's related to being leaders and founders and people who can walk people through uncertainty.

SPEAKER_00 51:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Like I remember, you know, as I'm in my 20s and I was like, you know, trying to be a hotshot leader guy. And I was like, oh, we talk about substantive things and people don't want to talk about the weather and blah, blah, blah. Well, people do want to talk about the weather.

SPEAKER_02 51:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

Right. Because they want to talk about shared experience. And the reason why everywhere you go, the only thing few people need to know what to say about is, oh my God, the gas prices, right? Um, you know, my 16-year-old kid, oh my god, the gas prices. I'm like, and there's a part of it's like, well, gosh, isn't there something more we could say? And I think in many cases, these ideas like, oh my god, the gas prices is just a code. It's a, it's a, it's a traveling metaphor for a lack of feeling in control. Yeah. Right. It is, it is, it's just, it's just this week's code for the fog.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Yes. And and in fact, almost every one of those topics you could say that about. They're all things that are outside of our control and are super complicated. And if you talk to my wife, she'd say, we don't know the real story about any of those anyway. Right? And so the the the leaders that I'm working with, I'm like, what can you work on? What can what is within your sphere of influence? Let's focus there, let's keep our time there and our energy there.

unknown 52:41

There.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

And and and just the incredible important work of how do we build things that are resilient to the fog. Yeah. Because it's not going anywhere. It just really, I didn't know that that was going to be our theme today, but it really is our theme today. The fog's not going anywhere. And and it does require to the kind of early part of our conversation, it requires us to think differently about how we organize our businesses, what middle managers do, how we think about financial structure, how we hold leadership in our own bodies and in responsibility. Like it's fascinating to me, and I think so central to why this podcast exists that kind of everything's up for discussion because there's so much of a past way of being that has needs to be composed. And it's not easy. It's hard on everybody, but it does get easier when we're we're doing it together, you know?

SPEAKER_00 53:33

It's legitimately true. The most profound transformation that I've experienced this year was in groups, in groups of people.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

All right, Brad, my man, thank you. Thanks for hanging with me. Thanks for giving us all the wisdom on all the ideas. Brad will be back. We're gonna bring him back in season three, maybe more than one time. If you're listening now, that is a reminder that we are almost on our way to season three. And season three is another massive upgrade of Damn's Given. We're taking it to a whole other place. More content, more structure, not like more volume, but more density and more meaning and um really delivered in a way so that you can take each episode and go, okay, here's how this applies to me. Here's what I want to do with it. The skinny episodes are always going to be really topical and kind of meditations for you as a leader to think about and apply. And then the interview episodes are really to stretch our intellectual capacity and go, okay, how are smart people thinking about complicated things and giving a damn about stuff that matters? So where we kind of expand and contract, expand and contract. If you have ideas or requests or things that you want us to do, make sure you're emailing us at pod emailing me, actually it goes directly to me at podcast at culturecraft.com. You can get all of the back episodes on video on our YouTube channel. Uh, just search for Damsgiven with Nick Richmeyer on YouTube, or you can find both the episodes and various commentary that I've done on other topics at damnsgiven.com. If you're like, God, that Nick guy is so freaking cool, I would love to work with him. We're wait listing some things on culturecraft.com so you can see there some ways that we can work together as my opportunity opens up. We want to have those wait lists available. But at the end of the day, what I'm here for is all of us reconnecting with ourselves and each other and getting back to the business of expansion. We have been in this contractive, extractive system that seems to be overwhelming us over and over and over again. And it doesn't have to be this way. We can lead, we can run our ventures, and we can build opportunities in a way that builds trust, compounds trust, breaks down the distrust that's happened and actually function and grow in expansive ways. I know you want that, I want that, and we're using our time together here on Dams Given to help build it together. Thanks for your time today. We'll see you next time.