Cold Open And Tech Fumbles

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome back to Corporate Strategy, the podcast. It could have been an email. I'm Anthony. And I'm Michael. Didn't see that coming, did you?

SPEAKER_03 0:23

That was so smooth. I figured it out. I made it work. Wow. What a that was just a game changer. Last time it was so clunky. We're like, do we have to stop? Did we have to stop the intro music? What do we have to do? Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

I'm Anthony.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

That was so smooth. Why is it coming back?

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Oh, I know why. It's because of the YouTube. Oh my god. There we go. We were so close to the back. We're so close to production.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Oh, we were there. Now we know. Now we know what we need to do. I'm sorry for everybody who just had to witness that. That was probably really confusing.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

I mean, it was so good. I timed us in. I had my finger up. I made you not breathe for a solid like minute. Yeah, way longer than I thought I'd have to. You really held your breath, which is good. I stuck my face right here and held my breath because I wanted to make sure people knew I was holding it.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

I uh you well, you said don't breathe. Yeah. And then dogs started barking in the background. And then I still held my breath and eventually said, Oh, you can breathe now. I'm like, oh thanks.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

I did allow for the breathing because the dogs wouldn't stop.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

I've had a little of like allergies going on too. So it's not the easiest to breathe. So you doing this to me, I could have just fell over.

Health Stories And Medical Weirdness

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah, I I I would have enjoyed that. That would have really livened up the show. I think like a little drama is what we're missing.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

Yeah, how entertaining would that be if you just let the live stream run while I'm on the floor. What if you just kept the podcast going? You know what? Let's make a vow to each other.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Should we start it over?

SPEAKER_03 1:49

No, I think we just need to make a vow that if it ever actually happens, we have to continue the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Keep talking.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Just keep talking. Don't ever happen. Yeah. Don't acknowledge it. Just continue it on.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Love that. Love that. I think that's uh that's the plan, that's the play. Hey, uh Michael. Still your name? Anthony. Still weird. Still weird. It's never gonna be not weird. Pinkies up vibe check. How are you doing? Vibe check.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

I have been through a week. So I told you, I told you.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

That usually happens over the course of seven days, but please continue.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

Well, no, there's like I I had a week. And there's I've been through a week. Then there's yeah, it was just a week. Oh. All different. You know, you can catch that. So you remember my back problems. So my back was hurting. I said I did something, I threw out a disc.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

You've been carrying the pod for two years.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

I know, right? My back hurts. Yeah. It still hurts. So I herniated a disc, had to do the whole MRI thing I talked about a few episodes ago. I finally got the procedure to help. I got a giant needle stuck into my back. Giant giant needle stuck into my back. Is that really the length? It's it's crazy. So have you ever seen the epidur an epidural for a woman that's giving birth, anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

I've never given birth.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Well, yes. But they do they call it an epidural where they inject steroids into the herniated disc. Okay. And so it starts with just two little needles, they give you a little pinch, they numb the outer area, and then they take this giant needle that they have to stick all the way down in between your vertebrae, into the little cushions, the little marshmallows back there, and they basically have to inject the steroid into that little area just so it can have time to recover and heal and stop from hitting all the nerves. So I had that done this week. Okay. It is the weirdest sensation I've ever felt in my life. Really? Describe it. So one, you're numb. So the skin is numb, so you don't really feel anything. You can feel a little bit of a pinch, but it doesn't really hurt. But when they actually start injecting the steroid and sticking the needle down there, it feels because you're laying face down, it feels like you've got this immense pressure in your like lower stomach groin area that's just pushing down into the table. Like a bowling ball is just being sat and pushed into you from the inside. Weirdest feeling in the world.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

I don't even know how to, like it wouldn't, it didn't hurt. So so I've I've had two very weird feelings in my life uh under medical circumstances. The first was LASIK, which was very weird.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Yeah, you told me about it. Because it doesn't hurt.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

And you'd think it would and it doesn't. And you you do feel something, but it's not painful. And they don't put you under, right? No, it just kind of feels like you're somewhat it honestly feels like this. If you can do the the listeners can't see it, but if you take your fingers and just rub them up your eyes, that's what it feels like. Uh it's strange. And the second weirdest thing, this is probably TMI, was I had my prostate exam. And let me tell you, the sensation of that is something I'll never forget. And I'm just so excited to get older and have that happen at least like once a year. Let me tell you.

SPEAKER_03 4:54

I think they have a test, you don't have to do that anymore now.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

For me, they did. Oh, okay. There was there was no choice.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

You walked in the office and they're like, he needs to have the real thing done. Not what I went in for, but what I came out for. That's so much worse. You go and be like, oh yeah, routine checkup, blood pressure, pressure, cough, touch your toes, whatever they do in there.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

And then they're like, all right, turn around. They got the glove out and everything. And let me tell you, when you were describing the needle, it just sent me right to it. Like I was back in the room because again, it was a pressure, it was a pressure that just didn't let up. And it felt like forever. Uh, and for all of our listeners who have a prostate, don't wait. Get it examined. Despite what I'm telling you.

SPEAKER_03 5:44

Okay. Don't wait. I would take the needle thing ten times out of ten versus what you had to go through. So maybe my whole entire thing is is mute now, but be be brave.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Be brave and do it. Um so, well, how is how is responsible?

SPEAKER_03 5:59

So it's weird. So the the whole when you herniate a disc, the whole thing is weird. Because one, when it herniates, it pushes on different nerves. So you get weird sensations like just tingle or numbness down your leg or in your groin area, just like shooting pain when you take the wrong step and bend over or whatever. It's the weirdest thing because you're not injured.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Like electrical, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Yeah, yeah. It's it's all just nerve. And so when they inject the steroid, it takes time for that actually to the steroid to kind of take effect and like give you that relief. So it's been like little by little, but the first day, I was so sore from the needle being in. Yeah, and like I couldn't even like walk the next morning. It was like excruciating. I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do anything ever again. Luckily, this is like day, this is day four, day four, and it is significantly better. Yeah, it's still a little bit of dull pain here and there. I'm gonna have to do some stretching, some PT, all that good stuff, but yeah, much better.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

I'm glad to hear it. Yeah, that was that was my work. This has been a journey for you. I've had a feet journey and you've had a back journey. I have. Yeah, I'm I'm glad to hear you're doing better.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

Well, I I said last year was the year of health, which a lot of things did go right for the year of health last year for me. This year somehow turned into now I have all these other physical ailments that I have to deal with.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

That's generally what happens when you focus on health, is you uncover that you're not actually healthy at all.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Yeah, you keep on uncovering different stones, and you're like, do I want to look down that hallway? Probably not. I'm gonna keep this door closed. I just don't want to know.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

You ever think about how all the cells in your body were not in your body just a year ago?

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Yeah, that's super weird.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Isn't it weird? You're like the ship of Theseus, but for for biomatter.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

Or when you get like something in your eye and like an hour later your eye's already grown over it.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

It's just grown over it. And now it's permanently in your eye forever.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

Body's weird, man.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Body's weird. Body's real.

SPEAKER_03 7:39

I could never do it.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

But I think I think you get used to it when you're a doctor. Yeah. We need to have a doctor in the pod. Actually, we should have my brother-in-law on the pod.

SPEAKER_03 7:46

Oh, we should. That'd be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Pediatrist.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

I I want to.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

She's showing me pictures. You want to see pictures?

SPEAKER_03 7:51

No, I don't.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Oh, we should have him show us pictures. On the YouTube stream. Wait, is that doc? Yeah, is that legal? I mean Isn't there a thing called HIPAA? No, he's not showing me pictures of his patients. He's showing me pictures of like reference. You know, you know how some people like volunteer, like he's like, hey, check out this. Yeah, gangrene right here, you know? I was like, yeah, I want to see. Yeah, I want to see. I want to see if I can stomach it. That'd be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

Yeah. All right, Pinky's up, how are you? Pinky's up. Uh, how do I seem? You actually seem a little more chipper today. A little chipper. But see, with you, I've known you long enough to know that's either really good or really bad.

Community Shoutouts And Monetization

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Hide the pain. I hide the pain through humor and joy. Yeah. It's actually, it's a little bit of a defensive mechanism, and I think it bothers some people because I do smile when I'm uncomfortable. Yeah. Like it's I don't know why. I get I get jokey. It's especially bad when I'm in excruciating pain or in the hospital.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

Like the prostate exam?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah. I'm I'm start, I I really start like the you know, I'm wonderful. How are you? I get very sarcastic, I get very smiley, and I'm like, oh, I'm dying. Uh but this is not that. I'm not in that phase right now. This week was fine, actually. I feel like I had a good productive week. I feel like I'm in good spirits, I'm in good health. You've seen the work we've had done on our house.

SPEAKER_03 9:09

There's a nice crap.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

See, again, you know, like the things you're missing if you're not watching our live stream. That was amazing. Just grabbed a flo- Nope. Now what are you gonna do with it? Because it came free of my hand.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

Now what are you gonna do with it is really the question.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

I was gonna eat it.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

That'd be amazing live stream.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Oh, just like just don't say anything about it. Just pulling a gex. I'm pulling you remember do you remember Gex, the gecko?

SPEAKER_03 9:30

No.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

You're too young for that, huh? Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_03 9:32

I don't know what that is.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Too young for Pepsi Man, too young for Gex. Sad. I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. Yeah. I I really have no updates. That's why I'm just, you know, looking for something to pull.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

Yeah, everything's fine. Well, productivity seems to be kind of like the name of this week.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

People in our chat were talking about that. They're like, hey, I'm feeling productive. And they felt a little more energy. Yeah. I kind of did the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Hey, speaking of productivity, how's that uh Discord swap going?

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Oh, yeah, it's it's done.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

You're ahead of that project.

SPEAKER_03 9:59

100%. Well, we'll get that done eventually. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. You know, at some point in the future. Yeah, why not? Yeah. I did see, I think you fixed the LinkedIn automation. I did fix the LinkedIn automation and it actually pulls our YouTube. I saw that. I did something, I didn't talk about it, but it does pull our YouTube, which is kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Live shout outs to Michael for fixing the LinkedIn automation. Also, live shout-outs, we got a new Patreon subscriber. And I am, I am very happy to say we are almost, almost a cash flow positive podcast. That's amazing. After five years, I can stop believing money.

SPEAKER_03 10:31

You think one day we'll ever make money from this?

SPEAKER_01 10:33

I well, we were talking about this beforehand. I want to make this very clear. When we do hit cash flow positivity, which may or may not happen based on you, the viewer slash listener, we're gonna take all extra proceeds and put it right back into the pod. So that means uh more unique content for our Patreon listeners. Also, it means more better setup, better ability for us to bring guests on. We are gonna invest every penny back into the pod. Community meetups. We have real jobs, we don't need the extra money. The extra money goes right back into this. So that is uh a promise. I was gonna say it's a Bruce promise, but who the hell is Bruce?

SPEAKER_02 11:07

Yeah, we got we killed him.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

We he's dead. Yeah, so it is a promise. There there will be no pocketing of the funds, it will simply be a reinvestment.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

Yeah, yeah. If anything, it'll just stop coming out of our pocket and actually just come out of the podcast pocket. So it's good. It's exactly important to it.

Introducing The CAC Framework

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah, and if you want to help support the show, link is everywhere. Literally everywhere. Just scroll down.

SPEAKER_03 11:27

We actually are filming some of our first Patreon content today.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Patreon exclusive content.

SPEAKER_03 11:32

Yeah, we're gonna get that started. So if you are a Patreon uh exclusive member, exclusive member?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah, they are a member? They are the corporate strategist tier now of Patreon.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Okay, so if you do that, you'll get access to this premiere guest.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

You will get access to premium content. That's pretty cool. So you guys gotta join. Please join.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

We love you. What are we talking about today?

SPEAKER_03 11:50

Oh, this one's important. I actually I posted it. I was like, you know what? What's something that we've that we feel really proud of on this podcast that we've created over the years?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

My feet.

SPEAKER_03 12:00

Yeah, your feet. We've talked a lot about your feet.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I'm so proud of them.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

They know more about your feet than they probably need to know.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

They still haven't seen them yet. That's an exclusive Patreon tier content, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

Maybe a different subscription service?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

A different, a different tier on a different platform.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

But one thing we've always talked about and that we found really helpful for us was how do you evaluate workplace happiness? I think we all go through it. You know, you you join a job, uh, you're part of a corporation, and at some points you might love your job. And a lot of the times maybe you love it for the whole entire time. Like some people are very lucky where they just say, I love my job, love everything about it, love the people I work with. But I would say more often than not, people are not the happiest with their job, and whether it's certain parts of what they have to do or whether it's the job in totality. And so what we did, you know, a few years ago now, how many years old is this? Three years?

SPEAKER_01 12:50

I want to say it's like four years old now. It might be four years. We we kind of did it, I think, in year two.

SPEAKER_03 12:53

Yeah, we started that early.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

Yeah. We were kind of thinking, like, okay, well, what goes into? We did. That was actually it. We should have never done this. But we started thinking about like, well, how do you evaluate if you're happy or not? Like, how do you know? Um, and how do you know what factors into that? I I'm guessing you felt this way too. In certain jobs, I felt unhappy, but I didn't know why.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

You're just like, today sucked.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:16

And you're like, I don't know why. You know, maybe I can think about it a little bit. Maybe the work was frustrating. But then day after day, you're like, okay, it can't just be the work that's the problem. Like it's got to be something else. Maybe it's the people I work with, maybe the people I work with suck. And the environment is just really crappy. Maybe I feel like I need to earn more money. You know, maybe I need to uh get that next promotion or whatever it is for your personal goals and ambition. So we created something that, you know, is essentially a way for you to kind of grade yourself in all those areas and understand not only a little bit more about you, about what you value in workplace happiness, but also, you know, be able to real realistically look at your day-to-day and say, hey, this is why I'm not happy. Maybe I need to look for another job, maybe I need to transition to a different part of the company, or maybe there's something in my control I can do.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Now, I want to shout out ourselves, because yeah, we did peak with this, but the the construct we made, it is, it does it evaluates everything Michael said, but I think the really neat thing about it is, you know, we came up with this four years ago. It has not changed. Yeah, it's stayed consistent. It has really stayed consistent, and I I think about it often in my own work life, what this thing is, which our existing listeners know, but new viewers might not. I still use this. Is it is it the flies back?

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Yeah, I don't know where it went. Grab it. You need to eat it.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

This is definitely gonna impact your score. Um, but I think the the big thing to think about here, we joked about this last week, is when I log into my HR platform, it asks me for a happy, sad uh an NPS score.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

That's right.

Defining Culture And Why It Varies

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Like it wants me to click an emoji on how I feel. You can't measure workplace happiness on a single day. Yeah. Right? There are going to be ups and downs in your corporate existence. Even if you have a perfect score of our system, you can still have very bad days where you're like, I want to quit. And that's okay. Normal. Very normal. Very normal. I think what we've built and what we're going to talk about is actually a way to evaluate over a span of time your satisfaction with your job and your existence and how your work balance, not work life, just work balance and work quality of life, can be measured. And it can also help you identify what you want to do next and what to look for in the interview process. So, with that, Michael.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

I guess I gotta say, what is it? So you've got to think about as we were as we were working through it, what are kind of the four vectors of things to think about? We were able to bucket all the things that you need to really think about and evaluate that play into workplace happiness. And I would say, even if you think of something different from one of these four things, just to keep it simple, they probably can fit in that bucket somewhere. And so the four that we identified were culture, autonomy, challenge, and compensation. Or some might say cack.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

And I want to I want to make this clear culture, autonomy, challenge. If you think about, if you've ever like, you know, seen a stereo, used a music app, that's your that's your kind of your bass, your treble, your mid-tones. You can adjust those as you see fit as you need them. Compensation, that's your master, yeah, right? It does not exist on the same scale as the other three. It is an offset. And it's important to call that out up front because some people would be like, I want all compensation. It's like, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

You actually have to evaluate the three first, and then you can use compensation to turn up the volume for the other three. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

Yeah, yeah. As you as we kind of did this, so a couple years ago we did an experiment where we, I think was it 10 days, two weeks, one week?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

We did two weeks and we revisit it and did two weeks again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:51

So basically, the first thing you have to start out with this in understanding whether you're going to be happy and whether, you know, what thing you weight more than the other, you have to think for yourself, well, what do I value? Do I value a happy workplace where I love my coworkers? I drink the Kool-Aid, I'm excited to go to work every day because of the people. So the culture is really, really good. That might be something you value. Some people not so much. He, when we were talking about this, Anthony was different than me. He valued that a lot more than me, where I'm like, for me, that's not the biggest thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

Even if I don't like the people I'm working with, if we're doing something important, if we're doing something challenging, I still would be just as happy the other way around. So the second one is autonomy. You know, a lot of people are told what to do every day. Hey, this is what you have to do, this is how you have to do it. For me, I prefer really high autonomy. I want to be able to make decisions on how I do the work. Some people, on the other hand, don't. They're like, hey, just tell me what I need to do. I want to clock it at the end of the day. Totally fine. Challenge. So is your work challenging? Are you solving big problems? Or is this something, or and you're are you learning every day, or is this something that like you're just mundane, you're used to it, you like the rhythm of work, you know what you need to get done, and at the end of the day, you can sign off. And then lastly, as you said, compensation. It's like maybe you're okay with how much you get paid, but a lot of people they're like, hey, I actually want to get paid more. And that will make one of those three things, culture, autonomy, or challenge, that'll bolster maybe I get a C letter grade on that. That'll bolster that up to a B minus. And I'm like, that's okay, because I'm getting paid enough to not care so much about being so happy with the culture.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

I mean, there's a possibility where you hate your culture, you hate your autonomy, and you hate your challenge. But your compensation is just so gosh darn good that it's like, whatever. I could not quit this job if I wanted to, because I am compensated so well for it. And I think that's important because the opposite can also be true, right? Like it it is it is a balancing act to truly find your happiness at work because you could love, you could have perfect 10 out of 10 compensation or challenge, 10 out of 10 autonomy, 10 out of 10 culture. You're paid pennies. And you're paid pennies, and that's not sustainable either. So, you know, professional gamer uh as an example. Yeah, awesome idea. Awesome idea.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

You're not gonna get paid for it.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

No, sadly, sadly, unless you're selling those counter-strike skins, it's kind of out of the or you're doing the other subscription feet picks on the side.

SPEAKER_03 19:10

You might be able to scrape by.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Right. You know, I wonder what the culture is like for that one. Challenge seems low.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Yeah, challenge seems everyone's got feet.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Well, you gotta keep it.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Well, not every sorry, not everyone's got feet.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

That's true, that's true. Let's not be let's not be uh ableist here. Um, but also you gotta keep those things clean, right? You gotta clean them, polish them, maybe get scraped. Yeah, get a get a treatment done, a peel, perhaps. Uh, you know, I'm very familiar with feet. You might need to get a trim, yeah, maybe even deeper trim into the into the borders, perhaps.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

I love that we're breaking this down. You might be seriously considering this as a possible.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

I could well the challenge, you know, the challenge is all things that I could work on. The culture is, I mean, as long as I guess I need a photographer, so as long as they're pretty easy to work with, that's could be a good culture. That's pretty solid. Compensation could be good. I really think it depends on the audience for the dogs. And the compensation is really what I make of it. So it's true. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

What do you value?

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah. And completely autonomous. I get as many or as few pictures as I want a week. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:15

So I mean, you know, maybe that's a good career path.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Foot pick model could be a path worth following.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

It could be. Yeah. Well, let's break those down. Yeah, let's do it. I think it'd be helpful to kind of go through each one and talk about like, well, what what does it mean? How do I know if culture's my problem or if I like culture, like if that's what I value? And so I think maybe we start with that one. Let's do it. What would you say for culture of saying either this is something that I value, so I should read it high on my scale, or it's something that you notice is actually a bad thing that's draining on you. I think both sides.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

At its basis, culture is it's the temperature of the room you like working in, really. And your culture is not my culture, it's not Michael's culture. I think that's the first thing we have to make clear here. There is going to be variance on your own grade of culture based on what you want. I like an environment where we can joke, we can be open. We had that white-collar, blue-collar episode, we talked about like the difference in conversation. Like, I want to work in an environment where I can say whatever the heck I want, and you know, no one's gonna be offended, everyone's gonna be happy. Your your culture slider, if you if you're looking for that, if it's up in the tens, like you're looking for a weird place, right? Like, but if your culture is, hey, I want to work in a place where everyone's professional, everyone's respectful, we shot the laptops at five, but I can rely on my team to get the job done. Right? Like a 10 out of 10 culture for you is probably just a professional workplace. Yeah, so it's a feeling. It's uh it's really subjective. When you're in that room, you know, I like this culture, I don't like this culture. This works for me, this doesn't work for me.

Autonomy: Structure Versus Freedom

SPEAKER_03 21:51

Yeah, actually, that's a that's a really good point because I do think people will have different perceptions of do I want to be an environment where like we're pushing each other and Challenging each other and like gaming each other, maybe maybe like a sales environment, right? Where it's like it's very much, how do I close this deal? Like we're ragging on each other because we're like, how do you not close this client? Or sorry, you have to deal with that client. Like that could be your thing. And you could be like, I get energy off of that. And I like going to work and having that, you know, friendly competition. But in some people's case, it might be like really terrible for them because they're like, I feel like this is way too demanding. It's toxic in ways because it's all about the sale. Like, those are all the things to consider uh when you think about culture. And even when you're like going into work for the day, like, are you looking forward to talking to your coworker who you depend on to do your job? Like if that's the case, if you're like, yeah, I can't wait to submit this pull request so that way we can like collab on the code, you probably have a pretty good culture.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

Because you're excited about it.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

I I I I like that. And I think uh there's respect.

SPEAKER_03 22:48

Maybe that's what I was going for. Is like, I'm yes, I want to talk to Anthony because I know he's gonna give me feedback. And we had this environment when we first started our careers, and then I can get I can genuinely learn, and I'm looking forward to that. So there's a a culture of respect between each other.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Yes, and I want to have one of my friends on who is an uh he's an ex-Marine. I guess he's a retired Marine. I don't know. Former Marine. Former Marine.

SPEAKER_03 23:08

You're never an ex-marine.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

That's true. You're that never, yeah. Okay, so you know. Um, hearing him talk about the culture of that environment, but they love it, right? Like Marines love that culture, and I think military in general has a very specific culture that you can really only get in the military. Right, right. Maybe some weapons contractors and you know, government contractors, you might get a similar vibe, but like that is a very specific culture, whereas an educator might seek a very, very different culture. So you really gotta think about like who you are, the environment you like to be in, and quantify that. Like, what are you looking for? And is it important to you? Like, yeah, I'm a nerd. Am I gonna do okay in the Marines? I don't know. Like, I don't know if that culture will gel with me. But if it's not that important, if I'm like, you know what, I'm a little bit of a chameleon, I can work anywhere.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Then culture's gonna be low on my ranking, maybe like a two out of ten.

SPEAKER_03 24:00

100%. Yeah, if you're extroverted, introverted, if if you work in a job where you have to collaborate with a lot of people, but you're introverted, like that might be really draining for you. Because you have to go and talk to everyone every day, and at some point you're gonna look at yourself in the mirror and be like, I'm dreading going to work. Why?

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Is it the work that I'm doing? Do I just hate doing the work? Or is it the environment I'm in that it just isn't suitable to who I am?

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:23

And so that that one's really, really subjective. But I think all those vectors will help you understand whether you value it or whether you just don't care. Like if you work alone, you're like, yeah, I go into work, I talk to no one, I do my job and I leave. You probably don't care much about culture because you're very independent and you don't need to worry about it so much. But let's go into autonomy.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Well, do you want to give your rating? Oh, yeah, what do you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny. As I was at Universal, in the beginning, I would say I didn't know I wanted culture, but I did. And like I love the environment I worked in, I love the people I worked in. Over the years, and especially through COVID, it was just such a weird time because you got so isolated and you kind of realized what you valued and where you got energy and where you didn't. And I noticed I really did enjoy being around people that I like to work with. Um, but then towards the end, as I kind of got to the executive executive ranks and my team got bigger and bigger, I kind of lost that again. But I didn't realize it. I think I talked about this on a web and on an episode where I had that like light bulb moment where I was like, I miss like working with people on things, not managing people, working to solve a problem with people. And so I used to rate, I think when we did the exercise, my culture rating was low. It was like three out of 10 or something like that. Like that's how we quantified it. And I think towards the end, I'd probably put it more like a six, but it's culture of working with people on things, not culture of just being isolated and just managing people.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Right. And I, you know, for me, interestingly enough, I'm I'm on a very similar path to you. Yeah. Where when we were on a development team, I valued culture the highest. Yeah, right. We talk about our golden days, our best of times. That was when we had a really good culture, but we were working as a really good team. And we were working in an engineering department. So, like, I I think back then I valued culture at a 10. Yeah. Like it was really important to me. And I think that was reflected in the challenge might not have been there, compensation definitely wasn't there, but culture was so good that it it made up for it. As I went into sales, I think culture came down a bit because it was more on me, right? How are you, Anthony, going to help us sell more product? Like, it doesn't matter what your team is doing or what your reps are doing, it's like, how are you helping close those deals? So my culture dropped. And then as I moved into management, culture just I don't care anymore.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

You just don't care about it.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

I literally do not care. I will work anywhere in any situation and I will fit and adapt to the culture because as a manager, I kind of have to fit with the culture of the environment versus exist in the culture of the environment. Fair. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

That's a really good, that's a that's a good way to put it. Is you kind of get out of the ranks of you needing to work well with inside your team to do actual work, and now you're just managing like the actual work that's coming in and the process and the people.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Right. I want my team's culture to be at a 10.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Yeah, you want them to be so happy.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

I'm a I'm a miserable sack of turds.

SPEAKER_03 27:11

And sometimes you gotta play shield.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

You gotta play exactly it.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

And some people really love that. They love to be the shield for their team and protecting their team, the mama bear, as some people would say.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Oh, interesting. Do people say that?

SPEAKER_03 27:22

Occasionally. Oh, okay. That's what people say. So let's do autonomy. Yeah. Um, so autonomy, how do you know whether you value this? How do you know whether it's draining on you? If you find yourself always being told what to do and how to do it, they're like, hey, this is you go into the system, you do this thing with the data, and then you put it in the report at the end of the week. And that's what you do. You come in every day, you do that. This is almost making like severance vibes today. Where it's like, yeah, you go in, you sort the puzzle, you don't really understand why, but you're doing it in the system and you're told what to do. In that case, you don't have a lot of autonomy to solve the problem. And in that case, you don't really even know what the problem is. You're just like, I just do the job.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Yeah, macro data refinement.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

Yeah, macro data refinement. I do that and that's it. That's all I ever do. So, like in that case, if you go in and you're you're kind of miserable on that because you're like, well, there's a better way to do it. And they're telling you no. Likely the autonomy kind of sucks there. Because they're telling you, no, you do it this way. This is how you work. I would even say another example is whether you can work remote or whether you need to go to the office because you don't have the autonomy to choose when you work.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Right.

SPEAKER_03 28:24

You don't you don't have the autonomy to choose how you get work done. It's no, you show up to the office, you work nine to five, you get your work done then. And for a lot of people, that's okay. That's a good thing. For a lot of people, they're like, no, my energy is from me in particular, five to nine in the morning, and I'd rather like take off early in the afternoons because I just don't have energy then. And for me, I need that autonomy to do my work that way, structure my days that way. Otherwise, I am way less productive. So if I'm in an environment where they're like, no, no, no, you start at nine, you end at five, I would be miserable.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Well, I think autonomy is another interesting one because, like you said, it just because you have your autonomy set at a seven or an eight doesn't mean you want to be completely autonomous. That could also mean I want structure, right? Some people actually really like being told what to do. I want to make my own decisions. I don't want to have to be uh a decision maker. My autonomy, it needs to be guided. I need structure. I need, I start my job at 8:30, I leave at 4:30, I can be home every day, you know, I get an hour-long lunch, I fit within this square box. Some people find comfort in that. Yeah. Right? So it is interesting again, depending on where you rank and where you find your comfort in being autonomous or being completely structured, you're gonna you're gonna turn that thing up or down based on you.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

Yeah, absolutely. And it what I would say for all these things, if you recently started becoming unhappy with your job, I would say it's probably due to something that changed.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

A change in your CAC.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

Yeah, yeah. A change in your CAC. Sometimes it's you, but more than likely it's an outside factor that's now impacting your CAC, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Absolutely right.

SPEAKER_03 30:03

A reorg that happened, a call back to the return to office, you know, whatever it is. Like all those things can factor into, hey, I'm not happy. And you can start to look at this and be like, well, what changed? And start to diagnose, okay, was that like a cultural thing? Like, did I change teams? And now I'm miserable because I want a different team. It very likely could be because you don't like the people you work with anymore and you miss your old team. And so culture is probably higher on your list. And so, for all these things, I'd say, like, if you are unhappy or you're trying to figure out why am I unhappy, what do I value? Those, that's the way to look at it is diagnose what changed. And it could be you, it could be a realization on your own to be like, oh, I'm actually starting to just understand I like to do things my own way.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

I I think about how when we went through our agile transformation, yeah, you and I got super jazzed. Because we're like, this is a great way to work. This is such a better, we are we're free. Yeah. Now we get to tell product management, this is gonna take this long. But we had peers who were older and more attached to the old waterfall style method. And you would have thought like someone kicked their puppy.

SPEAKER_02 31:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

It was it was like a devastation for them. And what was a turn up and a cack for us? Because we do feel like we got more autonomy with Agile.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

I felt like culture was much better. Right.

Challenge: Finding The Right Level

SPEAKER_01 31:15

For them, it was I don't want to adopt this new style of working. I like the old style. Yeah, I like the consistent way of doing things, and their autonomy got cranked down, which is just interesting to think about like how autonomy can mean something very different for two different people.

SPEAKER_03 31:30

Yeah, a hundred percent. I I like that a lot. I never thought of it that way, but it's so true. It's like, yeah, your version of autonomy can be different than someone who's just like, no, I just don't want to have to like let's say somebody has a fixed scope of work, it's 8:30 to 4:30 every day, they get to sign off. Like they have autonomy within that, they're within their life to decide, right? Hey, I'm going into work, I'll be back at this time. And like for them, that's fine. And then for other people, it's like, no, no, no. This is your work. You work either as much or as little as you need to in order to get it done. Don't care how you do it.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's interesting too because you know, we're thinking about examples from our own life and people we know, but this is also an opportunity not for you just to evaluate yourself, but to share this mechanism with your team, your peers, and check in with them. Yeah, right. Because we find this very valuable as a tool for ourselves. Right. This helps us make decisions based on what we want to do, the decision we're gonna make in our life. Don't just keep this for yourself. We talk about this often on the podcast. I think it's the most revisited topic simply because it does help. It is a great tool for measuring sort of the overarching weather of you.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:36

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:37

Yeah. And for the last one, what's your autonomy? Oh, yeah. What's my I keep on forgetting to get my own ratings. How dare you? I would say autonomy for me is really high. Same. I mean, I'd say it's probably like a nine or ten out of ten.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Agree.

SPEAKER_03 32:49

Nine and a half.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Agree. Same. I'm I'm 10.

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Like, I don't like to be told exactly how to do something. I like to use the creative part of my brain and decide when to do it. And like I said, when I get up in the morning at five in the morning, that is when I knock out my biggest tax or tasks, and at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, I'm like, my brain is mush, I do nothing.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Yeah. I love it. And I I too am a 10 in autonomy. And I would say, for me, it's not just autonomy for me, it's autonomy for everyone else, too. Yeah. Like I trust you to do your job so I can do my job. And then together we will do a good job. Yeah. Right. That's a perfect autonomy situation for me, is complete autonomy for me and everyone.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Right. Yeah. As a leader, I'm a very high trust, high autonomy leader. And so I give a long leash. I hate that so much for the program. That's really bad. A long leash. I don't like it. But I do exactly what you say. I'm like, I'm not going to tell you how to do it. Here's what we need to solve. Yeah. I need you to help me figure it out. Like you tell me how to solve it. You tell me how we're achieving the outcomes, and I'll support you, like whatever I can do to help. So 100%. It's kind of funny because what you value is often as a leader what you portray back to your team.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 33:52

And that can be good and bad, as we talked about in the love languages. Or the appreciation languages.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Yeah. For work. Yeah, we we didn't talk about love languages in the workplace because that would be an HR violation.

SPEAKER_03 34:03

HR would enter that chat so fast.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Maybe like Pepsi Man busts them through a wall.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

Wait, is that cool-aid, man?

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Pepsi Man does it too.

SPEAKER_03 34:10

Pepsi Man! What's next? He came back. He came back. Last one, I I would say last one that's on the normal scale, the vector, is challenge. And so, like I said in the beginning, challenge is again subjective. Like it's some people see challenge as they do challenging and hard work. So like they see the work in front of them, it's not mundane, it's not boring. They don't exactly know how they're gonna solve it. They're gonna have to really try to think through and work hard to solve the problem. Might be even more than they want to work, but they need to do it to get it done. Some people love that environment. Always learning, always dynamic, always changing. Some people hate that environment. Like you said, our friends back in the dev world that were like, no, agile is not the way, man. I've been doing software development for 40 years. Agile's not gonna make it any better than that. And they were skeptical because they knew that this was like a new, different way of working, and it would take them a lot to shift out of their old way of working. It'd be a higher challenge for them. They didn't want that. So I think challenges is one of those things that is again relative to you. Like, do you want a job that you're always having to learn and always having to do something new and probably think about outside of work because you have to, you know, process in your brain handle it? Or do you want a job that you could show up, do exactly what you've been doing for five years and be successful and move on?

SPEAKER_01 35:24

I was watching Nova. Are you familiar with the program? No idea. Nova on PBS, aka the public broadcasting service. PBS still exists?

SPEAKER_03 35:33

Real question.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

It's one of the best subscription services you could possibly sign up for. Nova is a program where they talk about science, technology, and the world we live in. And I've been watching it since I was like a child.

SPEAKER_03 35:48

It's been out that long?

SPEAKER_01 35:49

It's been out before I was alive. Nova goes way back. And I watched an episode on quantum computing, and specifically, they got to the IBM Quantum Computing Center, and they had a lady on who's talking about working with the quantum computing computer. And she was basically like explaining the process. And you could do this by the way, you can literally go to IBM's quantum computing website and like write a little program, have it run on their quantum computer, and get an output. But the process of using this insane computer, we can't trust it because the results it comes back with are completely uh right, but also there's gonna be some squirrely data in there. So we gotta go in there and refine it. Ours like macro data refinement. We gotta refine the quantum data, and then we can give it back to the end user. I was like, this has to be one of the most maddening jobs in existence because you are working with such beyond cutting edge hardware and software and like compensating for quantum errors. Like, I can't, I I don't know how she does it, right? I gotta watch this jaw a gape. Like the challenge, her desire for challenge is like a 24 out of 10. But some people love that, yeah, right? Like they do. And meanwhile, me, I'm like, I want my challenge a five. Yeah, I want to learn right in the middle, but I don't want to have to like break my brain every day I go into work, you know?

SPEAKER_03 37:15

Yeah, I think there is an important distinction too. Like, as you were talking about that, I wouldn't say challenge as is it challenging to work there. That's not the point of challenge. Challenge is like, do you enjoy that type of work? Are you challenging yourself? It's not, is Anthony hard to work with? That's not he is challenging, but that's not true.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

I really like difficult coworkers. Just give me a tan on that.

SPEAKER_03 37:37

That one goes more in the culture, yes, more in the culture bucket. But this one is your personal, you know, realm of like, would you be okay doing the same job and not really challenging yourself or learning a new skill for the next year or two years? If if that's a yes, it's probably pretty low on the challenge scale for you.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

I feel like you could also rephrase this as mental satisfaction.

SPEAKER_03 37:57

Oh, that's interesting. Right?

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Like, maybe I want to work in a massage parlor because I like the Zen environment. I like using my hands and being kinetic and you know, the act of massage. Yeah, it's it's for the benefit of my clients, but it's a calm environment. It's the same repeated tasks. Like, I know the work, I know, like your challenge might be very important to you that it is not my brains are leaking out of my ears at the end of every day, right? Or you could be the woman at IBM, right? Like two totally different spectrums. But it is important to figure that out for yourself is what do you like? Right.

SPEAKER_03 38:35

Yeah, putting it in a way of like way to think about this. Like for me, if I think about, hey Michael, you have one project this year. This is all you're gonna do all year is this one project, and it's gonna be on something you've been doing for the last two years. So this is your one project for the year, you're just gonna continue doing what you've been doing. For me, that's a no. I'm like, I need multiple things to kind of stretch my brain and think outside the box and learn new skills, even learn with new people or meet new people. It's like I need that in my life, and that's why challenge for me, I'll spoil it, is high. Yeah. I mean, it's probably like a 10. Like if I'm not always learning, I get bored really, really easily. And it's not because I get bored of the people, but like that for me is just really important that I'm challenging myself, that I'm learning, that I'm going beyond. Maybe it's because I was an athlete in the past and that's the competitive nature in me, but it's like that to me is a critical part of the job. Otherwise, I'm just not gonna be happy.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

I like that. I think that's a good way to think about it. Because for me, challenge, I would say it's maybe a five or a six, but I want to be mentally challenged because I like learning new things and I like being able to express myself creatively and do things the way that I can experiment and feel like I'm pushing things in a direction, but I don't like to be challenged on multitasking, too many projects, uh, you know, it it's chaos all the time. I can't ever focus and get something done. Like that kind of challenge, nah. But some people thrive in that.

SPEAKER_03 40:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Like some people love the chaos environment, right? Not me.

SPEAKER_03 40:08

Yeah, maybe it's because I'm ADHD, I feel like, but I've noticed that.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Because I've worked with people with ADHD. My wife has ADHD. I think you probably some people thrive in these environments. I am the opposite of whatever ADHD is. Yeah, I love to focus and fixate.

SPEAKER_03 40:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

See, for me, like there's a different A-word that probably uh fits in that bucket.

SPEAKER_03 40:31

No. But it's it's true because like for me, all those projects, they force you to be productive. Because if you don't time box yourself and get the thing done, you can't move on to the next thing and get the thing done. But some people are like, oh, I've got an open day and I've got one problem to solve. Like, let me figure this out.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

Love that.

SPEAKER_03 40:49

That is the worst for me. Love it. I'm gonna procrastinate as long as I can to possibly get that thing done, and then I'll get the thing done. Because like I need my brain to be hopping around other things, and if it's just an open slate, I'm like, I need something to do.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

Are you a first in, first out kind of person or a first in, doesn't matter what it's out kind of person?

SPEAKER_03 41:07

I would say if the no, not first in, first out. I would say there is a prioritization that happens. Yeah, it has to come in but be prioritized, and then it will come out.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

The second thing comes in, that's my first in, yeah, first out. You just pop that out right away, and then whatever comes in next needs to go behind it. And if someone gonna change my priorities, and so that first of the came in that you're working on, no, oh my gosh, you just ruined my life. My week is ruined. Why did you do this to me?

SPEAKER_03 41:37

So it should really be last in, first out for you.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Oh that sounds awful. That sounds like the worst, but I'm not a procrastinator. Yeah, and that's the other thing I've noticed is like I I've noticed, especially working with people with ADHD, there's a little bit of procrastination. Yeah, like, but it's like what what do they call it? Um, it's like procrastination. Yeah, like your Productive procrastination, where they they use it as an art form. And I've also seen the people who do that are considered like geniuses on the IQ scale, which what does that say about me? But uh I find that to be maddening. Again, I want when I get something, I want to get started, I want to go, I want to get it done, and move on to the next thing. Like pat it on the head, you're good to go. But this isn't we're very different in this way. So my challenge, yeah, it's like a it's like a I can't do this again. It's like a five-six plus one. Uh you can do it for the third episode in the road. I'm really glad. And I'm not doing it on purpose. It just comes up naturally. It's not your fault. Maybe this is why it caught on in the first place, is it's such a common number pattern.

SPEAKER_03 42:42

Yeah.

unknown 42:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

You know, I still I'm not on social media at all, so I don't understand the trend, but I see it everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

If you roll two dice, you know what the most common outcomes are gonna be? No, is it really? I think so. Huh. Right? Because it's it's the average between 12. Yeah, I guess it's true. Right in the middle. Right in the middle. So five, six, that's my challenge rating. Plus one. Plus one. A bonus die thrown in for a plus one. You throw in an extra die for a plus one. Uh, and that's my reasoning.

Compensation As The Offset

SPEAKER_03 43:07

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it's funny, even thinking about like if you think about the people you work with, you'll kind of be able to diagnose where they fit on the scale between June Anthony and I. But even like my wife is like something comes in, like, she deals with it. Yeah, the email comes in, she deals with it. And it's like for me, my brain does not handle that well. Yeah. Because I just get distracted. And so, like, for me, like when I'm doing work, it's I gotta put on, you know, reduce interruptions, do not disturb, and like let all those things go by. Sometimes this drives my wife insane. I don't respond to texts for like weeks, it's just not prioritized for me. I'm like, it's not that I didn't see it, I saw it. I just didn't respond because it's I got a bunch of other stuff to do first.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

I just hate typing with my thumbs. Yeah, I really hate it. Is that what I should tell people? I I mean, I do tell people, I'm like, hey, listen, if you text me, yeah, you can make it like a kind of crappy response. I like using grammar, I like using pronunciation uh like you know, pump. Punctuation and it just it pains me so much to have to text. But if I'm on like Discord, you're gonna get a very thoughtful response from me because I can I can keyboard it out. Uh another question for you when you check your email, do you read it from most recent to oldest?

SPEAKER_03 44:17

Ooh, that's interesting. Or opposite. I so when I process my email, because I don't respond to everything. No, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. In under two minutes. I do go top to bottom.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Ooh, gross.

SPEAKER_03 44:28

I do it in what order is that? Descending order?

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Descending. Yeah. So you're in ascending. You're an ascending. Most recent to least. Yes. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 44:35

Because I just look at it, I'm like, the most important thing, the biggest fire will likely be at the top.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

That's it's true, but I don't care.

SPEAKER_03 44:44

So you go back. If you took a weekend, let's say it's say you are for four days. Yeah. You scroll all the way back to the beginning. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

And that's the order I go in. And I will respond to things people have already responded to. Well, the nice thing about Outlook now is there's group conversations. So that's one of the best things Microsoft's ever done. Shout out to Microsoft. This is the last time you're getting one of those.

SPEAKER_03 45:03

If you're new, don't do fall into the pit trap that we just talked about. The pit hole? Pill pit trap? Pitfall. Pitfall trap. Yeah. Don't fall into that of you go all the way to the bottom, you don't realize there were seven replies to the email you just replied to the first one. Everyone will look at you and be like, that guy's an idiot.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

Sort by conversation history. Yes. It's a great feature. But I love that feature because it does let me start at the bottom.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

And then I can kind of see, okay, this is what happened. I now know the narrative, but I'm a very story-oriented person. That's why I love marketing so much. It's why I was good at sales. I like telling stories, and good storytelling has a beginning, a middle, and an end. True. My inbox has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it's in that order that it actually happened. And I'm putting the story together. So we're very different people, you and I, which is fine. It's fine, but we value things differently.

SPEAKER_03 45:50

We're both productive. We both get things done.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Well, one of us is.

SPEAKER_03 45:54

The other one, eh, journey is still. You can figure out which one's which. I won't say who it was, but someone in our community reached out to us and was asking a question. And from like a challenge perspective, you could tell that this person, if you agree with me, loves challenge. Like always is challenging themselves, trying to learn something new. And that's a level beyond me. Like I like it, but I just don't even know how this person is so incredible.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Shout out to this person. You're an impressive human being. Right?

SPEAKER_03 46:21

Like we it blows my mind every time.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

We acknowledge your impressiveness.

SPEAKER_03 46:24

Like my you say things, and my brain is just like, that's possible. People can do that in life. I appreciate you came to us for advice.

SPEAKER_01 46:32

But maybe it's the other way around. Do better. Find better role models. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

But when you're saying challenge, it was funny because it's like that challenge of fulfillment is like a little bit in work, a little bit out of work. Which I think is like really interesting to think about.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

Agree, agree. Well, and I I like like I said, that when I watched this Nova special, I was just like, my God, everyone on this episode is like the smartest human being on the planet, and I don't know how their brains don't leak through their ears after like a day of work.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Because there's so much thinking involved.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

Right.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

You know, and like that that amount of thinking, that amount of challenge intimidates me.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

Right? Scares me.

SPEAKER_03 47:09

Yeah, and you can even look at if you watch like high pressure environments, either like sports or something else, and they're like yelling at each other. Like some people thrive off that. That's challenge for them. Is like we're pushing each other to be better, we're working hard. And like you might see that and be like, uh no, that ain't for me. Like, I don't want conflict. I don't want to battle with people, I don't want to argue for my stuff. Like that level of challenge probably isn't the challenge you want.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

One of the things I love about marketing is my challenge is how do I convince people through non-conversational means to buy my product? Right? Because at the end of the day, like I have to psychologically convince you that I'm right, that my product is the best, and that you're gonna love it. And I hope that you do love it. But that's not entirely my problem. The challenge of that is so satisfying for me, right? Like when I create a good asset or I release uh a good video or put out a good launch and I know it does well, it's like, ah, yes, I love that level of challenge because a lot of it falls onto me. It requires my own level of creativity, my thinking, my focus on storytelling. Right. But uh when it falls apart, oh boy, it hurts. Yeah, ooh, it stings.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

Yeah, it's almost like if you were in marketing at a very well-known brand, like an Apple or something like that. Like you really can't do much wrong in marketing. You know what I mean? Like you could make a mistake, the ad could kind of suck, but who cares? It's Apple, dude. And like that would be a different level of I think challenge for you. Like if you were, if you're at a startup now, you guys have to fight for your lives and build this product, you know, whatever is next step for the company. So you are responsible for that. Yeah, if you suck at your job, you're not making sales.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

I mean, that headset's the perfect example, yeah, right? Because that headset is a piece of garbage. Shoutouts Apple. Very expensive. You just did the worst thing. Shoutouts, congrats. Uh, but the people who marketed that product, how many of those things do they sell? Yeah, right? And like I knew from the onset that it was gonna be garbage because I've been a VR enthusiast since the early days. And like, this is just a crappy VR headset with a little extra pizzazz. Um, but the marketing team did such a good job.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

Because even even though I was like, this thing sucks, and I knew that I was I was reading all the material, I was like, what is this? I'm watching videos and people use it. I'm like, it's cool, but I don't I don't think it's it almost got me.

SPEAKER_03 49:30

Yeah, it almost got me because I was like, this is super cool. Like, I need this. And then I saw the reviews, and I'm like, I am going to hard pass.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

That was probably very challenging for the marketing team at Apple because they probably knew this thing sucked.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

Like they knew, but look at what they put out. Yeah, and look how many people bought it.

SPEAKER_02 49:46

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

And now it's you know collecting dust in everyone's house. Right. But that marketing team did a great job. So I think it's a good example of when you have a fun challenge like that, it can be very rewarding, especially when you see it succeed, even if the product itself is a piece of crap.

SPEAKER_03 50:00

Yep, 100%. Let's talk the last one, compensation. Let's do it. How do you want to start this? So it's not the same on the vectors of a scale where you can say I'm an eight out of ten in culture, I'm a three out of ten that I care for in autonomy, I'm a seven out of ten in challenge. Compensation's a little different.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Right. Uh, I think compensation has a baseline, which is what do you need to survive?

SPEAKER_03 50:20

Yeah, like base living income that you need.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

You're your compensate if you're a one at compensation, that should just mean that you have enough to live.

SPEAKER_02 50:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

Right? Like it gets you by. It gets you by. You're not missing bills, you're able to go to the hospital if you need to, you're never wanting for money, but at the same time, you're not eating filet mignon every weekend, right? So that's that's a one. Uh a ten is your Scrooge McDuck in it.

SPEAKER_03 50:43

Yeah, you got so much money, you're like, I couldn't, I couldn't just, I don't even know what to do with my money.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

I got so much in my pocket for it. I could walk down the street and fire a gun loaded with$100 bills at people and whatever. Yeah, it'd be totally fine. Totally fine. So you use that scale as basically what do you want? Like, where do you want to be in your life? And can you make, can you take something on the lower end if your other three categories are where you want them to be? Right. Right? Like, hey, I might only be a three at compensation, which you know, I get a filet mignon every quarter.

SPEAKER_02 51:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

Right? Like I we go out to eat every three months. It's a pretty nice meal. Maybe your compensation is a seven. I love filet mignon. Right. I want to eat it every Friday and Saturday.

SPEAKER_03 51:28

I want a yacht. I want a Bugatti. Right. Like all those crazy things. Like you can't be at a one. You actually really care about getting paid money.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

Interestingly enough, we've never talked about this before. I think compensation is the one place where life actually creeps into CAC.

SPEAKER_02 51:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:42

Right? Because compensation impacts your life outside of work, which is why it is uh an a horizontal bar where the others are vertical bars. Yeah. Right? So you have to figure out where do you want to be in your life, and then how does your work happiness get impacted by that? Right. And what are you willing to sacrifice to meet that?

Diagnosing Issues And What To Do Next

SPEAKER_03 52:04

Yeah, 100%. So you can almost use it like if I were to give an example. You know, if you value culture at an eight out of 10, so it's super high for you, and you're like, yeah, but my current company, like, I probably rate them like a three out of ten on the culture side because culture just sucks here. And then you're like, okay, well, autonomy, I value like a seven, I've got like a four in work, and you know, then on challenge, uh, I value a nine, but I have like a three. In that case, you're pretty low. You're probably like a D minus if you were to put those scores together and figure it out. But if you're making Buku bucks and like all your living situations are figured out and you're saving money like crazy and you're buying whatever next thing you want, and like those things are what are making you happy, then you can look at that D minus and be like, actually, because I'm getting paid so ridiculously, I'll grade myself like a B plus at this company or even an A minus. So you're willing to put up with the multiplier. Yeah. Yeah. You're willing to put up with the shit of work because of how well you are being paid. And I think that's an important way to look at it is it's a bell curve to your score, if you're thinking about it like taking a test. Like if you if you rate yourself low, use that as the bell curve to say, will it pull me back up? If that's what you care about.

SPEAKER_01 53:12

I feel like compensation is probably the only category that can actively change on a month-by-month basis, potentially. Right? Because you're thinking for that. Let's say you have a lifestyle change. Okay, right? Gonna have a baby. Yeah. I had a medical issue that's changed the way I live. Um, you know, got divorced. Had something happen where suddenly I've either come into a lot more money or a lot less money. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

Or more expenses.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

More requirements, right? Like I, you know, have a kid now. I have another mouth to feed. Right. Like suddenly it's like, oh, I care about their success. I need the compensation to go up. Yeah, everything else can come down. So I do think that's the one that you can see a rapid change in your personal needs based on life.

SPEAKER_03 54:07

100%. And so, like, like like you just said eloquently, if you are one of the only times that's gonna happen. Well, if you're gonna turn, if if you realize work is not making me happy, I'm dreading going to work today. This is one of those factors of being like, oh, it's because out like life is impacting the fact that I need more money, I'm feeling more pressure financially. I need to boost up my compensation. So now I'm feeling like I hate work because I'm not making enough money, which is also affecting my life, and it's just that never-ending circle. And so at that point, you might be like, I need to make more money. And even if culture is at a 10 out of 10 where you work and you really value that, and autonomy's high, and challenge is wherever you want it to be. Even if it's the case, like you said in the beginning, that my if your compensation is a one, it doesn't matter. Because your outside life will creep in, and none of those things matter because your compensation is so, so low.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:00

And so it's it's a it's a lose-lose situation because you're like, I love the company, I love everything about what we're doing, but I need to make more money, and they can't do it. And that's like a really hard realization where you're like, I've got to leave my job just because I'm not making enough money, and I'm probably gonna go into something that I like less.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

I think also agree, first thing. I just want to say eloquent to use your own words, but also I I don't want to just lump compensation with money. Healthcare benefits.

SPEAKER_03 55:31

Yeah, benefits.

SPEAKER_01 55:32

401k, right? Like pet insurance, dental. Yeah, all of that fits under there because your needs outside of work are still your needs, and it that your needs can include your family's needs, your you know, your whatever your home needs are, right? There are a lot of needs that can be filled in by compensation. Right. Some people need a car allowance. Yeah, you know, they'll go into sales, it's like because I need I need a vehicle, and because I'm a traveling salesperson, that's covered by my job. Right. Right. So there's there are things I think even outside of salary that you can consider for that compensation slider too.

SPEAKER_03 56:04

Yeah, I love that. So maybe since we're kind of wrapping this up before we get to everybody in the chat uh in our own Discord server, soon to be retired, and also in this chat, let's talk about maybe um like some examples of how you can you can just look at this and evaluate whether do you need to jump ship and exit? Do you need to call a plan E. A plan E as we like to call it. Exit your company. Do you need to look for a transition in your company? Or should you just stay where you're at? Maybe ask for a raise or something like that. Do we want to talk about like the different signs of where people might be?

SPEAKER_01 56:38

Yeah, I think we should. I think it's a it's a good thing. So let's start with culture, right? If if your culture is not good, what do you do?

SPEAKER_03 56:44

Yeah, so if you realize I value culture and it's not great, I think you need to also look at is this, and we talk about this in our interview uh episode where we talk about all the skills and questions you should ask in your interview, but you should evaluate is this a company problem or is this a my team, my role problem? Because if you're like, I'm getting paid really well, um, I've got high autonomy, the challenge is actually pretty good, but I hate the people I work with. Maybe just switch teams. Yeah. I mean, we can we can attest to that when we were in development.

SPEAKER_00 57:15

We switched teams hundreds of times.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

We had 35 different teams in our building. It's like we could just switch teams if we really liked everything else about the company. But in some cases for culture, it's it's a cultural problem in the company.

SPEAKER_00 57:25

Right.

SPEAKER_03 57:25

Where the people suck, the upper leadership suck, the things they're mandating just are ridiculous and you're just not on board for it. If it extends beyond like your immediate circle and you realize it's a cultural thing that's really impacting your life beyond that, I think that's your sign of like, okay, I gotta get out of this company.

SPEAKER_01 57:42

And I want to throw one more thing out there before you throw in the towel, check yourself, right? Because your evaluation of the culture could very well be dictated by you, the human being working there. If, hey, I I don't really know about my team. They're kind of weird. I don't want to read on them, right? Like, if that's if that's how you're feeling, you are part of the problem. That's a great you need to, if you value culture, you need to embody the culture you value. Right. So let's say I like going out with my team and getting Starbucks, then invite them. Say, hey Jerry, uh, me and the gang are going to get Starbucks. You want to come with? Start a habit. Build the culture you want to build. If you can't do that and you're still miserable, then pull the plan E. But I do think it's very preemptive to look around you and be like, oh, this sucks. If you don't do something, culture is one of the few things I think on, especially on a team, yeah, you can make a direct impact on. Now, if you were rejected outright, you're in the wrong place. But you never know until you try.

SPEAKER_03 58:41

Right. Yeah, it's a it's a good way. Test the weather really quick. Be like, okay, let me check myself. Let me ask someone I care and trust. Are they feeling the same way I am? Yeah. Like, do they think it sucks on their team? Get another perspective. Because yeah, if everyone around you is the problem, this isn't as true in life as it is in work. If everyone around you is the problem, you're never the problem, you're probably the problem.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

You're probably the problem. Yeah, agree, agree.

SPEAKER_03 59:04

So don't be the common denominator. Ask around, try to understand it. Um, okay, autonomy. You want to do that one next?

SPEAKER_01 59:10

Yeah. So autonomy, autonomy is hard because a lot of times it is dictated by the process you exist in, agile, waterfall. Uh, you know, you're in the Marines, right? There's very tight autonomy when you're in the military. You're a doctor, you live and die by your patients, your schedule. There's an emergency, right? So depending on what you value, you will quickly know whether or not it is a fit. And I don't think this is one where you get to make a change yourself. So autonomy really, you judge it in the interview process. Yeah. I would say. When you're looking at new jobs, ask the kind of questions about the work environments you like to work in to the hiring manager. And if you get to talk to you, you know, your potential new team members, ask them those questions. They're not weird, right? What's it like working on a team here? You know, how do you guys uh share the workload? Yeah. Uh do you guys have weekly meetings, daily stand-ups? What's that process like? Like, these are not questions people are gonna be like, oh, Anthony's on the suspus with that one. This is just normal one. You should always ask lots of questions in the interview, and you're gonna look good for doing this.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:15

You might not be charging.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:17

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:18

I just saw the battery sign come on. I'm like, oh, this could be fun. Okay. There we go. But I absolutely love, oh man, that was good. Good state. Good state. Cut the stream right there. We got good culture on this pub. There we go. We're looking out for each other. But if you, yeah, ask those types of questions. What's it, what's the working culture like on the team? Ask that question. Be like, okay, do you guys like have to work in certain hours, or is it more like flexible? Hey, however, you need to get your work done this week, get it done. Like, those are the types of questions you can ask in the interview to understand does it have the level of autonomy that I want or need?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Agree. And I think, you know, if you're just listening to this podcast right now and you've just had the light bulb go off and realize I missed this opportunity and I'm in a place where the autonomy is not good, to your earlier point, there are other teams. And autonomy can shift team to team, manager to manager, department to department. So before you bail on the company, take a look at the other options around you.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:13

Yeah, couldn't couldn't have said it better myself. I do think there's also a couple questions you might be thinking in your head of whether you have autonomy or not. If you're if you're asking yourself, man, we always get these tasks and I know we can do it better, but my manager won't let me. Or I want to be able to do this better, but my manager always says, no, don't do this. Autonomy is probably low and you're probably not happy. Um, but if you have flexibility to be able to do this and you're like, yeah, I got this new test, I don't really know how I'm gonna solve it yet, like your autonomy is probably high because you get to decide how you're gonna go about that work. All right, should we do the last one? Challenge.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:46

Challenge.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:47

Challenge. So challenge. This one, like we said, is all relative to you. But if you find yourself to me, it's a little bit more straightforward. If you find yourself being bored, if you're bored and what you do and you're like, I gotta go do this thing again. I don't want to do this thing, but I gotta do this thing because that's what I that's what my job is. If you find yourself stagnant in life, like you're just like, what's what's the point of me going to work today? You know, what's the point in the future?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

Like if you're in those places, I think challenge I feel like you're about to pitch a medication. Are you stagnant in life? Are you bored at work? Do you get tired occasionally?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:24

There's a reason why those questions work.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:26

Have you tried drinking Pepsi?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:28

Pepsi Man is there. Pepsi Man. But would you agree with that? It's like challenge, I think is easier to diagnose.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:37

But I would I I would take what you said. I kind of cut you off with the joke, but I would take what you said and say when you are in that level of lull, you're in a really good spot. I would actually say boredom is an opportunity in corporate. When you're bored and you feel like, ah man, another day where I could literally just work five minutes and then go play Minecraft. That's actually an opportunity. Look around you. Look around you when you're bored because there are problems that exist that you might be able to step in and help solve, and that is a career development opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:10

100%. How often did we do this? And all the freaking this is why we are where we are. We literally would go to other teams and be like, so what are you up to? Like, how does that work? And be like, okay, maybe we can make it better by doing this. Our manager didn't ask us to do it. It's just because we automated the crap out of our jobs. And we were able to have this free time to go and learn, try to find opportunities, and then kind of insert ourselves into those. And that is why we got to where we are. I'm just kind of great.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:34

Exactly why we got to where we are. Now, the opposite side is a little more challenging.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

I mean, to use the own the word to explain the word. When you're in a situation where you're like, I am screaming in my brain because my job's so hard. I'm working 12-hour days. It is it is a sweatshop in here. Like, what do I do?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:55

They're asking me to do this job, this job, this job. There's not enough hours in the day.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:00

It's conversation.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:01

I can't master anything.

Negotiation Humor And Real Pay Tactics

SPEAKER_01 1:04:02

Yeah. That's when you have to have a conversation with your manager andor leadership and say, Hey, I am drowning here. Come with solutions, right? Say, you know, I think we need to hire for this role. I think we need to uh pass off this responsibility to a different team. Come with solutions before you go and say, Hey, I hate my job, right? Like, don't just show up and open the door with that, right? But have potential ways you can fix it. And if that doesn't work, yeah. Plan exit.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:35

Plan exit. Get out of there. Get out of there fast.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:38

Yeah. So yeah, I think that's that's this tool.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:41

You know, in a way that we can explain it that we hope will be helpful to you too. If you're feeling like, yeah, maybe this job isn't great for me, maybe I'm hating work today, whatever it is. Like we encourage you, try to put your brain into kind of these different vectors and understand yourself first. Which one do I care about? And then think about, well, why am I not happy? And then what are my solutions? You know, do I decide to stay? Because I am happy, actually. But if you're not happy, then it's do I look around me and figure out that I just need to try a new team? Maybe I need to try a different role that'll be more challenging and interesting to me. Or maybe it is finally your plan E. And we actually we did a really cool exercise as we keep mentioning. We'll have to put that in the notes or something of the episode we did for like a week or two weeks. We basically did hour by hour scores. So we said 9 a.m., here's my rating, and then also here's my ratings for myself. 10 a.m. Here's my rating for culture autonomy challenge. And we did that for every single hour. And then we graded ourselves off that curve. Yeah, it was good. And it was pretty abysmal. Yeah. But the compensation kind of brought us both back up.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:38

The weird thing is, I think Clark, Michael, gosh dang it. I never I never call him this in real life, by the way. I call him Michael. It is weird hearing you say it. But like when this it just comes out. Uh it's funny because I look at you and I think there's a guy who's just got it together. He's so happy. You know, you could just punch him in the gut and he wouldn't take the wind out of his sails. But when we did this exercise, you were like in a freaking D minus. It was eye-opening for me because I don't think it was. I was almost there.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:13

I mean, I was passing. I'm like, what the heck, dude? It's just so funny because I didn't realize that it was that bad, but I felt the energy drain. But like I was so busy all the time, I never even thought about trying to map it out and take a minute, reflect.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:26

I think that's what it was, is because I I do reflect often. Yeah. I'm aware, I'm more aware of what's good and what's bad, where you're just like, I exist. Yeah. In your fire.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:38

I bury my emotions deep, deep down into a tiny cavern that we'll never be able to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

It's another way we're very different. It's very, very different. We didn't talk about uh compensation. I just really quickly, when you are in a compensation lull, what you do is uh go to I don't know, I don't know where you get them. Go online, Google search where to shop for nunchucks, and have them on hand, bring them into the manager's office when you begin to negotiate. Just put them on the table. Set them down gently. Don't bring any sort of aggression or violence into the situation. Just set them on the table. This is what we call a power move. Now, when you bring the nunchucks into the room and you've set them down, they're now off balance. They have no idea what is going to happen next. Now, you're not making a threat.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:25

All you do is bring them up.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:26

You just carry nunchucks with you. This is this is a comfort. This is my security animal that happens to be nunchucks. Keep them on the desk, say, hey, I'm currently interested in being compensated more for the work that I do. Make eye contact, blink twice, pick up the nunchucks, walk out. Simple as that. I've never seen it fail.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:48

How many times have you seen it?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:50

Enough to know that it doesn't fail.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:53

It's like art of the deal. It's like when you're sitting in your manager's office, they walk in behind you, they sit down in your seat, you immediately stand back up and just stand the whole time. Just stare it. Stand.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:02

It's called a power move. And trust me.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:05

Works works 100% of the time every time.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:08

Every time works 100% of the time. Never seen it fail. Never seen it fail.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:13

But compensation is an important one. This one is just frankly, usually a conversation with your manager.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:18

It is.

The Spreadsheet Tool And Listener Chat

SPEAKER_03 1:08:18

Like I've had many people come to me and I didn't even think about it. They were like, hey, I've actually been at the same pay raise for a while. I actually have taken on, I've taken on more responsibility. You asked me to take on this project and this project. I feel like I should be compensated for that. And so recognize that when you're working, like you are compensated for what you do. They can't just keep adding things to your plate because you're an all-star and you're you're knocking out of the park without compensating you properly. It's not fair that you're doing 25 things and the person next to you is doing two and you're getting the paid paid the same amount. This is corporate. Maybe not all corporate, this is business. They should pay you for what you're worth. And so that is another big one of if you constantly take on more, your pay is never raised. That means your compensation value is probably low, and you think you should be getting paid more. If they won't do that for you, it is time to leave. They don't value you.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:04

Yep, agree. Couldn't agree more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:06

My best managers have always done it. They they recognized, hey, this person does a lot. I'm gonna give you out-of-band pay raises. Yeah, I've been so fortunate with so many managers who have done that.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:14

That's really nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:15

It's rare, but it has happened to me, so it is possible.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:18

It can't happen. And he did bring.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:21

I don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:22

The nunchucks.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:23

I put him right on the desk. Yeah, I'm telling you, it works. Uh I think we did it. I think we did it. So one thing I would say, we did create a tool that you can kind of grade yourself. Maybe we'll release that. I've been meaning to get that out there. Did we never release that? We never released it. But if you want it, send us a note. We'll give you our spreadsheet where you can literally just go day by day and put your score in there and you'll know where you rank. Are you an A or are you a D minus? Is compensation helping you rank it back up? This will really be your opportunity to reflect.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:48

It's the kind of thing we could put on our website if we cared. That's true. Uh yeah, and uh culture is really gotta be. I want to hit some of the well, we only we really had one message in the chat. We had a we had a couple of people uh jump into the chat. Always gotta give shout outs to individual contributor and King Iica. Also, we didn't recognize King Iica as our king. We do have a king, uh just FYI. He is this. If you're part of the corporate strategy crew, the Discord, which uh join if you can, but if you can't, don't worry. There's gonna be something new coming soon, as soon as Clark decides to make it happen. Michael, the King Iica said, I always thought culture wasn't important to me. Work is work, but I learned that apparently I have a conscience. Now I work for much lower comp, but at least I don't hate myself. I actually love that comment because I feel similarly.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:38

I used to chase the biggest number possible, and you know, thinking about my future, that is not gonna be the case moving forward. When whenever I do look for work elsewhere, or just look for work in general, it's not gonna be the number on the salary that I care about. It really is gonna be the autonomy.

unknown 1:10:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:59

What's that culture feel like? What's the challenge look like? That's gonna, I'm gonna be interviewing them just as much as they'll be interviewing me. Yeah. Because I want to smell that. And the compensation, so long as I'm comfortable, I'll be happy.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:13

Yeah, I've talked about a friend of mine that pretty much only values the money. It's funny because I think people start with that, and then I think over time they realize they actually care about culture a lot more than they think.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:26

Because it it working, let's face it, is a lot of your life. You're gonna spend a lot of hours doing things and working with people and to just not care about that just for money, like that's really, really hard to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:37

Agree.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:38

Now, if you can work a job, and I would say my friend is in this situation where you work as much as you need to to earn your paycheck, and then you can sign off and do whatever else you want. And whether you work more or less doesn't necessarily matter. Like, that's a great spot to be because you can just you can just do your work and you can make good money and you can not care about anything else. Culture autonomy challenge. Sign off and do whatever you want to do because you can only work 10 hours a week that week. If that's your thing, do that thing. And so for me, I'm just not built like that. Like I'm all in.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:06

And I want to be part of the work and I want to be building the people and all that stuff. But it's totally up to you. There's no right answer. You either live to work or work to live or somewhere in the middle, and like that's for you to decide.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:16

And just a minor side note, I did mention the 401k and the benefits. Do make sure you are planning for the future. Right. Right? Like, don't just live within your means, live for your means after work. And I mean that's a totally different episode, it's a totally different topic. But uh if you're gonna take our advice, I'm not a financial advisor, but please invest in your future monetarily.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:37

100%. Take advantage of matches, things like that. Yeah, look into your benefits. Look into them. Uh and I think that's it. Yeah, yeah, we didn't actually have many other chats because I think our chat's still kind of funky, but we'll get better at doing that. We're trying to put the chats in like a dedicated section that we can talk about them. That way, you know, for people who are not in the live stream, you know, they they don't know. It doesn't feel like we're just reading out names.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:59

We do take feedback. I want it to be known. I hear you, and I listen.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:03

Yes, yeah, we will take the feedback, we will adjust, and one day we'll get the intro right.

Wrap Up And Calls To Action

SPEAKER_01 1:13:08

It was so close. Oh my gosh. You know, and the you know, we'll get it next time. We'll get it next time. I just I'm gonna cry about this later. And you know, I said the do not disturb, and yet here we are still happening. Here we are. Uh so that'll do it for another episode of Corpus Strategy, the live show slash podcast. It could have been an email. If you want to get in our crew, I highly recommend you do, even though we're gonna change. Get in the Discord for now because we are going to stay there until we're out. Great conversation happens there. If you want to support the show, go to the Patreon, please check it out. Uh, we do have a chat in the Patreon if you want to talk to us directly. There's a member exclusive chat in there uh that only uh our Patreon supporters people who pay. Um, also, just a request. Even if you're not gonna pay us, can you still sign up for the Patreon? Because I think it actually helps. Yeah. And then you get a little flair and you get a free and every chat we decide to do. You'll get notifications in your inbox about things we're doing. Um, just sign up. It's also in the link. It is free. There's no monetary obligation there. That would help us. And if you don't want to do that, share the pod, share the CAC, give us a good review. Buy a baby onesie. Buy a baby onesie. We do have a merch shop. And I think that'll do it. I think that'll do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:24

It's great. I think this is one of our favorite tools. Also, let us know if you want this spreadsheet. So if you want to evaluate your CAC, you want a way to grade it, you want a moment to reflect and try to see where you stand in your workplace, let us know.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:34

Ooh, maybe that's a Patreon only benefit.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:36

Ooh, I think that's if we give it to you if you message us. I stand by that, but we will put it in Patreon for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:40

We will also make it available as a post on the Patreon. I think that'll do it. That's it. All right. Well, thanks as always, Michael, for uh providing excellent pod conversation. My God. What is happening?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:58

We're getting calls, we're getting notifications. I got a call, you gotta call, everyone's getting a call.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:02

I think that was actually my wife's laptop. This is our time to end. We need to end this thing. We need to end this right now. Thanks as always for watching and joining us on Corporate Strategy, the podcast. It could have been an email. I'm Antonio. I'm Michael. And you're on mute. We will see.