EP 50 The Empty Bolt Seat: The CEO Who Thinks He Doesn't Need HR, Grogu, and Reddit

A CEO returns to his struggling startup, looks around at the wreckage, and decides the HR team is the problem. He fires them. All of them. Then tells the world about it at a conference. Tony and Steve have opinions. Surprising, nuanced, occasionally loud opinions, and they're not entirely on the side you'd expect.  In between the Star Wars tangents and Tony's deep philosophical feelings about performance improvement plans, the guys also tackle AI: what most HR professionals are doing wrong, why Reddit is a terrifying foundation for legal advice, and how to actually use these tools without accidentally torching your credibility. Fifty episodes in, and the chaos has never been more educational.

Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven “Big Deal” Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast

Learn more about our New sponsor at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about our sponsor MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Lean more about Jobs for America's Graduates (JAG) at: https://jag.org/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about the Thrive Life Project: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/
The newest book mentioned on the podcast: The Bus Has No Driver: https://rb.gy/rqocj5

Creators and Guests

Host

Fantastic Tony Benjamin

I am a unique HR leader with more than 20 years’ experience working for some of Utah’s oldest, fastest growing, and most well-known companies. My experience includes Superior Drilling Products, Air Medical Resource Group, Control4, Ovivo USA and Deseret Book. I am a regionally recognized authority on building successful cultures and am an alumni speaker at DisruptHR SLC and DisruptHR St. George. I have earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor’s degree from Utah State University, and am a certified Professional of Human Resources (PHR). I'm married to a woman out of my league, have three brilliant kids I doesn’t deserve and, although I travel a lot, live in Vernal, Utah.

Host

Steven "Big Deal" Smith

Steve will be the first to tell you that recruiting is marketing. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance at Brigham Young University and started his career in recruiting in Feb 2005. In 2008, he took a risk during a recession to help start a new company with Ryan Kohler, called ApplicantPro, a full suite HR platform for small to mid-sized businesses. In March 2025, ApplicantPro became iSolved Talent Acquisition, now serving 177,000 clients and close to 9800 employees. Before the merger, ApplicantPro made the Inc 5000 list 12 years in a row, Top Places to work in Utah 3 years in a row, and Steve was named the Small Business Utah HR Achievement Award winner in May 2024. iSolved was also named an Indeed Platinum Partner in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is one of only ten ATS platforms in the country to obtain that designation. SHRM-CP & PHR certified, Steve currently volunteers on the Utah SHRM State Council as the immediate past State Executive Director. His book, The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction, was released in early 2023, and has helped thousands of organizations across the country rethink their approach to hiring. If you need help understanding the principles and role of SEO, marketing, and AI when it comes to attracting job seekers, Steve provides a solid framework for hiring effectively.

What is The HR Life Podcast?

The HR Life Podcast is a show about the work-life experience of those of us in Human Resources and business leadership. This long-form podcast is a conversation, casual, and not always the corporate line. Hosts and guests touch on everything from serious or even controversial topics to the absurdity of modern American business practices. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Steven J. Smith, Author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and all-around important guy. Guests include the best minds in the HR world. Join the show weekly.

Tony Benjamin (00:09.968)
Welcome to the HR Life Podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are fantastic Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange, Strategic HR Consulting, and Stephen Bigdeel Smith, who is so famous that Grogu calls him daddy. Hey Steve!

Steve-o (00:32.718)
Wow. Every time. I know like the movie came out yesterday. I'm going to go see it here pretty soon, so we'll talk about it later. yeah, May 22nd. Yeah, May 22nd official official release. And yeah, so I'm actually really excited. I I don't know for some reason that that particular series has been one of my favorites.

Tony Benjamin (00:36.76)
Happy Groger Weekend, man.

Tony Benjamin (00:44.824)
Yeah, we'll have to do an official review.

Steve-o (01:01.206)
Yeah, I just, I don't know, I just enjoy it. That and Andor. Andor I absolutely loved. I just, the whole Rogue One storyline is just phenomenal to me. I...

Tony Benjamin (01:10.658)
Yeah, no, the the and or thing that was that was incredible. Like just incredible. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:15.886)
It's it's deep. Like the whole thing is really deep. And, and you know, I think what I enjoy most about it is you have these characters who for, for all intents and purposes, they're trying to do the best that they can with what they've got. And they're trying to make the right choices. But there's sometimes you, I don't know, you have to do things that are out of the ordinary or out of character for you to, to get things done, which is kind of sad in a way. But, but man.

It's such a good storyline, the character conflicts and such. It's just good. It's a good story. The story is written really well and that kind of stuff. I like stories like that where they're written well. So.

Tony Benjamin (01:56.42)
Me too, and they have moral conundrums and choices that have to be made. Exactly.

Steve-o (02:02.19)
Mm-hmm. Because that's what we face in real life, you know? Everything isn't perfect and, you know, butterflies and waterfalls and rainbows or whatever you want to use for your metaphor. So.

Tony Benjamin (02:15.266)
Yeah, no for those of you who aren't Star Wars fans, if you're going to watch anything like Star Wars or anything like that, watch Andor and Rogue One. And those are really, really good movies and it helps if you've seen Star Wars but literally Andor takes you right up, yeah, yeah, they take you right up to the day.

Steve-o (02:27.352)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (02:35.842)
But they're good by themselves too, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (02:40.718)
that the movie Andor starts, or I'm sorry, Andor takes you right up to the day that Rogue One starts, and Rogue One takes you up moments before the movie Star Wars starts. the original, yeah, yeah, and it is, it's wonderful. Great storytelling of both those, but you know, it's Grogu weekend now, and the little green guy, and supposedly he gets to fly the ship, I haven't seen it yet, but that's coming up, we gotta.

Steve-o (02:41.026)
Yep. Yep.

Rogue One starts, yeah.

Steve-o (02:51.374)
Correct, like the original, like the OG. Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (03:07.99)
I know right? We're going to give you all the spoilers guys so just be prepared and then in coming weeks there's going to be spoilers for sure. We're just going to promise now.

Tony Benjamin (03:09.528)
He gets to fly this ship. That's right. That's right. And. And again and again we understand if not all of your Star Wars fans we get it we get it. But you know. That's.

Steve-o (03:23.224)
Yeah, I know there's some Trekkies out there. It's all good. Trekkie has some good, one of my favorite Star Trek movies was First Contact. By far one of my favorites. so because that was a great storyline, it literally explains everything, right? I just, that's what I loved about that. So, you know, there's some good stuff out there. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (03:32.781)
yeah, first contact was brilliant. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (03:40.131)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, thoughtful stuff. Yep, exactly. So today, if you have, boy, I'm having a hard time. I've been mowing the lawn today and you could tell because I'm Yeah, yeah. It's that scene from My Fair Lady when he's putting the marbles in her mouth and then Audrey Hepburn and then she, oh, and she spits them all out and she says, I accidentally swallowed one. And he goes, no problem, I've got more. He puts more in her mouth.

Steve-o (03:48.172)
Wow. That was like marbles in the mouth right there.

Steve-o (04:07.726)
Wow, I've never seen that. So there you go. Of course. No, of course I haven't. I do know that's where the whole Tiffany's stuff comes from, right? Like the jewelry don't they get, or is that breakfast at Tiffany's? Yeah, well, it's, you know, I know it's the same actress or.

Tony Benjamin (04:10.551)
Haven't you? Oh, no, okay.

Tony Benjamin (04:19.128)
No, that's breakfast at Tiffany's. there.

Tony Benjamin (04:25.348)
Yeah, they're the same actress. No, the musical My Fair Lady is based upon the Greek tragedy. It's a musical, which I don't generally like musicals. There's only two that I really like, but it's based upon the Greek tragedy play called Pygmalia. And Pygmalia is a myth about a man who carves a woman out of stone.

Steve-o (04:33.032)
it's a musical.

I didn't know this.

Tony Benjamin (04:53.128)
woman out of a block of marble and his own creation is so beautiful that he falls in love with it. And he falls in love with his own creation. And so

Steve-o (05:04.056)
There is a lot of wow there.

Tony Benjamin (05:07.46)
Yeah, it's a powerful story. So anyways, my...

Steve-o (05:10.68)
Because think about it, think about things that man have made and that we have basically fallen in love with and we worship basically. know, AI is one of those things. I know our topic today, and I don't mean to burst any bubble, that's going to be our topic a little bit today. you know, AI, I think is becoming like that. They've created it and now some of us are so fixated on it that we in part, we miss the point. And, you know, too, just like any technology or anything, you still have to be careful.

Tony Benjamin (05:17.272)
Right? Yes.

Steve-o (05:40.814)
So let's not fall in love

Tony Benjamin (05:41.7)
Exactly.

Anyway, so the Greek play, they made a modern play of it called Pygmalia and then My Fair Lady is an adaptation of that. It's a modernization adaptation of that play. there you go. Anyways, it's really good. It has one of my favorite actresses of all time, Audrey Hepburn and

Steve-o (05:57.358)
It's interesting.

Steve-o (06:03.736)
She is pretty amazing, I will give you that.

Tony Benjamin (06:06.436)
Yeah, amazing person, amazing human being, great actress, all that. So, okay, now, as you have, as I tried to say before, before the marbles ended up in my mouth, we're have an empty red seat today, as you might be able to tell. Either that or whoever it is has been exceptionally quiet. And exceptionally quiet.

Steve-o (06:09.902)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (06:28.384)
Exceptionally. Actually, it's the CEO from both everybody, but he just doesn't want to talk right now.

Tony Benjamin (06:34.936)
He's busy taking other people's calls. That's... He just doesn't know. Yeah. Isn't it just me? Is it just me or does he look like he's 12? I mean, those... some of the pictures, man, that guy looks young.

Steve-o (06:36.916)
I mean, he truly is our red seat right now. He just doesn't know it yet.

Steve-o (06:49.42)
You know, he's definitely a millennial, right? So that's fun. But yeah, I don't know. That's a good, good point. He is young. I mean, you can tell he's young, but you know, kudos to him. He started the business to begin with, which means he was even younger because it was what, 12, 13 years ago when he originally started it. And so, you I don't know, kudos to brilliant minds like that who just take an idea and literally run with it and make things happen.

Tony Benjamin (07:07.715)
Right, right.

Steve-o (07:17.166)
So, cause that's not the easiest of things to do. Been there, done that, right? It's just, it's really difficult to do. You have to trust your instincts, but you also have to trust that the market wants what you have. And you know, there's been a lot of failures over the years that I've had as well in different projects and things like that, that we tried to implement when we were at Applicant Pro. They just failed miserably. They completely failed. And you know, it's hard to swallow, but again, if you don't have the market for it, don't waste your time on it. Move on.

Tony Benjamin (07:17.698)
Exactly.

Tony Benjamin (07:21.646)
Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (07:47.608)
No, that's, yes.

Steve-o (07:47.616)
And in fact, was talking to somebody, I was talking to somebody this week, and I can't remember his name off the of my head, but he was, he's creating something and trying to implement and using AI and things like that. We had a really good conversation. I was just kind of telling him some of my experience with it. And, you know, one of his biggest challenges, well, how do I market it? The reality is when you start marketing something, it should sell itself, right? It should be so easy to understand and conceptually.

grasping for the person you're speaking with that it almost becomes a no brainer. That's when you know you really have something. And so so anyway, so I I believe that to a T, right? You really have to have something that you know is going to benefit them and is actually going to help them and and is easy to explain, if you will, and easy to pitch in essence. So I don't know, like marketing should be fairly natural like that. I'm not sure cold calling is the way to go.

So, you know, sometimes you gotta just do outreach, right? But anyway, I like it when people just raise their hand, say, hey, I heard about this. I wanna check this out. That's really cool.

Tony Benjamin (08:49.892)
Yeah,

Tony Benjamin (08:56.004)
Well, I think I've told you that's where I'm at in running my business. I'm done trying to convince people that they need human resources. If I am talking to you and I'm having to convince you that you need HR, you don't need me. You certainly don't want me. And I've done that in the past where I've talked to people into having my services. And it never goes the way I want it to.

Steve-o (09:02.998)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Steve-o (09:19.438)
Well, I'll tell you what, you and, you know, Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt, would get along really well. I'm not so sure he's convinced he needs HR. We'll get into that, but there you go.

Tony Benjamin (09:26.468)
yeah, that's true. Here we go. Okay, so let's let's, yeah, let's let's jump right into this. So Steve sent me a link to link to a LinkedIn story. And it was a which was unfortunate, right? Yeah.

Steve-o (09:36.258)
Yeah, let's just jump into this.

Steve-o (09:45.624)
Which was on Fortune, for those of you that know. Yeah, it was an article on Fortune by Kristin Stoller. I wanna give her credit.

Tony Benjamin (09:53.86)
That's so nice of you Steve, way to go. Kristen Stoller.

Steve-o (09:56.344)
That's right. I'm going to give people credit for where I get the research. Well, and then you can look it up yourself later on if you want and just verify that we're not blowing smoke over here.

Tony Benjamin (10:01.742)
Right, right.

You know and Kristen Stoller if you want to come on the podcast

Steve-o (10:06.7)
I'm just really big on having, yeah, I'm just really big on having the facts, right? I've seen too much in my career where they just pull something out of the blue off the internet and assume it's factual and start pitching it like it's the next thing or something, I don't know. That bugs me. So I'm gonna give you where it came from. There you go, Kristen Stoller at Fortune Magazine.

Tony Benjamin (10:12.035)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (10:26.68)
There. There you go. Fortune magazine is where we originally saw it. A number of news sources are now covering it, including MSN. It's I think I think all the major cable networks have covered it to one degree or another. It's it's out and about. It's you know, it's a big story when my wife hands it to me on her phone and says, Hey, look at this. Right. And yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (10:34.904)
Correct. Yep.

Steve-o (10:41.614)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (10:47.982)
That's awesome. Yeah, that's that's funny actually that's really funny

Tony Benjamin (10:54.36)
Well, it just shows that how big of a story it became. Right. And and look, I'm going to tell you right now, I don't know a ton about Bolt. I don't know much about their company. But go ahead, Steve, why don't you give it why don't you why don't you talk a little bit about about what you noticed it and kind of what the story said. And then let's kind of keep going from there.

Steve-o (11:14.188)
Yeah, so the CEO, Ryan Breslow, he was at a workplace innovation type summit and they were interviewing him and talking with him about things that were happening. know, Bolt started out really well. In fact, I think in 2022, the valuation was about 11 billion dollars. I mean, this was an organization that he had originally built. Now he had he had stepped away for a while, stepped down as CEO.

in 2022. So once it was evaluated as such, that's when he kind of made his exit strategy like some good CEOs will do. But after stepping down by 2024, that 11 billion value went down to only about 300 million. I mean, this was literally a decline of almost 97%. And so they were they were busy doing layoffs and all of this stuff. So Breslow was asked to come back and hopefully I'm pronouncing his name correctly.

But he was asked to come back. And so he noticed there was some poor decision making and overspending and things like that. And so he returned to CEO and just last year in 2025 and started operating in this concept that he called wartime because everything had gone down so much. In essence, he had lost all his troops and so he's coming back. Yep. Yep. And so so here's what happened. He had an HR team.

Tony Benjamin (12:24.077)
Right, right.

Meaning this is the time, yeah, this is the time to dig deep and fight for our survival.

Steve-o (12:37.486)
that what he said was our HR team was creating problems that didn't exist and those problems disappeared when I let them go. And so he admitted to letting them go. And in fact, during this same layoff, there were about 30 % of the employees that were let go at that point, including pretty much the entire HR team. Now we'll get into other details because he did hire some, but there's the gist.

Tony Benjamin (12:48.985)
So.

Tony Benjamin (12:59.79)
Well, they. Right, I was going to say he he sat out. He said and what caught headlines is that he fired his entire HR team. There was no one that was on staff. There is no one that was on staff that didn't that was there before. None of the HR team made it.

Steve-o (13:08.312)
Correct.

Steve-o (13:15.544)
But, and I wanna focus on this just a second. He said the reason was because his HR team was creating problems that didn't exist. And this is only one of several comments that he made. I'm gonna bring up some of these as we go. But I want you to think about that for just a second. And I'm gonna share a story that I believe I have shared before, my Chicken Little story. Do you remember that one? Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (13:39.768)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, that's a great tease. Hold on one second because I want to do something really important now and hang on everybody. This is important. So you don't want to need to do this. The HR Life podcast would like to announce the a new sponsor to the podcast and that is right. Dino Outfitters here in Vernal and

Steve-o (13:43.981)
Hahaha

Steve-o (13:48.142)
That's right.

Steve-o (13:58.591)
Yay!

Tony Benjamin (14:06.112)
Amber Toler is the owner of this business and they're fantastic. They do cool things. So Steve, have you ever heard of a Via Ferrata? Do you know what a Via Ferrata is?

Steve-o (14:16.494)
Via ferrada, I know via means like a lane or a road. At least in Spanish, if I think of a via, yeah, a way. the, isn't ferrada, isn't that iron? Ferrada, ferra, yeah, ferra. Okay, okay, yeah, so iron way. I'm trying to translate in my head. This is what happens when you're bilingual, you start taking random words and trying to translate.

Tony Benjamin (14:21.348)
Right away. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Iron way. Yep. You got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, no, that's cool. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do the same thing. I start looking for the Latin route and I start building apart. No, that's exactly right. So the Via Ferrata was this thing in the Italian Alps and they had to transport equipment up and over these giant mountains. And so what they did is they drilled holes in the cliff walls and put these rungs in the cliff wall.

Steve-o (14:41.89)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (14:58.628)
And then they would put parts and stuff on the back of a soldier and he would just climb this cliff wall with these rungs and cables. And over it he would go and they called it the Iron Way. Well after World War II, people took tours and went on this Iron Way for fun. And went up over these high cliffs and mountains. They, I don't know where, yeah, yeah, so I know, I think I want to say there's two or three now in Utah.

Steve-o (15:16.578)
wow. Don't they have some of those in like Zion's National Park? I know they've got a few down there.

Tony Benjamin (15:27.67)
And there are some all over the world. But anyways, there's not tons of them. Number one, there's not tons of them. And number two, almost all of them you can do in less than half a day. So they're not super long, they're guided, they have these cables that go with them. You double clip into the cable so you don't fall off the cliff. It's seen as a very safe way to learn mountain climbing and all that sort of stuff and have that thrill without the danger, right?

Steve-o (15:53.208)
That's kind of cool. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (15:55.78)
So anyways, really cool team. anyways, about a year and a half ago or so they opened one in Vernal, Utah. It's up Dry Fork Canyon or up the Ashley Gorge Canyon. And it is that it is right now the longest course in the United States. And it's a big deal up here. It was a long time in coming and all that.

Steve-o (16:17.228)
Now I heard it's actually the longest via Ferrara in the entire northern hemisphere. So it's not just the states. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (16:22.122)
Is it? there you go. Okay. So that's even better. But as they built it, our sponsor Dino Outfitters and Amber, she's a she's an ad with mountain climber and all that. And, and she has Dino Outfitters and they rent equipment to people to go on the Via Frada. They also provide get guides. And if you've never been on one before you want to guide. I haven't done it yet. But I know tons of people that have but yeah.

Steve-o (16:48.748)
Yeah, so much better that way, Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (16:51.98)
So anyways, but I talked to Amber and Amber said that one of the areas that she wants to make sure that she talks to people about is corporate events and team building activities. And so here we are, she, Dino Outfitters is our newest sponsor. So here we go. We're about to read for the first time from Dino Outfitters. I think I have to. That's, that's right.

Steve-o (17:11.608)
so excited. I just think it's fun because it includes dinosaurs. I just, I mean, it's like Jurassic Park. can't, I just can't help it.

Tony Benjamin (17:20.888)
That's right.

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Everybody via ferrata, it's U T A H V I A F E R R A T A dot com Utah via ferrata.com. Welcome Amber to the show and being a sponsor. Yeah.

Steve-o (18:04.59)
I mean, what a cool experience would that be? I mean, if applicant pro back in the day had come to me and said, hey guys, we're going on to be a ferrata, I would be in a heartbeat. It's so fun. So cool.

Tony Benjamin (18:14.53)
Right? Yeah, yeah, me too. Me too. Great opportunity for people and their teams to go team building and all that. So there you go. Welcome, Dino Outfitters. Yeah. Very much. Okay, Steve, so let's start with this. You were gonna talk about your chicken little analogy.

Steve-o (18:22.648)
Yeah, huge shout out. Yeah, and we appreciate you.

Steve-o (18:31.586)
Yeah, Chicken Little. you know, and I talk about this in my book. There was a point in my career where I started learning a bunch of legal stuff and I got kind of excited. Learning legal stuff for me, for whatever reason, is very exciting. I just like it. I know I it's just weird. I'm weird like that. In fact, Heather, Heather Anderson, she loves legal stuff, too. And she actually went and got her degree now. She's just rocking it right now. I'm really excited to hear her story. We'll have to get her on so she can talk about that.

Tony Benjamin (18:56.452)
right?

Steve-o (19:00.504)
But anyway, when I learned some of this legal stuff, I remember coming back to my organization at the time and literally we had a company meeting and I talked about all this legal stuff and I said, we need to do this and I made all these changes over the course of several weeks. And then it turned out none of it applied. None of it. None of it applied to our industry, none of applied to our company size. It was all completely a waste of time. And so when...

Tony Benjamin (19:00.761)
be good.

Steve-o (19:27.982)
Breslow in this example says the HR team was creating problems that didn't exist. That is the first memory that comes into my mind where I was doing something very similar way back in the day. I mean, this was 20 years ago, but still it was something where I was learning and I wanted to put that learning into action, but I did it prematurely and I was literally acting as if the sky was falling and in essence creating a problem that actually didn't exist.

And then I had to own up to that and explained to everybody, okay, nix that, ignore everything that I said, this guy is not falling. So very embarrassing time for me in my career. Luckily it was very early on, but I can see why Bresla probably saw that in this situation and thought, wait a minute, these are problems that don't even exist right now, why are we even promoting them? Why are we even talking about them? It's just like when it comes to benefits or total rewards.

Do we need all of those? mean, HR, we're so proud of our little checklist, but the reality is, what's the adoption rate? How many people actually use it? What kind of ROI does it actually bring to the table? So I can imagine that Bressel probably had this epiphany moment when he was going through the process and looking at why there was suddenly this 97 % decline in revenue. And I'm sure he found a ton. And I know that it wasn't just HR that was creating the problems. I'm sure there were others within the organization.

Tony Benjamin (20:34.628)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (20:45.572)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (20:53.922)
But here's the thing, Breslau saw HR as the one who should control all of this, right? Otherwise, why would he have let them go like he did? And so even though in this article it makes it sound like he just really hates HR and all the storylines and all the headlines try to make it sound like, yeah, fired my old HR team, HR is horrible, blah, blah. Let me tell you one thing that he did say. He said that HR is the wrong energy format and approach for a company of our size.

Tony Benjamin (21:03.692)
Right, right.

Steve-o (21:23.352)
Like he was talking about the company as a site, because they're more of a startup now, like they were when they first started. And then, and what he did is he replaced the HR team with two, what he calls people ops or POPs, which I love the word POPs. So this is a lot of fun to me. But the way he described it is people ops actually empowers the managers, streamlines decision-making and keeps the company moving at lightning speed. That was his comment on

Tony Benjamin (21:38.626)
Right, right.

Steve-o (21:50.614)
And so it's not that he wanted to eliminate HR entirely, but he needed an HR team that was about empowering the managers, streamlining those decisions, and then keeping the company moving forward instead of this downward trend that they had seen all this time. So it's not that he wanted to do away with HR altogether, but he wanted to have the right HR people in place that understood those three concepts, empowering managers, decision-making, and moving at lightning speed, which I totally get. I've been in startups before, right?

So anyway, that was a lot of fun to kind of read that and all the crazy comments out there. Anyway, Tony, your take on that so far.

Tony Benjamin (22:26.53)
But, well no, okay, so when I first saw the headline, my thought was, great, here we go. We're hearing about another company that's getting rid of HR altogether. We'll see how this goes for them, because I don't think it's gonna go well. That, I mean, just that was my first reaction. Then I got reading the story and then I started texting you, right? I gave you my gut reaction and then I started texting you more. And my thought was, well, he's kinda, the headlines are kinda misleading because he didn't really get rid of the HR function.

Steve-o (22:32.36)
Right?

Steve-o (22:55.192)
headline that's misleading what?

Tony Benjamin (22:57.508)
Shocking, right? And he didn't really get rid of the function. He just got rid of the people who were doing it. He reframed it and started over. And look, you know that I'm not always the most rosy picture person in the world about the state of HR. shocking. Anyways, it was...

Steve-o (23:18.327)
What?

Tony Benjamin (23:26.69)
When I first read that, was like, no, that's terrible. And then of course I was like, well, he just reframed it. Now here's what I hope. Here's my reaction to this. I hope what he did not do is, and I've seen some interviews with him and stuff, and this might be the case, but I hope not. Like I hope not. I hope that he did not get rid of anybody who does human resources for real, and instead got paper pushers, transactional people.

Steve-o (23:55.5)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (23:57.099)
If that's what he did, like if he just got rid of HR stuff altogether and now he has all of these managers handling that and he just has paper pushers inside, right, who onboard and take your W-4 and make you sign here and process benefits and all that. If that's all he's done, then I worry for bold. Yes, yeah, now the flip side of the.

Steve-o (24:14.52)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (24:20.792)
That's a problem. Yeah, that's a problem for both. Yeah, I don't get I don't think that's the case. But but you're you make up a very good point there.

Tony Benjamin (24:29.326)
Yeah, yeah. Now, if on the other hand, he has brought people in to build a new cultural aspect of HR from what he had. So like, look, I've gone and interviewed at companies before and they say, the person that I had before you kept telling our employees to sue us and kept telling, you have a case you've been discriminated against. And I was like, okay.

before we do anything else, I don't wanna work for a company that discriminates or doesn't tell me what was going on. And then let me, sometimes they even let me see the file on the deal. And the truth of the matter was, no, it wasn't. They were generating things for themselves to do. They wanted to be able to investigate. They wanted to be able to call out people or do certain things. And they got very petty about it. And I could see where they were in.

Steve-o (25:06.54)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (25:24.654)
they were wrong. So matter of fact, I interviewed with one company. They had 35 employees and they were growing really quick. So they were, you know, they'd gone from like 15 to 35 and like six months and they were going to whatever. And they had hired her somewhere in between there and they were ready to jump off and like quadruple in the next three or four months. Like they were really growing quick. She had decided somewhere along the line to introduce a DEI program in the company. Think about that.

and under 35 employees, she was going to create a DEI program. And guess where the company was located? In the middle of Wyoming. Do you think that people have a very good friendly view? Look, you can do a whole lot of things that you want to do. You just don't have to call them the soup du jour of the day sort of thing, right? Anyways, she was just in our team. She was looking for something.

Steve-o (26:02.626)
Nice.

Steve-o (26:16.984)
Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure her intention was good, right? Like, I feel like when I see people that try to do stuff like that, their intentions are there. It's just like when I came back from a conference and learned all that legal stuff and acted like Chicken Little for a while. Like, my intention, I had good intentions, but sometimes we missed the mark.

Tony Benjamin (26:22.968)
Yes, yes.

Tony Benjamin (26:31.168)
Exactly. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (26:39.132)
And that's exactly it. So if that's the sort of HR he was experiencing where you're doing things just to I call it virtue signaling. If you're doing it just to say hey look at me I'm doing this. That's the wrong reason. And if that's what he was experiencing and they were causing whatever then I get it. Now I don't know as much about Bolt and I tried to read up a little bit about what the culture was like there. I couldn't find much although I didn't check Glassdoor. I should probably should have looked at Glassdoor but

Steve-o (26:40.846)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (27:06.382)
See what the real employees are saying. All you'll see are the ones that were let go.

Tony Benjamin (27:09.048)
That's right. But yeah, pretty much. Or the people who didn't get the job when they interviewed. But but you know, so I don't know what it was really like. Maybe things were really, really bad and their HR people were like, no, you can't do that. And he got tired of it. And he said, you're out of here. You're in my way. I don't know. But I want to take this on face value and let's take it on face value.

Steve-o (27:17.57)
Right, right, there you go.

Tony Benjamin (27:37.026)
I think it's dangerous to get rid of everybody on a team unless the culture on that team is toxic. And if indeed they were causing troubles that weren't real, then I can totally see why he would do it. Whoever is in charge, especially since he's back down to about 100 employees. That's what I read now, they're down to about 100.

Steve-o (27:54.562)
Yeah, I mean, that's a huge difference compared to where they were at. mean, like I said, to go from 11 billion in revenue down to 300 million, that's a huge drop. Something's going on, right?

Tony Benjamin (28:02.008)
Yeah.

Right, exactly. So that's kind of my reaction to it. Now here's the other thing that is to push along with this. I recently read a story and it was from the Wall Street Journal and it had talked about that the companies who laid off tons and tons of people because they were expecting benefits from AI are now slowly rehiring people.

Steve-o (28:34.328)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (28:34.68)
that the ROI on their full implementation of AI had not worked the way they wanted it to. And many of them had made these giant public claims about, we're so advanced in our AI usage that we can get rid of all these people and everything. And now quietly in the back, they're slowly hiring some of those people back and they're, yep, and they're doing it on the QT so that it doesn't get out in the press or whatever, but they're slowly bringing it back. And then it's not working out for them.

Steve-o (28:53.848)
Yeah, they're slowly bringing him back.

Tony Benjamin (29:03.97)
the way they want.

Steve-o (29:07.512)
You know, it's funny that you say that because one of the things that always intrigues me when these types of posts and stuff get put out there are the comments. Because sometimes it's just a... It's kind of like whenever I read comments on LinkedIn, I imagine that I'm sitting on a park bench and I'm watching people. Right? That's what it feels like. I'm sitting on a park bench and I'm watching people watching.

Tony Benjamin (29:07.512)
Go ahead, I know you have some thoughts about AI on this, so.

Tony Benjamin (29:28.75)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (29:35.48)
The couples that fight as they walk along the pathway and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Steve-o (29:37.046)
Yeah, you know all the things you you just see so much and one of the comments was, you know HR departments don't create problems. They expose them to leadership. So killing the messengers doesn't doesn't address the root cause of the issue. Valid comment to a point. It's true that HR doesn't create problems, or at least that's not usually their intent. Yes, they do expose them to leadership, but there's another comment that are not. It isn't even common. The CEO.

Tony Benjamin (29:50.968)
Yep, yep.

Steve-o (30:06.582)
Right, Bressel is what he also said at this conference much later on that was not really in the the main articles or in the main media. He says that we need a group of people who are very oriented around getting things done. And there is just a culture of not getting things done and complaining a lot. And that led to his decision about letting the team go. And I want you to think about that for just a moment. Again, I talk about this in my book when I introduced the gopher, right?

You know, how many people do we have in our organization that all they want to do is complain the entire time? Just to complain, complain, complain, complain, complain. And I get it. I've complained in the past as well. I have also complained about things that are going on. What I've learned, though, is you just have to, OK, is it me? Is it the organization? Maybe it's time for me to move on. Maybe it's time for me to adjust to what the organization is trying to accomplish here.

Tony Benjamin (30:41.796)
Huge numbers of them, yes.

Steve-o (31:03.918)
kind of mold into what they're looking for. Those are some questions you have to ask yourself. But I do agree that there's no time to just sit there and complain, complain, complain when there's still work that needs to be done. I've done my fair share of complaining in the past, but I also knew there was still stuff to get done. And so I would just get it done, right? You just go and do it. You just move on. Sometimes you just need to vent a little bit. And I get that, right? And unfortunately, I feel like social media is just a place for venting.

We see the complaints all the time right in social media, which is unfortunate because again when I'm doing my people watching from my park bench on LinkedIn that's you I see a lot of the complaints and then I see thoughtful responses people that actually say something worth reading and saying okay, that was well thought out and It wasn't judgmental because I put times of comments every if I one of the comments he says that it sounds like this guy doesn't know HR

Tony Benjamin (31:35.904)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (31:47.896)
Yes.

Steve-o (32:01.928)
like they're just like he doesn't know HR at all you know you know his way of talking he talks about being a remote company obviously he doesn't get it i would imagine he gets it you know especially when he sees the complaining

Tony Benjamin (32:03.556)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, look...

Tony Benjamin (32:14.276)
Well, he grew a business, right? He grew it from a startup to really big. I think the answer to that is yes. I think what many people don't like, and this goes back to the business IQ of people, right, which we don't do very good job of, is that we see our niche within the company and we assume that everything functions around that. We make assumptions. The company's got plenty of money.

Steve-o (32:18.55)
Exactly.

Steve-o (32:42.36)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (32:43.62)
It can spend on what it wants to. Or we see that the company spent $10,000 and you're looking at it you're like, man, that only saved us like 500. What are we doing? Right? Well, you don't know that that $10,000 also debt to XYZ and B or whatever over an accounting and this department and that department. And it did a whole bunch of things, right? Like you don't know. Or you don't know that the CEO has got something planned for five months from now.

that this lays the foundation for. And so, yeah, it saved you your bit of money right now, but that's not his goal. His or her goal is to say, you know, down the road when I want to execute the strategic, thank you, strategic goal, I am thirsty. You've heard me drink and I'm still thirsty. Mowing the lawn today.

Steve-o (33:28.334)
Tony was thirsty.

Steve-o (33:34.094)
there you go. I've been working it.

Tony Benjamin (33:37.933)
Right. So, but we don't have that sort of education for lots of people. And unfortunately, I see some of that in HR too. It's just, you know, you don't know what you're doing. Now look, working with the law firm I've worked with, I've seen some bosses do some pretty nasty, mean things to people. They treat them like dirt. It's just they don't like their personality. So instead of just saying, I don't like working with you, and so I'm not going to, I'm sorry, you're swell.

Steve-o (34:06.424)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (34:07.768)
but I don't like working with you. And so we're just gonna let you go, right? That's a crappy reason to get fired, but at least it's honest. At least it is honest. Instead of manufacturing a pip, I hate pips by the way, I hate them. manufacturing a pip and coming up with reasons, because then somebody who's competent will do what you wrote in the stupid pip, right? And then what do you do? That's right, then you gotta find an

Steve-o (34:15.19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (34:20.738)
Ha

Steve-o (34:33.262)
And then what? You're right back where you were. You're still where you were at. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (34:38.104)
You got to find a new reason to fire them. And why not just be honest and why not say, I'll give you three months severance or whatever it is and pay you to leave. And you go and good luck to you because I don't like working with you. That's fine. Just do that. But why do you have to make it up? You know how many, you know how many my favorite is when they, you know, somebody's on ADA or FMLA or something and new boss comes in and takes over the team and they go, so and so's on FMLA. I need to have

a riff and I need to restructure my team. And my team is 12 people and I need to restructure and, mmm darn it, I only need 11. I guess it's the FMLA person who's gonna get fired. I see that quite a bit. Idiots, right? It's like you put a stamp on your forehead that says, please sue me. Anyways, now I'm off on a tangent, but yes.

Steve-o (35:11.51)
So let's do that.

Steve-o (35:29.614)
Well, and this is where HR can be helpful to keep the business out of trouble. For example, there was a comment online to this. She goes, HR is such a waste of resources. The only thing they really know how to do is keep the business out of trouble. OK, there is some truth to that, but it's not the only thing that they know how to do, especially for those of us who are. Yeah, exactly. And this is why I say, especially for those of us who are moving into this more of a strategic process where we actually are trying to tie.

Tony Benjamin (35:47.864)
Not good HR.

Steve-o (35:58.158)
people ops into what the business strategy is actually about and EBITDA and all of those things. Again, I think what I like about this CEO is the fact that he did call them people ops when he replaced them and he explained very explicitly that the three things I want is they need to empower managers. Now think about that, why would he say that? Why would he say that he wants a team to empower managers?

I can guarantee that HR team was not empowering them in any way. And they probably were so focused on the legal that, or whatever it might be, they may have been focused on something other than that. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (36:32.898)
Whatever they were, whatever they were focused on, the CEO did not see value.

Steve-o (36:37.802)
Exactly. And it's so funny because one of the comments too was, the world deserves to know what those invented problems were. Because he said the HR would invent these problems or what have you.

Tony Benjamin (36:48.45)
Hey, as someone on a podcast, agree. Bring it on. Let's talk about it.

Steve-o (36:51.246)
Yeah, and and so, you know, he looked at he realized you know what we're at a state where we can't do this anymore. So let's whittle it down. Basically what he did is whittle down that team and you know cause them people ops, but I'm sure they have a much different directive than the original team had now that they were much smaller. And so I don't know I I kind of agree with him and I

I do agree with some of the crazy comments out there too. There are so many elements here that we don't have the full picture. But overall, hopefully he's not deprioritizing HR completely. Because if he does that, then as he grows again, he will run into issues, you know? So.

Tony Benjamin (37:25.176)
Right, right, right.

Tony Benjamin (37:35.749)
Well, and this is the catch, right? and when I gave my speech at Disrupt HR, which is with 30 or three row, when I did that, I had a whole bunch of headlines that I put up on the screen. And one of them was, do we even really need HR? Right, that was the headline. And I was like, you know,

The answer in their minds, do I really need a bureaucrat who only CYA's for the company all the time, ticks everyone off, gets in the way of managers, right? To your point just a minute ago, gets in the way of managers and causes me problems. Do I really need this? No, no, you don't need that. If that's the type of HR that's going on in your business, I can totally see why. On the flip side of that, there are some companies where HR

Steve-o (38:10.766)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (38:31.202)
desperately needs to say if you keep doing this you're gonna get sued out of existence eventually like you're gonna get hammered and and that's needed and maybe the boss doesn't like that that's true but but That role is not just to go in there do the paperwork and pass it along and not care So yes empowering managers. I agree now matter of fact. This is something probably good to talk about

Steve-o (38:41.699)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (38:58.104)
Here we go, this is one of Tony's pet things again here. it's, I, so I hear this all the time online and stuff. Why don't you, you know, just tell the manager to write his written warning and move on, right? Number one, and small to medium companies where most of my experience is, I don't let my managers write the warnings, okay?

Steve-o (39:01.902)
Tententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententententent

Steve-o (39:16.046)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (39:24.63)
And here's the reason why, because most of them don't know how to do it correctly. Most of them don't know how to do it. And it isn't a few sentences about what's going wrong, because that, let's assume that that works for you as the manager. There's a 50 % less chance that it works for the employee because it's not specific, right? Number three, it doesn't tell, it doesn't give you a history or the employee history of why.

Steve-o (39:35.576)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (39:40.696)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (39:53.881)
They got how they got to this point. Now you may verbally tell them that, but it's not in the document. So why have a written warning at all if you're not gonna put that in the document? Exactly, and number four, it doesn't help you in compliance. So if I just put in there, hey, Steve hasn't been doing his job very well lately, I've talked to him three times, this is a written warning. And then the next one I give you says,

Steve-o (40:02.74)
Yeah, and there's not full context. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (40:20.362)
Steve has continued to not improve in those areas I mentioned to him before, therefore this is a final written warning. And then I fire you, okay? And then we go into our unemployment hearing at the lowest level of this, and the person says, I had no idea what I was supposed to do to improve. And I say, no, I told Steve, I told him he had to get his invoices in early in the day, and he had to do this and he had to do that.

and the person just sits there, looks the administrative law judge in the face or says straight out on the phone, I didn't know that, he never said that to me. Do I have any proof? No, there's no documentation and that's just his word against mine. And in the state of Utah, you'll lose the UI case. And that is on the lowest level. Maybe the person comes into that meeting and again, they can, you don't even have to assume they're telling the truth here. They can say,

Steve-o (40:55.95)
there's no documentation. yeah.

Tony Benjamin (41:12.792)
He said to me, I'm tired of dealing with black people in my company, you're gone. Or I'm tired of dealing with you Mormons, or I'm tired of dealing with this or that or whatever it is, and you're out of here. And that document didn't say any of that. So then it's back to one person says this, one person says that, right? And again, so my point is, is I help managers with those things. Now, in the end, am I the person

that tells a manager whether or not they can or cannot write somebody up. No, uh-uh. Whether or not to do that is completely up to the manager. But I do advise them and I do say stuff like, hey, if you say that you're going to write this person up because they spend too much time in the bathroom, what happens if they tell us they have some sort of kidney failure going on and it's medical problem and you just wrote them up for it? What happens with that?

Steve-o (42:08.366)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (42:09.644)
Right? have you talked to them? No, but they know better than to spend 20 minutes in the bathroom. Okay, well, are you set? Yeah, let's see what happens, right? Meaning, my job is to, and those are dumb examples, but my job is to help the manager. That's how I empower the manager. I don't get in his way. He or she makes the ultimate decision on whether or not that it's given. I help word it, I help write it, and then I help in the meeting deliver it correctly.

but it's not my decision whether or not it's done. There you go, that's why I do all that sort of stuff for my managers.

Steve-o (42:45.614)
had a funny thought come into my head, like calling it poop empowerment or something like that. Just the bathroom issue.

Tony Benjamin (42:52.452)
Okay, with that Steve, let's take a breath and I know we want to get into AI, but let's do our other read. Okay, so running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be. Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR. With expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks, compliance to culture, need payroll help or recruiting power, we do that too. Fractionally and flexibly, no overhead.

Steve-o (42:56.303)
man.

Steve-o (43:01.09)
We do, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (43:21.516)
Just results. Visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business together. Steve's got it all timed out there. Yeah, she did. Becca is going to continue to be our sponsor. So that's really good. We're happy. It was nice. I stopped by and I saw her the other day. I took her one of our sodas, Steve, and she was very happy about that. I told her lime ricky flavor forever.

Steve-o (43:30.21)
Huge shout out to Becca again. I think she renewed, so there we go.

Steve-o (43:48.142)
That's awesome. So I have one comment before we get into the AI. And I just want to throw this out there because I see this sometimes. Do we think that the reason this article came out the way it did was because they wanted PR? They wanted the attention. They wanted people to talk about it. They wanted the conversations, right?

Tony Benjamin (43:50.03)
So.

Tony Benjamin (43:53.443)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (44:16.472)
bring the company back into the spotlight again and things that they hadn't had in the past because of this downward trend. I don't know, sometimes I think about stuff like that. I'm not saying that's exactly why they did it, but I will say that I have seen some companies, and I was part of an organization 20 years ago, that when certain things happen, they love to publish it because for them, was just bad press is good press.

Regardless, right? Like for them it didn't matter. Press was press. And so anyway, I do wonder sometimes if part of this whole thing was to get more PR. anyway, Again, that's literally not an opinion. It's just a thought that I always have in some cases like this. So.

Tony Benjamin (44:57.092)
All right.

Tony Benjamin (45:04.28)
Well, if you think about that, I don't know that it's true either, but you can see where as a CEO you'd say, I have to get my investors to understand that I mean business. And since I'm doing this anyways, maybe I come out and make a big deal about this particular thing. And they'll know I'm serious about business because I'm going to cut out the fluffy people. I'm sure, matter of fact,

Steve-o (45:15.906)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (45:29.194)
I've met a bunch of investors, private equity investors who thought that HR was worthless and they had it because they have to. And maybe you're right, maybe he is signaling that, just telling people, hey, I'm hard nosed that I did this. Yeah, go ahead.

Steve-o (45:36.963)
Yeah.

Steve-o (45:43.608)
Well, and there's one more comment. Yeah, there's one more comment he made that was kind of intriguing. And this is where he may want to be careful in the future. And you'll know why in just a second. He says that today we have a team, a quarter of the size, who are much more junior, who work a lot harder and who have better energy. And our customers are telling us that we haven't had this type of attention in four years. So he's using that as a tool to say, yeah, look what our customers are saying about this. But think about what he said there.

They're more junior, they work harder and they have more energy. What does that usually mean? Younger people. Yeah. And so again, that's where, let's, know, and I'm not saying that he's being, you know, prejudice or discriminatory against over 40 and all that, but those are some fine lines there. You have to be careful.

Tony Benjamin (46:19.372)
Youth, you're young. Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (46:32.588)
Wait, wait, you mean you mean the EEOC reads what you say publicly? That shocking. What? Right, Coke? You've never heard of that. New York Times. That's right. That's right. That's right. Geez.

Steve-o (46:38.606)
What? I feel like there was a there was a podcast episode I listened to about that was really good. Anyway, so so with that comment going in place, let's switch over to this AI aspect and. And and so again, when I was going to some of these comments.

Tony Benjamin (46:57.74)
Okay, right, right.

Steve-o (47:04.397)
One of the people on the comments said, infrastructure really matters. Whether it's HR or AI implementation or whatever, the real question is who is actually carrying the human complexity. And I think it's a valid question because when we're looking at AI, in fact, I'm gonna give a shout out to Ryan Kohler. Ryan Kohler, his book just launched last week. So Ryan Kohler finally wrote a book. I told him to write it years ago, but he's just now coming out with it.

Tony Benjamin (47:32.152)
What's the name of it? What's the name of it?

Steve-o (47:33.568)
It's called the bus has no driver. And the reason is called the bus has no driver. Yeah. And in fact, if you want to, if you want to get a copy, I can get you one really cheap. Just message us messages here at the podcast and I can get you the link. I'll, I'll, bug Ryan about it. But, but, but in essence, when you think about the title, the bus has no driver, what he's referring to is the fact that the AI is, is, is like this bus that has no driver right now.

Tony Benjamin (47:36.568)
The bus has no driver.

Steve-o (48:01.646)
Some people are pushing on to HR. Some people are pushing in the IT team. Some people are pushing on managers, pushing on our people. And the reality is he's absolutely right. The bus really has no driver at this point. And because there is no driver, it's freaking everybody out. And it's worrisome because not only do we need to have the right driver in place, but how are we actually going to drive the bus to begin with? Because

Unfortunately, HR is going to be expected to be the messenger on this. Really, HR is going to be the driver of the bus. And so one of the things I love that Ryan is trying to do with this is create this concept for HR teams to actually help them drive the bus effectively. And to drive it in a way that's meaningful to the organization, that's meaningful to the people, just meaningful altogether. In fact, we probably should get Ryan on this podcast. I'm going to bug him about it.

Tony Benjamin (48:58.916)
Yeah, get him on here. That's right. And he can tell us all about all the goofy stories he has about you. That's what we need.

Steve-o (48:59.18)
have him talk about his book. Yeah, yeah, we totally need to. We need to.

Steve-o (49:06.312)
absolutely. Yeah, I'm sure he'll he'll love to tell you about the Halloween that when he dressed up as me. I don't even know if he remembers that, but.

Tony Benjamin (49:14.328)
Hey, I just want to say I've had that happen to me once for my first job and I just want to say you know you're cool when other people are dressing up as you. Even if it is to mock you, you're cool.

Steve-o (49:23.254)
I know, right? There you go.

It was totally a mock, but it was great. It was probably one of the best outfits I've ever seen. not that because it was me, it was just because the joke was spot on. So you gotta love humor like that.

Tony Benjamin (49:29.988)
Yeah

Tony Benjamin (49:37.23)
Well when you dress up is a big deal. That's right. That's right. That's funny. No. OK. That's good. And I. We were talking about this a little bit earlier when we were texting back and forth. So tell me give me a couple of things Steve that you think people misunderstand about A.I.

Steve-o (50:00.238)
So first and foremost, probably the biggest one I see is they're just using it like Google.

They're just asking you the question and then assuming that the answer they're getting is exactly what they want. So for example, let's say that I want to understand a certain legal issue. And so I just go up and I ask Chachi BT or Gemini or whatever and say, hey, help me with this legal issue. And then they kind of describe it or what have you. Or sometimes they don't even describe it. just, they just ask it a question. And I think that's a challenge. If you're only using AI to simply ask a question. Okay. And I actually, okay, this is a big one. I'm going to pull up.

Tony Benjamin (50:06.115)
Right.

Tony Benjamin (50:36.248)
This is one of Steve's pet peeves.

Steve-o (50:36.494)
And I have this on my desktop. So hold on just a second while I pull this up. So if you want to make some comments about this. But there was a research that has been done as to where does AI come up with the answers when they're providing answers to people. And guess what? Yeah, the number one stat was Reddit. Now, I want you to think about that for a moment. If Reddit.

Tony Benjamin (50:55.806)
I love this stat go

Steve-o (51:05.29)
is where these LLMs are getting the majority of answers, how much information on Reddit is 100 % legit? Right? I mean, I've been on Reddit. I've seen Reddit. I've read posts from Reddit. The reality is it's just a bunch of people on there, again, complaining or they have some crazy story happening at work. We're only hearing their side of the story. And so all the comments go crazy. Again, some of the comments are very well thought out. Other comments are just way off the wall.

Tony Benjamin (51:14.254)
Yep.

Steve-o (51:34.976)
over the top. But think about that. That's a big... I don't know. I want us to think in AI. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (51:36.707)
and

Tony Benjamin (51:41.381)
you tell a robot to take all this information in, and even with the best of programming, it's very, very hard for an AI to distinguish between wacko comment and real comment, right? Right.

Steve-o (51:53.325)
Yeah.

Steve-o (51:58.67)
Correct. It's not going to know it. And this is why when you're asking AI to answer a question like that, I would highly recommend to include as part of your prompt, please cite all references being used and link to them so that I can read them myself because this will be part of your verification process. You have to be able to verify that the data that you're receiving is actually legitimate.

and not just some Reddit post of somebody filing a complaint or expressing their opinion. And that is very dangerous, right? So.

Tony Benjamin (52:33.676)
So, exactly, and one of the things I like to do in my prompts is I limit the AI to only certain websites. For example, I say limit your research to government sites or SHRM or something like that. Like if I want to understand something about say whistleblower status or some legal question or whatever, I say only look at the Department of Labor's

Steve-o (52:45.644)
Yeah, to SHRM to, yeah, HRCI. There you go.

Tony Benjamin (53:03.18)
the official .gov addresses associated with the Department of Labor directly and return information based upon that. And it does a huge job. So matter of fact, okay, so you give me your reaction to this. You and I have not talked about this. So I'm curious your reaction to this. So what I learned, so I now have a chat GPT account.

Steve-o (53:06.274)
Yeah.

Steve-o (53:23.628)
Okay, here we go.

Tony Benjamin (53:32.354)
and I have one of my chat bots that I've created. And when I was creating this, this was the first one I'd ever done. And when I was creating it, I didn't realize that when you create a bot, you essentially program it, meaning you tell it how to think and the process it's supposed to go through and all those sorts of things.

Steve-o (53:35.278)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (53:45.646)
Correct. Yeah.

And you give it files, you give it examples, you give it context, yeah, all the things.

Tony Benjamin (53:53.743)
That's right. Remember you say use this file as an example. You say to it, for example, I will give you, this is what I do on my performance evaluation creation bot. And I say, I will give, here are three examples. This is what I'm trying to do. This is the goal of what I'm trying to do. Here's what I want you to produce for me. I am going to give you the following inputs. So I'm gonna give you three, for example, three things.

Steve-o (53:58.722)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (54:14.478)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (54:23.438)
that the manager has told us to focus on as part of the review within the format I just told you. And then I want the output in this format and any references that you make to anything on the web must be referenced. And then, right. And what I have found is it's like programming its brain. Suddenly it says, okay, here you go.

Steve-o (54:40.504)
Yeah. And you have to provide the reference to me, right? Give me the link. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (54:53.7)
So, and by the way, it does a freakishly good job, like a really good job. And then I told it, we're gonna go through several example of these and you're not officially done until I tell you that I give you final approval on one of your drafts. And so we went back and forth, we did it, I don't know, eight, 10 times and each time I would tell it, remember this as an example of what you did right and what you did wrong. And I only want you to do it the right way.

Anyways, it started producing, it got better and better and better. Till now, it puts out some really good stuff, really quickly. Things that would take me two or three hours to write before, now take me five minutes. As long as I have the right inputs that I've told that I will give it. And I think most people think they can just put something, even a good prompt into AI without it being trained first and expect to get something good, and they're surprised when they don't.

Steve-o (55:49.656)
Yeah. Well, and you bring up a really solid point, and I cannot emphasize this enough when I'm talking with people, you still have to do the back and forth because there are additional constraints that you need to add that maybe you either forgot or that they're simply not using when they're giving you the information that it's producing.

And you have to clarify it. Sometimes I equate it to a conversation. Let's say we were on a speed date and we're having a conversation. You only tell me a few things. I'm going to walk away from that thinking, wow, that person was like this or wow, it's such a great fit or whatever. then later on, you go to another date or whatever and you talk with them more. You're like, whoa, this is not my jam at all. This is not who I thought they were because we only went off this initial impression. And unfortunately, too many of us are stopping at the initial impression.

That's a problem. If we're not really digging deeper and understanding the full relationship there, yeah, it's no wonder the relationship doesn't last or that it fails later on. so, because there are some people that use AI and they just, it didn't work for me. It's horrible. We got to get rid of it.

Tony Benjamin (56:41.56)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (57:00.226)
Well, and the reason is, once again, because you need to know how to approach it the right way. Was it Steve Jobs? Might have been him or Bill Gates. About 15 years ago, I read an article, and they were talking about the problem with computers are that we still have, it was Steve Jobs, that we still have to approach them on their terms. We can't just.

Steve-o (57:26.478)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (57:27.01)
be ourselves and do anything we will do and have it give us something meaningful, right? Like we have to approach it on its terms. And what he meant by that was we have to click here, we have to swipe, we have to scroll down, we have to click commands in a certain order. We're still doing it on its terms, right? And I think AI is much closer to the idea of approaching it on our terms instead of its terms, but we're not there yet.

Steve-o (57:31.299)
Yeah.

Steve-o (57:43.779)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (57:49.934)
.

Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (57:55.489)
At least the AIs I'm aware of. Now maybe, look, there's some pretty advanced Claude bots that are out there that are doing some incredible stuff. So we'll see whatever. But most of us are not even close to that yet in the AI that we're using.

Steve-o (58:10.764)
Yeah, if you guys want to, for those of you listening, there's a company called Searchable. And Searchable will talk about this. Reddit is number one. Number two is actually LinkedIn. So the number two place where these LLMs get their information is from LinkedIn. Now again, the problem, our example today is a good example of this. We're looking at a headline.

about this CEO without really understanding the full context. Can you imagine what AI is going to pull from that because it's pulling from LinkedIn? Wikipedia, yeah, Wikipedia is number three and YouTube is number four. Number six is guess what? Facebook.

Tony Benjamin (58:42.542)
not something strategic.

Steve-o (58:53.1)
And number 10, Instagram. Again, I want people to understand that when you're out there pulling stuff from AI, when you look at the top 10, and I just named off six of those 10, there can be potential for issues right there. So anyway, so just kind of keep that in mind that those are the most cited domains. And so when you are...

Tony Benjamin (59:14.7)
Yes.

Steve-o (59:21.474)
what you do, Tony, where you have your bot and you cite specific sources that you want it to pull from, that is the biggest recommendation. Cite specific sources that you want it to focus on so that you're actually getting legitimate information as opposed to information that's obsolete. Now keep in mind, AI cannot access logins, right? So if you say, look at Shurm, it's only gonna see the public facing documents from Shurm.

It's not gonna see everything that's within your account itself. Now, I'm hoping eventually, Shurm will have an AI model that allows you to search within Shurm's database as a login type person, right? I'm sure, hopefully eventually they'll get to that point.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:00.877)
or at least an AI interface that the AI can give it. Now, I will tell you this, that there are cloud bots out there that can log into anything that you have access to, including your bank account, by the way. So that's right.

Steve-o (01:00:10.104)
There are, there are, you better train them really well because otherwise they might take over. And you know, one of my favorites right now, cause I'm in this world is trading money, Cryptocurrency and I do a lot of options trading and all that stuff. And the market's kind of weird right now. But, but regardless of that, what's funny about that market is they have all these new things now where you can literally download an app that's an AI bot and throw money in it and let AI do all the trading for you.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:22.402)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (01:00:39.246)
Again, the problem with that is you're not learning anything when you do that You're literally sitting down and just letting the AI bot run amok and If you don't formally sit down and create an actual bot to teach it and train it how you actually want to trade Using your conservativeness or riskiness, you know those types of things. This is a prime example of Potentially losing all your money and it's just a gamble my fear with AI is that

In many cases, there might be some of us who will literally become dumber because we are not.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:14.478)
Well, in some cases, that's going to be very hard to do. Not that it's impossible, but very difficult.

Steve-o (01:01:17.571)
Ha ha!

Very difficult. But again, know your stuff, right? Know your stuff. And I always talk about this in my presentations. The human intelligence will always trump the artificial intelligence. Use your human intelligence to your advantage and never give up on your human intelligence. Always use the human intelligence when you're directing it, helping it, telling it what you want, what you don't want, et cetera. Use that to your advantage and that's where you will actually learn and become better. Don't allow it to be such a crutch.

that you completely lose sight of what it's there for, right? To make our lives easier.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:54.391)
Agreed. Yeah. Now that

Now, want to talk about, and I've been thinking, Steve, that maybe we'll have on an expert in AI who's a software developer or something like that come and talk to us, and they can talk to us a lot more about what AI is capable of and stuff. But here, I want to drop this on people just a little bit. So I was at the State Sherm Board the other day, and we were talking about a whole bunch of things, and this was a little tangent that came up, but it got me thinking, and Steven, you and I have talked about this before.

Steve-o (01:02:10.446)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:24.98)
One of the skill sets that HR people will need in the future is software development project management skills. And here's why I want to say this. And to all you people out there, and we have some good friends that work in the software industry for HR, but I want to put it out there for everyone. You need to understand that software developers don't write code anymore. They have AI write up for them.

now you can say, okay, that's still highly technical and blah blah. Yes, that's true. But the way it was described to me by developers is that they farm.

is that they grow it. They grow it and they're farming it and they're developing it over time by conversing with somebody, an AI about it, right? And so that got me really thinking and so I went back and asked this person a little while later, I said, wait a minute, you're talking about growing code, that means you don't have to know how to write code to write stuff. He goes, no.

Steve-o (01:03:04.984)
Yeah, I've, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:33.283)
In the future, you won't need to know how to write code itself. It's gonna make it easier for you maybe to debug certain things, because you could do it yourself if you needed to, but you don't have to. You just have to learn how to work with the AI to make it do what you want it to do. And I said, so what does that mean? Why would I buy software from anybody else if it is so cheap and convenient and easy to develop software? Why would I buy software?

Steve-o (01:04:01.198)
Yeah, all right.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:02.166)
Why wouldn't everything be proprietary? Steve's making me laugh. Sorry, he's got his little brush out for his beard. That was too funny.

Steve-o (01:04:12.366)
It's not a brush. It's one of those little rakes that you get at the at conferences. You know, I'm raking out my beard. No, but but you you bring up a solid point. Sorry to distract you. I just you know, I hadn't I hadn't itch so.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:15.807)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:20.419)
Okay, we're

No, no, that's, but in the future, I just want to put this out there to HR people. You will not go to a company who doesn't, you know, is using QuickBooks for payroll and they want to have some sort of HR system. In the future, you will not say, let me call my five favorite vendors, have them come in, do the dog and pony show. We will pick one and all that. What you will, right, but what you, what you will say is,

Steve-o (01:04:42.222)
Yeah, and do the... Wow, the dog and pony show. You went high class.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:51.476)
Let's call that company over there and get them to, or let's just hire a freelance guy to spend three weeks with us and make us one. Do our own and let's write out our features and everything we need and here it goes.

Steve-o (01:04:58.69)
Develop something for us. Yeah, and And I'm gonna tell you right now that three weeks will still never be enough, right? Three weeks they can maybe put it together and have it for your company But your company is gonna continue to evolve which means you're gonna need somebody that understands Code and such enough so that once it's built and running it can be maintained and and potentially built upon

Tony Benjamin (01:05:24.419)
Right, right.

Steve-o (01:05:26.118)
And I think this is why these skill sets in AI are still going to be extremely critical for some of these developers, because I'm sorry, you can't just one and done build something and you're done. And that's it. It's going to continue to evolve. I have built a software program with Ryan. We've done that. And I remember when we did the iteration with iApplicants and then switched to Applicant Pro and how much work went into that. And I'm telling you.

It's going to continue to evolve and you can't just assume that once you build the code, you're done, period.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:57.231)
Yes, but the things that you're going to tweak mostly are not bugs are not different languages to write it in or what the base code looks like or whatever. What you're going to be doing is adding features and functionality and tweaking how it looks and stuff. Yes, that's what you're going to be doing. Yes.

Steve-o (01:06:12.844)
Which is fantastic. Yeah, because then you can tailor it to your customers and clients in a way that's actually going to benefit them in a powerful way, right?

Tony Benjamin (01:06:23.882)
Exactly. So all you HR people out there that are younger and you're going to be in it for a while, unlike me, the old decrepit guy, you're going to have to... The warning is, there will come a time, I promise in the next 10 years, I expect it in three, is you'll start to see companies develop their own. They'll just go hire somebody and they'll say, it. Remember when it was super expensive for your company to have its own app?

Steve-o (01:06:28.718)
Ha

Tony Benjamin (01:06:50.948)
That was super expensive. Everyone wanted it, but it was super expensive to do for the average small business. Not anymore. That can happen fast. And the same is going to be true for all the internal software as you do. Everybody will have proprietary software and it will be relatively, relatively cheap to produce. And eventually it's going to be nothing. Now I am told, and I'm not a developer, I am told that the heart, the thing in the way right now is UI.

Steve-o (01:06:57.644)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:19.768)
the user interface. AI is not very good at producing the user interface. So that might be the thing that is slowing it down.

Steve-o (01:07:26.882)
Yeah, I can create the code. But yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:29.742)
but the user interface and the workflow is still a human thing.

Steve-o (01:07:32.366)
That's a good point though, because again, this is where, and I call that part of the maintenance, right? Yeah, if your software is not user friendly, you're gonna lose people real fast because they will describe it as clunky, outdated, DOS. There's still some old people that call them DOS when they get frustrated by stuff like that. All you young people out there probably have no clue what DOS is, but there you go.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:40.302)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:52.75)
Yeah, well, I think it's funny that not-

Yeah, go look it up. Go look up a screenshot of DOS and see what that looks like. You had to know the command to make it work. No, but...

Steve-o (01:08:02.734)
my gosh, I remember using a DOS program when... So fun.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:09.092)
I'll tell you what, the reason I got, the reason I made it into computers as early as I did is because Windows 3.1 came out. And when Windows 3.1 came out, suddenly I could do it. But you can ask my buddy Nathan, he'll tell you, I couldn't do DOS. Man, that guy was a whiz at it and I couldn't do it. I couldn't figure it out. The commands I couldn't figure out.

Steve-o (01:08:30.54)
Yeah, some people were just whizzes at it. And it was just like this black screen with code and words on it. You're just like, what? Yeah, yeah. So fun. So

Tony Benjamin (01:08:36.716)
and a little prompt that was blinking at you. I'm like, I don't know what that is. anyways, there you go. Is there anything else we want to say about that? That's kind of, go ahead. Is there anything else you want to add to all that?

Steve-o (01:08:48.618)
I don't, I mean, this, I pretty much said what I want to. We just have to just remember that human intelligence will never trump AI. But man, it's so cool stuff that's coming. mean, maybe Tony, maybe you and I should create a new HR life ATS or HR life payroll. I mean, we could just do it all.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:54.028)
Okay, right, right.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:00.238)
And I.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:10.58)
Hey, I'll tell you what, within a year, well, two things, two things. Number one, my company is going to launch something soon that we're developing. The Grange is developing something for its clients that will be really cool. Okay, that's number one. Number two, I think with, it's gonna be good. But I also wanna say that within the next three years, we could create our own ATS. We could hire somebody to do it for us to grow the code.

Steve-o (01:09:11.916)
Make it part of the service.

Steve-o (01:09:25.844)
I know all about it, so it's gonna be fun for sure.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:39.308)
and to make an ATS. And me, I'm all about the UI and the interface and the functionality.

Steve-o (01:09:43.662)
I think payroll is one of the biggest areas that needs help right now. Because I look at a lot of the systems that are out there, there's just no one system that's good for every company period or industry, right? There just isn't.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:48.75)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:54.883)
No, and, and, and my pet peeve. Yeah. Except ADP. No one likes ADP once they buy it. They like it when they look at it, but not when they buy it.

Steve-o (01:09:59.212)
And everybody has their favorites and what they like and what they don't like, but there's still things that they don't like. imagine, but imagine though, right. Yeah. But imagine for a moment that you can say, I don't like this about the software and you could change it on the fly and you could tailor it to your organization. That's the beauty of where AI is headed. And that's exciting.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:16.216)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:21.558)
Yes, no absolutely. we're, I will find somebody to come on and get into the technical nuts and bolts. Matter of fact, I talked to somebody recently and I said, hey, I don't know how to do this with AI. Like I want it to be a personal assistant for me. I want it to read my emails, not answer them. I don't, I know some of you do that. I don't want it to answer my email and stuff for me. But what I want it to do is summarize my inbox and remind me you have these four things that you need to do today.

based upon your email and your calendar and remember these it's like a virtual assistant and Every day it helps prompt me and remind me of certain things and it will help me delay certain things that I need to do and other things It will it will you know push up in the pile for me that and I'm gonna have someone help me do that. Yes

Steve-o (01:11:04.13)
Well, and it can even create drafts for you and your voice that you still can approve before it gets sent out, which I love that aspect of it too.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:12.238)
Yeah, me too. But that's, I'm gonna have someone do that. I might see if we can get somebody to come on the podcast and help us with that sort of stuff. Like here is how you set this up. Here's how you make it work. I think it'll be, I think that's a great baseline for the AI stuff and how you it to work. So, okay. I've got one thing for HR in life, Steve.

Steve-o (01:11:27.49)
Yeah. Cool.

Steve-o (01:11:34.722)
Yeah, I was gonna say, what's our little segment for today?

Tony Benjamin (01:11:37.226)
Yeah, yeah. Now this is, well, it's not a real HRN Life segment topic, but you'll like it. Here we go.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:02.166)
All right, all right. Okay, so for those of you who know or are in the know, we were at the FuelHR conference the other day. Wow, was that fun. We had so much fun.

Steve-o (01:12:10.712)
We were.

It was, it was a lot of fun. It was our first live event ever, if you will, live to recording, as they say.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:17.816)
That's right. That's right. It was it was so much fun. think everybody when the music came on and Steve and I started to dance for the intro music there were a few people looking at us like you must be drunk. Like it was awesome.

Steve-o (01:12:31.468)
Honestly, okay, here's what was really funny about that though some of their faces were literally like What are these guys doing? What is this about? Because I know some of them had never heard of the podcast, right? And so to give you context for those of you who weren't there Fuel HR was very generous and gave us 20 minutes during I think it was just out just before one of the keynotes

Tony Benjamin (01:12:43.532)
Right, right, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:55.448)
It was after a break. It was after break before a keynote.

Steve-o (01:12:57.006)
Yeah, it was after a break and it was right before Britt Davies, which we're going to have Britt Davies later. So look forward to her episode. This is going to be a really good one. But they gave us 20 minutes to kind of do a live HR in life segment. And we chose the EEOC segment. So you'll have to listen to that. it was just, it was fun to do live like that because we got some really good comments from the audience. So I'm excited.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:00.802)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:11.716)
That's right.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:18.978)
No, yeah, me too. Anyways, it was a great event. One of the coolest things that happened at the show was that Steve and I debuted our new swag, which is the lime Ricky soda cans and and they're clear cans. They're awesome. They're really, really cool. It was so much. They got the logo and everything on it. Yeah. So when you see

Steve-o (01:13:30.19)
Lime Ricky.

Steve-o (01:13:38.574)
I got the logo on them and everything. It's kind of fun. Okay, tell everybody what lime ricky is. Cause some people may not know what the flavor of lime ricky was. Cause I know we ran into that a few times.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:46.391)
Okay, so lime ricky is, it is, well, right, right, right. Well, grape juice, grape juice is the base. And then it has sprite or something like that and lime juice in it. And what it does is, that's, there's a little pulp in there from the lime, that's right. So there's a little bit of pulp in there, not a ton, just a tiny bit. So you like floaties better.

Steve-o (01:13:50.062)
Sprite is the base, right? Sprite or 7-Up or...

Steve-o (01:14:03.608)
Which is why we have little floaties from the lime juice. It's real limes, guys.

Steve-o (01:14:12.086)
No, it's floaties. like floaties. It's way more fun to say. Forget PULP, it's floaties.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:16.612)
But anyways, it's a really cool thing. They were a big hit. People came over and all you had to do to get one was show that you subscribe to the podcast. So hey, to all of you who were there and subscribe to the podcast, hi and welcome to the podcast. Really cool. Really, really cool. we had and we hope you enjoyed the Lime Ricky. So we had a fun time there. We want to tell everybody that's going to be our next episode that's going to drop.

Steve-o (01:14:25.646)
Just subscribe, yeah.

Steve-o (01:14:32.812)
Yes, absolutely. Welcome.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:45.288)
Because of the way we recorded it and different stuff like that, it's taken me much longer to edit than would normally happen because we tried to do it in a different way. So we had everybody on different tracks and whatnot. But I wanted to tell you that it did happen. We are going to release it next week. And it was so much fun. Thank you to Carrie and her team and everybody there at FuelHR. Carrie's, yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (01:15:07.864)
Yeah, Kerry Steele, Kerry Stevens, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:11.192)
both of them, you guys were awesome and we really, really appreciate the opportunity to do that. Steve and I are.

Steve-o (01:15:17.314)
And if you're in Utah County, if you're in HR and you're not part of Central Utah SHRM, you should get involved, become a member. Lots of good activities every month and obviously the Fuel HR Conference every year. In fact, this year was the highest attended Fuel HR Conference that Central Utah has had historically ever. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:36.569)
It was really good. Yeah, it was really, really good. And of course they were all there to see us once they saw we were on the agenda. But anyways, we had a great time and no, no, no, no, for sure not. But when the music started playing and I started jumping around on the stage and kind of dance and everybody was like, what are you doing? And I thought, welcome to the real world of HR.

Steve-o (01:15:41.218)
Hahaha

Steve-o (01:15:45.356)
They're there to see Tony.

Nobody knows who I am.

Steve-o (01:16:00.302)
think they wanted you to fall off the stage or something. We should probably add that to the gimmick, right?

Tony Benjamin (01:16:05.28)
Okay, yes. So that, yeah, I can wear a helmet. That's, I have to say this. So my band, you know, we have a lot of fun and we, normally we end with the song, What I Like About You and everybody takes a solo and we say, this is our two weeks notice and all that sort of stuff and we go off and we end that song.

Steve-o (01:16:07.544)
Well, we're going to choreograph it for next time.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:28.132)
with me and the drummer extending it out and then I'll jump in the air and hit the last chord and come down, you know, because I'm all cool. Well, look, I'm in my 50s and people who are 20 do that sort of stuff, not in their 50s. And there was one time I missed my footing and down I went. I totally fell on my butt and the whole band, right? You're going along on your back and playing, yeah.

Steve-o (01:16:46.028)
Nice, nice. You're trying to pull off a Michael J. Fox and back to the future, huh?

Tony Benjamin (01:16:58.052)
Anyways...

Steve-o (01:16:58.644)
I will say watching you up there, Tony, you do play a mean air guitar. It's great.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:03.812)
Not as good as yours. You totally played it up. Matter of fact, was almost my opening for today, was the best air guitar player in the western half of the US or something. Anyways.

Steve-o (01:17:12.622)
Yeah, I I go all I go all up and down the strings there.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:18.466)
Yeah, it was it was really good. Thank you again to Central Utah. And you're right, they do a great job over there. You know, the more I understand about being involved with shurm or other organizations are the people you meet in the connections. And I think you have to do more than just go to the it's a place to start to go to the classes and that sort of stuff. But it's it's more than that. It's a lot more than that. So

Steve-o (01:17:26.894)
They really do.

Steve-o (01:17:46.51)
Yeah, the networking is big. I have lots of friends now from years and years. I mean, good example, you and I, Tony, connected through SHRM, right? And so these kind of things, I mean, I think they're important. And unfortunately, we're losing a lot of that human element. And so I believe getting involved more is only going to help you in your profession. So you should definitely get involved.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:09.412)
Exactly. And it really helps. The other thing somebody mentioned to me the other day, I think songs are on this topic really quick. I think this is important to say it gives you professional experience in a way outside of your job that you can use to move your forward, move you forward in your career. So for example, the first time I've never been given a $300,000 budget on an annual event or something like that.

and said go to town and that's, well, that's a longer story there. But I operated and managed those two years, a $300,000 budget each year to make that conference happen. And if you guys don't know, that's what it costs to put on a conference. You have to be able to generate and spend around 300,000. And the more you can lower your expenses, the more the organization gets to keep so it can do more cool things. But it's,

Steve-o (01:18:58.851)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:19:03.246)
Correct.

It was a big deal. I mean, if you think about that, it's just like, you know, I got experience as an executive director and I managed, you know, 28 people just on the board for several years. That's a it's it's it's a little difficult when you're managing actual volunteers. But man, you learn a ton. You just learn so much.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:07.754)
Yeah, yeah, it's.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:17.452)
Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:26.286)
You learn a ton. It is executive experience for those of you who want it. So you can say I've done X and it was, it was really cool. It's one of the proudest things I've ever done, managed the conference for two years. That's one of the special things I look back on and I was involved with. And the reason was because it gave me an opportunity to really put my executive skills to the test and it worked. And it really, really worked.

Steve-o (01:19:30.082)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:19:52.046)
to the test, yeah. Yeah, it worked beautifully, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:56.311)
And I'm and I'm happy about that. And there's a whole bunch of other cool things about it. But anyways. Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (01:19:59.896)
I'm gonna make one more comment about that too. Don't serve unless you are willing to serve.

Tony Benjamin (01:20:06.21)
Yes. Don't do it to have on a resume. That's, it's cool to have on your resume, but yes.

Steve-o (01:20:08.942)
Correct. If you're only doing it to be able to write it out on the resume, that is not good enough. Because as a volunteer organization, especially when you have a board like that, we need doers. We need people that are gonna own their particular role and just run with it and learn it and grow it and yeah, all the things. So anyway, just food for thought and for people to understand and know. You really have to run with it.

So.

Tony Benjamin (01:20:39.204)
Take three years and it's not a lot of time, surprisingly, it's not as much time as, well, not only that, but it doesn't take as much time on a weekly basis as you would think. And when we get together and we talk about this at the conference and remember all the late nights and we're all clapping each other in the back and all that, that scares away some people. It's really not that.

Steve-o (01:20:43.598)
Yeah, it goes fast.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:02.85)
My goal for when I ran the conference was you at most have one hour a week until the last couple of months before the conference. And then you might be five to seven hours a week because you had done that one hour a week the whole year long. And it's that easy to get involved. You make some great, great, great friendships. There are people there that I met, Carissa and Becca and the whole board there and everything and all those people that did such wonderful, cool things. And I'm...

Wow. But anyways, there you go. yeah, volunteer and help. And I think it will help your career in many ways. OK, there you go. And Steve, we will add the bus has no driver to our page, which is on your web page about about the books that we have on the podcast. So everybody check that out.

Steve-o (01:21:43.544)
That's right. That's right. will

And I'm going to bug Ryan about being on the podcast. So it might be a few episodes from now, but we'll try to get Ryan fairly quickly. So because I know he wants to talk about it. He's really sharp and he knows AI probably better than anyone I know. So because he's been experimenting for like three years already. So.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:56.366)
Yeah, he's a sharp guy. Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:22:02.34)
Perfect. Good.

Tony Benjamin (01:22:07.586)
Let's okay. Excellent. Well thank you everybody for joining us today. I'm really grateful. Can't wait to have you hear the next the next podcast that comes out and and get a better feel for what the fuel HR conference was like. And I hope you enjoy that. Send us some emails about this stuff. We can't wait to hear about your comments on the future of HR and a and a I and where we.

we as HR professionals can go with that and what we need to be doing with it. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:22:38.094)
Yeah, and what are you using it for right now? I know Tracy Calmer. follow her on on all the time and she's used it for several projects over there at Nice. She was a guest we had several months ago. And man, it's amazing some of the things she's able to accomplish and how much they share internally what they what they do. In fact, that's my only other thing I would bring up. I totally forgot to bring this up. Don't be afraid to share.

with others in your organization about what is working for you and what is not working. Because the whole purpose of AI is not to become a silo and become the rock star superstar, right? Share with others because there's gonna be some things that they'll bring up that'll just empower you to be better. And so let's use this as a tool and actually share with one another. mean, when I speak at conferences, I share some of my sample prompts and show people how to do it all the time. I don't mind sharing.

I think that that's the whole purpose of it, right? Is to help one another grow in this particular field, so.

Tony Benjamin (01:23:36.948)
And where appropriate, when it's not a trade secret or some sort of internal competitive advantage, share with your fellow HR practitioners. Share, help out other people that are coming along. That's right. That's right, very good point. And Tracy's awesome too. All right, well everybody, we're very grateful that you are here with us. And I guess this means that we're headed out the same way that we came in. Running a business, whoops.

Steve-o (01:23:40.974)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:23:47.746)
Yeah. Yep. Cool.

Steve-o (01:24:04.396)
Yeah!

Tony Benjamin (01:24:06.98)
wow. Here we go. It's that good. It's that good. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast app. Comments or questions for us? Email the podcast at theHRLifePodcast.gmail.com. We'll talk again soon.

Steve-o (01:24:10.111)
you gotta keep that in there.