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The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
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answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
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at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
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lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
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that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
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highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
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in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide
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guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
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all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, doctor
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Elise Cortez.
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Welcome back to Working on a Purpose program, which has
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been brought to you with passion our pride since February
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of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning again this week. Great
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to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If
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we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm
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a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, logo therapists, speaker
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and author. My team and I at Gusto and I
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help companies to enliven and fortify their operations by building
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a dynamic, high performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers
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activated by meaning and purpose. Did you know that inspired
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employees outperform their satisfied peers by factor of two point
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twenty five to one. In other words, inspiration is good
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for the bottom line. You can learn more about us
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and how we can work together at Gusto, dashnow dot
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com or my personal site Atliscortes dot com. Getting in
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today's program we have with us today Miles Everson. Since
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twenty nineteen, he has served as a Chief executive Officer
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at MBO Partners, the market leader in enabling the future
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of work and improving the well being of the professionals
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and businesses throughout the world. Prior to IMDIO Partners, Miles
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held several senior roles at PwC. Over thirty years as
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Global Advisory and Consulting CEO, leading the company's Asia, Pacific
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and America's advisory and consulting businesses, eventually becoming the US
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Advisory Consulting Vice Chairman. Miles led the first globalization for
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the advisory consulting practice across the PwC enterprise. He's the
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co author of Freebirds Revolution, The Future of Work and
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the Independent Mind for both independent professionals and corporate executives alike.
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This educational and practical guide unpacks the ever growing independent
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workforce and offers leaders crucier ways to become its client
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of choice. To Freebirds, we'll be talking about this book today.
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He joined us today from Austin. Miles a hearty welcome
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to working on Purpose.
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Helloly, thank you. I'm happy to be here.
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It's really great to me too, and we are like
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independent minded human beings here. Miles. I'm so happy to
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know you. I want to ask you first if you
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would just to sort of talk a little bit about
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your early career and why you wanted to jump in
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into your partners, and then I want to comment as
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to why I think it was such a great idea.
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Yeah great. So my early career, yeah, my thanks, At
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least my very early career. I started very young. I
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had I won't go all the way back, but my
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very first business was when I was eleven years old.
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So I had I had that business builder h DNA
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in me, and so I spent though after university, I
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was at PwC. Started there in the Minneapolis office, and
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then I did a bunch of tours through various offices
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in business units, and I was, you know, as you
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had sent in the introductory one of the h I
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ran the global advisory and consulting businesses in my last act,
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so to speak, before I decided to go over to
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MBO Partners. When I was at PwC. One of the
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things I did is it related to the workforce. Is
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I hatched and delivered a what we call the PwC
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Talent Exchange. And the idea behind that was that when
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you create liquid markets, all boat rising the liquid market.
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And as I say in the book, one of the
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trends that has a lot of permanency to it is
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that the frationalization of everything. At the time, I looked
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at it and said, well, we're going to fractionalize every
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company's most valuable asset, which is their workforce. And for individuals,
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we're going to fractionalize their careers. And that's exactly what's happening.
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Lots of data to support that. We may get into
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that here. And so then when I decided to move
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on from p TOBC, I went over to MBO Partners
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and they were a leader in helping independents stand up
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their businesses and operate successfully. Is white collar independence? Interestingly enough,
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it's now publicly announced, but as of last Tuesday, we
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sold MBO to Bline. So b Line is the I'm
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going to end vender management system in the contingent work industry,
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and now MBO is part of the Beeline family, so
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we're happy about that as well.
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Congratulations, Miles. It's really exciting. And you know, as I
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read your book, and I think you know by now,
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I read my guests books cover to cover in part
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because I'm a lifelong learner and I want to keep
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getting better for my clients and my own notification. But
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could really relate to it, Miles, because I am an
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independent mind person as you describe in the book, and
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went independent in two thousand and three, which correlates exactly
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when my daughter was born. So you talk about three
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main if you won't do you know, higher independence, considerate
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for the disabled, for the children, and for the environment.
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I did it for my child because you know, I
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have one daughter. My husband then at the time worked
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for Deloitte, was on that path, traveling all the time.
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Somebody's got to be home base. Still wanted to work,
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but on my own term. So I feel like I
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was ahead of my time in some ways back then.
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But that's just like you say, I was interested in autonomy,
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control and flexibility, and I didn't feel I could get
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that in a typical job working for most companies.
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Yeah, I mean it's you know, sometimes I get asked,
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you know, why do people choose to be independent. There's
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specific reasons, but the most simple and basic answer is
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because they can.
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Right Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right. Well, one of the things,
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there are so many things that I got from your book,
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and I really like how you talk about, you know,
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unbundled work. And so if you could situate that a
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little bit about what you mean by unbundled work.
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Yeah, uh, and it's a the description of unbundled I
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would even say is a living definition because of this
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point that I make about the fractionalization of everything, and
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the more you fractionalize any asset, the more unbundled it
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can become. And so unbundled work allows you to really
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i'll say, celebrate and embrace the people that have deep
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specialized skills. Yeah, and when you many independents I have
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found are really deep skills and they really don't want
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to be the general manager, right, And so that unbundled
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is if you can get really good at decomposing the
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work and unbundling it, you can get deep expertise and
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then things move at a faster pace because people are
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focused on one what they're really good at, but also
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what they have a passion for. Yeah, And that unbundling
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is just to me, is just so critical in terms
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of why the way the work is getting done is changing.
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And you know, we'll probably you know, if I really
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put my crystal ball to work, We're going to see
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even more of that get amplified. As you see the
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complement of technology today, people would say, you know, gen
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AI applied to the work environment, people with very very
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deep skills will complement themselves with bots and other technology
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to be able to really do just the piece that
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they like. We'll see more unbundling. That last is things
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involved here.
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M H. I love that you talk about the future
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of work is independent, and I like also too that
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you talk about that this is more even on an
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existential level. The future of work is independent because people's
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innate desire for a more fulfilling, rewarding vacational life is
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what's also what's driving that. We're gonna talk more about
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how things are done inside organizations that really destroy that.
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But if if you could just speak a bit more
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about the future of work is independent?
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Yeah, so you is it to me? There's a there's
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kind of a long potential story that i'll shorten up here,
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but I kind of see it that post World War
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Two we experienced what I refer to as the corporatization
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of America. Now this is more than just America, but
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the book is really geared towards the US market for
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the most part. And what I mean by that is people,
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mostly men, would go to work for a company, and
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those companies would make the promise to take care of
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them for life, including retirement, you know, pension income and benefits.
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And then what happened is by the time you get
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to the late sixties, so think of it as roughly
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twenty ish or so years twenty five years, you started
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to see an emergence of dual income families, and so
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the spouse usually the wife, decided to go to work.
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And I attribute that to that people are trying to
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do one of two things, either meet their basic food,
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water shelter needs or they were trying to keep up
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with the joneses, and the cash flow that they had
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to be real technical to feed their families wasn't enough,
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and so then were experienced inflation during the seventies. And
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what happened by the time you get to the late eighties,
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roughly again another twenty five years, twenty twenty five years later,
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what we saw is that the dual income family, even
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in itself I was not enough money to support the
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feed the family. And so Wall Street invented these things
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called mortgage backed securities and other securitizations. And so at
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that time what happened is whatever asset you had, if
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it was ill liquid, you could fractionalize it and you
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could turn it into money to support your lifestyle i e.
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Home equity loans and the increase in home values. Well,
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that ran its course for about another twenty five years
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before you get to the Great Recession in two thousand
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and eight, when you saw a collapse of the housing
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market and everything else correlated down at that time. But
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what you saw is people had started to dabble in
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the early two thousands. I think you said two thousand
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and three for you, right, you were independent, but there
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were others that were dabbling, kind of doing side gigs,
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doing some things, trying to get some incremental flow for themselves.
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Concurrent with this period from the eighties to the mid
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two thousands, what happened is corporate America broke the promise
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what promised you. They broke the promise of you come
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and work and I'll take care of you forever. They
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got ready to find benefit plans. In nineteen eighty, if
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you worked for a private company in the United States,
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two thirds of those employees had to find benefit plans.
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Today that's less than ten percent. By some measures, it's
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less than four percent. So that created this broken bond,
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and then people became more mobile. They didn't the loyalty
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just started to really dissipate, and so then you take
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an add onto that. The emergence of technology, and so
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it's possible to do work remotely, it's possible to do
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work with machines, et cetera, made it possible for people
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to go out on their own. So barriers to entry
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to start a business today had never been lower. Right,
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And so now we're sitting here basically twenty years into posts,
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you know, not quite twenty you know, seventeen years posted
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a great recession, and we're still in you know, I
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would say, the early innings of independent work. So for
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the next decade or so, people are going to choose
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to work as independents because they can, and because it
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creates multiple economic streams to feed their family, and they're
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not dependent on one manager that decides they don't want
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them at a company anymore. Right right now, None of
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what I just said is very technical or you know,
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high wisdom, but pragmatically that's what's happening.
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Yes, And a few things to add on to that
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that are darn fascinating. One is that you talk about
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that today there are seventy two million independent workers in
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the United States working occasionally part time, full time, in
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other words, on their own terms and that organizations, in
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order to future proof themselves need to be able to
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open their eyes to see the totality of their workforce.
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And I like how you break down looking at that,
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you have the sixty to thirty ten rule, and then
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of course you've got a recommendation for organizations that if
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they don't have if less than twenty percent of the
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workforce isn't independent, you want them to get to thirty.
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Right. Yeah, So if you talk to most CEOs of
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companies of almost any size and you ask him or
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her what their most valuable asset is, they're going to say,
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my people. The problem is most of them define my
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people as their W two employees.