 Thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you again from New Workforce Hawaii and New Workforce Hawaii is a membership organization, a strategic membership organization by exclusive invitation. So if anybody is listening today and likes what we're talking about, we'd love to hear from you. When Rob Kinslow, who's my guest and co-founder, and I first met, we started talking about sustainability and we were particularly interested in the sustainability of people. Things are changing. They're changing radically. When you think about the impact of longevity, one in four Hawaiians is over 60. When you think about the impact of technology, all of us are going to be impacted in our jobs either by learning to use it or by losing those particular jobs. And when you think of data and other things that are coming in today in artificial intelligence, one result that's really important is how we're going to work. So get rid of the word job and give me the word work, please, as a privilege. Jobs are one way of working, but by far not the first way. So we've decided to try to help people see other ways to work that's coming with the future and why it matters. And we've written one book on it, our first book, which you're welcome if you write to us at newworkforcehawaii.com. We'll be happy to give you a free copy. Our second book is The New Workforce Hawaii and it's all about ways to work, not where, but ways. So if you think about working today for yourself, you could be an entrepreneur, you could be a solopreneur, a single entrepreneur. A single, you could be a free agent. There's any number of ways that you can work for yourself that are just as vital, just as exciting, and sometimes many times much more rewarding than working for someone else in the job that you're stuck in. Why do I say that? I'm probably the oldest person you've ever seen on YouTube. I work full time and it's all fun. I work full time and it's all meaningful. I work full time and my energy is better than it's ever been. So think about that when you're working in your job. Is there another way to look to work? And I thought I'd bring up with Rob a couple of those ways. One, because Rob is an expert in the idea of portfolio work. He will explain what portfolio work is and then tell you a little bit about it so you can look at this as an alternative to going to get a job for someone else. So Rob, when did you start working in the portfolio way? Well, I used to be an aerospace engineer and I had a full-time job with great benefits and then I had a crisis and my mom got sick and so I went to help her and when I was out there doing that, helping her, I realized I didn't really want to go back to full-time work. So I traveled around the world and when I did that, I saw that people worked in different ways all around the world. And when I got to Hawaii, I went, well, maybe I can become my own person and start some type of small business. And so I started investigating what my competencies were and then expressing those in the community for free or for free or in different ways depending on the circumstances. And so over the years, it's just become a way of life for me that I have a multi-talented with a diverse background and a bunch of different competencies from writing to speaking to wellness, coaching, all these things that I now kind of have created small businesses in each of those niches. So a portfolio worker is somebody, but so I just came to this kind of ad hoc because of my own way of being, not really because I was saying, oh, I want to be a portfolio worker. But today, because there's so much disruption in the workplace, you can choose a number of these different ways that you have laid out in the latest book to supplement your income or to actually build multiple streams of income should you get laid off or lose your job or lose your benefits. And so I think that portfolio working, you have to have the ability to jump from project to project from hour to hour or from time segment to time segment. You have to be able to switch gears very quickly. So that's one key aspect of the portfolio worker. I love portfolio work. I had done it for years. And what I like about it is that you always have an investment. So if you think about it, compare it to a stock portfolio. So you have something for long-term gain. You have something for short-term income. And maybe you have something for the common good for your community. That to me was seductive. It sounded like a way to live and call work part of living instead of calling living part of work, as so many people do. And you were a top-notch graduate from the university here, weren't you? Yes. And so you had a long investment. Yeah, in sustainable development, yes. And sustainable. So how do you see sustainable work in what we do? Well, you've helped me see that, actually. So much of my sustainable development education was about encouraging and promoting sustainability in organizations and institutions and communities. But what about sustainability for the person, for the individual? I mean, what happens if we have another economic downturn and many full-time workers lose their jobs? Do they have a backup? Is unemployment going to be there given this current political climate? We don't know. And neither do you. And so I would urge people with full-time jobs out there to start looking at what are your core competencies? And how can you express those in the community? Where are the needs? Where do people need what you know? Or need what your skills are? Need a little bit of your experience? How can you help others move beyond their 9 to 5 job? Because the 21st century is going to be radically different. It already is radically different from the 20th century. Less stability, more volatility, and more disruption. Technology is going to disrupt all of our lives when it comes to income and jobs, so-called jobs in the coming decades. So let's be prepared. And that's where the sustainable person comes in, is that you take a long-term view. You start parsing out your time and your energies and your abilities in a way that you can reap income from those areas. And, you know, it's so interesting, because when we talk about sustainability, we're always talking about the earth and the water, all of which are critically important. But it comes down to how are we going to self-sustain, especially with the longer lifetimes that I've mentioned. I promise you something. You go out at age 60 years old and apply for a job. Don't call, because you won't be getting one most of the time. But if you have a strategy and you have something you can do that the world needs, that the market needs, they will be very happy to engage you in other ways. But I don't know too many 60, 65-year-olds who don't run into big problems, even 50-year-olds, in getting regular jobs. Yeah, and, I mean, you mentioned 60 years old, you know, for many of us, or for our parents' generation, in your generation, 60 was the time you retired. But given that we're going to be living longer in the millennials' generation, they may have another 20 years worth of working after they reach 60. So what are you going to do for that time? Exactly. How are you going to, you know, if pensions go away, which, you know, most pensions are underfunded and not guaranteed, then where is your retirement going to come from? You're going to have to work. And what does work mean? And that's where I've learned so much from you about what are these alternative ways to work, and then delighted to realize that I'm actually already kind of ahead of the curve participating in this new world of work when I really didn't even know that that was. I just thought I was struggling to weave together these threads of income together, which actually, that's a new way to work. So that's very encouraging to me to receive that perspective. Well, I love it because the one thing I will tell you about being on the 80th time of life, I have no problem getting work. None. I have something to do every day of my life. What a great feeling it is to still be important, to still matter, to still have things to do, to still come down here and have a YouTube show, to be able to still stand up and be counted with the other people in your community. But it's not just us. It's not just us, meaning this, us. It really is happening that if you look at it, the average length of employment in the private sector is less than four years. Are you ready for that? So when I was young and went to work, you'd say 20, 25 years, and that was kind of the sum total. But now, if you're going to live another 20, 25 years from when your parents did, what are you going to do with that precious time? So work, let's get clear. It needn't be for a fee. It can be for free. It's still work. So we're working on Make-A-Wish for Saturday night. That's a volunteer organization that really is a wonderful, wonderful organization. But it's work to work for them and to get things ready for that. So that's one way, the portfolio. Well, and one thing you've helped me with is to realize that even if work is for free in the sense that you're not getting paid, there always has to be an exchange of energy. And there always has to be something in it for you. That's right. And so what is that thing that's in it for you that you receive from this work that you're doing for free? Well, it's funny you should say that because you've been a Hogan mentor at Shamanad. And when I talked with the kids and volunteered to help them to do something, they would always say, oh great, come help me. And I'd say to them always, what's in it for me. And then people typically turn around to you and say, well, I don't have any money. I didn't say money. But you're right. That exchange is really a beautiful thing to continue to feel part of something important. What other ways are you interested in working besides portfolio? Well, I think portfolio and freelancing are very close together. In other words, some of portfolio work can be considered freelancing. But freelancing has a certain openness about it where, oh, whatever comes along, you'll take. Or it's like a temp, almost. Not so much of temp because temporary workers are actually kind of working for organizations and you're required to do the work that the organization wants you to do. Whereas freelancers, you get to choose a little bit more of what you want to do. But you're still going for opportunity as it comes. Whereas portfolio workers are more, you can actually limit. And by that, I mean, you can reduce the amount of distractions you have by saying, what are my core competencies that society and the market needs? And how can I align myself with my core competencies with market needs? And that's what the beauty, I think, of the portfolio, much like a stock portfolio, you can choose the stocks you want to purchase. You can choose to buy a stock that's doing social good as opposed to one that's not. That's only for profit. So that's the beauty of portfolio working. What are some of the other ways of working? Well, go back to freelancing for just a moment because the fastest growth in all of the U.S. is freelancing. Wow. So I want you to look it up. Don't just take our word for it. Go look at it. But somewhere around 35, 37% of the workforce are freelancing. Already? Yes. And the reason for that is, if you're not needed full-time, you're not going to be hired full-time. So I need what you do, Rob, but I only want it on Tuesdays. And so you might say, well, great, I'll be happy to do that. I freelance, but I do other things as well. One of my freelance is really virtual work, which is another way to look at it. So I write for clients, and it's great. I don't have to go anywhere. I don't have to be interviewed. They take my writing, my 12 books, and say this is the style I like. I want this kind of writing. So there's freelancing and temping, and all of which are really important to understand. There's no disgrace in it. There was a time, if you change jobs too often, you were seen as some kind of a job hopper. Now, believe this or not, if you stay too long, you're the stick of the butt. You're considered dead wood, yeah. And I heard recently, I read a very interesting statistic that I'm a Gen Xer, so in my generation and Boomer generations, if you had one to three jobs in your lifetime, that's as much as you were going to have. But in millennials' lifetime, they're projecting that they will have up to 14 different jobs by the time they're 38, which is really not even halfway through their career, because now mid-career is 50, not 40, or 35. And so because we're living longer, we're working longer. So mid-career is now 50. So yes, I think that's a very interesting fact. And employers are going to have to start also changing the way they hire, because the millennials will be moving around so much, you're going to have to be really clear about what you want, what do you expect out of this person in the short amount of time you have that person for? So part of the problem with that is, we always hear these criticisms of millennials. I just love them. I think they're wonderful. If you watch your parents get laid off right and left. Yeah, exactly. And now you come up and they say, well, we're dying to have you. This will be just wonderful. And, oops, by the way, we've got a little bit of a hiccup in our technology. I'm not going to name the firm, because that would be impolite, but it's a true statement. When I went to the mainland last year during the holidays, I had a company, a large tech company, called me up and said we're having a layoff. And I said, may I help you? And they said, yeah, come on in, because I used to run their career centers. And I went on in and expected to have people wringing their hands and wondering what they were going to do at this Christmas time. And everybody was going, did you hear? We got a whole month. Oh, really? It was just, the flip is there to observe. They're happy to have some time away from this. They know they're going to go on. They have the talent. These are the techie workers. They're going to work. This is Silicon Valley, a whole different place. When you look at other ways to work, though, for the rest of us, for those of us living on an island, yes, you can be in the STEM careers, in the technology careers. But I want people to see different ways to do things. And one that I was excited about, and I'd like to hear more about from you, the entrepreneurial program at Hogan. Oh, huh? I'm very, very thrilled with that program. And I've been blessed to be able to go in there almost weekly to hear what they're doing with these kids and how they're looking at the future as entrepreneurs. So tell me more about that program. Well, the motto of the Hogan program is doing social things that make business sense and doing business things that make social sense. And I just think that's a meme whose time has come for our society in a full world where there's seven and a half billion people and we need more connection and more services between people than we need products. But social things that make business sense and business things that make social sense is the perfect purpose-driven organization. So the Hogan program is teaching young entrepreneurs who go through their program. Not so much always young either, actually. So the oldest person who went through the program is 60 years old. And the youngest is like 15 or something. So they teach anybody this new way of working. And it's about innovation. It's about exploration for them. It's about as far as me and a mentor there, I make myself available to the students to help them understand, kind of have a broader perspective and to think outside of the so-called entrepreneurial box and more in the way that you're writing about in your book with these 12 or 14 different ways of working and just help them see the options that they don't have to just be looking for a job. They don't have to just be looking for an institution for a nine to five that they can express their own creativity and express their own security and their own confidence in themselves through their work. Exactly. Well, I want to go through the list of the different ways to work so that everybody who's listening gets a taste of the many choices. And there are many choices. And I'm so excited about some of them. If I was 10 years younger, I'd start over again. I think we're coming in on a pretty hard break here. So let's take a minute or two and then come back to that list, shall we? Yeah, OK. You're watching Think Tech on ThinkTechHawaii.com, which broadcasts five live talk shows from noon to 5 p.m. every weekday and then streams our earlier shows all night long. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. So here we are again. I'm very excited about the many options. And I'd like to give you just kind of a taste. OK. And then, of course, we have another book coming out. We'll be able to tell you in depth. And we will have experts, experts from Hawaii as part of that book who will also give their opinions and ideas. So the first one on the list under A are the adjuncts. Well, people are familiar with adjuncts because they think of college and university. But I bet they didn't know that in the university system now, not necessarily our university, but all, up to 50%, 50% of the professors and teachers are adjuncts, meaning they don't work full-time. They may have classes on Monday or whatever it's going to be. They've taken on the adjunct title into the private sector. Oh, really? So if you had a regular gig, if you would, because you have something really big to offer, you could be called a subject matter expert or you might be called an adjunct today. And that's a shift. In the private sector. In the private sector. So if you watch the shift, it kind of gives you the hints of where you can label yourself. So that's adjuncts. How about barters? Well, bartering, I think, is something I do quite a bit of, actually, because I have skills and services. I'm a licensed massage therapist. So I often barter my massage skills for things I need from the community, whether it's another massage myself or whether it's somebody needs to, can give me a product, say, like I bartered for dog food before. I bartered for somebody has a set of used weights in their room that they're trying to get rid of that I want. I get that or a table or, you know, oh, you know, so we figure out value. What's the shared value? And bartering is really important. How big is the bartering industry? Oh, it's huge. It's a last count, which was a year ago. It was $12 billion. Wow. And where the bartering is really taking off is in work for barter. I see work for barter. So when I write a book, for example, I wrote one for an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, I should call her, who started her own business. And she said, I don't have any money, but gee, I like the way you write. And I said, let me write a book for you. But this is what I want. Oh, wow. So she ended up saying, well, what's in it for you? And I said, I don't know. How about a trip to the mainland? I see. So you can barter small things, you know, from your attic, but you can also barter work and business. It's big. It's getting bigger. And I barter. I've just thought of another way I barter. I barter with my mentors sometimes. They say, well, what can I do for you? And I say, well, I need some transcription for some public talks that I've given that I've recorded. Can you do that? A few years ago, I mentored a galt. She went to Berkeley in environmental sciences and she edited a film for me. So I agree. I didn't know it was that big, though. It's huge. And in fact, there's actually a tax implication for some people who barter into the big numbers kind of thing. I see. Then there's crowdsourcing. I bet a lot of you have never heard of crowdsourcing or outsourcing. What is that? Crowdsourcing can be, let's say I want help for what we're doing. And I don't see it here, maybe just because I don't know that it's here, but I happen to know the exceptional person in Japan who can contribute to us. So we pull in people from various areas of the world. I see. And this is in large part because we have computers now. It's a virtual team, you mean? It can be a virtual team. So you can have a mix of it. But the beauty of that is when I write for people and they say, do you know so-and-so? And I don't. They're just across the pond. Just a few electrons away. We can get them very, very quickly. Exporters and importies. If you think that isn't growing, think again. That's a huge, huge business. And from places like here. We're not talking about necessarily the largest exporting and importing, but it's a big business in the megabillions. Then I wanted to go on with a few for you. Oh, externs and fellows. What a lot of people don't realize, lifetime learning is part of work. So when you think of interns, you think of the college kids. Going into an organization and providing. But what's happening in the externs, it's so excited. Let's say I have this wonderful company and everybody is well thought of. But we're making a shift, a product shift. And so I will have you as an extort on your old salary to learn to make the shift rather than going ahead and getting someone else. That's taking off like you wouldn't believe. People are saying, I have an investment in Bill, Mary, or Rob. So I should keep that investment. I know the quality of the man. And I know that he can do this. He just has to learn it. I just realized that I have something to say about fellows. For example, I realized that I was a fellow when I went to school in this National Geothermal Academy with the Department of Energy. I wanted interested professionals, mid-career professionals to join their team so that they could transfer information from a previous generation of geothermal practitioners to this generation so it wouldn't get lost. But they wanted a certain level of professionalism in that. And then in exchange, you did some type of consulting for them. And as a group, you wrote various papers for them that they could then disseminate to their members. So there was a real exchange there. And it's happening more and more because people who have been working together where you've established value and trust and character, that's maybe worth the investment. So I'm kind of excited about that. The freelancers we've talked about, fastest growing segment, I count the temps in freelancing because they're just assigned for something and doing it and they can leave as they choose. The global pros, that's probably one of my most exciting. As you know, Rob, I've worked around the world. And somebody said, women don't do that, right? Men do that. Who says that? A lot of people say that. But what I learned was that there are many places where there are needs for particular talent. You mean somewhere else in the world? Somewhere else. Physically moved to the somewhere else. So I'll give you a quick story because we only have a few minutes. In the late 80s, my husband was an engineer, went to MIT, was highly credentialed, and he said, I can't stand this boring job anymore. And so he took an interim position, an interim executive position in Penang, Malaysia to build a factory. It was titled interim, not full-time. He was intended to go there and teach the local people how to run the factory. So that's what got me interested. I thought, well, maybe I can find something. So I went to one of the American firms in Penang when I was already there. And I said, do you need some help? And can I get a work permit? And the answer was yes, because I had something that they needed. So if you're willing to travel or if you're willing to work remotely with another team, that would be the Global Pro. No, the Global Pro is the person who's there. Oh, they're there. That would be the virtual pro that we're going to talk about in just a minute. So we have one of the things that's really changing now, and I hope for the better. It was really hot when it took off and then it kind of settled down. It's called phasing. Phasing. And that's when you take the older worker and offer them a cutback in time, still benefits, but from 40 to 32 hours to allow them to phase out. It kind of ran into a hiccup only because... Oh, phased retirement. Phased retirement. I sketch it. If I said to you, we're going to put you... Yeah, I don't like the word return. We're going to put you on a 30-tower week and you say, wait a minute. So what they're doing a little more of now is allowing the individual to say, I'm very excited about staying with you, but I would like to go to the 32-hour week. A lot of them hesitated doing that because they thought that would put them on a layoff. That was just a short way to get out. Now, this also is good for the company because it allows them to train the younger worker, perhaps using the older worker's skills, right? Well, it's just exactly. And that's part of what's used. I don't want to run over our time, but I do want to get to virtual work because virtual work is the other work that I think is so big that it's exploding. And I can tell you that it's in the mega-billions. And virtual work can be selling on your computer. People are doing all sorts of things that don't involve leaving home. I see. And when I think about the possibilities, NEH, mom at home, small child, dad saying, I've really had it with this job. I want to do something different. There's virtual work in there. You'll see it in our book when it comes out. You will see links to people who put together virtual workers that will just blow your mind. So you can see, in the kind of summary, this is a start of other ways to work, not things to do, ways to work. So I don't know. Do you have any more questions? Well, how much time do we have? Of course I do. I have lots of questions. I think we have about... I would just encourage everyone out there to, if you have a real-time job, full-time job, even if you have a part-time job, start looking, do some deep soul-searching, internal work. Come to us and receive the benefit of this eight-step process that Carlene's got that helps you understand your trajectory and your strategy and do a SWAT analysis of yourself and figure out where your core competencies are and how you can express that into the community doing business things that make social sense and social things that make business sense. And one last comment, and I think it's so important, if you can get in your mind that your career is your business, not your job, then you start looking at it as though you're running a business and it starts getting more and more exciting. Yeah. Oh, Rob, thank you. Thank you. We're just about at the hard end of this. It's been a wonderful day. Thank you.