Why Salary Transparency, Youth Hustle, and AI Are Reshaping the Future of Work

[00:00:10] What is going on everybody Ryan Leary, William Tinkup here with another episode of The BARF. I like when you wave to me. I'm gonna wave back to you today. So I'll just say it outright. I've got stains on my shirt. I just realized it. If that's the worst thing that happens to you today Ryan, you're living right. You're living right. I guess so. I guess so. I mean stains can be pretty. Depends on what type of stains. There's a gradient. A scale.

[00:00:40] I don't know what type of stain it is. But it's a stain. No judgment. Whatever man. What is going on? You know, it's been a good week. We're adding some shows. We're up to 42 shows on Worked Fine on Podcast Network. Yeah, we are. Halfway to our ish. Halfway to our goal of 100 for the end of the year. You know, all is well. No complaints for me. There we go. Anything big happen this weekend for you? Because I didn't have shit happen for me.

[00:01:10] No, no, no. I was just doing a bunch of stuff around the house. Doing stuff. Last week, yes, because doing a garage sale. Which, by the way, we made over $3,600 for our troop at the garage sale. What? Yeah. Legit. A garage sale. A garage sale. All right. Which is great because we also had Mission Arlington, kind of like Goodwill, come after. And so they cleaned out everything else that wasn't taken. They just took it with them. They buy. That's what you did. Are they buying?

[00:01:37] We didn't even have to. No, no. They, no. Bye-bye. Oh, bye-bye. Got it. We didn't have to load it. They had people, they had trailers, trucks, and they loaded it. We literally didn't have to do anything. That's amazing. Send them my way. 100%. We're going to do it every year now. Now it's a bit. It's like we can raise, poinsettia sales is our number one fundraiser for the troop, and it raises about $3,000. This wouldn't surpass that, and there's no cost to it.

[00:02:05] Right. Are you still selling like $10 things of popcorn and like $20 pizzas? The Boy Scouts do that. Excuse me. Cub Scouts and Weeblos do that a lot. The popcorn sales is a big fundraiser. Once they get into Boy Scouts, they're kind of tired of that. So you have to have other things, other types of fundraisers for them to get kind of excited about, especially with 15, 16-year-old kids. I'm all about supporting the group. We do Girl Scout cookies here.

[00:02:33] I've supported Girl Scout cookies since I can remember. Yeah, but $10 for a little thing. Oh, they get smaller. My favorite's the mint. The mint, the thin mints. That's always been my favorite. And it used to be like a sleeve, like this massive sleeve of a thin mint. Yeah, now I think there's 12 of them in there now. Right. Count it this year, yeah. Yeah. We didn't know what, whatever. We did not put an effort into it this year. Yeah.

[00:03:01] We sold what we had to sell. We did a couple of boots. Right. In years past, y'all have killed it though. Yeah, we put a lot of effort, but in the end, it's fun for the girls. Right. But in the end, they're getting like whatever it is, like a quarter, no, it's not a quarter. It's like 80 cents or something like that. A box to the troop. There's other ways to earn money. 100%. Garage sale. Yeah. I mean, you could teach them, you know, oh, it's good for sales. Life skills. That's great. Guess what?

[00:03:30] So it was a garage sale when you're making, you know, a lot more money and doing whatever. I mean, on both cases, both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, I like it because it teaches them sales. It teaches them that rejection and, you know, all that types of how to upsell and all that type stuff. And with Henry, Henry never really liked any of that stuff. Like he would just wait for people to come and like, I want to buy this candle. Yeah. Fantastic.

[00:03:57] Whereas Van, dude, when we were at Ace Hardware selling candles and poinsettias, he'd meet people at their car doors when they parked. Like people barely have their door open and say, hey, how you doing? We got some poinsettias. We got candles. Where are you at? They haven't even gone into the store yet. Did you open the jacket? Like poinsettias. Dude, seriously. Like, I don't know. You know how it is. Your girls are different. Your boys are different.

[00:04:25] It's just, it's fascinating to watch. I don't know, man. I'm on it. Let me pitch you a couple stories. You ready? Yeah, go for it. Hi, Ryan. You've seen the signs about Real ID, right? At the airport? Yeah, I avoid them. Yeah, good. The deadline for air travel with a Real ID is May 7th. That's coming up. That would be in about a month from now. Yes. So if you or your employees have business travel coming up, beware. The Real ID deadline for air travel is May 7th.

[00:04:55] Yeah. And Department of Motor Vehicles are slammed with appointments. This is from the Wall Street Journal. So, you know, we've seen the signs for years now. I've recently had my driver's license updated, and you just have to have a gold star in Texas. You have to have a gold star in the right-hand corner, and it's a Real ID. You can still use your passport, right? Yes. You can still use your passport. Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And good.

[00:05:26] Yes, with your passport. But if you can show up to the airport and you don't have your passport and you know your driver's license isn't a Real ID, you don't travel. Right. Just bring your passport. That's what I'm going to do because— Just bring your passport. I ain't getting the Real ID before then, for sure. All right. You know a company called SAP? I do. Yeah, yeah. Well, they overtook Nova Nordisk as Europe's most valuable company. Wow. Check that out, right?

[00:05:55] Good for them. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily tie, tie, tie to work, but success factors, right? They kind of do their DOGs, and I figured you'd have some thoughts here. But 313.7 euros, so about $340 billion U.S. dollars, kind of mid-range in the U.S., right? Because everyone else is all the trillions. Right, right, right, right, right. But it's a thing. They're now Europe's number one.

[00:06:23] Well, SAP took a dip when cloud first came on the scene because they were on-premise for a lot of their stuff. And so they had to kind of figure out the cloud business. It's just nice to see them being rewarded for basically reorganizing their business. They still have no on-prem stuff, but they've really, really gotten behind cloud. So good for them. I'm happy for them.

[00:06:50] Ryan, 84% of Gen Zers say that they stream series and movies while working remotely. Yeah, that's about right. I try not to laugh. Is that Axios.com? So you go look at it. So, of course, I did the RTO-1. Wait, hold on. What's that guy? JP Morgan's calling. He said, get the fuck to work. Pretty much. RTO-1, remote zero.

[00:07:15] So, you know, the advice is while true, some things should be admitted publicly, right? This was a survey. You didn't have to say this. It just gives more ammo to the RTO kingpins. Yeah. You know what? I get distracted when I have TV or music. I know you run music all the time. Yeah, I can write while listening to music. Yeah.

[00:07:40] Sometimes I can, but there's moments where I just want to throw the speaker against the wall. And I just have to stop. But, you know, that's just me. 84% is a big number. It's a big number. All right. So the next one is 69% of millennial workers want to work for employers with benefits that support building a family. Kind of makes sense, right? The Securian, S-E-C-U-R-I-A-N.com.

[00:08:09] This is where this comes from. So last week I talked about and I thought about gender-based benefits. And the menstrual cycle is the one that we talked about and whether or not we should load balance based on gender. And this story made me think about should we be load balancing based on generations? So, like, you're looking at a benefits portfolio as a benefits manager or an HR leader. You're looking at, okay, what benefits do we serve up?

[00:08:39] And it's all the discretionary benefits, right? Well, the millennials wanting things that are going to help them facilitate their family growth. That tracks. They're at that age. Well, you know, boomers don't care about that particular benefit. So it's just one of those things that make me think, are benefits managers? Are they looking at their audience or their employees and then figuring out the benefits that matter to them based on gender, based on generation, et cetera?

[00:09:06] So, anyhow, again, big number, 70%. Excellent. All right. You remember 11X? I do. We talked about 11X back in November when they landed $50 million in funding. Well, turns out somebody didn't do their homework. They're not doing so well.

[00:09:27] And it turns out from a couple dozen different sources familiar with the case, they have been lying about their customers and their customer base. Now, not the only thing. Check this out. Customer turn 70% to 80%, it's estimated, of their early customers' discontinued services after their initial trials. That's not good. No, that is not good at all.

[00:09:56] These are like major investors. These aren't like your run-of-the-mill investors that got behind these guys. You know, you say transparency is king, and this is the moment, right? Transparency and actual performance still matters, turns out. But that's a lot, man. That's a lot. Well, what it's going to impact is funding.

[00:10:21] You're going to do more due diligence on the sales conversions, both those from zero to trial and from trial to a full contract, et cetera. And so they need to do that, by the way. Like legit sales pipeline conversion analytics and due diligence. Now, this is just one of those stories that's going to feed that. It's like, hey, listen, we don't want to get burned like other investments did with 11X. So hopefully they can turn it around.

[00:10:51] Yeah, we don't want to. I mean, unless they're just scamming and jamming everybody. But, you know, you have bad product. You're not doing good performance. Got it. That happens. Happens. You can make things better. Unless you're just playing charades here. Bad actors do bad things. Yeah, that's right. Hey, it's Bob Pulver, host of the podcast. Human-centric AI, AI-driven transformation, hiring for skills and potential, dynamic workforce ecosystems, responsible innovation.

[00:11:20] These are some of the themes my expert guests and I chat about, and we certainly geek out on the details. Nothing too technical. I hope you check it out. All right. Getting back into benefits. The latest niche workplace benefit. Helping workers get a mortgage, especially first-time homebuyers. You and I briefly talked about this last week about a benefit that would really be helpful in financial kind of wellness. And so how do you help people get their first house?

[00:11:49] Well, so to me, I think this is a great perk or benefit to balance out RTO. Now, I'll make fun of it at the same time. Come into the office and we'll help you buy your first house, which you can't work in remotely. But you can cut the grass when you get home. 100%. You got a bunch of work that you need to do. You got to clean the gutters.

[00:12:14] But, you know, the thing is, it's legit a good idea to have this as a benefit for those first-time homebuyers. Helping them get the mortgages and getting a lower mortgage. Helping them understand the financial implications. Yeah. Well, I never had any of this go into my review. Yeah. I mean, and it would have been. I mean, I can hear my parents yapping in my ear. Go work here because they help you pay back for college. They're going to help you with reimbursement. And that was like the big thing.

[00:12:43] That was a big thing. Tuition reimbursement. Yeah. I would tell my kids to go work there if they're going to help you get a house. Now, what is help, right? Like they're not giving you a house. They're not giving you money. They're helping you with, you know, access and all that stuff. Right. Love it. Get it. All right. IBM, my old stomping grounds. It's all right. Yeah, I love talking about IBM. They're facing a reverse discrimination lawsuit. Reverse discrimination. Okay. Yeah, from a former white male employees.

[00:13:12] This is an interesting one because this isn't just somebody jumping in and saying, oh, well, you know, I'm a white male. You're discriminating against me. The structure, the lawsuit, if you go through and read, you know, parts of the lawsuit. The structure of the manager's incentives. So the executives are incentivized. Right. For hiring diverse and meeting certain diversity goals. And so they are led. Well, say they are.

[00:13:41] In this case, they were and they did let go of this guy. And I think there's a couple of others that are part of this. They let go of them for performance when they were a top performer within particular groups. Wow. Yeah. Through performance reviews and all that. I mean, obviously, there's a lot more of the story we'll never know. But horrible. Yeah. I think the thing is, it's also a limited definition of diversity. Absolutely.

[00:14:07] So some of this, you can be a white male, but you can come from a social economic group that's lower or higher. You could go to a different college. There's so many different ways, neurodiverse. There's so many different ways to look at diversity. I think historically we've looked at it as gender and race. And that's diversity. I think that's how the majority of people hire. They're not experts. I get it. But it's the company's fault. Not, well, I should say not the individual.

[00:14:32] If they're incentivizing executives based on gender and race and not a broader aperture of diversity, yeah, they should get penalized. Yeah. And they will. Ryan, mentions of DEI on Glassdoor increased 259% year over year between January 1st, 24th, February 18th, 25th. It's on Glassdoor. It's their blog. And again, you know, is this outrage about DEI?

[00:15:01] Is this false outrage? Is it the new normal since the election? I don't know. But it did make me think about candidate boycotting work to change businesses that have abandoned DEI policies and programs. Like I think back to 80, I think it was 85, 86 when Coca-Cola, there was, Coca-Cola was operating in South Africa during apartheid. And basically people said, stop drinking Coke. And people stopped drinking Coke.

[00:15:31] It puts so much pressure on Coke. They're like, we're out. And it actually did change things. And it was apartheid with horrible regardless. So, but it's the same thing. Can candidates band together to actually change things at a company in terms of DEI? I don't think so. I don't think so either. I don't think there's enough power nor volume of candidates.

[00:16:00] They'd have to form a coalition and boycott. What changes this is hurting the pocketbook. And candidates don't. I mean, there could be arguments made for that. Yeah. Yeah. There could be arguments made for it. But I mean, that's a massive undertaking. I know. Yeah. Consumer boycott's much easier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to stop buying your stuff. Okay. Well, maybe we'll change our policy on that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:29] Well, then they don't have to. And then eventually it hits the pocketbook and they're like, hmm. Okay. Yeah. Well, while at Glassdoor's blog, they've actually, they've got great stuff there. I haven't been there in a long time. Yeah. Lots of cool. They've always had good stuff. Lots of cool content there. So definitely go check that out. All right. ChatGPT just got an infusion of smart baby. Okay. So they can now with the different, there's a enterprise version, but they can now tap into your internal files.

[00:16:58] Right now it's just Google, Google drive for the company. You can attach that to ChatGPT and it begins to learn your models at work. So it'll respond in your language, understand your project names, the acronyms in a company, team specific terms, things like that. But it's a model that they're going to expand on. And so. I love that. Yeah. That's the enterprise version. That's not the pro version. That's the next level. No, that's the enterprise version. Yeah.

[00:17:26] And there's one of the product guys, a lead engineer posted about it. And I happened to see that. So I went and looked it up and it's pretty neat. They're excited about it. Yeah. They'll be attaching a whole bunch of different things. The more it knows, the better it gets. Yeah. I wonder if we can get access for us and make us. I'd like that. I'd like that. That'd be pretty cool. Hey there. I'm Tim Boris, host of the Working Well podcast, where business strategy meets human sustainability.

[00:17:54] If you're an executive, a leader or changemaker ready to ditch burnout, build thriving teams and drive real results. This is your next must listen. Tune in on the Work Defined Network or at timborris.com forward slash podcast. What happens when employees behave badly? Boy, we could do an entire TV show, maybe a Netflix special on that.

[00:18:20] Well, Ryan and I sat down and recorded episodes for Fama and we asked practitioners, give us your most outrageous story. You know, the sales leader that brings cocaine to work, you know, whatever. Just bring us the outrageous and it is funny. So if you need a laugh, which we all do from time to time, search for workplace misconduct on wherever you get your podcast and you'll find it.

[00:18:48] And trust me, you will laugh and cry, but you'll definitely laugh. All right. Thank you. All right. So last story for this show is Amazon will resume screening warehouse employees for theft and requiring that they register their personal phone, cell phones for the first time since the start of the pandemic. This is on Bloomberg. So you can go read the story. I don't hate this personally at all.

[00:19:15] Employee theft in retail is called shrinkage. Yeah. Seinfeld shrinkage, but shrinkage. It directly impacts the cost that are passed on to consumers. So employee theft, it's not like a hidden crime. It actually, it impacts us. So I'm, I'm, when I read the story, I'm like, I'm shocked that they actually moved away from it. Yeah. And maybe it was just, they need to hire faster or more, you know, like they just basically got away from it because they needed people.

[00:19:44] But what's the, what's the registering phones for? So they, so they can, so they can background checks and also so that they can get in touch with them in case something happens right away. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. They, they should, they should, they should always monitor for theft. I mean, I don't want to pay more for shit. No, no, I don't need that in my life. No. All right. I got a good research one for us today. We'll jump into some research. So. Sounds good. So businesses, this is going to be interesting.

[00:20:14] I'll get your take on businesses, evaluate AI systems using human like criteria. So I found this on venture beat and what they're saying is that businesses are starting to judge AI just like they judge people. Interesting. They expect the AI to be helpful. They expect it to be likable, emotionally present and intelligent, right? Not just accurate, but like actually care and do things.

[00:20:43] And I'm like, yeah, it's really, it's like a human like expectation. And it's like, okay, it, it, every AI tool that we've spoken with said it's not that way. It doesn't happen that way. Although I don't necessarily agree with that because as it's learning, I mean, tools that I use, as it learns me, it talks like me, it regurgitates me, right? Yeah. It's mimicking, mimicking your behaviors. Yeah.

[00:21:09] And it also, it also contrasts me on certain issues and says, hey, look, here's my opinion. Like, okay, that's cool. Whether it's right or not, I don't know. That's an opinion, not an emotion. No, but it's, it, and right. Right. And so is emotion, are they judging emotion by the way that it talks? Because mine will actually talk back to me. Like I talked to it, right? It'll use slang. It'll do all of that. Right, right, right, right. I don't necessarily feel like that's emotion.

[00:21:39] No, it's mimicking your behavior. Yeah. It's, you're showing it. It's showing you it's, it's just mimicking. It's a mirror. So how do you judge it on emotion? You shouldn't, you shouldn't judge robots on emotion. They don't have emotions. Yeah. I don't want them to have emotion. I don't. I want them to be a robot. That's why I hired them. I want accuracy. Yeah. If you're talking about emotions, I think we're talking about something that's more futuristic or dystopian than, than that's really what's needed. It's accuracy. Is it accurate? Great.

[00:22:08] Fantastic. Yeah. I think part of the efficiency of bringing in AI like this is the lack of emotion and the lack of having to deal with the emotion of an actual employee. Right. That's, I can manage AI. I'm not great at managing employees because I lack empathy. Actually, you can talk to AI just like you talk to employees, but they'll respond better. A hundred percent. I won't get in trouble. There'll be no legal issues. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:38] All right. Pay gains slowed March. Year-over-year pay gains slowed to 4.6% for job stayers and 6.5% for job changers. The pay premium for job changers was about 1.9 percentage points matching a series low seeing last September. This is on the all-important ADPEmploymentreport.com. So you can go there and then you can kind of look at your industry size of company and you can kind of see all those things are.

[00:23:08] What this particular story got me to think about is how the April numbers, if they'll be impacted by the tariff, like will, I mean, we already seen the stock. Do all kinds of crazy stuff with the stock market, but will it impact jobs? And I don't have a great answer on will it, will it or won't it, but I want to see now I'm interested in the April jobs report. Yeah. Just to see if there's change there. I'm going to, well, this is being recorded, but I'm going to clip this portion.

[00:23:37] So the next time you say, I don't give a shit about the jobs report, I'm going to throw this at you. I care about the tariffs. I don't care about jobs. Actually. I care about will a policy around tariffs impact jobs. That's what I care about. Whether it impacts jobs up or down, I'm not sure. Does it make things better? Because we're building businesses here in America to make up for the businesses that we're not going to use in China and Mexico.

[00:24:06] Or does it close off businesses from hiring because they're having to deal with less revenue or other scenarios that I'm not thinking about? I mean, I think we're going to see, we'll see in April. I think we'll start to see a mix, a healthy mix of each kind of play out. Yeah. Yeah. There we go. All right. The Federal Judicial Center survey recently came out and was taking a look at that one third of U.S. U.S.

[00:24:36] U.S. Judiciary. You can't say judiciary. Employees say they've experienced inappropriate behavior at work. Now, this was, so, okay, we all, this happens at every job. Get it. Yeah. But you'd think in a legal profession. It wouldn't be, especially, yeah. So. That's 33%. Wow. Yeah. That number should not be that high. Yeah. So, okay.

[00:25:00] So 34% said like offensive stuff, like offensive jokes, rude comments, things like that, right? Like things that you maybe goes borderline, like, oh, you're just too offensive type thing. Right. 8.3% said they experienced serious issues. However, they grouped it all under wrongful misconduct. Now, maybe this is the legal way to legal term. I don't know.

[00:25:28] Here's what's under wrongful misconduct. Discriminatory harassment, sexual harassment, employment discrimination. Wrongful misconduct. That's what kind of made me pull this out. It kind of bothered me, but I'm like, why are we just pushing this aside? It's not. I guess it is. But is that how we actually classify this? Wrongful misconduct? And it just gets lumped in. They didn't even list it out. It just said wrongful misconduct.

[00:25:56] It didn't say anything about the sexual harassment or anything. Yeah. In a study, you'd like to see both of those broken out. Yeah. The unprofessional behavior, 34.7%. You'd like to see what made up those things by percentage points, right? Yeah. And the same thing for wrongful misconduct at 8.3%. Again, it doesn't seem like a high number.

[00:26:22] However, the things that are under it are not trivial. No, they're not trivial. And if you have 40,000 employees, I don't know how many there are. I say 40,000 employees. 10% of that's 4,000 people. That's a lot of people experiencing wrongful misconduct. That type of – that's legit. I mean, all of it's legit. I mean, again, if a person feels uncomfortable at work for a reason that another employee does, you got to take it seriously. Yeah.

[00:26:48] And the whole thing is weird to me because it's in the legal profession, which you would think would be on top of these things. Now, I should say this wasn't – the majority of this was from managers. Right. Right. Not the judges. Right, right, right, right, right. Not those in those positions. These are ancillary. I skipped over. I should not have skipped over that. No, no, no, no. Franklin Templeton's Voice of American Workforce Survey tackles talent retention, sustaining a competitive edge, and meeting employees' needs.

[00:27:18] Now, this is at Franklin Templeton. You can go take a look at .com. You can go take a look at the study. It's – we've seen it a couple times. It's always good. So four things from this survey. Let me read all of them, and then you tell me what you think is the craziest. Okay. 70% of employees state that financial security, having enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, is critically important.

[00:27:41] 88% of employers report that employees are willing to leave their jobs if dissatisfied even without clear alternatives. 90% of employees now view retirement planning as a collaborative effort with their employees. And the last one, 60%, 59% of employees admit that they don't understand or maximize their company benefits. Those are all facts. Those come from the survey. I'm going to say facts. Those come from the survey. Those are the results.

[00:28:11] Which of those is the craziest to you? I'm going to go with, you know, I'm going to go with 90% of employers view retirement planning as collaborative. That's the one that I keyed in on. I'm like, because when I read it, I thought I read it wrong. Yeah. You know, I'm like, yeah, employees view this? No, employers view that this is a collaboration. Yeah. This is a collaborative effort around, you know, retirement planning.

[00:28:41] And it's like, I've never seen a company think of that as collaboration. All of those numbers seem very high to me. Regardless of what it is, when you get 90% of something in a survey, it's not a very, you didn't pull your panels very well. 88% of employees willing to leave their job if dissatisfied, even if they don't have a clear alternative. Yeah. Are you kidding me? No. No, of course not. That's macho talk right there. Seems like.

[00:29:07] In practice, that's like 5% because that ain't happening. Huh? Not if you have a family. Yeah. No. 100%. I mean, if you're 21 and you're going from Taco Bell and you're leaving, all right. Well, yeah, I can see you leaving without a safety net. I guess. I mean, I'm not leaving unless I have. I don't care what people say. Leave if you're not happy. If I ain't got a paycheck, I can't go. 100%. That would make me less happy. Home Depot won't pay in my bills. Let me just tell you. Never. No, and I live modest.

[00:29:37] I live modest. Me too. And I ain't paying the bills. So anyway, we got some dollars and cents. Let's do it. Let's do it. Merit Health. That's M-A-R-I-T. Health launches groundbreaking community-powered platform for salary transparency in medicine. They raised $3.2 million. It's on PR Newswire, so you can kind of look up that. It's anonymous and self-reported comp data for the healthcare industry. Isn't a bad thing, right? This is not a bad thing.

[00:30:06] It's probably going to take a couple of years to get the data right and efficient based on location and all that other stuff. But I love this. I love anytime you can get good comp data to understand kind of where you are in the market, I think it's a good thing. So good for them. Great funding. Fantastic. I love it. I like the idea. I'm always kind of leery about user submit it, right? I know. However. I caught a fish this big. Yeah, I've got plenty of those.

[00:30:35] Guys, listen. You've got to go to MeritHealth.com and look at their salaries. I know physicians make money. Yeah. I'm looking at some here. They're neurosurgeon. 925K. Yeah. But here's the deal. Breast imaging. 650. The only thing is look at their insurance that they have to cover on themselves. Well, yeah. There's a lot there, but that's it. It's a big number. They can afford it too. Yeah.

[00:31:04] No, no, no. I mean, let's be real. I'm not crying for them. Don't worry. They can afford it. When I saw that, I was like, I'm going to go check this out. And I went and looked and I was like, damn. It's like, yeah. Podcasting, maybe. Doesn't suck. Let's go back to med school. It'll only take 12 years. And then we can, you know. On a 100% deserve it because you don't want me as your neurosurgeon. No. Nor I. No. Ryan Ribbon.

[00:31:30] Raises 8 million to transfer hiring with AI-powered voice interviews. Yeah. Cool little recruiting play. Yeah. Really, really, really interesting. Ribbon, R-I-B-B-O-N dot A-I. Go take a look at the website. It's pretty cool. That's where I looked at the press release. So I love to say everyone gets a voice interview or screening call. I like it. It's cool. I like, you know, the name and the approach.

[00:31:57] Let's candidates immediately know if they're right for the job and the next steps, all this type of stuff. So I'm cool. First of all, I love investing in recruiting. And this one's trying to solve kind of a bespoke, you know, don't apply. Don't even waste your time filling out a form or doing this other stuff. Let's just do this voice interview. Let's find out if this is even the right thing for you. And it's all going to be AI. Yeah. I want to get hold of these guys. I want to check them out because I love what HireLogic does.

[00:32:27] I love everything about them. And I want to see where this falls in relation to them and what they're doing. So let's check them out. All right. Next one is Ropes. Cool name. AI-driven platform transforming how engineering talent is evaluated. They announced that they raised $3.1 million. This is finance.yahoo. So you go take a look at that. Skills-based hiring for the win.

[00:32:53] Well, I believe, and I know you believe the same thing, that we're going to see more and more of these type of industry-specific. I mean, we just talked about one, comp and medicine. We've talked to last week about, you know, platform play and construction. Now we're talking about, you know, engineering talent and how they're going to do skills-based assessments. So if you're a civil engineer, great. You graduated 20 years ago. What's your skills today? Like, what do we have today? Right.

[00:33:22] So, Rebben. There you go. Okay. Let's see what we got here. EPSOR, that's E-P-S-O-R, those grading at home. $24.4 million to become a market leader in the employee and retirement savings plans industry airspace. This is on- In collaboration with. Yeah. All the employees. I like how you did that. That's nice. This is on partechpartners.com. You can read kind of their presser.

[00:33:48] It's a nice, obviously, $24 million, $25 million, decent round, more than a decent round. But I like, out of all of the stuff that we do, I like seeing things when they're kind of off-center from the stuff that we normally, like we're in a sea of AI funding. Like, pretty much you and I could just talk about AI funding, not just in our space, but in general. We could spend hours just talking about that.

[00:34:12] The fact that now we're talking about a retirement savings and employee savings. I like that. Now, will it be AI infused? Yeah, probably. But that's not how they're leading. That's not how they're kind of coming about it. So good for them. It was listed in pounds as dollars. So I'm assuming it's a British-based investment. But good for them. I want a, and I know these exist. I haven't gotten into them.

[00:34:40] But I really want an AI infused retirement planning platform that I can just talk to. I want to talk to. That would be cool. Yeah, I don't want to talk to a human. I just want to talk on my own time. I'm driving in the car. I want to talk and ask a question. I hear something on the radio that triggers a thought. Yeah. I want to ask. But know that it's tied to a retirement company, a benefits company that actually manages, you know, the information I'm getting back.

[00:35:10] It's not just a grant. Well, it also knows your portfolio and your risk tolerance. Exactly. All the cash flow and all that type stuff. So I can see that happening. I can actually see someone building that already that knows your banking information, your savings, all that type stuff, and all of your investments historically to then understand, okay, where are you at right now? You know, because typically it's the pyramid of when you're younger, you're willing to take on more risks.

[00:35:36] And as you get older, you take on less risk for more guaranteed returns. Right. It's kind of the general pyramid that goes on. But some people break that pyramid. Yeah. You know, if I'm 60, I'll take a – I'll drop $20,000 on an investment. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. It's a space that's interesting because historically you have to be a high net worth individual to get a really knowledgeable and solid financial planner. Right. Right. So – and you're going to pay –

[00:36:05] They're called wealth managers. Wealth managers. Right. Right. Right. Yes. Wealth managers. However, the field can be leveled here. It can be leveled here, right? Yeah, I can do this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You get the right team behind this. It can really make a difference for people in the middle class. So anyhow, that's it, man. We did it. We worked through it. All good. Thank you all for listening, watching, and we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.