[Music] welcome everyone to uh the latest

edition of our on the offense podcast and more specific than that welcome to

the 2025 spring break Edition wow of on the

of on the offense Jeff we are recording this a few days in advance but uh when

we post this it will officially be spring break so any spring break plans are you going

down to to Fort Lauderdale you going down to the Gulf of whatever it's called now what what are you doing Palm Springs

yeah absolutely no I'm I'm staying at um you know our house was fairly

destroyed after that pipe broke in our front room so you realize you just gave out your personal address to the world

right it was at this moment that he knew he [ __ ] up well people could get it anyway

right she said I'll bleep no I'll bleep it well Gilman our producer has just

told us she will bleep that out um but they're not going to know what's being bleeped out I in I inadvertently gave my

home address yes yes and I don't want any of you visiting me well especially for high security high visibility people

like Jeff we don't want to be giving the right you know I have my own security details who was the uh the Detroit Lions

coach do you remember that story it was during the playoffs last year and while

he was in San Francisco playing in the NFC championship game so what 2,000

miles from his home in Detroit somebody posted his home address yikes and a

whole bunch of people went to his house during the game he's in a stadium 2,000

miles away coaching they're at his house and his daughter was home by herself oh

my and got really scared and concerned and his wife was at the game with him

right and uh it got so bad that so many people posted the address that he had to

move that's unbelievable so if if Gilman hadn't agreed right here to bleep that

out you might have to move if you saw my house right now you'd say that's a good idea

right well it sounds like Jeff is homebound for spring break I um am

homebound for part of it not homebound for another part of it that's a story for another day but um welcome to on the

offense uh we hope you enjoyed our last one the last one uh was when we had our

first ever guest on on the offense smooch repovich uh Rosenberg who yeah who is

one of the most esteemed well most well-known frankly one of the best if

not the best recruiter that I'm aware of in corporate community Communications

and uh investor relations and I I don't know I I I thought that discussion was

really great yeah I think it I think it was really good yeah yeah smooch definitely leans towards the financial

side versus the pure PR and that was very helpful to me back in the day yeah

for sure so smooch thank you thank you thank you for those of you who didn't

get a chance to watch that I thought it was our best podcast yet I think it was our eighth episode so that makes this

number nine uh and so uh you can find that on um our YouTube page or on our

web page or you can find it on any of our social channels uh we post it U

there as well so and and as we'll do for this so that was the L the last podcast

this podcast also like all of our podcasts has a very specific uh launching pad and thus theme

and that is uh the fact that today again when we post this March

11 is a day that will go down and infamy 2 or five years ago March 11

2020 that was the day the world shut down that was the day that the uh

Centers for Disease Control and I believe the World Health Organization and others uh officially categorized

covid-19 as a global pandemic and as such that's the day five years ago today

essentially that the world began to shut down um the night before that I can tell

you where I was you tell them where you were and then I'll tell you where I was all right he thinks this is going to be

another one of my long stories but I'll give you the short version he's God no the short version is that I was right

here in Frisco Texas at the soccer stadium at the she believes cup watching

the US play Japan the US Women's uh national team team played Japan that

night beat them uh and little did we know as we sat there uh not yet masked

up I don't recall that tomorrow was going to be the day when the world was

shut down uh little did we know where were you the night before or

on the day the world shut down we were actually the night before um and we knew

the world was going to shut down yeah we went out to for Japanese food with a close friends of ours another couple and

the guy Chuck who's a close friend still had a cold or he thought he had a cold

oh great and so he was sitting over there coughing it's no big deal just they had cold and we finish our dinner

and the next day his wife calls and oh you know Chuck went to the doctor and he just has a cold and I said oh good

because it would I'd hate to start out the the pandemic sitting with a covid

infected person not a good way to start a GL pandemic no no but two days later

she got another call I mean she got she called us again and said ah the test was wrong he actually has covid and you

probably freaked out at that point oh absolutely my got absolutely yeah so that's that's my start to the whole

thing and I do believe in my bag over here I do have a mask so if you want prop I can pull it out you know I I

still carry my mask with me yeah I do I still have it you just never know um

well Robert F Kennedy Jr probably wouldn't support you the covid vaccine

so yeah well here okay yeah we try to avoid Politics on on the offense but

it's tough on that one that one is tough yeah you know CO's just a bad cold right I know that yeah yeah and how many

people died um it was like over a million wasn't it oh look here here's a

sta are we getting 7 million people go wow 1.2 million in the US all right

that's even worse just a bad cold right bad cold really bad cold you know what not to ever smile or make light of it it

it it what a horrible horrible situation it

was Co it's not like Co isn't out there still but boy oh boy that was rough that

was rough and um uh it just a terrible situation I'm

I'm glad we're here now five years later to look back on it I myself have had it three times uh including uh about six

months ago um each of the three times I've had it I didn't feel quite as bad as the first right the first time I had

covid the most sick I've ever been I I couldn't believe how horribly I felt huh

um but anyway so uh the point of uh I mean this the five years ago is really

just a launching pad for today we're we're here really to talk about how did covid change the workplace right but

even more importantly as we look forward because you know we're all about looking forward here right on the offense how

are companies today five years later handling the challenges at work from

home uh Andor how are they handling getting people back to the office I mean

covid fundamentally changed how we work we're talking to you via Zoom which

existed before Co but wasn't used but wasn't like what it became um um Zoom to

me is now almost like Kleenex right which is a brand but it's like this generic for what we're doing today and

that was all because of covid so you know how are companies handling this and and so here we are okay five years later

here we are March of 2025 and the Pendulum has swamp five

years ago everybody went home um and we figured out a way to still be productive

right and over time people started to go back to the office because some companies more abruptly than others um

but here we are and the pendum has completely swung the other way now and now you've got the federal government in

the United States mandating that people go back to work I am looking here at a New York Times article from just a

couple of weeks ago saying the um uh the co-founder of

Google um urges this is and I'm paraphrasing the headline in the New York Times urges workers to the office

at least every weekday at least every at least every weekday so if you don't think the

pendulum has swung way back the other way right now this guy's saying not only

are are do we want you in the office every weekday we want you to consider

being in the office on the weekends now lots of jobs are kind of like that whatever but um now um that would

be an Elon yeah yeah now the Google according to this article the Google official return

to office policy does not mandate that people go in every weekday and then on

the weekends it mandates that employees work in the office at least three days a

week and that seems to me at least to be kind of where things have settled if you

will right um that it's depending on the company depending on the on the type of work that you're doing it's two days in

the office three days in the office four days in the office I'm seeing company some companies mandate four days a week

but maybe you work from home on Friday this Google comment was the first one I'd seen uh from a highlevel company

founder uh saying you ought to be in the office on the weekends too right so so

the question now is you know are we going to let that stay kind

of work from home most of the time but you can work from home a little bit of the time or is it really going to go

where the new Administration wants it to go at least for federal workers which they can control by definition five days

a week period end of story what do you think I think what we need to do is take a look what what did the pandemic show

to us with regard to productivity yeah with regard to earnings results with

regard to you know life in general and and what I saw at the time the co uh

pandemic began I was already a remote worker there was no reason for me to go

into an office I was writing I was on the phone I was doing video calls um and

I felt pretty productive like that and I didn't waste two hours or two and a half hours a day commuting you know you don't

get much productivity in the car aside from listening to the radio so um for me

that situation worked out pretty well and I think if you take a look back retrospectively at all this stuff I

think for lots of people they were pretty effective working remotely and

pretty happy um and if you take a look at productivity stats going back you

could make the case that um you could make the case that people were actually a bit more productive working remotely

than working in the office because they didn't have the distractions um they could you know take a trip to

the restroom to the kitchen have a c pot pot of coffee all the time and um so for

me I I just thought working remotely made sense and honestly as an agency that's what we do we work remotely out

of our homes we meet up here occasionally and maybe at Starbucks or

op Doty Burgers but U you know I re I recommend hop doy for a meeting place I

like hop doy yeah um it it with the the violent exception of the boozy shakes so

if you're going to have a meeting at Hop do don't have don't have boozy shakes during the meeting I've never had a

boozy Shake don't even get me started on okay um all right so I guess so you're

saying the key is can you be productive to what extent can you be productive at

home or remotely you're saying in your case at least that you can be fully productive we as an agency or fully

productive wherever we are right yeah yeah and and in in essence we could live

wherever we want it to as well I mean if I wanted to live in Florida right now I could be doing the same thing with just

using this uh computer as a way to communicate and to see each other um but I think a lot of it has to do with what

type of job you're doing can I get that little anecdote we talked about oh this is a good one good story okay so you

know you get all these mandates to go back into the office and uh my wife was on a business trip to Washington DC and

she went to Phoenix and this is just last week right yes last week yeah and so with the um Doge edicts and Elon Musk

and Donald Trump um people were being urged to come back into the office and because of that in Washington

DC the traffic was incredible you know commuting time was twice as long all

that productivity wasted and then they'd get to their offices and oh you know all the wires have been pulled out and the

Wi-Fi is off so they they have no way to communicate some people's offices were destroyed and they had to work in a

conference room um so so the the flip side of um of covid was remote work is

cheaper because you don't have to worry about the facilities so much the utilities running a cafeteria you know

keeping the heat at a certain level you don't have to do that so you know from an economic perspective for some

people that makes a lot of sense so just my my little perspective okay so you're

you're suggesting that people in in in and on the Beltway sat in traffic

forever right and these are people that maybe used to sit in traffic but then got used to not having to do so they

Pony up they get in the car they go there and they show up and and everything's been ripped out and they can't get anything done yes that's

that's government efficiency right there that is government efficiency well things really are getting better under Doge aren't they hey doge is what it's

all about we're doing we're doing it again we're fearing we're fearing it doge is what it's all about oh it's all

about Doge these days oh yeah you know the company I was at Unisys uh big

global company um we deployed very quickly on zoom and

and in not me because I was in the corporate office I was an office rat I was there all the time when you are

serving at the pleasure if you will of the CEO you got to be in the office okay

I had one of those office rat jobs but even then if you needed to work

from home if you had a doctor's appointment I mean the point is we were already used to some more than others in

our company used to working at home sometimes and being able to be perfectly productive and and and for us we were

able to continue being collaborative um I worry you know I when

we talk about to me it's all about are you being productive but it's also about

are you feeling engaged are you feeling are you an Engaged employee right this

is something we've we've talked about employee engagement I think on these podcasts before um it is so critical to

engage your employees because there is a direct line of sight from their level of Engagement to their level of

productivity uh to to their level of attachment to the company right which then creates a direct line of sight to

their level of productivity um to their uh efficiency and success in their role and also to

their General happiness if that chain is broken now they're starting to check out

mentally which I suppose would be easier to do if you weren't in an office

right if you're in an office you can't just take a nap for an hour right

but uh and and if people are less less

happy less productive less engaged Etc they're more prone to quit and when a

com when when an employee quits any for any of you out there who've tried to replace that employee it is a boatload

of time and it's a boatload of money to try and replace them so to me it all starts with engagement now how do you

engage engage employees when they're not there I mean where do we get the

majority of our work information we get it right through our screen right right we all carry laptops right my my

business is with me yeah I've got my book bag here I'll throw my laptop in and I I'm on a wireless network that I

created using Apple um yeah so I could do this from anywhere right now well you

can do the job from anywhere I will say this I mean we're kind of on one side we're we're it seems like we're saying

well as long as you have the tech technological capacity to stay connected you're going to be productive here's

where I worry I do worry especially for younger people who you know on one hand younger

people especially those who've been in the workforce for five years or less they only know work from home remote

work at least for part of the time and they expect that that's just the norm for them so kind of weird for those of

us who were chained to our desk for decades right um so I worry that if we

are overreaching with the pendulum and forcing everybody back five if not more

days a week in the office the young people are going to start to lose engagement and lose productivity even if

you have them back to the office so ironically you can lean on them more and

they're in the office more but you may they may end up over time being less productive the other side of that coin

though I do worry about young people and I'd love to get your view on this I do

worry that if you're newer in your career and if you're new with a certain

company if you are not in the hallway and if you're not in the company kitchen

or whatever you're not meeting people in person no and thus I think it's going to

be harder for you to build relationships with people and again when you're at any point of the comp wherever you are in a

company you have to build relationships with people but if you're new and you're 23 and this is your first job you need

mentors you need people to learn from you need to be able to sit in conference rooms and Learn by osmosis uh from a

discussion right and you if you're sitting by yourself in your pajamas and you're

24 you may be hearing stuff but is it quite the same I do worry about that no

it's not it's not quite the same given the hours that people work especially in this country and that socialization

process is really important at the same time I don't think you need to be in the office five days a

week if your job doesn't require it if you're there two days a week one day a week three days a week that should

handle it from the socialization perspective yeah um yeah the the other thing I'd say is uh back in the day and

I don't know whether you were still at EDS um but you know we took took a look at communications I know this was a few

years after you left um and just what was most effective and and we found

out it was really important to engage your employees in telling your company

story um yeah like EDS and unisus very complex companies that did complex

things that were hard to hard to relate to if you weren't in the industry so one

thing we did is we had a storytelling program and we said okay on this 3x5 index card write down the the most

important thing you think that describes the company and everyone thought this is

what a screwy idea this is we ended up getting thousands of responses I love it

and a lot of them ended up in our messaging you know so if these people think oh wow this company's really

listening to me they're gonna have a better opinion of the company and so I think that's something you have to

balance out too what's internal invariably goes external and

so I think if remote work could be a part of it that hey I come from an atmosphere I don't care where you do the

work it's just do you do a good job do you do the work yeah with that other component of well we're gonna meet

physically weekly or you know we're going to utilize those office facilities

but um but I think it all depends on what type of job you do obviously you can't manufacture from home you can't do

a lot of engineering work from home ABS absolutely um so it sounds like

we're kind of landing on some some level of balance is best

right yes if you're if you're home all the time you're never meeting anybody you're probably not going to be fully

engage or as engaged as you might otherwise be because you're missing the social parts of it um but if you're

being dragged into the office five if not more days per week it may end up

backfiring so I mean I guess our advice to those of you out there would be be careful be careful what you wish for if

you're going to mandate people come back five days a week it may backfire on you you may be surprised that the level of

Engagement Goes Down And Thus everything else goes down except for your costs

because you're going to have to replace more people who are going to quit it sounds like we're we're recommending balance we're recommending balance I I

had a quick comment here too I just wanted to give you guys an extra little seed to work with is you know from from

the perspective of somebody who's been in the in the um Workforce postco if you

will I mean I mean if you like right as we were understanding what covid was right like um call it summer of 2020 and

and that it wasn't going anywhere um so yeah I think there's a big shift for

people my age and younger and even a little older just for um you know uh

reference I'm I'm 28 um I think you know the Millennials and younger I think are are stepping more into the fact that you

know maybe there should be this work life balance where I don't meet all of my friends and and people I hang out

with on The Daily at my job you know there's much more of a um Resurgence of

that third location between work home and this third going out meeting people

um you know socialization aspect that's separate from work it's just an interesting shift to be aware of um

especially too as we're you know learning the effects of how Co is going to you know affect professional

corporate life moving forward so it's an interesting point I mean everything has changed and I was gonna say the same

thing Everything's changed everything has changed retail changed going to a theater has changed oh yeah um shopping

yeah retail shopping I mean look at Amazon now compared to what it was before and I never really uh I never

really um shopped online that much but now I do everything online exactly and

it's a treat when we go to a movie yeah but you can see everything at home so I

don't know I don't know how it all balances out if you can do it at home why not right why not um unless a pipe

breaks floods your house yeah that would never happen that never could happen um

I will say this also another piece of advice and this is something I got out

of an article in Fortune uh that was writing about this topic there's tons of

Articles as you can all imagine about this right now because it's a very timely topic um Fortune did an article

on what some companies are doing they focused on private sector what on What some companies are doing to make it more

worth their employees while to come back to work so in other words you show up at

work X number of days per week and some companies are making that easier for you

to do because there's more benefits for you when you get there I don't think that's asking too much of companies to

be a little bit more creative right especially with younger people because because again last five years it's all

they know right if you're if you're Caroline's age 28 or or or younger

that's all that's all you know so look at look at what JP Morgan has done to entice their employees to come back with

some in office benefits When employees register for a conference room for example for a

meeting their temperature preferences are included and employee coffee

preferences are tracked I love it I mean I love it is that going to turn the world upside down no but that's kind of

cool right um but you know and then well even if

companies don't quite have such wherewithal not everybody has the money or the with all to do stuff like that um

but I'm sure there are some things that companies can do and I would challenge you if you're a head of marketing or a

head of communications or a chro out there try to think of some things that you can do and I don't mean just have

like a Friday Donuts thing right try to be a little bit more creative than that

there's all sorts of ways you can make this worth your employees while and you might say why do we have to do that we

just want them back but again everything changed and if you're talking people are

what 30 or younger nothing's changed for them this is all this is all they know so I have a

uh what's that I said perfect example daddy it ties in perfectly with what you were saying wonderful the company I work

for um have just announced their new evening yoga sessions in the basement of

the office that they have a little like it's like a a gym it's it's it's very small it's like the the size of a of a

studio apartment very small but it's you know with a with a gym floor and all of

the yoga mats and everything and it's from 5:15 to 6 o'clock so right after you get off of work right at 5 you go

and change you go downstairs and you do quote unquote rest and relaxation to to

end your your day at the office and then walk out with your co-workers and your friends

beautiful genius rest and relaxation yes that's always been our

motto yeah so the the people who do that are probably much better partners by the

time they get home because they're in better mental and emotional shape when

they get home than you and I ever were well right yeah I I'll give you one more example that kind of ties into that a

bit but it was way preco um I used to work in the pharmaceutical industry in New Jersey

and the way we work during the summer was you work four days a week you put a tack an extra half hour onto the day of

each of the first four days then you get off at noon on Friday summer hours summer hours yeah baby and when you

walked out the door there'd be a hot dog cart with an ice cre ice cream cart you'd go off with your buddies and play

golf or you'd meet your wife at the movie theater but it was a real morale Builder yeah and and you know the

company didn't have to do that but pretty much almost every company in that industry in that state did that you know

in that industry which I I think had made people more loyal to the company

but also I think gave them some Affinity to the company we had all kinds of stuff on campus too we had a yeah a store

where you could buy any of the products we had a wide variety of products but not not just pharmaceutical but consumer

products um you know everything from tinman's Donuts to um to roll aids to

Hall meth alyus to Ben andural to psea fed and then on the script side you know

we had lipore and some other really big things um but we had that in a store and you could get it from pennies off the

dollar we had a medical clinic where they would even give you an x-ray we had

a dry cleaner on site um so you could pretty much do anything you needed right

in the office and that convenience factor was a big thing and I I really thought that was great we all took

advantage of it yeah and and Caroline you're right I mean the the Third Leg of

the stool as you were describing a few minutes ago I mean yeah they're you don't have to just make your friends

through work but if you have things like that you probably are more prone if you've got oh we're gonna have a golf

crew for summer hours right we had we had four of us we' play golf on Friday yeah exactly um summer hours by the way

that there the quick aside that's that is not a West Coast thing I don't know if you you're an East Coast guy right

I'm an East Coast guy that's a that's an East Coast thing I'm convinced uh you want to know why because it's always

beautiful weather on the west coast and so this whole summer hour oh let's get out Friday afternoon to enjoy the good

weather it's always good weather out there so we never had I don't know I've been there in June it's Gloom H well

other than gloomy other than gray May or wait May gray and June Glen other that's

a good point so the key in my view is to be intentional and uh to be intentional

about engaging your employees regardless of what your work from home policy is so

I've got uh three recommendations that I'd like to offer for an intentional

approach are you ready for this I've never been more intentionally ready really okay number one is develop an

internal Communications campaign designed specifically to celebrate the

benefits of being in the office being in t so in other words okay great we're

everyone's back now but that doesn't mean you don't have to engage them so this could include for example building

and promoting a set of in-person activities um people might like their home offices they also like camaraderie

like you were just talking about right people like camaraderie uh so be

intentional with a campaign number two deploy a group of

employees as culture ambassadors Oh I thought you were gonna like that so and

I by the way I am paraphrasing right now from a LinkedIn piece that I have

offered that will be live on LinkedIn today before this goes live but as I say

in the piece I have lost track of the times that I have seen a company talk about doing stuff like this like brand

ambassadors and never and then never do anything about it yeah right

and I just think that now is a really good time for a company to think about doing something like that right you are

almost by definition at this point and it all depends on the company you're at being forced now to be in the office

more than you were before whether you've gone from two to three 3 to four four to five Health five to six whatever

um people could use a little bit of of uh of cheerleading right and and if

people you can have people physically walking around an office you can have people who are running certain meetings about this or that but brand ambassadors

which is such an easy thing to talk about and then frankly blow off I I think now is a great time for it as a

bit of an antidote for those that don't like being there as much as they have to be there and every company I have to

assume has some those people people who God I used I used to be at home now I'm

here you know whatever right and then the last thing is measure you progress right um many companies already measure

Employee Engagement they they oftentimes it's done in kind of a preset schedule

I'm talking about measuring the campaign itself the campaign that that I'm suggesting you deploy a as an engagement

device sounds bad um uh as an engagement activ ity right you have to be able to

quantify any campaign you do whether it's internal focused external focused

with some sort of measurable data right and so you know you could set up a

prepost where you measure engagement level before the campaign and then you measure it after the campaign's been

deployed for six weeks or whatever if you have a preset

engagement schedule maybe wait until that is about to be deployed maybe

that's your foundation your Baseline and then you go back in a few weeks later and measure the difference you do stuff

like that um and let's assume the data reports people like the campaign they

are feeling more engaged than they were before that's the kind of thing that not only can you leverage to report out to

leadership to me there's no reason not to report that out transparently to the

employee base right in other words hey everybody we wanted to put our money

where our mouth was we realized that we've had you come back to work more or come back to the office more just so you

know um you know our employees are 177% more engaged and more productive

now than they were six months ago and you but you got to be careful though you don't want to present it as and I told

you so it's more like a rising tide lifts all boats we're so happy you're all here look at this great data um that

shows us our model was working thank you for your commitment there's all sorts of

ways that you can present this in a positive way so so that it's contagious

and people start to get into their heads boy this going back to the officing

maybe isn't so bad after all right yeah yeah no no that's that's actually those

are good points yeah I remember in our time at EDS we had a celebrating winds

program and if we had a big contract mostly multi billion of contract but we

had some hundreds of millions that we would celebrate those as well and so we would Spotlight the team that brought

home the the contract the bacon we'd put their names up pictures up and if it

were a contract in let's say um Japan or China or whatever we'd have Japanese or

Chinese food in the cafeteria on that Friday and we'd let people wear blue jeans do we have some

questions oh do we have questions in the chat we have questions for our esteemed

podcast hosts if you will really if you will engage me we're happy we're happy

to take questions from our live studio audience question from the audience you might have already answered this but

focus on the on the local specific um quote how has local marketing evolved as

the world is quote back to normal what do you mean local marketing

yeah maybe this is more small small town marketing maybe this is small businesses

maybe this is um you know not so maybe this is businesses or or entities that

aren't so forward- facing for example like Dr Pepper Coke you know big brands

that are going to bounce back and likely continue to survive through the through covid you know what what about smaller

marketing efforts you know how have those evolved that to not to your knowledge since the world has gone back

to normal um you know I guess what I I think that's a really interesting question to

me the way I think about it is whether you are JP Morgan Chase and you're having coffee preferences for the

conference room or you're um you know a small business in a

small town the you know the talent that you

have in your employee base is the most is typically the most

important thing you've got going as a company you got to recruit the right talent and and um

so there's two sides of that one is how do we recruit the best talent the second

thing is okay now that we have the right Talent how do we keep them engaged how do we keep them happy right now on the

first piece I have seen a huge Trend in the market of so-called recruitment

marketing uh that's actually a service that we offer as an agent agency uh

where we can help you build um websites uh micro sites if you will all designed

the content is all designed to showcase the goodness of working for the

company the goodness of living in the community especially if you're based not

in New York City like Chase right in other so in other words people there might be people who see a job posted and

they think boy that's a great job I wouldn't mind working for that company but boy do I want to live in Smithville

name the state right right it's a One-Stop light town or there's not a big hockey team right there do I really want

to do this right and so these recruitment micro sites and recruitment

campaigns are all very yes intentional to recruit the right Talent um that is

something that has become more prevalent since covid yes um and I don't see it

going anywhere anytime soon regardless of work from home right but then the second thing is how do you keep people

engaged because even if you are in you know Tim Buck two name the state whe

whether you're there whether you're in Midtown Manhattan you have to have some sort of work from home policy right otherwise

people don't know where to go every day and you do want to strike that balance I would argue right um but you have to

keep people engaged regardless of what kind of company you are and and I would argue that since covid back to the

question keeping people engaged is more critical than

ever because unlike before covid you now have the

option to not physically be in the office and so you you know you got

people who there may be people who you've hired they have all the skills they sound great you've never actually

met them and they never and they've never actually met you right you think

you know somebody when you've only been on Zoom calls it's just not the same and so how do you engage people like that

knowing that since covid more people I shouldn't make it sound like people like some people didn't work from home before

the pandemic but since the pandemic majority of people people and again if

you're 30 years or younger this is all you know so the world really hasn't changed for them this is the world the

world didn't change if you're 28 years old the world didn't change for you five the work world didn't change for you

five years ago because that's what you were entering for the first time the work world is changing now because now

again like we were saying earlier that pendulum has swung all the way back and the two of us are recommending

balance um but a lot of companies right now are not practicing balance they are putting their foot down and saying we

are done with that we want you back in the office period full stop and so um I

don't know if that answers your question Caroline no that's a great answer I have a few things I'd add to that um you know

small towns and communities have changed forever because of the pandemic great

point and lots of little restaurants lots of little boutiques weren't able to

make enough money to stay in business so a lot of them went out of business that's a great point and where people

live that's also changed you know look at vacancy rates of offices and buildings yeah big offices have been

closed down there's nobody to occupy them and the cost is too prohibitive um

and in this remote work World wouldn't you like to be able to take your laptop

out on a beach in Barbados and work just as effectively from there there as you do from your

house in Dallas um actually I know someone who did that and it and it

worked um so I think you've also seen things in communities where things have

changed people don't go as much to shopping malls anymore but we've had all these communities pop up that have like

a a town center outdoor activities uh music and those have replaced offices as

places to socialize so I think if you kind of plan around this new mindset of

our society as a whole you know it works pretty well and I think as you said earlier you know why do you want to

commute in New York City why do you want to pay $15 each way you know for your

train ticket in and out of town each day why do you want to give up an hour and a half each way of

productivity and instead of having that you know 10hour day in the office it

doesn't work out quite like that so you know there there there are puts and takes yeah but absolutely as someone who

home I think basically it's pretty good you just have to get one more

yeah one more question for the two of y'all what what industry will never be

the same again oh that's a good one that is a good one what industry will never

be the same again um now this could be a positive shift

because of Co yes I mean honestly movie theaters I was going to

go the same place I mean and and it's not just because of Co frankly um I

don't if I have the choice to watch the same movie sitting next to my very attractive wife in my very nice family

room or sitting next to a stranger in a dark room who I don't know who may have

covid or may have this or may have that or may just chew popcorn too loudly I'm

staying at home right but the other reason and this is very negative um and

we always try to stay glass half full here on the offense but I've heard of one too many stories of Mall shootings

and theater shootings and you're sitting duck and it's going to be hard to get me

back i' I've probably been to two movies in a theater since

Co wow yeah wow that's a dark answer but that's the first think second thing that

came to mind was restaurants I mean you talked about all these restaurants in these small towns that just couldn't

make it through just this week for those of you based in Los Angeles the original

Pantry announced that it's closing immediately this is a Diner downtown LA

that has been there on the same corner for 100 years um 100 years

unbelievably popular iconic a tourist stop closed and the story I read

basically said they never really recovered from The covid Slowdown I

think that's going to be same for a lot of different Industries I mean recording is true look at that you know people

don't go out and buy CDs anymore or records well they are going out and buying records because that's sort of a

a retro thing but that whole music industry yeah you know when you can download two songs you like from new

album why are you going to go out and buy the album yeah when you could just do it online with an MP3 so I think that

changes it's already changed I don't think it's going back um so you know

there are a lot of different things like that yeah look at the health of shopping malls you know it's just oh oh it's a

nightmare yeah it's a nightmare yeah so I I will say that maybe maybe just to close this Q&A down I will say maybe one

industry that's been helped by covid is I hate say it but ours right we can

provide you as our client perfectly good uh counsel and

advice and offer as many insights from here at the University of North Texas

than we can sitting in the conference room with you uh you know now that that will never though um preclude the

importance of our getting to know you as people and that's we'll never not be in person right but I'm just saying we can

get things done for you uh like this right so may I do a quick programming

note yeah let me just sing a verse you know you you got to come and face the

changes the ches and face the Str

changes to quote the great David Bo um and and we're here to help guide you on

your change I mean we're the sharpest we're obviously the sharpest we're going to lead you up the mountain and we know

what you're going to an encounter up there the Bumble success oh success oh yeah we can lead you to success and and

the Bumble and the Bumble and the Bumble um so quick programming note so uh as I mentioned earlier this is uh this is

being posted on March 11 which again is the five-year anniversary of the world shutting down or beginning to shut down

from covid um yesterday I think I mentioned this as well uh I posted uh

our first monthly LinkedIn uh authored piece on this very topic on purpose uh

we're going to switch off um Jeff and I uh month by month so next uh early in

April Jeff will post something and then we'll go from there we hope you enjoy that content it is meant to be thought

inducing thought producing and and all of this stuff kind of like the recommendations that I

suggested earlier is all meant to be action oriented as well to give you things to chew on to consider doing for

your own company and then tomorrow the day after this posts we are going to

launch our very first client's first newsletter if you are on the uh the

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we're hoping that as many of you as possible can follow follow us on LinkedIn uh we're trying very hard as an

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think followership followership on LinkedIn so if you like this content if you liked the LinkedIn piece if you like

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and we will make it worth your while the content we produce is always meant to

add value in real time to anyone who listens so thank you for listening um any closing comments well

just you mentioned a couple of it but uh please visit our social channels good point we're on all of them and uh we

look forward to seeing you there or in person or what have you at the Town Center of your town yeah as uh as many

started to say when covid hit I remember a lot of people would end conversations with stay well stay healthy uh you know

be good so stay well stay healthy we hope you made it through Co um we hope

you didn't lose anyone during covid that you loved um I'm sure that all of us

listening to this either had it ourselves or know people who had it hopefully you came through it okay uh it

was quite a time and uh there are still battles to be waged and the work from

home thing right now is kind of we're at that stage where it's like okay where do we go from here so stay well stay

healthy see yall later