Podcasts about xers

We know what financial advisors want for a website in 2025.  Technology has become an essential part of investors' lives across virtually all generations. Whether they're Boomers, Xers, Millennials or Gen Zers, your clients likely expect you to provide them with tech that they can access to make their lives easier. Fail to do so adequately and you face the real risk of losing them to advisors with better capabilities. With that in mind, consider some key steps you consider when it comes to ensuring your website tech and resources are helping—not hurting—your client acquisition and retention efforts. Watch, read or listen to find out more on our website for top financial advisors at CEGWorldwide.Com.

I don't know about you, but I didn't watch any of this year's Grammy Awards. This used to be appointment viewing back in the day, but now - not so much. I thought, let's revisit the ceremonies of 1975, 1985, and 1995. While we might not be tuning in now, these past shows seems to actually matter - and I recognize that is because I am an old man yelling at clouds!While you early Xers may recall the '75 awards, for me it was 1985. Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, and Lionel Richie were huge stars, while Huey Lewis & the News had their big breakout with “Sports”.The Best New artist award went to Cyndi Lauper. The other nominees? Sheila E., Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Corey Hart, and The Judds! I think Cyndi might have deserved that one!I'm not sure if it just being a middle aged man that informs my lack of interest in modern awards shows - it seems as though the industry has changed since our youth. While it has always been about the record labels and their influence, it at least seemed as thought the artistry was equally, if not more important, than record sales alone.So, did you watch the Grammys this year and are there any artists I should actually take the time to listen to?

Today, we're talking about America's Gen X, aka the best generation, and our role in the US economy moving forward. Let's look at the current situation and what to expect in the coming decade or so.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/boomers-xers-and-budgeting

Merry Christmas and Happy holidays Gen'Xers! This is our annual Christmas special extra-large episode. This episode was super fun to make and we hope you enjoy it as well. We welcome back the hosts of Retro Rewind Podcast, Francisco and Paul J Powers.com to bring plenty of laughs as we play games and reminisce about Christmas time during Generation X. Round 1 features a fun game of What The Blank?!?. Eight Is Enough topics include trivia on movies Christmas Vacation, Scrooged, A Christmas Story and as well as TV trivia from Christmas Specials we grew up with and so much more. Dysfunctional Family Feud was all Christmas themed and a lot of fun.Join the fun and the effort to save Generation X from being forgotten.Show NotesCheck out our new website: https://www.whowillsavegenx.com/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/whowillsavegenxVenmo: WhoWillSaveGenXWant to contact the show? Send a shout-out or special message to a loved one or friend who listens to the show? Email us here: WhoWillSaveGenX@gmail.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2730544227204426Want to buy some merch? Go here:https://www.teepublic.com/en-gb/stores/who-will-save-generation-x-podcast?ref_id=16967Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/hMu6ezGuest NotesRetro Rewind Podcast: https://www.firejoystudios.com/Junkyard Juggernaughts: https://www.firejoystudios.com/p/about-junkyard-juggernautsPaul J Powers.com can be found here: www.pauljpowers.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ideas about the preferred approach to wealth building and financial planning can be quite varied when you compare the views of different generations. Today, John Walker, Regional Vice President, Mercer Advisors, is joined by CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERTM professional Jason O'Meara, Wealth Advisor and Sr. Director, Mercer Advisors. They discuss how baby boomers, millennials, gen Xers and others, view financial success and the many ways to attain it. Listening Time: 29 minutes Mercer-Cordasco Disclosure Information Visit Our Website Join Our Email List Additional Mercer Advisors Disclosure Cordasco Financial Network is a tradename. All services provided by Cordasco Financial Network investment professionals are provided in their individual capacities as investment adviser representatives of Mercer Global Advisors Inc. (“Mercer Advisors”), an SEC-registered investment adviser principally located in Denver, Colorado, with various branch offices throughout the United States doing business under different tradenames, including Cordasco Financial Network. Mercer Advisors is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice to clients. All estate planning document preparation and other legal advice are provided through Advanced Services Law Group, Inc.

Jean Twenge (psychologist; professor at San Diego State University) is regarded as the world expert on “generations”. She famously described millennials as “Generation Me” (also the name of her 2006 book) and first made the (controversial) connection back in 2017 between smartphones and the sharp uptick in anxiety and depression among Gen Z teens, which has since become one of our culture's top talking points. In her recent book, Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America's Future she explains how themes such as narcissism, individualism, fear and tech addiction play out between the generations (including the Boomers, Xers, and the latest cohort, “the Polars”).In this chat we cover…Do millennials actually have it harder? Why do 60% of Gen Z girls have mental health problems? Why aren't young people aren't getting their driver's licenses? Is modern parenting setting kids up for failure? As well as the “slow life” phenomenon.You can catch Jean in Sydney at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas on 24-25 August, speaking at the following talks.The Machines Killing Our KidsThe Generation GulfContagious RealitiesSHOW NOTESSubscribe to Jean's Substack​, Generation TechHere's the teen mental health post I wrote on SubstackAnd here's the Substack post about the difference in young men's and women's political leaningsLearn more about the Festival of Dangerous Ideas here--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Inside Economics podcast welcomes Jason Dorsey to talk about the generations that characterize the American population. The conversation takes up what event(s) define each generation, from 9/11 for the Millennials to COVID for Gen Z, and then turns to each generation's traits and behaviors. The podcast was generationally well-balanced, with Mark the aging Boomer, Marisa and Cris the skeptical Xers, and Jason the creative Millennial.  Guest: Jason Dorsey - President of Cener for Generational KineticsFor more on Jason Dorsey: LinkedIn: @JasonDorsey Instagram: @Jason_Dorsey The Center for Generational Kinetics   JasonDorsey.com  Hosts: Mark Zandi – Chief Economist, Moody's Analytics, Cris deRitis – Deputy Chief Economist, Moody's Analytics, and Marisa DiNatale – Senior Director - Head of Global Forecasting, Moody's AnalyticsFollow Mark Zandi on 'X' @MarkZandi, Cris deRitis on LinkedIn, and Marisa DiNatale on LinkedIn   

Here is the next episode of our 3rd format of the show that we call: Who Will Save Generation X: Challenging Stage. We have created this mini-game format to meet the needs of those who have asked for it. Give it a listen and let us know what you think on our website "Answering Machine" feature. In the bottom left corner of the website there is a blue microphone icon. Just tap on that and leave us a message. It's free to use and your voice might be used on an upcoming episode of the show. We want to hear from you no matter what you have to say, but we are looking for YOU to ask us some GenX trivia questions that we can feature on upcoming shows. So, let's hear what you have to say. :)In this episode of the Challenging Stage we share our memories of growing up during Generation X. In round 1 we play a game called “Satanic Panic” that features a brand new theme song, round 2 is our spotlight trivia round on the topic of "The Transformers", and we welcome guest-host Chris A. to take over the Captain's Chair in round 3 for some trivia questions featuring Monty Python and The Holy Grail. There is something here for everyone that we hope you'll "especially like".Show NotesCheck out our website: https://www.whowillsavegenx.com/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/whowillsavegenxPayPal: WhoWillSaveGenX@gmail.comVenmo: WhoWillSaveGenXWant to contact the show? Send a shout-out or special message to a loved one or friend who listens to the show? Email us here: WhoWillSaveGenX@gmail.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2730544227204426Want to buy some merch? Go here:https://www.teepublic.com/en-gb/stores/who-will-save-generation-x-podcast?ref_id=16967Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/hMu6ezAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On the previous episode of The Clarity Advisors Show, host Ken Trupke explained the difference between timely trends and timeless truths and shared some timely trends leaders need to understand.In this episode, Ken offers three timeless truths that have been -- and will continue to be -- true for you to build and lead a successful team.Timestamps(00:20): Introduction.(01:10): Timeless truth No. 1: Communication.(02:39): Synchronous and in-person communication.(05:17): Both sides of the DISC profile are important.(07:42): Timeless truth No. 2: Culture trumps skills.(09:34): Timeless truth No. 3: Appreciation.Episode Quotes“People are going to fill the void with negativity.”“Synchronous and in-person are better than asynchronous and not in-person.”“Businesses tend to get off the rails...because we had a miscommunication somewhere and people didn't understand something."“Communication is something you'll never master, but you can continually get better at.”“People...want to belong. They want to be somewhere where, ‘People like us do things like this.'”“People also want to know that you notice (them) and that they matter.”“Gen Z and Gen Alpha don't just work for the money and they won't just put up with things for the money the way Xers and Boomers did."Recommended reading and listeningThe Clarity Advisors Show Episode 89 – Timely trends to help build your team.Clarity Advisors Reading ListFollow/Connect with Ken Trupkeken@clarityadvisors.iohttp://www.clarityadvisors.io/Ken Trupke on LinkedIn 

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In this episode, we are talking about using the exchange on X between Mark Cuban several other Xers and the EEOC! Please don't forget to leave a review, like, and subscribe! Also, leave a voice comment or write me at support@helpdeskforHR.com and I will be sure your comment or question is addressed in an upcoming episode! Send in your questions using this link and I will answer them on an upcoming show! ⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/small-business-spoonfuls/message⁠⁠ Until next time, Be Audit-Secure ™! Lisa Smith, SPHR, SCP --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/small-business-spoonfuls/message

After two decades in wealth management co-managing $1 billion for more than 300 families, Jessica Willis noticed gen Xers and millennials have a totally different approach to personal finance. But the majority (a whopping 86 percent!) of financial advisors ignore them. We want more autonomy, more ownership. We're not going to pay someone loads of money to do something we're pretty sure we can figure out on our own. But 90% of us lack a critical piece to our financial plans despite the resources available to us. Why? Jessica believes everyone should have access to a complete financial plan, not just the wealthy and finance nerds. So, she set out to change the landscape. With a team of super smart partners, they created a way to make financial planning approachable, quick, easy, and even fun. In just 10 minutes a month, you can build and keep track of your own plan. They do this with no investor-speak, monthly fees or in-person meetings. And it's completely free! Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/ Website: https://jondwoskin.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/ Email: jon@jondwoskin.com Get Jon's Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!   Connect with Jessica Willis: Website: https://www.pocketnest.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PocketNest1/?ref=br_rs Twitter: https://twitter.com/PocketNest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pocketnest_/   *E – explicit language may be used in this podcast.

In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Jack tests Xochitl's knowledge of 1960s and 70s slang.Transcript:00:00:01JackWelcome to the A to Z English podcast. My name is Jack, and today I'm here with my co-host social. And this is a vocabulary builder episode and I don't know social how useful this vocabulary is going to be for our students. But it's fun and I have some 1960s and 1970s.00:00:21JackSlang and I think.00:00:25JackThe closer we get to, you know, the the 2000s, the, the more you're going to know because you know, like giggle water. That was a pretty weird one last week, the 40s and 50s.00:00:40JackI just want to say I just.00:00:41JackLove seeing giggle water? I don't know why it's such.00:00:43JackA hard word, yeah.00:00:46JackSo here's some 60 slang uh #1 groovy.00:00:52JackWhat does groovy mean?00:00:54XochitlIt just means cool. Like, wow, that's Ruby, man. It's like, that's cool. That's neat. That's like.00:01:01XochitlChill, you know, that's cool.00:01:03JackYep, exactly. Groovy. Cool. Awesome. How about rad?00:01:11XochitlUh, I mean the same thing. Like awesome, those are bad waves. It's like those are some amazing waves. Yeah. It's basically the same as groovy.00:01:21JackAh, your new car is groovy. Your new car is.00:01:24JackRad. Like. That's it. Yeah.00:01:28JackOK.00:01:28XochitlOr it's like.00:01:28XochitlOhh Brian is a rad dude man. Yeah, he is groovy. Yeah, like.00:01:34JackSo so many of.00:01:35JackThese are the same, but uh.00:01:38JackWhat is a hippie?00:01:40XochitlA hippie is a person that.00:01:44XochitlIt was kind of a movement in the 60s and 70s, I guess and.00:01:51XochitlAnyone listening to that word will have a visual like the little bandana headband thing, the grounds John Lennon sunglasses or glasses. Yeah, the kind of.00:02:02JackBell bottom pants.00:02:04XochitlBell bottom pants and open vest or whatever.00:02:08JackChest hair. Lots of chest hair.00:02:10XochitlYeah, yeah, it was just kind of like, you know.00:02:16XochitlPeace, anti war, cultural movement of the 60s and 70s, so it's.00:02:22XochitlKind of. Basically what?00:02:23JackRight. Or maybe we could say countercultural.00:02:26XochitlYes, countercultural movement of the 60s and 70s and I guess it arose.00:02:34XochitlAlso, in contrast to the Vietnam War.00:02:40JackRight. That was a big part of it was.00:02:43JackSome protesting the war, you know, anti war, love not love and peace. Love not war, that kind of stuff, yeah.00:02:53JackMake Make Love not war.00:02:55JackThat's the. That's the expression, yeah.00:02:57XochitlThat the hippie slogan.00:02:59JackRight.00:03:01JackOut of sight.00:03:03XochitlOut of sight.00:03:07XochitlDoes that mean, like far out?00:03:09JackYeah, it's same, it's.00:03:10JackSame as groovy out of sight.00:03:12XochitlYeah, I guess it means super cool that one almost got me because I said to be like out.00:03:16XochitlOf sight. Out.00:03:17XochitlOf mind, which means like if you don't see it, you don't.00:03:20XochitlThink about it.00:03:21XochitlOr whatever and.00:03:21XochitlThen like that, can't be right out of sight.00:03:23XochitlIs far is like far.00:03:24XochitlOut, which is the same as Ruby.00:03:26XochitlRad. Cool all that.00:03:28JackGroovy red cool out of sight. Yeah, yeah. Bummer.00:03:32XochitlFar out.00:03:36XochitlI we still use that, that's the banner.00:03:38발표자I know.00:03:39XochitlIt's like.00:03:41XochitlUM, the winter has been super mild here in Iowa. And then I was telling someone I was talking to someone and I was like, oh, it's been such a mild winter. And like, you know, it's the. So it's snow 10 inches later today. And I was like, that's a bummer. It just it sucks, basically. Oh, my God, that sucks. That's terrible. That's bad news. That's a.00:04:00JackRight. Disappointing or unfortunate situation. You know, a bummer, you know. Ohh John can't come to the party on Friday. Ohh, what a bummer.00:04:12JackThat's a bummer.00:04:14XochitlRight.00:04:15JackOr if we hate John.00:04:17JackThat's rad, but OK.00:04:22JackCatch some rays.00:04:27XochitlEdson rays. I think a lot of people use this in surf culture and and hippie culture, whether it's like I'm gonna go out and catch some rays like get some sunshine.00:04:40JackYes. Yep. Get get it. Get some sun, get get some sun sunbathing. Get some sunshine, get some rays.00:04:51JackUM freak out.00:04:57XochitlFreak out.00:05:04XochitlJust go all out, man. Go like.00:05:09XochitlThere's that song that has that as a lyric. Yeah, I think that. Yeah.00:05:13JackFreak out.00:05:17XochitlIt's just like having.00:05:18XochitlA good time and and dancing and stuff. I think I don't know.00:05:24JackOh, wow. OK, so this one, you kind of missed this one a little bit. I mean, I think I think you're thinking more of like I think.00:05:28발표자Thank you.00:05:32JackThe more modern version of.00:05:33JackThis is like to kind of freak out. Is like to go.00:05:37JackTo get freaky, which is totally different like freaky.00:05:40XochitlWell, freak out trying to like freak out is like, Oh my God. Like, that's horrible too. That would that even this context? Because something because it can also mean like your parents freaked out because you wouldn't. You decided to skip school today.00:05:46JackRight. And lose control.00:05:58JackYes, exactly. Got angry.00:05:59XochitlThat's what it means. Ohh.00:06:00발표자They freaked out, yeah.00:06:00XochitlThat's the context, I think just too.00:06:02JackThat's the context.00:06:03발표자Hard about it because.00:06:04XochitlI like if it's old then it must be something different, because I remembered that song.00:06:09JackRight, right. Yeah. And maybe like, you're right, I think there is. There are a couple of contexts for this one actually. Yeah, cause the freak out can also mean to, like, get freaky, which is to more of like, just, like, lose lose control in a good way, you know? And just like like let loose.00:06:09XochitlAnd I.00:06:17XochitlRight, there's.00:06:30JackBut in this case, yeah, they're saying more. Like get angry, you know, emotionally lose control and freak out. My parents freaked out.00:06:43JackHow about dude?00:06:45JackNow this is 70s now we're in the 70s now.00:06:48XochitlFood is just a word for a guy. It's just like both a dude or a person, but but usually different.00:06:51JackRight.00:06:54JackYeah, you use it. I still use it. I'm like, hey, dude, come on, you know.00:07:00XochitlI used to say hey, man or hey guy.00:07:02XochitlHey, I do. I think they do, I think.00:07:02JackYeah, yeah.00:07:05XochitlI do use it sometimes though.00:07:06JackYeah, I I used it more like dude.00:07:09JackLike, why did you do that?00:07:10XochitlWhat the heck?00:07:12XochitlMan, that is weird. Yeah, like.00:07:15JackDude, relax, chill out.00:07:17XochitlI really but it.00:07:18XochitlWas like the only person I really talked to like that was my dog. When I tell him like.00:07:22JackYeah. You're like, come on, dude. Yeah.00:07:26JackUM, funky.00:07:29XochitlFunky is.00:07:34XochitlIs that a good thing?00:07:36XochitlYeah. OK. Then if in the context where it's a good thing, it just means.00:07:43XochitlCool, fresh, original groovy. It's like the same thing size.00:07:48JackYeah, same thing. Same thing. Yeah, boogie.00:07:54XochitlThat means to dance.00:07:56JackTo dance is to boogie.00:07:58XochitlThe as the song goes so.00:08:00JackYep, Yep, there you go.00:08:03JackThis one is right in your wheelhouse right here. This is related to your name.00:08:08JackChill out.00:08:10XochitlPill out. It just means to relax, like dude, chill out is like, take it down a few notches. Relax. It's not that you're chill out.00:08:20JackI like that dude. Chill out, right?00:08:24XochitlOhh, groovy man. Chill out.00:08:25JackOhh baby, it's it's all far out tube sock.00:08:33XochitlWhat the heck?00:08:34XochitlThis is like calling someone a tube sock.00:08:37JackNo, this is just a just like a noun, just the the item. What is?00:08:40발표자The tube stock.00:08:41XochitlThen ohh a person, a tube sock is just like a sock that people wore like a one of those white socks.00:08:50XochitlThat goes up way up your shin.00:08:51JackRight.00:08:52JackHas has like 2 red stripes on it.00:08:55XochitlYeah, or sometimes they're just white. But yeah, it's like in that vein.00:08:58JackRight.00:08:59JackRight.00:08:59XochitlThat's funny. I thought it was like I still thought it was slang, so I was gonna be like, man, you're such a tube sock. Like I like.00:09:06XochitlAn insult.00:09:08JackYou suck.00:09:12JackMake it we're making new slang here the IT is the English podcast. Don't be a tube. Don't be such a tube sock, man.00:09:19XochitlYeah, yeah.00:09:20JackDude, foxy.00:09:25XochitlOoh, foxy means like attractive person, woman or man. That's hot, attractive.00:09:32JackSo what do you? Would you, you. You.00:09:35JackLike women will describe men as foxy as well.00:09:38XochitlI've seen it.00:09:39XochitlIn old time movies, I don't know if if it's accurate to the time period, but I have seen.00:09:46XochitlAnd like in movies that are supposed to be like from, like Greece and stuff.00:09:51XochitlThat's kind of in.00:09:51XochitlThat time period.00:09:52XochitlI guess.00:09:52JackYeah, I feel like women.00:09:54XochitlHave some.00:09:54JackMore say like the hot like the hot.00:09:58JackThat guy's hot.00:09:58XochitlOh, yeah, well, no one really uses foxy period anymore, but I feel like in the time period I think people did use Foxy.00:10:05JackYeah, yeah, I right. This is the 70s. I'm, I'm. I'm talking. I was talking about right now. Right. But you're right. Yeah.00:10:12XochitlYeah, even now then, wouldn't use Foxy for women. Really. And women wouldn't really use foxy for men. But I think back in the time period, I do think it was.00:10:20XochitlAt least somewhat gender neutral.00:10:22XochitlBut probably more applied to women than men.00:10:24JackOK, OK.00:10:26JackThis one if if any of these are going to.00:10:29JackGet you this will get you.00:10:32JackGag me with a spoon.00:10:37XochitlI think they know the intent of what it means, but I'm trying to figure out how.00:10:40XochitlTo phrase it, it's like uh, gag me.00:10:43XochitlWith the spoon, man.00:10:44XochitlLike you like.00:10:46XochitlIs it that kind of thing?00:10:48JackYeah. Disgusting. Yeah, yeah.00:10:50XochitlRose, yeah.00:10:51JackYeah. So when you see something disgusting, you, uh, gag me with a spoon. We used to use that a lot in the in the 80s when we were kids. I think we heard our parents use that expression.00:11:02JackFrom the 70s.00:11:03JackSo yeah, I see something like, uh, gag me with a spoon, which is such a dumb expression. It's so stupid.00:11:03XochitlIt's sunny.00:11:14XochitlIt is kind of cringey.00:11:16JackYeah. And why is spoon so weird?00:11:20XochitlYeah, yeah. And it's using fingers.00:11:20JackI don't get it. Yeah.00:11:27JackOK. Yeah. Get those spoons out. Yeah, right on.00:11:33XochitlRight on my dad still uses that sometimes. It just means like it's, let's say, someone says an opinion. You really agree with, like. Yeah. Right on, man. Like, that's you're right, man. Like you got it.00:11:47JackYeah, yeah, I like how you use man at the end there. That's very 70s.00:11:51JackRight on, man.00:11:53XochitlWe don't need.00:11:55JackTotally man. Right on. No, wait. Totally. We haven't gotten to the 80s yet, so that's next week.00:12:03JackOK. Yeah, that's it again. Social, you aced the exam, but.00:12:11XochitlYeah, I got this. You know, I have an old dad, kind of. So I guess that probably helps.00:12:17JackWell, you have a you have a groovy dad.00:12:21XochitlYeah, I have a groovy dad. He. I mean, he's younger than your dad. He's like, in between your dad and your age. So.00:12:28JackRight. I mean, he's like he's either like a really, he's like an old Gen.00:12:32JackXer or or a young.00:12:34XochitlLike the last, he was like the last year to be a Gen. X or the sorry the last year to be a boomer or the first year to.00:12:41XochitlBe a Gen. X or cusp.00:12:43JackOK, OK. And I'm I'm right on the the kind of opposite, I'm like the the.00:12:48JackWhat am I?00:12:49JackLike millennial Gen. X I'm, I'm on.00:12:52JackThe line there.00:12:53XochitlYeah. And I'm a Gen.00:12:55XochitlZ millennial cusp. So that's funny, we're just three generations of cuspers.00:13:00JackWe're all. We're all just a bunch of lost generation people, you know? Yeah.00:13:04XochitlYeah, there's a. There's a really funny. I'll send you it later. Jack. On Facebook, there's a guy who does like the different generations. And every time he does, Gen. X, the guy reminds me of you. He's always wearing, like, a beanie.00:13:15XochitlAnd it like.00:13:17XochitlIt it just it kind of reminds me.00:13:19XochitlOf you in a way, because he's like wearing the beanie and stuff and it just like, yeah, it's like.00:13:23XochitlJack, in a way, I don't describe it, but.00:13:25발표자I'm. I'm I'm.00:13:26JackAlways wearing a I'll be either a ball cap or a beanie, but it's not a it's not a shame thing, it's more just like a my head gets cold.00:13:34XochitlI think it's a good trend thing, like for that, for like people who are kind of Gen. Xers because it's like he's representing Gen. Xers and he's always.00:13:42XochitlWearing the beanie.00:13:43JackYeah. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do wear like, yeah, that kind of like that, like, Brooklyn, the hipster kind of.00:13:44XochitlAnd I think that's.00:13:52XochitlLook. And it's funny because.00:13:53JackYeah, beanie, look.00:13:53XochitlWhen he's a millennial, he wears like a baseball cap. And so it's funny that you're like on the cusp and you wear, like, the baseball cap or the beanie.00:14:02JackYeah, my my style is like if I if I don't look like a gas station attendant, then I'm doing something wrong, that that's my, my, my kind of look.00:14:03발표자Right.00:14:14XochitlYeah, that's kind of what this, Jenna, I'll. I'll have to send it to you. It really it reset. It resonates with your aura.00:14:21JackYeah. Nice.00:14:23발표자OK.00:14:23XochitlAlright, listener as well, let us know what you think and comment down below at A-Z englishpodcast.com shoot us an e-mail at AZ englishpodcast@gmail.com and join our WeChat and WhatsApp groups to join the conversation. We'll see you guys.00:14:37XochitlNext time, bye bye.00:14:38발표자Bye bye.Podcast Website:https://atozenglishpodcast.com/vocabulary-spotlight-1960s-and-70s-slang/Social Media:WeChat: atozenglishpodcastFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/671098974684413/Tik Tok:@atozenglish1Instagram:@atozenglish22Twitter:@atozenglish22A to Z Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/theatozenglishpodcastCheck out our You Tube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCds7JR-5dbarBfas4Ve4h8ADonate to the show: https://app.redcircle.com/shows/9472af5c-8580-45e1-b0dd-ff211db08a90/donationsRobin and Jack started a new You Tube channel called English Word Master. You can check it out here:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2aXaXaMY4P2VhVaEre5w7ABecome a member of Podchaser and leave a positive review!https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-a-to-z-english-podcast-4779670Join our Whatsapp group: https://forms.gle/zKCS8y1t9jwv2KTn7Intro/Outro Music: Daybird by Broke for Freehttps://freemusicarchive.org/music/Broke_For_Free/Directionless_EP/Broke_For_Free_-_Directionless_EP_-_03_Day_Bird/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcodeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-a-to-z-english-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Description:

Every generation thinks that the generation behind it is the worst generation ever. There are significant psychographic and value-driven differences between different generations that lead them to listen to different music, vote differently, watch different television shows, and purchase different products. But Boomers, Xers, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha all have at least this in common: they all need Christmas.

How can we best understand and engage younger generations today? Our guest today, Dr. Jean Twenge, is a professor of psychology at SDSU and the author of Generations. She has been one of our go-to scholars on generational trends and has just released a 500-page book that traces generational changes from Silents (b. 1925-1945), Boomers, Xers, Millennials, Gen Z, and up to the newest generation emerging today (polars). Join Scott and Dr. Twenge as they discusses the research on Gen Z and what it means for pastors, parents, and others who care about understanding and mentoring the next generation.Jean M. Twenge, Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, is the author of more than 180 scientific publications and 7 books, including iGen, GenerationMe, and The Narcissism Epidemic. Read a transcript of this episode at: https://www.biola.edu/blogs/think-biblically/2023/understanding-the-generations==========Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture is a podcast from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, which offers degrees both online and on campus in Southern California. Find all episodes of Think Biblically at: https://www.biola.edu/think-biblically. Watch video episodes at: https://bit.ly/think-biblically-video. To submit comments, ask questions, or make suggestions on issues you'd like us to cover or guests you'd like us to have on the podcast, email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu.

The fellas discuss some amazing but possibly innapropriate movies all gen Xers watched as kids.  

Description:

Andy and Jessica welcome you to another episode of The Deal Board Podcast. This week, they record from the Bahamas, chilling and relaxing while discussing how to help Baby Boomers understand what it takes to retire; for that, they bring the tales from the experience of Transworld Business Advisor's best franchisees. Listing of the week: JT Tatem is selling a signage business that has been running for over ten years; it is a great owner-operating model. The company makes almost $2 million in annual revenue, and nearly $300,000 is SDE. It is listed at $975,000. The business has a great location and a fantastic reputation and brand! Call JT at (864) 315-8998 or email at jt1@tworld.com. Key takeaways: [3:12] Seventy-five trillion dollars will be transferred from Baby Boomers to the Xers and the Millennials. [5:32] In the next 5 to 10 years, all Baby Boomers will have to retire, and these businesses will have to be sold or transferred. [7:26] Many Gen Xers and Millennials want to buy a business. [7:42] Baby Boomers, be aware it might get harder to sell your business. [9:40] Get prepared; it takes time to sell your business. [14:19] Aaron Fox (Boston) shares a very personal story. [17:02] First, any seller should know why he is selling. [18:30] Michael Berry (Indiana) shares a retirement story with the audience. [20:03] Bill Kleinschrodt (Gold Coast, Alabama) tells the story of selling for retirement. [23:41] Bob Kelliher (Central and Western Washington) shares a story about someone he helped retire. [27:08] Deal of the week: Blake Hickman (Raleigh) sold a $2.3 million e-commerce tactical gear business. [29:11] Jennifer Fox (Boston) brings a couple of successful retirement stories. [32:05] Johanne Sharp Sermania (Philadelphia Mainline) shares on a recent closing that helped clients retire. [34:47] Jonathan Choe (Oregon Central) talks about retirement. [38:00] Nick Mastrodicasa (Alaska) talks about how he helps people retire. [40:06] Rupesh Bharad (Virginia) shares his favorite retirement story so far. [43:23] Tony Khoury (Eastern North Carolina) shares a story about someone who thought his business was worth nothing. [45:50] Listing of the week: JT Tatem is selling a signage business that has been running for over ten years; it is a great owner-operating model. The company makes almost $2 million in annual revenue, and nearly $300,000 is SDE. It is listed at $975,000. Mentioned in this Episode: The Deal Board Podcast Subscribe to The Deal Board Podcast YouTube Channel United Franchise Group Transworld Business Advisors Transworld on Linkedin Transworld on Facebook Call us — (888) 719-9098 Email us thedealboard@tworld.com Call Aaron Fox at (781) 773- 8922 or email aaron@tworld.com Email Michael Berry at mike.berry@tworld.com or call (317) 564-4777. Call Bill Kleinschrodt at (251)237-1030. Call Bob Kelliher at (509) 558-7150 or email bkelliher@tworld.com Call Blake Hickman at (919) 578-6360 or email him at bhickman@tworld.com Call Jennifer Fox at (978) 286-8922 or email jfox@tworldma.com Call Johanne Sharp Sermania at (610) 783-3555 or email jsharp@tworld.com Call Jonathan Choe at (541) 213-0234 or email him at jchoe@tworld.com Call Nick Mastrodicasa at (907) 529-2403 or email him at nickm@tworld.com Call Rupesh Bharad at (804) 835-6363 or email him at rupesh@tworld.com Call Tony Khoury at (252) 347-9606 or email him at tkhoury@tworld.com Call JT Tatem at (864) 315-8998 or email at jt1@tworld.com

How would you like to guarantee that you're communicating effectively to all generations in your organization? Well, discover how from Dr. Darrell Hall, author of Speaking Across Generations: Messages that Satisfy Boomers, Xers, Millennials, Gen Z, and Beyond. Darrell is the pastor of The Way Community Church in the Atlanta area. Find full show notes here: https://bit.ly/357darrellhall Share the love. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it on Apple Podcasts and write a brief review. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-flourishing-culture-podcast/id1060724960?mt=2   By doing so, you will help spread our podcast to more listeners, and thereby help more Christian workplaces learn to build flourishing cultures. Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on X https://twitter.com/allopus  Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allopus/ Email our host at al@workplaces.org  

Description:

Sarah discusses her recent New York Times essay, "Hate Gen X? Get in Line (Behind a Gen X-er)." Why are young people lumping together Boomers and Xers? Why do so many Gen X writers spend time railing against "woke" ideas? Is Elon Musk more defined by being Gen X or by being a billionaire? And why do Xers find Millennials so annoying?Recorded September 14, 2023Follow Culturally Determined on Twitter @CulturallyDetLINKSSarah's NYT piece, "Hate Gen X? Get in Line (Behind a Gen X-er)."https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/style/gen-x-generation-discourse.htmlSarah's NYT piece on not having kidshttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/style/new-friend-children-conversation.htmlChuck Klosterman's book, "The Nineties"https://www.amazon.com/Nineties-Book-Chuck-Klosterman/dp/0735217955Big Fun, "Teenage Suicide, Don't Do It"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO3WEfBIPvMSara's Substack, "The Real Sarah Miller"https://therealsarahmiller.substack.com/Follow @sarahlovescaliFollow @AryehCW Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Friend of the pod Steph Cherrywell joins us to talk about Crayon Shin-chan: The Storm Called: The Adult Empire Strikes Back, one of the bazillion Crayon Shin-Chan movies and the one to greet the new millennium with a surprisingly heart-felt mediation on the seductive and destructive powers of nostalgia. Somehow how poignant when we're living in 2023, the year that all the suddenly middle-aged Xers got weirdly obsessively fascistically nostalgic and also decided that their childhood has been ruined by things and stuff.

Description: In this episode, we'll explore the August edition of MRA's monthly Talent Report: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We'll hear from Jim Morgan, Vice President of Workforce Strategies, on best practices, including: Attracting the next generation of customers and staff Employee engagement and experience Recruiting and the candidate experience AI platforms Implementing company-wide DEI initiatives  Uncover C-Suite priorities, top creative HR strategies, and more! Resources: August Talent Report  Talent Report+ Webinar Series  MRA Membership  About MRA  Let's Connect: Guest Bio - Jim Morgan  Guest LinkedIn Profile - Jim Morgan  Host Bio - Sophie Boler  Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler  Transcript: Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word. 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:21:03 Unknown Hello everybody and welcome to 30 minute Thrive, your go to podcast for anything and everything HR powered by MRA, the Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We'll be the first to tell you what's hot and what's not. I'm your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you're here. 00:00:21:05 - 00:00:41:24 Unknown Now it's time to thrive. All right. Well, welcome, everybody, to this episode of 30 Minute Thrive. I'm excited to go over this month's talent report with Jim Morgan, MRA. Vice president of Workforce Strategies, as we go into what he's been seeing in the world of business in the month of August. So thanks for joining us again this month, Jim. 00:00:42:01 - 00:01:08:16 Unknown Always a pleasure to come back. Well, for August, it looks like the special topic was on diversity, equity and inclusion, specifically working on efforts in organizations. So why did you choose this DEI topic for this month? Well, I think, you know, it's a topic that we could probably do just about any month, and we hadn't done it yet this year on the talent report, and that now would be a good time. 00:01:08:16 - 00:01:32:19 Unknown And with the talent shortage and what we've talked about the last six or seven episodes, all of the issues around diversity, equity, inclusion also play into the talent pool as well. And we know what are companies doing in order to to figure that out. And so, Diana, what we brought in from our Ohio office talked about and we talked a little bit more a little bit later about the results. 00:01:32:19 - 00:02:15:13 Unknown But, you know, she started by talking about, you know, why are we doing this in the first place? And we had just done a survey of our Chief Diversity Officers roundtable. And that's sort of what drove this month's topic. And she had brought to it. Well, you know, here's what they were saying were the reasons that they had a DEA program in their company to build stronger teams, to foster collaboration, to make employees feel valued, to enhance productivity, to create a welcoming environment, to build trust among employers, to attract top talent, to increase retention, to increase business development, and to ensure the production of new ideas. 00:02:15:15 - 00:02:38:24 Unknown So that list of ten, I thought, well, okay, well, people aren't interested in those ten things and we're really in trouble. So that's kind of what we focused on, was sort of yea, the positives that come out of that, and especially in terms of engaging and retaining. And I can talk a little bit about our elite program here at Amara, but really it's it's just a strategy that I think almost every company is utilizing now. 00:02:39:00 - 00:03:06:15 Unknown We're just trying to help them see some of the best practices that are out there. Yeah, that was a great list of benefits that you just talked about. And this episode will kind of be a good leeway in to our next week's episode. After this, we're talking about how belonging fits into the diversity, equity and inclusion mix. So understanding that one, yeah, let's kind of go into what's happening in recruiting and retention world. 00:03:06:15 - 00:03:36:18 Unknown So Jim, what's what are you seeing here that's new? We were wrapping up our internal leadership program, of which you are a proud graduate and we were asking, you know, what are you doing in some of your wrap up things? And we got some really neat ideas from the coordinators around kind of their year end projects. And they shared with us that one of them had their interns look in their own department as to how do they attract the next generation of customers and employees. 00:03:36:20 - 00:03:59:14 Unknown And so depending on what department they were in, they were providing their perspectives on how do we go out and engage 20, 21, 22 or 23 year olds. So that was one of their their projects. Another company had them look at the entire employee cycle of life and basically say, What is our candidate experience look like? What's our onboarding experience look like? 00:03:59:16 - 00:04:21:22 Unknown Where does our experienced employee experience look like? And so they reported back on conversations that they had with employees at a variety of different places in that in that cycle, one of the groups developed a campus recruiting strategy for the company so that when they go out next year, they've kind of got the playbook and what it's going to take to go. 00:04:21:23 - 00:04:44:23 Unknown We we recruit people. One put together a social media plan for, you know, how do we go out and recruit. And then most of them were presenting their material to the executive staff, which really I think was a real bonus for the kids that were the interns in the program. It gave them a chance, you know, to have some exposure in front of those people. 00:04:45:00 - 00:05:02:12 Unknown And I think exempt were from everything that we got back. We're pretty excited about the fact that while these are, you know, some of the ideas might be out there a little bit but it's a fresh set of eyes looking at what does this mean for a 20, 21, 22 year old. So really kind of a cool wrap up to the season. 00:05:02:12 - 00:05:23:10 Unknown And I think with a lot of the the interns that we had. Yeah, absolutely. And I just have to mention because I just saw this on LinkedIn, but was Emory's interim leadership program with our intern grads, we gave them a little interim leadership badge to put on their own personal LinkedIn accounts and they can post it as an accomplishment. 00:05:23:10 - 00:05:48:13 Unknown And that also just kind of gets the word out and creates creates our own little intern program advocates and kind of in a fun way to. Yeah. So that was that was pretty exciting. On the intern side, we've also seen, you know, we're talking about salaries and things and the companies aren't in quite the same hiring mode that they were, but they're still looking for those critical positions. 00:05:48:19 - 00:06:14:11 Unknown But the pressure on salaries remains there. People coming in asking for more money than some of the experienced people in that same position. So that continues to be an issue, I think, for employers trying to help people understand what the market actually is. And just because, you know, your cousin made this much out in California, doing something doesn't mean you're going to make that much in Green Bay doing the same thing. 00:06:14:13 - 00:06:41:07 Unknown So they're continuing to try to educate, I think, their employees on on market value and things like that. The people wanting the remote worker mode remains a big deal. And we just keep hearing stories. This one came from an I.T. company that was just having a hard time finding computer technology folks because they were requiring them to come in and finally just said, we'll let them work fully remote. 00:06:41:07 - 00:07:16:08 Unknown And we're surprised at the increase in number and quality of the people that they were starting to get in. And that doesn't apply to every job. But again, people that are in the I.T. business might have already had some experience working remote, and that seems to be something that they're they're very interested in. And then lastly, seeing more of a push right now and candidates asking for more leads, whether that's family leave or paid sick time or vacation, that, yes, everybody still wants more money, but the lead time is coming into play. 00:07:16:08 - 00:07:34:21 Unknown And I think it's one it's a work life balance thing for a lot of people as they come in. But two, you've got folks now that are taking care of elderly parents. They're trying to figure out child care issues. You know, they're kind of stuck in the middle of taking care of both the the people that raise them and the people that they're raising. 00:07:34:23 - 00:07:58:15 Unknown And so I think that's putting a little more pressure on employers as well. You know, anything else in the thinking section just kind of goes along with the recruiting and candidate process. But I know you talked about recruiters being more involved with their hiring managers and actually shadowing the position that they're recruiting for. Can you expand on that a little bit? 00:07:58:17 - 00:08:17:22 Unknown Yeah, You know, I think the people in h.r. Have been pushing for this for quite some time because, one, i can't do it alone. And two, you're the hiring manager, you know, a little bit more about, you know, what's happening in the position. So I think you're seeing a lot more teamwork between the two. I think the hiring managers have begun to understand what the h.r. 00:08:17:22 - 00:08:38:20 Unknown Folks are facing in terms of trying to find good candidates. I think they're buying into the process a little bit more and i think it takes a little bit of the pressure off the human resources people to, you know, basically do everything, but it also engages the hiring manager and the process to it rather than after you've gone through the entire process and said, here's your person. 00:08:38:20 - 00:08:59:17 Unknown They're like, this isn't what I'm looking for. You can find that out a lot earlier, that this is not the skill set or the person will know it right away versus after having them interview and come in and and do the rest of it. So I think that partnership is really sort of helping, helping us find even better people and probably find them a little bit faster as well. 00:08:59:19 - 00:09:21:10 Unknown We also, in connection with that paid time off, there was a Georgetown University survey that came out that said the flexible work schedule is right up there, along with paid time off as the two things that young adults are asking for more than anything else. I don't know that that's really different. You know, I'm guessing when I went in for my first job, I sure I said, how much does this pay? 00:09:21:10 - 00:09:41:00 Unknown How many days off do I get and what's the work schedule? But I think it's just there's more of an openness now to bring it up and have that have that discussion. And like I said, the salary issue, you know, there's a lot of data out there and I think people can look up, Oh, I'm an electrical engineer, how much should I get paid? 00:09:41:02 - 00:10:07:17 Unknown And depending on what sorts you get, all kinds of things come out. Second of all, you talk to your cousin and they say, Oh, I made this much. So you take that and your generation, more than mine, shares information on social media a lot more openly than people did 30 or 40 years ago. And I think we had just as human nature, we have a tendency to find the highest number that anyone shared and said that must be the starting salary. 00:10:07:19 - 00:10:31:17 Unknown So employees and candidates, I think, are coming in with what they think is here's my data and it all says 80,000 and then meeting up with the employer that says, Well, here's our benchmark survey and it says 60,000. And so we're having some tough conversations, I think. But, you know, it is what it is. People have some information and at least gives you a place to start from and have the conversation for sure. 00:10:31:19 - 00:11:06:21 Unknown But we always talk about employee engagement in our talent report conversations. And this month you stated that 31% of us employees are thriving at work or are very engaged where 52% are quite quitting or not engaged in. 17% are actually wild quitting or actively disengaged. So my question is, what do you do with these three different groups? Well, all of this data came from Gallup, and they are well known for their employee engagement surveys and do literally hundreds of thousands of individuals. 00:11:06:21 - 00:11:26:07 Unknown So it's a pretty good database that they can pull from. But yeah, those were those were the results. And, you know, you look at that and you're like, holy smokes, you know, what do I do with this? And, you know, Gallup's advice out of all this was, okay, first of all, you've got more than half of them. They're quiet, quitting, not engaged category to them. 00:11:26:07 - 00:11:46:09 Unknown That's the low hanging fruit. You know, these are people are still showing up. They're not disruptive. They're they're working. And they're probably the group that would be the easiest to sort of push into that engaged group if we figure out what it is. Well, you know, what's missing is it camaraderie? Is it you know, you're feeling like you're independent. 00:11:46:11 - 00:12:15:02 Unknown Is it more social activities? Like, you know what? Why don't you feel engaged? And if we can find that, we can probably push that group, maybe some of that 52 into the 31, the people that are actually, you know, engaged and thriving at work. The second suggestion comes even from those people that are engaged, you know, are they really, you know, like you've got that group of people that you can send them out on the street to sell the organization no matter who it was to? 00:12:15:04 - 00:12:37:21 Unknown And how do you maybe get some of that group that's already engaged, but to that really engaged group? And is there a little bit something special that these are our high performers. These are people that are getting the work done. Can we give them another nudge? And yeah, they'll still be in the same category, but they'll be even bigger zealots, I guess, you know, and advocates for your for your organization. 00:12:37:23 - 00:13:09:17 Unknown And then a little bit of, you know, okay, if you've got people that are loud quitting, which was their term, which basically is now, you know, and not engaged, I'm telling people I'm not engaged and I'm posting things that say I'm not engaged. That's a group that can do some damage. And so with that group, it may be, okay, let's bring you in and find out, can we move you into someone that you know is satisfied with their job, at least not actively out there, you know, saying bad things about stuff? 00:13:09:19 - 00:13:31:19 Unknown Or is it someone who just is a bad fit for the organization and we have to deal with it that way. So I think, you know, if you go from top to bottom, take those really good engaged people and make them even more engaged. Take the group that's not engaged but is just kind of on the fence and try to move them to those that are thriving and for those that are, you know, actively sabotaging. 00:13:31:19 - 00:14:06:04 Unknown And almost we either got to get them under the tent or help them find a different tent in which to play under. And so there's work for all groups, basically across groups. Everybody can move up a notch. I think actually we're kind of moving into more of our tech talk. Last month we talked about how AI is just continuing to grow every second of the day, which means that companies are figuring out how to use it and how to incorporate that in AI into their work, in their day to day responsibilities. 00:14:06:06 - 00:14:35:07 Unknown So any new updates this month on how AI platforms are being used in in work today? Yeah, I just got done doing a seminar with folks that were utilizing it and recruiting and it's fascinating. And all of this that I'm about to tell you came from the part of Chat GPT that you actually have to pay for, which you know, I knew there was the free part that I've used and then there's the paper and I thought, Well, I'm getting what I need from the free part. 00:14:35:13 - 00:14:56:05 Unknown But now having seen the part that you can pay for, it does even a heck of a lot more. But they just gave examples of things that were real, I guess just time savers writing a job description. You know, you can feed in. This is what it is. This is what we're talking about and get an awful lot of information back. 00:14:56:07 - 00:15:15:03 Unknown Give me 12 really good interview questions and they can come back with a whole bite, you know, save you the time of trying to figure out, you know, what are we going to ask this type of job? There was one sample where they took a very complicated job. It was some sort of engineer, and I wouldn't have understood what they did. 00:15:15:05 - 00:15:38:23 Unknown And the question that they actually asked of Chad GPT was explain a whatever a nuclear engineer to me. Like I'm 12 years old and you know, the h.r. Person said he just gave me a better idea of. Okay, i understand now seeing all these big words over here, but now i know what they actually do. So in terms of writing it, I've got a much better idea of what it is I should be talking about. 00:15:39:00 - 00:15:59:04 Unknown And then even, you know, saying, what are 12 good lunch and learn topics that we can share with all of our employees, you know, and you get a list back not only of the 12, but with some bullet points underneath that say you might want to touch on this and this and this and this. So it was really it was really interesting to see the things that could generate that were really time savers. 00:15:59:06 - 00:16:19:24 Unknown All of this comes with a caveat that says don't just take it and put it out there, take it and read it because funky things can happen because this is, you know, this is machine learning. This is a language that is looking for, you know, and pulling out our chat. GB t it basically stop taking in new data in September of 2021. 00:16:20:01 - 00:16:44:20 Unknown So if you're looking for something that's up to date, you're not going to get the latest and the greatest, at least from that platform. But when you're asking for questions like what are good topics, what are good questions, you know, missing out on the last two years probably doesn't make a whole lot of difference. And then I think the most interesting quote I heard during the whole webinar was, you know, people are afraid that AI is going to come and take their job. 00:16:44:22 - 00:17:08:12 Unknown And the person's response was, A.I. is not going to take your job, but someone who knows I might and they're simply saying this is another tool. This is now you know how the Excel and PowerPoint and Word are basic skills. Now, PDFs are basic skills now, and knowing something about A.I. is going to become a basic skill is basically the point that she was making. 00:17:08:14 - 00:17:40:21 Unknown And I've also heard that it's like we all know it's it's never going to go away. So the businesses that figure out how to incorporate it and use it successfully are going to be the businesses that come out successful all through A.I.. Yeah. So Diana Small, our executive director of Emory Emory's Ohio division, Like we said, she also made an appearance on this month's report talking about implementing DEI strategies and efforts into organizations. 00:17:40:23 - 00:18:03:09 Unknown So you talked a little bit about the why, but do you have any other key points or takeaways that Diana mentioned that you want to highlight today? Yeah, When we got done, I just said, you know, and she walked through the beginner and intermediate advanced and everything that was was going on there and people can see the recording of that if they want to go look at the talent report. 00:18:03:11 - 00:18:23:04 Unknown But I just said to her, you know, I said, you've done enough of this just at a gut level, what what has to be in place in order for someone to be successful in putting a DEI program in place? And she said really two things. You know, one, you've got to have a culture that's ready to accepted employees that are willing to engage and want to be a part of it. 00:18:23:06 - 00:18:47:10 Unknown And two, you've got to have leadership buy in. And, you know, that sounds so simple, but, you know, you can just see how things will move faster if you're not trying to overcome your leadership team, but you're being driven by your leadership team that makes such a difference. And then if you find people that are really engaged in this and are passionate about it, that really changes the game too. 00:18:47:12 - 00:19:10:08 Unknown And that, you know, I shared with her, you know, our employee resource group here is called I Lead at MRA and I'm a part of that and about 40 other people are. And it's really our place to go have these deep discussions. And I said to her, I said, That makes complete sense to me, because the people that come into those meetings are passionate about, you know, how do we make sure that we're diverse and equitable? 00:19:10:08 - 00:19:36:07 Unknown I include people and there's a sense of belonging, and people really are very open and honest, sharing their own stories. Here's what they're seeing, here's what they're hearing. And then what do we as a group of employees do to reach out and engage even more of our employees? And so I thought, as simple as you, when you say culture and leadership, it, when you think about it, if those two things aren't in play, boy, then you really got your work cut out for. 00:19:36:07 - 00:19:51:13 Unknown So I just thought you did a really nice job of breaking it down to that point and saying, you know, look, you got to you've got to set the place up to be ready for it and you've got to have the leaders that are willing to lead on it. So it was succinct and simple and but a big deal if you don't have it. 00:19:51:15 - 00:20:18:22 Unknown Yeah, absolutely. I would just reiterate to make sure to tune in to next week's episode. If you do want to learn more about implementing DEI strategy in your organization and how belonging should send to mix. But just as we kind of wrap up here, we've got another chart question, and I know you included the chart at the end of the Taylor Report, and it shows the working age population annual growth rate. 00:20:18:24 - 00:20:43:18 Unknown So what does this chart shows or anything that we should necessarily be scared of when we're looking at it? I think you're doing this to me on purpose, that you're trying to have me. Okay, let's see. And how many words can you describe this chart? So I'm just going to put it on the website. You can go look at it now if you want to see what the chart is, Is it the working age population annual growth rate? 00:20:43:20 - 00:21:21:04 Unknown So how much is it growing each year? And it goes from 1960 predicted through 2050, and it's got ten different countries, continents, areas of the united of the world on there, North America, Africa, Russia, West Europe, Japan, China. So you're getting a look at basically the whole world and what exactly is going on there. And the simplest thing I can say is the chart from 1960 to 19 8085 looks like you're climbing up the ladder to a to go down the ski slope, I guess. 00:21:21:06 - 00:21:48:06 Unknown And when you hit about 1980, 1985, you basically go down the slope and it's for every single country that's in the group, some more severe than others. But you have countries that are dropping below, you know, the 0%. I mean, they're actually getting smaller, which includes North America, it includes Russia, it includes Western Europe. You know, so this isn't just a United States problem. 00:21:48:06 - 00:22:11:19 Unknown It's sort of an all over the place problem. But even the countries that are staying above and are the ones that you think of the fast growing like, you know, Africa, they're starting you know, by the time you get to 2030, you're starting to see a drop off there. So it's a universal thing. And the point we're trying to make with that is this is happening everywhere, maybe for different reasons in different places. 00:22:11:21 - 00:22:31:10 Unknown But as people are thinking, oh, well, I'll just go to where the people are, they might be having the exact same problem that we're having in the United States. And so as people are trying to figure out, if I can't do it here, how do I outsource? Where do I go? It was just sort of take a look around the world because you can see that other people are going to be facing the same problem, too. 00:22:31:12 - 00:22:52:03 Unknown So that chart is I know it's in the tail report that's on the tail report website and maybe we can put it up on the podcast site as well. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you did a good job of describing it. Thank you. Just think of the up and down. Yeah, well, as we wrap up here, can you give us a sneak peek on what September's talent report will be? 00:22:52:05 - 00:23:13:01 Unknown Yeah, it's going to be about compensation and compensation trends. We've got our big comp trends event in September. And just as another plug, we've got our Big D conference coming up in October. So I would encourage everybody to go to the MRA website and take a look at both of those. But we're not going to share all the comp trends data because that's coming out a couple of weeks. 00:23:13:01 - 00:23:33:07 Unknown We won't have the final information, but we are going to have some trends of what people we may not have the specific data for 2023, but we will be talking about some of the things that people are starting to look at and as the teaser, I guess for for for next month that we're sort of at this generational tipping point. 00:23:33:13 - 00:23:57:15 Unknown We're at the point now where the workplace is about 50% millennials and Gen Zs and 50% Gen Xers and Baby boomers. And if you think about the Xers in the Boomers, and then you think about the Millennials and the Zs, they want different things. And so when you start talking about benefits, not just because they're in different age groups, which does drive a lot of it, but they are very different lifestyles too. 00:23:57:15 - 00:24:19:01 Unknown And so now how are companies going to figure out their total compensation practice when these this group of people might be looking for things that isn't what we're offering right now, but we still have to offer them for this group until they retire. And I think it's going to it's going to be an interesting sort of tipping point as we go from one to the other. 00:24:19:03 - 00:24:47:23 Unknown And we'll have some thoughts on that in September. Yeah, sounds like a great topic and a great leeway into the terms about. Yeah, but Jim, thank you for all your great information today and kind of recapping what you've been saying in business with an emphasis on talent for August. So to our listeners, if you liked our chat and topic today, I'd urge you to comment something new that you learned today or any current trends or topics that you've really been seeing in the h.r. 00:24:47:23 - 00:25:09:03 Unknown World. Don't forget to share this episode and consider joining mra. If you aren't a member already. Like always, we have all the resources you need in the show notes below, including jim's resources on the talent report plus. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And we will see you next week. And that wraps up our content for this episode. 00:25:09:04 - 00:25:27:11 Unknown Be sure to reference the show notes where you can sign them to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA's 30 minutes Thrive so you don't miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next Wednesday to carry on the conversation.  

In this episode I will discuss if generation X is ready for retirement. I will first give a definition of who are the generation Xer's. Is there a lack of education and understanding? If generation Xers are lagging in retirement savings, Why is this the case? Will Social Security be enough to retire on for Gen Xers. How Gen Xers are the first generation heading into retirement without a defined benefit retirement plan. Can the labor shortage benefit Gen Xers in their preparation for retirement? Lastly, what strategies can be implemented to assist Gen Xers in their preparation for retirement? Visit the website and leave a voice review, and get on the email list for information pertaining to the show. www.podpage.com/the-3-13-men-money-and-marriage --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/andrew-johnson03/message

[00:00:00] Tom Lin: I had no idea what InterVarsity was when I got to college. A group of sophomores knocked on my door, were persistent, and invited me to Bible study. I checked it out. They were persistent. Again, I joined a small group, so InterVarsity really reached out to me and I had a great experience in a small group Bible study my freshman year. The community I loved and then I loved doing ministry. I learned how to serve others and reach out to others and minister to others, and I had a blast and just got more involved in and grew as a leader in university.  +++++++++++++++++++ Our guest today is Tom Lin, the Presidency of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I had the privilege of meeting Tom, when our company, JobfitMatters Executive Search, was retained by the Board of Directors of InterVarsity to conduct the search that brought Tom to be their President. Tom took his undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard.  In addition to his day job as President of InterVarsity, Tom serves on several nonprofit boards. Let's pick up on that conversation. [00:01:10] Tommy Thomas: Before we dive too deep into your professional career, take us back to your childhood.  What two or three experiences do you remember as being formative?  [00:01:17] Tom Lin: Looking back at my childhood a couple things come to mind from my young childhood. I remember distinctly in third grade as a child visiting Taiwan. That's the country where my father immigrated, my father and mother immigrated from. And I'll never forget visiting his hometown in the countryside. His family was a farmer. And it really gave me a sense of who my dad was, the poorest of the poor in the community. He was the only child of eight children to go to elementary school and high school, much less college. And there was this conversation that I overheard him talk with a friend of his when we were in Taiwan, and he said his friend said, oh yeah what was that school you went to again? I remember how it took you like two hours to walk to school every day? And my dad had told me stories about how he walked five miles to school every day, but I thought he was exaggerating. And then when his friend literally said, it was like five miles walking to his school every day, it struck me significantly. And I'll never forget that. And I think that just spoke to who my father was, his humility in life. He never felt like he deserved anything. Everything was kind of grace, God's grace in his life. And he had all these different opportunities as life went on, but he remembers where he came from. And in a lot of ways that shaped me. Generally in my life I don't think I deserve anything in particular. I try to remember where my dad came from and that kind of simplicity in life and not feeling I'm supposed to be this or that. It's just, at its core, I'm the son of my father who was a farmer, so anyways, that's shaping, that's a significant experience that I remember.  [00:03:00] Tommy Thomas: How did they get to the states?  [00:03:03] Tom Lin: My dad immigrated after he graduated from college in Taiwan through a scholarship for grad school, so to Mississippi of all places in the late sixties. His college experiences in Mississippi are really interesting stories there as well. Jackson, Mississippi is where he went to graduate school.  [00:03:23] Tommy Thomas: Oh, my goodness. [00:03:27] Tom Lin: Yeah.  [00:03:28] Tommy Thomas: What was high school like for you? [00:03:29] Tom Lin:   High school was a time of generally a lot of fun. I would say high school was very positive for me. Both from a faith perspective, I was involved in my youth group and given a lot of leadership responsibilities. And that actually was a close-knit community where I got to lead a lot, and that gave me a lot of energy. I remember organizing things, calling people every week, preparing things. We had a very active youth group of a few dozen people of different ages from pretty much middle school through post-college. And as a young sophomore in high school or junior, I was leading the whole thing. And yeah, that was an important part of my high school experience. And then in my actual school, that was just, it's a lot of fun. I was active in sports, a lot of extracurriculars. And had a good number of friends. I loved going to school every day. I loved seeing people. I loved sports and being active.  So, it was a very positive experience.  [00:04:31] Tommy Thomas: Being Chinese American, did you feel different or were you pretty much one of the crowd?  [00:04:37] Tom Lin: Yeah, certainly at that time and age, I began to understand more of my ethnic background, I went to a school which was majority white for sure. I was one of the few Asian Americans in my grade. And no, I mean I certainly noticed those dynamics. But if anything, it gave me a lot of experiences being a cross-cultural person every day. I went to a setting that was different from my home or my church, which was an ethnic church. It was actually a Taiwanese church that I went to. So, I would cross cultures every day. And it certainly has helped me as an adult in my career as well. These days I'm in a different setting, multiple different settings in different cultures every day, to experience that in high school every day, certainly helped develop me and shape me positively and prepare me for the future. [00:05:24] Tommy Thomas: You went to Harvard, and you studied economics. Tell us a little bit about that. How does a guy choose economics as a major? [00:05:30] Tom Lin: I often say, my major is economics, but in many ways my major was InterVarsity. It was the campus ministry I was involved with. Going to Harvard, which was a generally liberal arts school. So, there's no business major per se.  Economics was the most popular major. It was general enough, social science, and so I fell into it. It wasn't that I was passionate about economics. However, I would say looking back now, I see how God used it. I've been in pretty much full-time vocational ministry most of my life, with the exception of a few years, and economics helps me think about systems, systematically about things. Trends help me analyze things, analyze this macro and micro. I think economics, certainly starting economics certainly helps me with today. I would not have made that connection though if you just assumed that I never use economics anymore, but I do use some of the ways you're taught to think.  [00:06:33] Tommy Thomas: How did you connect with InterVarsity? [00:06:36] Tom Lin: It was InterVarsity who reached out to me. I had no idea what InterVarsity was when I got to college and a group of sophomores knocked on my door, were persistent, and invited me to Bible study. I checked it out. They were persistent. Again, I joined a small group, so InterVarsity really reached out to me and I had a great experience in a small group Bible study my freshman year. The community I loved and then I loved doing ministry. I learned how to serve others and reach out to others and minister to others, and I had a blast and just got more involved in and grew as a leader in university.  [00:07:12] Tommy Thomas: Early in your career, you helped establish IFES in Mongolia.   What was that like and what was the hardest part of that? [00:07:22] Tom Lin: Yeah, so in the early 2000's, my wife, Nancy and I went to Mongolia, and it was a context which really was a pioneering context, we call it. There's not much Christian ministry going on. The Bible was translated in the year 2000.  We arrived in 2001-2002 where, you know, there was a lot of excitement for this new Bible. Church planting was going crazy. People were investing a lot in church planting. I would say that was an exciting experience because we were on the front end of a huge decade of growth in the Mongolian church. And yeah, we wanted to go because people needed to hear about Jesus and most Mongolians had never heard of the gospel before. And so what an opportunity to go and focus on student ministry, campus ministry, specifically planting a new campus ministry movement in Mongolia. And it was Mongolian, the goal was that it would be Mongolian led indigenous, that we'd raise up Mongolian staff and eventually a Mongolian board and praise God that those things happened over a period of time. [00:08:32] Tommy Thomas: Can you think of anything that you learned there that you've carried forward? Any particular leadership lesson that you still use today?  [00:08:43] Tom Lin: Yeah, many, for sure. I would say in Mongolia we learned a few helpful missiological concepts that I think is helpful for every leader to think about. One is, you enter with an exit strategy.  You never assume you're going to be there forever. Generally, I don't think it's helpful for missionaries to stay in one place forever. And so, you're always thinking about how I can develop this movement or this organization to be self-sustaining so that it no longer depends on me. I think that's helpful for any organizational leader, and certainly you're always thinking about succession planning and how do you develop future leaders, and what's your best contribution? And can you pass and delegate your responsibilities to someone else so you can work on something else? And I think those principles were really helpful. And I think those are some significant lessons and things that continue to hold dearly.  [00:09:41] Tommy Thomas: Let's go to mentoring.   That seems to be a theme in a lot of leaders' lives that I speak with. Have you had a particular mentor or has that played a role in your development? [00:09:52] Tom Lin: It's interesting. I think as a Gen Xer, I'm of a Gen X generation. Growing up I didn't think too much about mentoring. I think the millennials are much more open to it. And particularly, you may have interviewed folks, the millennial Boomer connection is very strong. Gen Z now appreciates mentoring, but Gen Xers, generally, thought we could figure it out ourselves, in a lot of ways. So, I didn't value it, I would say earlier in my career. And then it wasn't until later that it was interesting. It wasn't until later that I found a mentor that reached out to me. His name is Steve Hayner. He's the former President of InterVarsity in the nineties. And Steve cared for me. He invited me to his home. He eventually would play a mentoring role, which basically meant in my life of key moments, key decision-making moments in my life. He entered and would give me his advice, or I would ask for it. And yeah, he periodically would show up. I would seek him out when I was trying to decide a career decision or if I had just a significant life question I was wrestling with. So, Steve would've been one of those mentors. I've had other ones, another one in my life is Leighton Ford. I still do spiritual retreats with him. In fact, I have one coming up soon. And he's been a different kind of mentor, more a spiritual guide in helping me do some reflection in my life. [00:11:20] Tommy Thomas: Steve and Leighton are two very different personalities.  [00:11:26] Tom Lin: Yes, they are. They are.  [00:11:27] Tommy Thomas: I've had the chance to work with both of them over the years, and as I remember Steve is being so soft spoken and yeah, you wouldn't know he is in the room unless somebody pointed him out and Leighton's a little more forward and a lot more energy in the room when Leighton's in the room. [00:11:42] Tom Lin: That's right. Yeah. It's certainly different and that's also helpful I think, in mentoring to have different types of leaders as mentors. And yeah, so I feel lucky that these two in particular reached out to me and initiated with me in different ways. And, yeah, I think they played a significant role.  For sure.  [00:12:03] Tommy Thomas: Usually if people get to your level, they end up getting most things done through teams. And I'm probably assuming that's true about you. Maybe tell me about what you think was your most dynamic team as you think back over the years. And it could have been in student ministry, it could be an executive ministry. [00:12:20] Tom Lin: I think I've had the privilege of working with a lot of great teams and I think they're all very dynamic. I think probably one of the most exciting teams and exciting moments was when I directed the Urbana 2012 conference, my first Urbana event. I directed a huge ambitious event where we're preparing for usually two years in advance for these five days where about 18,000 young people come together to explore global missions. Right? And so many facets of it from operations, the communications to recruitment, to vision casting and budgeting for it. And it was like running an organization. The team we had needed to be dynamic, needed to be collaborative, needed to work with urgency at times. And, we did it and it was a phenomenal conference.  And so that was probably one of the more dynamic teams, and team experiences.  [00:13:29] Tommy Thomas: What's the most ambitious project you've ever undertaken with a team?  [00:13:34] Tom Lin: That one I would say was one for sure. To have key goals like seeing 18,000 people come or partnering with 300 organizations. We had come to the event, managing thousands of volunteers and then a world class program. There was a particular moment at the Urbana. We called it the join in where we partnered with World Vision. What we did was we assembled something like, I believe it was to speak accurately, I want 40,000 - 50,000 medical caregiver kits within a 90-minute program time slot at the conference. These would eventually be shipped to Swaziland and other parts in Africa for AIDS caregivers to use. And we did it at Urbana in this massive stadium with trucks on the stage. And it was just a really ambitious undertaking. And within 90 minutes, these 18,000 students put together 40,000 kits. It was an active experiential event, and then these trucks pulled away with being fully loaded with these kits and they were like on its way to Swaziland. It was pretty amazing how it all came together, but it took a lot of coordination, a lot of preparation to pull that off. That was a fun project within the bigger Urbana project.  [00:15:04] Tommy Thomas: Let's switch a little bit. Our topic overall is next generation leadership. What are some of the things either that you're doing or that you're seeing being done that you think is contributing to this next generation moving into place? [00:15:18] Tom Lin:   Yeah. I ask that a lot. Our bread and butter. What we do is develop the next generation of leaders. We do that on campus. We do that with student leaders. I think one way I'll answer the question is how we develop the next generation of leaders within our organization because I get asked that question a lot in terms of staff or employees. I think the keys are really around first intentionality. I think you have to be intentional. It doesn't just happen. People often say to me I don't have any, I don't have any potential people, so what can I do? I think it takes intentionality to build your pool of people and then to invest in the right people within that pool. So, intentionality creating, and that might include creating access. So every year I host what I call the president's living room consultation. I bring about a dozen or more emerging next generation leaders into my home for three days in the living room when we talk. And I give them access to me and I give them access to other leaders. And I think sometimes the key to developing future leaders or giving them access to current leaders you have to be intentional though. And then I think another thing we do is we offer stretch assignments. So, to develop the next generation, you have to give them tough assignments. So, it's going to be hard for them to develop into, let's say, the next level without giving them risk taking opportunities to stretch assignments where they can prove themselves or learn from tough assignments in addition to their day job. So anyways, those would be a couple things. I'd say, yeah, intentionality, access stretch assignments.  [00:16:58] Tommy Thomas:  You've mentioned two or three generations here, so you've got the boomers and the Xers, and have you noticed any difference in their proclivity to take risks?  [00:17:09] Tom Lin: Oh yes. Yeah, of course. Generally, for the millennials, again generally speaking, and generational theorists would agree with this, and studies have been done. Because of their upbringing. And the millennials have seen mostly prosperity and the rapid advance of certain technologies, iPhone generations, such apps that can solve the world's biggest problems generally. They're willing to take risks because they think, and they see the opportunity to change the world. They can do it. And so, their proclivity to take risks is, they're fine with it. Gen Z, the current student generation. They've seen some hard things. They've experienced the great recession.   The world's not their oyster and everything's not come easy. Mental health crisis. So generally, they're more risk averse. And what used to be when, to millennia you might say, hey everyone charge. Let's go, let's take the mountain, let's take the hill. You can do it.  For the Gen Z folks, that's not an effective rallying cry. Usually, you need to say let's do it together. We're behind you. You have the support you need. I'll be your mentor along the way. Or you lower yourself and take the big goal, and you break it up into three pieces and you say, hey the first step is this. You can do that first step and then we'll do the second step.  And so, it is different.  [00:18:33] Tommy Thomas: Maybe a more global leadership question. What's the most dangerous behavior or trait that you've observed that can derail a leader's life or career?  [00:18:47] Tom Lin: Yeah. There have been studies done about derailers. I think for me I don't see it so much as you do this one big thing, or you have one big trait and it's going to all of a sudden sneak up on you and it's going to blow up in your face or something. For me the most dangerous behavior is the collection of small decisions that a leader makes. Small steps. So, for example, I think when it comes to money, we can easily get tempted to have a deserving mindset. I deserve that thing. I worked so hard, that little decision or I should need that thing because I'm a little tired. I deserve a little bit of this or that. And the collection of small choices adds up to one day, a leader can be tempted to take something or make a decision that they shouldn't do. Or another example is, my time is valuable. They've heard that a leader and you begin to buy into that, and you start making little decisions. They start off innocently. My time is valuable, so therefore I should do X or Y or the organization should do X extra Y for me. And then where's the fine line, the line starts to blur and it goes into my time. I am so valuable that I should be able to do extra Y. So, a collection of small choices can easily build toward the point where a leader really does something completely unethical or, yeah, derails them completely. I always tell people to watch the small steps and the small decisions you're making.  [00:20:24] Tommy Thomas: What's the best piece of advice anyone's ever given you? [00:20:43] Tom Lin: Yeah, maybe I'll just share something more recent I've been thinking about. I was reading Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, his autobiography, and one of the things he mentions is, people don't want to follow leaders who are pessimistic.  It's not a formula for success. Generally, people's inclinations, they want to follow a leader who's hopeful who is optimistic about his future. And I think generally that's something that I've abided by, even if there are challenges, people want to hear about the hope you have. People want to follow a leader who's optimistic about what's to come, who can paint a picture of why the future, or the preferred future, is better than today's future to today's reality. And I think that's so true and so important in leadership.  [00:21:33] Tommy Thomas: What do you do and maybe what do you and Nancy do for work-life balance?  [00:21:39] Tom Lin: Oh, work-life balance. I think. You know how I view that question? I think to me, work life balance is you have to work at both. You have to work at your work and you have to work at home, or your personal life, right? So it's not so much you work here and then you just veg out, so I think you work at both. And for me it meant I'm committed. I had both children at home. Now I have one at home, but I've had both at home for quite a while. I was committed to evening dinners at home, no matter what work demands were. I was committed to evening dinners at home when I was in town and I didn't carry work into dinner. And if I really needed to do work later at night, I'd wait till the kids go to sleep. So very careful about my evenings and then maintaining a Sabbath, there's a reason why the Lord commanded us to keep Sabbath and observe a Sabbath. And I think that really helps having the discipline of Sabbath where you're making sure you rest one day a week. [00:22:35] Tommy Thomas: What are you most excited about in life right now?  [00:22:40] Tom Lin: On one hand with my family, I'm excited about my kids growing up. One of my daughters is in college, and I'm in college ministry, so it's an exciting time for me to see my own daughter enter into this fantastic life stage. I think in work generally I'm excited about what we call our 2030 calling a vision. At InterVarsity we have a vision to see every campus in the country reach with the gospel. It's a fantastic vision for 2030 that is bigger than just InterVarsity. It's collaborative. We're working with over a hundred different organizations to see every campus have a gospel movement. And that's really exciting for me because it gets at my planting my experience in Mongolia wanting to see the unreached reached, kind of mentality. And as well as, I love campus ministry, so I want to see other organizations and churches get excited about campus ministry. And then ultimately, I want to see students' lives transformed and more students reached. It is a combination of a lot of things that go into this 2030 calling and that's what's making life exciting right now?  [00:23:52] Tommy Thomas: Let's reflect back a minute. The last two or three years we've lost two of your peers have gone on to be with the Lord and Steve Douglass and Denny Rydberg, and I know you've worked alongside those men and with them. What kind of reflections do you have on their leadership? [00:24:10] Tom Lin: Oh I would say Denny I did not have the chance to work with as closely, but we certainly collaborate a lot with the current CEO of Young Life, Newt Crenshaw. I would say with Steve Douglas, I did have a good number of years where I worked alongside. We met together to pray and fellowship with our spouses twice a year. My reflection on Steve is what I was saying about the small decisions equaling big ones. He was very aware that Steve was humble. One of the things he would do is he would decline a first grade up first-class upgrade on airplanes his entire life. He traveled a lot, but he would always decline an upgrade. I think he was very aware that even the small choices we make where we subtly begin to think that we deserve an upgrade or an extra treat or whatever, he wanted to be a model of simplicity and humility. And so, he would decline it every time. That's amazing. And then the second thing that struck me about Steve Douglas is he's always sharing the gospel, always sharing the gospel, always wherever he was, whether it wa at a restaurant with a waiter, a waitress, on an airplane, in a store. He would always just talk to somebody and find a way to share the gospel, and it was just very inspiring.  [00:25:29] Tommy Thomas: What are you going to say next week when you get a call from somebody that either thinks they want to be a leader, or maybe they're already in the leadership track and they're having second thoughts? How are you counseling our NextGen leaders? [00:25:47] Tom Lin: I think for NextGen, there's something about perseverance and paying the cost. So, I do think what I would counsel them is and it's harder to do I think in our North American context some of our majority world friends and leaders understand suffering and the role of suffering more. I think we're still less developed in that area. I would say I would counsel, persevere, especially in today's day and age as a leader, you are going to face extreme pressures, criticism, and reasons to hang it up. Reasons to just say I can't do it anymore. And I think I would say, keep on building the support team around you. Who's got your back?  Who is there for you? But when you engage in suffering, just know that's normal. And it happens. It will come. And that's part of the territory in leadership. So, I think that's how our counsel is just encouraging them to persevere and to understand it is a part of the reality, but you don't have to go through it alone. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++= I'm grateful to Tom Lin for taking time from his busy schedule to visit with us today. Why are we taking a break next week? It's 4th of July week holiday. And my experience has been that a lot of us take time away from work to spend time with family and friends. We will return the week of July 10 with our next episode.  In the meantime, stay the course on doing your part to make the nonprofit sector more effective and sustainable.    Links and Resources JobfitMatters Website Next Gen Nonprofit Leadership with Tommy Thomas InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Urbana IFES - International Fellowship of Evangelical Students   Connect Tommy Thomas - tthomas@jobfitmatters.com Tommy's LinkedIn Profile    

What's Good RAP Gang?! Did you miss us? Well no worries, we've got a lot to catch up on with this special extended episode! The topic is cultural (and local for our KC listeners) nostalgia and how that plays a part in how things are perceived by different generations of today online. It's weird sometimes being a millennial online in environments that we have literally been cultivating since we were in grade school. We are indeed the great liaison between Boomers, Xers and Zoomers who are navigating the internet due to our specialized labor. But what does that look like when Gen Z is boasting not knowing the songs of the rap samples they're borrowing and Boomers and Xers are gullible enough to believe outdated and pixelated memes on Facebook? We're running down some of the origins of internet trends and providing some context to these cultural phenomenas within our millennial shared experiences. You don't want to miss out on this special episode! Can't wait for you to tap in with us!

LOL I love today's leadoff story.  Karen Morgan made some harmless jokes about Generation Z and they are shooting back asking if us Xers know how to switch the HDMI inputs.  Oooo zing. A Wrath of Khan comedy podcast? I may have to check that out John Oliver and Seth Meyers are doing one show together Thanks to MyPostglow.com for sponsoring today's show! Whatever happened to the 2013 Sam Kinison movie? Support the show! Join the $2 Club! at  Buy Me A Coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/dailycomedynews Listen Ad-Free and get the episodes early with a premium subscription for $4.99/month on Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daily-comedy-news-podcast-a-podcast-about-comedians/id1474309028 www.linktr.ee/dailycomedynews Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/dcnpod - join us to to discuss comedy and your favorite comedians. YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/@dailycomedynews?sub_confirmation=1 Instagram is @dailycomedynews https://www.instagram.com/dailycomedynews/?hl=en Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/dailycomedynews/ AI generated transcripts at www.dailycomedynews.com Twitter is @dcnpod because the person with what I want tweeted once Email: john at thesharkdeck dot com Daily Comedy News commentary includes satire and parody. Daily Comedy News is a production of The Shark Deck, the leading company in short form daily podcasts    Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dailycomedynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is Incarnational Ministry? It's Jesus' involvement in our life. How do we embrace the same philosophy of Jesus' ministry in our own ministry contexts? And how do we do so in a hybrid and digital way to show up where our church people, members and congregants and spending their time? Follow Us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Show Notes & Transcripts: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/046 FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook SHOWNOTES THE ARTICLE BEING READ & REFERENCED: https://youthministry360.com/blogs/all/how-to-be-present-with-your-social-media-presence MY STUDENT SOCIAL MEDIA: https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscreekchurch?lang=en 10 FREE SPIRITUAL PRACTICE TIKTOKS: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4n40o5080lblih/Spiritual%20Practice%20TikToks%20-%20Nick%20Clason%20and%20Bailey%20Fore.zip?dl=0 TIMECODES 00:00-02:18 Intro 02:18-07:24 How to be Present with your Social Media Presence 07:24-12:19 How do we Show Up Where our People are Spending their Time? 12:19-12:58 Don't post Announcements on Social Media 12:58-14:01 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:01): Well, hey there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason. Thrilled to be here again with you. And just let me let you know little bit of a shorter podcast today I'm actually gonna do something a little different, a little unique. I recently wrote an article for YM Short for Youth Ministry 360, um, titled How to Be Present With Your Social Media Presence. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drop the link to that here in the show notes, but I'm actually just gonna read it for you, um, and also give you some author commentary as I, uh, am reading it through. So expect like a 10, 12 something minute pod. You probably already saw that. If you already downloaded this, if you're on YouTube, welcome in. Glad to have you. Excited to be with you. Nick Clason (00:48): And here's why. Honestly, um, this may release the week before, week after, not sure yet in the order. I'm doing a little bit of some batch pre-recording because my family and I are getting ready to go to Disney and I'm looking to just completely unplug from work, from this, from podcast side hustles, all the things I'm doing. Uh, so excited about unplugging, excited about getting ready to send and go and be with my family in Disney. Um, that being said, I, the, the craziest thing about this article is I wrote it, I can't even remember how long in advance, and then it dropped months later. Like I, I wrote it, I know when I lived in Chicago and it dropped just a couple weeks ago now when I'm living here in Dallas. And so my life has changed immensely. And when I heard it, there were elements of it that I was like, oh, that's interesting. Nick Clason (01:34): Oh, I don't know if I would've said it that way. And then there are other things I was like, yeah, I definitely still agree with that, you know, so I thought it'd be fun to bring to you all because I wrote it before, I think I wrote it before we even had a podcast going. So these thoughts, like, just think about that. If you've been on this journey with me listening to, to me in your ear ball holes for a while, think about this. These, these thoughts that have been ruminating inside of me and brewing inside of me. Uh, anyway, all that to be said, show notes, hybridministry.xyz. Subscribe to us on YouTube, follow me on TikTok Act place. And Nick also five star review if you would be so inclined. And without any further ado, let's dive into how to be present with your social media presence. Nick Clason (02:19): All right, here we go. How to be present with your social media presence. Read by the author himself, Nick Clayson. Here we go. Incarnational ministry. Did I lose anybody yet? Now before you go dust off your lexicon, you probably already know and embrace this as a characteristic in your life and in your ministry, right? Here's the thing. And I said this cuz I knew that, that pastors, youth pastors, who's ever gonna be reading it, primarily, this is a youth pastor. This isn't aside by the way, in case you didn't know primarily youth pastors reading this. They embrace and embody this, this characteristic, this idea of incarnation ministry just may not use it. You know, super frequently in our vocabulary anyway, in the gospels, we see Jesus going to be with his people that he encounters. So if our ministries are going to be a mirror of Christ's incarnation life and incarnation ministry, we are required to go and be with the people that we're ministering to. Nick Clason (03:16): And if you and I were youth pastors in the nineties, well we'd probably be found at the mall sitting next to a Chinese restaurant that's handing out free samples of their bourbon chicken and browsing hot topic on our way out the store. You know, you remember, however, if your towns anything like mine, well, the mall I just described as a of it, former of its former self. So where are all the teenagers hanging out? According to some statistics, 45% of Generation Z report that they're online, as they describe it as almost constantly, 45%, 24% of teams report feelings of discomfort if they go more than just one hour without access to the internet. And finally, on average, generation Z allocates two hours and 55 minutes per day on average to social media. So let's just be honest for a minute. The mall has gone to there, and let's be honest and frank, our pockets, it lives on our phones and the students that we're trying to reach and spend their time, they're online. Nick Clason (04:26): Regardless of your opinion of whether or not you believe that this amount of screen time is healthy, advantageous, it's probably not. It is where our students are spending the majority of their time. Let's pause for a minute. Um, a quick aside from this, I was in a recent Barna CoLab group on how to disciple Gen Z and their, they're sharing some recent findings, super interesting, super fascinating stuff. One of the things that they shared, um, actually it was a guy that they interviewed from a church and he said, uh, if Generation Z is the first digitally native generation, then generation alpha right behind them. By the way, if you're youth pastor, that is fifth and sixth, seventh, eighth grade, maybe not as high as seventh and eighth grade, but definitely like sixth, fifth, and on down. So they are the youth ministry of the future. Nick Clason (05:13): So if generation Z is the first digitally native generation, then that means that generation Alpha is the first digitally dependent generation. Crazy to think about. And so a lot of times, let's be honest with our generational age gap and difference, even as I'm a millennial, even as some fellow millennials, Xers, boomers on up, what is our constant, like, what are we constantly asking generation Z and younger to do? We're asking them to get rid of their phones. We're asking them to disconnect and unplug from technology. And while I think that there's advantages to that and it's advantageous for people to learn the disciplines of being able to break away, find some silence, find some solace and solitude, um, away from social media culture, away from online culture, I think all of that is well and good. I just think that you have a generation that is dependent on it. Nick Clason (06:06): It is literally their alarm clock. It's their calendar, it's their actual phone. It's where they communicate with all their friends, whether it be text message, Snapchat, be real, but it's, it's their their map, it's their navigation system. It's the way that they check their grades. It's how they pay for their school lunches. Like it's everything. It's not like, I'll give you this example. I am recording this podcast when I'm recording it in preparation for my trip to Disney World. Everything at Disney World is now online. It's in the my Disney Experience app Genie Plus, which is the replacement of Fast Passes, lightning Lanes, um, checking into my resort, making mobile food orders, like everything is on my phone. And you are at an amusement park with your family trying to unplug, trying to disconnect Bif, do you have to be on your phone? And there are people who are like, I'm done. Nick Clason (06:56): I'm not gonna do that. And that's fine. But the reality is we are moving more and more towards that than we are away from that. And so if this generation is dependent upon it, what we have to do is stop villainizing the phone and we have to start looking at it as an opportunity to teach them and disciple them through how to have faith with a phone through that lens. And I think that's my heart in this article, and that's what's coming through. Let's read the next section. So here's a question for you. If in the nineties you would've gone hung out at the mall to connect with students and teenagers, how in 2023, which is one of the articles written, how in 2023 are you showing up where your students are? See, I'm not necessarily proposing that the digital church replaces the in-person experience hybrid far from it. Nick Clason (07:47): But if your students go home after school and spend almost three hours on their phones, which is what the statistics told us, then couldn't you make an impact with your students or your people online? All right, so here's some ideas how to do that. If you've been listening to this podcast any length of time you've heard it, I'm gonna say it in idea and then I'm gonna riff on it. So I'm gonna say idea number one, idea number two, so that you're clear, okay, idea number one, share a devotional thought. Guys, you can hold your phone out in front of you and you can give either a recap of, or you can give a completely new and different from, not different cuz come, gonna come from the Bible, hopefully, but different from your sermon or from the lesson that week or whatever the case might be. Nick Clason (08:29): You can give just a devotional thought, boom. Hey guys wanna give you quick encouragement, 60 seconds or less. People don't want longer than that. Anyway, you can do a deep dive into an encouraging, um, or challenging passage of scripture. Again, 60 seconds or less. I, I think maybe it was Mark Twain, I'm not sure, but it was him who said, Hey, I wanted to write a short letter but I didn't have time. So I wrote a long letter. See, it takes more time to make something quick, concise, and short. Idea number three, have fun, create fun and funny posts. Hey, if you're not following us on TikTok on our student ministry, I would encourage you to, you can go check it out. We are Cross Creek students. Um, hopefully now we are at Cross Creek students. If not, I may still have it set as at Cross Creek Church cuz TikTok won't let me switch my name over to Cross Creek students, but that's ultimately the goal. Nick Clason (09:18): I've had a hard time switching it over. But we do fun and funny posts. I literally, right as I was walking into this spare bedroom of my house to record this podcast, I was literally posting a video of a girl drinking ranch dressing flavored soda and trying to guess the flavor of it. Like it's just fun. And honestly, what I do is I toss out the invite on a youth ministry night. Hey, you wanna be on TikTok tonight? Sure. They all come into the room. I have six bottles of soda with weird flavors. I have a game cud up on my laptop. And another thing with the filter on on TikTok, it gets me like 20 pieces of video content that I just store, bank and pull back out later when I need it in my calendar. Idea number four, film answers to theological questions, right? Nick Clason (10:02): People are inspired by answers to deep things that maybe you don't wanna put online, but things that students are dealing with. Like, why do bad things happen? How do I develop a habit? Why, how do I spend time with God even if I don't want to? Why would I go on obeying him and living a life of sinlessness or the goal of that if he's always just gonna forgive my sins? Anyway? You talk about that every week. What's the point of it? What does God think about gay people? Does God require me to be a democrat? Does God require me to be a Republican? What would Jesus think of our current political landscape? You get the idea. Idea number five, encourage spiritual practices and disciplines. I don't know if it's gonna get accepted or if it's out yet, but I recently submitted, if it is, I'll drop a link to it in the show notes. Nick Clason (10:48): I recently submitted 10 TikTok videos. Actually, you know what I'm gonna do? It's on ym, um, or I submitted it to d y m I don't know if they took it or not. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drop a link, uh, to that resource, the Dropbox resource in the show notes here, completely free charge. Just go grab it and use it. It's, uh, memorize scripture with me. Practice meditation, sit in silence, have a praise break, all kinds of different things. 10 different spiritual practices that that students or people or adults can use. It's not branded. So you can use it. Just download it and post it wherever you, uh, manage social media free for you. Uh, let's see. Are we on six idea number six, you can do recap posts or videos. Just take, literally you only need 3, 4, 5 seconds worth of of videos and you get like 10 of those real fast at the beginning of the night, um, or during your program. Nick Clason (11:40): And then you just put 'em into TikTok. Auto cut. Boom. You got a less than 22nd recap video. Phenomenal way to do that. Idea number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, less idea Number seven, give shout outs to leaders and volunteers. Figure out how to do that on social, whether it's static graphics, whether it's motion graphics, whether it's you talking graphics, whether it's voiceovers, give shout outs to leaders and volunteers. Finally, you can quiz students on their Bible knowledge. Uh, one of my favorite ways to do this is on the Instagram story editor with the story sticker, uh, uh, multiple choice story sticker. You can put it in there and you can ask them bible questions and test their Bible knowledge. Super fun way to go about doing that. Those are just some ideas to name a few. I don't know your context, but here's one thing that I do know, we're back to the article, is that I want you to notice that not one single idea that I mentioned above was an advertisement for an event. Nick Clason (12:32): We've gone into this, if you've listened to me for a while, you've heard this before. But what if we could use social media to encourage students to actually take the next step in their faith to engage with you or with your ministry, to challenge them to deeper more meaningful ways and a more meaningful walk with Jesus. It's not just another communication platform, which is what we often default social media into being. It's a means to help accomplish a more incarnation form of ministry. So that's it, that's the article. Love to know how you are using social media in your ministry context for more than just announcements to encourage people in their faith to show up where they are. But the bottom line is we are rooting for you. We are cheering you on. So glad you're in here. Hey, listen, if you didn't know this, 2023 is the year of short form video content, vertical video, short form content, less than 60 seconds. If you're like, man, I don't even know how to get this word out there, we got you right here. Link the description. If you're watching on YouTube or go grab our 100% completely free e-book titled, have I already ruined my Church's TikTok account? No. But this book will help teach you how to post one from start to finish all the way through doing it all on the phone in your pocket. So we're here for you, rooting you on. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being a loyal listener. And as always, we never forget.

In this episode, Nick talks about the lastest Generation Z findings, the cultural and generation gap that is growing in our churches. And answers the ultimate question, is Gen Z deconstructing their faith? And if so, what do we do about that? Show Notes & Transcripts: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/044 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook RECENT GEN Z STATS *GEN Z * 70% are spiritually open TRAITS Correct 6% Teens 8% All Gen Z 9% Young Adults Knowledgeable 16% Teens 21% All Gen Z 24% Young Adults Being Honest 41% Teens 32% All Gen Z 25% Young Adults Being Open to New Ideas 29% Teens 28% All Gen Z 28% Young Adults Being Curious 7% Teens 11% All Gen Z 13% Young Adults 51% HAPPINESS IS VERY IMPORTANT Happiness Looks Like 43% Success 23% Education 20% Family 8% Spiritual 6% Health TIMECODES 00:00-02:46 Intro 02:46-06:32 A BeReal Generation vs. an Instagram Generation 06:32-11:37 The Latest Gen Z Statistics 11:37-18:52 Church & Workplace Implications of these Cultural Trends and Shifts 18:52-21:49 Gen Z Still Likes Jesus, just not our Church 21:49-22:44 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:00): Hey, what is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I am your host, Nick Clason, excited to be with you. And in this episode, we are going to talk about the workplace gap and generational gap between older generations and younger generations, specifically generation Z and those that have come before them. And also, I want to pull out some principles that I think might be true about what that means for you and your local church and how they're the, the gap is causing a riff in potentially church attendance. But before we do, I just want to say thanks for being here. If you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe and notification button, that like button. If you're on TikTok, give us a follow. And if you are just listening in your podcast catcher, I wanna let you know that you can head to hybridministry.xyz for all of your podcast needs, including show notes and transcripts. Nick Clason (01:00): We will link all of the notes to everything, uh, all the links, everything that we're talking about. And, uh, all of the, uh, transcript is there for you, 100% completely free of charge. We also wanna let you know that LinkedIn, the show notes, both on YouTube and in your podcast, our free ebook, have I already ruined my church's TikTok account. That will be available for you. Again, free of charge. Just hit that subscribe button and sign up for that email list. We'd love to give that to you as a free gift and our token of appreciation. Uh, and also, without any further ado, if you are able, willing, or, uh, have any sort of interest in letting us know, this would be great. We would love a five star rating or review that would really help us out, that would help us get index in the search for all these things on podcast. Nick Clason (01:47): All those things matter, and they're just, they would just be a small token of appreciation from you to us for all that we do. Um, but again, we are just thankful and thrilled to be here. So without any further ado, let's dive into the workplace generation gap conundrum. Hey, what's up, hybrid ministry fam, thanks for watching this or listening to this. Hey, I just wanna drop a quick note and let you know about halfway through, uh, the audio recording. Somehow my audio got corrupted. You'll notice a drastic drop off in quality some way through. Sorry about that. You're still gonna be able to hear it cuz I was recording it on my phone just like I'm doing this little announcement right here, right now. So this'll be able to hear it. It's just not the best, it's not our favorite quality level. We'll get it back, you know, we'll figured out the issue. Nick Clason (02:40): Um, but just wanna give you that quick disclaimer. Heads up. Hope you still enjoy the rest of the episode. So if you have been paying any bit of attention recently, you know that the social trends have been shifting. We all know that TikTok has grown in immense popularity. All of what Congress and the US is trying to do with it, it's grown in immense popularity. So much so that some of our more, um, legacy platforms like Facebook and Instagram have adopted many of the AI features that are available in TikTok. But another trend that I've noticed recently, uh, is the trend of the, the social media app. B real bre has been, uh, launched recently, um, within a year or so I would say. And Gen Z and current teenagers have gone crazy for it, at least in my anecdotal experience. And they're using it. Nick Clason (03:37): And if you don't know what B Real is, it's basically an app that one time a day says it's time to be real. But they, uh, you know, you can, you can, it has like dual meaning like cuz BRE is also another thing that you use in like film or whatever, but it says it's time to be real and they just take a picture of what you're doing wherever you are, right there in that moment. You have two minutes to post it, you can post late and that's what a lot of people do. But it's really just like a once daily posting app. It's not the curated feed and the beautiful like Brazilian vacation photo pictures that we would get in the old school, Instagram and Facebook, right? So that was a lot more curation and now Gen Z is leaning a lot more towards just like, this is how it is, this is what it is, take me for me, it is what it is, take it or leave it. Nick Clason (04:29): Like that's essentially right? Like that's essentially, uh, what they, uh, have kind of leaned into. And I think it's fascinating shift this like perfect polished, kind of curated down to this like little more nitty gritty just as I, as I am, take me or leave me for who I am. That's kind of what BeReal is. That's kind of why I think TikTok shifted too. And one of the things that's interesting is burial is where you follow friends, but they only post one time a day. There's like not as much pressure on social media on the curation of it. And I just, I think that that's a trend. I think that that's, uh, a, a way, a thing that Gen Z is attempting to adopt less curation, more just realness, more rawness, more authenticity. Um, and meanwhile like, uh, take, uh, Instagram, Facebook, and some of those more legacy platforms, millennials and up, that's not as much the priority in fact, or it hasn't been, you know, and as they've shifted into reels, which is much more discovery based, more raw, more quick cuts and more like entertainment based. Nick Clason (05:36): Um, like you would go on on TikTok or any of the other platforms, shorts, reels, and you would watch something, it's like 98% or, or something like that. 90% of what you actually watch and consume is not from people that you know. So that's not really a social media anymore. It's honestly much more of like a entertainment platform you get on TikTok at the end of the night or whenever you do to be entertained. So the actual sociability is happening on apps like be real and other, just more like basic, very like nitty gritty, not a lot of bells and whistles type of thing. And I think that there's an attraction to that. And so, uh, I I just, I think that's one, one interesting shift that I'm noticing in the generation gap. I wanna also look at the workplace gap here in a minute and how I think that that plays out for you and your church. Nick Clason (06:29): But first I have some new stats I got from Barna. So let's dive in to those recent stats from Barna on Gen Z. Um, found some of these interesting, just wanted to share them with you. According to Gen Z or according to Barna, 56% of Generation Z claim to be Christians, which might be higher than you thought it was. I think that there's sort of a notion out there that Gen Z is deconstructing, gen Z is rethinking their faith, but 56% still claim and classify themselves as Christians. Granted, I know there's, you know, all kinds of different things on spectrum. You may claim to be a Christian, is it nominal y or whatever, whatnot. The thing that's staggeringly high though is Gen Z considers, uh, only TW or 25% of Gen Z consider themselves to have no faith at all. And here's the the crazy thing, right? Nick Clason (07:19): Like that is, that's the part that is alarmingly high I believe because that is the highest of any other generation by a lot. So US adults, according to US adults only 13% say that they have no faith. And the next highest, um, like breakdown age demographic thing is millennials and they're at 15%. Gen X is at 13%, boomers at 8%, elders at 5%, all of that under not saying that they don't have, uh, faith. And so here's the thing is that while you and I, if we're older and not generation Z, we may look at that and we may be like, wow, that that's alarming. And they are definitely deconstructing and that may be the label that we give to it. But what's interesting is that they surveyed Gen Z gr deeper. And these five words were the words that most defined and clarified their spiritual journey. Nick Clason (08:12): And they were these words, number one, they're spiritually growing. That was 39% of the population checked that, uh, number two, they're spiritually open, 35%, they're spiritually curious, 32% they are, um, spiritual in general, uh, 29%. And then they are spiritually exploring 27%. So like I said, we might have that classification as like, man, you're deconstructing what they call it a different word. And I, that was a very, very, um, uh, important learning, at least for me. I was like, okay, we're freaking out about it. And they're like, no, I'm just open. I'm just exploring. I'm just growing. I'm just checking things out. That was how they would describe it. Uh, big bucket of that, 70% of Gen Z claim to be spiritually open. 70%, that's a large stat. Um, and then furthermore, to expound upon that and that this is where I think this really gets interesting and important for churches is that these were some of the traits that, uh, the survey asked Gen Z, what do you want in your, um, church? Nick Clason (09:20): What do you want in your religious institution? What are the key things you're looking for? The first question, are you looking for it to be correct? 6% of teens said that they were looking for their religion to be correct. 8% of all Gen Zs said that and 9% of young adults said that. Not very high, right? Are you looking for it to be knowledgeable? Are you looking for people in your religious institutions or people around to be knowledgeable? 16% of teens said, yeah, I'm looking for them to be knowledgeable. 21% of all Gen Zs said, yeah, I'm looking for them to be knowledgeable and then 24% of young adults, so I'm looking for them to be knowledgeable. You can see that jump right from teenager to young adult. Once you become an adult, you're like, I do want someone to know something, right? To help me out. Nick Clason (10:02): Uh, this one was the, the highest, the highest on the graphs. You had different graphs of all these different, um, characteristics. Being honest, this is the highest one. 41% of teens want their religious institution. To be honest, 32% of all Gen Z ask for that. And 25% of young adults want honesty, want authenticity, right? Back to be real honesty, authenticity, the real you being open to new ideas. That was another category. 29% of teens want that. 28% of all Gen Z, 28% of young adults. And finally, curiosity, that one was lower with 7% of teens wanting to be curious. 11% of all Gen Z and 13% of young adults. And so they're looking for honesty, they're looking for transparency, they're looking for realness. Okay? Furthermore, and this is the last bit of the stats before we dive into what I think are pot, some potential implications for this. Nick Clason (10:55): 51% of Gen Z say that happiness is very important to them. They are looking for happiness. Well, you know, once, once they heard that stam in this like Barna kind of collab thing where they are sharing these statistics, one other person's put in the chat, how do you define happiness? And they ask that question, they're like, what does happiness look like to you? So 43% say it looks like success and, and they used images for them to choose. So that success image was a guy holding money. That's what 43% say, happiness looks like. Successful man holding money where 23% say education is happiness. 20% say family, 8% say spiritual and 6% say health. All right? So what does all that mean? Let's dive into it and check it out. Okay? So I think that there's a workplace shift that needs to happen. Covid ushered a lot of this stuff in and your church is probably in a different spot than it was pre covid, but it may not be fully there where generation Z is interested. Nick Clason (11:56): Cuz here's the thing, whether this matters to you on paper or not, you are going to need to start hiring generation Z by the year 2025, which at the time of the podcast recording is only a year and a half away. Millennials and Gen Z are going to make up the majority of the American workforce. That may or may not be true in your context and in your church, but the fact is, if you're catering to boomers and Xers in the workplace, just because this is the way we've always done it and they need to get over it and they need to get used to it, that may not be your most effective strategy moving forward. And it may not bite you right in the year 2025, but 2026 rolls around 20 27, 20 28, and you're trying to recruit new young talent and they're just not interested in coming to work for your church or your organization. Nick Clason (12:43): Why is that the case? Here are some thoughts I have based off of this research and just some things I've observed in the last couple of years that I think might be contributing to it. So the first is this, the time off conversation and or the work life balance conversation. These are wide sweeping generalities, I understand it. And so if you're like, Hey, I'm a Gen Xer and that's not true of me. I'm saying by and large wide sweeping, um, I work for a boss, he's Gen X, he is phenomenal at giving me time off, taking care of me, making sure I have balance, work life balance, all those things. But he will of his own admission and, and own accord say that he is a workaholic and he will push it to the limit. And so, uh, that is something that is of the older generation, much more the norm. Nick Clason (13:36): They're looking for people who are gonna work hard and give it their all and bust it. And while that may be true, and that may even be what's necessary at times, that is not the natural disposition of millennials and Gen Z, I'm a millennial and I I am friends with and work with a lot of people that are Gen Z. I don't think that they're lazy and don't wanna work. I just simply think that they are more aware of their work life balance. They've looked to their older parents or wiser people in their life and they've seen how they've approached work and they have not, they don't want to fall to those same, you know, pitfalls that they've seen over time. So work-life balance, PTO rhythms, taking time off vacation. I have a coworker, she's Gen Z and this is her first job. And so she's been with us, um, at our job for the, about the same amount of time that I've been working there, eight months or so. Nick Clason (14:32): And this is her first time with like a true weekend, but she has to come back for Sundays. Sundays are not a weekend anymore, but we get Fridays off. And so she will often try to get out of the office a little bit early on a Thursday and she will often take a trip somewhere, go meet some friends, you know, whatever. So she's leaving at like two o'clock, three o'clock, hitting the road, getting there on Thursday night, hanging out. Like, and that's important to her. And so there was a Thursday night commitment that she had and she's like, I can't do that. And it was like, because this is my weekend. I need my weekend to explore, to have fun. And that's just like, I think most older generations would be like, no, you have to work yet to stay here until five. Like, that's the rules. Nick Clason (15:16): And I just think that that that's a shift that is happening and that's probably an adaptation that I would say is gonna need to take place in the workforce. Uh, also flexible in workspaces, like remote working should be able to be a thing. Now I get it. If you're at church and you're in ministry, you know, just how valuable and important like in-person face-to-face meetings are. If you're gonna disciple somebody, if you're gonna grab coffee with a leader, if you're gonna sit down and have breakfast with a couple and you're counseling them, like all those things are valuable. But there's a lot of computer work, there's a lot of email based work, there's a lot of like software things that can take place via remote work. And you don't have to be 100% completely in the office, your butt in a chair because the natural like tendency for that is like everyone's here. Nick Clason (16:06): And so if anyone needs anything, we just pop in and out of people's offices. There are tools nowadays, there's slack, there's as much as I hate it, there's Microsoft teams, there are chat based features that you can stay in touch and you don't have to have a quote unquote office or hallway or pop in type conversation. Why do we do that? I think we do that because it's comfortable, it's familiar to the way it's always been done, but the tools are there and they're probably a little bit more effective on, uh, efficiency workflow, getting people like, you know, in and outta conversations as opposed to like, Hey, how are you? And that conversation taking an extra 10, 15, 20 minutes, there's value in those things, no doubt. But generation Z and millennials are looking for more flexible workspaces if they can get their job done while out, while also being on vacation somewhere so that they can work for a few hours, they can close their laptop and then they can go and have fun on vacation. Nick Clason (17:03): If we are so tight and stringent and say, no, you have to be here in the office, that's not gonna lend itself well to that flexible workspace and that first one, that time off that work life balance. The other trend, the other thing that I'm kind of noticing is that the older generations, uh, Xers and boomers, they're holding on longer, they're working later, they need the money to retire, they still need the income. And this one I think is big, is because while Gen Z is pursuing happiness, uh, corporate work environment may not be the cure or key to their happiness, but if it is, especially in church, they may say like, well, I'm looking for purpose and the church helps bring me that purpose. I want to be a part of a church. However, there are older generations that are still hanging on and that are still working. Nick Clason (17:54): So the question is, while we want to hire younger people, where is the space for them to come into your organization attached to it, take ownership of something and begin working toward any sort of authority in your organization because you have people already holding those most important positions. And that's gonna get tricky, especially if you got those people sitting there and and holding those most important positions. Where are they going to lay down and pave away for generation Z to come in and take opportunity? The last thing I think is that Gen Z is very concerned and rightly so about their mental health, about their mental state, about their mental wellbeing, making sure that those things are taken care of, that they're important. And so your organization, if you're bringing in millennials and Gen Z, consider finding a way to help prioritize their mental health, make counseling a part of a employment benefit for them, um, and for, you know, a thing that you offer to them. Nick Clason (18:56): So I have one last idea, let's check it out on the other side, right? So here's my conclusion. Gen Z, well, 25% would claim that they don't have faith. I think one of the things I've noticed in my experience is that generation Z, they still love and like Jesus a lot. In fact, in this Barna co lab, they sat down and talked with two guys who were Gen Z business owners. And what shocked me and was just an interesting thing that I noticed, uh, they didn't necessarily say this, they're a part of their church, but they're Christians running a Christian organization, not doing it through the local church. So my question to myself in that moment was, if Gen Zers, like these are passionate about faith, passionate about God, they love going to things like, you know, passion, these people, they were in the event business as well. Nick Clason (19:51): They love going to those things, but we're not seeing them in our churches, both on the workplace side or the attendance side. Do they like Jesus and just not like the way that we do our church? I think church has a propensity right now to feel very institutionalized. And I think that that, that if that rubbed you the wrong way, and especially if you're older and you're listening to it and you're like, my church isn't institutionalized, this is what we've been doing it for years. While that may be true, the way that we've been doing church for years is American, not necessarily New Testament. The New Testament church looked very different from the American church. So are you doing church like the Bible or are you doing church like America? And there's nothing wrong with doing church like America unless it's not effective in reaching the next generation. Nick Clason (20:36): And in that case, that's where it becomes an issue. And so I think both from older generations holding on from workplaces not being very friendly to Generation Z, millennials and those with that type of mindset and the fact that there's just not as much space for Generation Z to, to go into these spaces, they're creating them over here to look more New Testament, to look more authentic, to look more be real, to have more community, to have more places to lean in as opposed to coming to your institutionalized church. Because if they're not there in the seats from eight 30 to nine 30, then we consider them deconstructing. And that just may simply not be true. They might just be open to exploring new ways, new, new ideas, new places to engage with these things. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're out on Jesus. It just might mean that they're out on you. So what shifts might you need to take place? What stats have you heard that you're like now that's interesting and that might change some of the way we do things because before long, millennials and generations here are going to make up the majority of our workforce. They are Gen Z is not just teenagers in your youth group, they're graduating college now. They are looking for a church to attach to. Is your church friendly to them and what they need? Or is your church stuck dogmatically to the way that things have always been done? Nick Clason (21:59): Well thanks guys so much for hanging out in this episode. Thrilled to have you with us. Don't forget everything that you need is gonna be available to you in the show notes. Make sure that you like, make sure that you comment, make sure that you subscribe, rating, review, all those things. Glad to be with you. If you find this helpful, we would love to continue to create and produce content like this for you. So all that stuff helps keep us going as well as head to hybridministry.xyz Click on the contact form and if you have questions, submit them there to us. We would love to start taking some questions, answering some of your questions and giving back to y'all and letting you know what our perspective is on certain hybrid things, digital, social marketing, communications, generation Z, all the above. Let us know on those topic. But until next time, and as always, stay.

This episode we once again play games and reminisce about the cool stuff of Generation X with these two Gen'Xers. We welcome back the guests from episode 4 for a rematch that you don't want to miss. The Facts of Life game this episode asks, "What are the greatest action movies of the 1980s?" Eight Is Enough topics include trivia on movies Weird Science, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, TV shows The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island and so much more. Dysfunctional Family Feud was very close and exciting and the winner just might surprise you. Stick around at the end for a Yakety Sax "tribute" to Wally George and find out about a new way to connect with the podcast through our new voice mail system featured on our webiste. Drop us a line, won't you? :) Join the fun and the effort to save the pop culture of Generation X from being forgotten.Special shout-out to newest Patreon supporter: Paul!! Thanks so much, you're doing your part to save Generation X!Show NotesCheck out our new website: https://www.whowillsavegenx.com/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/whowillsavegenxVenmo: WhoWillSaveGenXWant to contact the show? Send a shout-out or special message to a loved one or friend who listens to the show? Email us here: WhoWillSaveGenX@gmail.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2730544227204426Want to buy some merch? Go here:https://www.teepublic.com/en-gb/stores/who-will-save-generation-x-podcast?ref_id=16967Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/hMu6ezAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode Nick Recaps each step of the Church Social Media Framework for 2023, and he puts it all together. Get your notebooks out (or head to the transcripts) to take notes as we go quickly through all areas and social channels and lay out a church social media and marketing strategy. Follow Along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Transcripts: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/040 SHOWNOTES //TRAILER https://www.hybridministry.xyz/034 //YOUTUBE https://www.hybridministry.xyz/035 //TIKTOK https://www.hybridministry.xyz/036 //FACEBOOK https://www.hybridministry.xyz/037 //INSTAGRAM https://www.hybridministry.xyz/038 //EMAIL, TEXT & WEBSITE https://www.hybridministry.xyz/039 COMPLETE YOUTUBE PLAYLIST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YCREabCjGg&list=PLngXlSr64YaIbzg_DNJrTrCtBHQnxcOVo&index=1 NUCLEUS WEBSITE BUILDER: https://www.nucleus.church TIMECODES 00:00-02:24 Intro 02:24-06:08 Becoming All Things to All People on Social and Digital Media 06:08-08:36 Step #1: A Good Church Website 08:36-11:08 Step #1 after the Website: YouTube 11:08-17:53 The Full Weekly Social Media Strategy 17:53-20:10 Better Weekly Church Emails 20:10-21:59 Outro and Final Encouragements TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:00): Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. My name is Nick Clason. I am going to be your host. And in this episode we are taking the last, uh, several episodes where we talked through YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, email, text, website. And then we're gonna put it all together and hand you the perfect custom package social media plan for your church here in 2023. Excited to have you with us. As always, wanna let you know that every single episode we provide for you transcripts, you can head over to hybridministry.xyz for this episode. You'll go back slash 0 4 0 for episode 40. Also, we are on YouTube, so go ahead and click the subscribe button over on that. And finally, every little, uh, piece of content I pull out for these episodes, we also post those over on TikTok, so you can follow me, hit all those things up in the show notes and any other links and articles and relevant things that we're going to be talking about. Nick Clason (01:10): I will also drop in the podcast episode show notes. Again, you can find all of that, um, just in your podcast catcher or at hybrid ministry dot x y z. Additionally, in as always, you know the drill, it would be incredibly beneficial and helpful to us if you'd consider giving us a rating or a review, a like or a subscribe on YouTube. All in any of those things, help us just be found, just be seen and get this message of hybrid ministry out to the masses a and to the world. And so if that's something that you have the time or are willing or able to do, we would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And as a thank you, we want to offer you a 100% completely free ebook. The title of the ebook is, have I already Ruined My Church's TikTok account? How to Post a TikTok from Scratch, starting at the very beginning from A to Z. Nick Clason (02:00): You can head to the show notes for a link to the ebook as well. Um, and what will come along with that is when you sign up, you'll also get a bonus throw in of the social media checklist. Everything you need to do every time you post to every single social media platform. Once again, so glad that you're with us. Let's go ahead and dive in and put all of the last several episodes together. Well, everyone, if you are just diving in, you, what you're doing is you are catching us at the sixth episode of the sixth Part Church Social Media Framework for Churches in 2023. And what we've done is we've parsed through each individual's social media platform as well as spent some time on website, email, and text. And so really we had four, and then we had an additional three that we package into one episode that was in the most recent episode. Nick Clason (02:50): And then in this episode, we're gonna take all of those facets, all of those pieces, and we're going to put them all back together. So, uh, just as a reminder, all the way back at the very beginning of this episode in the trailer, um, I'll drop a link to those in the show notes. But we started with and talked about YouTube and if you've listened to any of these episodes or even just maybe a few of them, you are probably in the boat, probably one or two camps, one, wow, good information. Thank you. No way on the earth I would have time to do any of that. And I get it right, like it's a lot. It can feel overwhelming and definitely if you have none of it started starting and launching, some of these things will feel potentially overwhelming. The other camp is you're ready to take the hill. Nick Clason (03:36): You're like, let's go. I'm all in. I believe in this stuff. I think we do need to lean more into the hybrid space and reach more people where they are. And whatever the camp you're in, let me just remind you that one of the things we talked about in the very, very, very first episode is that the apostle Paul reminds us and says that he became all things to all people. And in that way, we're gonna do that. And I'm not saying that we're gonna bend to culture and go, you know, the wayward ways of the world, but we are going to find the places that our people are and we're going to intersect and enter into their life, um, with the places that they're finding themselves. And so a majority of people are spending time on phones, on social media, and, and, you know, this is how they are living their lives. Nick Clason (04:22): Like less and less people are sitting down, uh, to browse a computer to find information about churches, websites, whatever, whatnot. But what they are doing is they are navigating, scrolling and spending majority of time on social media. Now, every demographic is a little bit different. You know, gen Xers, boomers might be spending more time on Facebook where millennials might be spending more time on Instagram. Gen Z and Jen Alpha are finding themselves on things like TikTok can be real. The fact of the matter is like we have this unique moment in history and time on social media where all of the platforms are in an alignment of what they want, short form, vertical video based content. And this is how we can provide that, and we can put that together on a social media strategy for our churches. So before you give up, before you let go, this is the why behind the, what all these reasons is. Nick Clason (05:19): We wanna show up in some of the most meaningful places of people's lives. And not because we think that like, you know, someone stumbles across a short 32nd TikTok that they're gonna like repent and give their life to Christ. But we're building a rapport, we're building a relationship. We're showing up regularly in the places that they also are finding their time to show up. And that's what the Apostle Paul, that's what missionaries, that's what pastors would do. So how can we, how can you position yourself and leverage yourself as a church to show up in a spot where you can help build trust and build rapport with people so that yeah, one, you are building a relationship, eventually down the line, they do make a decision, make a commitment, and become a more committed and devoted follower of Christ. So step number one, the first thing that you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to have a good church website. Nick Clason (06:16): Your website is sort of the backdrop and the, or the backstop you, if you will, of all of your social media platforms. For any of you who are baseball fans, you know that behind every, uh, catcher, um, there's a backstop. And so a pitcher throws and if the ball goes too far behind them, the ball gets stopped by what is called the backstop. And you can, you're gonna kinda want that as your website. It's also gonna sort of be your kind of home base. I'm very into baseball analogies this morning, apparently went to a baseball game last night. Uh, nonetheless, you want these things to sort of be your place where people can know, um, where they can always turn to. And so all of your social links should be able to go out from your websites as well as if you ever need to just embed a video or a resource or something like that, you need to have a website that is mobile friendly. Nick Clason (07:08): Um, and that is also, you know, probably, let's be honest, even mobile first one that feels familiar to people, one that looks like other, um, websites that they're spending their time on. And so if you don't have a website yet, odds are you probably do hone that in a little bit. Um, get that built out so that it's a little bit more user friendly. Um, and begin to think about how can you create even like blogs or resources or other additional pieces of content that can go with and supplement some of the other social media things that we are gonna be talking about. My all-time favorite website builder is from Nucleus. The guys up in Canada, pro Church tools, Brady Shearer and those guys. Phenomenal website builders. So easy. So user friendly and built four churches and four pastors. And you don't need a lot of like website information. Nick Clason (07:59): Know how knowledge to pull one of those off. So if you, um, are thinking about starting one or you're like a side ministry youth pastor and you have the go ahead from your senior pastor or communications team to build some sort of like additional website, this can be a great one. Stop shop. It also, excuse me, it also has podcast like functionality, sermon, um, upload places where you can link YouTube videos, all those types of things. So let your website kind of be your first stop, your first shop on, um, creating a backstop and creating a home base for everything else that we're about to talk about. Nick Clason (08:38): All right, so what about, uh, what, what's the first step then? All right, so the first step I would say and I would recommend is that we make it YouTube begin recording and putting up long form YouTube videos of your content, of your sermons from the weekend. And if you, um, did not go back and have not listened to the YouTube episode, uh, one of the things that I have been recommending, and one of the things that we have been doing in my own church in my own context is we don't have the framework and the infrastructure to like live stream our student ministry services. And so instead of, uh, buying cameras and hooking it up to the soundboard and just posting a video of me or anyone else on our team teaching, we are actually sitting down in front of a camera, much like I'm doing right now and just pre-filing our message, talk our message content that allows us to craft it and hone it specifically for YouTube, make it better YouTube length, create YouTube hooks. Nick Clason (09:40): I can do some post-production editing type stuff, but then that also gives me like video clips that I can use later, oh, excuse me, that I can use later on down the road in and for social media. And so starting with YouTube as your spot, the other reason why that's important is because as we go, we're going to incorporate and use TikTok, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, and YouTube shorts. We're going to use all of those things. And if we're posting little, little snippets of, of the sermon of the message at the end of it, you can just have a ender screen that says, watch the full video on YouTube. And so when you do post something that goes viral or, or is seen by more people than just those who are following you or your church, what you can do is you can be pushing them to a longer form piece of content. Nick Clason (10:30): It's pushing them down that funnel, you're building a relationship with them and maybe they see a few of your messages, 1, 2, 3, of just the little clips until finally they're like, maybe I do wanna hear this message. Maybe there is something interesting and enticing that's gonna want me to click and hear the full version of this message. And so that's why I recommend starting with YouTube, starting with filming your messages and getting them posted up there, PA pr, use all the YouTube practices, use good thumbnails, use good titling, put 'em in playlists, use SEO related things, and all of that information is available for you and to you. In the YouTube episode that we talked about, Facebook reels, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, and TikTok, I would recommend posting anywhere from 10 to 15 pieces of short form content per week. That is on average two to three pieces of content per day when you're in the growth phase. Nick Clason (11:28): If you're not in a phase where you're looking to grow and get a lot of awareness and people seeing you, um, then you still wanna try and remain consistent and you can maybe back that down to just one per day. Um, but what I would recommend is that you can, like I said, use the clips from your YouTube teaching video pre-filed and put them on your TikTok and Instagram reels account. I would also then aim, uh, to use things like trending sounds, trending hashtags, uh, templates that you see in cap cut. You know, the more time that you spend on TikTok personally, you're gonna know these things. And if you're like, well, that's not me, that's okay. Um, I would, I would beg you and recommend that you reach out and find someone in your church who's Gen Z, who's younger or who's a teenager, um, and who might have some ideas of things that you could do. Nick Clason (12:18): But keep in mind that the trends, they are quick. I mean, I remember at one point, um, I bookmarked one on like a Thursday and I came back around on Monday and it wasn't a thing really anymore. So you kind of just gotta jump on it and post it when it's available and ready to do that. So don't miss out on those. Hop onto those. And some of those things are, are the things that are gonna help you get discovered the most by outside people because it's, it's a popular thing in the moment. And so TikTok is pushing those pieces of content and you'll know the ones that are trending when like you get on TikTok yourself or Instagram or whatever, and you see it 2, 3, 4, 5 times in like one sitting, one stint. You know, it, it's just one of those things that like, it just keeps recurring. Nick Clason (13:03): You're like, okay, how can I use this? And if you go back even before the six part church social media framework, we did an episode on YouTube trends. And one of the things that they found was that they said, uh, consumers, um, are looking for content creators who are going to post like mem ified content or they're going to make jokes about like certain things in pop culture or whatever. So that is a thing that is both culturally relevant and I think it also can work for your churches. And so if you are using, um, TikTok, any of those things, think of it less of like a mini sermon posting platform and more of like a meme, a funny account like that. That's really why people are getting on those apps. They're getting on those apps to be entertained. What about Instagram? So Instagram that everything I just said, that's your Instagram reels strategy, however, there's more to do on Instagram. Nick Clason (14:00): So, um, what I'll do is, um, and I laid this out in the Instagram, uh, podcast, but on on your feed, if you hired me and you're asking me to like, uh, consult your church, this is what I would propose. I would propose a me Monday, 10 memes, curate them all throughout the week and then post your 10 best memes in a carousel post. I would recommend a TikTok Tuesday where you post one of your tos also to the feed. I would do a Wednesday night recap of what's going on in your church. So maybe like a carousel post of all the ministries that are meeting that night. Uh, if not, like I'm a youth pastor, so our main kind of night is Wednesday anchors us. And so I would do, um, if I don't have the ability to do photos, I would just do like a recap post. Nick Clason (14:45): Um, on Thursday I would do some sort of like recap from your message. Uh, on the week on Friday I would do a photo dump of like, uh, a week in the life of my church. And then Saturday I would do either a sermon quote post or an invite back to church Sunday post. And if you don't wanna post Sunday, uh, then save that quote post for Sunday and do a, use the like Saturday invite to church post. There's a seven day posting strategy on your Instagram feed on stories. Uh, I would also focus on engaging heavily in your stories with your people. That's sort of the spot to kind of go back and forth and that's where your actual followers are going to be engaging and interacting with you. Um, and so you can take any of the other like Instagram real content that you've been posting that didn't also post to the theater that maybe didn't do as well. Nick Clason (15:32): And you can also share those to your, uh, Instagram stories. And then you can use things like slider tools, question tools, true or false tools, poll tools, uh, question stickers and engage with your audience in that way. And so you can use the content you're already using and just repurpose it and push it out for stories. Other fun story ideas beyond reels are things like you can do like hot takes, like hot take oatmeal, oatmeal, um, raisin cookies are the best cookie. And put a little slider thing with like the fire emoji. Are they gonna slide it all the way down cuz they don't agree or all the way up cuz they do agree. You can do, uh, sermon recap quizzes or um, like total recall things like, I love things where you watch, have 'em watch a little clip and then you ask 'em a question about the clip they just watched. Nick Clason (16:19): Uh, you can do things like polls, you can do things like games. Um, take any game that you would maybe play on like a screen in your room, uh, especially if you're like youth pastor and you can just adapt it to Instagram. You can also post prayer requests and ask people like, what's going on in your life? How can we be praying for you? Stories have a lot, a lot of potential to help engage with your people one-on-one. So what would I do on Facebook? So like we talked about back in the Facebook episode, you should have a page that's your place where you're gonna be able to start throwing money towards ads if that's something that you're interested in or that you want to do. But I would also have a private group where you can have people. Um, and that's where you can really segment things out. Nick Clason (16:58): So parents of students, parents of kids, members of your church. And that's really where I would just spend the majority of your time. And in there I would do a very minimal amount of things. I would, uh, send like a weekly email of some sort. And if you have a good website, you don't need to make your email announcement heavy. You can make your email one story plus one call to action and that's it. And then you can take that good story that's gonna have a little bit more of like a blogy type vibe and you can also post that in your Facebook group with like an image that relates to the email of what's going on. And then I'll just post like one or two other things like, um, share, you know, share, share a photo of your view right now, um, bible emoji quizzes, just fun, quick kind of hitter things that you can post in there. Nick Clason (17:47): But then just let the group do its thing. Let the people drive the remainder of the content. I would also recommend sending out an email and a great to do that is Tuesday, it's historically been one of the like email days. They've done all sorts of studies on it. So schedule an email to go out by Tuesday morning at 9:00 AM then that way your people are gonna get used to it in a rhythm of expecting an email from you at the same time. Uh, if your email center gives you the opportunity to schedule it, I would definitely recommend scheduling it. That way you can get a little bit ahead and you don't have to just be chasing your email every single week. Uh, I would also perhaps consider linking some of the current messages in your email or any of the other things you wanna do on social media, any of the things you're trying to do to lean into the hybridization, lean into it and send links to those things in email because what it's gonna do is gonna kind of help create this like circular funnel of like hitting those pieces of content more and more and multiple times. Nick Clason (18:44): And the same thing is true with texting. You can send out registration forms, you can send out reminders of things. All those can be linked directly to your website that you have built. Again, that's your backstop. And so now you have this all-inclusive plan from website with socials including YouTube and email and texting and all of that is sort of like your package. Listen to build anything from scratch, it takes work, takes effort, whatever platform you're on, it's gonna also just take consistency. So if it's, um, like in a group text, you can text out your TikTok link, you can stage announce your new YouTube channel, um, and emails. You can invite parents to Jo to jump into your Facebook groups, whatever the case may be. But use the different platforms to help cross promote as you're starting from scratch to help build that base, build that core of those people, um, subscribing and getting on things. Nick Clason (19:36): And then a couple different times a year, run a blitz, get it like a big deal of a thing going on. Like right now, for example, I'm gonna date this because this is gonna come out after, but during March Madness we've been doing like a, a serial bracket in our youth ministry where people are voting on serial matchups and um, we've been using our parent email to help push and promote, um, the serial things, you know, going on in our, our ministry. So those can kind of help balance both the in-person and the online. And that's where you really get to see and use that hybrid stuff. Reminder, do not forget that God has placed you strategically where he has placed you. And while all of that slew of things may seem overwhelming, don't forget two things. One, just take one step and two, that's why we have transcripts. Nick Clason (20:29): So you can go back and you can parse that out and you can take that a little bit slower. If you were listening at 1.5 or two times speed, go back to the transcript and lay some of those things out. What is your next step if you're, if you've got nothing going, get a website Bill. If you got a website, then go ahead and get a YouTube channel you're not posting regularly. Start pre-filing your content, you know what I mean? Like, just take it one bite, one step at a time. You don't have to have it all done tomorrow. This is just my proposed and my recommended church YouTube strategy. And I think more, what I would say of all things is that at some point churches are gonna have to realize that social media is more than just a side gig or a volunteer role. Nick Clason (21:12): It is a full-time effort for somebody to pay attention to, to watch the analytics, to know what's going on. And so good luck to you as you navigate this, as you embrace it. We are always here. Please don't ever hesitate to reach out hybrid ministry.xyz for questions, for comments, for concerns, or follow us on YouTube or TikTok to hit us up in the dm, shoot us a message. However we can help. We wanna remind you that we are here, we want to give you guidance, point you in the right direction, but blessings on you, blessings on your ministry. And as always, never forget to stay hybrid.

Most companies are now seeing three, possibly four or five generations coming together. Each generation comes with their own context, style of working and also has a different motivation, workplace value and behaviour. This shift in workplace demographics and style has created its own subsets of challenges and opportunities for organizations. Over the past several years, leaders across industries have noticed an increase in generational tension among employees most often focused on the attitudes and behaviours on the arrival of newer generations. First it was understanding of the Millennials (Gen Ys) vis-a-vis Gen Xers and Boomers but now it is the Gen Zer's in comparison to Gen Y's and Xers.The Gen Z's are coming of age in a time of global unrest, divisive politics and the ubiquitous presence of technology. They have grown up in a time, with active shooter drills in their schools', they have seen visible impacts of climate change, “fake news” and ‘#Me-too' as trending topics. A generation that is highly connected living in an era of high-tech communication, technology-driven lifestyles and prolific use of social media. A generation which finds hard to escape the threat of physical or emotional abuse anywhere, as bullying has gone online via social media and follows them everywhere on their mobile devices. The constant perceived threat of personal harm has become a defining characteristic for this generation. This unique context has impacted their narratives, values and behaviours. So what will it take for them to succeed as they enter the workplace which is also increasing become volatile, filled with stress, pressure, anxiety, and even drama from time to time.. The answer is Emotional Intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and regulate one's emotions and understand the emotions the others. A high EQ helps you to build relationships, reduce team stress, defuse conflict and improve job satisfaction. Find out more in this episode as guest Dr. Niloufer explains what is Emotional Intelligence and Why it has become one of the most critical leadership skills. How does the young Gen Z build the EI muscle and what normally comes in our way. What are some of the EI practices firms are using and the Do's and Don'ts for Gen Z's and their hiring managers. Find Us OnlineDr. Niloufer Aga : LinkedInNikhil:  Website,  Linkedin, Youtube & BookCredits:- WYN Studio: LinkedIn, Instagram- Producer: LinkedIn, Twitter- Engineer: LinkedIn, Youtube

This episode we play games and reminisce about the cool stuff of Generation X with these two professional Gen'Xers. Kevin is a legendary rock photographer who's worked with everyone from The Cure to Nirvana. Stephan is a professional musician and voice actor was was in a pilot with Edie McClurg (Grace from Ferris Bueller's Day Off) about being parents to a bunch of rocks. Both were wonderful guests and very talented dudes. The Facts of Life game this episode asks, "what are the greatest songs by The Smiths of all-time?" Eight Is Enough topics include trivia on movies The Empire Strikes Back, Grease, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and so much more. Dysfunctional Family Feud was very close and exciting; you won't want to miss it!Join the fun and the effort to save Generation X from being forgotten.Special shout-out to newest Patreon supporter: Darren!! Thanks so much, you're doing your part to save Generation X!Show NotesCheck out our new website: https://www.whowillsavegenx.com/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/whowillsavegenxVenmo: WhoWillSaveGenXWant to contact the show? Send a shout-out or special message to a loved one or friend who listens to the show? Email us here: WhoWillSaveGenX@gmail.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2730544227204426Want to buy some merch? Go here:https://www.teepublic.com/en-gb/stores/who-will-save-generation-x-podcast?ref_id=16967Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/hMu6ezGuest NotesCheck out our guests podcast and projects:Kevin Estrada: http://www.kevinestrada.comBuy "Bound For Hell: On The Sunset Strip" here: https://numerogroup.com/products/on-the-sunset-stripStephan Cox: https://www.stephancoxmusic.comhttps://www.facebook.com/stephancoxmusichttps://www.youtube.com/stephancoxAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Description: MRA's Talent Report is an up-to-the-minute review of what is going on in the world of business with an emphasis on talent. This month, MRA's Jim Morgan, VP of Workforce Strategies, and Alicia Kiser, VP of HR of member company M3 Insurance, cover recruiting & retention innovation, talent thinking, HR creativity, and more. Key Takeaways: Work/life balance: Are your people “blenders” – those preferring a work-life blend, or “splitters” – those who prefer work and life to be separated entirely? “Talent Mobility”: Enabling employees to move within the organization is becoming an area of emphasis for many employers With the varying generations in the workplace, HR professionals are spending more time helping with communications including coaching people to avoid statements like “all young people…” or “all old people…” Resources: Become an MRA Member! Talent Report + Webinar Series  Let's Connect: Guest Bio - Alicia Kiser Guest LinkedIn Profile - Alicia Kiser  Guest Bio - Jim Morgan  Guest LinkedIn Profile - Jim Morgan  Host Bio - Sophie Boler  Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler    Transcript: Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word. 00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:03 Intro Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We'll be the first to tell you what's hot and what's not. I'm your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you're here. Now it's time to THRIVE.   00:00:23:14 - 00:00:50:16 Sophie Boler Hello everybody. Thanks for taking the time to spend part of your day with us. I'm excited to introduce our topic and our two guests for today. We're going to be covering how to leverage HR for critical business decisions. So we'll be talking about the current best practices for HR and building strategy. So good thing I have two experts here with me today to really debrief this topic.   00:00:50:23 - 00:01:19:06 Sophie Boler And that is Alicia Kiser, vice president of human resources at member company M3 Insurance, and MRA's Jim Morgan, vice president of workforce strategies. So Jim and Alicia really make a strong duo for today's episode, really based on their expertise and HR background. Alicia  started at M3 insurance as an HR business partner back in 2011 and has climbed the ladder to VP of HR, where she is now.   00:01:19:06 - 00:01:48:05 Sophie Boler And Jim Morgan has an extensive background in business development, HR strategic planning, and he's a keynote speaker on those topics, most recently being on his monthly Talent Report+ webinar. So he'll be sharing some ideas from that as well. So I'm excited to talk to you two today. Thanks for being on the show. I want to really kick off our conversation today with what's happening in the recruiting and retention world.   00:01:48:18 - 00:01:53:05 Sophie Boler So, Jim, do you want to start us off with what innovations you're seeing here?   00:01:53:18 - 00:02:20:14 Jim Morgan Sure. And I'll back it up just a little bit with the Talent Report, because this was something that we started putting together for our 3,000 member companies. One of the values of that and one of the things we can bring back to our members is having the chance to steal some best practices from different organizations. And M3 being one of those leaders who shares what they're doing and some of the ways they're getting around some things to be more effective than the ways they used to do it.   00:02:21:02 - 00:02:44:07 Jim Morgan So we really are, we put the Talent Report webinar together to talk about what's timely, what's happening now, what are the best practices. And so the thoughts and ideas that I'm going to share with you are, you know, this is what we're hearing right now, this is what some of the companies are doing. And Alicia will be able to dig into that a little bit deeper and talk specifically from a company's point of view, some of the things that that they're doing.   00:02:44:07 - 00:03:02:13 Jim Morgan So in the last month, here's a couple of things that we heard in the whole recruiting and retention area. One of the most fascinating things that I found was there was a survey done by Gallup and they were looking at how people manage work-life balance. And they found they really fell into two groups of people that they called splitters and blenders.   00:03:02:22 - 00:03:19:17 Jim Morgan And the splitters were the people that were able to just divide their world, like, “Look, I'm working from 8 until 5 and then I get home and that's it. Now I'm on life balance time,” and others that were more blenders that were like, look, I'm working and I'm, you know, and I'm doing my life at the same time.   00:03:20:03 - 00:03:47:09 Jim Morgan And what was interesting is some of it fell by industry and some of it fell by job type. But the one that was the most interesting to me is when you got into people that were managers of people, it was almost a 50/50 split between blenders and splitters, which I found interesting. But the point in the whole thing was you need to know whether your people are blenders or splitters when you're talking about benefits. You might be giving more hours and that's not what somebody wants.   00:03:47:09 – 00:04:13:06 Jim Morgan Or you might say, “You can leave a little bit early” and they're like, “I don't leave early. I never leave. I'm always working,” and truly understanding how your people are managing. That whole work-life balance really made a difference. The second one that we learned a little bit about was just everybody's focused on learning. And I know Alicia can talk about this and the learning development they do at M3, but companies are really now starting to say, Look, we have to have somebody in charge of this.   00:04:13:06 - 00:04:55:17 Jim Morgan We can't accidentally do our learning and development here. It's got to be more conscientious. It's got to be more specific, and especially with a lot of the younger workers, that career path and development is really a big deal for them. And the last one that we spent some time on was when I called “catch 'em young.” And I think manufacturers have done this for a long time, going back to when the skill sets of skilled technology people, skilled tradespeople, carpentry, masonry, IT, things like that, they weren't finding the people they needed, that they realized that they had to really go back, almost into the middle schools, and start saying, these are jobs that are available.   00:04:55:17 - 00:05:30:07 Jim Morgan So don't rule them out because people have said certain things. And then in high school, getting on the advisory councils for the tech department and making sure people know and at the tech colleges and universities and there we've seen just a huge growth in co-ops, youth apprenticeships and internships that companies are starting to realize that we gotta be the first ones to get in there and find these kids and university students and young adults, and not wait until they're 18, 22, 23, because by then everybody's looking for them.   00:05:30:15 - 00:05:42:10 Jim Morgan So just the strategies that companies are starting to put into place now that say this talent supply chain starts much earlier than the age of 20, and we've got to figure out how to get in there a little bit quicker.   00:05:42:10 - 00:05:58:23 Sophie Boler Absolutely. It's kind of crazy to think that companies are targeting as young as middle school. It just sounds crazy, but that's what's happening. Alicia, Jim mentioned about work-life balance, so I'm curious to know what M3 is doing around work-life balance for your employees.   00:06:00:08 - 00:06:22:07 Alicia Kiser Yeah, absolutely. But first of all, Jim, I need you to send me that report on blenders and splitters. That's fascinating. I'm definitely not a blender. I'm a splitter. If you're a  splitter and you have a team of blenders, I could certainly see how that would bring about some conflict. I think that's really fascinating and a great topic for us to plug into.   00:06:22:07 - 00:06:46:12 Alicia Kiser So kind of in that vein, you know, work-life balance—so we, M3 has chosen to have a hybrid approach to where people work. So what that means for us is that we, and we actually kind of branded this, right, so we could help people understand it with a nice flashy one-pager and did some all-company meetings about it.   00:06:46:12 - 00:07:17:03 Alicia Kiser But what that means to us, what hybrid means to us, is that the office is primary and from there we just ask M3ers to work with their team to figure out when and how often they're in the office versus not in the office. And to us not in the office could mean working from home, but for us, because we are, really revolve around our clients that could also be in the marketplace meeting with prospects and clients in the marketplace.   00:07:17:03 - 00:07:39:17 Alicia Kiser And so and for us, it's really not about butts in seats. I like to talk about that because I think there's a difference in an organization's posture, if you're talking about butts in seats versus being in the office for the right reasons. And we went so far as to define here are some specific instances where we feel like being in the office is a must.   00:07:39:22 - 00:08:15:18 Alicia Kiser So when you're onboarding a new person to your team, when you're having performance issues or communications within your team, you know, during, we are we're in the insurance industry. And so there are certain times of the year where being on the same page and collaborating and connecting is extremely important, maybe more than others. And there are many, many others, but we want to define what are those kind of moments that matter, where being together, physically together is super advantageous and really help   00:08:16:17 - 00:08:18:10 Alicia Kiser M3 stand apart from the rest.   00:08:18:18 - 00:08:36:02 Sophie Boler So I mean, you just mentioned being a hybrid workforce, which is great. So can you dive in a little bit deeper on how you're really handling that to ensure that all your employees, your customers, and M3's needs are being met?   00:08:36:02 - 00:09:10:06 Alicia Kiser Yeah. So: trust. We are not tracking fob swipes or we don't have someone walking around taking attendance every day. We work really hard in whatever we roll out not to manage to the exception. I think it's easy to think about, well, what about, you know, all these people that are going to take advantage of us and, you know, do 2-hour lunches in the middle of the day or do their laundry while they're working from home, and we try to really kind of center around let's not manage to the exception.   00:09:10:23 - 00:09:44:10 Alicia Kiser Let's focus on the majority and deal with the exception as it comes up. And so that's our philosophy around the hybrid work, the hybrid workforce, but just generally most things  at M3. And I think that that bodes well for us from a recruitment and retention perspective. The hybrid, as we've been recruiting, we've had a lot of success in bringing people onto our team whose companies have said, Hey, we aren't going to come into the office until we don't know when.   00:09:44:10 - 00:10:08:23 Alicia Kiser We've also had a lot of success in hiring and bringing people onto the team whose companies have said, like, Hey, we want you to be in the office, butts in seats, every day because of our approach. And I would say as the weeks and the months go on, I am seeing more and more people in the office because I think the kind of excitement or novelty around working from home is wearing off a little bit.   00:10:09:12 - 00:10:16:22 Alicia Kiser But just to have the option and feel like you have the freedom to make a choice, of course, in working with your team, I think goes a long way.   00:10:17:12 - 00:10:39:18 Sophie Boler Oh, absolutely. And I like how you brought up the whole trust aspect because that is so important. I mean, some employees, like we've seen, Jim, they like to work at 9:00, 10:00 at night, and you almost just have to put that trust into them, like they're getting their work done when they feel most productive. And that might mean working at different times depending on the employee.   00:10:40:04 - 00:10:41:12 Alicia Kiser So the blenders, right, Jim?   00:10:41:12 - 00:10:47:01 Jim Morgan Yeah, the I get at 3:00 in the morning are the ones I don't respond to.   00:10:47:12 - 00:10:50:08 Alicia Kiser Yeah. So you're, you're not a blender then.   00:10:50:08 - 00:10:53:06 Jim Morgan I think I am just not between 1 in the morning and 5.   00:10:55:01 – 00:10:55:22 Alicia Kiser There are boundaries.   00:10:56:08 – 00:11:09:18 Sophie Boler I would say I'm a blender, but. Well, moving on, another topic that I'd really like to discuss is what's going on in the talent world. So, Jim, do you want to talk a little bit about what you've been seeing here?   00:11:09:18 – 00:11:39:23 Jim Morgan Yeah, we had three things that we discussed in the Talent Report. The first one was the imposter syndrome, and that was the title that's been given to the 2 years of COVID for employees and college students. And really what it relates to is if you think about those students that lost their junior and senior year in college and what happened in those 2 years, or you think about the people who came out right before the pandemic and their first 2 years of work   00:11:40:09 – 00:11:58:03 Jim Morgan were right in the middle of COVID, that they missed out on a whole bunch of experiences. You know, for the kids in college, that's where you sometimes get your internships. You get to go work for people. You didn't have those opportunities. For those that had started work, you know, how do you figure out the culture? How do you figure out who your mentors are?   00:11:58:04 – 00:12:19:16 Jim Morgan Who do you get to go talk to when you've got questions? Those things got disrupted and companies are now starting to realize things got missed during those couple of years and we may have to back up a little bit and say, you know what, We didn't really get a chance to onboard them the way we like to onboard them or set things up the way we like to because we just couldn't because of the circumstances.   00:12:20:00 – 00:12:42:15 Jim Morgan And so that's been an emphasis for some companies now to say what got missed out on and what blanks do we have to fill in now. Somewhat related to that was one that I called “Got Onboarding?” kind of after the “Got Milk?” campaign. But the whole onboarding process as companies now are moving from the, just the endless search for new employees and recruiting—   00:12:42:16 - 00:13:05:10 Jim Morgan We got to find 10 more and then 10 more and then 10 more—stopping now and saying, well, that's part of it. But once we get 'em, we got to figure out how to keep 'em. And that first week, month, 6 months of the job is just so critical. And so just like in the learning and development area, companies are now looking at onboarding and saying, we really need somebody to look at this strategically.   00:13:05:10 - 00:13:26:12 Jim Morgan Not we got to check these seven boxes, but at the end of it, are people feeling welcome? Do they have a feel for the company and the culture? Is this a place they want to come back to? And I was in M3e just a week ago, and Sean LaBorde, the president, was saying, “You know, we're trying to be a magnet for people,” which I found really interesting, that we want to have spaces   00:13:26:12 - 00:13:56:03 Jim Morgan they want to come to and they want to have conversations they want to be a part of, and then they'll want to be here. And I think that's another part of this whole onboarding and building that culture is creating a spot that's inviting and that that's a place that I do want to be. And then lastly, a discussion on talent  mobility and again, trying to hang on to people and looking at it from, you know, some companies are very passive and they say, Wow, Sophie's a great employee.   00:13:56:09 - 00:14:12:11 Jim Morgan We should figure out how to make her happy and keep her. And they just look at Sophie and say, Wow, we can give her an opportunity here or have her do this and have her do that. And it's a great plan for you to hopefully help you understand your mobility within the organization and your chance to rise in it.   00:14:12:21 - 00:14:31:22 Jim Morgan But it's not really active for the organization. It's not the organization saying, well, not just Sophie, let's find all of our high performers. Let's find everybody and see how do we move them, how do we give them different opportunities, whether it's lateral or up and down. And so then we get into, okay, let's be more active about it.   00:14:31:22 - 00:14:53:14 Jim Morgan Let's put a plan in place that gives people opportunities to figure out what they want to do. And then leading up to ultimately, how do we make this strategic? How is this mobility part of our succession planning of making sure we've always got the next person up so they can get their job done? And talking with companies about where are you with that.   00:14:53:14 - 00:15:13:07 Jim Morgan Because traditionally or historically, I think it's been more of a, well we find a person, let's make sure we hang on to them versus an organization-wide opportunity to say strategically, we've got to look at people and figure out how can we keep moving them up in over 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and no longer have it be:   00:15:13:13 – 00:15:36:13 Jim Morgan “Well, Alicia, if you stay here for 27 years, here's the opportunity for you to maybe move up a little bit”. So a lot of work on talent, mobility and helping both the employee find their niche and what's going on and the employer making sure that they're not only have the butt in the seat, but that they've got the right people in the right seats so they can be as effective as they possibly can be.   00:15:37:11 – 00:15:48:11 Sophie Boler I love that example, Jim. And just talking about talent mobility, Alicia, is that really a thing at M3? And if it is, what have you really implemented around this?   00:15:49:19 - 00:16:16:01 Alicia Kiser Yeah, so I'm a huge fan of this topic. I actually started my career at a very, very large organization in a role, like a leadership development type program where every 18 months we rotated from one kind of department or discipline to the next, like think operations, HR,, logistics, customer service and while working for a very, very large organization wasn't my cup of tea— 00:16:16:07 - 00:16:51:00 Alicia Kiser I'm certainly happier at a midsized organization—I learned a lot. I would never take that experience back and, you know, the reason why is because I think that it really helps you understand, it helps you build your business acumen. It helps you learn about each of the functions of an organization in that particular industry and in that particular organization and the different levers that can be pulled to produce certain outcomes within that organization or that industry.   00:16:51:09 - 00:17:26:16 Alicia Kiser And without getting the perspective from lots of different disciplines, it's not as easy to do that. And I also think it helps you appreciate what your team, what your peers and coworkers are doing every day. And I think it allows you to have more empathy but just work better together on the softer side of things. And so specific to M3, I would say we are kind of in the early stages of this or working to find more opportunities to infuse talent, mobility, into our development efforts and into our roles.   00:17:27:00 - 00:18:07:17 Alicia Kiser Right now we are absolutely doing it with our internship program, kind of our sales accelerator and sales development program. And, you know, per the reasons that I cited and why I think it's so valuable, we're certainly seeing, you know, those, that work pay off in those particular roles. The other thing that we've done to your comment, Jim, about college students who have lost their junior and senior years potentially entering the workforce: So in our internship program, I mean, we rotate and give them exposure to the different parts of M3.   00:18:07:17 - 00:18:32:03 Alicia Kiser But we also started to partner with our insurance companies that we partner with. M3 is a broker. So we work with hundreds of different insurance companies and you know, those who have offices where we have offices, we've done intern swaps, and that is a fan favorite amongst our interns and interns from our carrier partners, because again, it gives you different perspective.   00:18:32:03 - 00:18:51:21 Alicia Kiser And I think our perspective and our career partners perspective has been, you know, because one could say, well, what if they like that internship program better than this one? It's like, well, we're you know, the rising tide floats all boats, right? We're gaining exposure and excitement and engagement throughout the industry. And, you know, we'll all win in that way.   00:18:51:21 - 00:18:55:14 Sophie Boler Mm. I love that example of intern swapping.   00:18:56:13 - 00:19:02:17 Alicia Kiser It was it's fun. And we're just because it is such a fan favorite looking for more opportunities to do things like that.   00:19:03:04 - 00:19:20:23 Sophie Boler Oh yeah. And even when I was younger or in college, job shadowing companies in their different departments was something I loved to do, to just get exposure of what each department is doing. And then I could find what I like doing and carry on from there.   00:19:20:23 - 00:19:38:08 Alicia Kiser Yeah, as a young person, you kind of know what you want to do, but until you gain those experiences, I don't think you really know and you're secretly building up this business acumen that will for sure to your advantage in the future that you're not even aware of at that time for sure.   00:19:38:11 - 00:19:55:05 Sophie Boler Absolutely. Well, you know, more than ever, we've seen businesses needing to pull together some creative plans when it comes to some of the topics that we've discussed today. So, Jim, I'm curious to know some of the top creative HR strategies that you've been seeing.   00:19:56:08 - 00:20:04:06 Jim Morgan Well, first I have to react to when the host of the show who I think is, you know, in her mid- to early 20 says, “When I was young ...”   00:20:06:05 - 00:20:07:05 Sophie Boler I knew you would say something!   00:20:10:17 - 00:20:36:07 Jim Morgan In the creativity area, a couple of things are happening. We have a lot of companies, especially manufacturers, that English is not the first language for a lot of their workers. And so companies have been spending a lot of time on helping those employees learn English as a second language. But now we're seeing it work the other way, too, and expectations of supervisors and managers to learn the language of the people who are working for them.   00:20:36:07 - 00:20:57:09 Jim Morgan And they're sort of looking at this as if we come at it from both sides, we're going to improve the communications one way or another. And so we've got a lot of people becoming bilingual, both as the worker and as the supervisor, as they try to figure out ways to make sure everybody is communicating as accurately and easily as possible.   00:20:57:09 - 00:21:18:10 Jim Morgan I had an interesting experience in a manufacturing facility where they're always trying to motivate the people that are running their machines, helping them know that, you know, the value they bring to the organization, which is fantastic. And also trying to subtly remind them occasionally that this is a $27 million machine you're running here. So let's make sure, you know, we're taking good care of it.   00:21:19:00 - 00:21:39:02 Jim Morgan And they had actually put the price tag of each machine right on the machine, saying that this lathe is worth this much money or this manufacturing piece is worth this many million dollars. And they said they do it as a way of saying to the people who are operating them, we've put this much trust in you, that we think that this is fantastic.   00:21:39:02 - 00:22:12:02 Jim Morgan You're a skilled operator and that's wonderful. At the same time, you know, saying let's not get sloppy here because there's a lot at stake. And sometimes people sort of take that for granted. Now that I just made fun of you as a young person, generational diversity is one that we're seeing, you know, popping up more in everyone's diversity, equity and inclusion, especially as we have a whole bunch of younger people coming in and a pretty big generation of people still there but on their way out and the HR   00:22:12:02 - 00:22:31:22 Jim Morgan people really having to spend more time with people helping them understand that sentences start with, “Well, you've been here so long, you probably don't know that” or “You just got here. You'll eventually figure it out.” That you know, the harm that's done in a lot of these assumptions of saying, “Well, you've only been here for 2 years, what could you possibly know?”   00:22:32:08 - 00:22:59:21 Jim Morgan And one example here where someone said, Yeah, somebody just said to me, “Well once you've been here longer you'll figure it out.” And your reaction to that is, “Why would you have me figure it out over the next 5 years and keep making the same mistakes? Why don't you just tell me what you know and we can both learn, you know, together,” that there's a lot of things that are kind of taken for granted in the age compartment that, “Oh, that's just a joke” or this “Everybody understands that, you know,”—not so much.   00:23:00:05 - 00:23:25:03 Jim Morgan And so as the generations have very different communication styles, very different ways of communicating, very different life experiences, more time being spent on helping, you know, millennials and Zers understand boomers and Xers and everything in between that we've all done different things. We all bring great assets to the organization. And some of the stereotypes are in the way of that.   00:23:25:03 - 00:23:54:04 Jim Morgan So spending a little bit more time on generational diversity. And then one last one that we had is people have been churning folks like crazy. And an HR department was having a hard time explaining to people that when we get these people in and they stay for 3 weeks and they walk out the door, that's a lot of time and effort wasted, and trying to develop a corporate strategy that says this is HR and the recruiters and the hiring managers and the other people that they work with.   00:23:54:04 - 00:24:14:07 Jim Morgan All of them have to do this together in order for us to hang on to these people. And so they decided to use an all-staff meeting as an example. And they had churned about 30 percent of their people in the past year. So they had talked to 30 people in advance and they got up and said, We're trying to visualize here how much work we're doing, trying to hang on to people.   00:24:14:15 - 00:24:43:17 Jim Morgan And so we're going to give you an example right now of this is how many people walked out the door in the last year and 30 percent of the audience, which was about 100 people, got up and walked out of the all-staff meeting to try to help visualize for people: Do you see how much work this is? And so that was their creative way of saying it is kind of everybody's job and we would really like your help because otherwise we have to go fill those hundred jobs who just walked out the door in the last 35 seconds.   00:24:44:00 - 00:24:48:11 Jim Morgan So I thought that one was a pretty creative way for people to try to get everybody on board.   00:24:48:20 - 00:25:06:07 Sophie Boler Yeah, that is a creative way to show the impact. So Jim talked about generational diversity here. Alicia, how is M3 really handling diversity, equity and inclusions in general and how are you dealing with the whole generational diversity specifically?   00:25:08:01 - 00:25:44:03 Alicia Kiser Yeah, it's certainly ongoing. And I will say we are definitely not an expert in the space, but man, are we grinding. And so I actually co-lead, we have a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, which is a cross-functional group of some leaders, some individual contributors from across the organization, from all of our offices. I work with our CEO to put a strategic plan, if you will, together around diversity, equity, inclusion.   00:25:45:05 - 00:26:38:21 Alicia Kiser And our committee is charged with education and awareness. But we really look for our leadership team to be accountable for and live out within their respective areas, helping M3 move the needle on all things diversity, equity and inclusion. And it's been fun to see how, as we kind of, I recently saw a continuum of an organization's DEI efforts from compliance to committee to leadership owned and then being a truly inclusive organization. I would say we're moving into that leader owned phase of DEI and it's been fun to see our leadership team find their own ways to lean into DEI work.   00:26:38:21 - 00:27:08:15 Alicia Kiser And it's been very different, but it allows them to own it and feel comfortable in leading on it with their respective teams. And so that's been, that's probably been the most notable and most fun thing for me to see. One of the things we moved away from when we were in that committee phase putting the organization's DEI efforts on a committee, a cross-functional committee is a lot and that's a heavy load to carry.   00:27:08:22 - 00:27:36:18 Alicia Kiser And it's tough too because this is this is like not a project, not an initiative. It's a long game, it's a marathon. And it can become discouraging when you're not seeing maybe the immediate results that you want to see. And so when we made that, when we kind of articulated flipping the switch from, Hey, hey, committee, you're actually not, this is, the responsibility for this work isn't on your shoulders, but we'd like you to lead on education and awareness.   00:27:37:01 - 00:28:04:22 Alicia Kiser This, the responsibility and accountability is on the leadership team. That was a big game changer, I think a big moment for us in moving our efforts forward. So maybe that's that's what I would say from a DEI perspective. There's certainly other things. I mean, one thing we're really proud of and I've had an opportunity to talk about with MRA in lots of different forums is our Women's Business Resource Group.   00:28:04:22 - 00:28:30:14 Alicia Kiser So it's essentially an affinity group. We have over half, over 60 percent of our overall population is female. And so that was kind of a natural place for us to start is with women at M3, and especially with all the stats that you've seen kind of within COVID and post-COVID about women exiting the workplace, our focus is keeping M3 women in the workplace.   00:28:31:00 - 00:29:02:03 Alicia Kiser And we started that group in 2018 and just have had a lot of great evolution in terms of providing development opportunities for women at M3 up to giving them opportunities to lead in ways or have more global involvement in work at M3 outside of like the key area that they're focused in from a day-to-day basis, which allows them to get exposure amongst leadership and other people throughout the organization.   00:29:02:18 - 00:29:43:08 Alicia Kiser But it is also a professional development opportunity as well. So those are just a couple of things maybe I would mention. And then as it relates to generational diversity, we're hearing more and more about this in terms of M3's interest in learning about how to navigate through generational diversity—certainly a hot topic. One of the things I'll talk about that we've had a lot of success with and are trying to do more of is finding more natural ways to get different generations to collaborate and build relationships and respect for each other.   00:29:43:17 - 00:30:43:09 Alicia Kiser And so, for example, we've got an overall mentorship program throughout the organization, but we also have mentorship in different pockets. Like, for example, we have a shareholder development program and are really intentional about how we match people up. I think that's one way that we've supported generational diversity, but also going back to your comments, Jim, about onboarding and our development efforts, career planning, career mapping, we as much as possible with so much institutional knowledge with some of the folks that are nearing retirement, we try to lean on those individuals to facilitate our development sessions, training sessions, you know, use their expertise to educate other M3ers and obviously they're not   00:30:44:01 - 00:31:07:09 Alicia Kiser professional speakers or facilitators, or and they don't have that expertise. But our talent development team works to provide the framework for them to share their knowledge, whether that be in-person or on demand, using our learning management system. So really like organize that and deliver it in a way that can be impactful for M3ers of all generations.   00:31:07:09 - 00:31:16:03 Alicia Kiser And so that's maybe a little bit more indirect way of navigating that generational diversity topic.   00:31:17:00 - 00:31:28:06 Sophie Boler I like that, and I like how you brought up mentors. I think mentors are, can, I don't know, lead to huge impacts on the organization and the employee too. But as we really wrap, oops sorry go ahead.   00:31:28:13 - 00:31:52:14 Alicia Kiser Oh no, sorry. I was just going to say I was just on a call this morning with our CEO and he said, “You can't rush wisdom.” And so I think that's very true. And the more that we can get these folks working with each other, I think, you can't rush wisdom. But the more we can help infuse and ensure that that moves from one generation to the next.   00:31:53:04 - 00:32:15:05 Sophie Boler And like you said in a natural way. I like that. But as we do wrap up here, Alicia, Jim has mentioned to me your role at M3 and not only in HR leadership, but just as a leader at the company overall. So what advice would you give to HR professionals trying to move from a tactical position to more of a strategic one?   00:32:15:05 - 00:32:21:06 Sophie Boler And Jim, feel free to offer your thoughts and advice as well.   00:32:21:06 - 00:33:17:18 Alicia Kiser Yeah. So thanks for asking this. I would actually go back to my comments earlier about business acumen. I think, ,and I recently was reflecting on this with my coworker, my colleague, our HR director, and we both agreed that the, our early exposure to an ability to build business acumen was one of the key things that I think helps make that jump from I call it like taking off my department hat on and putting my M3 hat on and I think what that has allowed me to do is, of course, truly understand the business and the different levers that make the business work, but also helps me to be viewed as a more valuable partner   00:33:17:18 - 00:33:45:16 Alicia Kiser to the other leaders throughout the organization, and helps have my opinions and perspectives validated because I'm not necessarily just approaching it through my department's lens, but trying to frame it in a way that considers all lenses. And I certainly so. so I just I would go back to that business acumen. I think that's a really big one.   00:33:47:04 - 00:33:54:10 Sophie Boler Jim, anything to add?    00:33:54:10 - 00:34:13:12 Jim Morgan I would say that's the biggest one. And I think the advantage right now is with the talent issue being what it is, you all of a sudden are one of the most important people in the decision-making process because they can find land, they can find a building, they can get a loan. But at the end of the day, somebody has to say, well, where are we going to find people to do it?   00:34:13:12 - 00:34:36:06 Jim Morgan And that is the HR person. And the second one is with all of the HRISs out there and all the data that's being collected in the HR department now, you also become a data analyst, and you can provide information on an awful lot of things that's very business related. So I think both of those go right back to what Alicia said is that you're not making HR decisions.   00:34:36:06 - 00:34:42:20 Jim Morgan You're making business, strategic business decisions, and that immediately elevate you to a different level.   00:34:42:20 - 00:35:14:06 Alicia Kiser And if I could if I could summarize, I would say I always view myself—and I think this can apply to any department, whether you're marketing, finance, HR, customer service—I consider myself a business person first, and HR just as the discipline or the way that I choose to channel my business skills, and I think if we think more like that, making that jump from tactical to strategic becomes, it becomes easier and fun.   00:35:14:16 - 00:35:37:09 Sophie Boler And that's some good advice. Yeah. Well, I want to thank both of you for being on the 30 minute THRIVE podcast today and sharing your knowledge on the latest of using HR as a strategic partner. So if you liked our chat and topic today, I want to encourage listeners to share this episode, leave a comment or review, and consider joining MRA if you aren't a member already.   00:35:37:14 - 00:36:00:15 Sophie Boler We've got all the resources you need in the show notes below, so take a look at those and we have linked Jim and Alicia's email and LinkedIn profile in the show notes below. So if you'd like to get in touch with them or just chat about whatever, they're available for you. Otherwise, thank you so much for tuning in today and thank you both for the great info and we will see you next week.   00:36:01:01 - 00:36:02:00 Alicia Kiser Thanks for having me.   00:36:02:13 - 00:36:03:07 Jim Morgan Thank you, Sophie.   00:36:04:01 - 00:36:26:08 Outro And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA's 30 minute THRIVE so you don't miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.'''  

Does anyone remember the time where we didn't know something and you had to be OK with it?  Seems like ages ago, or maybe I'm feeling my age. But thanks to the advent and growth of technology, it's easier than ever to obtain facts. The issue I have with this, is that we may be sacrificing wisdom for convenience.  The more we know, ironically, drives anxiety. It lessens curiosity. It quashes our desire to learn. Quite frankly, it makes life boring. If we have all the facts available to us, what's the point in asking questions?  It's one thing to know a fact. But you can get facts anywhere. What's more important, I would argue, is how to think. Reasoning, logic, deduction, interpretation – these are the skill sets that will help us move past just repetition and boredom.  It's a focus that will translate well to the workplace. What I come across often in the coaching world is that most people have insecurity and anxiety, and many of them try to cover it by giving advice or spouting facts. But the fact of the matter is, those who embrace their insecurity, ask really good questions and learn to focus on their ability to continue to learn are the best leaders in an organization.  Solutions will vary – but I'd say a good start is to begin by asking yourself questions, and going deeper beyond just the basic answer. Figuring out a belief system, why you believe things and understanding why others can believe the opposite, is a fun and productive philosophical exercise that will translate over into other areas of your life.  It's too strong to say facts are worthless, but without context and understanding, they don't have multiple legs to stand on. It's our understanding and interpretation that give facts meaning, and we only understand and interpret through questions.  Happy week! Your Title Goes Here Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings. Click Here for an Unedited Transcript Welcome to Bellwether. Thank you for being here this week. As always, I appreciate your attention and your time, and your listening, and your follows and all of that good stuff. Today we're talking about the joy of not knowing. That's right. The joy of not knowing. We don't need to know all the answers to all of our questions. I was wistfully thinking the other day about how nice it was back in my, my fellow Gen X listeners. 0:28 I'm, I'm at the tail end of Gen X, but I identify with Gen X. I like my Gen X people. Gen X will remember this. Do you remember a time back where you just didn't know the answer to something and you had to be okay with it? It was almost this freeing kind of . It was, it was so nice to just not know. And we're, we're living now in a place where we're inundated with information. 0:51 We're inundated with facts. Everybody's got a fact. Everybody wants to tell you what they know, and they can find the study or statistic that shows it. But without context, the facts are irrelevant. And I'd argue that we're, we're sacrificing wisdom and intelligence for the, the idea of just knowing facts that anybody can find when they Google something. And I would argue that the need for reasoning, logic, understanding context, being able to think is far more important as we move forward in the society than it is to just no facts. 1:31 Cause anybody can get facts anywhere. And that's what I'm gonna talk about today. I'm gonna talk about how knowing everything like we do today, having information on our fingertips is actually driving more anxiety. Anxiety, um, it lessens our curiosity, it impacts our ability to be leaders. I'll talk about workplace impact and then maybe at the end of this, if I remember, and if I have time, um, and I'm so inclined, I'll give you some, some tidbits maybe that can help us get thinking about, um, how to think, thinking about how to think rather than, uh, just knowing facts. 2:02 So, um, like I said, I think my gen gen Xers will appreciate this and older, there was that time where, you know, you'd think of something and, and you would just never know it. And the only, you had to take a trip to the library, go through the Dewey decimal system to find some kind of book or an atlas or an encyclopedia to find it out. You actually had to do research. 2:22 And most of the time you're like, I just don't care enough to do that. And so it just went away. And that was nice. It was nice. You could focus on more things, more pertinent things, more impressive things, more relationship things. And you just, you didn't know when your friends were gonna show up. You didn't know when, uh, you know, your parents were gonna pick you up from the movie theater or anything else. 2:43 You could talk about it in general, uh, in in general context. But we, you know, there was a mystery to it. And there, there was a lot of fun to that. Um, now granted, having information on our fingertips has its benefits. I will say that. But, um, I, I would say we, we have this fake knowledge now of knowing facts. And you could find any fact online. Any fact that you wanna find, you could find it. 3:07 And there's true facts, and there's fake facts, and there's half true facts. And there are, there are facts that are only facts when included with the proper context and . So, so facts. The idea of a fact is, is almost subjective at this point. And so knowing facts, and, and you see this a lot in the coaching industry, um, people who try to present themselves as experts, everybody wants to be an expert. 3:35 Okay? We get this. Everybody wants to be an expert. Everybody wants to be wanted, everybody wants to be intelligent and seen as such. And that's great. So they spit out knowledge to almost present themselves in this way that they are intelligent. But without context and understanding the context or making it real for people to know how to implement these facts, it's almost irrelevant. The facts are pointless because it doesn't change behavior or doesn't drive home the message you're trying to drive home. 4:03 It just, you know, it's this false supporting of some BS statement so that we can present ourselves as experts in some particular type of way. And especially on, you know, you see this on TikTok all the time. I love the psychologists who come out and the psychiatrists and the neuroscientists who say, that's not what that means, right? To, to correct all these people. Or just say, the hippocampus does this and you, that means you're gonna do this. 4:27 And, um, it's such a misinterpretation of, of knowledge, um, to the point where it's damaging and it, it makes people change behavior in a very negative way. And, and you look ridiculous. I want you to know, you look ridiculous. . Um, there is, ironically, I think the more knowledge we have, the more anxiety we have. Um, ignorance is bliss. I do believe that to a certain extent, there is, uh, a certain bliss of ignorance. 4:57 It's why when people turn off social media, it's a cathartic experience. It's why when people turn off the news, it's cathartic. Not knowing what's going on and not being a hermit. I'm not talking about being a hermit, but there's, there's a scale of knowledge and information. We're being inundated with constant ads and information and facts on, on why you need this medication that you didn't even know you needed. And, uh, let me come in with this article and why you're doing things wrong. 5:25 You're shoveling your driveway wrong, and you're like, what the hell are you talking about? This is ridiculous. So, so the more facts were given, uh, I would say it is impacting us in a very negative way. Um, even right on down to the weather. Do we need to know that the storm's coming in a week when you're know, start, say, ruins your week, right? Well, it's gonna, you know, nice day. Yeah, but it's gonna rain this weekend, right? 5:48 We can't enjoy the moment we're in because we have so much knowledge as to what's coming down the pike, that, that we actually can't be present and we can't enjoy the people that are around us. And it drives this, this type of anxiety. And at the same time, it lessens our curiosity. And we need a sense, you know, I've said this before, multiple times. The reason kids are happy is because they're learning. 6:11 They have this sense of wonder. There are things that are new to them. When we have all these facts, we lose that sense of wonder. We have to have the facts, we have to have the answers. We have to do all this stuff. It drives more anxiety, and we care less. We're less curious. The last time you got really lost in something, it's probably because you were curious about it and learning, and you wanted to know a new answer. 6:32 And that's why we read things, and that's why we get into things. And that's why we, you know, I, I speak to so many Gen Z people and say, well, what are you reading right now? They're like, oh, I, I don't read books. I don't read books. Because they have all the facts that they need at their fingertips and what they're sacrificing. And this isn't a Gen Z, this isn't everybody challenge, okay? 6:52 I'm not, I'm not bashing Gen Z. Um, they don't have to read, right? Because they have all their information. There is a benefit to learning and reading and being curious, and that's your developing the capacity to think. And that's what's so important. We have to develop a capacity for reason. We have to develop a capacity for logic. We can't just repeat facts. You see this very much in politics, right? Let me tell you why this is so important and why you're wrong. 7:19 Facts are all about giving somebody, uh, i I bucket facts into this category of just giving advice and for coaches to be good. Again, I'm going back to my coaching. We never give advice. Good coaches never give advice, because advice is just an exercise of feeling superior to somebody else. Telling facts is just this false sense of superiority that we wish to have. And it's trying to mask our own insecurities and our ability to ask questions. 7:46 We don't want to be known as someone who doesn't know, but yet, ironically, the most secure people we know and the most effective leaders we know are those very people who could say, I don't know the answer to that. Tell me more. Ask me. You know, can I ask more questions? This is really good. Let's get curious. Let's dig more. Let's learn about the logic, the reasoning, the interpretation of this. What can we deduce from all of these facts that we find? 8:10 And how do we make that relevant today? The ability to do, you know, do that cognitive exercise, to do that thinking. That's what we need to really embrace and drive and, and really look for. And we can only do that when we don't know. We only have that, that desire to do that. When we don't know the facts, we don't know the answers. We don't stop at just knowing this ridiculous fact here. 8:36 And we say, all right, well, we did our job. We just told everyone how smart we were, and then we can move on. We need to deduce and make things real. Things evolve over time. Facts change over time. Facts change with context, right? You can make the same statement in two separate places. One time it's true, another time it's not. And depending on interpretation, that's one of those big muscles that we really have to learn and drive. 9:01 And, and if we wanna bring this to the workplace, uh, that's gonna separate the, the adults from the children, your ability to deduce. That's how you bring value, right? I, I've gone through this exercise at a few places, um, depending on the size of your company, right? But I was working at a company or working with a company, had about a thousand employees. I said, if you wanted to get rid of everyone, 200 employees, what would they be doing? 9:30 And they know that they could survive with, you know, one fifth of their employees. They'd be thinking very differently. They'd be doing very different type of work, much more cognitive. And they know those 200 people, they would keep those people who could think, right? That's gonna be, we're, we're not moving to a knowledge economy, right? Or maybe that's what we've got. We've got a knowledge economy. A knowledge economy is irrelevant, right? 9:52 We need a thinking economy that's very, very different, right? You have all the information you could want at your finger fingertips, but what makes you uniquely human is the ability to deduce and think and interpret, right? AI is gonna blow you outta the water of just pulling facts. It's got mountains amount of facts and can make decisions and do all of these things very quickly based on fact and trends and everything else. 10:17 But to be uniquely humanist, to think and to be cognitive. And that comes from not knowing. That's where we need to focus. That's learning mindset, that's asking really good questions. When we think about our best leaders and the most productive individuals, the people who are creating new things, the people who are bringing value to work, the people who are, uh, creating new processes. And those are the thinkers. They're not just repeating the way we've always done things. 10:45 They're not repeating, well, this is how it works. This is fact. They can interpret deduce question, ask really good questions, and be really, really curious. If you've worked with me. You know, I always talk about the, the question, does anybody know what a real question is? And most people don't know what a real question is. A question is a request for information where you legitimately do not know the answer, and you want the answer. 11:11 Very, very important to make that distinction of, I'm really curious. Otherwise, it's just a judgemental statement. And when we're trying to mask anxiety, when we're trying to spit facts, when we're trying to just tell people why they're wrong, why we're trying to tell people, uh, advice and say, this is what you should do, and I think you should do that, and this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's our own insecurity. 11:32 It's, it's trying to feel superior over other people. Everybody sat in a meeting where somebody asks someone for feedback, they're very quick to say, well, we can't do it because of X and we can't do it because of y. Right? That's their own insecurity. They never go first to Well, it's possible, but right? They, they're never open to that. That's a stressor. They're insecure. It's the first thing that you notice about ineffective leadership is they always tell you why something can't be done. 12:00 And so not knowing, um, is a blessing. It's a blessing. I don't fully appreciate, I I didn't really fully appreciate the blessing until recently. And the more I've been talking about it with people, you know, I don't watch television. Well, I do a little bit, but not, you know, in, in the other way. Um, it's nice to not know what's going on in general. You know, as a matter, I'm still engaged in my community. 12:24 I've got my people, I've got my clients, I've got my family. I, you know, I'm not a hermit, but I don't need to know everything. Although I do love spitting facts. I do love the random facts. Everybody does. But the reason we love the random facts is because we've learned something, right? We say, oh, that's shocking that I wouldn't have thought of that. And oh, that's very interesting. It's a curiosity thing. 12:46 And we, we tap into our learning and that's why, why we like to do it. So, um, a few episodes go, I would encourage you to do the believability episode. Listen to the believability episode. If you haven't done it, that one resonated with a lot of people, because that's a differentiator in the workplace as well. And that comes from not knowing believability. There's an authenticity to believability. In order to be believable, you have to build this capacity to be believable. 13:12 It's not just enough to be authentic, it's not just enough to know things and how things work. We have to be believable. And we become believable by, by connecting with other people and asking really, really good questions. And then that gives us some credibility. It brings authenticity to say, oh, I don't know everything, but I can deduce and bring more value to the fact that you actually know that's real value. And that's something that we should focus on. 13:37 So what are the solutions? How do we do this? How do we become a person who knows, but doesn't know a person who is valuable, not knowing everything, but can ask really, really good questions. And that's, you know, it's odd. We, we wanna be curious. We wanna know facts are fun, right? I love spitting facts. I love it. Um, I should have prepared some random facts, right? But I'm not, uh, , I didn't do that for this episode, so I'm sorry. 14:02 But the first one, the way to start is, you know, we have to learn to become philosophical. That's the first. And we have to, to work on our questions. And so I had asked, you know, what's the most interesting question you could come up with? And I'm not talking about, you know, does a straw have one or two holes? Um, although those are fun little conversations to have with your people. But what are really, really good questions you could ask yourself about anything that's going on in your world where you legitimately don't know the answer and you want to know the answer. 14:33 And if there's nothing that you want to know the answer to, we have a lot of thinking to do, right? Asking why, why do we do the things we do? That's part of self discovery, it's part of personal development, it's part of everything. And that's ultimately the meaning of life. The aim of life is self development. Uh, who said that the aim of life is self development. Dorian Gray, Oscar Wild said that Oscar Wild said, I think he did. 14:59 The aim of life is self development. Um, but, but how do we exercise reasoning and logic, our belief system, pure curiosity, just for the purpose of being curious. That is how we become a, a, a proponent of not knowing, not to just get to the end answer. Cuz there are no end answers, right? But how do we continue to exercise this muscle of being curious and asking questions? That's, we don't want to be the one who just knows all the answers. 15:28 That's boring. It's so boring. Life gets so incredibly boring when you have all the answers. So let's go find something to be curious about. That's my advice for the weekend. my advice, I always give advice, um, which is the opposite of what you actually want to do. But that's my thing when I go for a run, it's always asking questions. My reasoning, my deducing, why do I think this? Well, if I think this, well what does that mean for this? 15:55 And if I think that, well, what does that mean for this? And what do I believe in all of these questions? It's, it's a very heavy exercise. It's a very difficult one. Uh, but it's a, it's an awesome one. It makes life so, so interesting to not know. So let's get a little exciting. Let's get a little crazy. Let's not know something this week and get a little curious. That's just tons of fun. 16:15 So have a good week. I hope it was helpful. It's my wistful kind of going back to the, um, I mean, I guess it was late eighties when I was just kind of running around with people and, um, just not knowing anything. Like mid, mid eighties, late eighties, just run around, doesn't matter. Don't know anything. Um, but you had a lot of fun and part of it was a maturity cause you're a kid, right? 16:39 Um, but also it's, there's, there's some credibility to it. So have a great week. Enjoy. Thank you for paying attention. Thank you for your time. And uh, with that, I'll see you next week. Thanks.

What will the holiday 2023 shopping season look like for retailers? How are consumers adjusting their shopping, buying, and gifting habits this holiday season given the current economic environment? It's our Holiday Special episode and we've brought in two incredible experts to dive into what's really happening this season and explore what we expect the season will bring retailers. Meet Roshan Jhunja, Head of Retail for Square, who recently released their holiday Festive Forecast report based on surveying merchants and consumers, and Bridget Johns-Pavlopoulos, co-Founder of To&From, a premium multi-brand marketplace for gifts of all occasions. Square/AfterPay Festive Forecast Report available here: https://bit.ly/3EwpqP2To&From gifting marketplace: https://app.toandfrom.com/ News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during NRF 2023 in January in New York City! IF you're a fan of the show, please give us your vote! You can vote here: https://bit.ly/VIPretail News alert #2! We've moved up to #19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we'll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review to be mentioned in upcoming episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Made It On Stream (Xmas), from the album Lo-Fi Christmas, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Includes sound effects provided by Free Sounds Library. The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey  TRANSCRIPTS2E6 Holiday Special[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar:[00:00:20] Show Intro[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a very Merry and Joyous season two episode six of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo.[00:00:28] Casey Golden: And I'm your holiday spirited cohost, Casey Golden. Welcome retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite jingle, bell filled podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.[00:00:45] Ricardo Belmar: And if you didn't guess by our whimsical and seasonal intro, this is our holiday specials for 2023 episode of the show.[00:00:54] Casey Golden: So Ricardo did. Did you start your holiday shopping or this season?[00:00:58] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Actually, [00:01:00] no, not really. I mean, had every intention to, honestly, ever since that second Amazon Prime day that we're not supposed to call Prime Day, cuz apparently I'm one of the few people who did buy things on that sale, but they were mostly for me and it didn't really help me get the shopping started early.[00:01:14] Casey Golden: Oh, shame on you, Well, didn't you know that every industry expert is saying customers started the season early? Maybe you just need to hear it from our two guests today to get you into the shopping season of giving mode.[00:01:30] Ricardo Belmar: Well, funny you should say that, Casey, because I bet many of our listeners are just like me and could use some insider knowledge on gifting and shopping ideas for the season. And by the way, did you start your shopping already,[00:01:42] Casey Golden: Of course I did. My grandmother taught me to shop for thoughtful gifts all year long, but there are always a few emergency pur purchases before, you know, black friday, of course.[00:01:52] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I should have known. So let's tell our listeners then all about our guests for today. Since we're not like other retail podcasts, we don't [00:02:00] just bring you a holiday special episode and talk about sales numbers for year over year stats for the season. No, no, no, of course we don't do that.[00:02:09] Casey Golden: Certainly not. I mean, if you just want those types of numbers, check out the reports on NR F'S website instead, we're bringing you some much needed insights into what retailers and consumers are, not just thinking. , but what they're actually doing so far this season.[00:02:25] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Today we will be chatting with Roshan Jhunja, the head of retail for Square, who will be sharing some valuable insights from their recently released holiday forecast and survey of merchants and consumers.[00:02:37] Casey Golden: And we also have Bridget Johns co-founder of To & From a premium multi-brand marketplace for gifts of all occasion. Who will share some interesting data about how consumers are shopping for gifts, and maybe she'll give us a few hints on what the hot presents really are this season.[00:02:54] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I could certainly use some help in that department, so let's not keep everybody waiting and dive right into our [00:03:00] discussion with Roshan and Bridget.[00:03:06] Holiday Special - Gifting[00:03:06] Casey Golden: welcome everyone. We all know that finding that perfect gift is no easy task. But our guests have been making holiday shopping a lot more productive for retailers to prepare for the holiday season and less stressful on our pocketbooks. Alarming stat, 41% of Americans are willing to take on debt to gift shop with a whopping 15.2 billion is the estimated total of unwanted presents.[00:03:35] This is worth the conversation. We all say we're starting out our holiday shopping early this year, but what are we buying? What are the trends in who's shopping where and with what? Let's unwrap the holiday gift shopping season. This is our 2023 holiday special report.[00:03:53] Ricardo Belmar: And of course when the retail razor show does a holiday special, we don't just run through all the usual stats everybody else talks about. [00:04:00] You know the ones, how much will sales increase year over year? What categories will underperform or overperform, all the usual suspects? No, we like to take a different approach and leverage some real world experts that have read the pulse of both retailers and consumers.[00:04:14] So to help us unwrap this holiday special extravaganza. We brought in two experts on the topic, Roshan Jhunja, head of retail at Square joins us today hot off the heels of releasing Square, and AfterPay's festive forecast report, Roshan will be sharing many facts and stats from that extensive merchant and consumer survey.[00:04:33] Welcome Roshan.[00:04:34] Roshan Jhunja: Thank you, Ricardo Casey. Glad to be here.[00:04:36] Casey Golden: And since it's the season of Gift Giving, we've also brought in Bridget Johns, co-founder of To and From a Premium Multi-brand marketplace for every occasion guest to share interesting facts and figures about how people are shopping, why they're shopping, and. What they're shopping for. As we learn why To and From's mission is to change how we feel about gift [00:05:00] giving and receiving.[00:05:01] Welcome Bridget.[00:05:02] Bridget Johns: thanks so much for having.[00:05:04] Ricardo Belmar: let's go to you first. We're gonna talk a lot about your Festive Forecast report in this episode because we're all about the data on this show. So why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about your background and what you do at Square and Afterpay, and explain to us the methodology in the survey and you know, who are the respondents?[00:05:22] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. Glad to do that. So just to recap, square started with a purpose, which was to enable any individual or business to participate in the economy. And today,[00:05:31] 13 years after that,[00:05:31] founding, we've got a full ecosystem of commerce solutions from software to hardware, enabling merchants of every size type and complexity to run their business on Square.[00:05:39] That includes retailers, restaurants, beauty, personal care. And so my role at Square is looking after the retail vertical. So in particular, I'm the head of retail at Square. I've been at the company for six years. Before this I was largely in financial services, but kind of was interested in the mission and purpose of Square, and that's what sort of brought me and keeps me and, and my goal.[00:05:59] And I'm, I'm, you know, [00:06:00] the thing that keeps me excited and, and eager to get going every day is to empower retailers of all sizes to. By leveraging Square's platform. So I over oversee all the aspects of the vertical and we were really looking to create the best possible experience for retailers who run their businesses on square. terms of the methodology of this survey you know, like any good survey, it's important to make sure you've got a broad cross section. So we looked at both the consumer side 1000 consumers in the US as well as the seller side. So on the consumers, you know, we surveyed at the beginning of September, we made sure that we got equal gender representation.[00:06:33] We made sure that it was a broad demographic from, you know, the, the different regions in the us, northwest south, the Midwest, and, and. generationally, because that's increasingly an important access to look at. We made sure to include gen Z and millennials. In fact, you know, those kind of younger cohorts made up about 40% of the survey, but we also heard from Gen X, baby boomers and the postwar generation.[00:06:55] And so, you know, by doing so, we were able to draw out some meaningful distinctions between [00:07:00] how those different consumers operate. And then lastly, we also made sure to, to cover the seller side of the story. So we surveyed almost 600 square sellers in the us you know, of varying sizes, including some larger sellers.[00:07:11] And you know, one of the things that we did here was we looked year over year factoring, you know, some data that we have both on the square and after pay side. And yeah, eager to get into some of the the.[00:07:21] Ricardo Belmar: All right, fantastic. I'm looking forward to that. So Bridget, let's have you jump in here. You know, we've known each other for a long time now, but for listeners, why don't you tell us your background and what did you, and why did you get into the, the gifting side of the business and what makes gifting such a challenge?[00:07:34] And of course, what makes to and from unique.[00:07:37] Bridget Johns: Yeah. Thank you so much for asking. I've been in retail my entire life. I grew up on a farm and my first retail business was a corn stand when I was 10 years old. I moved on to more exciting retail. Worked for many years for brands like Ralph Lauren Home Collection, Tiffany and Co L'Oreal. And for the last 12 years as you know, Ricardo, I worked for Retail Next, which is an analytics company based in Silicon Valley, really focused [00:08:00] on brick and mortar data, data gathering of, of customer.[00:08:04] Action inside of brick and mortar stores. So as I started thinking about how I wanted to take my two sets of experience and bring them together to start my own company, gifting was obvious. It's my love language. It always has been. And I see a lot of pain points in today's gifting in the gifting world.[00:08:22] So those sort of break down into three categories that I talk about as discovery. It's hard for people to find good gifts. If you go to large marketplaces and you search for something, you are probably gonna be disappointed in those search results. there are No tools really for modern gifting.[00:08:45] On the digital side when you get outside of those large marketplaces. So there aren't things like widely adopted universal registry. There isn't a data set that really allows. Somebody to understand a consumer and their [00:09:00] preferences when it comes to when it comes to the people that are they're buying for and the occasions they're buying for them in their life.[00:09:06] And the third thing is, as Casey talked about, you know, 15.2 billion in returns of gifts, people don't like the gifts that they're getting. So our idea. That there is enough data in the market and that people will tell you about what they actually want as gifts, that if you bring it together intelligently and layer it in with some really good curation and some really awesome tools that help to just manage the day to day gifting that you can deliver a much better experience for consumers.[00:09:37] So that's what we're building at, to and from.[00:09:40] Casey Golden: It's great and it is all about consumers. So let's talk about the first step to any gift giving inspiration, stocking up on ideas and making a list. This is really where I see an opportunity for retailers to win customers over through product discovery. Where are shoppers getting their inspiration from holiday purchases?[00:09:59] Bridget?[00:09:59] Bridget Johns: That is [00:10:00] a great question and I think Roan will probably say the same. They get through inspiration everywhere and sometimes in the most unusual places. I have a 10 year old son who is a hockey player in a hockey mom's group on Facebook, and you would be shocked to see how much conversation is about hockey related.[00:10:21] For their hockey players. So I think, and it's like one of the things that we do at to and from is we get very precise about the occasion, the relationship, and the interests of the people who you're buying for so that you can get very targeted in really good gift recommendations.[00:10:38] Casey Golden: Roshan, your report has some interesting stats on this topic. What did your surveyed customers say about how they come up with their gift ideas?[00:10:46] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, well, you know, picking up directly from what Bridget was touching on earlier family and friends, right. So, you know, what we found was that about. 43% of consumers are looking to family and friends of their top sources of inspiration. You know, and I'm sure that includes, you know, [00:11:00] Facebook forums and whatnot that that hockey thing resonated.[00:11:03] My father-in-law is an avid Giants fan. And you know if I could find the right place to source more giants gifts for him, I absolutely would. I think I've kind of exhausted what's out there. But for sure family and friends followed by being in. And you know, this is where retailers really get a chance to cultivate some of the in-store experience and make sure that it's a great place to discover new products.[00:11:22] And then, you know,[00:11:23] following along after that would be websites, blogs, and forums. And so, You know, obviously social media's gotten a lot better with targeting. You know, a lot of folks in their, you know, as they're scrolling their feeds are gonna you know, be presented with lots of ideas there.[00:11:36] But one thing that I will mention that, that I found relevant is that, you know, almost 20% of shoppers really are preferring products that are sustainable or ethical. So that's a pretty important trend, and one by the way that I expect to continue, especially as you know, gen Z continues to come into more purchasing power and makes up a larger portion of the consumer base.[00:11:55] Casey Golden: Speaking of Mary Zema and Mary Exes, I think there's a bit . Our, our, our [00:12:00] target markets have actually quite changed recently. So I heard Gen Xers spend the most money on gifts and they feel like they receive the worst gifts with 44% of them disliking what they receive. So since they're impossible to please end up the forgotten generation, let's just talk about Mary Zema and Gen in Gen Z, , because this is very interesting as like a prime.[00:12:24] Consumer target for a lot of retailers right now is, is trying to capture those eyeballs.[00:12:29] Ricardo Belmar: And I think as I looked through the festive forecast report, one of the things I took away is it seems like one of the indicators that younger shoppers, let's say Gen Z and millennials, are really looking to create something meaningful with gift giving versus just finding something they think will be a super interesting gift or, or item that the other person wants, which I think tends to be the way Gen Xers look, look at that concept. So I'm, I'm curious lemme go to you first. I, are you seeing trends like that reflected in your data at, to and from?[00:12:59] Bridget Johns: [00:13:00] Yeah, a hundred percent. So we have deeply attributed all of the products that are on our, on our platform. So we have 5,000 products across 500 brands, and each of those products is attributed for all the normal things that you would expect, like size and function and form, and. All those things, but also we have attributed across values that people care about.[00:13:21] So you're able to, you know, search for black own businesses or female female owned companies, or sustainable, or B corporation or whatever it is. And what we see is that not only do we overindex on search. With those attributes. So people are very highly interested in gifts that have a social tag attached to them, as Roan was saying before.[00:13:46] So we're definitely seeing that. But then we also see that those products lead to when you can find the product that has that social attribute, it leads to higher conversion. So, not only are people searching them, but they're also buying [00:14:00] and we see that across Across all of our demographics. So as a proud Gen Xer gen Xers also I think are interested in finding those right those right products that match the values of themselves or for someone else.[00:14:14] As someone once told me, he said, you know, I might know, not know what my girlfriend would like for her birthday, but I know what she's interested in. Like I know the social causes she's interested in. So it becomes this trigger that can actually help. The gift making decision, the decision making around gifting.[00:14:32] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. That's super interesting. So, Roshan, what, what else can you tell us from the findings in the report about these generational differences in shopping and are, are there different expectations from in each demographic?[00:14:47] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. You know it's interesting because this is where a bunch of elements in the kind of the buyer journey may start to differ. I think, you know social media that I touched on earlier is certainly a more important influence for some of the, [00:15:00] the younger generations. I think 25% of shoppers, for example would spot gift ideas on Facebook or I.[00:15:05] I also think that it changes a little bit of the the buying timeline, whereas older generations are likely to get more of their holidays shopping earlier. We do have you know an emphasis on the younger generations trying to, and maybe waiting more towards promotional periods and, and sometimes even you know, pushing it right up until the holidays.[00:15:23] And so I do think that there's also a difference. Motivations, whereas older generations focus on value and making sure that the gifts are kinda targeted. There's more of an emphasis on the emotion from younger generations and kinda, you know the feelings that you know, they're creating meaningful connection.[00:15:39] And you know there's a, a sentimentality that's attached to.[00:15:42] Casey Golden: I like to hear that. So customers will look to family and friends for recommendations and in-store experiences and environments provide these high impact results for gift ideas. Sales may spur to get them to spend. Bridget, I can imagine disseminating customer behavior [00:16:00] during this season is difficult, and you mentioned that you have a lot of different types of tags and, and the way that you're indexing your catalogs and products.[00:16:09] How do you look at your assortment planning and really build those recommendation builders when it's not on the customer shopping, but who the customer's shopping for? I can imagine it's much more complex.[00:16:23] Bridget Johns: It's very complex and I think it's one of the reasons that gifting fails so often on the regular digital commerce experience. Like you don't have those normal tags that you would have in your regular life. Like we don't go shopping with our husbands anymore, like you. Walk around the mall and something catches your eye and you, your husband notices that something caught your eye just doesn't happen.[00:16:52] So we hear stories about husbands like creeping on their wives, fa Pinterest accounts, and , all of these wacky things that people do. But at the end [00:17:00] of the day, what you really need to do is you, I, well, the way we've approached it is, Assorted based on what we know as retailers. So a team of retail experts.[00:17:10] We've lived in brand, the brand, world merchandising world. Product world, understand the, you know, brands that we wanted to start with. And then we from there we've really led with the data, like what are customers telling us? How are they experiencing the platform? What are the things that are important to them?[00:17:29] You know, when we started, we didn't have a like mandate around values. And as we started doing a lot of consumer testing, one of the things that we heard time and time again was that consumers, as we've talked a little bit about really were leaning into the values of the brands that we were recommending.[00:17:47] So now I think. , probably 90% of our brands have some kind of a social tag attached to them. So if a customer is really wanting to shop their values, they're able to do that. And [00:18:00] it's the beauty of a digital business is that you can react really quickly. And we can flex up and down based on what we're hearing from our consumers and what their interests are at any given.[00:18:10] Casey Golden: And where does all of this excitement come from? You know, why are people gifting and, and how has that changed? You, your report mentioned kind of the, the purpose behind the why of this motivation for gift giving across these different demographics and the way that they look at it or feel about it.[00:18:31] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. You know, what I'd say here is, is just, you know, again, to revisit why people are looking forward to the holidays. You know, the, the social connection is actually right up at the top of, of motives, right? I think we, we see a lot, especially the younger generations interested to see friends and family you know, the celebratory atmosphere.[00:18:48] And so, you know, but to lesser extent, you know, there is a, an important component of holidays that, that is really about gifting.[00:18:56] The good news is that in my book, you know, it's actually kind of a minority [00:19:00] that's focusing on gifting because it's expected, because it's traditional. And, and what you have instead is a big focus on showing love and care, putting a smile on somebody's face, you know, the, the, the good feeling you get from giving a gift.[00:19:12] And so these are all things that are kind of driving some of the behaviors out there. And so, you know, I think it's, it's important for retailers to consider how they can actually enable those outcomes, right? How they can Effectively cultivate their product assortment that aligns with what will make people feel good and, and make them feel like they're able to convey that love and care.[00:19:31] Casey Golden: A hundred percent. The the why leads to the what.[00:19:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly. And you know, as you, as you I hear you saying that, RO I'm, I'm thinking about the opportunity retailers have to really lean into their loyalty programs during this season to help drive some, of these gift purchases. you know, do, do you have any. Tips for retailers just based on the research findings in the study or on what you would tell 'em to do and how to leverage or how to best leverage their loyalty [00:20:00] program.[00:20:00] Any interesting examples from some of the merchants you work with?[00:20:03] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. You know, that's a great question. There's a couple of high level things I think that are going on especially this year, which is, you know, obviously we've had a lot of macro things going. On with inflation you know, and you know, symmetrically what, what our report found was. Despite what's going on out there, people are still interested in spending money for the holidays.[00:20:22] Consumers are gonna go out and the majority of them are gonna spend more. Some of them intend to spend, you know, quite a bit more. Still a very important time you know, for retailers to really think about how to reach those consumers now. But the, but the interesting aspect here is also that consumers are more than ever interested in.[00:20:38] Given that their money is, is you know, there might, it might not buy as much as it did before, really focusing in on what's gonna be a great value. And that's not always about the dollar. It sometimes comes down to things like return policies and, you know, a bunch of other value add components that retailers can add to kind of take some of the risk outta it and, and make sure that, you know, again, dealing with some of the the unwanted gift giving you know, there's, [00:21:00] there's ways to deal with that.[00:21:01] So, so as far as loyalty is concern I think this is a great time, especially for retailers that have oversupplied given some of the supply chain concerns and have just a lot of inventory sitting. There is a buyer out there for, for these things, right? But you may have to do a little bit more work to find them.[00:21:17] And so I think leaning into loyalty and marketing to make sure that you're kind of targeting the right people. And, and for some retailers that means doing so in different ways. Leaning into omnichannel, leaning into, you know, social channels to promote their items is gonna be super. So here, I would say that, you know, sending out marketing messages make sure that folks are, it's not just enough to, to have the sale.[00:21:37] People have to know about it. And, and there's, you know, a lot to choose from out there. So making sure that there's marketing messages that are promoting what's going on, keeping your brand top of mind. There was one seller that I would call out Sasha, who's the operations manager of the Chakra Shack, which is a spiritual gift shop in Laguna.[00:21:52] They're using Square for in person online this season. They're excited about using loyalty for the first time. It's something where, you know, they are really excited to [00:22:00] see what happens with customers in terms of, you know, how motivated are they by the rewards and the discounts? How's that gonna impact the business in the long term?[00:22:06] I really think that leaning into marketing, you know, especially with a lot of folks thinking about potential downturn next year, this is a really great time to kinda, you know focus. Refining your marketing approach because it's likely to be important for your business in the, in the coming months.[00:22:21] Bridget Johns: Yeah, and I would just, I would just add to that, that I think when you talk about loyalty, all of the things Rashaan said a hundred percent, but you also have to think about what's the value add for your consumer. And I'm surprised, especially in the, in the digital world, how few brands offer. Gift messaging and gift wrapping.[00:22:41] Two of the easiest things that you can do to really build loyalty for your customers and retailers, by and large fall short. Either the wrapping is terrible, there's no way to have a gift card, or it's so terrible that you wouldn't wanna use it anyhow. So just like think a little bit more [00:23:00] about what you would like as a consumer and build that into your loyalty program, I think could have a pretty tremendous impact.[00:23:06] Casey Golden: And just to validate that I do all of my Christmas shopping at one store. Because they offer free gift wrapping, beautiful note and free shipping[00:23:18] Ricardo Belmar: There you go.[00:23:19] Proof[00:23:19] Roshan Jhunja: That's amazing. I hope, I hope lots of retailers. Yeah. I hope the retailers hear[00:23:23] that. That's loyalty. If[00:23:24] Casey Golden: because I have a wonderful time shopping. I take it to the counter, I write my little notes and they gift wrap it and mail it out, and I'm done. And can go get a cappuccino and or a glass of wine[00:23:37] Bridget Johns: Yeah, really.[00:23:39] Ricardo Belmar: It's the way we all wanna shop[00:23:40] Casey Golden: not saying where I shop .It's not for everyone.[00:23:45] Ricardo Belmar: So I, I guess I, I want to kind of maybe switch a little bit here and talk about something, Roshan you touched on it a little bit a few moments ago, which is maybe the, in some ways the big elephant in the room for this season, which is, you know, everyone's worried about what impact of inflation may have on [00:24:00] shopping.[00:24:00] I think you've both kind of mentioned that if, if we go by what you're seeing so far, it actually maybe doesn't seem like it's causing consumers to shop less or to buy less at least so far at this stage in the holiday season. And I wanna talk a little bit about what, what the impact of buy now pay later has on[00:24:18] all of this , to be totally honest about it, right? Casey and I talked about this way back into our predictions episode at the start of the year, and we probably weren't the, the kindest people towards the, the category of type of payments and that, you know, our prediction was that there was gonna be a lot of consolidation in that space and that there was a risk that, you know, there may be regulators looking at what the impact on savings and consumers in general was gonna be, and I suppose you could make an argument that, you know, after pay becoming part of Square kind of speaks to that consolidation piece of it. But I think for the most part, all the other things we predicted on this one really haven't come to pass. And I think the momentum is still there behind buy now pay later.[00:24:54] So what I wanted to get into, and, and you have some interesting data on this in, in [00:25:00] the report, Roshan, on what impact, let's maybe start with the merchant side of it, you know, does offering B NPL to consumers, but both online and in store and across channels, what impact is that having this season on consumers either, either ability to buy their propensity to want to buy from a retailer that offers it, for example, versus one that's not?[00:25:20] Or what interesting trends are you seeing?[00:25:22] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, it's great. It's a great lead in to say that you know, there were some predictions about this particular service and you know, looking at how it's been faring, I think is honestly, you know, the most important. And that is It's only increasing in terms of its importance for consumers, you know, and I think most online shoppers you know, have heard about it at this point.[00:25:40] And increasing more online shoppers this year, plan to use by now, later compared to last year from the, from the seller's standpoint from people that are offering this as a service. A hundred percent. Believe that it's going to help them with the, the younger demographics. So like the Gen Z you know, who are more, have a higher propensity to use by now, pay later.[00:25:57] You know, those are consumers that are citing an [00:26:00] interest in budgeting and immediacy, right? So, so wanting to actually have the item in hand at the moment. So being able to reach newer shoppers and I. We have seen this with more traction online for sure. But a lot of in-store retailers, what they're finding is that the need to have a coherent experience, you know, across channels.[00:26:16] This is the kind promise of omnichannel and always has been, is that, you know, your, and your ability to transact. Extends across all the various, you know, in-store, omnichannel, social, you meet your customer where they're in a consistent way. They know what to expect from you. And so I think that's a really important translation to make sure that, you know, those customers that maybe found you online or discovered you on social you know, have the same experience when they come to visit your store.[00:26:39] And, and that's just, you know, a powerful consistency and, and coherence kinda. But in terms of discovery a hundred percent. You know, there's a, there's a really impactful, you know, for, for the fa the fans of B now pay later who are looking to discover more sellers. I think there's several tools including you know, with Square and Afterpay, where you can actually use buy now[00:26:58] after pay supporting sellers [00:27:00] to kind of filter and discover who else out there might be able to support you with this really powerful buying mechanism.[00:27:07] You know, I think the stats are, are pretty telling here. It did start in Australia there, you know, there was you know, it skyrocketed in terms of its penetration both for consumers and, and of course for sellers. And in the US it is continuing to take off. We have now one in eight shoppers that would sign up for a buy now pay later service.[00:27:23] Like I said earlier, you know, it's trending up in terms of the number of online shoppers planning to use buy now, pay later, like after pay. So again, it's it's, it's here. I think the inflation inflationary impacts are an extra tailwind because you know, more people are looking to smooth the, the impact of their purchases and, and it helps a lot with budget planning.[00:27:40] Ricardo Belmar: Let's move into, talking about sales channels , one of the biggest recent debates going on in, the media about retail has to do with e-commerce, of course, since the pandemic taking over in store shopping is, is it true, is it not true? What, what's happened with social commerce? How does this all compare to the numbers of [00:28:00] people shopping in store versus these other digital channels and, and which one is likely to come out on top as the dominant format?[00:28:07] Which in some ways, I think a lot of times what consumers want gets lost in the noise. When we read about all this, all these reports in the media. So Roshan lemme start with you on this one. You know, given that this popular narrative right now for so long, and again, because of the pandemic, is that e-commerce was just gonna leapfrog all this growth.[00:28:25] Massive growth stores would close and suffer. Of course, it turns out that didn't happen. consumers are still going to stores and I think we're seeing in, in a surge now in consumers wanting to. In store and get that experience. you had some interesting in the surveys to both consumers, I think, and to your, your merchants about this.[00:28:41] What, what can you tell us and about what's happening here?[00:28:44] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, I think you know, some of what we found in the survey was that Americans are most likely to get their gifts at online marketplace. You know, followed by discount department stores and superstores. One of the interesting things about this point you made about online is that in fact what we saw post pandemic was a lot of folks [00:29:00] interested to go back and reconnect with that in-store shopping experience.[00:29:03] And so, you know, while there was a very pronounced immediate shift when folks had no other option, we definitely saw it kinda rebound back to a place where people. Still value in store. Now, one of the most exciting trends to me personally is experiential retail, where, you know, interestingly from a staffing perspective, we've found that as brick and mortar retailers are adding staff to with in buyers to stores.[00:29:26] Who they're adding is actually, you know, baristas and, and more of this experiential aspect of, you know, coffee with your, your retail purchase. I know Casey values that, especially when she's done wrapping things up. You know, but, but it's kind of the, the retail store, the, the brick and mortar retail store as like a, a core component of your your neighborhood and your c.[00:29:46] And being a destination for folks you know, to get more than just a product. You know, also, you know, for bookstores doing book signings or, or music or, or coffee shops. And so I think that's in my mind one of the more powerful drivers of the channel mix is in store for discovery, [00:30:00] but also for experience.[00:30:01] But in terms of, you know, the, the, the buyer journey, this is an interesting one. It's not as cut and dry. You, you, you alluded to, you know, there's a lot of predictions out there in the media. It's not as cut and dry as you know, Hey, all, every, you know, online's gonna eat everything or social's gonna eat everything.[00:30:15] I think what we see instead is that discovery may happen in one place and that sometimes can be like social media More information often happens with, you know, researching, you know, product listings, maybe going in store to touch and feel and try something out, and the actual purchase may happen at yet a later time, whether that's via, you know, a conversational commerce with you know, the seller, like texting them, you know, what, I actually did decide to buy that thing.[00:30:38] Or, you know, maybe hitting the website. And so really it kind of this is, you know, the emergent omnichannel nature of, of shopping, right? It's kinda like your discovery to your. Finding more information to your ultimate purchase, and then even your return may all be at different places and at different times.[00:30:54] And so that's that kinda you know, in some senses muddies the waters, but but also make it more important to have a, [00:31:00] a coherent strategy of a presence across all the, your buyers wanted to. But in terms of the. The other point you raised on which social platform is it gonna be and, you know what's kind of most compelling?[00:31:12] I don't think that that there is a, a right answer to it. I think it has a lot to do with generational preference. I think there's always gonna be some social media platform or right around the corner, many of whom are trying to keep people on the platform. And by this I mean, if you are a retail seller one of the things that we're always encouraging folks to do is try to the grave you can to drive that purchase back to your site.[00:31:33] And the reason for this, Your ability to kind of have the customer information and to you know, be able to market to them is, is greatly diminished if, if it's, you know, entirely transacting outside of you know on a different e-commerce property. Right? And so there's also, there's a hundred percent powerful convenience, but this is where.[00:31:51] Being very deliberate about your strategy. Which products are you going to sell, and which channels and which marketplaces, and what, how then will you draw your [00:32:00] consumer back to learn more about your full assortment in, you know, on your website or in your store? I think that's an increasingly important strategy for, for all retailers to think about.[00:32:08] Casey Golden: are you seeing any trends around that buy online, pickup in store? I mean, I haven't had a lot of success with. That personally, but I know that it's been had huge growth over the, the pandemic and if it's carrying on here through holiday season.[00:32:22] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, I think it's one of these things that along with the shift to e-commerce, the, the buy line pickup in store, buy. Buy online and return in store as well are here to stay. I don't think again that they're at the levels of engagement when there was no other option. But for sure we see increasingly retailers asking for ways to support this and looking for solutions that help them support you know, that flexibility of buy online and, and, and coming back to.[00:32:46] Casey Golden: I found it quite interesting that the report found that like 53% of customers are planning to purchase gifts online compared to in-store. But it still sounds like. E-commerce matters just as much as in store and you almost can't [00:33:00] operate one without the other. How do you see this with your reports and then just experience with Square being able to understand how that customer's buying online and in store.[00:33:09] Is there like certain KPIs that this is increasing, that it's 50 50? Is it 30%? Just kind of curious what, what that looks like from an omnichannel perspective.[00:33:19] With Square you have a really unique visibility to how much omnichannel business is driving each other.[00:33:26] Being able to track that customer from in-store purchases, online purchases. What does it look like? in the past has been kind of like a black hole and we just make assumptions. But you have a unique perspective.[00:33:38] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. So what I would say here is I find that this varies a lot by the types of seller you know, with with our Square for retail offering, we tend to concentrate a lot on apparel. Where, where we see that a lot of discovery is happening online. We were just talking to hot Sam in Detroit.[00:33:51] A week or two ago, and they were describing how discovery online is a really important component of the, the buyer journey, but ultimately coming into the store [00:34:00] to engage with staff, to, to finalize that purchase, make sure that the, the fitting and whatnot is right. And, and that experience will be different for something that's a little bit more commoditized and not as bespoke.[00:34:10] You know, that requires kinda the assistance of an in store person. And so something like electronics or home goods, what we find is that there's a lot of folks who are willing to transact online. So the answer unfortunately isn't you know, as straightforward, although I, I will say that I, you know, they continue to be equally important channels.[00:34:27] You know, like you said before, you've got 53% of consumers planning to purchase. Gifts online compared to in store, that that's kinda an equal mix. And so really it, it goes back to that omnichannel journey that I mentioned where I think consumers really want a blend of online and in person experiences so they can purchase the way they want depending on what its, and you know, what they need in that moment.[00:34:47] Ricardo Belmar: So Bridget, obviously to and from focuses on the e-commerce experience and as you told us at, at the beginning of our session that, you know, you were looking to change things around [00:35:00] on, on solving discovery issues and gifting. , I'm sure you are now, you know, obviously well into the holiday season, seeing a increase in site visits and searches, et cetera.[00:35:09] What, what can you tell us about some of the unique trends you're seeing there? And I'm curious. How are consumers finding your site when they start their search for.[00:35:18] Bridget Johns: Yeah, so I think there are a few things that are important. I, you know, said before that you have to be where the consumer is. And for us that means being very precise about how we communicate to them. So we've talked a little bit about how we attribute and about how we organize our products to be able to.[00:35:35] Really dial into the occasion and the relationship and the preferences of the person receiving the gift. So because we've built our system to because we've built to and from, to allow for that, it allows us to be very precise in our marketing so we can very easily. Create a blog post about, you know, my sister who lives in a mid-century modern house who loves gardening.[00:35:58] So you can bring these [00:36:00] like disparate attributes together and create a very quickly create a list of gifts that will be appropriate for that person. And what that allows us to do is it allows us to meet the customer where they, where they are. To very specific Facebook group or whether it's a creator that's focused on a particular segment or topic or whatever it is.[00:36:20] And we've had a lot of success just being able to, to be so precise with the, the data and the assortment.[00:36:26] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, so you really do kind, kind of play on the whole discovery piece by creating these kind of interesting, inspirational moments of, of discovery. I, I would describe,[00:36:36] Bridget Johns: Yeah, and we do that across lots of different channels because customers are everywhere. So, you know, for one particular customer it might be a Facebook group for another customer, it might be a creator that's focused on gift wrapping and really like dialing into their audience and the. The types of people who like to follow their content, whatever it is.[00:36:55] So it's been like a really, a really interesting journey for me having lived my whole life in brick and [00:37:00] mortar to start being able to really dial into these little micro moments in a impactful way.[00:37:06] Ricardo Belmar: So Roshan mentioned this or touched on a little bit earlier and some of the sources of inspiration, I mentioned social media and that always makes me think about social commerce in general. So I, I'm curious, Bridget, what opportunity you see in the social commerce space in particular what you're doing at, to and from.[00:37:24] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I mean, it's been obviously a big important conversation for us, and I think there is so, so much interesting retail happening in the social commerce space, having, you know, Having studied retail for, you know, all of my career as, you know, I think being able to tap into that's critically important because it's such an important place for consumers and where they are and what they expect.[00:37:48] What we've done for this holiday season is we've allowed, we're allowing a beset of creators to create these custom gift lists that then they can kind of manage and share to their audience. So they can be pro, [00:38:00] you know, products from our assortment, but they can also be products that they. Think are interesting as gifts and we've given them some really good tools and the feedback has been very good so far.[00:38:10] We'll see through the holiday. Like I said, it's just a test we just launched in June, so we, you know, are still learning along the way. But we think[00:38:17] that, you know, giving tools to creators and, you know, having more visibility for social commerce, we think is important and will continue to be, you know, a growth area over time.[00:38:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I have to agree with that as a, as a growth area for.[00:38:30] Bridget Johns: Yeah,[00:38:31] Ricardo Belmar: so makes me think, you know, timing is everything. and so back in holiday 2020, I, I wrote an article for the Robin Report about the death of Black Friday. And yes, it was meant to shock readers quite a bit. but my point was that Black Friday didn't really need to live on the way we're all used to thinking of it given how consumers started shopping so much earlier in the season, and frankly, how that actually helps retailers manage their inventory better and, and their pricing and discount structure for the season, particularly when we keep running [00:39:00] into these never ending supply chain challenges.[00:39:02] Roha, let me ask you, I mean, one of the findings I noted in the report where that. Younger generations might kind of spring into action with Black Friday and, and, and maybe Cyber Monday as well and get more shopping done. Whereas maybe, you know, gen Xer is like myself and maybe older generations, we might move a little slower and leave the holiday shopping for later and, and end up, you know, doing a lot more of that shopping in December.[00:39:27] Is there really a difference in timing for when each generation starts shopping from the findings you have and, and how should retailers react to thi[00:39:35] Roshan Jhunja: s?[00:39:35] Yeah, it's a, it's a great question on the timing. You know, for a while I think we all know that there was a bit of concern that the, the windows kept stretching earlier and, and, you know, are we gonna eat Thanksgiving dinners or are we just gonna go straight to the stores that day? And so I think what's interesting here is that, you know, we know that three quarters of Americans are gonna have their holiday shopping.[00:39:53] By December 1st. And so there's, it's more crucial than ever to kind of get started. Here we are in November you know, almost [00:40:00] halfway through it. And you know, I think Casey said she was already done. So you know, there's definitely evidence for, for starting earlier. That's not to say that folks won't be purchasing later in the season.[00:40:08] We do know that one in six are gonna start purchasing in earlier December, but by the time you get to mid-December, it's only one in 12. One of the ways to think about this is it makes it crucial to start your marketing as early as possible and to, to target on the channels that you think are important to get visibility out there.[00:40:25] But also it all is not lost, right? Black Friday, I think the term originated from, you know, retailers, you know, that might be in the red all year. Finally get into the black as they get into the holiday season. And so, you know, all is not lost if you kind of miss those early windows. I think still in December what you get is a lot of last minute shopping folks are, are still, like I said, there's a lot of consumer purchasing power out there.[00:40:45] So there's still a big windows opportunity to think about, you know, what inventory you have that you were interested in moving during the holiday season. And again, just continue to lean into marketing and discounting and make sure that you can reach those consumers that are trying to finish up their.[00:40:59] Casey Golden: said that [00:41:00] we weren't gonna focus on like the typical holiday retail trends that everybody else talks about. But what can I say? Like, show me the money we have to say a little bit before we close on what sales expectations are. Right. Ro in the report it says that 44% of retailers expect sales to grow this season.[00:41:19] Another 20% expect everything to remain pretty flat. Putting you on the spot here, how much of this do you think is due to inflation prices? Especially considering the expectations of heavy discounting? What's, what's kind of your prediction here?[00:41:35] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, you know, It's, it's a good thing. You know, you let in with a follow of the money. Best I can tell folks are still spending and, and it's surprising in some ways because, you know, there is a lot going on. There's a lot of uncertainty and turbin in the world, but consumers are still spending.[00:41:49] And so really what I think, you know, in terms of retailers, they're kind of keyed into this and they know that you know, that there's still you know, transactions that folks are, are interested in. Some of the stats that we cited [00:42:00] earlier where there are significant portions of the consumer base that is going to spend more than last year.[00:42:04] Some of them ex expect to spend quite a bit more. You know, that right there is your inflationary answer. Even though those dollars are buying less, they're going to spend more of those dollars to make sure they can get the gifting done that they wanna do. And so, you know, yes, there's expectations in heavy discounting.[00:42:19] I would expect that to skew more towards the larger retailers. We've all seen headlines, whether it be Target, and you know you know, Some of the other folks that really leaned heavily into supply chain by overstocking. But I would say for smaller retailers, I don't know that there's gonna be as aggressive ing.[00:42:34] We do know that, you know, most folks in order to be moved by a discount, it needs to be 20% or more right. For them to even consider that changing their behavior. But here I would expect that I expect that retailers are still gonna see a lot of strong purchasing this holiday season.[00:42:48] Casey Golden: Bridget, I'm not gonna let you escape this one either. What is your overall hot take on sales this season? I come from a world of luxury, so there's no discounts on designer handbags. They're under the trees , [00:43:00] but.[00:43:03] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting. I mean, I have been really impressed with actually the transparency from brands particularly the direct to consumer brands where they have. Not started their discounting, but they have told you they're going to start it. So you get an email that says, our friends and family or our Black Friday is going to start on this day, sign up to be on the list.[00:43:25] So it automatically puts it in your mind and you're like, okay. Like I, to me, that is one of the biggest shifts in email marketing. I haven't seen it and. Past years where you're getting like proactive notifications that the, you always know the sale is coming, but for D to C brands to be like, okay, next Friday we're gonna have 20% off, so be ready, or, you know, get early on the list.[00:43:47] I think it's super interesting this season. And I, I agree with Roshan. I like, I think it's going to be like flat to up. I don't think it's gonna be down.[00:43:56] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. I think everyone will be happy to hear[00:43:59] Bridget Johns: I [00:44:00] also don't, I also don't, but I also don't think it's gonna feel like a win[00:44:03] because I think retailers are gonna have to work so hard to get that flat up that it's gonna feel very painful.[00:44:11] Casey Golden: Very painful. I mean, we're not really used to this holiday rush. Right. And if they're. They're budgeting their staff and increasing their budgets on the experiential associates. In moments like baristas rather than store staff. I think we can expect that there's gonna be some longer lines. Longer hours, rather than hiring more staff.[00:44:30] Everybody's just gonna be working longer, so, Take it easy on everybody working in[00:44:35] stores this season. Be kind, find your patience. Bring your own hot cocoa[00:44:42] Ricardo Belmar: That's[00:44:42] right.[00:44:42] Casey Golden: if you have to.[00:44:43] Ricardo Belmar: telling stat, maybe what we're all gonna look at after the season is what was the margin pressure for retailers? So wherever the sales end up, I, I think even if we all say it's flat to up how, much of those dollars, you know, translated into [00:45:00] margin for retail, I think that's gonna be the, the big question.[00:45:02] So, to close this out today, Roshan, If you could leave our retailers retailing listeners your top holiday tip, what would it be.[00:45:11] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, look a lot of what we covered today, including omnichannel and wanting to meet buyers where they are as well as making sure that you're leveraging your discounting. I think you really have to lean into the data. Here the top tip I have is to make sure that your inventory management system, your, your catalog management is up to date.[00:45:29] You can lean heavily into those reports, right? So, you know, one of the things that Square's been doing to empower retailers is to make sure that we allow you to have insights into your data where, you know, to your point on margins, right, and your costs are good, sold. But also, you know, what's selling, you know, what are your velocities like, and, and what should you do as a result?[00:45:43] And maybe the things that are moving less quickly need more aggressive discounting. So I would say that the, the more you can leverage digitizing your catalog and inventory information, the less, like the more able you are to sell effectively online. The less likely you are to run out of inventory unexpectedly, right?[00:45:58] And, and those dreaded outta stock [00:46:00] moments. And most importantly, you can leverage that reporting. You can learn from what you're, if you've been doing this for a year, you can learn from last year to project, you know, how you need to run this holiday season. Or you can leverage what's happening now to predict the future.[00:46:11] And so I would say really emphasize leaning on your, your digital systems to kinda power you through this holiday.[00:46:18] Casey Golden: So to bring us back to the present. Pun intended. Bridget for everyone starting to shop. I mean, you've got quite a special destination for gifting at to and from, but what are the hottest items under the tree this season? What does everybody want? What are people buying?[00:46:35] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I have like the hot take. This is the gift because we're all about that personalized gift that's very specific to you. But we do see gifting breaking down into three very distinct categories. Val values led not value, but values led gifting. So what is important to the person you're gifting for?[00:46:56] I think the second area that we haven't really talked about, but I think is [00:47:00] very important, and it's. Been a bit of a trick I think from retailers is personalization. Cause you can't return something that's personalized. So I think like the personalization has been very key in finding ways to make those gifts feel even more special.[00:47:16] And then the third trend that we're seeing are gifts that really help you spend time together as a family. I think that's something that has continued post covid. Like people have learned that they actually like spending time with their family. And I think that trend.[00:47:30] Actually continues. Like I think that's not something that has gone away.[00:47:34] So I would say those are the three areas. And then, you know, if you're a mid-century modern lover who, you know, likes gardening, you're gonna get something very different than the hockey mom.[00:47:45] Ricardo Belmar: That's very true. Very true. Well, Bridget, Roshan, this has been a fantastic discussion. We can't thank you enough for joining us today for our holiday shopping special episode. We covered so much ground. I can't believe how time has run out on us so [00:48:00] quickly.[00:48:00] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, I had a fantastic time chatting with you all. Thanks for having me on.[00:48:04] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I really enjoyed it, so it was a lot of fun.[00:48:06] Casey Golden: Thank you both for joining us. This show is a wrap[00:48:10] Closing Wishes[00:48:10] Casey Golden: wrapping up this holiday special edition retail razor show and wishing our guests and listeners a very merry holiday. We hope you slay your sales targets and delight your customers this festive season.[00:48:22] Show Close[00:48:22] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden.[00:48:54] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore [00:49:00] Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[00:49:10] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.[00:49:11] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show.

Are you out the door at 5:01, won't work weekends and prefer texting to face-to-face meetings? Or do you live to work, can't text and can't tolerate change? Like most stereotypes, these over-generalized generalizations about generational groups lead to further miscommunication—and often aren't correct. So how does one speak across generations, particularly in the Church? Rev. Dr. Darrell Hall lays it out in his new book, “Speaking Across Generations: Messages That Satisfy Boomers, Xers, Millennials, Gen Z, and Beyond.” He currently serves as the Campus Pastor of the Elizabeth Baptist Church campus in Conyers, Georgia. And he's made it part of his ministry to communicate effectively with members of every generational people group—each with its own culture and preferences. He's on the show to share more about this idea of generational intelligence and how we all can better speak across generations. EPISODE SHOWNOTES: Read more. WHAT'S YOUR CAUSE? Take our quiz. STUDY SCRIPTURE. Get inside the collection. GATHER WITH CARING MOMS. Join the group. BE INSPIRED. Follow us on Instagram. FIGHT FOR GOOD. Give to The Salvation Army.

Mordecai Ian Brownlee, president of the Community College of Aurora, will lead the conversation on navigating the digital equity gap in higher education.   FASKIANOS: Welcome to CFR's Higher Education Webinar. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Mordecai Ian Brownlee with us today to talk about the digital equity gap in higher education. Dr. Brownlee is president of the Community College of Aurora in Colorado. He also teaches for Lamar University in the College of Education and Human Development. Dr. Brownlee publishes frequently and serves as a columnist for EdSurge. He has been featured on a number of national platforms including by Diverse Issues in Higher Education magazine as a new school leader representing the next generation of college presidents, and he was most recently appointed to serve on the board of directors of the American Association of Community Colleges. So, Dr. Brownlee, thank you very much for taking the time to be with us. I thought we could begin by having you define digital equity and give us an overview of the digital equity gap in higher education, and I know you are going to share a presentation with us so we look forward to seeing that on screen. BROWNLEE: Absolutely. Thank you so much for the opportunity to the Council on Foreign Relations. Just thank you all so much. And to answer that question as we talk about digital equity, it's the assurance of ensuring that all have access to the information technology available and to have the capacity to engage in society and productive citizenship. And so we'll talk about that and let me just start sharing the screen and we'll jump right into it. All right. Here we go. So, once again, thank you all for the opportunity, again, to the Council of Foreign Relations for this opportunity to talk about navigating digital equity. Bringing greetings on behalf of the Community College of Aurora here in Aurora, Colorado. And let's just jump right into it. You know, as we talk about defining this work, how to navigate this work, we have to first understand the work, and to understand digital equity we must first understand the digital divide. And so, you know, as we talked about the digital divide at the beginning of the pandemic it, certainly, was dealing with the voice and mindset, the texture and tone, of accessibility and being able to engage in learning throughout the pandemic and, first of all, I would say as educators it's so critical that even as we are, quote/unquote, “coming out of the pandemic” that we still acknowledge part of the challenges that are happening across the country and across the world in regards to accessibility—equitable accessibility to information technology, to the tools, and to have the capacity to not only learn but, certainly, engage in the economy and society. So as we talk about digital equity, we must understand the digital divide and so let's kind of define that. One of my favorite definitions for the digital divide defined comes from the National League of Cities and they say the digital divide is the gap between individuals who have access to computers, high-speed internet, and the skills to use them, and those who do not. There's two critical components as we talk about digital equity that I want to call out with the digital divide definition here. One is access. The other is skill. Access and skill. So as we think about equity and just think about how do we level the playing field, how do we close the gap on accessibility and skill attainment to engage. And it's not just being able to access and that's the other—I think the complexity here as we think about the term equity because just because I provide you the computer, right—and we found this during the pandemic—just because I provide you the computer do you even have broadband access? And if you have broadband access do you have dependable sustainable broadband access? And then if you have sustainable broadband access, are you skilled to not only learn but and engage through this instrument and tool, and that in itself is where we have found there to be challenges as we think throughout the pandemic and, certainly, beyond the pandemic on what we must do to close the gap for equity and the digital divide. So digital divide provides that access, skill. Equity will then take us deeper into this work. Here are key factors I want to call out in regards to how we must eradicate or address these challenges, these factors, in order to close the gap on the digital divide. Number one, what we have seen through research—and digitalresponsibility.org has done a great job of calling this out—number one, age-related issues as we think about the various generations that are engaged in society and still present in society. We have digital natives. I consider myself to be a digital native as a millennial. But this is very different than previous generations that may not have had the proper training and skill and their jobs do not have them engaging, utilizing these tools and instruments on a regular basis and so that in itself has created some challenges. And, again, there is, certainly, all those that are outliers and those among the generations that have been able to engage in these instruments and tools. However, it is truly a fact through research that age-related issues have been a part of this challenge, more specifically, speaking to our older population. Socioeconomic factors—have to talk about it. I think about it, especially in the higher education space. Our tribal institutions is where I've heard throughout the pandemic some of our most severe challenges that have been experienced in regards to the digital divide. One of the stories that I heard that just breaks my heart—I remember the first time I heard it, it truly had me in tears—we were at the height of the pandemic at this point and what we were learning is in one particular tribal community in order for those students to complete—these are young K-12 students—in order for them to complete their assignments they had elders and community members of that tribe that would walk the students up to the highest point on the mountain within that particular tribal territory just to be able to pick up an internet signal, and they were able to do this when there was not as much traffic on that internet broadband access—that grid, if you will. And so those students were having to do their work—their homework—between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. in the morning. Very interesting reality—unfortunate reality. We, certainly, have to come up with the solutions to addressing this. This in itself is part of that digital divide conversation. Geographic causes—it depends on where you are in the country. I remember at one point in time I was teaching and served the University of Charleston out of Charleston, West Virginia, and for those that are familiar with that part of the country in the Appalachia, I would have my students that were having to use their own cell phones in order to complete their assignments and upload their assignments. They did not have either, in some cases, the actual tools or accessibility, would have to drive in to more populated spaces to pick up a signal. This was impacting their learning experience. This in itself is all a part of that digital divide. Last, certainly, not least, racial, culture, language. All of this plays a role and more in that skill set component along with accessibility component and how are we going to as educators, as key stakeholders within our community, leaders, be a part of the solution to close that divide. Age-related issues, socioeconomic factors, geographic causes, racial, cultural, and language. Again, digitalresponsibility.org is the source on that there. Step two, to navigate digital equity we must understand digital equity, and so now we're going to go and delve into what does it mean—what does digital equity mean. So I'm taking my definition, again, from the National League of Cities. Digital equity is a condition in which all individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in our society, democracy, and economy. This is huge. So, again, as you heard me talk about the digital divide just moments ago, it's the component of accessibility and skill. That skill is then where we get into productive citizenship through society, democracy, and economy, and so now we're talking about how does this tool, this instrument—it's much more than just accessibility. Now how do I engage? How am I advancing my family, my economic—social economic realities through this instrument and tool? The definition goes on to say—again, by the National League of Cities—digital equity is necessary for civic and cultural participation, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential services. Case in point, life. As we think about all aspects of life from employment to social participation—as we think social media engagement, employment, we all understand what that means; lifelong learning, certainly as educators we have to think about that component—and then accessibility to the tools that we need, I think about my own child who this past weekend had to reach out for virtual assistance from medical care for an earache that he was having. My ability to have the skill set and accessibility to reach out, obtain those resources for my family, and engage through an electronic means to fulfill what my needs were are all a part of this equity. Life in itself should be able to remain whole in what I produce and how it is able to produce within me, and that is in itself digital equity. So step three, let's discuss how to navigate digital equity in higher education and, again, hello to all of our educators that are on the call today. So here's some tips that I want to leave for you on today just to think about, and I look forward to our conversation that we're about to have here in a moment. Number one, as educators—and we're talking about navigating digital equity—it is so important that we understand who we're serving. I say that because, unfortunately, what can happen is especially as educators and we think about the economy, the disruptions that we're experiencing in the marketplace right now, we'll sometimes pursue who we want, not necessarily who we have, and that's unfortunate. As we think about the respective institutional missions and the spaces in which we serve, we have to be mission centered and embrace who it is that we're serving because we owe it to those students who are pursuing their academic endeavors and their professional endeavors through our respective institutions to totally be served. We must understand their realities. One of the conversations we have here at the Community College of Aurora is the conversation about you don't know who is actually sitting, respectively, in that seat in that classroom and what they had to overcome in order to sit in that seat that particular day. Do we know how many bus routes they had to take? Do we understand the challenges that they were having with their children? Do we know are they now leaving their second job that they've worked for the past twenty-four hours to now sit in your classroom? So we have to understand, be aware, and approach that engagement with a sense of grace. I think that's a word that we, perhaps, haven't necessarily embraced in the academy in the way in which we have—should have, but now more than ever we have to. Secondly, create systems that level the learning engagement field. So it's this idea of privilege—this thought of privilege—and, perhaps, what we assumed that everyone had access to and what everyone had the ability to engage with that they don't necessarily have, and if they do have accessibility to it do we have a true understanding of what all they have to do to have that level of engagement and accessibility? Again, case in point, bus routes. Think about what's happening around our country. There has been a reduction from a transportation standpoint financially, and many of the routes and the transportation services that have been provided—some of this due to disruption, others due to areas in which there have had to be a funneling of tax dollars and resources in other spaces and places in our communities. Long story short, the reality is, is that in many communities the bus routes have had to be reduced, which means that individuals are either having to walk or find ways to public accessibility to some of these resources in terms of broadband access and computer access. So then as we're teaching and we're instructing and we're providing services, we have to think about how can we level the playing field and remove barriers? Does it have to be performed—does that learning outcome have to come in the form of computer access and broadband accessibility? And maybe it does, so this takes us to point number three. Let's promote community resources to close the digital divide. I think that laser focus on how we're going to close that divide creates this space for equity, and so, perhaps, it's through libraries. There's one organization out of North Carolina in some of their rural spaces they have now through grant funds created different spaces in their rural communities for those in more rural spaces to gain access to a computer lab and the grants are sustaining that accessibility through computer labs in those rural spaces. Amazing resource. There's many others and examples that we can share around the country. So with that said, let's promote these community resources. Sometimes it's a library. Sometimes it's a grant-funded opportunity. Sometimes it's a local nonprofit. So let's talk about how we can be creative in our respective communities to close the gap there. Fourth, adjust learning experiences to be more inclusive. Not only do we need to create the systems to level the playing field but we must then adjust the learning experiences to be more inclusive to create learning spaces and engagement spaces for all, going back to not only accessibility but skill. Last, certainly not least, providing institutional resources to close the digital divide. What I mean by this is, is that, in closing, due to—through the pandemic and many of our institutions received the Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds—the HEERF funds. Those HEERF funds were utilized in many different ways. In many cases, we were able to do laptop loan programs. In some spaces they were even doing hotspot loan programs. And so now that we are coming out of the pandemic what does it look like to sustain these resources, OK, because now that we provide these resources how do we sustain them? How do we ensure that we're having long-term engagements? One of the things that I want and I ask from my educators, especially administrators, to look at: How do we close this—(inaudible)—without placing the costs on the backs of our students? They already have enough going on. We don't need to just move the cost of something on to their tuition and fees. How can we be even more creative with the engagements and enrollments of our students to being laser focused on what we're doing to close, again, many of those factors and gaps that were highlighted earlier? So grateful for the opportunity. Have a website. Would love to engage with you all more. I know we're getting ready to go into conversation. But itsdrmordecai.com and, again, thank you all so much for the opportunity. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Thank you so much for that overview. So we're going to go to all of you for your questions now. You can click the raised hand icon on your screen to ask a question, and on an iPad or a tablet click the more button to access the raised hand feature. When you're called upon accept the unmute prompt and please state your name and affiliation followed by a question. You can also submit a written question by the Q&A icon and I will read out the question, and if you do write your question please include your affiliation just to give us a sense of where you're coming from. And there are no questions as of yet but I know that will change, or else you were so thorough that nobody has questions. (Laughs.) So do you see now with the pandemic experience that there will be continued—I'm going to ask the first question—you know, that this has opened up the space now for deeper understanding of the digital divide and bringing the resources to bear? Or now that we're kind of post-pandemic or whatever this is people have forgotten about it and are moving on? BROWNLEE: Thank you so much for the question, my friend. I think that it's twofold. There's two sides of this coin, right. So there's the one side of the coin where the awareness now is so much deeper and richer than it ever has been because of the amount of resources and what it took to sustain since 2020 those resources that were being provided to the students in the community. So now there's many that have learned and they're now having those conversations about how to sustain the resources because, as we all know, while there's been an extension of HEERF funds through the Department of Education, that day is coming to an end here pretty soon and so we have to talk about sustainability. The other side of that coin is, unfortunately, there are those that acknowledge what the realities were but their agenda is more on how do we move past it, not necessarily sustain what we were providing. That's part of the issue for some that we have to address because we don't just move on from hardship, right. That hardship is real and we have to still maintain a laser focus on how we're going to close the digital divide, especially in the academic spaces, but also understanding our responsibility as not only educators but community leaders, stakeholders within our community, to be a part of the solutions and the expansions on equitable access and resources being made available. And so I think with both sides of those coins we're seeing two different realities. But I think that there's also a need now more than ever to maintain the senses of urgency around the haves and have nots and what we're going to do to be a part of the solution to ensure that we're raising the level of accessibility and skill for all within our communities. FASKIANOS: I noted in your presentation you talked about knowing who your students are. So what advice do you have for higher education educators and leaders who are trying to navigate the digital divide in their classroom and to get to know—to figure out where their students are coming from and what their needs may be? BROWNLEE: So, as we all know, especially in the IR space, right, there's different tools, resources, that we can use to survey our students. There's different splash pages, if you will, that we can utilize in terms of the enrollment processes or the readvising processes, or even think of some of our learning management tools that we can engage with students to determine what their needs truly are. I think that it's important that we create tools and instruments that will have high engagement rates. Sometimes those have to be incentivized. But we have to think about outside of our normal student leader responses how we're capturing the voice of all of our students. And so that's those that would not typically provide response, and as we think about the digital divide we have to acknowledge that that tool, that instrument, can't just be electronic. What are we going to do to have paper resources or maybe through phone conversations, outreach, being able to have, certainly, the walk around conversations around our respective campuses and the universities. And so we need to have those conversations to make sure that we're capturing the voice of all of our students, I think, is in the true spirit of continued improvement. We have to understand who we serve and then acknowledge, through the development of systems and the recalibration of our student experiences, are the voice of these students. FASKIANOS: Right. And in terms of the skills, because community colleges are so focused on developing the skills, what specifically are you doing at Aurora or are you seeing in the community college space to help students develop those skills that they need to navigate digitally? BROWNLEE: Absolutely. One of the things I'll talk about—and those that may not be aware and I don't know who all has visited Denver—but the history of Aurora—Aurora is the most diverse community—city—in the state of Colorado. I call that out because immigrants—it has a strong—there's a strong population in this community and so part of our young thirty-nine years of existence in this community has been providing English second language courses. We're noticing that especially our immigrant families and communities that are seeking social and economic mobility, highly skilled from where they come from but now we must create learning opportunities to close that gap, not only through language but through accessibility in this American market. And so through our community ESL programs we've been able to educate upwards of two thousand students a year and walk them through the various levels of learning and engagement with the English language, and then at some point in that process—learning process—we then engage and begin the computer engagement in utilizing the English language in their native language and beginning to close that gap. So I think that that work in itself is a part of that digital equity that must be created—how do you create the foundation to build upon to then advance the engagement. And there's been some other great examples that I've seen around the country in doing that work, a lot of grant programs that I've seen in respective communities. You heard me talk about what's happening out there in the Carolinas. But I think about what's also happening over in California. California has been a great state that's been able to do some work about working and identifying through heat maps and institutional resource—research and resources and community resources, looking at demographics, identifying low socioeconomic spaces, and putting concentrated efforts in those particular communities to increase the level of engagement, accessibility, and skill, and it's critical and key. FASKIANOS: Great. We have a question from Gloria Ayee. So if you can unmute yourself and state your affiliation. Q: Hello. Thank you so much for sharing this important work that you're doing. I am Gloria Ayee and I am a lecturer and senior research fellow at Harvard University, and my question is about the connection between the digital divide and also how it mirrors to current inequities that we see in the educational system in general. So thinking about that type of relationship, what do you think are the most significant challenges to addressing the digital divide, given the issues that we continue to see with the educational system in general at all types of institutions, and what do you foresee as the best way to actually address these challenges? BROWNLEE: Oh, that's a great question. Great question. Thank you so much for asking that question, Gloria. I would say two things come to mind—funding and agenda, right. So if—I'll tell you what comes to mind for me. So as we think about financially and we look at how these institutions are funded around the country, let's think K-12. So grade schools. Think K-12. Let's also think higher education. Are we talking headcount? Are we talking full-time equivalency? Are we talking success points? Are we talking—even as we think about developmental education, how are these institutions being funded to sustain the work of working especially with low socioeconomic communities? Let's just take, for example, full-time equivalency, especially in this higher education space. So if I were someone who wanted to work to create programs that I'm going to help in the advancing and addressing of the digital divide and advancing digital equity, I need funds in order to do that. Now, could I pursue grant funds? Absolutely. But even—we all know that grant funds are not necessarily all the time sustainable funds. Short-term funds, but it still has to be a hard-lined. So then as we think about doing this work—I'll go back to funding and agenda—realizing and looking at what would need to shift within particularly my state's legislative agenda or, perhaps, in that particular district how the funding is occurring. If I'm working with a high population, which we are here at the Community College of Aurora—a high population of part-time students, these are students that are maybe taking one class and engaging. However, if I'm funded by a full-time equivalency model it then takes several students that are taking one class to then equal that one full-time equivalent, which then impacts my funding structure. So then how do I then serve, yet, I am seeking to obtain? And this is where we then get into, I think, a part of that friction of agenda and funding models. So I think that as we think equity—with an equity mindset beyond just the initiatives of overlay—we actually want to bake in the equity experience within our respective states and communities—then we're going to have to take a look at the funding agenda, the agenda and funding—how are we truly going to advance equity and closing the digital divide. It has to be funded properly towards sustainability. We've seen this same thing occur in developmental education as well for those who've been a part of those conversations where we saw around the country there will be a reduction in developmental education funding, which has been impacted, in some cases, the success rates and resources that were historically provided through community colleges in certain communities. Same thing in this digital divide space and digital equity. So funding an agenda, and I think that the solution is, is really coming to the table and saying what does equity look like without it being an overlaid agenda, without it just being a conversation? What does it look like for it to be baked into the experience of how we're going to transform lives, which then means that, in many cases, legislatively and funding models. We have to move from a transactional mindset to a transformational mindset and we have to go all in on ensuring that we're creating equitable communities and engagements for those that we serve. Oh, you're muted, my friend. FASKIANOS: Yes. Thank you. After two-and-a-half years—(laughter)—I should know that. Encourage all of you to share your best practices and what you're doing in your communities as well. You know, we have seen the Biden administration really focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion. They're focusing on bringing more diversity to the State Department and other parts of the government. Is the Department of Education looking at the funding model? Is this an area that they are actively trying to reform and adjust? BROWNLEE: I get the sense—and I've had the pleasure of speaking in front of several legislators in different venues—I get the sense that there is a major conversation that's happening. I do. I truly get the sense that there's a major conversation happening, not just with our current administration from thinking about our U.S. president but also thinking local legislators as well. I really think that there's conversations—many conversations that are happening. If anything, I feel as though the major—I don't want to use the word barrier so I'm searching for the appropriate word here. But I think the major hurdle that we're going to have to think about is how we have built and designed our funding models to date. You know, some of these funding models were built in early 1990s, mid-1990s in some cases. Really, you don't see it too much early 2000s, and so we have older financial modeling infrastructure that we're trying to pursue this work and how to change it. And so it can't be a Band-Aid approach. I think in some spaces and communities that's what's been done is that rather than changing the actual model, the infrastructure itself, it's received a Band-Aid in the form of grants. And I do believe that grants are significant and, certainly, necessary and appreciated. However, I think that we're reaching a point in society where there has to be a total restructuring of our funding models and taking a look at what percentages are going where, taking a look at the demographics in our respective communities, taking a look at the economic realities in our respective communities. Take a look at just how much the demographics are shifting in our respective communities and building a model that's ready to engage, sustain, and raise the level for all, and I think that we're on our way. I, certainly, hope that we are. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Rufus Glasper. Q: I am here. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Q: Hi, Mordecai. How are you today? BROWNLEE: How are you, sir? Q: Hi, Irina. FASKIANOS: Hi, Rufus. Great to hear from you. Q: Mordecai, talk a little bit about digital equity and faculty. How have they accepted, rejected, embraced what you were describing as all of the different factors that are affecting our students, and what kind of practices have you developed or can be developed to ensure that faculty can continue the progress and include our students who are most needy? BROWNLEE: Great question, Dr. Glasper. I didn't expect anything different coming from you. So, let me just say, we've had some very intense conversations, and I have to really give our faculty and our instructors kudos because I will tell you this is probably by far one of the most engaged communities that I've ever worked in of educators that are committed to just truly getting to the solution. There's some strong work that was done around inclusive excellence here at the Community College of Aurora, certainly, prior to my arrival. It led to this college receiving an Inclusive Excellence Award from the American Association of Community Colleges right around 2017. Part of their work at that time was looking at, as our faculty and our academy, how were we going to close the gap on success rates, particularly in English and math, and part of that work was creating resources towards gap closure to ensure that those that had not traditionally and historically had access to some of those learning materials and plans and resources that they were being provided those in a more intensive way. Now as we think more into the digital space and, certainly, think through the pandemic, what we've now done as an institution is that we've become—Community College of Aurora has become the very first Achieving the Dream institution in the state of Colorado and one of the projects that our faculty and our instructors are delving into—I've got a big meeting tomorrow on this, matter of fact—is taking a look at the respective success rates in our gateway courses—our key courses that are gateways into our respective academic programs—and asking ourselves how can we create more equitable learning experiences. Two things—critical things—that I've seen our faculty do. Number one, looking at the data. I think that the data is key and critical—taking a look, disaggregating that data. And our faculty and our instructors continue to do that work, looking at a three-year spread, a five-year spread, and saying: Where is the success occurring? Who's it occurring with and those respective identities of those students? And then really asking the hard questions: Why isn't this population succeeding at the same rate as this population? The other part of this criticality is, is also then accepting that there can't be an excuse in the work. There can't be an excuse in the work and that we must ensure then that we are creating the equitable resources and infrastructure to close the gap, create learning experiences, and say, listen, if our students can't access the internet and the Web then what can we do to create for them the resources, whether it be paper? If they can't come to the teaching demonstration at this particular day how can I create an opportunity for them to engage and obtain that information at another given time? Perhaps they're a working parent and can't necessarily attend at 10:00 a.m. but they can at 5:00 p.m. What are we doing to level the playing field with accessibility? And the other aspect of that is just that our faculty and instructors have been partnering to create these more holistic learning engagement opportunities where if we're having a conversation in English then what can we do within our math department and almost cohorting, in a sense, the learning experiences amongst those two separate classes but then creating like engagements where the same conversations happening in English could be happening in math and science to begin to bring about a new learning within the students to say, OK, well, this particular world issue, now I'm understanding it through various lenses and I understand the interconnectivity in these learning experiences. And so more integrated learning, and I think that we've got a long way to go but we're committed to doing that work. FASKIANOS: So Rufus Glasper is the chancellor of Maricopa Community Colleges, and I just thought I would ask you, Rufus, to maybe share your experience as the chancellor what has been working in your community. Q: I am the chancellor emeritus. I have not been at the colleges for a little over six years now. But I am the president and CEO for the League for Innovation in the Community College. And one of the things that I'd like to connect with with our experience right now we are involved in the state of Arizona with a project which is—which we are embracing. We are working with four different types of institutions right now—urban metropolitan, we have a couple of rural institutions and we have a couple of tribal, and we're trying to make that connectiveness between insecurities—student insecurities. So we're looking at housing. We're looking at hunger. We're looking at jobs. And one of the things that we have found is that we can't make either of these items connect and work without broadband first, and the reason being when you're looking at access it's critical when you start to look at the activities that are occurring throughout the U.S. now and specifically within Arizona—I'll talk about the connections we have now made that are national in scope, that are city, town, and county in scope, and the commitments that we are now working to obtain from all of those who are in position relative to enhancing broadband access and digital equity. There's actually a Center for Digital Equity at Arizona State University (ASU), and last week we had a gathering of all of our institutions to get a better understanding of what does digital equity mean as it comes from the ASU center. What does it mean for each of our different types of institutions, and I will tell you that the one that was hardest hit was the one you talked about and that's tribal just in terms of access, in terms of resources. But I am pleased with the dollars that are out there now at all levels. So if this is a time for us to increase access, increase affordability, than I think we should seize the moment. My question then, which would lead to another one, is on the whole notion of sustainability and you talked about that in terms of stimulus kinds of resources, and equity is in everyone's face right now, especially broadband and others. Is it a sustainable initiative and focus and what are the elements that need to be connected in order to make sure that it stays in the forefront and that our students who may have benefited from buses sitting in their neighborhood during the pandemic and others but are still trying to make choices? And I'll make the last connection point, and you made the opening—how flexible should our institutions be around work-based learning so that our students who are not able to come to the campus and be there on a regular basis but want to balance having a virtual environment? Do you see a balance coming or do you see us forced into staying the old, antiquated model of face-to-face classes and sixteen and eighteen weeks? BROWNLEE: Let me start with the sustainability component then. Thank you again, Dr. Glasper. From a sustainability standpoint, I'll say here at the institution part of the conversation—it's a hard conversation. But I encourage every educator to have this conversation, this brave conversation, in your spaces. Let's take a look at your success rates, and I'm just particularly speaking to higher education right now. Let's take a look at your various academic profiles. Let's take a look at what has been your engagements with your workforce partners, your advisory councils, in many cases, and let's talk about two things—one, the sustainability of those programs and, two, the social and economic mobility of those programs directly to workforce. I think what we will find is what we found here at the Community College of Aurora is that over time the various disruptions that have occurred has shifted the needs of our students. However, the institutions respectively delivering these services have not shifted with the times. And so it is quite possible that either our approach to the work or the actual lack of proper programming is prohibiting social and economic mobility in many of these communities and especially for us. Fifty-two percent of our students are first generation. Sixty-seven percent of our students are students of color. So as we talk about sustainability, we're right there on the front line of having to take a look at enrollment, full-time equivalency, completion, graduation, and employment rates, and we began to find a shifting of that. And so when we talk sustainability, I bring this up as a framework, if you will, to say once you've had those conversations now let's talk about where there are losses—financial losses—and areas in which we can truly be innovative and reallocate dollars that were once going in certain areas and infuse that into other areas that are going to have a higher return. So I think thinking, truly, with a return on investment—an ROI mindset—will then help us to not only meet the needs of our mission, meet it in its current state and its current needs and the disruption that's currently being experienced, which will then help create new opportunities for sustainability beyond what has just been HEERF funding or potential grant funding, it can be hardlined into the institutional mission. I think the other component of that sustainability, too, is looking at the strategic plans of our respective organizations, looking at those—not only the mission but the objectives and asking how equity is not necessarily a separate objective but equity is actually ingrained in all aspects of the objectives—the strategic objectives—because, at that point, we can then understand the significance in resourcing and funding equity all the way through the entirety of the institution. In regards to your latter question about work-based learning and the old model of doing things, I, certainly, believe and hope, Dr. Glasper, that there's this new movement that's occurring where we're going to have to embrace, whether we like it or not, the next era of higher education, and that next era will require us to not approach things in the same modalities and same ways. We're watching, especially in research, the confidence levels reduce—heavily reduced now in the public's perception of what higher education is to provide in comparison to what it once provided. Higher education in many communities isn't necessarily being seen as the sole or the primary tool towards social economic mobility as it once was twenty, thirty years ago. So what does this mean? Our approach to sixteen-week instruction is, certainly, going to have to be transformed. What does it look like to have five-week instruction? Eight-week instruction? What does it look like for us to have true noncredit instructional programs that's in direct partnership with business and industry to ramp up the training and social economic mobility opportunities within our communities? Folks aren't necessarily looking for a two-year or a four-year or a six-year learning experience. They need to put food on their family's table today. What does it look like for them to engage with the institution and have that kind of learning experience, and we have to do it with a digital equity mindset, right, because they're seeking opportunity. So it doesn't necessarily mean that they have accessibility in their current state. We want to get them to a state where they can have that accessibility. So how then do we create those tools? One key component of this is even looking at our college application processes. What is the readability score on some of these applications? We want to educate those that may have a reading level of a—seventh or eighth grade reading level. But some of these college applications are reading at a fourteen, fifteen grade reading level. That in itself is creating a barrier to those that are seeking opportunity, that need the opportunity to up skill. And so I think that the old model is going to, in my opinion, and hopefully quickly deteriorate and we're going to have to be more effective. But let me also say this. It is critical that we have our faculty and our instructors at the table. These decisions shouldn't be thrown upon them. It should be conversations that we're having collectively together, and then how can then we resource our faculty and our instructors and our staff to be a part of those solutions, drive those solutions, reinvest in them to be able to create more innovative and more, I'll say the word, relevant learning experiences because I truly believe that relevance is not necessarily a word that we've used in higher education in terms of our approach, but now more than ever we're going to have to. FASKIANOS: OK. So I'm going to take a written question from Nicole Muthoni, who is an entrepreneur and innovator at the University of Connecticut. She has been passionately working on bridging the divide in emergent nations, especially Kenya. Therefore, in this regard, the key factors creating the digital divide in this space is geographic causes, socioeconomic factors, and culture. So the question is what tools and programs can we use to effectively educate teachers to learn the necessary skills that they can use to teach their students in the classrooms. This is because most of the teachers have not been empowered with the necessary and needed skills for educating in the space of digital equity. BROWNLEE: I think—I began to speak to that right towards the end of what I was just sharing, right. FASKIANOS: Right. BROWNLEE: It's this idea of we've got to get out of the blame game. Oh, I want you to come up with the solution. Well, how are you investing in me to be a part of the solution? How are you even engaging me in part of being the solution? You know, as I talked earlier about those conversations we're having at CCA about what are those programs that have been unsustainable or times have shifted and changed and we needed to create some more relevant learning experiences. It is our faculty and our instructors that made that decision to be able to say, hey, it's time to pivot. They were at the table. Not just present for the sake of inclusion but, truly, the decision makers in that work. Now, I think, the next component of this work as we talked about achieving the dream and us being the first in the state of Colorado, part of our strategic plan is creating a—we don't have a name so just work with me here conceptually. We don't have a name yet. But I can tell you what the desired outcome is, and the desired outcome is that we create a learning center for our faculty and our instructors to grow and to be invested in and to learn what are those emerging approaches that will—on the verge of becoming best practices. However, they're not, quote/unquote, “best practices” around the country yet. What could we create here at CCA to be a part of those solutions? And also exposure to national best practice. What are we doing to invest into our people? So I think that part of that shifting that Dr. Glasper was calling out is going to have to occur now more than ever because, unfortunately, what's happened, I think, in the academy too many of our instructors and faculty have been blamed. Too many of our staff had been blamed, not engaged and brought about to be the solution, and not just thrown right out there in the fire to say come up with something. No. You need to care for your folks more deeply, more passionately, and more genuinely than we have ever before and really ask the question how are we going to be relevant and make sure that our folks feel cared for and that they're valued in the spaces in which they're serving. FASKIANOS: Thank you. So the next question is from Krishna Garza-Baker from the University of Texas at San Antonio. What would you say is the role of private service providers and their ability to assist in reducing the digital divide? Are they doing enough to collaborate with higher education institutions to address this area, specifically, internet service providers? And I'm going to add on to that. What are your recommendations for how schools can and should be leveraging corporate and community partnerships to help address the digital divide? BROWNLEE: You know, you heard me earlier talk about how we can't just do this overlay approach. Yes, I want to give you a voucher for reduced broadband access. That's wonderful. It is. It is grateful. It's better than not having it. But now let's talk about how we're truly going to hardline in opportunities for all. As we think about the spirit of advocacy, unfortunately, sometimes, as they say, it's the squeaky wheel gets the grease, I think, is how it's communicated. And so what I would say is, is that now we have to think about those that don't have a voice how we're still meeting their needs. And so working directly with corporate industry partners, those who have the access. What does it look like if we focus less on trying to make a dollar and more on trying to create opportunity? What would it look like if we all came about and said we want to be the solution to the issue? Yes, there's areas and opportunities where we'll make that dollar. But as we think about society as a whole, what does it look like to create experiences and a life for the goodness of all? And so I think that now we really more than ever have to have these conversations. More than ever it just can't be who gets the voucher. It's how do you create the accessibility for all, those who have a voice and those who know how to use their voice. And I think that—if I understand the nature of that question now, I will say with private entities, corporate partnerships, I think it's more visibility in these colleges and universities and these nonprofit spaces beyond the cameras and just looking at the campaigns. What does it look like for us to have the conversations day in and day out to say we're neighbors, we're all going to collectively be a part of the solutions and to bring the rising up, if you will, of our communities to raise the level for all and that's, certainly, what we're seeking to do. We've seen some major responsiveness in this particular community to say, listen, outside of just some campaign and a picture, what does it look like for you all to be a part of our learning experience, a part of our community, a part of our solutions, and to hardline these experiences for all. So equity causes and it charges and it demands that, and we have to realize the power of that. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Laila Bichara from SUNY Farmingdale. Many of my students are immigrants and are first-generation college students. My question is about skill transfer—once our students get access to technology for themselves and their families who are then losing their jobs due to automation. BROWNLEE: Demographic shift. I talked about it earlier. You know, I think about here in the Denver Metro area and I'm going to—I attended a site visit conversation with their chamber of commerce there in Denver. It was pretty telling. In looking at the demographics, it broke down how for millennials, I think, there's currently—so there's 3.3 million in the greater Denver area. It broke down for millennials, which I fall into this group—I think it was eight hundred and sixty-four thousand millennials currently in that space. Then it had Xers. Not Xers. It had generation Z. Z accounted for, roughly, six hundred thousand. But get this. So my children, my eight- and my four-year-old—they're generation alpha—were only accounting for, roughly, three hundred thousand in the space currently right now. I say that as an example that I'm going to walk us through really quickly, and that is, is with the lens of equity and we think about the shifting and the disruptions in market and we think about especially now in the markets humanization versus automation, and we want to create social and economic mobility for these respective spaces wherever those realities are and we think about accessibility to the internet and we talk about that digital equity and the digital divide, we then have to have a high degree of urgency within us to say that what will—can we create today that will prevent communities of color and low socioeconomic communities that traditionally in this current market would have been given opportunities but that in the future market, due to a lack of potential skill and accessibility, will not be provided the resources and the opportunities that they once were in an automated world. And so what do we do then to make sure that they're not the one pressing the button. They're the one that's coding the button, right, and that's all a part of that work and that shifting. So it's going to take stronger math and science skills and accessibility and equity all built into their learning experiences because if not the wide—we will widen the gap—the poverty gap—because we move, again, deeper into automation, lessen the humanization, and then we are essentially moving an entire population of folks further down the supply chain, if you will, which then will prohibit their learning—not learning, their earning ability. And so we have to be laser focused on those realities and, really, look to eradicate what's going to be future barriers now so systematically we are able to address it. FASKIANOS: Great. So the last question I wanted to ask you is you've just completed your first year as president. What are the lessons that you've learned? BROWNLEE: Oh, my gosh. I will tell you that, you know, I just released an article on this talking about my first year in the presidency and through EdSurge and lessons learned, and one of those lessons I would say is is—that I highlighted in that article is, you know, don't do more for an institution than you would do for your own family. I think that as educators, as community leaders, and anyone that's on this call, I'll just take the opportunity to encourage you. You know, sometimes we give our all to these entities in which we serve, and we do it and we give it countless hours. You know, we say it's a forty-hour job but we're probably spending fifty, sixty, seventy, if not more, and we get lost in that, right. And so there's good work to be done. However, what is the biggest mockery of all to save the world but lose your own family? And I think that part of my lesson that I had to really reflect on was, like, right now as I'm giving this lecture my eight-year-old son is here in the office with me right now that I'm trying to get to be quiet and work with me as I'm giving—having this time with you all now, right. He doesn't have school today. It's an in-service day. But really creating those engagements for my family to be engaged in the experiences and making sure that they're part of the process. I think the other component of this is, too—and I talked about this in the article—is realizing that it is a privilege to serve, never taking for granted the ability, the opportunity, that we have to serve because there's others that wish that they had these opportunities. So, yes, even in our most—our days of most frustration it still is a pleasure and a blessing and an opportunity to serve and honor. And so what would life look like if we embraced it for the pleasure and the honor that it truly is and how we treat and create spaces for others to thrive, because they're sacrificing being away from their families and loved ones to do this work. We need to create more communities for all to thrive. FASKIANOS: Oh, your son should be very proud of you. I have to say that—what a role model. BROWNLEE: Thank you. FASKIANOS: I'm going to go next to Laurette Foster. Laurette, please say your affiliation. It's great to have you on. Q: Hi. Laurette Foster, Prairie View A&M University in Texas. And I really don't have a question. I just want to say how delighted I was to hear the conversation and hear about what the next steps are, because looking back at the pandemic and how we wanted to step up and do so much and I'm just afraid that even though we did those things that needed to be done that many of us now are settling back into the old ways. And it's still funny that when you told the story about the tribal community happened to go to the top of the mountain from 2:00 in the morning to do—the passion for education is there with the kids. But we have to continue to do our part. So I just appreciate all the comments and—that you did today. It was really enlightening. So thank you very much. BROWNLEE: And thank you, and I will say that my wife is a proud product of Prairie View A&M. The Hill as well. So just thank you for your comments. FASKIANOS: We have another thank you from John Marks of LSU of Alexandria just saying that it was really great to take time out of his day and to—said they—definitely in Louisiana access and skills are, indeed, real obstacles that are typical of every online class that he's taught. I'm going to take the final question from Haetham Abdul-Razaq from Northwest Vista College, again, from San Antonio, Texas, working on a research project regarding online learning and community college students. One of the interesting findings is that some students might be considered as tech savvy, yet they have problems engaging in online classes. Do you think that we should build on the strengths of our students' digital knowledge when it comes to these sorts of skills? BROWNLEE: Great question. Absolutely. I think, you know, we talk about creating student-centered approaches and sometimes we're successful at that and other times we're not, perhaps, because if we were to really delve into student-centered approaches just how far from our base currently of how we approach higher education just how far it'll take us. But I would say, going back to an earlier conversation, now's the time more than ever to go there. Matter of fact, we should have went there already before. It's time, truly, for a revolution and an evolution in our approach to learning and engagement and advancement with an equity lens. And I go back to that word relevance. We have to create more relevant learning experiences. Think about business and industry. If we look at what's happened over the past ten years due to some of our bureaucracies and our lack of responsiveness. Look at business and industry. They're creating learning experiences right around higher education, in some cases not even engaging higher education anymore, directly working with middle schools and high schools to create their own strong pipelines. What has happened that that even came about, right? And so due to a lack of responsiveness, perhaps, innovation—true innovation—and that student-centered approach that we, perhaps, moved far from or maybe just took parts of that was easier to tackle, not the harder aspects of that, and so we now have to tackle it. We have to embrace it, because if not I think that five, ten years from now, certainly, twenty years from now, we'll have more institutional closures, more reductions in enrollments, if we fail to be responsive and create these more equitable learning opportunities that are geared at creating a digital equity. FASKIANOS: Right. Well, we are just at the end of our time. Thank you very much, Dr. Mordecai Brownlee. We really appreciate your being with us and sharing your insights, and to all of you for your questions and comments. And so you can follow Dr. Mordecai and also go to his website, itsdrmordecai.com, and at @itsdrmordecai, correct? BROWNLEE: That is correct. That is correct. I look forward to engaging with everyone. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. We really appreciate it. Just as a reminder for all of you, our next Higher Education webinar will be on Wednesday, November 2, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time. Rebecca Granato, associate vice president for global initiatives at Bard College, will talk about refugees, migration, and education. So we hope you'll tune in for that. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out CFR fellowships for educators at CFR.org/fellowships, and this is a program that allows educators to come for a year in residence at CFR or else go work in—we place you in government to get some policy-relevant experience. The deadline is October 31. So if you're interested email us and we can send you information about that. Also, go to CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis, and follow us at @CFR_Academic. Thank you all again. Thank you, Dr. Brownlee. We appreciate it, and we hope you have a good rest of the day. (END)  

О Боже! Not unlike Kevin O'Leary's napalm on LinkedIn about quiet quitting, Dr. Phil has weighed in on the subject. On Thursday, 9/29, the episode "Quiet Quitting: Lazy Employees or Taking a Stand?" hit the air waves and it featured people on both sides of the topic, including Attorney Ryan who has become a social media sensation on this issue. Key topics:✔️ According to Dr. Phil, "quiet quitting is bull."  So is he right? Or not?✔️ Are there people who advocate for quiet quitting while they're working their tails off? Are they giving you bad advice?

Click here to view the full show notes and transcript for this episode.Speaking across generations in the church is a challenge for many church leaders. Different generations have different ways of communicating. In fact, it's not even just that they use different words or phrases—it's more about how they understand the world around them.So, how do you reach such a diverse audience? How can you convey your message in a way that resonates with everyone? If you want to speak across generations, you need to understand their mindset, values, and interests so that you can speak their language. No matter what generation you are speaking to—Gen Z, Millennials, Gen Xers, Boomers—there are certain things you can do to better connect with them on a deeper level. All you need is some insight into the mindsets of each generation, as well as some practical tips for bringing those mindsets into your ministry practices.With the help of our guest, Dr. Darrell Hall, we'll unpack how each generation thinks differently and how you can use that knowledge to create an environment where all generations feel welcome, included, and valued.Dr. Darrell has authored a book titled Speaking Across Generation. So, it's a real treat to hear some insights from his research and experience on this subject."Whatever generation you're in, see yourself as a missionary to the generation you want to reach."-Dr.Darrell HallIt is important to remember that generational gaps should not prevent us from reaching out to people. After all, Jesus' message of love and acceptance transcends all generational divides.If you want to learn how to create a culture that engages all generations in your church, this episode will greatly benefit you.By the end of this episode, you will learn:What communication approach will work with each generation How to bridge the generational gap in your churchWhy understanding generational differences mattersHow each generation communicatesSome insights and research results from his book Speaking Across Generations: Messages That Satisfy Boomers, Xers, Millennials, Gen Z, and BeyondResources Mentioned: Read Dr. Darell's latest book: Speaking Across Generations Follow Dr. Darell on Twitter: @iamdarrellhal Follow Dr. Darell on Instagram:  @iamdarrellhallOther Episodes You May be Interested In: How to Attract Millennials to Church with Tony Fernandez Evangelism in a Post-Christian World with Shaila Visser Create a Culture of Belonging with Willie Dwayne Francois III=======Tithely provides the tools you need to engage with your church online, stay connected, increase generosity, and simplify the lives of your staff.With tools like text and email messaging, custom church apps and websites, church management software, digital giving, and so much more… it's no wonder over 37,000 churches in 50 countries trust Tithely to help run their church.Learn more at https://tithely.com

Join us once again as we travel to the past to discuss the Greatest 90s TV Show Theme Songs! This is our era and it was almost too difficult to whittle it down to 4 choices a piece. This one's for the millennials and gen Xers! You can find us at https://mtgoatmore.buzzsprout.com/ or by searching Mt. GOATmore on your favorite podcast host.Contact us at facebook.com/mtgoatmore or send us an email at andremtgoatmore@gmail.com 

Today on the show we are talking to Darrell Hall about his upcoming book, 'Speaking Across Generations: Messages That Satisfy Boomers, Xers, Millenials, Gen Z, and Beyond'. Darrell E. Hall is campus pastor of Elizabeth Baptist Church in Conyers, Georgia, where he regularly preaches and teaches across five generations. He is an experienced preacher and public speaker who has given messages in venues from local Bible studies to a packed NBA arena. Hall has a DMin from Beeson Divinity School, where his doctoral research focused on generational intelligence and effective intergenerational communication. He and his wife, Eboni, have three children. You can connect with Darrell on Twitter by clicking here. We would love to connect with you! You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. To make sure you never miss an episode, click the subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

♬Episode Highlights: This episode is about the Half Time Show of 2022, Super Bowl, and settle the argument if it was an Xer half-time show or Millennial. from a Gen Xers perspective. We wade into the discussion of if the show was for Generation X, or the Millennial generation. -Clearly is was a show for Xers! Subscribe to our channel if you want to learn about money and not be bored: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7KT...

In this episode I talk about the differences in types of mustangs represented at ponies in the smokies as well as which one is taking off.  Also the generation Xers that like foxbody mustangs and SN95 mustangs because of the time they started driving cars. Listen and follow us for the new foxbody mustang trivia coming soon. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube as well as Facebook and Instagram for details and content fix. FoxbodyFX  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100074686572974 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/foxbodyfx/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8J1keu0ufh-xUIHgg7uvWA  Email foxbodyfx@gmail.com for any inquires or being on the Podcast as a guest.  Thank You for listening you ROCK!! Lance  Foxbody Influencers PodcastBy: Foxbody FX

Hey there Xers!Matt & Jayce are back with another episode of XRadioX!  This is Episode 27:  The One Where Jayce Plays.  Plays?  Plays what?  Keep reading and you'll find out.In this installment we touch on all our regular topics.  We cover what we've been up to, make sure you are expertly warned of crude content via our disclaimer, we give you a BedTalk update, talk about Jayce turning 47, talk about Jayce taking Christmas lights down (finally) and we play a guessing game.  I know what you're think.  F!@k ANOTHER guessing game?  We get it guys... You like to guess music things and have us play along but another one so soon after the last one?  Just wait friends...  We put a different twist on this one.  Jayce broke out his old acoustic guitar and plays parts of some songs and Matt has to guess what he's trying to play.  WHAT!?!  Jayce plays guitar?  He sure does and he is solidly average at it.  All this and a smidge more on this great episode of XRadioX!!!  Yes... Jayce is almost 50...  I know!  He sounds so young.  ;)

The innovators of technology and pop culture society Generation X is often sandwiched and overlooked. In this series you will hear from Xers who are making strides to continue the X legacy while providing opportunities for the masses. These convos are both fun and enlightening. Get ready to laugh, glean and appreciate the voices of Generation X.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.If you haven't been with us the past three weeks, we're in our last week of advent. This is a season, it's a tradition, in the church where we celebrate Christ coming, advent means coming, and we celebrate that Christ came in the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures, the first time as a baby born in Bethlehem. Simultaneously, we look ahead to Christ's second coming, where he will come not as a baby, but as a righteous judge and ruler. And so we've covered the themes of hope, love, and joy in recent weeks, and today we're going to close out this series just tapping into the theme of peace. We do not have Mini Mo today so I was put under contract to deliver a very short sermon today. There actually aren't that many children here in person and those online we're probably at 30% capacity or typical attendance right now. But my son is there with my wife so she's got me on the clock. But we're just going to have a nice sweet gospel sermon today.We've gone through the season very topically. I don't think we've actually read the Christmas story in its entirety this year. I want to read a lot to begin from Matthew 1 verses 18 through the end of chapter 2. I want to just read through this story that is just at the center of history and just a crucial moment in the narrative of redemptive history for God's people. Matthew 1 verses 18 through 2:23. I'll cover this and then I'll go back and spend a lot of time in the genealogy of chapter 1 later on."Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit and her husband, Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her shame resolved to divorce her quietly.""But as he considered these things behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not fear to Mary as your wife for that, which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.'""All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. 'Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.'""When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to his son and he called his name Jesus.""Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in days of Herod the king, behold wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying, 'Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.'""When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him and assembling all the chief priests, and scribes of the people he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, 'In Bethlehem of Judea for so it is written by the prophet, 'And you, Oh, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.'""Then inherited summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared and he sent them to Bethlehem saying, 'Go and search diligently for the child and when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him.'"After listening to the king, they went on their way and behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them, until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy and going into the house they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh and being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed by their own country by another way.""Now, when they departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 'Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.' And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt they called my son.'""Then Herod, when he saw that he'd been tricked by the wise men, became furious and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who are two years old or under, according to the time that had been ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled with spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be comforted because they are no more.'""But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and Egypt saying, 'Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead,' and he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee and he went and lived in a city called Nazareth so that was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene."This is the word of our Lord.I want to begin with a simple point as we reflect on what I just read and is that we are all wicked sinners. I read this section because of its graphic nature. Of the gospels, of the birth narratives, we have Matthew, Luke and John tap into the birth narrative of Christ and this is the most jarring. There's shock, heartache, broken dreams, deception, pursuit, anxiety, pains, corruption, murder. Matthew shows us more than any of the other gospel writers that Jesus entered a world that was broken, full of conflict, full of anxiety, full of despair. Nothing that the world had to offer could solve, could improve, man's moral condition. If you study the historical Herod, this man that we're talking about, he was one of the best administrators, best businessmen of the ancient world, though he was still a pawn of the Roman world, he was as good as it gets. He had no answers and he contributed much to the moral depravity of the day.Matthew shows us everything that the world says Christmas is not. You hear a lot, "Christmas is a feeling. It's simply a time for family and home. It's sitting under Christmas tree opening presents, a time for peace and good will," and none of those are on display right here. Nothing but the depravity of man on full display. Christ, didn't enter into a picturesque Brookline mansion living room next to a spiral staircase with a fireplace and beautiful mantle. He was born in a stable wrapped in swaddling cloth. As Pastor Jan said the other night, "Swaddled in shame in this union, the scandalous situation, between the union of Joseph and Mary."As soon as Mary gives birth, the family has to flee a mad king. Even in the church, there's a temptation to look at this season as a kind of faux form of peace, to kind of calm, a distraction from the darkness that we're facing within ourselves, facing with the men, the man around us, in the church, out of the church, we can carry these traditions, we can think of ways to just uniquely present these themes of advent in a new fashion. We can talk about moral lessons. Let's be generous like the wise men, let's be, let's submit to God like Joseph and Mary, but that's not what the Christmas story's about.I'm just here to say people, praise God, that the Christmas story is not about this stuff. Praise God that after living in 2020 and 2021, we can see our desperate need for the Christmas story to be true. For more than ever we see a that the world we live in is not supreme to the ancient world presented in the text. All the answers that we have today offering problems don't seem to be providing peace. Any reasons that we might have had a couple of years ago to claim that our age is superior just has been cast away. Government, medicine, education, technology, wealth, food distribution, plumbing, running water, have not improved the moral condition of man. We see the world, we see people trying to build a righteousness on their own in vain. We see the ugliness of sin dominating our society, and it's easy to believe Romans 6:23 for the first time, really in decades, multiple generations going beyond gen Xers that all have sin and fall short of the glory of God. We are all wicked sinners.The most important thing as we process this is that this season has helped us to understand that that sin is not just out there, just in the world, outside of the church, in the people next to you here. Maybe the people next to you on the couches, that sin is in each and every one of us.I know that a lot of us today, we're scared of the circumstances that we're facing, by God's Providence, God's appointment. We're scared of just the craziness that we see around us, but really the scariest thing that lot of us are dealing with is how we're reacting ourselves. How many of you have learned about a new side of yourself in this season? When your opposition says something, you slander them, you call them moron, you cancel them. You essentially treat them as if they're inhuman, an act that scripture says, Christ tells us, is the same as committing murder in the heart. How many of you have just struggled with envy, seeing other people, the comforts they have to get through this season while you're trapped in some sort of hard situation, a hard job, a small apartment? How many of you have struggled with greed? Just buying more and more and more to satisfy yourselves? How many of you have struggled with overeating to distract yourself from the pain, the challenge, the anxiety?It's shocking. We feel guilt, we feel shame. A lot of pastors, I searched the country, what are they saying? They're saying, "We've had it hard. We've had it hard." Yes, we have, but scripture tells us we need to be angry and do not sin. If anything can weigh more heavily on us than challenging circumstances, it's the weight of guilt and shame of our sin staying on our shoulders.I just lead with this point that as 2021 comes to an end as part of this 20 month period, 22 month period, going back to March of 2020, we are wicked. We can't deny it. This story, praise God, we can look into this story and say, "These are the same circumstances that Jesus Christ came into." This same story was not just an abstract story. It's not a fable, a parable that we place our hopes into. It's a concrete story that we can place our hope in. This time of year, as we feel the gravity of the year we rest in the fact that Jesus did come.What does that mean for us? My second point is simple. God offers peace to wicked sinners. As Matthew in chapter 1, he provides this genealogy, and I'm not going to go through all of the names for you, but he continues pointing out the wickedness of man and it's in there that we find our hope, we find our option for peace as we process just the guilt and shame that looms over us as individuals, looms over us collectively as a church, looms over us as a nation.Really want to take some time, let me read verses 1 and 17, just to cover, "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham," that's how it begins. And then it ends, "And so all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, from David to the deportation to Babylon 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations."These verses, they specifically show us that Jesus comes from the line of Abraham. Specifically, Abraham was told that he'd be a blessing to many people, the nations, and in Genesis 12, the first book of the Bible, 12 chapters in, and we have this text telling us that Jesus Christ is his heir. He is a descendant. He is the recipient of the promises. Furthermore, King David was told a thousand years before Christ's birth, that it would have an heir to the throne of Israel forever and so this genealogy shows us that Christ is the king in that line to David. This gives us evidence to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. This is the good news.But as you dig into the genealogy, when you look at who's included in the genealogy start saying, "Why are these people in here? Why would these people be mentioned in the line of the king? These people are wicked. These people are sinners. They're the wrong race per the Old Testament's standards." It's really hard to just process. In the Old Testament times when Matthew wrote this, a genealogy would be especially a Hebrew's pride. If you were a kid back then at the playground, you would make sure that all of your buddies, all of your friends, knew the good names in your line.It's hard for us to relate to this. Most of us can't go back one to three generations, but the way they did it was just the same. Let's keep the good stuff, let's hide the bad stuff, that crazy uncle, that crazy grandfather who lost all the family money. It's a lot like on LinkedIn we have the opportunity to present ourselves, show our connections, and what do we do? We present ourselves perfectly. But we see here just the line of Jesus Christ. You'd think if someone was conjuring this up, they would make it a little bit more publicly correct but we don't see that. Why would they do that? Because it's true. Let's notice just these people who by societal standards, moral standards of that time, should not have been in the genealogy.First notice Matthew 5, it includes five women. You have Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Mary, and Bathsheba, directly. In a patriarchal society, you don't include women in the genealogy period to establish your ethos, your credibility to garner praise for someone. More shock in this list includes moral outsiders. There's verse 3, "And Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah, by Tamar and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram."This Tamar. Tamar pretended to be a prostitute. She slept with her father-in-law, she gets pregnant. This is an incestuous relationship in the line of Jesus Christ. Why is it in the text? It happened. Rahab was another moral outsider. Before she got saved she was a prostitute in Jericho. The genealogy goes even further to say in verse six for King David, oh, and furthermore Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, they were Gentiles. Ruth from Moab, the other two from Canaan. Even further you think it starts to get looking better when king David's brought it up, but specifically it mentions with David, it mentions Uriah.It says, "And David was a father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah." This is a king, but Matthew doesn't just leave it at that, at king David, he mentioned Uriah. Who's Uriah? The story goes that your Uriah was one of David's top men, top soldiers, most faithful guys, but David fell in love with Uriah's wife. David tries to get rid of Uriah. He tries to bring him home, to spend in time with her to cover up the pregnancy. Ultimately, Uriah, David sends him off to die at the battlefront. This is the king, the Messiah, the man after God's own heart, and Matthew mentions this sin.Furthermore, a lot of these kings listened in verse 7 through 11 did some horrible things for Judah's religious worship of God. They were just bad people led the country, astray, the nation astray in their worship. Ahaz offered his child as a sacrifice to a foreign God.As we look at this genealogy, we feel more deeply depravity of man, not just in our day, not just in Matthew's day, but throughout the history of the world. Why is it here? Because it's true. But it's here more to make the point that God is saying upon Christ's coming, "I'm taking ownership over my people." At advent, Jesus comes and he takes ownership over his people in all of their glory and all of their sin. When he is born, he accepts these sinners, these sinners outside of his bloodline. Though he never sinned himself, he takes the punishment for the guilt of their sin and covers their shame. He's making it clear, "Yes, I'm in the line of Abraham, I am in the line of David, but your pedigree, your spiritual, religious, racial, pedigree, Jew or Gentile. Does not matter. I welcome you into my family out of sheer grace." Flipping that it's saying, "No matter how good or religious you've been in your life, it's not enough to commend yourself to my line." Rahab the prostitute is in the line, but so is king David and the greatest and the least in Jesus line are not beyond the need for his grace, his unmerited favor to cover their sin.John 1:12 to 13 says, "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." This is the great news for all of us. This is the good news of the gospel, the good news in response to my first point, that we're all wicked sinners that God graciously offers peace to us in our sin. That's the Christmas story.Jesus does come into the world, judging us right away. He's sent to communicate to people from God, "I want relationship with you. I want peace with you." The infinite breaks into the finite and he wants relationship. It's all by belief, believing in this message that Jesus Christ lived the life I could not live, died the death that I deserved, resurrected on the third day, ascended into heaven, where he is ruling all things in this life at the right hand of the father, until his appointed time to return. It's when we believe that we can have salvation from our sin. The guilt, the shame does not have to weigh on our shoulders. We can have peace with God, but furthermore, we can have peace with ourselves. When we see the ugliness that comes out in tension and conflict and isolation, when the pleasures of life are taken away, when we turn to him, we can always receive grace.My question today, before you turn into this next year, those of you who are Christian, you've been walking in the Lord for a while, maybe this season did shock you, maybe you saw darkness, you saw the depravity in you that you had never seen before. You can always just bring it back to the Lord. We've all seen people flail around with guilt, with shame, of sin on their shoulders, and what does that lead to? It leads to them projecting that guilt, that shame onto other people, especially in the church. But no, take that to the Lord, receive His grace, see that He owns you, he loves you, he doesn't reject you.Those of you who just don't know Christ, if you've never received him as the Christ, the Messiah, the king of your heart, and you have this weight and shame on your shoulders, I beg you receive his offer of peace. This is the good news that we preach all year. This is the good news that we need take into the new year. This is the good news that we need to preach into our hearts every day. It's in this that we find peace and it's from this position of peace. In scriptures, peace means eirene, comes from the verb eiro, to fill. The opposite is anxiety. The verb, it's to be broken up. It's in God that we can have fullness and from the position of fullness, we can go to Him, have peace in a vertical sense and look upon the situations around us, in our lives on a horizontal level. Look at the relationships, look at the greater societal problems, and approach them from a position of fullness. I encourage you today just to spend time in the coming week, be filled in the Lord, find joy in Him. See how loving He is that he sent Jesus Christ to come for us into this dark, wicked world, into the depravity, with Herod coming to chase him at his birth, into the depravity that continues into our day, and just rejoice. Enjoy Him, love Him, and find your peace.Let's pray.Lord, we just come to you, perhaps after an age where we've been reliant upon just the comforts, the pillars, the horses and chariots of this world. Lord, we repent of that. We pray please forgive us for not thinking that ultimate peace, ultimate forgiveness, joy, love is found in you, and hope, our hope is rooted in the promise of your return.Heavenly father, we just pray, give us hearts of longing that more would be saved. Lord, give us daily reminders in this next year of just the abundance of your grace, the depths and length and height and breath of your love to us in Jesus Christ. Lord, when we look upon those in sin, let us not look upon in judgment, but look upon them in compassion in the same way that you looked upon us in Jesus Christ.Heavenly father, we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.