The Role of Generalists in the Future of Work with Kai Algar

Kai Algar shares her career journey, which has been characterized by adaptability and a diverse range of experiences. She started in business and accounting, then pursued interior design and real estate. She later explored UX and found her passion in applying it to employee experience. Kai has worked in startups, consulting, and recruitment, constantly learning and adapting to new challenges. She emphasizes the need for businesses to future-proof themselves and build equitable models in the changing world of work. In this part of the conversation, Kai and Martin discuss the need for a shift in the way education is done and the importance of self-education and self-reflection. They also explore the limitations of the current system and the need for a more flexible and adaptable approach to work. Kai emphasizes the importance of building small and medium-sized businesses that focus on sustainability and quality rather than infinite growth. They also discuss the need to dissolve hierarchies and empower employees through an employee-owned model. Finally, they touch on the challenges of scaling and pivoting in larger companies and propose a squad model as a solution. The conversation explores the need to hire for the right qualities and create decentralized work environments. It emphasizes the importance of employee ownership and equitable compensation. The discussion also touches on the challenges faced by founders and the potential of generalists in the future of work. The guest shares their vision of building tools and structures to enable a more sustainable and engaging work culture.

What is From A People Perspective?

A podcast about fascinating professionals, how they got to where they are and where they’re going from the lens HR, Recruitment and People Operations hosted by Martin Hauck.

Martin (00:00.11)
intro. So thanks, Kai for joining today on the podcast from a people perspective. I'm your friendly host, Martin Hawk. And today we're getting a chance to sit down with Kai Algar. And thank you for Yeah, thank you for so much. First off, for the for the folks that don't know Kai has been instrumental over the last few years in terms of

Kai (00:01.518)
Thank

Martin (00:29.026)
like helping run the community behind the scenes and running some of our events and some of our strap planning sessions and stuff that's not even coming to mind. so if you've been to an event before that you've had a blast at, it's likely, a huge part of the, the heavy lifting that that Kai's done. And on top of that, you're a people person. You're you've been in the people and culture building space for quite some time. And so

We met up at an event, I don't know what feels like many years ago, but it's like only a few weeks ago and we were like, Hey, we should, we should do a podcast together. as you gave me a kind ride home, cause I wasn't going to take a new br at that point. So, that's the introduction. Welcome to the podcast.

Kai (00:58.604)
Hahaha

Kai (01:12.718)
Nice. Thanks. I'm happy to be here. I think we got to talking about a lot of different things. So I think that's why we're saying, hey, maybe we should just record one of our sessions.

Martin (01:25.472)
Yeah, yeah, like there's there's always, there's always goes in some interesting directions. So I sort of provided my kind of high level take on on on you and the what I know, but there's so much more to it. And, and we kind of talked about it sometimes. But yeah, for the folks, the whole purpose of this is to learn about other people, people. So we'd love to just kind of get a get a sense from you.

Kai (01:43.021)
Hehehehe

Kai (01:54.808)
Mm

Martin (01:55.264)
in terms of how you got to where you are. But first, we're going to do a few icebreakers because I'm obsessed with them. And I've managed to remember that off the top of my noggin. So I'm really proud of myself. Let's just say, I always put a weird scenario here for this. I'm just not going to do it. You can only listen to one album for the rest of time.

Kai (02:02.551)
Ooh, okay.

Kai (02:23.086)
watching me, I'm really bad at that music. I can't necessarily like claim an album, but I think for me, I'm like really into a little bit like indie and like Motown and that kind of vibe of like kind of a little bit chiller helps me think but has like a lot of meaning and it's like singer songwriter. It's not like overly produced. So like

Martin (02:25.28)
What? Okay, that was fine.

Martin (02:51.662)
Okay. What's, what's a go -to song?

Kai (02:52.674)
Things like Imagine Dragons, for example, is like something I really enjoy. Yeah, I'm bad with music. Yeah, it's a pretty good go -to for me. Like right now, Beaches, because they're Canadian, Torontonian, really into them. And yeah, singer -songwriter type stuff as well.

Martin (02:57.228)
Nice, nice. Imagine Dragons is a go to.

Martin (03:09.838)
Nice, nice.

Martin (03:13.326)
Cool, cool. Nice, nice. All right, next one we've got, you know, Midnight Snack. What's your go -to midnight snack?

Kai (03:26.892)
like a sweet tooth. So I'm very much on the candy and things like that. But I will say I'm very into almonds. I think I like to pair sweet and salty together. I don't like them as the same thing. Do you know what mean? Like I don't like them the same. But I do like them separate. But I love like midnight snack is almond so easy to just grab a handful and like walk away. And then for sweets, I'm just a candy person. I like sweets. I like yeah.

Martin (03:54.702)
What's what's your take on Skittles? Okay, yeah, no.

Kai (03:57.878)
I love Skittles. Yeah. I don't eat the purple ones. He's just like, I always, there's like, I like just a bag full of purple Skittles that I like, my wife usually will eat for me, but she's not a sweet person either. So I like, it's just kind of, that's what I eat. I don't, I'm weird with purple things. I don't eat purple food.

Martin (04:17.516)
which is strange because you've been so helpful to the people people group. Yeah, and it's like we're obsessed with purple. Now the the skittle. so it's the purple like the grape. The grape skittle not because there's other bags, right? There's the the green one. And then the light blue one. Like there's no like

Kai (04:20.81)
I know.

Kai (04:30.339)
Yeah.

Kai (04:34.935)
Hmm.

Yeah, there's like different flavor profiles, right? They're okay, but honestly, I like the original. I mean, I everybody loves the same ones, but like green and red are the best ones. And then I'll tolerate the orange and yellow, but like I just will not touch purple. I'm a very particular person.

Martin (04:49.059)
my god.

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. No.

No, I if I could just buy red Skittles by themselves. That's it. Yeah. That's this podcast brought to you potentially by Skittles. I'll reach out. There's the number one selling candy in the world. Did you know that? Yeah.

Kai (05:05.644)
It'd be dangerous. It'd be very dangerous.

Kai (05:10.977)
Hahaha

Kai (05:16.268)
No, I didn't know that. Like just for like the brand that owns Skittles or just Skittles itself? No way. Really? I would have thought.

Martin (05:21.326)
skittles itself like, yeah, yeah, the red pack is like, you can if you can't get that in some remote area of the country, or the world, you're, you're very remote. Yeah.

Kai (05:35.5)
Did not know that. I guess it's not that hot take.

Martin (05:39.67)
No, no. No, it's okay. Sweet. Cocoa sweets, music, and I guess biggest sort of like overall pet peeve.

Martin (05:59.084)
or like ridiculous pet peeve like I shouldn't, this shouldn't bother me, but it does.

Kai (05:59.566)
Right?

Kai (06:12.086)
I have so many. I think for me, it's like, it's like little things that are like inconsiderate. Like I find very inconsiderate. Like it's like if you don't, you know, clean up after yourself, like if you're in an office and people don't like put away their dishes or like help out in some way or clean up after they just it bothers me so much because it's like, why why are you feel like the entitlement to just leave your things around? I'm very like

Martin (06:13.099)
Hahaha

Kai (06:41.452)
Very neat for the most part. borderline, sometimes OCD. So I think like cleanliness and things like that. Like if clean up after yourself, make sure things are tidy. That, that helps.

Martin (06:50.85)
Yeah, yeah. That's no, we're Yeah, we're we've we know this about each other. But we're playing from many a similar playbook on on that thing like Skittles. And the wow, it's still doing it. I didn't know how why is that coming up? This isn't there was like a little I didn't know. Do you see it? The emojis?

Kai (07:02.946)
They're scared of us.

Kai (07:10.22)
What is coming up?

Martin (07:17.964)
weird anyways, we'll cut that part out. so, now that we've covered the really super serious stuff, let's, let's, let's dive into to, yeah. How, how did you get here? Yeah. How'd you end up in, in tech slash people and culture? Was it what you wanted to do right from the get -go? All that fun stuff. What's your story?

Kai (07:20.833)
There's emojis.

Kai (07:30.273)
How did I get here?

Kai (07:35.458)
Hmm.

Kai (07:41.838)
I consider myself career fluid. I think I have a very nonlinear looking career path or experience. If you were to look at it, I think it's confusing to some people. But I started out going to school for business.

really enjoyed that. did accounting as well, but then I transferred for interior design, got my real estate license, did a boot camp for UX. I have pretty much studied a lot of variations of things and I would like to think of myself as just kind of like a lifelong learner. Just always kind of going after more knowledge, diversifying my knowledge in whatever skills that I need to kind of up

upgrade in, I would say that I'm a generalist and think that is the best way to describe me as a person. After doing things like recruitment, I decided I wanted to go into tech and people and culture was a really big piece. I'm very passionate about workforce, labor rights, organizational design, how businesses really function.

And I lean heavily on the strategy aspect of business. And so I've done consulting. I've led as a people and culture lead in a couple of startups as well. And overall, I would say I'm kind of.

the kind of person who's like kind of been preparing myself for the next phase of economy. And I'd say the next phase of economy is very adaptive and very flexible. And so I think generalists are the right way to go. And so I've been just building my knowledge in that way.

Martin (09:25.41)
You're not scrambling to figure out what the new world of work is shaping to look like. You've been kind of living that life since day one.

Kai (09:36.31)
Yeah, I think we've been told that the future of work is going to change. We've been told that everything's going to change. have demographic changes that are happening, especially in Canada. We have so many things that we were told since we were kids, I think, that we just didn't... It just seems like nobody's doing anything about them. So I have taken it. I don't fit in a box.

Martin (09:41.187)
Hahaha

Kai (09:59.606)
And so I've always knew that I won't fit in a box. So how do I diversify myself as much as possible so that I can kind of be adaptable for the next phase of it? I think like we had industrial economy and then we had the knowledge economy and I think we're entering an adaptive economy. And so all those things that I built up that maybe didn't work in the workforce, I didn't find my fit in a lot of places. I had to struggle in that way. I think now it's kind of coming into fruition because I'm I'm starting to see

Martin (09:59.608)
Hmm.

Martin (10:16.75)
Interesting.

Kai (10:29.346)
the change. I'm starting to see that, you know, we knew the world was going to change. We knew the future of work was coming. just doesn't seem like we've built anything for it. And I think it's, it's really kind of a shame because I think we had.

ample warning to slowly transition. But so far, what I've seen even today is a lot of band -aid solutions, a lot of new tech that's not really new, AI models being used for things that you don't really need to use an AI model for. It just feels very confused is what I would say at the moment. But I think this is growing pains. I think we're going to see a huge shift in the way that we work and it might not come.

Martin (10:52.141)
Hmm.

Martin (10:56.835)
no.

Kai (11:08.75)
this year, it might not come next year, but I do think in the next five to 10 years, we're going to see major, major shift of what is a productive company? How do you actually organize your talent force? How do you manage your talent force in a way that is good for them and that is sustainable and that isn't harmful for the place that you work or the community or even the planet? Really? I think people and planet mixed with tech is going to be a huge,

is going to have to be considered when we're building the future of work.

Martin (11:40.747)
Well, we've been building global companies for a while now, or the idea and concept of like, it's it's hit, you know, peak global almost right where it's just like, yeah, so that that makes a lot of sense, I guess. And not to say like, okay, we got to talk about everything in the past or anything like that. But because you've brought us to the present, which is great.

Kai (11:46.38)
Hmm?

Kai (11:53.665)
Mm

Martin (12:09.594)
what I like kind of diving into just for the listeners that are looking to you for inspiration, you know, whether it's they relate to, you know, having a fluid career path or, or whatever, guess, maybe just kind of like highlight some of the big sort of key moments are like the highlight reel of some of these changes in what you learn like

super interesting to go from like accounting. So why did you choose that? And then how'd you wind up in real estate? And yeah, help us understand like the threads because you know, zooming out, might not necessarily make sense, but it made complete it makes complete sense to you. And it and I'd love to get a sense of that clarity that you have.

Kai (12:39.692)
Mm -hmm.

Kai (12:49.644)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kai (12:56.588)
Yeah, for sure. So when when you're growing up in school, and everybody always tells you, what are gonna do when you grow up? It was always kind of like the biggest question for me where I could not choose. I considered health sciences and medicine for a while, because I thought, you know, this is I was very rich. like science and math. And I was good at those things. So I thought, okay, I'll go down the science path. But

Having been, I had family things that happened where both my parents were sick. I spent a lot of time in the healthcare system, just kind of getting to know it and realize that's not for me. I don't think I can work in that kind of environment or in that kind of pace. So I decided to go down the business route, kind of on a whim, not gonna lie, it was kind of like a last minute thing. And when I went into business, my first major was in real estate. I grew up moving around a lot.

My dad was an architect, so I also grew up around a lot of design and homes. And so I really had like, I would say I grew up in like open houses, just kind of going around with my parents because of how many times we've moved. And so I grew up kind of like with this sense of home as being such like an elusive thing for me because I never really got to build roots.

And so I always had an interest in it. I followed the real estate market since I was 13 years old. Yeah, it's just like, because it's math and numbers, but also creative and design. And so it helped both sides of if there is such a thing as two sides of your brain, which I think we're already realizing there is, but basically I have creative and kind of technical parts that like make me happy. So I just kind of wanted to pursue the things that.

Martin (14:26.954)
Wild.

Martin (14:42.818)
Hmm.

Kai (14:47.618)
come easier to me and I find interesting because I find with myself with lot of learning disabilities that I do have, just being on variations of the neurodiversity scale, I didn't know the words for it back then. I just knew that it wasn't built the same. And so I was like, well, these normal ways don't really work for me. What are the things? It's like when I'm interested in something, I tend to dive a lot deeper in it, like full force. And so I thought, let me find things that I'm interested in.

Martin (15:01.822)
Mm. Yeah.

Kai (15:16.854)
And if I find it and it's interesting for me, then I probably will be better at it. And so I just kind of went down that path. I liked it for a bit, but then I wanted to switch schools and there wasn't a real estate major. I've always liked, like I said, math and business. So I wanted to go down the accounting route. But as I was doing it, I realized universities, not necessarily the thing for me. I don't think it was structured in a way where I learned best.

So after four years, I just decided I wanted to go to college after. And so after university, I went and studied interior design. And it was some of the funnest schooling I've ever done in my life, would say. Learning how to draft, just understanding color theory, furniture history. That's definitely down my alley of things that I find interesting. And from there, I did work placements and I did some kind of co -op.

opportunities with some designers in Toronto. even worked on an HGTV show, like with a designer that had an HGTV show. So I did a lot of the background stuff like sourcing and managing sites and things like that, which was very interesting. But I realized the industry wasn't really the one that I wanted to be in. I think I wanted something a bit more progressive and it's slow.

Martin (16:22.935)
Nice.

Martin (16:28.77)
Now what?

Kai (16:42.188)
Right? Things like interior design and projects like that. It's like you get one client, you spend a lot of time with them before you actually see a project into fruition. it just depends. It just wasn't as, it didn't move at the pace that I wanted to move at. And so I decided at the time out of school, I got my real estate license and I decided that's what I'm going to do because it kind of combined a lot of my interests in one place and it didn't have a ceiling in terms of earnings, which

Martin (16:56.471)
Hmm.

Kai (17:11.79)
When you come out of this much school, you have a lot of debt. having a no cap on earnings was very important for me. So yeah, I went down the path, realized that, you know, as a 24 year old, not a lot of people took you seriously as a realtor or as a real estate agent in like, especially in like, you know, houses and the cost of them, they don't really trust you the same way. And so I realized, I was like, I need to find my niche. And that was like another obstacle that I had to kind of get over.

Martin (17:35.149)
Yeah.

Kai (17:41.388)
and finding my niche was who are the kind of people that I want to help? What kind of skillsets do I have that makes sense that I can apply anything that I've learned? And I realized that I liked working with creatives. I liked working with investors and first time buyers. And so I really wanted not necessarily repeat buyers. Those weren't necessarily my clientele. And so I wanted to, I realized that I also have.

Martin (17:59.779)
Hmm.

Kai (18:09.506)
design and it needed to be more aesthetic. And so I went down the path of selling lofts, specialized lofts. So those are converted buildings, basically they used to be commercial buildings that turned residential. So a lot of brick, a lot of concrete, big windows. So they were very stylistically comparable to in terms of the design aspect of things. But then at the same time, the people that would enter that market

Martin (18:32.888)
Mm.

Kai (18:37.77)
is usually creatives. They're not looking for two, three bedroom houses or two, three bedroom condos. They're just looking for a place to live that they can be creative, has good light, that kind of stuff. So I found my niche client and I found my niche product. And so I decided, okay, this is my area of expertise that I can gain a lot of knowledge in. And so I just dove in into lofts all around Toronto. Did that for about five years.

But kind of near the end, I realized I really like to work with people. I wanted to work as part of a team. I'm more of a team player, even when I play sports. I always played team sports. And so I'm very much about the collective that I have on the individual aspect of things. So yeah, I decided I needed to go and explore something else. so I actually, that's when I combined my accounting background and.

Martin (19:14.584)
Hmm.

Martin (19:30.466)
Yeah

Kai (19:31.936)
I went and worked for CPA Ontario, which is a designation for accountants. And I worked in the mentorship side, building mentorship programs and connecting students with alumni and people that are experienced to gain those technical competencies, but also the soft competencies that they're not getting just out of studying. And then on the other side, I also then went down the route of recruitment. So that's when I started down the recruitment path.

joining that team. So that's student recruitment at the time. So from there, I wanted to study UX. I thought it was interesting. I always wanted tech. I thought I belonged more in a tech kind of culture. But after I studied UX, I realized I didn't actually want to build product as much as I wanted to apply it to people. I thought it had very similar employee experience and user experience.

Martin (20:03.342)
Nice.

Martin (20:16.845)
Yeah.

Martin (20:26.037)
Ehhhh

Kai (20:31.286)
At the time, wasn't like a big thing. couldn't find a lot of literature on it. And I don't think a lot of people really thinking about the workforce in that way as employee experience. They're just kind of like, yeah, like there's just starting with culture and think that, know, ping pong tables and things are all that you have to do versus it's like understanding the journey, applying the same exact concepts that you would use in product and in user experience, but apply it to the employee experience journey. And so.

Martin (20:47.8)
it.

Kai (20:59.072)
Once I started thinking about it in that way, after I finished my education, I kind of wanted to just go into tech. And that's when I started, that's when I jumped head first into tech as employee experience, office management, whatever, because with tech startups, you basically take on whatever is available. And that's where I started to realize that in a startup environment, all of those generalists, all that random stuff that I have played so well as a combination.

Martin (21:14.732)
of things. Yeah.

Kai (21:26.914)
because when you're in a startup, there's so many things to be done and you don't really know. It's not like it's like adjusted into like perfect roles, but you just go in there and as you grow, you see opportunity and you decide, this is actually a path I wanna pursue more. This is more what I would like. And by working with a small startup, I got a lot of opportunities to try out all my experiments to really figure out what works, what doesn't work, why doesn't it work? How do you organize?

teams, how do you become more strategic in your thinking? What are the pitfalls and the failures that we are going through and how do we learn from them? And having that kind of adaptive, constant learning really allowed me to start kind of opening my horizon to understand niche -wise, what is it that I wanted to do? And I've always felt very strongly about the workforce labor, like kind of

the workers' rights, how we work, how do we build equitable models that, you know, allow other people to have as much joy from their work as much as I get joy from my work. Because that's really what it is. I enjoy what I do. I don't do it because I have to do it. I don't do it because this is the only job I can have. I have set myself up with a lot of skills that I can honestly go in a lot of different directions.

Martin (22:22.424)
view.

Martin (22:31.066)
Hmm.

Martin (22:35.106)
Mm -hmm.

Martin (22:42.722)
Yeah.

Kai (22:46.464)
And that gives me security. That gives me lot of stability. And so with that, what do I want to actually do? And that's when I decided to go and create sort of like a little consulting firm of me where I built programs. And I built a lot of programs around strategic thinking, about design thinking for businesses, small businesses, entrepreneurs, but also leadership teams that aren't aligned. How do you align? Because I think there's a lot of

Martin (23:13.858)
Hmm.

Kai (23:16.298)
unproductive leftover bits and pieces of how we do business from old models that don't work anymore. They don't, they haven't been adapted. We're still doing things as if we were factory workers. We're still doing things as if it's just a knowledge industry and the knowledge is king and that we don't have access to all the information. We all have access to similar information.

Martin (23:27.724)
Yeah.

Martin (23:31.213)
Yeah.

Kai (23:41.926)
and similar tech tools. So then like, what is it that we need to do going forward? You need to think differently, you need to plan differently, you need to just adapt. And so that's sort of what I've been concentrating on is mostly research and development of these new models that I think will help businesses really grow and thrive in the future.

Martin (24:05.23)
sort of future proofing helping business future proofs themselves, making the assumption the pretty very correct ones because we see it already right now in terms of like, companies and businesses and organizations are always slow on the uptake of new trends. And so there's a cost to the business for not not doing that before we

Kai (24:19.319)
Yeah.

Martin (24:34.562)
you mentioned a few that there's so many threads that I have gone here, which is, which, is awesome. And thank you for that. Like it's, there's, I can only imagine how exciting it's must been for you to like be able to like, check out all those different industries. And I think in terms of comparisons to like people that do the opposite of that, and they're at one company for a really, really long period of time.

Kai (24:37.838)
Pick one.

Kai (25:01.26)
Mm

Martin (25:03.71)
And there's merit and you know, that's for there's merit to that approach and comfort to that approach and just like a preference to that approach as well. So I'm not saying one's right and one's wrong. It's just that there's two interesting directions there. guess the thought that came to my mind, I have a million questions about lofts, but I'm just going to save that for later because I love lofts and I was

Kai (25:25.258)
Hahaha!

I live it all off now.

Martin (25:30.22)
there. We could I could but this isn't the loft podcast, unfortunately. I do have questions on that front. The the the piece that's interesting to me, I guess, if you could do it all over again, right. And and I I similar to you, I feel like I've got a pretty dive like we both have, you know, different levels of neurodiversity, I've got ADHD. And and we we've talked about that as well. And so

Kai (25:34.016)
Okay.

Kai (25:44.824)
you

Kai (25:58.189)
Mm -hmm.

Martin (25:59.432)
the career path of someone with ADHD kind of looks scattered. that that that I can relate to, I guess, the one thing that I say is like, I don't ever really regret the path that I've gone down. So that's not the question, because I'm not trying to elicit that, I guess, like, for people that the thing that I've learned, and this is a really long way of asking a question. So forgive me. But the thing that I've learned is that by

Kai (26:04.099)
Yeah.

Kai (26:10.605)
Yeah.

Martin (26:30.082)
going through riskier things with my career and just trying out more things. It's it's enriched me right and to your point right like it's your adaptability and all the things you've learned you're you're now this not only a generalist I think generalist is like a good obvious well -known word to describe it but you can go deep on a lot of different threads like nobody's business versus

Kai (26:56.618)
Mm

Martin (26:59.746)
Generally, generalist kind of means that like, you know, a few things about a lot of different things versus like, you know, a lot of things about a lot of different things. And it's a different type of generalist, I guess. So I guess the real question is if, like, if you could go back, like, are there things that you do differently now or do quicker now, because you almost know that you're gonna, you almost know by nature of your track record, my track record, but like,

Kai (27:15.939)
Yeah.

Kai (27:20.408)
Yeah.

Martin (27:26.06)
The next three years is going to be completely different from the last three, right? So I guess what I would love to hear your take on on that.

Kai (27:28.78)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kai (27:34.102)
I mean, I think I wouldn't necessarily say I would change a lot of things because they, all those things build on each other, right? Like without, it's like a butterfly effect. It's like, what if I didn't do this one first thing that I thought was a horrible mistake and like a waste of money, a waste of whatever as like, if I didn't do that, would I be who I am today because of it? And so if we put that aside and if I say, Hey, okay, like what are things that I've learned that if I were to go back, I would do differently because now I know better. I would say things like I personally.

Martin (27:43.244)
Yeah.

Martin (27:53.538)
Mmm.

Kai (28:03.15)
My personal opinion is I don't think education is being done correctly at all. I would say that I gain more from self -education and micro learning on my own than I ever did from the tens of thousands of dollars that I had spent at university or institutions. Some things, 100%, I do think that you need that. Like, it's good to have that, the cohortness, the collectiveness of college. I would say...

was the thing that I gained the most, is having people to work with, people to learn with, that was really cool. But only for the creative bits, for the things that we were exploring, we were brainstorming, things that made sense to see other people's perspective and how they approach something. That in itself was a learning experience I wouldn't.

change, but would I go back to university or go to this structured model of I need a certificate, I need a some kind of, I don't believe in that system anymore. So I don't think I would go back. I think it slowed me down.

I think it didn't really provide me honestly with that much. I drove my professors nuts as well because I questioned everything. I didn't believe in a lot of things, especially my economics professors, I would say. Absolutely, just I could not. I didn't understand them all. The things that they were teaching me, I didn't believe in because I'd read other things outside of it and be like, this doesn't make sense.

Martin (29:04.142)
Hahaha

Martin (29:19.348)
But sounds like you care deeply though, right? Because you wanted to know, yeah.

Kai (29:21.868)
Yeah, yeah, I did. Because I wanted to know, I wanted to know the truth. I wanted to know the real facts. Like, what is it that I can really learn and be like, I can depend on this knowledge. And I didn't find a lot of it in university, to be honest. So I would say I would probably not go back to that. That's not the kind of learning environment that made sense for me and for what it is that I wanted to do. So that's one of the biggest things that I probably wouldn't do. The other thing is more of a mental thing.

I think I doubted myself a lot because the whole world tells you that this is the way things are. You should be doing these things. If you don't fit in this box, it doesn't work. You have to act this way. You know, the bureaucracy of working environments and corporate and that kind of stuff. And also the other side of like failure. It's like, you can't fail. Failing is so bad. Like you have to make sure that you remove all and every barrier and everything so that you are very sure and don't take risks.

don't do these things. And all throughout every decision I made, I think I second guessed myself a lot because of the pressures outside. I think what I have now, that confidence and like, I know what's good for me and I will build because I know who I am. I think that self -reflection piece that took a lot of years to get to is everything. Understanding who I am, understanding my strength, understanding my weakness, being honest with myself about it, holding myself accountable to it.

Martin (30:25.88)
Yeah.

Martin (30:33.09)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Kai (30:48.288)
is also something that I don't think a lot of people spend too much time doing, which would benefit them way more than any kind of certificate or graduate program you could do, in my opinion.

Martin (31:00.302)
This is hilarious because just before this podcast, I was talking to a friend I used to work with at like five companies ago and he wanted to chat with me about his friend's business idea and her idea is

Kai (31:11.863)
Hmm.

Kai (31:15.17)
No.

Martin (31:20.236)
re talking about what you like finding a way to teach people how to like really investigate self actualization sooner in a person's career. And he was just looking for my like high level take on it. And so I guess it's it's funny because like it's similar to what you were just talking about, right? Like this this idea of trusting yourself and really doing the work and

Kai (31:25.282)
Mm

Kai (31:29.794)
Mm

Yeah.

Martin (31:48.992)
it's wild to me how little that is taught in in school, right? It's more just prescriptive, like, this is how things are done versus how do you get things done? Or what are like, yes, you you can have interests in basically like, academia, or applying yourself, right? Like, if we bucket into like, there's applied and academic, and those are like, that those are the two buckets, I guess, this

Kai (31:59.403)
Mm

Kai (32:08.334)
Mm

Kai (32:12.525)
Hmm?

Martin (32:17.836)
this podcast definitely not brought to you by a university or a college definitely brought to you by spittles, which is awesome. But I guess no. So I'm actually kind of curious to like present this like challenge that they have, because my take to them well, regardless, like, do you think companies are ready to shift how they train people how they

Kai (32:20.718)
No, they would not like us very much.

Kai (32:31.66)
Yeah.

Martin (32:47.502)
hire people to the point where as it almost prompts the individual to really second guess their entire like, if you've never really taken a step back from your career and all the plans and let's say you went through university and now you're a UX designer or whatever, right. But you never really took a step back and you just went with the flow and you followed it for whatever reason. Like, there's a

Kai (33:00.749)
Mm -hmm.

Kai (33:08.118)
Yeah

Martin (33:17.024)
it's a little bit problematic for a company to say like, hey, we're gonna help you like figure yourself out while you're at our company, knowing that that's going to come at the huge cost of you likely figuring out that you don't want to be a UX designer or whatever the case might be. I guess that's it. That's a tricky problem to solve. What's your take on it?

Kai (33:24.087)
Yeah.

Kai (33:37.965)
Yeah.

So I think I have a couple of things that I want to mention first. First, I believe that the reason that we're not set up this way is on purpose. I think the reason that we are not given this opportunity to really explore ourselves, really understand what it is over time, because we change. I'm not the person I was when I was 18. I'm definitely not the person I was even three years ago. So we are evolving. We're constantly evolving. And so to understand what I needed then is not

Martin (33:59.117)
Hmm.

Kai (34:10.028)
what I need now. So it's a continuous improvement type of cycle. And I think that is not built into the system on purpose because they need us as a system that we've created. You need to be a brick that fits so they can build upon you with other bricks. If you don't fit in that brick mold and you decide I want to be, you know, like an odd shape, bolder, like they're not going to be able to use you. They can't utilize you easily. They can't fit you in a box easily. So I think the system itself is built.

Martin (34:31.534)
Hmm.

Kai (34:39.67)
in a binary way on purpose because it was built originally to make factory workers. Then it was built to create academics that can just dive deep into one topic and know I'm a UX person. Like what does it mean to be a UX person? That's not, I think jobs and roles are gonna change immensely in the future that if a company is still looking for a UX person, you're doing it wrong. What you're looking for is somebody who can do.

Martin (35:01.233)
Mmm.

Kai (35:04.098)
What exactly? What is your actual job to be done? What is it that you actually need in the future? Because UX has so many skill sets within it that it doesn't really matter what the job is. You're looking for people who are skilled, not people that are experienced. And I think that's the difference that we need to start thinking about. Like, for example, a LinkedIn page makes no sense to me. I don't really care. I don't really care where you've worked. It doesn't matter to me. It doesn't matter to me what education you have. I want to know.

Martin (35:12.589)
Hmm.

Martin (35:25.336)
well

Kai (35:33.464)
based on you, what you want to do, what brings you joy, what are you self -learning, what are you self -developing in, combined with what skillsets do you already possess and how, like, are you at the top end of that skillset? Are you still developing that skillset? Are you like preliminary but need help? Like, if you are self -reflective and know who you are and know what your gaps are, that is so much better to me. And if you're a self -learner, then anybody who comes in with like this giant resume of things on the list,

After hiring so many times, I've realized that's not what you look for when you're a recruiter. To be a good recruiter, you're actually trying to figure out that thing that fits that gap that you have. And I think companies are saying, how are we going to do this? What if they leave? First, the company needs to do the same thing. The company needs to do self -reflection. I think that's something that's missing. We don't look at a company itself and be like, is this what you want to do? What is your mission? Where do you want to be? And is this the right structure for your company?

Martin (36:04.972)
Hmm.

Martin (36:21.798)
Hmm.

Kai (36:32.002)
What is it that you want to work on and what are the actual problems you're trying to solve? And if you figure out what your problems are going to be, then you could break it down to figure out what kind of team do I have? And then you could look at like, what are my gaps? And you can move somebody around. Like for example, I think one of the most underutilized job roles is a support person. Customer support is so underutilized in every tech company I've ever worked in. And the reason being is like, they don't understand the kind of skill sets they have. They think it's an entry level role.

Martin (36:54.164)
Mmm.

Kai (36:59.404)
And then you just stay in it forever. There's no growth. There's nothing that they can do because you're just a support person. But to me, I'm like, a support person makes an excellent product person. They know your product more than anything. They do. They can do user research like nobody's business because they talk to your customer constantly. They know what your pain points are. Also, they can be excellent customer success. They could really help integrate, implement new tools into, into the customers. You're not utilizing them correctly. Just because you do support does not mean that you can't do these other things because there's a lot of

Martin (37:14.093)
Yeah.

Martin (37:25.112)
Hmm.

Kai (37:29.206)
relatedness to it. And it's the same thing with marketers. People forget that marketers can be product marketers. They could be different kinds of marketers. Content is writing, yes, but it could be creative in other ways. Creative people are creative. And if you just harness it as like, I'm a creative in writing only, it's not true. You're a creative thinker. In order to be a creative person, you have to be a creative thinker. And so you can use them in a lot of different things. And so I don't think we're utilizing the...

The working force right now, the workforce that we have is not being utilized correctly because we keep thinking that tech is going to be the future. A lot of companies are laying off their people because they're like, well, jobs are going to be going away. You're like, yeah, jobs as a whole are going away. We need to start thinking a lot less boxed in and a lot more unique. We need to look at the individual and the individual talent and see what their unique talents is. Look at your own needs. What are your unique needs? And fit.

Martin (38:11.553)
AI.

Kai (38:27.458)
the puzzle together to make a good team. That's how you actually build good resilient teams instead of sticking them into blocks and be like, well, I no longer need UX or this person doesn't actually want to do UX. So then I don't need you. That's not, that's not actually how we should approach it. You should look at yourself, actually do some self -reflection for your company, for yourself, for your future, all that kind of stuff, and then fit the pieces after.

Martin (38:46.99)
Hmm.

Martin (38:53.238)
No, that's I mean, that's a bold claim, unfortunately. But it, it, it makes a lot of set like preaching to the choir, I guess, but that's, that's not necessarily helpful. Because I don't, you and I both agree that this is not the majority of the majority of people are who

Kai (39:00.428)
Yeah, it's radical.

Kai (39:15.011)
Hmm.

Martin (39:19.818)
would listen to this or the majority of businesses that are operating right now. There is this like, pretty heavy friction point with like, No, we need bricks. We need people to be bricks. Please, please stay being bricks, right. And that's it. Because it's anything otherwise is inconvenient for the capitalist system that we live in at the moment, right?

Kai (39:34.157)
Yeah.

Kai (39:40.11)
the capitalist system, think we're already seeing, I mean, we already know that the cracks are very, very clear. And I think what happened is that we, as a person who's been in real estate and really enjoy like the investments and like really breaking down the math behind it, especially the accounting piece, I would say what I'm realizing is we've sucked all the equity out of the market. There's no equity. Everything's valued at like 30 times what it actually makes.

Right? Like if you look at companies now, they're valued at an insane thing. If you look at real estate, the value is way higher than what anybody can actually afford. So unfortunately, the last 10 to 20 years, we've sucked all the equity out. So there's no more, in my opinion, there's no growth. You can't have infinite growth in a finite planet. And we've eaten up all the growth. So then what is the future? The future is not in growth. The future is in quality. It's in sustainability. It's in continuously doing well.

Martin (40:24.866)
Hmm. Yeah.

Kai (40:35.542)
And so if you change your mindset away from growth is everything and instead look at, they already capped. I think the big companies have capped. don't personally believe in the big companies anymore. I think in the small to medium businesses, I think that's the future. I think we need to break down the monopolies because they can no longer grow. There's no more equity to be taken. So nobody wants to invest in them anymore. What they want to invest in is something that has the potential for sustainable growth, not

Martin (40:48.686)
Yeah.

Kai (41:04.728)
crazy growth, not 10x growth. think we want businesses that really build a community, that really build the individuals, that really are built on talent. And so I'm concentrating on that. I think my viewpoint is that's the future. I think these big conglomerates are just, there's nothing left for them. Where are you going to go? Where are you going to go when there's like five companies that own a market? There's not much. You just eat each other and then that's it. There's nothing left.

Martin (41:31.854)
Yeah.

Kai (41:32.908)
So like, why would I invest in something like that when I can invest in local, I can invest in young, small businesses that actually have potential that could be built correctly from the start. Cause I think we have a systematic issue. So instead of trying to fix the current system, I say, rip the bandaid off, build on your system. Cause that I've tried a lot throughout my career to fix the system that exists, whether it's through DEIB, whether it's through just productivity.

even profitability, like whatever lens you want to think of, it does not work, in my opinion. I have not found a lot of results or lot of findings from my experiments there to say that it actually is doable. What I do see as doable is the small businesses being built correctly from the start, or small businesses being able to be agile enough, flexible enough to actually adapt and change the way that they do things. So when I talk about like,

Martin (42:03.538)
Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

Kai (42:30.158)
Let's look at it in a different way. Let's do self -reflection. Let's break down our business and actually rework how we work, the ways of working, how you're structured to do that. You can't do that at a thousand plus company. does not exist. Like that's, it would be too chaotic. Too many things would be missed. There's too much bureaucracy in my opinion at that point, but give me a 50 person company, a 200 person company. They get harder as you get bigger, but it has potential.

Martin (42:42.883)
Hmm.

Kai (42:59.864)
for adaptability. And I think the future needs to be adaptable because you have no idea what the market's going to do. And so you're better off being a flexible company. And the only way to be flexible is to build flexible, is to build with all these equitable models built into the system so that you don't have to keep figuring out every band -aid, every thing. Like, let's just fix the issues that we know already exist so that we can operate in a way that's actually sustainable and scalable.

Martin (43:00.972)
Yeah.

Martin (43:27.779)
Hmm.

Kai (43:28.002)
And I think that's the issue with the scalability of bricks. You think that's why we need bricks because we need to scale. You're like, can scale at your own level. I'm not saying don't scale. I'm saying this system does scale. It just needs to be built correctly to begin with. And you have to have the commitment to it. The foundation is everything. I think our foundation has crumbled under that system that I have no interest in fixing it anymore. I think I've switched my entire viewpoint towards, okay, how do we build a brand new system?

Martin (43:42.146)
Yeah, stronger foundation, yeah.

Martin (43:57.25)
Yeah, that's no, that's, yeah, there is a this was a poetry club. I'd be like snapping my fingers a lot.

Kai (43:57.378)
that actually works.

Kai (44:05.55)
But I also think that's the issue is we think it's all a dream. We all think, this is a nice utopian. We built the future. We are the people who make what the future becomes. So if we think this is a necessity, if we can do it in a way that's sustainable on paper, we can see it works. Right? Because I'm not saying this, you don't need to wait for a government to change a law for that to happen. These models, like you can just operate that way now.

Martin (44:15.414)
Yeah, yeah.

Martin (44:26.029)
Yeah.

Martin (44:31.106)
Yeah.

Kai (44:33.77)
It's as long as you're still thinking, how do I still make sure that people are paid well? How do I make sure that this is profitable? How do I make sure that all of these things are still part of it? Then what is the excuse other than this is just the way I know how to do it and I don't want to change, right? Then it becomes like, it's a choice, not necessarily, it's just, can't do it. It's just a choice now. We have all the tech to do it.

Martin (44:48.216)
Yeah.

Martin (44:56.746)
yeah, it was as predicted. We knew we were gonna get into some good stuff here. So I'm not disagreeing with anything. But I do have sort of like a contrarian question to pose for you. Which is, let's assume these small companies that you're talking about grow and you're not saying don't grow, you're just saying do it in a sustainable way. And so

Kai (45:00.46)
Hehehehe

Kai (45:06.977)
Okay.

Kai (45:10.765)
Mm -hmm.

Kai (45:18.156)
Yeah.

Kai (45:24.375)
Yeah.

Martin (45:26.126)
The thought that I'm having is at some point companies evolve and change with growth by nature of it, right? Like if you have a small dinner with four people, the quality of your conversation is gonna be split up 25 % between four people. And so everybody, hopefully if it's equitable, we'll get 25 % conversation time.

Kai (45:36.174)
Mm

Kai (45:41.336)
Yeah.

Kai (45:45.229)
Yeah.

Kai (45:48.78)
Yeah.

Martin (45:52.046)
Or maybe somebody wants to be quiet and everybody else gets to talk a bit more and that person's having a good time and there everybody else is having a good time. But you add a hundred people to like this dinner party and you get five seconds of conversation with like 20, 30 people and you don't really get to dive in any conversations. And I'm clearly like projecting like a thing that bothers me about social interactions, but it's the same thing can kind of be applied to a

Kai (46:04.223)
Mm

Kai (46:12.726)
Yeah.

Martin (46:20.824)
company, right? And so no matter like if if a company infinite growth, let's assume that it's not right, because it isn't. But for this example, the math is not math now. So I guess like, how, how does a how do you how do you see a company operating when it you know, if they've got these sustainable business practices, but then

Kai (46:28.588)
minutes and the math does not matter.

Martin (46:49.236)
know, the speedboat and like cruise ship example of like speedboats are small companies that can move really fast and drive circles takes it takes much like a big company. It's like, okay, we need to turn five degrees left. Okay, so like, I'm going to call four people in, you know, the engine room to make sure that it's doing whatever you get my point, right. So those are two very different things. And it's it's easier to like build from the start.

Kai (47:01.324)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Martin (47:16.568)
But at the end of the day, if you get to the size of a cruise ship, you still have to like, it's going to take forever to turn, I guess, right or pivot.

Kai (47:24.152)
Well, here's the thing. think the issue is that we built the cruise ship as one entity. You upgrade to a different model. What I'm saying is you start out, for example, one of the things that I'm building right now is this new business model of how to operate. And it's based on basically squad model. We already know that it works for developers. You have this sprint.

Martin (47:39.543)
Mm

Kai (47:48.794)
You have a squad that works on a problem. They fix the problem. There's certain specs that they need to fill. But before they even get this project, there's somebody who's shaped this project, somebody who's done some research and really validated if this is the right thing for us to do. So instead of having a ship, basically I'm taking a bunch of speed boats and attaching them to each other so that if you do need to change and pivot, you could send three speed boat down that way.

to start to see if this is the right path for you. And then you slowly integrate by moving the pieces over instead of being one giant conglomerate that only works because it's centralized to one entity or one leader or one person. I don't believe in also like the centralization of power. And so I think that's the issue is because you have all your decision -making, your, really the power, everything is conglomerated into like one entity. It's like a set of C -suite.

that make every decision for the whole company. That's not an adaptive way to work. think we need to dissolve the hierarchy and we need to do it in a way where business operations are run a bit more flexible, but standard and equitable. So I believe in an employee -owned model for companies. So basically an employee -owned ownership trust of 51%.

Martin (48:59.662)
Hmm.

Kai (49:08.814)
Right? So no matter what happens, the employees will not get screwed because they have 51%. So like, they always have like veto power basically for anything that would be bad for them. And I think this is kind of like an alternate to unionization a little bit, but like also it's a great way instead of, you know, trying to figure out how they're going to grow over time, their, their, you know, retirement funds and things like that. It's like, they're actually getting a piece of that labor back to them. They're getting to own their labor in a, in a certain.

Martin (49:34.115)
Hmm.

Kai (49:39.956)
degree and it allows the people who are founders to also exit, right? You get to exit a portion of your equity early so that you can not have to sell to a bigger company, right? And you get to exit out some of the equity that you have in the company by giving it back to the employees and having being paid out that way.

And so I think if you build it that way and the way it's structured in more squad models, where some people have the job of being strategic and coming up with that roadmap, because that's just the things that they like to work on. And then you have people who like to build. Those are the people that change. So you're always in a cohort of some kinds, so you get that small, knit environment where you get to work with people, but you also have the flexibility to work with different kinds of people. You're not always stuck in the same model with the same people.

This whole manager hierarchy is also not something I believe in anymore because I don't think managers are equipped correctly for the job that we put on them. I think middle managers are expected to understand human behavior, understand L &D, understand recruitment, understand project management, and on top of it, understand the hierarchy strategy, all those things that they have to do, but also

Martin (50:41.537)
No, no, no.

Kai (50:57.418)
in today's world, you can see a lot of the middle managers is what's being laid off from companies because they realize they don't need them because they don't know actually producing anything. They're there to deal with the bureaucracy for the most part and to fill in gaps that they're not equipped to fill. spend so much. think the leadership training industry is like trillions of dollars large because it's based on trying to teach them everything. And human beings can't like people leave jobs.

not because of the job, they leave it because of their manager. So then my question is, why are we managing people so poorly? It's because we're equipping one person to do everything that doesn't make any sense. So I think decentralizing just the way that we work, the hierarchy, how we do performance, how we measure things is the issue. The reason we have to do these giant performance reviews, these engagement surveys that take up so much money and so much effort and...

Martin (51:32.546)
Yeah.

Kai (51:55.19)
Honestly, I don't see them showing a lot of, like something that is tangible value that you can say, I got that from this performance cycle.

Martin (52:04.366)
Yeah, they're they're exercises that a company goes through. And then the intention and the hope is that you extract what you need from it, but then work happens typically, and then you just have to power forward and they're like, boy, is going to happen again in three, six, 12 months. And then what

Kai (52:07.651)
Yeah.

Kai (52:14.862)
Exactly.

Kai (52:21.676)
Yeah. And I will say the assessment piece is where the most, like biased, inequitable things that happen in a workforce. Like when we talk about DEIB, a lot of it happens in that assessment piece is we're assessing people incorrectly because we're assessing it based on arbitrary things or biased things or gut feelings or how they talk in an interview. Like, why does that matter?

Martin (52:44.523)
Hmm.

Kai (52:44.844)
Why are the things that we are looking for when we hire actually matter to your business? And I don't think we're looking at the right things. We're not hiring for the right things. And we're not allowing people to shine in their own way and be able to judge them actually fairly. And the only way to do that, I think, is to decentralize a lot of the ways of working that we do. I don't think people need managers.

Martin (53:08.662)
Yeah, no, it's. And to your point, like, there's a bunch of problems that one could foresee if you told somebody who's been managing people for a long time and become good at management. In a corporation, they might have, you know, they might have feelings about about this, about this thing. But in terms of, I guess, getting to that point, having

Kai (53:22.146)
Yeah.

Kai (53:29.422)
Yeah, 100%.

Martin (53:38.094)
employees that was the interesting thing that I took from this is just if they've got equity, right, and it's 51%, then you've got a scenario where in every and it's very different from I think your traditional startup model because there's probably a lot of

Kai (53:45.933)
Mm -hmm.

Martin (54:00.014)
areas or people who are a little bit jaded in terms of especially in Canada, when it comes to like equity, right? Because it was the carrot that was dangled in the last, you know, five, 10 years, for every, every employee, like, you get equity, get equity. And like, yes, there were some people whose lottery tickets have definitely paid off. But and that actually probably made

Kai (54:07.202)
Yeah.

Kai (54:13.006)
10 years, yeah.

Martin (54:27.086)
the problem worse because everybody would look to that, you know, one out of 10, one out of 100, one out of 1000 people that they know, and be like, so and so was that x, y, company. And, you know, it blew up and they got equity. So I want that and it's going to happen to me because people you want to think the best outcome. But if it's baked in from the beginning, and it's done in a way that to your point, right?

Kai (54:31.949)
Yeah.

Kai (54:51.405)
Mm

Martin (54:55.854)
probably scary for founders and, and, and, you know, the traditional model to a certain extent. it would be interesting to play, play out and, and see, and, and why not, why not experiment with it? I guess you've done a ton of research on this to, to, get to this point. Do you have a examples of companies that have like gone down this path that, stand out to you that are sort of like inspirational,

Kai (54:58.242)
Very scary.

Kai (55:13.218)
Hmm?

Martin (55:26.326)
inspirational like businesses to aspire to to like take on this different model that folks can kind of wrap their heads around or or is it more of like a thesis and and yeah.

Kai (55:41.366)
I think like their employee ownership like trusts are not new. They exist. They exist all over the place. They can exist from construction to manufacturing, not just tech. And so I think there's a lot of people that already doing it, but are they doing it in a way that I think is fully equitable? No, I think that's just one piece that they've added to their company. Do I know one company that I think, there it is. We just copy this, this works really well.

Martin (56:06.146)
Mm -mm.

Kai (56:06.922)
No, unfortunately, I don't think that there's one existing. But I think the thing that's stopping people from going down that path is because there's no systems in place. When you're starting a new company, there's so much to be done. It's such a variety and it's so actually pretty ineffective because you're

You have to do everything and you never know what is actually going to be the thing that you can press down on and be like, this is the thing you're still exploring. You're still in that R and D phase when you're starting out from like zero to 10, I would say employees, you're too experimental for me to say, do an employee ownership model. I would say once you get to the 10 to 50, that's when you should really be looking at it. This is the right time to build that. Once you know that you can, what you need, the kind of talent that you have and that what it is that you're.

Martin (56:41.875)
Mm -mm. Yeah.

Kai (56:56.14)
kit is and what you can really build on, that's when you start building into this employee ownership model. But it's not just about that. It's how you divide out work. It's how you work. So how do you come up with what is the next thing that you're going to do for the company that requires research, right? So while somebody is building something, somebody else should be paying attention to the research part.

somebody else should be like validating these ideas so that you can then give it to the builders. The builder doesn't necessarily want to do the research and vice versa. So understanding people's different skill sets and their different things that make them who they are and what kind of talent they have will help you build those little pieces that then help you actually accelerate the model. And so yeah, there isn't something in place, but I also, think it's because they're.

There just isn't a tool or there isn't a system in place that can help that, you know, founders can come in and be like, you know what, I'm ready. We're ready to grow this company. I want this to be an equitable. want it to run smoothly. I don't want this to become like a 2000 person. I'm not trying to be a billion dollar company. I'm just trying to build a good, solid company that can, you know, give people good paychecks, give myself good returns and just like.

builds and helps the community or whatever it is that your mission is. And I think that's really the way that we should be thinking about it. I see a ton of people that want to start businesses, but just it's overwhelming because just to be a founder does not mean that you want to be a CEO. Doesn't mean that you want to be a C -suite, right? Like a lot of founders just want, they have a passion, they have an idea, they want to build this company, but they don't necessarily are not going into it because of the hierarchy or because they're a know -it -all. And I think a lot of the...

Martin (58:22.344)
Yeah.

Kai (58:36.354)
The companies that have been built before has been with very technical people. So you have somebody who's like a great engineer, who has a great idea, who can build that prototype, but then they need to hire, but then we're expecting them to also lead the company in a strategic way, in a business way, in a sales way. You're like, that's not, then they have to upskill in things that are not their interests. And then we're expecting them to be really good leaders just because you're a good technical.

person with a great idea does not make you a great leader. And I think when you're talking about all these leaders that are, you know, might take offense to my point of view, it's not to say that there isn't good leadership is think about what is it about being a leader that you actually enjoy doing, right? And for me, being a past leader, a past manager, I enjoy developing people. I like seeing

Guiding them. like mentoring them. I like seeing them grow. I like structuring things. like, you know, thinking ahead and making sure that we're, you know, we're, thinking proactively. Those are the things about being a leader that I enjoy. It's not because I have power. It's not because I have this overarching thing. No, I will tell you majority of people that are managers absolutely hate performance review cycles. Like they absolutely hate them because it's like, it takes so much out of their day. It's very confusing. The structure that the company gives you is not

clear enough, so then it's so subjective. They have to sit there. They have to make themselves do it. Not a lot of people look forward to it because that's not the part of management. That's not the part of leadership that they actually want to do. So I'm saying, let's look at the jobs. Let's see what are the things that they don't want to do. Things that kind of like, you have to like bring yourself up to actually do it and be like, why, why are you doing it? What is the actual root cause? What is the root value it's giving you? And then when you look deep enough,

Martin (59:52.824)
Hmm.

Kai (01:00:17.134)
through all the bureaucracy, all the band -aids, all the things that we place, you realize that's not actually necessary. We can do it in a different way, and that way we'll be way more productive, it'll make people happier at work, it will make you just more adaptable in general as a company. And I think that's the difference. Instead of a cruise ship, you have multiple boats that are linked together as a community, rather than a giant ship that is under one helm.

Martin (01:00:39.79)
When you, you talked about that, I was like, I gotta go on AI and get some image generated to, match this like crazy vigil of like all these like speedboats, like somehow attached to each other, but it's can like detach and like work. And it's a really cool idea. And then my brain went to sort of this place of where does this exist in the natural world? Right. Because there's both. Right. And, and so how can you

Kai (01:00:51.67)
Yeah.

Kai (01:01:03.156)
Exists in the natural world. Exactly. Yeah.

Martin (01:01:06.658)
How can we mimic something a bit more organic than kind of going down this path of, right? It's like right now we're building a tower that just leads to space and at some point it's gonna topple, right? And so there's limits.

Kai (01:01:24.416)
And to have a tower, you need very specific structures that are only because you have a tower. You need a giant elevator. have multiple elevators. You need all these things like that you would not need if you just didn't build that way. If you built a little bit flatter, if you build a little bit more decentralized, you won't need those other things that you waste a lot of money on and lot of structure on that make you slow. So you remove that thing that makes you slow.

Martin (01:01:30.434)
Yeah.

Martin (01:01:37.943)
Yeah.

Martin (01:01:49.644)
everything you build when you're building up in that model adds risk to the thing that is unavoidable. it's just like every time you'd like, a little bit like it's like Jenga, right? Like every time you take a piece out from the bottom, you're weakening the foundation and making it and you're doing it to pursue growth. It's it's an interesting

Kai (01:02:01.944)
Yeah.

Kai (01:02:11.672)
But growth at what costs? Are you keeping any of the money? No, because you're spending it on things that you don't need. And so like you go down this path of like, what is actually do you need? Like when I look at like investments, I think a lot of people are just kind of looking at prices, how much it went up, that kind of stuff. I don't really look that way. I need to understand the business. I need to understand what, how is there value? What does it actually bring that makes it valuable for me to give you money for it? Also, I don't look at like, this is how much revenue is and this is how much they like earn. Like, no, no, no. I want to know how much your income is.

Martin (01:02:14.38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kai (01:02:41.901)
I don't go by the measurements because I want to know downright, what can you pay taxes on? Because if you're just wasting money, then you're not capital efficient, right? Then you can't pay your investors. Then you can't give... And when you make employees shareholders, that's the way that I was talking about. It's not about them hitting it big. It's not about like, now I'm worth $10 million because I worked for this company. It's about I earn... It's almost like I earn a dividend.

earn something all the time that helps me alongside paying very, very well, because you have to also pay equitably. It's not a lot of those companies that we were talking about is that they switched in equity for pay.

Martin (01:03:13.23)
Mm -hmm.

Martin (01:03:19.66)
Yeah, they said we can't pay you what you deserve. We're going to go heavy on the equity. It was, it was a, and, so you were exchanging and you, gets exciting. I've done it myself, right? Like I sacrificed earning potential direct immediate earning potential for potential future earning potential because I believed it and I got caught up in like, and it happens to you once until, and you know, I've seen other people, but

Kai (01:03:22.989)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kai (01:03:32.386)
Yeah.

Kai (01:03:35.939)
Mm

Kai (01:03:39.917)
Mm -hmm.

Kai (01:03:45.272)
Hahaha!

Martin (01:03:49.464)
for a lot of folks, they're not in that position to make that risk. And the way it was being done at that time was questionable to say the least. think one of the things that stands out in all of this, and I know I mentioned companies previously, the one thing that came to mind is like, and I don't know, like there's a plumbing company, used to be a client of mine when I went out on my own as like a recruiting consultant.

Kai (01:03:52.994)
Mm.

Kai (01:04:14.754)
Mm.

Martin (01:04:18.67)
first time. And they, they're plumbing wholesaler, CO, right? Check it out. Check them out. They, I don't know that they do like the whole 51 % piece. But in terms of into your point, right, the companies are out there, they've been doing like, this is a plumbing company, it's not in tech, it's not a sexy business, they sell plumbing parts for homes and construction companies and all that fun stuff. But

Kai (01:04:25.827)
Hmm.

Kai (01:04:37.965)
Yeah.

Martin (01:04:47.946)
It's so interesting to be it's when you say culture, right? Like this company has a culture, their culture was so different. And it was like, this is both in the before time. like, I was a consultant and I sat in their building and I showed up to work every day. I just wasn't an employee, but they, they spoke. You, you could feel a sense of ownership from everyone else.

Kai (01:05:04.77)
Mm.

Kai (01:05:13.677)
Yeah.

Martin (01:05:13.814)
That was different, right? wasn't, it wasn't the like band -aid solution. wasn't the magic solution to company problems, I would say, but they did it in a really good way. And, again, not perfect, but they're definitely like an interesting, like, I think, I think, black rock, they, they own like a significant portion of the business and they're an investor and they're one of the largest investors in the world.

Kai (01:05:22.541)
No.

Kai (01:05:26.156)
Yeah.

Martin (01:05:41.814)
they have HVAC, they have plumbing, they have all these, they have an electrical division all all tied together. But they all speak the same language when it comes to these unique aspects of how they operate as a business. And because of that, they're stronger in a way that like, is actually confusing for their competitors, too. So there's like an interesting play, where, like, the competitors can't compete with them, just because they operate at scale.

Kai (01:06:06.796)
No.

Martin (01:06:10.904)
but in such a different way that you're like applying tactics that just are meaningless because of how they operate. And it's really interesting thing to like see and play out.

Kai (01:06:19.309)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that's like the measure there. I'm not going to say I advocate for like BackRock or any of that. Again, like I'm very opposite of giant corporations coming in and like owning the market. But I will say that like this idea of the culture is based on really respect, like all these values that we try to do as people and cultural person, you have a set of values and you try and get people to live these values. And one of them in one of the companies I used to work at was Bengage, it was like, own your job.

Martin (01:06:30.933)
No, no.

Kai (01:06:49.504)
And so to own your job, have to think about it as like, own this task. I am an owner of this, of my work. And so I get to decide and I get to do the research and I get to figure it out. And so to understand that and like that ownership piece comes very differently when you actually own the business. And I don't mean in some like arbitrary equity, RSU, something that you get down the line.

some point, but in a way where the business actually treats you as a shareholder and is it trying to spend all of its money on growth? It's trying to be sustainable. And so when it's trying to be sustainable, people actually see the fruit of their labor back to them. And when they start to see that, you want to talk about all the engagement tools and the things that we go through to get the workforce to care about their work. Nothing's going to make you care more than if you actually are invested in your work.

Martin (01:07:35.383)
Hmm.

Kai (01:07:39.094)
you see the fruit of your labor, you actually get to decide to a certain degree what direction to go to if need be. You're valued as a person because you know that you're valued, you're listened to. And so these things come naturally when you build a good foundation that is already built on this equitable model, it's already built. So you don't waste as much effort on all these extra things to try and get people to align and they're aligned because they know what the purpose is. You all agreed on it.

It's very simple. think we overcomplicate business to allow us to give all this hierarchy. But if you simplify the business, you actually end up with a much better, more cohesive, competitive business. Because I think the idea in the future that tech and AI is going to replace jobs and is going to be how we're going to do work is kind of silly because it's like, if you have access to AI, your competitor has access to the same tools.

Martin (01:08:09.88)
Hmm.

Martin (01:08:14.956)
Yep. Yeah.

Martin (01:08:22.664)
Yeah

Kai (01:08:37.004)
So if you all have access to the same tool, what is your competitive advantage other than your talent? You can't replicate talent. People are unique. Every single individual is unique. Twins are unique. So then you can't possibly that you're winning. Your winning formula is your talent. And I think we're doing it completely wrong. These companies are going backwards thinking that they'll, I'll just cut my talent. Like we've been in recruitment. We know the cycle. They fire the recruitment team because they think they don't need it. And now the.

is great and I'll just fire people and that whatever. And then all of sudden they're like, we need talent. And then they hire back their recruitment team and they ramp up recruitment too fast. It's just like a cycle of you obviously don't know what you're doing and you obviously don't know what the long -term vision is here. And so I don't think leaders in all companies are actually very good at being visionaries or very good at actually seeing the mission and seeing the market for what it is. I think it's a lot of like...

Status quo, this is what you do. So I'll do it. I need to, I don't look good on paper. So I'll just fire staff to cut my expenses instead of actually realizing why is it that your business is not doing well in the market? So I think like the idea of like talent being this extra thing that's throwaway is so silly and we'll bite them in the butt down the line because talent is your competitive advantage. That is literally it. And if you enable your talent well, if you manage your talent well, if you composite your talent well,

Martin (01:09:43.394)
Yeah. Yeah.

Martin (01:09:56.205)
Yeah.

Kai (01:10:03.352)
You're going to win. That is the recipe for winning. And I think what is it, whatever winning is to you, to me, it's not an abundance. It's not a crazy amount. It's just, I like to build. And I think a lot of founders have ideas and they just want to build those ideas. So allowing them to build this in a way where other people are actually engaged, understand the mission, really want to do well because then they do well, allows people to also switch jobs, learn in different ways.

build their own adaptability, their own generalist knowledge. And by the way, just to be a generalist is not just flat. Generalists have spikes. We have spikes in certain things that we're like, go really, really deep in them because I'm sure for you as well, like we go really deep in things that we think are interesting. But we don't necessarily go into everything. We just go into the things that we find very interesting. And all that generalist knowledge connects in a way that makes us great.

Martin (01:10:37.986)
Hmm. Hmm.

Kai (01:10:58.85)
conductors is the way that I would call that job description of the future is a conductor. You're good at seeing all the different pieces. You're good at problem solving. You're good at pattern recognition. You're good at organizing, you know, various people, connecting the right people to the right people to make the future actually work, to make the wheels turn. And so I think generalists are going to be huge, huge asset for a lot of companies in the future, which in the past they weren't.

They were always kind of ostracized and not given opportunity because they're not specialized enough.

Martin (01:11:31.872)
You've clearly thought about this a lot and it sounds like you're.

you're taking the approach of being the change you want to see in the world in terms of like, well, to your point, and I really liked it where it's like, we don't have to wait for a particular law to change, or we don't have to wait for a particular style or flavor of government to be in place. Like the stars don't need to align. If you want something enough, sure.

conditions might be easier if things were different, but you're not gonna change is not gonna happen if you don't start kind of chasing it down. So kudos to you for going down this path. guess, you know, speaking a little bit to the future for you and without, you know, I don't wanna get into like any like nitty gritty details or anything like that, but like, you're clearly passionate about this.

problem to solve, which is what the books and speakers and TED talks all talk about, like you have to be in love with the problem. Versus like the actual outcome, like and so that that's kind of cool to see. I guess what's on like, what's the horizon sort of looking looking feel like like there's

Kai (01:12:37.87)
Yeah.

Kai (01:12:46.903)
Yeah.

Kai (01:12:50.753)
Hmm?

Kai (01:13:02.69)
Hmm

Martin (01:13:05.298)
Where do you begin? Right? It's such a meaty, meaty problem. So where are you beginning? What are you what are you thinking of doing as we wind down here? Yeah.

Kai (01:13:07.182)
Yeah.

Kai (01:13:14.794)
I think I approach this kind of like a lifelong work. I think for me, I think of it as, you know, how people used to be academics and they just study a problem and I'm kind of approaching it in that way. I think I approach it in the same way. I've been spending at minimum five years that I've been reading and researching and learning about all the different models out there, the different ways that people work, sociology, business, all kinds of...

different bits that I've collected over time because there's already, you know, collective knowledge out there, collective intelligence, that not everything needs to be new and you don't have to invent everything. think understanding what's already out there and that people have, you know, done great studies on that you can't possibly do it. I am taking all that knowledge and I'm basically trying to in the future, like starting now on, I've decided that that's sort of what I want to do. I want to build the future of work.

Martin (01:13:44.355)
New.

Kai (01:14:11.884)
I want to build tools, allow people to have these kinds of businesses because there's no tool for this. There's no human capital management or HRS system or whatever that fits in this vision that I have. And I think, like I said, I'm pulling off the bandaid. I don't want to fix the current system. That's not, I think that's just going to take.

Martin (01:14:31.339)
Yeah, not appealing.

Kai (01:14:32.046)
30 years to do and I'm not interested in that. I think what we need, if it was 30 years ago and somebody started, great, but we didn't start. So we've got a finite amount of time ahead of us. And I think the best way to do it is to enable the current people, the current market, the current companies that want to make that change, enable them to be able to do that change. And I think you're gonna see in about five to 10 years, you're gonna see that fruit show up in the market for what actually does well in the market. If you see it,

Martin (01:14:38.126)
Hahaha

Kai (01:15:01.422)
anytime in history where we've had bad economic downturns, know, 2000, 2008, a lot of the companies that we now use and that were very, you know, they're huge right now and have eaten up the market are ones that started in that time.

Martin (01:15:17.678)
Born born in those years, basically. Yeah.

Kai (01:15:20.702)
Exactly. So this is the time to start that innovative, disruptive business that you want to start. This is the time to figure out what is it that you actually want to do and in the future. I don't think people are planning the way that they used to about their retirement. I think we've unfortunately been kind of scammed out of our future to a certain degree. And so people are now like, well, we have a hopelessness crisis at the moment that you would say in society because people don't see a future that they want.

They don't see an option. They don't see anything that they can get passionate about, or they can even feel like they can survive on. Like our minimum wage in Canada is what, 16 -ish dollars, and the living wage is $35. So when you compare that, you're like, how is anybody supposed to really, and that's just bare minimum living wage. Like in reality, if you live in Toronto, like you're looking at like 70 plus dollars an hour in order to like, and also this idea of dollars an hour is like you're trading.

every hour, which is the only thing that you have a finite amount of, for dollars.

Martin (01:16:20.312)
They bought it down to the they I mean, in theory, from like a capitalist perspective, they got it right. Like, unfortunately, fortunately, who knows? Yeah.

Kai (01:16:27.212)
Yeah.

So then we need a different way. We need people to be able to do the things that they enjoy without having to go and get like...

you know, pay so much money just because of gatekeeping information, which is what I think university is. Like, they don't want that. We have access to information. We have tools that can enable us now. And it's just about building communities. It's about connecting people and giving them the right tools and structures so that they can just hit the ground running, doing the thing that they like. So what I'm doing is I'm building those structures. I'm trying to get together with people that I think are brilliant, already doing amazing work. When it comes to generalists,

Martin (01:16:53.592)
Hmm.

Kai (01:17:06.42)
like kind of idea and how we work. There's an amazing company called Generalist World that is working on that, that is explaining that the future of work doesn't look like this and how generals can really optimize themselves because they are the future. There are great companies that are tackling the aging population issues and like the inequality with that and how do we build communities so that one person is not the only sole.

Dependent like person that has to be dependent for so many other people that they have to like take care of whether it's aging population or their own kids and and Understanding that women have a harder time and some women are very expert level, but they don't want to work full -time How do we allow people to work whatever hours make sense to them take whatever time that they want? How do we build flexible models where it's not but in seat?

Martin (01:17:53.367)
Yeah, yeah.

Kai (01:17:53.878)
Right? Like that doesn't work anymore. We're not factory workers. It's about output. So then if that's the output and it's about creativity, because that's not what AI can do, we have seen. It is not great with creativity. It's only good for certain things. And so how do we use the tech we have and use the talent we have and build better futures? Because I think the new population that we have, the new demographic that's coming into the market does not want this. You can see it. There's a huge clash between Gen Z and like...

the current business model does not work because they just don't feel motivated. There's nothing in it for them. There's no value proposition to the actual talent anymore. That's why they're not wanting to do it anymore. What are they getting out of it? A paycheck so that it goes directly to their landlord, it goes directly to a grocery company. Like it's for basic needs. So we need to build something where the employees actually win and the employees actually get a lot out of it. And the only way to do that is to do it in a way where they own their mean of labor.

to a certain degree, but also have a diversified way of working that fits all the different people, all the different things that they're going through their life, and isn't dependent on a butt in a seat.

Martin (01:19:03.126)
Wild. always, always a pleasure chatting with you. And thanks for doing it in a recorded fashion with me today. for the folks that stuck around this far and are just like, wow, I want to talk about this more because I do. just being mindful of like the traditional listening and attention span of, of the podcast, but

Kai (01:19:12.279)
Yeah, of course.

Kai (01:19:22.114)
Yeah.

Kai (01:19:26.594)
Yeah.

Martin (01:19:28.984)
For the folks that are just like, I'm resonating with so much. I would love to like, I imagine you would want to chat with folks like that, or can people reach out? there anything, are there any shout outs or call outs that you'd like to do? is one of many chances I imagine to plug yourself, but yeah.

Kai (01:19:38.23)
Yeah.

Kai (01:19:48.89)
haha

Again, I'm not really necessarily like building anything right now that I can, you know, direct people to yet, but I am very much happy to have people contact me. I'm having conversations just to understand their pain points and their job, whatever it is. I'm building some workshops for some, you know, young talent that have entrepreneurial desires, but just don't really know what is it that they want to do or how to get into and how to build that.

Martin (01:19:58.637)
Hmm.

Kai (01:20:18.686)
alongside having a job, for example, right? Because not everybody can just quit their job and build a product. So I'm kind of working on a lot of those things that I'm hoping to offer for free. So would say, you know, follow me on LinkedIn is probably the best option. Contacting me, I'm always happy to have coffee chats and understand people better and connect with people. But yeah, other than that, I'm not really plugging anything right now. Just happy to help.

Martin (01:20:23.074)
Yeah.

Martin (01:20:41.624)
Cool, cool, no, thanks so much. Yeah, thank you, Kai, for everything and thanks for this chat. Really appreciate it. You're right. Beep -a -dee -beep.

Kai (01:20:49.783)
Of