Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: See it, presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look at what's been called the great Resignation, namely the record level of job separations initiated by employees, which is a fancy way of saying people quitting their jobs that we're seeing right now. And later on, we're going to consider the extent to which all of the notifications that we get on our personal electronic devices, be it phones or tablets or computers, can be harmful to our productivity and even our health.
Joining me today is a man who's not a businessman. He's a businessman.
Tunde Yogon, Lana Tune Day. You ready to handle your business today?
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Always.
Business, business.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: All right. All right. Now we're recording this on November 29, 2021, and I want to jump right in. We're seeing reports this month in November of 2021, that 4.4 million people quit their jobs back in September of 2021, which is a record for a month.
There's also reporting out there that a quarter of all workers quit in the last year in the U.S.
and so, Tunde, what has been your reaction to these reports? And these numbers show an increasing number of workers and a substantial proportion of workers in the workforce quitting their jobs?
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that this. I'm looking forward to this conversation today because I think we're going to unpack a lot of different reasons. I don't think there's one. I think it's most likely very personal for each individual. And I know that there's different trends with different sectors and all that, which we'll get into.
But it is shocking in a sense. The numbers, you know, I looked up the numbers in preparation for today.
So far, as of November 12, when I saw these numbers published, which is just a couple of weeks ago, there was 34.4 million Americans who voluntarily resigned. They didn't get fired. They didn't, you know, that they resigned from their job in 2021 alone.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: The big trend started in April. That was the first month where we had that. Our first big record, which was 4 million. And so, like you alluded to, is 4.4 million, which was the new record in September.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And August. In August it was like 4.3. So it's like. Yeah. So steady and rising.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Correct. And so. And so. And since that initial kind of big surge in April, out of the 34.4 million, 24 million have been since April. So like, you're saying it has ramped up since, you know, the years progressed. And so, you know, I think there are various reasons, as I just mentioned, but I think part of it is.
Well, I think what we're seeing here is a continuation of the disruption. Not only that, the pandemic and all that stuff from last year, but the continued disruption of technology and where probably things that were trending a certain direction anyway, just like we, all of us can relate generally to Zoom. Right. And this kind of web meetings, those existed before March of 2020, before the pandemic. But what this did is the pandemic just kind of probably shortened that curve by five to 10 years, maybe that long.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Well, it existed and early adopters, the people who were like the front of the curve, so to speak, were on it, but the masses weren't on it yet. And now, to your point, everybody's on it. Yeah.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: And I think that this trend in people changing careers, changing what they want to do with themselves in their life, are also things that would have happened generally over the next decade and maybe a little bit faster than the prior decade because of things like technology and all that. But I think the pandemic, whether it forced certain people to have to get more entrepreneurial or certain things, or it caused people to have the ability to take time at home and, and see differences in their life and make changes, I think it's just another reflection of the disruption caused by the pandemic.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I definitely see that. I think there's a couple of things going on, as you said, it's not just one thing that we saw. There are a couple of trends, as you said, that have really come to a head or that have become so prevalent that it becomes something to act on. One has been real wages and young people, real wages being wages adjusted for inflation, have not been going up and in some cases have been going down, let's say over the last 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. And so people are making less money from employers.
We saw post financial crisis, people coming out of college weren't able to get jobs that were even able to pay for their loans and things like that. So what was available in the job market was becoming less lucrative, was less desirable. Over the. That trend has been happening. And then to your point, the technology that was coming on online was in ways allowed people to do things that they otherwise couldn't do, whether it be the types of businesses you could open or the way you could operate a business without 30 people there or without 10 people there. You know, the way you could operate a business as very lean, but still offer all, all of the things that people expect. So I think there were multiple different trends, as you said, that were either accelerated or that really came to a head in people's minds due to the pandemic. Pandemic may have given people more perspective, open their eyes to maybe what they were missing, but also along those same lines, what was available for workers. You know, we've read about how childcare has been affected by the pandemic, its availability and so forth. So all of those go into the calculation of, okay, you know, whether I'm going to go to work somewhere, you know, does it make me happy, does it pay me enough, you know, to justify this, what am I going to do with my kids? All those things. And so all of those things were trending in a direction to almost push people a certain direction. So I think that's what we're seeing play out right now. It's amazing to see it out in such large numbers, though. I mean, I think that's really is the big thing, as you point out like this. If this happened, the same Trend happens over 10 years, but then it's still a huge deal, it's still a substantial shift, but we're seeing it play out over months, you know, like 30 something million people is a lot of people to have been like, I quit. Not like, oh, they're fired. Not mass layoffs or anything like that. And so we're gonna see ripple effects which we'll get into in a little bit in terms of what that's doing to the labor market as well. And now you got all these employers that need workers. And, you know, what they were offering before isn't gonna get people in the door. So it's creating a bunch of interesting things in our economy. And, and this kind of disruption ultimately is good. We don't want to be beholden to the status quo, particularly one that wasn't delivering for so many people in our economy.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think you're right that this disruption in the long run will be good. One of the things that, as I was doing the research for today that I kept seeing a little bit in different articles and things that I was looking at, you know, we can't forget about the vaccine. And they were kind of equating this surge beginning in April to also that was when most Americans, the vaccines were opened up for more Americans, because I remember I got my first shot.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Oh, is that causation or is that correlation? I guess you're about to tell us.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it could be. I mean, who knows? But it could be a little bit of both because. And maybe more of a causation because that was some of the ideas of people think, you know, last year it was a lot more scary to be out if you're not vaccinated.
Maybe you didn't want to change jobs and go to a new environment that you're not sure how people, if they're sick or not, or how the employer is dealing with it, all that kind of stuff. So now if it's more people, because I remember April was when they allowed people, I think 40 years old and up that weren't like elderly or sickly or something, just kind of the general population to get vaccinated. And you figure when you're 40 and up, you're still in that you could be in that transient where you might want to change jobs and all that. So I felt like we can't miss that fact that the prolific vaccination push, which generally has been successful, more than 50% of Americans are vaccinated, led to what I put down here and wrote. So I would say it.
People felt they had more freedom to choose.
And what I wanted to say it that way is because in America, we love our freedoms, right. And we want to have choice. And we always say that. And I think that a lot of us, if you look back at how we dealt with labor and the labor force prior to now, a lot of people actually didn't have control of their lives when it came to work. A lot of people were trapped on the hamster wheel and the rat race. And a lot of it was psychological. I think a lot of us just felt like, oh, I got to do it this way.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: To your point about the pandemic can change in perspective, that's the kind of thing that might say, oh, well, actually, I don't need to stay on this hamster wheel, you know, type of thing.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Exactly. And that's where I'll share one from my own experience with my own business. But what I wanted to get to quick on this example was, you know, it reminded me a bit of, in a very different way, but in a similar way about when you're like, you break a seal on the kind of the mentality of a society and then the floodgates open like we see. So I started thinking of the great financial crisis and the short sale phenomenon, right. Like most Americans were conditioned to always pay their mortgages prior to 2008. But once that trickle started and people saw, okay, well, the banks aren't going to deal with me unless I stop paying this. And your house is worth, you know, it's. The mortgage is 30 times higher than the value of your home. At that moment, a lot more people, kind of that mental seal started to break where they're like, all right, well, I'm just not going to do it either. Everyone else is doing it. And then you had this wave of foreclosures and short sales and everybody's worried about it, you know, the long term issues and all that. And the system kind of figured itself out by the middle of last decade. Most housing had recovered, most people had begun to recover financially, all that. So I felt like this was similar in that way where a lot of people felt trapped in their hamster wheel and I can't move, I can't make a move on my job and all that. And I think the time at home, the time being with family, the time to explore. You know, like we talked about technology out there.
A lot of people, once they start seeing other people resigning and doing it, I think it's kind of like a wave, like it just catches on.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: That would explain why the numbers keep going up for sure.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Because I think it's a reflection of how unhappy a lot of people have been. I think that's.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: But that was kind of. My point is that the labor, it wasn't working. The way we were doing things wasn't working for the vast majority of society. And so ultimately this type of reshuffling. Now one thing that we saw something from the consulting firm Mercer recently coming out that they're saying that a lot of this is a lot of the, the, the quitting actually disproportionate, not all of it, but disproportionately is coming from lower income people who make less money, people who are the, the ones who really get less out of the economy than everybody else in terms of their, so to speak, on the bottom of the totem pole and so them seeking more freedom for themselves and more opportunity through, you know, like through the unknown versus the, the known, the devil, you know, so to speak. And so that really does support what you're saying as far as, like, yo, I know I'm getting pissed on my head, you know, like so. But in prior times or, you know, when things seem to just be quote, unquote normal, it may not be something where you're like, yo, I'm out. But when you start, start seeing that trend build and it's, it's throughout, but you can just see how that plays out, one of the things that comes up to me. Oh, actually, before I go into it, I wanted to mention the short sale piece. Just what you're speaking about there is. During the financial crisis, home values were dropping and oftentimes dropping below the value of the mortgage people had had on them. And so the short sale is basically where you and the bank make a deal to sell the house for a certain amount that's less than what you owe, but you're able to walk away at that point. So to force, if you, if you just came up to the bank and said that, like, hey, why don't we make a deal and we'll sell it and you guys lose some money and I'll walk away, they will be like, nah. But what people would see what you were referencing is that some people just stopped paying and then that would force the bank's hand. Either you're gonna have to do a foreclosure and we're gonna go do all this stuff in court and all this other stuff, or we can do a short sale, you can get something out of it and we can keep it moving. And so people saw that basically start to work and more people just stopped paying their mortgage because it's like, well, I want to force a deal. I want, I'm not sticking with the status quo because other people are doing this, working out for them. But what I wanted to mention on the, on this overall point that we're talking about, what this brought me to actually, and this is a deep cut for you, so I'm gonna see what you do with it. This brought me to David Ricardo and the kind that, like the kind of the substance theory of wages and how basically this is well known stuff. Well, you know, we're talking capitalism, this stuff has been studied and this is 1800s, I'm talking about right now, where basically if things are allowed to operate without regulation, without things like unions, things like that, then the market price for labor will always be driven towards the minimum required for sustenance. Sustenance, Excuse me. So just enough, you know, hand to mouth type of stuff like that's the pressure on wages, always the way capitalism works. And you have things like minimum wage, you have things like labor unions and stuff like that to try to avoid that from just happening. But when you don't raise the minimum wage, when labor unions are stomped out of existence, you start going on that trajectory again. And so I think what we're seeing here in actuality is the culmination of that trend, Reaganomics So to speak, trickle down theory and all that, where the workers just had, were at the end of how far you could push them. And by and large that pushed a lot out. And they said, look, I'm out. Even people who weren't at the bottom, but especially people at the bottom because it's like the, you basically push them as far as you could if you don't put in the guardrails to, to not drive their wages to sustenance and only reward or to reward those at the top a whole bunch hoping that it'll trickle down. So to me, I see that very evidently here. In fact, one of the things we read talked about this being a great reckoning and that's what I saw there.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, I don't, for me, I don't know how much I see that as much as I just see technology and people. A lot of people are just entrepreneurial.
And I think that also a lot of people had a real, like, think about it because I can appreciate this in my own life, I used to put 2,000 miles a month on my car.
I used to drive up and down here, South Florida, having meetings, all this stuff. And then to be just forced to stop last March, in March of 2020 and be home and then see my kid every day and my wife and be a dad and enjoy cooking lunch, you know, for the family on my grill. And, you know, there's something that changed in a lot of people that I talked to. I mean, I know that's anecdotal because it's just my life, but I.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Well, it's also people who are well off. It's you, it's other people that are well off. I would think I'm speaking more towards the bottom, but I didn't agree with what you were saying.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: But there's a lot of people I know that don't earn the income I earn and they had the same feelings, you know, for the first time they were able to just not be stressed out constantly.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: There's a lot of people that don't earn the income that you earn.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Well, we're not supposed to give those secrets away on the show, sir. Come on.
When the IRS comes a knocking, I'm coming to your bank account to pay.
So I'm not going to start blowing up your spot.
But no, so. And that's why I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily. I just think it's a bit bigger than that on this one because I think part of it is, I really think technology plays a Huge role. I think the fact that the market's boomed, I think part of that, because I'll give you an example, a lot of people at the lower end, like I look at my son, who's 23 in college, as an example. He's a regular kid earning the regular, you know, 15 bucks an hour type of wage. Right. When he's working.
He told me about his friend who's his age in College, who's made $600,000 trading crypto over the last four months.
So check this kid out. Now, my son is one of his minions because now he's got this group of kids, my son's one of them, trading options on the crypto for him. I guess he's just put together his whole thing. He's a businessman. No, exactly. My son's a businessman. So now my son is telling me, dad, I'm making three to four hundred dollars a day when I do this.
He's still working his job, but I just think it in my head.
Hold on. I mean, let's. I don't know if he's doing it five days a week or two days a week. I wasn't making three to $400 a day doing anything when I was his age. Right. I literally had to go clock in and I was making 575 an hour at the time.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: So there was no way to just earn money like this. And you multiply him by millions of kids under 30 who are all doing this stuff. And I think, because when, when I, when you were talking earlier, I could hear a detractor to what you're saying, saying, yeah, the only reason this is happening is because of the unemployment benefits and all the stimulus and these welfare checks. And I'm like thinking in my head, no, that's not enough for people to survive to get a 11400 check every six months.
If there's a lot of young people that I don't see, that's what I'm saying. I'm 43, and I feel like a dinosaur when I talk to my son because there's just a lot of people out there that have used this technology to their advantage and a lot of people like me that have been asleep at the wheel. And so I think that there's a lot of people out there.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Well, that's to the industries, that there's more industries available and way avenues into the industries. Technology, though, also allows you to do work. For example, as you were pointing out, not having to drive up and down 95 all the time instead of having three meetings in an afternoon, you can have six meetings at night.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: And that's where I was going to give in my example, where exactly that my business grew 34% in 2020. And I just found out doing an audit that I grew 35% this year. I can't believe it. And I put 50 miles of month in my car now. And you're right, it's because of this technology, because all my meetings are on Zoom. All my stuff is, is, is, is basically online now. And also what this, I think sped up is because I'll just finish on this and get off my high horse.
I don't think my clients would have accepted me over two years ago if I'd have just said, look, from now on, there's no more in person meetings. I'm doing everything on web meetings. I'm pretty sure I'd have lost, I'd have lost half of them.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah, because the expectation, yeah, it changes the reason.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: So that's what I mean by this, this pandemic accelerated trends that were kind of slowly happening.
But within three months of the, of March of 22, by June of 2020, 100% of my clients were all comfortable. And I never forget this. What showed me, I got a client, she's in her 70s, and she's going to kill me because she's either an AKA or Delta, but I always mix them up. So, you know, one of the big sororities out there that's always competing with each other. And I remember I asked her, I was like, Ms. So and so, are you, Are you comfortable? Because we had our first review meeting since the pandemic started coming up, and I said, I just want to. I know you're not that comfortable with technology, but are you comfortable if we do this on Zoom? Because I know, you know, me driving to your house and breathing all over you is not going to be accepted. And I don't feel like having a meeting in a mess.
And she goes, oh, Tunde, it's cool. My sorority, we've been doing our meetings on Zoom.
When she told me that is when I knew that, okay, this, this trend is now in.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: So, I mean, no, that changed the expectations of what the people you do business with, you know, is definitely a part of it. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that what we'll see, I mean, we are living through the disruptions of the pandemic, which continue to, you know, now we got a new variant popping out there and everything, and like, it continues to be something that's ever present in our lives, but it may end up shaking loose positive changes as well. You know, it may end up making us leaner, meaner, more efficient, more effective. We opening up new opportunities for people. And that's something that, that's not nothing. You know, that's something that can. Can help society all around. Now, I know you saw there, there was one piece that we both looked at where there was an opinion basically that in large, or not in large part, a notable part of this is actually mothers being forced out of work because of lack of childcare.
Now, did you think that was something. Now, again, the article didn't say that was all of it. It said, you know, it's just a part of it. But did you, did you think that that was something that society, we as a society should be taking more seriously as far as are we losing half of the minds or a proportion of the minds in our society that could be doing other work? And then now they're being forced to. Not the ones that want to do it, but the ones that would rather. That would rather do something else but are being forced to stay home with the kids now.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, I think you're right that there's all these different factors are real and all add up to this kind of, you know, the ingredients that make up this sou soup of kind of pandemic life and some of these changes that we're talking about that affect the labor force.
So I'm not going to take away from the fact that some moms, especially single moms, I mean, I feel for a single mom with two or three kids who now has had to, you know, this whole year was jacked up. If she had an employer that might not have been the nicest employer, and she's had to have kids stay at home. And if they're little kids, you know, and dealing with.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: I can't imagine that online learning. That sounds crazy. Yeah, So I have to. Your kids are doing school at home and then. But you still have to work and earn a living and all that. And like you said, there are many people who had different reactions to that kind of stuff.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: And so I do think, you know, that I'm sure that there is a statistic and a percentage of women that fall into that category. And that's a shame. And.
But I would say I took, you know, that specific reading that I did on that one a little bit more.
And I say it this way, I don't want this to sound bad, but almost like a victim thing. Like, oh, you know, all These women are getting hurt. And it's like, I'm not again, because I know some women that are some way. I'm not trying to say every woman is that way, but I know a lot of women who have become very entrepreneurial over this time and are actually thriving and they're much happier.
They are at home with their children and they're earning a living online and doing their businesses online and all that. And they figured out how to make this adjustment successfully. So I want to say it that way, that I feel like there's a lot of women that become empowered in this moment because they could kind of throw off some of those old shackles of the traditional, whatever, you know, And I'm a guy saying this, right? Like what I've heard is kind of the masculine dominated office workplace.
And a lot of women I've been seeing doing their thing online, getting clients, they got, their consulting firms, they're kind of doing things that are either the same or adjacent to what they did prior, but now they're owning it. And. And so I think that there's another side of that conversation where a lot of women have gotten empowered.
And that's why I say that doesn't take away from those that have gotten hurt either. So that's why it's just another conversation of change, some benefit, some don't.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Yeah, no, certainly. And I think that it's one of those conversations that has to be had. Like, you cannot broad brush that conversation because like you said, you can find exceptions to it. You can find people who voluntarily or who welcome the opportunity to get out of the workforce or things like that. But the issue that's raised to me is the one of childcare. And you and I discussed previously, I know maybe in the springtime when the initial infrastructure bill, the full one, when they were trying to do all of it together, had allotments for childcare and to try to improve access to childcare, reduce cost of childcare. And you and I both agreed that that clearly should be considered something that's infrastructure in the same way that roads are, because it allows people to. It facilitates work. It facilitates work. And so people who are able and willing to work, we want to do things to allow them to do that work, whether that would be have a road that allows you to get from point A to point B or to deliver goods from point A to point B or whatever. Or it be something that allows for children to be cared for in a way that makes sense financially. And so I think that you can acknowledge that we have to keep an eye on this. This is something that is happening to some people, not to everyone. But it doesn't have to happen to everyone for us as a society to decide we want to do something about it. A lot of things that we do something about in society only benefit or only are meant to remedy something for a small segment of people. Like, and this is an example of an extreme, just to make the point, like municipalities all around the country will put hundreds of millions of dollars into building football or baseball stadiums. That only benefits the owner, you know, substantially. The owner could have caught, paid for that, but it's like, no, no city, you do it, you know, and it's like, well that. So that is society putting resources to something that benefits a very small number of people. People are upset about that, but it's something that happens in the same way. We can't be afraid and we can't shy away from using the resources of society in ways that can help facilitate people to do better at what they're doing, whether it be to keep the cost down and improve accessibility to it and so forth. So I looked at it as more of that, as saying, hey, let's not forget that we should keep in mind that the childcare issue is one that if left purely to market forces, just like fire departments, just like roads, if left purely to market forces, we're not gonna get the level of service at the kind of cost that we want. So we may need to intervene from a societal standpoint. And you could still keep it in the market, but you can't leave it purely to market forces because ultimately what will end up happening is that it won't become, it won't be the service that we need as a society to continue to grow.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, that's all true. And I think really what it reflects and comes down to is just we as a society and a culture, what do we find more important? And I think you make some very valid points. And unfortunately in our discourse, in our media and our politics, these kind of nuances get lost. So like you're saying it's a lot easier.
It's kind of like Confessions of an Economic Hitman, the show we did last year, it's a lot easier to sell the short term economic benefits of building that billion dollar stadium in the city and you're going to create, we'll make 5,000 jobs and you're going to do this and that.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Yeah, even like, not true.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah, well, let's not get started on the Miami Marlins stadium. That's A whole.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Not one example.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: I know, but. But, but. But that's what I'm saying is that because everything you said to me makes sense as infrastructure, right To. Because you're right. Like, okay, well, if all these moms actually don't have to worry about paying 500, 700 a week for child care when they're earning 50,000 a year, because I'll give you a true thing. When our third kid was born, my wife was very entrepreneurial, and she was, like, wanting to get back to it. And we did the math.
She would have to gross over, like, 60 grand for us to break even.
But then she'd be coming home stressed out every day and all that, and both of us would be out of the house till late at night and all that. So then I was like, okay, so it's only gonna make sense if you make like, a buck 5200. Then I thought, okay, but if you're gonna earn that kind of money back, then we're talking 11 years ago, then you're gonna be working 60 hours a week like me. And then the kids. No one's gonna be home to actually watch the kids. And then we gotta spend another 50 grand on a nanny, you know, so you're right at some point. And what that did was those decisions took my wife out of the workforce for two years. So, you know, until our son was old enough to go to a different daycare and all that. So my point is, is that I see it, and I also think that from an infrastructure standpoint, it makes sense. And I know this show isn't about infrastructure. Forget about everything we talk about with the mom's labor. We know that early childhood education is important for a human being to learn and get literate and understand arithmetic and all that. So as a country, that's what I mean. Like, our goal should be to make sure that every little kid is early on, learns how to spell, read, and write and all that so that we can compete. Everyone's worried about China and all these other countries.
Well, that's how we need to compete, is have our future.
Our future generations, you know, have knowledge.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Equipped to come in. No, I'm glad you put it like that, because when I look at a topic like this, I'm not looking at it like, woe is me. Poor mothers. Like, I'm looking at it like, oh, this is a lost opportunity for society. Like, if people want to get out there and work and be innovative and put in hard work, society, I think society should try to meet them halfway. Like this is lost opportunity, this isn't. Oh, we feel sorry for them. So therefore we need to do this and that. And so to me it's more of a matter of how can we continue to make it so that we can continue to grow. Because us continuing to grow, us as a society continue to grow creates more opportunity for everybody and so and more opportunity for enterprising people like Tunde Ogunlana to keep building his business. You know.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Well, I'm already thinking, because here's my thought is seriously this is where I think I wish politicians would do a better job at articulating things and maybe. And of course we've got a fractured government here. We know that in the United States. But because you could do this, it's kind of like, you know the original ways that they were trying to do healthcare is a market based system which is just like. Because you've already got the model of HUD and Section 8.
Section 8 is a great private public partnership that a lot of private owners of real estate have gotten fantastically wealthy over the last 40 years or so. And you could have something where it's not a government handout to somebody.
You subsidize daycares and in lower income areas where maybe the moms can't afford it, just like section 8, the government subsidizes it and you have a private owner of the daycare who's actually an entrepreneur and has a business enterprise that they're growing. So it's a win win.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: And you know, and you can learn from Section 8 in the ways that Section 8 didn't work or they created suboptimal things you can still build.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Yeah, there's always learning. But that's.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: I think your point that it's not.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: A handout of just correct. Let's just give all this money out to people. You could create all industries and make a new economy out of this. Which we do all the time.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: We do all the time. We do that when it's time to build a shopping mall. We do that when it's time to build.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Look at what I just said. My son's trading options on cryptocurrency and making 3, $400 a day at 23. That's a new economy that didn't exist just five years ago.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: Unde you're gonna be working for your son before long. Man.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: I hope so.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: Actually.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: I don't have to do this myself. Well, that's my dream. He becomes a billionaire and I just show up and work for him.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: I'LL do his grass all day.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah, you, you.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: I just better be able to sleep. I better be able to sleep in the house where I'm mowing the lawn.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: There you go, man. Now, I do wanna wrap this piece up, but what do you see happening, you know, just briefly, what do you see happening with this over the next few years? Do you think this is a trend that picks up? Are people gonna become more entrepreneurial? Which American society has been more entrepreneurial? It's ebbed and flowed in terms of whether big business owned everything or whether you had a very fragmented ownership and so forth like that. Do you think we're heading towards a more egalitarian, so to speak, economy where people own their own means of production?
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Let me not get so excited to be that bold.
This still is human beings you're talking about here. We'll find a way to divide ourselves and to have haves and have nots pretty quickly.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Well, no, more so, like, just saying, like, you have times when there's a lot of little guys, and then you have times where the lot of little guys all get swallowed up by the few big guys. And right now I do think. Well, let me say right now we've been in a trend and a time when the big guys are swallowing everybody up. And so this could be a reverse of that, where you start having a lot of little guys again. Or not. I just, you know. So your thoughts?
[00:32:09] Speaker A: No, I mean, I don't think so in that way, because, remember, I mean, it's not like the imbalances of kind of the money trickling up to the 1%, and all that has changed. I mean, it's great to see kind of the little guy, the entrepreneur getting a. Getting a shot here and to see labor, for one of the rare times in human history, actually being able to command wages and things like that. That was one thing I've noticed too, is we don't talk anymore and argue in this country like we did just a year ago, about should minimum wage be 10 bucks or 15 bucks? Companies are just. I saw Ikea and the United States announced 15, 16 bucks Amazon. So companies are just doing it to.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Even get in the door. Like, they can't.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: Yeah, So I don't think so. I do think this is a good time for labor, but I don't think capital is going anywhere either. I mean, they're, you know, the little guys making money, the big guys making a lot of money, too. And so I don't know about that dynamic, but I do think this.
I do think the positive changes we've seen here, like we talk about the kind of the speed up of certain trends with technology and all that. I think all that continues.
I do think we have a positive moment of humanity where like I've said this to people, like this was something that happened like about a week, week and a half ago. I was on a Zoom meeting, like a professional meeting.
It was afternoon and my son had one of his friends over after school.
And my son's 10, I think his friend was 8. You know, you get to an 8 and a 10 year old in a room together or in the house, there's going to be some noise. So I apologize. I kind of pre apologized on the meeting on the Zoom. I was like, hey, you know, let me just apologize my friends, my son's got his friend over. If in case they make some noise, it's just them and the person's like, no, don't worry about it. And it just. I remember that prior to this pandemic, I used to like call in a frigging airstrike or something if I heard a peep while I was having anything business wise at home.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: Because I'd be out there telling. It would make you look unprofessional.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Correct. I'd be telling my family, be quiet. And all that. Because you're right, you're expected as a professor, like with what I do, wealth management or you're an attorney. We were expected to be in a shirt and tie in the office at least from nine to five, if not longer.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: And if we weren't in front of somebody, they expected us to still be in a shirt and tie, at least in their mind, that the facade had to maintain no matter what. And so if you got kids running around in the background, it's like this dude hanging out in sweat sweatpants.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: And that's what I mean. And that's what I like. Like, you know, I still make sure that on a business meeting on Zoom, I'm professional, wear at least a polo, some sort of collared shirt. But that's what I'm saying is that.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Everybody'S pants though, as to the pants.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: Let'S not go there.
We're lucky if I have pants.
So anyway, that's a whole different.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: But I feel you though.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: But my point is. But that's what I remember talking to someone saying this is the. It's nice that everyone can just be a human being with each other generally. Like that is what I'm saying. I mean, I know we still have our hierarchies and all that. But you know, I like when I'm having a zoom with someone and their kid pops in or I see the dog running behind, it just makes me feel like they're a human being and it's like, okay. And they're not trying to fake it and all that. And I think, I think that's a big benefit that's come out of it. And also a lot of the people that realize how many people that we talk to and that we even saw in the news and stuff that really didn't appreciate their own kids until the lockdown and then all the time people. So I think there's a lot of that kind of like when you see whether it's the depression, the second World War, how it changes a whole generation, I think that's what we're gonna get. Especially people like in our age range, like this kind of late 30s to maybe early 50s, that are parents of kids. I think that all of us are gonna have put now the rat race down a bit and have said, you know, the, like me, I'm middle aged. Like this journey is only gonna last so long. I'm not killing myself anymore for this.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: You know what I mean? I mean, and, and, but of course you have options. But I think a lot of people are trying to create their own options.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: But that's where the great resignation to, to bring it full circle on our show. A lot of people are realizing they have more options than they thought.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: You're right.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: You and I got a few more opportunities.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: That's what I was gonna say on that, is that people are creating their own options. And that's what we're really seeing here. Like you quit. People are quitting their jobs and they're saying, I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna create my own path. And I think that's, that's really good. Now, as far as to your point, I think that certain pieces of that are going to stick. You know, like that's sticking. That's something that, that has just become the character of our society. Like the, the fact that you do a zoom meeting and something might happen in the background and that's. You're not dealing with somebody who sleeps until noon every day and starts drinking at three. You know, so I think we have gotten there. But I. Speak for yourself.
So. But I see this actually similar to the Internet boom.
And you know, people of our generation can remember that because it was the same kind of thing. 20 year olds were making, you know, big time money and all that. And, but the reason why the Internet boom started very decentralized with a bunch of people, a bunch of entrepreneurs all getting in, but then they all got swallowed up into three or four companies. The reason that happened is because of the regulatory environment. And so as long as our, in our, in our legal, you know, like antitrust isn't enforced anymore, for the most part, the benefits of being small are no longer, aren't really as present in society when the larger companies can rig things through lobbying and so forth. So what I think we're going to end up seeing here is that we're going to have another kind of fractured everybody get out there, get on their own, and then you'll start seeing the big boys swallowing everybody up again in the same way you saw with the Internet boom. And then we'll end up kind of back where we started, hopefully not worse, but just where there's going to be. You got it. You got to go to the Capitol if you want to make a living. It's going to be difficult to get out there on your own. I hope that's not the way that's going to play out. But unless there's a change in kind of the regulatory environment where small guys are actually protected and the laws and the regulations aren't written in a way that bend over backwards to accommodate those who are already big, because those who are already big oftentimes aren't the ones innovating. They just buy up the innovators. And if antitrust doesn't stop them from doing that, that actually grinds our economy to a halt in many ways, from an innovation standpoint. So that's what I see happening is not necessarily the brightest note to end it on, so to speak. But I think what it needs to accompany this though, basically is we gotta start looking at producers in our society of all shapes and sizes and allowing them to flourish. Not just the biggest of the big that can afford the most lobbyists and give the most campaign contributions. So that's something that, from a mechanical standpoint that our society is going to have to improve on. And hopefully we will move in that direction as we have more voices in the public square right now. Now, most of them aren't productive, but some of them are, so. But no, I think we can move on from there.
We had the second topic we wanted to discuss, actually.
We're talking all this zoom and everything like that, all the abilities for technology to make it possible to do things you couldn't do 20 years ago or five years ago. Well, one thing, technology also comes with is notifications. Bing.
Not just the phone ringing, which we're familiar with, but all types of notifications from all types of apps. Wall Street Journal ran a piece and it really is asking the question whether these notifications, all these notifications that people have, because people apparently have and use a lot, A lot, a lot of notifications, but whether they're all making us crazy. And so Tunde, what was your reaction to this? I know you.
I asked this question knowing that you take particular care and control over your notifications. So what was your reaction to this piece and tell us why you had this all figured out already?
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it was great. Because yeah, I'll definitely be arrogant here and say, yeah, I've been on this train a long time.
No, because it's funny just I guess how I'm wired. Like, I don't like being stressed out and I don't like, you know, I don't like being bothered like unnecessarily. So when I first started getting smartphones, you know, like 10 years ago, and as more things came online, more apps, more ways for you to get notified on things, it would just start pissing me out. Like, I remember one time when I finally turned my email notification off on my phone because I'm sitting there having a meeting and my phone's on vibrate in my pocket and literally every like two minutes is vibrating because either it's a real email or a spam.
And I just, I couldn't concentrate on my meeting.
And.
And so I have everything turned off on my phone except the text notification. That's it. And my phone is 90% on the time on vibrate, you know, silent. So I don't hear it if it's not literally physically on me. And so it's funny, I feel bad sometimes because I have people trying, you know, they have to add today's day and age. I got people trying to hit me from everywhere. I used to be on Facebook. I'm off that. But I think I still have a messenger account somewhere.
I do have a WhatsApp account.
You know, I got other thing. Like, and then these people will send me a notice through WhatsApp. It'll sit there for four or five days. Gotta manually think about looking at it before. Cause I just turn all those notifications off. So I suffer a bit from not being instantaneous with so many people and all that. But I feel like my mental health doesn't suffer because I'm not always on. Like, that's the part that I didn't like. Like the Notifications always made me feel like I had to be on. And then, you know, the way that these phones are is they condition us to respond all the time.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So, but if I remember from the, the, what was the, the movie we watched that dealt with that in terms of how the notifications treat, they, they do train you to always be on the lookout and that you always have to respond right away.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the thing is like, and that's when I started thinking like, well, why would I leave the notification on? If I'm going to fight it and control myself not to respond, I might as well just turn it off and not be stressed out about even knowing it came through. And then basically, I mean, people, you know, when it comes to my business and my personal life, people know text, email, that's it. Don't really, if you want to get to me, don't, don't start going all this other different ways you could contact me because I'm not going to see it.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: And it's, you know, we did, by.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: The way, we did a streaming between the lines on the Great Hat. And that was about a year ago. And that was one of the, that was one of the points that the designers of all these social media and all those apps talked about is how the notifications are intended to train you a certain way. And actually we ended up in a similar place with this, like I am. I similarly do not allow most notifications through.
You know, I'll selectively pick what gets, what's allowed to get through. And then everything else, I just check when I check.
And I think some of that's generational because in our generation, when we first entered the workforce, I'm sure you recall, we still, we were just at the tail end of when once work was over and you shut down your computer or whatever, you could actually, you would not be expected to, if somebody could not automatically be able to contact you and know that they got you right away because you wouldn't necessarily have a phone always right there. You wouldn't necessarily have a BlackBerry. You may, but you may not. And so it was, there was a thing of, once five o' clock came and you shut down, people wouldn't know if they could actually reach you. And I actually enjoyed that. I was like, okay, yeah, so people see you send me something that at six o', clock, you'll hear from me tomorrow morning. And whether I saw it or not, you know, because. So I tried to replicate that, especially once I went out on my own. But even before I went on my own because where I was, the firm I was at previously did not give me a. They did not provide a phone or like a mobile device or whatever. And so I had my own. So I didn't. I didn't want to upload it with any of the business stuff. I'm like, no, no, I don't want it. You know, I keep it separate, yada, yada, yada. But part of that was that I'm not. You can't send me work emails after, you know, I have to see them when I get back to the office. And so for me, yeah, it's a very, very, very strong line where I don't want notifications. Like, I. I will check things and then I'll get to them. But part of that, I think, is the. With the, like I said, generational. If you're raised in the generation where everything is instantaneous, whether it be on the Internet and social media and all that, then there's more of a fomo. Like, I don't have the fomo. Like, I don't feel like. I'll feel like whatever it is, I'll just get to it. When I get to it. As long as it's a reasonable time, I feel like that's still being professional. And if it's a professional thing, and if it's. If it's personal, then it's just. It's on convenience.
So I think that younger generations have a harder time with this because they're used to not only giving instantaneous feedback, but expecting it themselves.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and I think that, you know, we've all heard of and learned about the things that. The negative sides of that kind of need for instantaneous gratification. It leads to depression. It leads to, like you said, this FOMO stuff, and especially kids at impressionable ages, teenagers, early 20s, that really can get damaged by that if it's kind of too much and negative. And what's interesting is there's a joke that I heard which is funny. It said, if Steve Jobs had an iPhone, he would have never invented the iPhone. And it's funny because I thought I started laughing. I was watching a documentary years ago, and I thought of that quote because it was. The documentary was about Albert Einstein. And I was bored one night watching that kind of stuff. But I learned in that documentary, I'll never Forget, he was 19 years old when he came up with his first big discovery and the theory of relativity, his major one. Right. He was 26.
And I was thinking, how many 19 to 26 year olds today are sitting there really trying to crunch information and numbers. And I thought, and that's what I started thinking was because I know how it affected me. That's one reason why I had to turn off all these notifications because even, I mean you and I have talked about it together. Like we can get caught, me and you as two guys who know all this stuff in a text conversation in the middle of the workday at 2pm and then I'll look up and it's 25 minutes later and then it takes.
[00:45:57] Speaker B: Your mind on the subject. You might be all upset at that point. Yeah, like, yeah, like it could change your day.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: And it's not like I immediately then go back to doing exactly what I was doing, how I was doing it. This might take me another 20 minutes to get my mind back into that kind of workflow and whatever I was doing.
[00:46:13] Speaker B: So let me jump in there because the article that we and we'll put have this in the show notes actually said specifically it takes an average of 25 minutes and 26 seconds to get back. To get back to where you started when you are interrupted from something external like this.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: Well, and let me add to that because above it it says that the gentleman's research finds that people switch screens an average of 566 times a day.
And half the it says half the time we're actually being interrupted, the other half we pull ourselves away. So some of it is people just taking breaks. But think about it. If half of the time you're interrupted, 566, I mean that's about 283 if I divide that and I'm just thinking like 283 times in one day, not even a full 24 hours because you sleep part of that time, right? So let's say a 9 to 5 is most of that. That's a lot of little micro distractions that I don't think most of us realize how it impacts our subconscious and our ability to just focus on one thing and one task and get it done. And that's where that was one reason why I had to turn them off. Because I realized, man, if I answer all this stuff then I'm not actually productive. Like I'm not getting my business done, I'm not working or I'm not enjoying my family or enjoying my downtime.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: Well, what it does is it biases you towards surface level interaction. Surface level analysis. Like for me that was what did it for me. Like I learned this in working like a decade ago. Like in Order to do what I do, I have to get some depth into like, of my legal analysis or whatever that I'm doing or trying to understand some concept. Somebody has an invention and I got to really understand it to be able to write about it myself. And I cannot access depth if I'm constantly getting tweaked here or tweaked there or anything like that. Like, I shut my email down when I'm doing a lot of this stuff because I'm like, I can't have anything else coming in because I'll be on my computer, turn the email down, you know, like mute the, the phones or whatever because I won't be able to get to the depth that I need if I'm constantly getting startled here, startled there, startled there, startled there. Even if I'm just like they got they talks about 500 something times you switch screens. That doesn't even mean that you switch. And then you look for a long time. That's just notification.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: Look at it. And then you go in like that kind of stuff. It stops you from getting into what you're doing. And so, and that's what I'm saying. I can't function like that as far as to be able to add value in terms of what my profession is. And so, and I find that the knowledge of that actually plays around, plays with my kids as well, where I'll put it away from me when I'm with the kids as well. Because then it's like, well, hold on. By that same logic, if I'm constantly looking at notifications on my phone or things coming in on my phone when I'm with my kids, I won't have meaningful conversations with them. It'll all be surface level with them. So that to me, I think is the real risk is that it prevents you. And I mean, that goes to your Einstein point. It prevents you from looking at anything with any level of depth and getting comfortable with it and analyzing it or just understanding it with any level of depth. Because you're constantly, you know, you're just looking here, looking there, looking here, looking there. And that's uncomfortable, you know, like from a stress standpoint. And it's not productive.
[00:49:20] Speaker A: Yeah, no, you're right.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: And so, but I think we can wrap it up from there. But I mean, ultimately the information is available. I mean, people should be aware of it because, you know, you're free to do what you want to do with these, with your devices. But you know, it's much different from a stimulation standpoint and from how Our brain processes all this stuff than the human experience has been for pretty much all of the rest of humanity. So we kind of need to be.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: Patient and a certain way. And I'll end with this. This is a experiment we're all living through. Because I thought about it in preparing when I was reading this.
The first iPhone came out in 08.
And 20 years ago, in 2001, we all still had bricks and maybe getting into flip phones. So we haven't had yet a full generation of humanity dealing with all these different things. So, you know, we'll see how this plays out 20, 30 years from now when kids, like, our kids are adults and how that generation, you know, kind of evolves, you know, and how they deal with themselves.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: You see how our generation, you know, adopting the.
Getting news from Facebook.
We've done swimmingly as far as being able to decipher what's real and what's not. So, ultimately, yeah, I mean, societies will continue to be exposed to different things and grow, or not grow, but we'll see how this continues to affect our society, and hopefully, as we move forward, we will be able to deal with it in ways that are more productive and more effective. Effective, so to speak.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: So, yeah.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:50:55] Speaker A: I'm the businessman.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: All right, subscribe to the podcast. Rate it. You know, review the podcast, and we'll talk to you next time.
