#1643 - We ALL Complain But…

The age of automation has arrived, and with it comes a mix of convenience, innovation, and a touch of apprehension about the future of our jobs. In this episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros discuss that we are now in a world where algorithms can outperform humans in various tasks, and the workforce is transforming significantly. The rise of automation is a wave that can be ridden with the right mindset and strategies. By being aware of the changes, embracing them, and continuously improving our skill sets, we can create a future that is not only secure but also fulfilling.

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Show notes:
(1:56) Use the complaining to improve
(4:29) The importance of awareness
(7:29) Industrial automation
(9:46) Statistically speaking
(12:51) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching.
https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/
(14:34) Technology, jobs, and adapting to change
(16:45) Know the future and understand the future
(19:59) Getting left behind: Frustration to fascination to transformation
(24:06) Two types of complaining
(27:45) Outro

🎙️ Hosted by Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Next level nation. Welcome back to another episode of next level university, where we help you level up your life, your love, your Health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode, episode number 1642. It was freestyle Friday. We did a deep Identity dive is what we did yesterday. We were, we went deep yesterday. Today for episode number 1643.

Speaker 1 0:25

We all complain, but I Am not at the stage in my life where I don't complain about things. Will I ever get to that place? I don't know. I don't even know if that's a place I aspire to get to. I know it sounds really good where you know if you don't complain, your life completely changes and all that I'm sure it does. I definitely complain far less than I have in the past, but I try to. If I'm complaining about something I can change, use the complaining to help me change something right. If I'm gonna complain about something that I can change, I can also put my energy into actually changing it.

Speaker 1 0:59

But the reason I wanted to do this episode is because I saw something recently and it made me sad that's probably the best way to put it because I Definitely have dealt with it in the past. I definitely would be in this bucket of experience in the past, but I also know it was really hurting me and it would have really hurt me. So I saw a post the other day or or something, on Instagram or whatever platform I was on. That was all about how so many stores are doing self-checkout. Now, every store you go into they kind of have their own self-checkout Whole Foods just put one in recently, the one we go to, target, all of them, they all have their, their kind of their own self-checkout, and there were so many people in the comments saying this is Terrible and how dare they do this and they're stealing people's jobs and and all that stuff. And I have never lost my job due to Automation and due to technology.

Speaker 1 1:57

So I don't, I can't. I can't claim to know what that feels like, but here's where it gets a little muddy. Unfortunately, oftentimes, the people that are complaining about that are also the people who are not focusing on how to avoid Getting left behind because of the thing they're complaining about. And I know I used to. I used to think that way for sure. I used to feel like, well, this thing is terrible and it's affecting all these people, and then, unfortunately, if I didn't do anything about my own circumstances, it probably would have ended up affecting me at some point. It's just this weird thing where it's hard to understand why something is happening if you don't know the thing above it or the thing below it. So the reason it's happening is because technology is speeding up and now it's more Cost-efficient for a store to put in a self-checkout than it is to have someone there. That's, that's a piece of it.

Speaker 1 2:58

But that also means, depending on what your job is, that might be coming for you too. If you're somebody who assemble stuff, technology and robots are probably coming for for you in some way, shape or form. I just don't want you to get Smashed over the head with that awareness. That's really why I wanted to do this episode. I don't want this to be from a judgmental Whatever. I don't want it to be that. I want it to be more from an awareness place of there's a lot of people who know where the future is going, but they don't usually communicate it to everyone. Yeah, unfortunately it's. It's almost like the people who know where the future is going don't really communicate it to the people who get affected most by where the future is going. Yep, and again, alan, you can speak at a higher level than I because you understand AI and you have worked around it. You know it better than I do. But that's really why I wanted to do this episode.

Speaker 1 3:54

I was someone who I worked with my hands. I All the jobs I worked at. I was easily replaceable and if I look back, a lot of the jobs that I had Might not exist. I mean, massachusetts is one of the. I Think there's only like two or three states where you have to have someone pump your gas. New Jersey is one of them. There's there's gas attendance in New Jersey.

Speaker 1 4:19

Is that always gonna be a thing? I don't know. I have to imagine at some point everything's gonna be you pump your own gas. That wouldn't have been an opportunity for me. That would have stayed forever. So, but I also feel like I probably would have said well, they can't change that. It's not fair for them to change the laws. What am I gonna do? I Want all the empathy I To come through in this episode. I just don't want you to get stuck, and that's ultimately when we say heart driven, nobs Heart driven. I'm afraid to talk about things like this at times because I don't. I don't want to be villainized. But I also want to make sure that I'm adding value, and sometimes that requires talking about the stuff.

Speaker 2 4:55

That kind of sucks this topic touches my heart so deeply because before Kevin and I teamed up, way back, I worked for a company called Cognix, and Cognix sold industrial automation equipment. Essentially what they sold was what's called machine vision, and machine vision is exactly what it sounds like. Imagine the eyes of a robot. So I Would go into these manufacturing facilities and just picture an ice cream company that you love. I'm not technically publicly supposed to talk about it, so I just don't. I just say picture you're the biggest ice cream company you can think of, that you love this ice cream company. You're probably landing on the one.

Speaker 2 5:34

So I was in this facility and I'll never forget it. There were these people at the end of the line that were checking the cartons To make sure. So if you're on video, I've got a PDL light here, I've got a carton in front of me and the machine vision equipment that I used to sell as a sales engineer on the road Would check that it says PDL light correctly. It would check that the cap was on properly. I also we had this 3d one that would laser scan it and make sure that you can, that it was the right dimensions and all that kind of stuff. So I would go into these manufacturing facilities and I would see these people at the end of the line and they're checking the the cartons of ice cream to make sure they're good. Okay, quality assurance, quality assurance, quality assurance, make sure every carton is is on point. You don't want to go to the grocery store and get the crushed one.

Speaker 2 6:18

And I Remember I left that day getting really sad, similar to what you described at the beginning of this episode, because I knew that I sold equipment that was taking those people's jobs, and I remember thinking like, wow, okay, and this was my thought process. Here I am. I'm in my early 20s, I Make a lot of money, I'm a top 1% earner globally, and this is back when I was in my early 20s, although that's true again, which is cool, but anyways. So I'm sitting there going. These people are Losing their jobs while I'm making a huge commission check, and that's gonna happen with me, with or without me. If it wasn't me working at Cognac, someone else is gonna work in Cognac's. I mean, that's, that's the way it works.

Speaker 2 7:02

There is a huge demand for these companies to automate, because machines don't get sick machines. You know, I used to go into these manufacturing facilities and I would see these images on the wall of the the 70s and 60s and 50s, and sometimes 80s, 90s, and you'd see that the factory had Hundreds, if not thousands, of workers. Back in the day. There was like these pictures, historical pictures on the walls. It was actually really cool, by the way to to see all these companies and all these products behind the scenes and how they're made. That's actually been really. That was a really cool part of working. There is, I would I mean, picture you go into the grocery store. I know where all those products were made. It's not all of them, but a lot of them. Very cool, connecticut has a lot of manufacturing. Who knew that was my territory?

Speaker 2 7:48

So, anyways, I'm in Connecticut and I'm seeing this happening and I'm kind of freaking out a little bit for for people, because I know I'll be fine, because I'm a computer engineer and computer engineers are in demand. There's, there's never gonna be a shortage for a need for me. I got a message literally earlier this morning for a job they want me to be on the board of directors Paid advisory for a board of directors, and I didn't answer the message and I'm grateful for it, but I did have that moment of. Okay, that's right, that's I'm valued, I appreciate that. But my point is is that and this is the the hardest part of this the people who need the jobs most, those are the jobs that are going away. Yeah, and I don't want this to land improperly, but I do think it's important because we talk about the truth here.

Speaker 2 8:36

So, statistically speaking, the less educated population tends to have more children and tends to have children younger. Statistically speaking please don't villainize me for this, this is just the statistics and you can research it. Statistically speaking, the more educated population Tends to have less children and they tend to wait longer. So you really, and I are gonna have children, but we'll probably only have two or three and we're waiting until our 30s. So, unfortunately, we have a population of less educated people globally having more children Younger, so that population is growing faster than the than the more educated population.

Speaker 2 9:19

Now here's the problem when it comes to industrial automation and the exponential technology. Technology increases exponentially, jobs for less educated people Decrease exponentially, while the population of uneducated people increases exponentially. So I saw this huge issue in my early 20s and I started freaking out and I started going holy crap, okay, listen, it's gonna happen with or without me, but if you're not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem, and I do believe that If you're not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem. So I was a part of the problem. That's my truth. One of the reasons I left Cognix was because of that, and so I decided to start a company. My mid-20s naive self on okay, instead of taking jobs and making money doing that, I'm going to make money equipping people to create a bigger, better, brighter future so they can create their own jobs, and so my whole slogan was what you'll never learn in school but desperately need to know.

Speaker 1 10:23

Not a great way to do speeches in schools. That's not. It doesn't work that way.

Speaker 2 10:29

But my whole business was built on helping people retool and reskill up for lack of better phrasing for their future, and so that's what NLU does. Underneath all of the work that we do is this through line of hey, every episode you've ever listened to if you're new or you're a long-term listener, just think of whatever amount of episodes you've listened to Every single one has an undertone, it has a through line, it has a theme. It's kind of like you watch a show on Netflix and it has a through line and a theme. Not only each episode has a theme, but the whole show has a theme. So each episode for Kevin and I has a theme, but the whole show has a theme too. And the theme underneath all of this is hey, by the way, we believe in you and we believe you can build a bigger, better, better future on your own terms, and we did it, so we know you can do it too. Now, do we think you're going to be a billionaire or blah, blah, blah, I don't know, maybe, but we do know that you can retool now, you can improve yourself now for a bigger, better, better future, and we believe in you. And that's really the undertone of what I started all those years ago, and then Kevin with the Hyperconscious Podcast, and then we teamed up and so the automation, the technology, it's going to continue. It's going to continue exponentially, and I actually think that in some ways that's actually good, because when a new technology comes into the marketplace, it makes the world richer.

Speaker 2 12:00

And I can be I'll try to explain it based on a plow. So imagine, I don't want to go off the rails here. Kev, I know you're like a plow. Where are we going here? No, no, it's good. So so imagine farming back in the day before there was plows. I don't know if the plow is a great example. Let me give them a better one. Okay, picture farming equipment. Picture like the amazing farming equipment that they now use.

Speaker 2 12:29

I remember reading this back in the early 1900s, 70 plus percent of the US workforce was for agriculture. Now it's less than 3%. Now, the bad part about that is that a lot of people lost their jobs. The good part is that those people hopefully retooled and now can go do something else and we can produce the same amount of food for less labor. And when you can produce more food for less labor, now the world goes less hungry, so to speak. Now, obviously there's politics in that and there's still countries that don't have that, and I'm not getting into any of that.

Speaker 2 13:06

But my point is is that when a new technology arises, like Zoom, it creates opportunity as well as taking away jobs. So Zoom takes away a lot of commuting and a lot of airplane tickets and a lot of that stuff. So during COVID, the airlines struggled because everyone was virtually conferencing with Zoom and Zoom went from 50 million to 500 million users overnight, basically, and so their stock price went through the roof and they did it very well and I think they have a great platform. This is StreamYard, so StreamYard does better now. But what does that take away from?

Speaker 2 13:42

Okay, so you and I used to commute, we used to use gas, so oil companies. We used to use cars, so car companies. So every new technology takes away from some old, older jobs, older industries, and then pours back into a new industry like StreamYard and Zoom, that kind of thing. And so the last thing I'll say here, to bring it back to our listeners, is the people to Kevin's point that know the future, understand the future, are not always sharing that with the people who really need to know it, and so hopefully, kevin and I can flip that script and share some of the stuff here, because I have mentors that are the on the board of directors on many of these tech companies, particularly robotics companies, and they know that the future is robotics, and so do I. I know that, too, Most people don't, and so they aren't retooling, and that scares me.

Speaker 1 14:35

Yeah, it's a tough thing to talk about because, like you said, you definitely can get villainized for it, but it is. The thought for me is I, if I didn't start the podcast and I wasn't where I am, I don't know what I'd be doing, and a lot of the things that I did to get to where I am today might not exist. If I was a gas station owner and I could just have pumps that people do themselves versus have someone, it would logically it makes sense to say, well, that person's going to be sick and you know, if something happens, I'm going to have to find coverage. And what if they're not nice? What if they're not good at their job? What if the people don't like them? It's, it's it's challenging. It's a very, very challenging thing. It's a very, very challenging thing. I'm blessed that we get to have so many amazing people on our team. I'm so grateful for that, so that's not something that's going to happen here to that degree. But I also understand, because when I remember when chat GPT for those who excuse me of you who don't know you could explain it again better than I, but I know you've been waiting years to talk about AI, so I got to keep a leash on you here.

Speaker 1 15:39

It's, it's something that it's. It's magical. You put in a prompt, it'll spit out. If you say, give me 15 ideas for social media content, it'll give you 15 ideas with hashtags and all this amazing stuff. And in the very beginning I villainized that. I was like that's, that's dumb, I'm never going to do that. I don't want to use that. I feel like that's cheating, I feel like that's shortcuts. Well, eventually it gets to the place where everybody's using that and it becomes a detriment for you to at least at least try it, or not to try it. You don't have to make your life about it, but you can use it. I'm sure in the beginning people didn't want to order from Amazon because they said, well, this two day shipping thing is stupid. Whatever, I don't know the the stats, but most people order from Amazon now.

Speaker 2 16:23

Yeah, because it's very convenient. Netflix, the blockbuster thing, yeah yeah, netflix yeah.

Speaker 1 16:28

Nobody's going to go to a store and rent a movie anymore.

Speaker 2 16:30

Yeah, that was going to happen. I think when we feed it, they're on their way out too. That's something. I would agree, because now you can stream them quicker, yeah, and it's cheaper, and it's cheaper and you're from the comfort of your own home. So there's benefits, but there's always a con to every pro.

Speaker 1 16:44

Well, and that's the thing is, a lot of people don't necessarily see the, the con, they see the pro, and that's really what I just want to make sure that you're not part of the con. You mean the opposite. No, I mean a lot of people who are. If your job doesn't get affected by it, you might not even notice it, you might not be thinking, you might be thinking oh, this self checkout thing is pretty cool, even though five years ago those were people there. You just might, it might slip your consciousness.

Speaker 1 17:13

I just want to make sure that at least you're aware of the changes that are coming, because I wasn't. I had no idea AI and all that. I had no clue any of this was going to be the way it is. Five years ago, not a clue. So I feel a responsibility to do an episode on this, even though, again, it always scares me to do episodes on on stuff like this, because I don't want yeah, I don't want to get villainized for it. But if that's the price for raising your awareness a little bit on something like that, like this, then I would say I would say it's worth it.

Speaker 2 17:46

I think hard truths are empowering if you deliver them in a way that's effective and you and you use them to. You mentioned at the beginning and you and I were talking earlier today when you can transform frustration into fascination. So okay, I lost my job, I'm frustrated. Okay, now I'm fascinated. Okay, so let's, let's do some research. Oh, it looks like a lot of people like me are losing their jobs in grocery stores. Okay, interesting. Well, now that fascination gets turned into transformation, I'm going to go back to school, I'm going to get my associate's degree in management and I want to be a general manager of a grocery store instead of someone who's at the register.

Speaker 2 18:33

Their adversities are coming. These things are gonna happen to all of us, no matter what. No matter what, there's gonna be adversities that come. The question becomes can you turn that frustration into fascination and then that fascination into transformation and what's underneath? That is what we talk about at NLU all the time. I can never talk enough about this is self-belief. If you have high self-belief, you will innovate. You'll find a way to improve yourself or transform yourself or find a new way to be relevant in the marketplace. Here's a good example. Let's say you lost your job and you were at the cash register. Here's one that's never going away for a long time. I don't want to say never, but it's not going away for a long time. Get good at social media.

Speaker 2 19:21

You want to get really good at social media. You know how many people need social media. Even grocery stores now need a social media presence.

Speaker 1 19:30

Or it's just okay how many. You have X amount of years in customer service. You've been talking to people for a long, long, long time. There's always gonna be some level of job in customer service. It's just different customer service. So even if you just stay within what you've been doing, I used to write that on my resume when I left the gas station. I said I have years of customer service experience. I do. I've been talking to people for eight hours a day and ensuring a positive experience with people for a long time. That carries over into other things.

Speaker 2 19:59

It carries over into every business basically ever, because every business needs to have a good customer experience.

Speaker 1 20:05

I think that's a good way to categorize it If you're doing something and that thing is on the verge of getting replaced. Unfortunately, there's probably other things within that bucket that you can do that maybe you just haven't thought of yet because you didn't have the necessity to do it.

Speaker 2 20:23

There's global marketplace. Now, too, you can sign up for Upwork. You can do.

Speaker 1 20:28

Uber EAs, you can drive Uber.

Speaker 2 20:30

There's a lot of other jobs that are getting created by technology as well.

Speaker 1 20:33

You can dog sit.

Speaker 2 20:34

You can do all kinds of stuff. You can work from home.

Speaker 1 20:38

There's a lot of people now that are working from home. If you're a stay-at-home parent, you can work from home potentially. I'm sure that's probably not easy if you're juggling work and children. But if we can focus more and I know it sounds like again it's one of those I don't want this to sound like the fortune cookie thing but if we can focus more on the opportunity than the sadness that created the opportunity, you're probably going to be in a better place Ultimately. That's why I wanted to do that. We all complain, but we all complain. But those of us who understand what we're complaining about usually are in better shape. If we can use the frustration that we're complaining about to Alan's point to get curious about something, to be some extra necessity at the end of the day, I think that's positive. That would be my next love.

Speaker 2 21:23

When COVID happened, Kev, myself and a buddy of ours, Mark Metry, we sat down and we said, okay, how are we going to come out of this stronger than we went in? We sat down and we all wrote in our notebooks what we're going to change, because we knew that everything was going virtual and we needed to find a way to still podcast virtually without you and I commuting to see each other. And so after that, we innovated a lot of things.

Speaker 2 21:47

We developed the business and we adapted, and so I think that's the main through line here. But the very last thing I'll share is this there's two types of complaining. There's complaining to complain, and then the second type is the type I recommend, which is complaining frustrations, to try to get to the root cause of whatever the thing is complaining to understand, I think complaining can bring. And again, so let's say I'm with Emilia and I say you know, I'm really annoyed or frustrated. I did this earlier today.

Speaker 2 22:20

Her alarm keeps going off on her phone and we have her phone, our chargers are like across the house, and so in the morning I'm doing my journaling and her alarm will keep going off, and I would. I complained a little bit like sweetheart that that keeps happening. She's like I'm sorry, my watch keeps dying. I said can we solve this? How can we solve this? And so we ended up. So I complained a little bit and she not negative, not toxic, I just complained a little bit about that. I'm like listen, that's happened probably once a week for the last couple of months. Can we please fix that?

Speaker 2 22:50

And so now we came up with a solution, and the solution is now we're going to use Alexa for our alarms, and the downside of that is now I'm if I'm not up ahead of her, it's going to wake me up too, which is why she was using her watch, but I said that's better than me being interrupted while journaling each morning, so let's just transfer to that. So the point is is that when you complain, you can find solutions when you find the root cause of the problem, and so complaining is constructive in all honesty, if it's not just complaining to complain, and I really do believe that. I think that the whole world gets better when we all innovate through understanding how to get better, through complaining and through frustration, understanding and deep conversations about these things I mean. Otherwise, nothing ever improves.

Speaker 1 23:36

Yeah, I think complaining is venting, that's all. Venting is Like hey, can I vent? All you're saying is hey, can I complain about something without judgment for a short period of time?

Speaker 2 23:44

I gotta get it out Without you looking at me any differently. You gotta get it out, otherwise you suppress it and then you're all bottled up, yeah you gotta get it out.

Speaker 1 23:52

If you are someone who is afraid of what we talked about today, reach out to Alan, because Alan can help you with this better than anyone. He understands all of that stuff. So reach out to Alan. If you need help, you can reach out to me. I can't promise I'm going to be able to help you very much, because I don't really understand how the world's going to change in the next 10 years. Not as well as Alan. But yeah, reach out. If you have not yet got your tickets to next level, live 2024, please do so. If you're listening to this episode, we are seven days out, so pretty much six days out for ticket purchasing. Link will be in the show notes. We'd love to have you. I went to the venue the other day. It is more beautiful than I remember the mountains. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful spot. You're going to love it. If you're in person, you'll love it virtual too, I promise. So link will be in the show notes. We'd love to have you there.

Speaker 2 24:36

Also, if you want to read next level books with next level people and, by the way, self-education is definitely the way to stay marketable in the future the books that we read are not just books for fun. They're books that help you improve yourself and develop your skills the skills that are going to be needed in the future. So, if you want to read next level books with next level people, we do book club every single week, 12, 30 pm Eastern Standard Time Every Saturday. The link to register will be in the show notes.

Speaker 1 25:03

Tomorrow for episode number 1,644. So I told Alan, I said Saturday's episode is about wealth. I want to get back to health, wealth, life and love. I want to get back to the roots. Tomorrow's episode is going to be about love. Are you setting unrealistic standards for your partner? I'm sure you've seen this. I've seen this so many times where somebody is upset with their relationship based on unrealistic standards that they're setting on their partner without their partner even realizing it. So we'll talk about that tomorrow. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we're going to fans. We have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2 25:42

Keep improving. Next level nation.