– Welcome everybody to today’s Building My Legacy Podcast. I have with me today, Greg Kihlstrom. Greg Kihlstrom is a best selling author. He’s a speaker, he’s an entrepreneur. And he has been a regular contributor to some major magazines, Forbes, Advertising Age, Smart CEO, Website Magazine, and Washington Post. Obviously you are well, well heard. He is currently CEO of CareerGig. Before that he was part of a digital company, Carousel30, which he sold in 2017. He has worked with Coca-Cola, Dell, FedEx, GEICO, Marriott, Starbucks, VMware, and today he sits on the board of Richmond’s Consumer Advisory Board. So Greg, you have an incredibly rich, rich background and added to that, you’ve just come out with a book in 2020, “The Center of Experience,” that talks about how consumers’ and employees’ experience can be operationalized into cohesive brand experiences. And I think, how do we blend that? That’s I think an issue that people are gonna be really searching for. And then you did “The Agile Consumer” before that, so you are very, very into writing. And there he talks about the recent shifts in brand and consumer relationships and how companies must become more agile across their entire operation to be successful. So those are some of the things that we wanna talk about today with our audience. And if I left out anything, I return it over to you, Greg, and you can fill in the holes, otherwise we’ll get started.

– Yeah, well, why don’t we get started? Yeah, I thought that was a great background.

– Okay, so the first question I have for you is, is the gig economy here to stay? And before you answer that, would you just talk a little bit about what is the gig economy? ‘Cause I think some people may not know what that is.

– Yeah, absolutely. And I think it goes by some, a bunch of different names, but I think the gig economy as we know, really comprises any member of the workforce that does not have a full-time salary job. So this could range from your Uber driver or Instacart delivery, or it could be a freelancer or a contractor, or really even a what’s called in the U.S. a 1099 contractor that may work almost 40 hours a week or close to that. But really anyone that does not rely on a full-time salary position to make a living. And this gig economy really has been growing for years. I mean, really in the United States alone, we hit kind of a at the lowest point I think in late 70s, there was about 7% of the U.S. workforce was self-employed. We’re now pre-COVID, we’re at about 35% of the U.S. workforce was doing some kind of freelance, whether they might have been holding down a full-time job, but it wasn’t quite enough. So they did some kind of gig or freelance work, and it’s estimated to grow to about 50% of the U.S. workforce by 2027. So it is definitely on the incline.

– So what does that really mean? Right now, part of what I hear as people have come out of the pandemic is that fear, the uncertainty, what’s gonna happen to my job? Will I have a job? And I’m also hearing from people that, “Yes, I’m going back to work, but it’s gonna be part-time now, because there’s uncertainty about what’s gonna happen next. So speak a little bit about that in terms of what does that really mean for the workplace?

– Yeah, I think this has really been part of that ongoing shift is, it’s not simply that people are choosing to engage in freelance or gig work. It’s also that the nature of work is changing and everything from the ability for companies to hire remote workers, which makes it easier to not have to pull talent from the local talent pool to the ability to work online, online only in some cases, but also this concept, and I think, I haven’t actually known the true concept of this in my career even, but this idea that you work for a company for 30 years, you get a gold watch on retirement. You have a pension, all of that, I hear that existed, but you know, my dad for instance, he started his own company when I was four years old. So I actually don’t know anything really, but this concept of self-employment and I’ll personally, but this concept of 10 year even at a company, it’s now down to about two and a half years to about three and a half years, depending on where you work, on average in a company. And you could look at that as a negative, or you could look at that as simply the way that things are and that people are getting more experienced. They’re moving on, they’re getting a higher salary, or they’re shifting from a full-time job to some more part-time work and things like that. And I think that’s, we, instead of trying to move back to an older model that worked for its time, I think we need to embrace it, but we do need to speak to your other point. Companies are embracing it because it gives them flexibility to scale up and down when, it doesn’t even take a financial crisis to do that, it may be an internal crisis or an internal change. It also gives people the ability to work when and how they want.

– So working when people want, I’m hearing from women especially that part of what they discovered with COVID was, some said they loved it, because they could adjust their schedule around all the other things in their lives. Other people said they hated it because they had all the distractions of home and taking care of children at the same time. So when you have 50% potentially of a workforce being a freelance or gig workforce, what does that really mean in terms of building teams and getting people to work together? What does it mean for engagement? Because we already know engagement’s pretty bad. You know, only three out of 10 people are engaged at work. So, does that help a company leapfrog over that? What’s your sense?

– Yeah, I think, definitely agree with you that that’s a challenge and it’s become a bigger challenge recently with everyone working remote, or at least most people working remote that were non-essential. But I think this has been part of a trend where we needed to solve and we needed to try to solve these problems, sooner than later anyway. And I think COVID has really just forced an issue that was growing all along. I mean, disengagement at work was always an issue. I think we need better ways to onboard people. I think we need better ways to not simply write values, company values on a wall, but really find ways to actually meaningfully measure and express those values. I think those things existed way before COVID and I think we always needed a way to translate those to remote work or whether that’s a remote full-time worker or a remote freelancer or 1099. I think we always needed a way to solve that. I can’t say that we’ve quite figured that out, but if there could be a positive out of such a terrible time that many of us or all of us have been going through, if there could be a positive, it might be that we were finding a better way to work together remotely. And you touched on another point, which is remote work actually, and the ability to at very least telecommute does increase the ability for more diversity in companies. And whether that’s women and men both taking care of their kids or a spouse or partner taking care of a loved one that needs extra attention or medical care, those things, they always existed. And I think this is forcing that issue as well. And I think it’s good that we’re talking about it.

– You know, one of the things that occurred to me is, as I thought about this is actually now the talent pool has been opened up hugely for companies. You can hire globally anywhere if it’s virtual, right? You don’t have to come into the workplace, that changes are dynamic of the quality of people we’re gonna start looking for. What do you see and how do you see that impacting?

– Yeah, I think it’s gonna be an interesting dynamic. I think there are certainly challenges with, already there’s challenges with doing things like verifying someone’s backgrounds and their skills before you can hire them. I think opening up the talent pool is great because there’s a wider variety of people that you can hire. It does cause additional challenges in properly vetting and onboarding, and you know, some of those other things you mentioned as far as from onboarding from a company culture standpoint, finding the right people and onboarding them properly. So I think it’s, I’ve lived through this in my marketing agency, Carousel30. We shifted from a solely staffing, internal full-time staff model to a hybrid of outsourcing, offshoring, as well as having a team, a full-time team on site. So, we dealt with some of those issues early on as far as, how do we extend some of our culture to not only, not even just a remote workforce, but a remote team that wasn’t even part of our own company, how did we extend some or our values to them? And it certainly, it takes doing and it takes documenting and it takes installing process even in people that normally you kind of take culture for granted sometimes, but it’s something that needs to be intentional.

– I think culture is huge. I have done a tremendous amount of work in Asia and particularly also Europe, but when I would take groups of people to Asia to develop business and would do business myself with the manufacturing company that I own. And one of the things that I realized was a lot of people walked away from deals because they didn’t understand culture. And I see the same thing happening in the workplace. We bring people in with different, very diverse backgrounds. We don’t do a good job of integrating right now. You know, we have a lot of discussion about diversity and inclusion, but we really don’t look at that in a broader perspective in terms of what if it’s a global group that we’re integrating?

– Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think the challenge there is to make diversity, and it’s not simply cultural diversity, but that’s certainly a factor in it, but to make and embrace diversity as a value add to the company, not as as a challenge to overcome. And I think the companies that do that and do that really well, they grow and they expand globally and they even expand domestically. Because again, they embrace diverse, whether it’s diversity of ideas, diversity of background, diversity of skill sets, all of those things, those companies that really get that, I mean, there’s facts and figures that show, those are the more profitable companies, all of those things. So it’s one of those things that when you hear it, it makes so much sense. And yet in application, it can be challenging because you get set in your way. I mean, a company that’s been doing the same thing, even for five years, let alone 25 years or 50 years, kind of doing things the same way. It’s often challenging to change things and open up a little bit.

– When you look at this, and with the work you’ve done, Greg, what have you found, how do you vet, how do you look at the hiring of a freelancer?

– Sure, sure. So there’s a few things, and I think there’s a few things that are different for freelancers versus full-time employees. So I think with any hiring you need to make sure that they have the skills and the background that you need. So, you know, we, with hiring freelancers, there are ways to do, you can do background checks, just like you would with a full-time employee. You can do skills assessments. And that’s certainly something at CareerGig we’ve automated and made very streamlined as well, to be able to do that. I think the other thing with freelancers and contractors is finding a way. They say it takes about 90 to 120 days for a full-time employee to truly onboard into their new role. Well, you may get 90 or 120 minutes to really onboard a freelancer. So that creates a challenge, but it also again creates an opportunity, which is, how can we distill what we really expect from a freelancer in this case into 90 to 120 minutes or possibly even less? And I think that’s something again on with CareerGig, we’re finding better and better ways to onboard and put that, distill that, the values of the, even the ethos of working together and all of that into quicker, quicker and quicker ways as part of an onboarding that really anyone should have to go through.

– Would you just for a moment explain a little bit about what CareerGig does, because I think it’s important for understanding what it is that you bring to the table and what people need to look at?

– Yeah, absolutely. So CareerGig is, we work to match freelancers with opportunities at companies. So that is, and we do this in some unique ways. So one of the things is this ability to accurately verify that someone is who they say they are, that they’ve done what they say they’ve done. I mean, unlike a lot of other let’s say competitors that have like a five star rating system or something like that that can easily be gamed, or just simply, if you get a bad rating, you close down your profile and open up a new one. We actually do verification that again someone is who they say they are, and they’ve done whether it’s gone to school or had the job experience, or have the even do criminal background checks and stuff like that when applicable. So we do that and we take a lot of care to do that because it matters who you hire for the types of positions that we’re placing. And then on the company side, not only do we offer these pre-verified and vetted candidates, but we’re able to have them really as an on demand workforce. So if you think about the traditional staffing model, they’re looking mainly for full-time placement, long-term placement, and they do a good job at that. They’re often expensive. They charge 30% of someone’s salary. They’re slow often, they may be thorough in doing their job, but we’re all about, can we accelerate this process? Can we find better candidates? And then on top of that we offer health, retirement, and other benefits to those freelancers. So one of the positives for a company to move to a more freelance workforce is, it cuts down a lot of overhead. So, they’re spending about 30% less by hiring these freelancers and contractors because they’re not paying for their health insurance and benefits and retirement and all that. But the downside is to those freelancers, which no longer get them. So we’re able to, if you work a certain amount of hours with us, we’re actually able to offer those benefits. We offer something almost unheard of, guaranteed issue insurance to freelancers, which for those outside of the U.S. like that’s, they’ve been doing that for a little while in the health insurance side, but within the United States, this is a big deal. And, you know, the Affordable Care Act does offer some health insurance. It’s often expensive, and there’s some limitations there, but we offer not only health insurance, but disability insurance and life insurance and critical care hospital insurance, even pet insurance, all of these things to our freelancers. And so they’re able to not only work when, how, where they want, but they’re able to take care of the rest of their lives. And I think by doing that, we’re really able to take care of really both sides of the equation, companies and freelancers.

– So what I hear you say is you maintain a pool of freelancers. Companies can contact you and get a freelancer for a specific job for a particular period of time. Is that correct?

– Yeah, absolutely. And they can know with confidence that they have the background and the exact skills that that company needs. We essentially badge them to say, “You know, for Acme Inc., they have these requirements in order to work for them.” While we’ve got a 100 people that have been pre-vetted and pre-qualified to work for Acme Inc. Therefore they can pull from that talent when and where they want.

– That’s an incredible gift, especially right now. I think when people are shrinking and growing, shrinking, and I think that model is here to stay for a long time. You know, as I talk with companies, I’m hearing people say, “Yes, but not all my consumers are back on board, so then my customers. So I have to change and shift how I’m doing things.” And I think we’re gonna see people coming on and off board as whatever happens. Is there a second wave? You know, those are the questions that are unanswered at the moment. So an incredible service that you provide companies right now.

– Oh, thanks, yeah, and I definitely agree with that. That need to be, I think it’s especially relevant right now to be able to kind of shrink and expand and as needed, but that’s not gonna change either. I mean, hopefully COVID goes and is no longer an issue for anyone shortly enough, but you know, there’s always going to be ups and downs, whether it’s industry ups and downs, even seasonal ups and downs within an existing cycle.

– So tell me, Greg, with all of what you’ve done and what you’ve worked with, companies you’ve worked with, I mean, your list of companies is remarkable. What do you see the future of the workplace to be? What will it look like?

– Yeah, I think what I see is really this continuum, and this is, I guess this is more about, you mentioned a couple of books that I wrote as well. And I see a continuum of the individual having more and more choice and power in the equation of what they do and how they do it. And I think this is going to a while to come to fruition, but I do believe this trend we see of more and more individuals and freelancers existing in the workforce. I think that’s going to continue to grow. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing for large companies and organizations either. I actually think it’s a win-win. I think when individuals are able to have more choice and be able to take care of more of their own needs in their personal lives and their financial and their future companies will actually benefit because they’re taking on less of the burden. And I see that as really the future of the workforce is that individuals may, this trend of the 10 year may even decrease. But that’s, I don’t know that that’s a bad thing. I think it’s incumbent on companies to make it clearer and clearer why you should work for them. I think that’s part of the organizational and the leadership work that needs to be done and will always need to be done. But I see this as just as an ongoing trend of there’s going to be great talent. They’re gonna move around more and they’re gonna demand more flexibility because they’re taking care of the rest of their lives, that whole work life, whether you call it work-life balance or work-life integration. I generally talk about the latter because I don’t think you can completely separate one from the other anymore, but you still need the life part of that equation. And I think that’s, I think many, many more people are going to have more of that life part of that equation in the future.

– What that says to me is companies that don’t get how to take care of employees don’t know how to onboard, don’t know how to take a virtual group of freelancers, regulars so to speak and integrate them, they’re going to have trouble with retaining and getting employees down the road. Am I right or wrong?

– Yeah, absolutely. I think it goes back to on the organization side, it goes back to leadership and culture and really making your values clear. And I think that I really, I started on the outside as a marketer and a brander. And the more that I got involved with branding and marketing, the more I realized that in order to have great marketing, you have to have a great product, in order to have a great product, you have to have good customer experience. And you can’t have good customer experience without great employee experience. And sure enough, you can’t have happy employees without them truly knowing what the mission of the organization is and buying into it. And I think that’s what you’re talking about is, there’s gotta be more and more succinct ways of explaining that, expressing that, and then finding the right people to do that work.

– So one of the things that you see large companies doing, and you’ve certainly worked with a number of them, is there are some, you have a philosophy. You shrink your employment group by let’s say 10%, 15% every year, because that keeps everybody on their toes. And in a sense, what you’re offering is just keep your pool of people at 70% or 80% of what you need and freelance the rest and get that top talent. But don’t keep churning, because that churning may have caused you to lack that stability and ability to onboard people. What do you think?

– Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, think about what you just said, think about that model. I mean, that means that you’ve got a core people that are not fearing for their jobs. There’s a core, I mean, sure a crisis could hit or something, but they’re not fearing for their jobs. And yet you have this other, this freelance pool that is actually really, really happy freelancing and wants to do that. And yet would love to work for a great brand, but they’re not actually even looking for that full-time job. So I mean, to me, I always try to look for the win-win and to me that’s a win-win is the people that want that full-time job get that full-time job. They’re committed to the company full time, but the company also gets the benefit of, as you said, that really top tier talent that they may not need the most highly skilled person full time, 40 hours a week every day, but they need them a little bit. And they need them a few days a month or maybe for a few weeks at a time. And so they get them and that person is thrilled to do that because they have that week to book with that company and the rest of the time they’re busy. So again, it’s that win-win scenario.

– Greg, we have been talking for, it’s hard to believe, a good half hour, and time has gone so quickly. But before we close, thoughts, last thoughts that you would like to leave with the audience? For those of you who are listening, we will have information about Greg’s books, so you can order them. We’ll have the titles and certainly they’re available through Amazon I’m guessing. Correct?

– Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re on Amazon.

– So in the show notes we’ll put the information about that there so you can go ahead and get those books. And if people wanna get in contact with your company, we have information, we’ll pass that on. We encourage you to do that if you’re interested. And Greg, so last thoughts, comments, what would you like to leave with the audience?

– Sure, yeah. I mean, definitely I encourage everyone to check out careergig.com. You know, I do really think that the future of work is this hybrid model of really embracing the different ways that your workers and your employees want to work. And I do think it’s a win-win for everybody. So I would love to talk with anybody that’s interested and I always enjoy having these types of conversations. And really, I feel like we’re making progress. And if anything, if we can make some good come out of a bad situation that we’re all in with the pandemic, I think let’s try to improve work and try to improve the workplace.

– You know, I do think, I agree with you there. I think coming out of this, people, there’s fear, there’s uncertainty, there’s a tension, right? In terms of what will be next. I also see an incredible opportunity. We’ve never been able to unpeel the corporate world and shape the workplace in a better way in what we’ve given this gift of COVID really. And the sitting back time to really look at, how can we do it better? And so I just look at this as a great opportunity.

– Yeah, yeah, agreed.

– Those of you who are listening, before we started, I was talking briefly with Greg about doing a round table in the future. So stay tuned, we’ll have information on that. We’ll come back with a whole lot more on this subject with Greg and a number of other people. Thank you all for listening to us today. on Building My Legacy Podcast, and Greg, thank you so much for your time.

– Thanks so much for having me.