 Hi folks. Top of the morning to you, wherever you are in the world. I'm Bill Siger. I'm here with my friend and guest, Phyllis Horner, and we're going to be talking to you today about working in the 21st century economy. The workforce is changing faster than any of us can imagine that it would have. Phyllis, you talk about getting stuck in a job. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean two things. Disengaged and feeling like you don't have a lot of mobility. So those two things. Disengaged meaning I don't like my boss, I don't like the money, I don't like the commute, they don't treat me right, I'm bored, disengaged, and like Gallup has been studying that for years, right? And then the mobility part of I'm afraid, maybe no one else will want me, it's too hard to start over, my husband will not or wife will not be happy with me, so perceived lack of mobility. So together that makes people feel stuck. Have you ever been stuck? I've been stuck. Yeah, I worked with the state for 20 years and the last seven were in a situation where I was to keep my mouth shut and do what I was told and wait out until I could retire, which I did at 55. Well, that's lucky that you were out at 55, but that's a hollow feeling inside, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. When your job has no purpose, you're just kind of lost. Right. Yeah. And what do you feel, a lot of people now are in their fifties and sixties and are no longer employed, they've been laid off, what options do they have? That's a tough question, Bill. It depends, like if the person's been laid off from a job that they held for a long time and then they're looking at it from the lens of I want the same exact thing that I lost, man, that's probably not going to happen after a year. Their entire identity is wrapped up in that job. Right. When I was a forester, I could tell people I was a forester. Right. When I was retired, I told them I'm a consultant and they say, oh, you're unemployed. Oh, is that right? Do you look up unemployed in the dictionary as a consultant? Yeah, right. Well, I think the other thing that people that have been out of work for a while and people are terrified of this happening to them and that's why a lot of people stay in jobs they hate, is they have to reskill themselves and they have to think about having a plan where they push through their own fears and maybe they need some help to do that because, you know, my sense of people is they are most of us are just one or two or three paychecks away from having that terrifying feeling. Here in Hawaii, right? A lot of us. What are two paychecks from being on the street? Exactly. Exactly. And so if you're in that situation yourself, no matter what you feel about it, you have to figure out how do I reskill and how do I get myself up and think about new options and, you know, Bill is a living example. Bill, you're a living example of somebody that works remote. You work helping people make money on the web, right? Yes. Right. So you don't have to show up, dress in a suit, do any of that stuff that you might have had to do in your other lives, right? Right. Yeah, working from home has an awful lot of advantages and disadvantages because I work from the time I get up to the time I go to bed and that's something that entrepreneurs do. And what I try to do is to develop an intermittent business that provides a recurring income and a sustainable income. And so if you're developing that kind of business and you are working 12 hours a day, you may need to do that to get the system set up. But you don't want to do it on a long term basis because it's not duplicable. Or you're just replacing. People need to be able to develop business while they keep their job. Well, that's a great point. And actually something that prevents that sense of getting laid off and having nothing as an option is to have a plan while you're still working. And especially at mid-career and later and mid-career being whatever you think mid-career is probably for you is 20 or something. But, you know, for most people, it's in their 40s or early 50s. They go, oh, my gosh, I have less time in this kind of work than before. But you don't have that. You have a lot more time left to live, right? So getting started, like you're saying, is so smart. And I work a lot with women professionals and executives. And one of the biggest barriers that they walk in the door with, almost everyone, is that they feel like they're cheating their current employer. If they take two hours to network at lunch, or even one hour, or that they go home at night, and they're working on an online course for some other certification or something, they think they're cheating. I think they're smart. And so we have to start with a meet towards, you know, how do you help somebody figure out that that's what they ought to do? You're writing a third of your life to your employer. And your obligation to your employer is to give them 100% during that third. Now, we talk of, you know, our life is focused on helping the employer rather than managing our career. And when you think about your career, yeah, I retired because I had a boss that was probably not ideal. And I was 55, so I could retire, that's my retirement. I was lucky because the state pays my health insurance. That's a big deal for a lot of people. It is. And I had a friend who was seriously ill and needed help to run his business. So everything came together at one time. And I made that move. Right. And you looked for the opportunity. You saw the writing on the wall with that boss, the opportunity found me really. Yeah. And if you write, so my take on things, and I know it's a little bit radical. If you if you think of life in the old way, to say that helping your career managing career helps your company. And I have a lot of people that I know this is true for because if you stay relevant, if you're learning and you're growing, then you will not be one of the people that they consider obsolete. If you don't manage your career beyond what they tell you to do every day. I mean, that's a really high risk, especially when you get in your late 50s and beyond. Yeah. You know, right? The world is changing so fast. Why would they want a person that isn't learning anymore? I have friends that either were laid off just before they could vest their retirement. Oh my goodness. And that is not a coincidence, by the way. Or they retired. And they come to me and they say, Well, I love helping my grandchildren and being with them. But there's got to be more and I feel lost. I don't know what to do. Yeah. And I think that's where the wing men can help. Right. When you might want to talk about that a little bit, because there's this concept called wing men and and wing women that in this group we're in that we've coined. And maybe, Bill, you want to talk about what that is? We help people strategize their career. And as you say, you can come to work tomorrow. And there's no loyalty in the job anymore. Because people change jobs so often, businesses are reluctant to invest in training and employee. So the on the job training aspect of you're lucky, if you're in a business where they care about your career development, you've got to take control of that yourself. Right. And look at the changes that are going to happen in the workplace. Right. Google just introduced the first store where you can walk into the store, pick your stuff off the shelf, put it in the cart, right? Walk out of the store. Google reads the credit card in your pocket. That's really scary, Bill. My husband charges you for this stuff when you go out. Yeah. And there's no clerks and there's no waiting line. Well, see, that's another figure that they're going to have that technology in all the big chains within the next 10 years. Right. So how many million and a half jobs? How many of our jobs are going to be obsolete? Right. Right. Exactly right. And and so we're just going along, you know, like an autopilot, right? Or even as I say, the passengers in the in our own career car, we're just like assuming things will be the way they were. And they're never going to be that way again. They're never going to be that way again. This is where the remote remote work comes in and other options, right? Employers are looking for employees that can be adaptable can solve problems. And they really don't care what your educational credentials are that they they're looking for people that can work with and control those machines. Yeah, I know. I mean, even when they bring a manufacturing plant back to the US, how many people will really be employed there compared to like in the 80s, right? Right. So it used to be that a drill rig had 30 people on their crew. Now they have three. And the guy is using a toggle stick and he's the teenager that played the games with his thumbs, he's got the reactions that can control that machine. Right. And by the way, speaking of teenagers and younger people, did you know that the stats I look at the stats on how many people are disengaged or not passionate about their work? And overall across the United States, it's two out of every three people are not interested in their work, they're not passionate about their work. They don't find it fulfilling. No, they and then if you look at the Gallup stats, over half of people are quote unquote disengaged, which means that the employer is not getting 100% out of them. In millennials, the recent study is that 80% of them are looking for new jobs already. And only 6% actually take a new job. Oh, and so they have barriers to probably student loans, or, you know, not sure whether they're they've been there long enough, or maybe it's still the honeymoon period, you know, because no one's disengaged in the honeymoon period. It's kind of always after that. So it doesn't just apply to middle late career, it applies to everybody in any job because the way that we've been working is going away as Bill's been saying, and what's going to come in its place is going to have to be us managing earlier and earlier and more actively our careers than we were used to coming along, right? Right. Even up till past 67, way past 67. We were approaching the midpoint and we need to take a break. Okay. So we'll do that. Okay, so I'm Crystal, if you haven't tuned into QuokTalk before, you better do it because you're missing out on all the information. We talk about sex, we talk about religion, we talk about everything and nothing. So we've got two gentlemen here going to validate that, right? Greg Kinkley and Roy Chu. What's your take on the importance of talking about these issues? It's very important. It's two, I think, expressing ideas and exchanging ideas that we come to a better understanding of the world and each other. And without that, we live in ignorance and fear. And fear is based on ignorance. Amen, Greg. What more could I say than that? Something in Yiddish. I think it was on my mind. Come, listen to QuokTalk Tuesday mornings. Hi, I'm Nicole Alexandreinos, and I was born three weeks ago. Congratulations on being there for me for some of the few weeks of my life. I'm starting a new show, The Millennial Mind, every Wednesday at 2pm for the month of April, where we'll go over some of the reasons why millennials are some of the most anxious and frustrated people at the moment. Yeah, we're back. I'm Bill Seger, and we're talking with Dr. Phyllis Horton about the workplace in the 21st century and how it will affect your career. And we're looking at a Twitter question. It sounds like you are talking about work, place, trauma. How does one deal with it? An interesting question, you know, I had a boss who took great pleasure in controlling the lives of his employees, and he wasn't trying to make it a better life. And that's workplace trauma. Oh, there are a lot of kinds. That's one big one. You're right. One is your boss. One is, you know, have you ever gone to a potluck outside in the summer, and you have this paper plate, and you start out and you put like the burger, and then you put the macaroni salad, and you know, whatever on the plate. And then just imagine another kind of workplace trauma is that the next year, your boss says, Oh, you still have all this stuff on your plate. Let me add another heaping scoop of rice on top of that. That's all the work you have to do in the year. So a lot of people have trauma because the work is just added to it's never taken away. And I guess a third kind of trauma is you feel like a fraud. There's a time in every person's career where and sometimes it just kind of comes and goes where you feel like a fraud like I am not up to this next thing. And that causes trauma as well. So how to deal with it. If you're in a full time job, and they have an EAP, you go talk to the EAP. If it is not resolved that way, then what you really have to do is start a digging deep yourself, maybe get a coach or look at going to your HR guys to talk with them about reassigning you to different kind of work. If it's illegal, this is not what I'm talking about. If they're discriminating or they're doing something illegal, then this is not what I'm talking about. I'm only talking about the trauma that happens with a normal course of work these days. But finally, I would say the bottom line, Bill, is when we have workplace trauma, we have to find a way that we reset and have the courage to make a change to be in work that matches who we already are, matches who we believe our purposes on earth. And I know that you talk about blue zone, right? Yeah. And that matches our skills and something that we're not going to be dreading getting up in the morning. And that is a process that takes time. Yeah. Just like any kind of trauma takes to get through, right? Well, the blue zone people studied communities around the world where people live exceptionally long, healthy and productive lives. Is Hawaii in there? Is Hawaii in there? No, actually. Okinawa is. And one of the things that they do with young people is to develop a marae. And that's where their parents select four or five children in their friends group. And those dozen children form a hui. Oh, no kidding. That exists all their lives. And the whole purpose of it is to support each other. Well, somebody's having trouble, you help them. If somebody needs to start a business, you come together to find financing for them. So that prevents the kind of trauma that we... I think it's a good point. You know, in our society, we compete with each other our whole lives. Why? Because it's efficient for employers to have employees compete against each other. I don't know if you ever thought about that. But this hui idea, which millennials actually bring to the workplace now, it doesn't matter what the boss says to the millennials, because they have that hui outside of other people that they collaborate with. Whereas when we grew up, if you were to talk to your co- worker, you were competing, you were giving them some advantage that they didn't need to have. Right? I'm just reading the Twitter note up here. Oh, I didn't see this one. It fits very much with what you're saying. The question is, if you absolutely don't love your job, but you're being emotionally abused, do you quit? And I think of Fox News and the means of dollars they've spent to settle sexual harassment cases and emotional abuse, whether it's at home or in the job, is totally appropriate. And I think back to where I was working with the forestry and the job that I described in. And you either put up with it, you find a lawyer, or you quit. And one of the things about managing your career is that you make sure that you have the qualifications to be able to find that other job, and you don't quit until you have a job or an income. Well, I don't know. I don't know anymore, because I think if you're in, there are a lot of kinds of emotional abuse. And one of the worst is where someone doesn't pay any attention to you at all. And then when you do something quote-unquote wrong, that's when you hear from them. You only hear, right? You only hear like, oh, you screw up again. Well, guide me, man. And so in that situation, what I would recommend is that they get, there are a lot of books out there on changing your career to match who you are. And one of the things that's important, and people don't do, is when they're feeling a push like that. When you guys feel like it's coming in, it's not good. We tend to pull in, we don't reach out. We don't go out and say, oh, it's just not a match anymore. I should probably look for a better kind of a company that treats people better, like a best place to work, that's really a best place to work, and how would you know? Your network or whatever. What we do instead is when we're feeling abused emotionally or even just rejected, let's just say that, in any way, we usually pull in. There's some kind of an internal shame to that, and we have to get through that. It's not the actual case. The case is that this situation that used to work, it doesn't work anymore. And you know, how do you get that courage? Well, you should just know that it's normal. It's just normal that things don't always last forever, and we want them to because it's more efficient, it's easier, we don't have to explain anything to anybody else. But it doesn't happen like that in work, and now it's speeding up. What are the common elements that people face when they're in this kind of a situation and they need to make a midlife career change? Well, I kind of think of it like a yin and yang, because the yang part, the external part, is do I have the right skills or is it a good time in the economy or will I have health benefits? Those are all the external things. So dealing with those, that's one set. And then the yin part or the internal part of the barriers that you have to get through are am I good enough or am I being selfish? Or you know, a favorite one is how am I going to explain this to my peers? I feel like I'm letting them down if I leave or do something new, and especially if you go work for yourself, that whole set of barriers is a little different, right? You end up with why would you give up something secure? Like you said, oh wait till you have another income before you leave. Well, wait till you have enough reserves that you can get through some period of time where your business grows before you leave, right? Right. I'm very much involved in helping people develop their personal resiliency, and it's two factors. One is personal and being prepared for an emergency. When we get hit with a hurricane, we're going to have to feed ourselves and our family for a month. You order food online? And do you have that, do you have the capability to cook and have food without electricity, without water? I mean, you've got to have a gallon of water per person per day for a month. That's a lot of water. So how about for your career then? That's the financial resiliency, and I believe that everybody has to have a residual income that's sustainable, that they can depend on, and I believe that the internet gives them the possibility to do that in a big way. No matter what their education level, sorry to interrupt, but no matter what their education level or what job they're down. The internet doesn't care whether you're male, female, or anything else. Right. It doesn't care what color you are, what age you are. It only cares if you can solve the person's problem that's coming to you for help. There you go, right? So that's a good way to build resiliency, I agree. Yeah, I agree. So the thing that other people miss though is that if you have the financial wherewithal to quit, people don't always still quit. They're afraid that they'll be perceived as going backwards in their finances and that they, like say they have a child that could use some of that money. So they'll just, we get all tied up in ourselves, you know. We have the resources to quit and sometimes we still don't. Yeah, and we talked a little bit about purpose. You need to know what your purposes in life is. Why do you, why, why are you here on this earth? And when you know that, then you can develop a business that is consistent with your values and you're going to be challenged and and happy to be pursuing what's important to you. Can I comment on that? Because I think that's absolutely true. What you said is really, really profound. The only thing that my, the folks that I know and I've helped, they think there's that one purpose. It isn't like that. Over our careers we end up with, right? How many times have you reinvented yourself? So you have a different purpose. We're out of time, so we're going to have to say goodbye to our audience for now. We'll be back on the 19th at one o'clock and we're here with the Think Take Away live streaming networking event and we want to thank the people of Think Take Away for this opportunity to talk with you. Aloha, Liv Pono.