.png)
KP Unpacked
KP Unpacked explores the biggest ideas in AEC, AI, and innovation—unpacking the trends, technology, discussions, and strategies shaping the built environment and beyond.
KP Unpacked
Your Boss Should Never Be Your Career's Ceiling
The AEC industry isn’t just stuck—it’s dying. In this episode of KP Unpacked, KP Reddy and Jeff Echols pull no punches in discussing why the industry's obsession with mediocrity and outdated methods is dragging us down. From stagnating leadership to a lack of true innovation, this conversation exposes the uncomfortable truths that no one wants to face.
How can AEC finally break free from its comfort zone? What’s holding us back from truly disrupting the industry? And how can we push past the status quo to unlock the real potential of AEC? This episode will challenge everything you thought you knew about the future of the built environment.
They Discuss:
- Why AEC’s ambition is falling short—and how that’s a death sentence
- The rise of ambitious leaders and why you need to follow them or get out of the way
- The real reason innovation is failing in AEC (hint: it’s not the tech)
- How AI and disruption are the only way to escape the mediocrity trap
Stop making excuses. If you're in AEC and not pushing for real change, you’re part of the problem. Listen, rethink, and start leading the transformation now.
🎉 Special Offer for KP Unpacked Listeners: Get 55% off your ticket to the 9th Annual AEC Summit on October 29th at the Diverge Innovation Center in Phoenix! Click the link below and use promo code UNPACKED55 at checkout.
Don't miss this opportunity to connect with top minds in AEC and beyond. Tickets are limited—act fast!
Hey, welcome back to KP impact. My name is Jeff Eccles, I'm a senior advisor at KP ReadyCo and I am joined, as usual, by KP Ready. He is the CEO and founder of KP ReadyCo, also the founder of Shadow Ventures, and this is my opportunity. He knows this. I say this every week but I'm not sure he actually believes it. But this is this is like the time when I have a captive audience with KP and I get to say, hey, what were you thinking? You're posting all these things on LinkedIn? What were you thinking when you posted that?
Speaker 1:I get to ask KP every week about something that he posted on LinkedIn. What was the inspiration, what's the background for that? Tell me more. Tell me more about that story. If you're not following KP Ready on LinkedIn, you should be. It's just KP R-E-D-D-Y, kp Ready on LinkedIn. You're probably not going to be able to connect with him because his connections limit is usually met, but you can certainly follow him. He posts two or three times a day usually and lots of great insights, often some pot stirring going on and also some personal stories, which is the basis of the post we're going to dig into today. So, kp welcome. Hey, jeff, glad you're here today. You have moved to California now. I guess we've mentioned this a couple of times, but you've moved to California. I'm in Indianapolis. We had snow about three days ago and today it's 80. What's it like in California today?
Speaker 2:No 65. Brian said it's like always, 65. You guys are boring. Someone said we don't have weather, we have climate.
Speaker 1:That's what someone told me yeah, so the deal in the midwest is hey, if you don't like the, if you don't like the weather, wait 30 minutes and it'll change. The deal is if you don't like the weather where you are, I guess you have to move maybe you should drive 30 minutes over the hill and it's like 90 yeah, go drive 30 minutes, alright well, that's good to know.
Speaker 2:We'll either wait. Maybe you should drive 30 minutes over the hill and it's like there you go Drive 30 minutes. Yeah, go drive 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, that's good to know. We either wait or we drive. The weather will change, and the post that we're going to unpack today, which I'll read here in a minute and then we'll talk through it, is it's about change. It's about change in your career and your early career, as it were. I just hosted our virtual demo day, which I host the final Friday of every month, and I had noticed in the audience that there were a couple of folks from our early and mid-career mastermind group in the audience. So that was really cool to see, and I think this post and what we discussed today will really resonate with them, because it is about your first job in engineering. So let me read it and then we will unpack it.
Speaker 1:As the title goes, in my first engineering job I walked into my boss's office and I resigned. He responded it's about time. He always understood that my ambition because it matched his own or maybe even surpassed his own At some point. He said that my ambition was exceeding his ambition and he knew that he was holding me back. Your ambitions should be clear to your boss. If your boss isn't at least as equally ambitious as you find a new boss. In AEC, I see a lot of innovation roles reporting to people that are not ambitious or curious, yet they stick around. Don't do it. Move on and find a new boss or be your own boss. You know it's funny. I mentioned their early and mid career. This definitely touches on that realm right.
Speaker 1:Early and mid-career this definitely touches on that realm early and mid-career mastermind group, but also we have two innovation leaders, mastermind groups and I'm not saying you're calling anybody out here. Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. You can reveal that if you like, but these are the people generally in these two mastermind groups that you're talking about. They're the ones that are leading innovation in firms chief innovation officer, director of innovation, those types of roles in those mastermind groups and the irony is they're leading innovation and reporting up to, sometimes reporting up to some people that are not. So turn the clock back. I could probably figure out exactly how many years here, but turn the clock back to this point in time where you walked into your boss's office and resigned, and then let's unpack it from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the year was 1997. So for some of our emerging people they're like that was before I was born.
Speaker 1:It was way before they were born.
Speaker 2:It could be. Yeah, and it was an interesting dynamic because I worked for a very large engineering firm and I was a good enough engineer. I wasn't like the best or anything, but I was really good with clients, mostly just because I took the time to talk to them and I figured out early in my career that I would go up, I'd walk by the receptionist every day and there'd be a stack of those while you were out messages oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And so one day I asked her like what is that? It's like, oh, there's all the like people call us wanting services. They can't leave messages. I'm like, well, who follows up with those? She's like nobody. These damn engineers don't seem to care. I think I'll give them to me services. They call and leave messages. I'm like, well, who follows up with those? She's like nobody. These damn engineers don't seem to care. I was like, oh, give them to me, I'll start calling them. That's all I did. I was like I'll start calling them back. That's kind of rude, don't call people back. And so I started calling these people, right?
Speaker 2:So next thing, you know, I'm driving a ton of business, like more business than anyone, anyone. And then next thing, you know, my I'm like going to my boss and of course I'm making like 26 000 a year at the time, and my boss tried to like keep giving me raises and promotions, uh, up until my the top of the pay band, right, the most he could do. He did that after he exhausted that he would buy me um cards to Longhorn Steakhouse and Outback Steakhouse. That was about it. I was like tapping him out, basically. And so I think he quickly figured out like hey, this guy's not going to like just hang out. And he was a super interesting guy because he was not an engineer, he was in the Vietnam War, happened to serve with someone at our firm and he started off as like a concrete technician. He'll tell you like got really good at golf so got good at business development and was able to drive business, so he kind of appreciated that I was out there driving business, so anyway. So I think a lot of what he saw was just that he was not going to be able to keep me and then when I started my startup on the side, he thought it was like game over at that point. But you know, it's this pattern and it's an interesting pattern.
Speaker 2:From him onwards, I think I really you know that company I started went from two people to 1200 people in like three years when public and I was a really I was a really good boss up to about 20 people and after that I was a pretty bad boss because basically I can't have people that work for me directly, like on a daily basis, that are not equally or more ambitious than me. I don't understand it. I used to try to like you know people would coach, like, well, you know, everybody's in different situations and different positions and you have to have diversity. I'm like, yeah, they can report to someone else, not me, right? That's kind of my conclusion. And I've had people say, oh, that's not fair, but I stuff just was constantly trying to improve himself and create opportunities to earn more and I was like, yeah, sure, I'll give you infinite opportunities. In fact, he was running a big department for the state of Georgia at one point.
Speaker 2:So there's been a lot of people that have had that equal or exceeding ambition, that have worked for me and have gone on to do, you know, pretty amazing things. But you know, there was a time in my career where it's like, oh well, not everybody has to be as ambitious as I am, that's okay. Some people it's just a job, and then really I've gotten to where like, yeah, I can, we can hire those people that you can't report to me, because it'll be equal frustration, right, you know, I slack at two in the morning. If you don't respond like, then you're not ambitious, right, that's just, that's just how, that is right, and so that's fine. There's, there's always those roles.
Speaker 2:But I think when you're younger, um, you tend to pattern the behavior, behavior of the people you report to. And if your boss shows up at nine and takes two coffee breaks and it's all about their quality of life, which good for them, right, and if yours is more like no, I want to be CEO, then that's the wrong person. Find a different person to report to. And I think that's why, like you know my, my work with startups and all the founders I work with, they are all very they're all you know, equally, if not more ambitious than I am Right. They're all trying to build're all you know, equally, if not more ambitious than I am right. They're all trying to build unicorn companies and work 24 seven and, um, you know, and they respond to my. You know they're. They're funny. Like I responded, they're slacks. I had one slack me today at three in the morning. He's like what the hell are?
Speaker 1:you doing up.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm up, like sleep optional, you know, like I get plenty of sleep, which is funny enough, but people perceive I don't sleep. I get plenty of sleep actually. But I think early in your career if you pattern people that are very content, you will pattern them and become that content person and not that ambitious person. And I think I think it's a problem because I think so if we look at at the very beginning of things. You know a lot of people that go into civil engineering or construction. It's because maybe they want a quality of life, they like the idea of working for an architecture firm that works with the local K through 12 and don't travel. You know, I think this year will be the first year that I don't travel 200 days, right, I'm like 200 days a year. That's been going on for 20 years, right, and I have friends like, oh, how do you do it? It's like, well, it's just the job, it's what I signed up for, right? So what I do?
Speaker 2:I think for a lot of people that's not the case. You know they want to drive, to work and be at Little League games and that's good. More power to them. But I think if you're, especially if you're younger in your career, it can be very frustrating to have a boss that's in their quality of life phase, or maybe that's just where they want to be. And I think you see it. And I think our industry is different. You see it in law firms, you see it in accounting firms, you see it in management consulting, where the youngest teams figure out pretty quickly who's the high flyer, which is the partner that's going to be CEO, and they kind of vie to work for that person, they try to work on their projects, they try to get access to them.
Speaker 1:I don't know if we see that in AEC.
Speaker 2:I don't know if anyone's identifying the high potential architect that's going to be CEO one day and says, oh, I want to go hitch my wagon to that person, because there's a little bit like hitching the wagon to someone else's career.
Speaker 1:Sure, hitch my wagon to that person, cause there's a little bit like hitching the wagon to someone else's career Sure, sure and looking, I mean there's a, there's the famous quote from Jim Rohn right, you become the average of the five people that you spend the most time with, and it's. You know, if you really sit down and unpack that it's like okay. Well, if I want to, if I want to go from here to here, and if you're listening to this it's a little hard for the visuals here but you know, if I want to go from this point to that point, then I have to surround myself by people that are above that point At least some of them, because the average right.
Speaker 1:It's math, so, yeah, it's leveling up to that point, it's learning from those people. It's hitching your wagon, possibly, but opening the opportunities. You know, my first job, um out of school, about the exact same time that you're talking about I. I ended up working exclusively with the senior designer, and so I got opportunities, museum of contemporary art and you know things like that versus tilt up, concrete distribution and things like that versus tilt up concrete distribution centers.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of truth to that. We talk sometimes about your latest book, the Intangible Enterprise. We don't talk so much anymore about your book. What you Know About Startups Is Wrong, and in that book you tell a lot of stories from startups you know from your startup days Similar. I don't remember if this, this exact story, is in in the book or not but, but similar. So what would you pull from what you know about startups is wrong into this conversation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so funny enough. It just got published on audible yesterday. There you go, no that on Audible.
Speaker 1:That's not from Segway everybody.
Speaker 2:Available on Audible. I think there's two things that I pull from. That is like I think I spent a lot of time racking my brain, putting in the energy and effort around things that were going nowhere, and just was unwilling to say like just shut it down and move on Right. There are a lot of companies that I started that had okay outcomes, but I should have just like shut it down. I think also in my book I talk a lot about like my personal challenges, including almost dying and stuff like that, and I think a lot of that stuff it wasn't from.
Speaker 2:You know, I was working hard. I work hard now. I think the difference is I still prior. I work hard at kind of everything. I work hard at my health, which is, you know, this age is always a challenge. I work hard at getting exercise and hydrating and all that stuff. So I think when I was younger, it was work hard at work and everything else I could let slip.
Speaker 2:I think now I'm probably one of these people that works hard, plays hard. I mean I haven't watched a TV show in a year. I mean it's been a long time. Everybody's talking about White Lotus. I'm like what's that? I mean there's just certain things that I have opted out of. In terms of that, I consider sedentary and not adding a lot of value to my well-being. So I think that I think there's a lot of parallels there from a lot of the stories in my book.
Speaker 2:But I think one of the things I think in being ambitious is also like knowing when to move on, and that could be a boss, a startup or whatever.
Speaker 2:Like hey, this startup's really mean you know, I had started a consulting business and we got to be like 50 people and I shut it down because I like, hey, this startup's really mean you know, I I had started a consulting business and we got to be like 50 people and then I shut it down because I was like that's not what I want, like I don't, I don't want to build a thousand person consulting company. I mean I could, I don't. That doesn't sound like very good use of my time, so to speak. So I think there's that. But I think when you look at you know, you know you do those like performance reviews and your boss sits down with you and says, hey, where do you see yourself in five years? You should turn around, ask your boss like hey, where do you see yourself in five years? You know it's like I need to see if you're a good fit for me.
Speaker 1:Right, it's good to smoke whites.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting. I mean I know some guy and some of the leaders in our AEC industry that are very ambitious and I think they're fantastic leaders in our industry, but I'll tell you like behind the scenes, I hear a lot more negative from their teams about them. Oh my gosh, he's so high energy. Oh, he's just like all over the place. Oh my gosh, he's selling work that I don't even know if we can do it, and I'm like those are all like really positive. As far as I'm concerned, that sounds amazing, right, but they view it as a negative.
Speaker 2:You know the energy and enthusiasm around expanding and growing and learning and that kind of thing. So I think in the post I even said not just ambition but curiosity, a boss that doesn't want to keep learning. I joke around with all you guys, right, like you'll never catch up. You can read all my posts. I'm consuming so much more information and you still have to catch up with all the other stuff I've already done, right? So unless I just stop, I stop reading, I stop listening, I stop interacting, I just kind of go into a hole somewhere for a couple of years. Then you have a chance of catching up, but as long as I'm consuming and doing. You're just not going to catch up. So I think even as much as ambition is super important. I think the curiosity aspect too. You know the boss that comes to you and says, hey, what do you think about AI? Hey, what do you think about this? I was reading this article. Those are the ones you want to hang out with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. At the end of the post the last couple of sentences of the post you say in AEC I see a lot of innovation roles reporting to people that are not ambitious or curious, yet they stick around. So the people in those roles, they stick around. Don't do it, move on and find a new boss or be your own boss. I mean, we know we talk about this for people that listen to this podcast. We know we talk about this for people that listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1:Maybe they're bruised sometimes by some of the things that we talk about, but we know that the AEC world, for all the things that we're doing here in this industry to change the world right, the world right Designing, building, developing those are different, by the way operating the places where we live, we work, we play, we worship, all those things For all of that.
Speaker 1:We also know that this is a pretty conservative industry. We know that oftentimes, when it comes to tech, fairly laggard and the innovation roles that we're talking about, one of the reasons we started the Innovation Leaders Mastermind Group was because there are so few of them and most of them are in the first. They're the first of their kind. They wrote the job description or the job description was written for them and they're sort of forging new ground. So what do you think this looks like in the future? Right, if we were to say that to all of the innovation leaders that participate in our two innovation leaders mastermind groups? Where do they go? Or did they become the boss that hopefully at some point inspires the next?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you saw me react. We had someone in our group that said that they had a shot to put their name in for the CEO job. They decided not to.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I was like what the fuck's wrong with you? Why would you do that? What do you mean? And it's like I saw it. I heard him say that. I was just like I don't get it. I don't get it, you know. And so I think we can.
Speaker 2:We say the word conservative a lot, right, but I think it's really complacent. I don't think it's conservative Like we use these words about risk and this and that and pride that we stamp drawings like is some big deal. It's not a big deal, really, not. You know, um, it's made to be a bigger deal than it is.
Speaker 2:I think we use a lot of these words and we say, oh, it's very conservative and risk and that, but I think it's it's as much as it as it being complacent, right, and, and I think that, but I think it's it's as much as it as it being complacent, Right, and and I think that's that's where a lot of this, this narrative around, like, oh well, you know you can't do that, you know you can't grow like that. So I think for these, for people that are ambitious, I think you have to decide like stay at the firm you're at, go to a different firm where the boss there is ambitious, or go do your own thing, Because I'll tell you, I talk to a lot of these CEOs not the founders, but CEOs of these firms and a lot of them are very ambitious and I will tell you they say things like yeah, I stopped trying to get people to get on board.
Speaker 1:Either they do and they're here, or they don't and they go somewhere else and that's okay. Yeah, that's okay. I think it's conservative and complacent. I think the danger zone maybe it's both, but the real danger zone is in the, in the complacency that that's where. That's where the blind spots are, that's where um architects, engineers, contractors, whoever it is that we're talking about, that's where they get passed up, forgotten about, disrupted, you know I think to me that's. That's where the real danger is, the complacency.
Speaker 2:Well, and it manifests itself. We've talked about this. It manifests itself in the business models. Oh, absolutely the firms that complain oh, hourly rate's the worst. That's not actually true for a lot of people. I always say so. A lump sum job you have to be a good steward of your money. And an hourly rate job the customer has to be a good steward of your money. Yeah, and an hourly rate job the customer has to be a good steward of their money.
Speaker 1:Sure yeah.
Speaker 2:I think there's plenty of people that love to camp out on projects and fill out timesheets. Not you know, call it in right. The DOT is not reviewing your timesheet to see how fast you calculated, whatever it is you're calculating.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:As long as you're in your chair at your computer doing the work, you get to bill for that time. And as much as people complain about, like, oh, this industry and the hourly rate thing, I'm like there's a lot of people that really love the hourly rate thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, because if it was lump sum, then they got to work differently, rate thing I'm like there's a lot of people that really love the hourly rate thing. Yes, because if it was lump sum, then they got to work differently. Right, they have to be creative. Uh, they have to work harder. They got to do more with less in order to be profitable.
Speaker 1:But maybe I mean, if you're going to be profitable like you try I mean well, I mean yeah, I mean where I'm coming from is you can't camp out on a job right, you can't camp out on it.
Speaker 1:Where I'm coming from is you have to understand what your costs are, and this is where I see the fear of for most about about lump sums is well, we're going to, we're going to throw a lump sum and you know what if? What if we go over? Well, what if you go over starts with, do you actually understand? You know from historical data that you had, from other, you know the last bridge project that you did or whatever it was. Do you actually understand so that you can put together a legitimate right and an accurate lump sum number? That's where it starts. And, yeah, sure, if you've got people sandbagging on it, then you're in trouble. Certainly, but it's also where the opportunity is. Hey, we understand it. Now we've incorporated this new tool where we can be more efficient, and that's you know what you're talking about the creativity and everything. That's where we can start to open up margin.
Speaker 2:But I think there's plenty of people. I'm an engineering company I work for. I remember people say guard your job numbers. I don't know why.
Speaker 1:People are stealing your job numbers.
Speaker 2:People will code to your job. They told me there were people in the company that didn't do much work but would always, if they had a conversation with you in the hallway, they'd bill an hour to your project. They just billed the jobs. I'm like okay, like hide your job numbers, don't let people know about them that's a pretty crazy culture, by the way I don't know that it's that different in some of these mega firms. I mean, we were kind of a mega firm, you know.
Speaker 2:And if you have some IDIQ contract with federal agency where you just kind of bill hours.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying like.
Speaker 2:I think there are people that love the hourly rate culture.
Speaker 1:But the thing is, Elon Musk is going to eliminate all of those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 1:Send all of your mail. Yeah, maybe Send all of your mail, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2:By the way, if you want to talk about the Elon Musk effect, right, I am hearing from CEOs that are kind of like they're telling me they're like, hey, I hate the way he's coming about it, but he's probably not wrong about a lot of things in terms of waste waste and fraud and in a lot of companies, the CEOs are saying like, hey, maybe we need to have a little bit of a reckoning within our own companies.
Speaker 2:What people are doing, you know, are they you know? And I think if you take that narrative with the return to office narrative, there's like a real question of like, what are people doing all day? Right, I think there's back to the being a very conservative industry. You could sit in your cubicle all day and produce nothing and your boss is like, oh, they're working hard. You can be remote your boss doesn't see you and produce effectively. Your boss might say like, oh, I don't know, that guy's never here.
Speaker 1:Sure yeah, Perception right and a boss that's not looking at the right things yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I think that it's a challenge. I think that's partly why we leave. You know, I've been ramping up our team and, um, someone asked me the other day because we've hired some really talented people and they're like, how did you recruit that person? Like because they're ambitious. You know, they want to come work for me and do ambitious things and companies they were at were not. You know they were not doing ambitious things.
Speaker 2:They weren't, uh, doing curious things. They weren't doing like, hey, go try out these four ai engines and break them. Yeah, you know, they didn't get it. It's like oh no, I'm too busy. I gotta go work on a project, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah. Yeah, you touched on the curiosity briefly before, but I mean, I think that's that's huge right, that's. Curiosity fuels part of part of what we need as human beings. Yeah, that's, that's a big deal and obviously that that's a human need. It goes beyond the goes, goes beyond the workplace, but, um, when we can incorporate it in the workplace that's important.
Speaker 2:I will say this too. I think I was talking to a friend. They got let go from one of the big companies. They just let go of 9% of their staff Autodesk, autodesk and interestingly enough, the biggest fear a lot of those folks are having is that they were so deep into the Autodesk system, doing Autodesk things the Autodesk way, that their skills aren't really that transferable.
Speaker 2:The world has changed right With AI. You know they still had, you know, droves of people doing content writing and messaging and social media, this and event that. And they're starting to realize, as they've kind of coming out to the workforce, content writing is a part-time job because you have AI to help you out. Content writing is a part-time job because you have AI to help you out. Graph, I mean, I think being a graphic designer at a corporate these days, I don't think it was ever a great place to be, but I think it's. You know that stuff's like kind of tough these days, right, like do you? Is that a full-time job? If you go to another company, someone is someone. I mean the specific example they said said yeah, like I'm a master at you know, adobe, illustrator. I'm finding out that outside of autodesk, like a lot of these mid-sized companies, they're all using canva, they're all using these other tools.
Speaker 1:What do you think they use at adobe?
Speaker 2:canva just curious but you know what I mean. Like I think there's a little bit like the world is changing fast and people just don't right, wasn't we? You and I talked to some company they'll know who they are if they hear, listen to us. It was like a podcast company that would help us, like manage our podcast. Yeah, and they started talking about sound engineers and sound boards, yeah, and like we had to fly in to do it. And I was like what? Like yeah, this is how we do it. And it was like you and I were like you want us to fly in and you're gonna have a sound engineer in a booth. And are you kidding? Like since when?
Speaker 2:yeah yes, I also doing that I.
Speaker 1:I also don't want session musicians either. I want the stars, right, I want the best guitarist. And yeah, yeah, that is that is. It's interesting because you know, and well you know this, listeners may not, but we will consult at times with an architecture firm, especially now. I mean, we've been talking about this a lot.
Speaker 1:Everybody thinks they need a podcast now, um, I don't disagree with them, the, but we've got to be very clear on what, the, what the goals are, et cetera, and so we'll, we'll do a lot of consulting on hey, how do I get this started? What do I, what equipment do I need and need, and all of this. And recently I was talking with a firm leader and said hey, gather up, gather up all the responses to your RFP, if you will, and I'll help you analyze them. I'll go through and we can mark out the things you don't need circle of things you do need. Because and it's what's to me specifically in the podcasting world is, this is like this is not new, right?
Speaker 1:We, we record right now on stream yard um, and we're not getting paid or sponsored by stream yard um, we, we use this um. It's not a new's, not a new platform, but it eliminates the need for us to fly around. Right, their technology is decent. I mean, it's good enough that you're listening to this right now. Riverside's a great, great example as well. You know they started in two different places, but probably two different desired outcomes would decide which one of those you pick. But, like you said, whether it's graphic design or it's content writing or it's producing podcasts or whatever, the need for change and keeping up and upskilling and all of those buzzwords that we love, that's more necessary every single day.
Speaker 2:Well, so that's kind of an interesting thing to think about, right. Do you think, in the new AI-driven world which we're seeing like every day, something amazing happening? It's like happening at that level? Do you think you actually can have a job if you're not ambitious?
Speaker 1:Do you do? I think you can actually have a job if you're not ambitious. Yes, it's going to take a long time for AI to replace all of this, 10 years from now. You know, I don't know. Do do? I think? I mean, to me, we've talked about this before. We talk about this in terms of our mastermind groups and other places To me, everything comes down to growth mindset.
Speaker 1:Do you have a growth mindset? Are you willing? And this is job, this is relationship, this is personal. You're talking about health and things like that If you don't have a growth mindset and the way I think about growth and mindsets is, there's three lenses.
Speaker 1:There's personal growth. There's relationship growth. There's business, career, professional. However, you need to couch work. If you don't have a growth mindset in all those and I think you need at least those three lenses for a holistic person, those three lenses for a holistic person If you don't have a growth mindset in each of those, you're in trouble, right? If you don't have a growth mindset in terms of your health, you're in trouble, maybe not today, yeah, eventually, eventually. If you don't in relationships, you're in trouble. If you don't in work, again, whatever that realm looks like, you're in trouble If you're at Autodesk and you're using Adobe, first of all, that's that's gotta be a punchline. There's like a bartender in there somewhere. But if you're at Autodesk and you're using Adobe rather than Canva, and you can't even get a job at Adobe because they're using Canva, that's telling.
Speaker 2:Or or more so like it's, because your job is. I'm in charge of creating the signage at our events and I use all these templates and I'm happy with that job. I'm happy with things coming to the inbox. I do my things. I complain about how busy I am.
Speaker 2:First of all, and then I upload them to a shared folder, like that's my job and you know things come in, I do some process and then but if you're not ambitious and curious, like you know, it was interesting. I was out with one of my investors and they own, like I don't know, 50,000, 70,000 apartment units and he's like he's like you know what the best thing that he got out of the pandemic was. He started coming into the office because he wasn't traveling as much. He's like I found out I have four people whose job is to open checks and put them in the right folders for someone else to deposit, and I was like what? And he's like yeah, that was my reaction Because you know what's funny is people think that, like the old guy CEO and he's a little bit of an older gentleman that they're not aware of innovation and technology.
Speaker 2:They're very aware. It's just that if you know their operations working, don't? They don't worry about it. And if they're too busy flying around on their private jets, they're definitely not thinking about how they take in checks, right, they just assume they have someone in place that is looking at that. And so he just told me he's like yeah, I walked around the office as we started getting back into the office after the pandemic. I'm walking around, I'm around. Well, we have four people whose jobs are to like, go through the mail, get rent checks and post them to their and put them in folders for someone else to post to the right property. He was like I was blown away that we and I'm like what'd you do about? He's like I fired three of them I'm blown away that they got checks no apartment episode apartment dwellers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's the whole thing, right, um, if you, if you live in an apartment, it's, um, you know, unless you're using one of our platforms like magic door or something else, or stake, you're probably paying by check at the policing office, still very prevalent, um. So, anyway, but you know, there are these jobs that exist that are, like, sure, my job is to open up checks. Now, what I'll tell you is anybody that's been in that job for a minute is probably not that ambitious at their work life, or curious.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Like, in other words, if I was an ambitious, curious person, I was given the task Maybe it's an entry level task to open up checks and put them in folders. I'm like, why are we doing this? There's gotta be like, there's gotta be a better way to do this. Like I'm gonna try to find a way to do it better and replace myself so I can do something else. I had four people, four people doing this full time, full time, and I was just like this is wild. And he was like yeah, so so my point is my question around like, if you are not ambitious and you're not curious, I don't think you have 10 years well, no, probably not at the speed that we're moving now.
Speaker 1:I, I do think it depends on the role, um, but we're moving at a speed now that's, of course, is faster than ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the same thing and we're teetering on a recession, if not already in one.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'll tell you like here in California, every fast food place, not even fast food, like quick serve, like burrito joints, they'll have kiosks, it's all kiosks.
Speaker 1:Nobody takes your order Right.
Speaker 2:Nobody takes your order.
Speaker 1:The same thing would have been said at one point about the person that laced the spokes on a wheel of a Model A Ford, right, I mean, it's that's, that's been a constant throughout, you know, since the Industrial Revolution, right, but it's, it's the speed. Now it's the speed and I think also the drastic. Drasticity is probably not a word, what's the word I want, I don't know, but it's the drasticness of the change, I think, is the real key. Now it's moving very quickly and the change is vast. And, yes, if you are one of four that are sitting in an office and all you're doing is opening checks, again I have, I have questions, but if that's all you do, yeah, it's, it's not going to take long.
Speaker 2:You don't? You don't think there's people at other companies that have those kind of jobs? I'm sure there's. There's a lot more of them. I think we are. We have different optics on the world. We are, we have different optics on the world. I think there's a lot of. There's a lot of companies where there's someone sitting at a desk opening envelopes and sitting next to the paper shredder for an hour a day, like just all this stuff, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there probably are. I don't know what's an envelope.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what I'm saying. I think we our optics are off. We're a bit myopic to our world. Yeah, I think we our optics are off, we're a bit myopic to our world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, definitely true. The. You started out this post talking about your first job and now we're talking about people's next job or last job. Maybe the post goes like this In my first engineering job, I walked into my boss's office and resigned. He responded it's about time. He always understood my ambition. It's about time he always understood my ambition because it matched his own. At some point he said that my ambition was exceeding his ambition and he knew that he was holding me back. Your ambitions should be clear to your boss If your boss isn't at least as equally ambitious as you find a new boss. In AEC, I see a lot of innovation roles reporting to people that are not ambitious or curious, which has been a big point of our conversation here, especially towards the end Yet they stick around. Don't do it. Move on and find a new boss or be your own boss.
Speaker 1:All right, I think we could probably do an entire another episode on this. We're going to wrap it up right here. As you're listening to this, let us know what you think. Wherever you're listening to this or watching this, this comes out in a variety of different mediums. Wherever it is that you're consuming this drop into the comments, your thoughts, your questions, questions, your challenges to what we're talking about. If you have them, let us know. If your job is opening envelopes or putting checks in folders, we want to know who you are, not to call you out or put you on the spot, but also know that everything that we've talked about that needs or deserves the link will be in the show notes down below.
Speaker 1:Whether this is an audio wave or it's a video, our production team will be putting the links in the show notes below. So thank you for listening. We do this every week. Every week, I get to ask KP hey, what were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn? This has been fun. It is. We were talking about this before we went live. It is fun talking about the personal stories, the personal experiences. So look forward to hearing more of these and also all the different formats of this unpacked podcast, and also all the different formats of this Unpacked podcast. As soon as KP and I log off here, I'm going to log on with Frank Lazzaro from our team, another senior advisor, and he and I are going to unpack some AI tools, and next week, I'll be unpacking some posts with some of our Mastermind members.
Speaker 1:There's lots of different formats that we're rolling out of this Unpacked podcast, so I hope that you'll give them all a listen. I hope you'll let us know what you think, what you want to hear more of. Let us know what your questions, your comments, your thoughts are in the comments, wherever you're consuming this, and we'll be back again next week we are still the number one podcast in aec, I think as far as we're concerned, we always will be Just tune in here, you don't need to go anywhere else.
Speaker 1:All the rest of them are stuffing envelopes using Adobe.
Speaker 2:No, they're all showing up to a studio with a sound engineer.
Speaker 1:With a session musician. Yeah, we've got real drummers. All right, everybody. We appreciate you. Thank you for listening. Kp, thanks great to see you again and talk with you, and we'll see you next week.