The Knowledge Worker Habit - Kevin Miller | Ep 2

Kevin Miller  

Every organization is in the process of failing. By definition, that's capitalism. Once you've determined the organization can have profitable demand, all your problems are internal, if you

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Caleb Roth  

we all want to improve our lives, but sometimes, it's hard to know where to start. Join us each week on the Stacking Habits podcast with your hosts, David, Matthew and Taylor. As we uncover life changing habits from inspiring people want to know the best part, you can then apply those habits to enrich your own life and move closer to your goals.

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Matthew Osborn  

I will welcome back to the Stacking Habits podcast episode number two. This is an exciting episode for me because we have Kevin Miller with us here today. And he's really important to me for two specific reasons. One is he was my professor in college, for my very first business class and my very last business class two of the most foundational classes to the two favorite classes I had while I was in school. And really the foundational classes I kind of built on after I graduated. But even more so than that. He's also responsible for how I met Caleb Roth, which led to the business we started, grew for the last five years and sold and really why we guys are all sitting here today is because of a networking event you put on I happen to sit next to Caleb, we happen to be talking partly because you always talked about being a knowledge worker and how you always have to be seeking knowledge from other people. And I knew he just started a business. And I was like, Hey, I should talk to him and figure out how he's done that maker relationship. And that's what started pretty much all of this today. So that's really cool, because it's the foundation to my store. And so I'm really thankful that you're here with us today to talk about that. And one thing I want to kind of kick this off with is when I was showing them a little bit about your bio and kind of stuff you've done in the past. And you're kind of known as the turnaround guy, you go into organizations in the past, I think where they're either failing, and they needed to come around format, where they're going through a transition that was chaotic needed to transition through it. That's a stressful situation most people tend to avoid at all costs. So how did you get sucked into helping chaotic organizations transition is literally the opposite of what people are looking for in a career path. How did you kind of get sucked into that that career path? That's I've never really been asked that directly before Matt, thanks for having me. And actually happened because I had started work at Ernst, the international accounting CPA and consulting firm. And I worked with another guy on these major company audits. And he left and started working for an insurance company. And he called me, oh, he'd been there a couple years. And he called me and said, Are you interested in coming and fixing

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Kevin Miller  

a crop insurance company? And I said, Ron, I have no idea. I know nothing about crop insurance. And he says, turns out, nobody else does either.

Said, so he says I trust you to come in and look and tell me can you fix it? If you can't? I'm happy with whatever your answer is, but I need somebody to come in and analyze it. So I said, Okay, so I mean, that's a, that's a sweet deal. Even if you're failing, you're going to hear the reasons I'm failing. So I wasn't looking to be one. But it was my introductory experience. And it was it was absolutely a blast. Go comp insurance is a government based thing. Their contracts are really complex. They hit the company had really messed up how they understood and interpreted contracts, where not every sales a good sale. It's like underwriting all drunk drivers. That probably not very good if your car company. And so it was highly analytical database type of an approach. And they had a bunch of human resource problems. And they just didn't understand their own business about all of it. So I just happened because of that.

And alongside that, real estate, another person I knew from the earth experience, because he knew me because of his wife working there. And he called me and said, Hey, I have this huge real estate problem in terms I've been my company has been purchased to help solve that. And I'd like to have you come along aside and help me do that. So they kind of every time that it happened, I kind of got invited in, I never have a look for it. Because it finds and part of it is here's the real deal. Here's the real deal. You don't go into turnarounds. Without that company's key people that are the decision makers being emotionally qualified. And the vast majority of people are not emotionally qualified to have their organization fix. They talk like they are. It's like someone who's on drugs. Oh, yes, I want to be off drugs. Okay, we'll see how that works. Because most people don't really want to have drugs or they don't have enough fortitude. So you're really interviewing them about whether they're qualified for a turnaround

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David Chung  

by like, sorry to interrupt, but emotionally qualified. Are you talking about like self awareness? Or are you talking about them being able to admit, for a question,

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Kevin Miller  

it's usually positional awareness, okay, because if they get blamed for the problems, they don't want that. If they're gonna lose their job, they don't want that. They kind of want me to come in and wave a wand and then just some little switch I need to turn and it's usually more complex than that. And there's usually there's The same for for I use for turning. Once you've determined the organization can have profitable demand, all your problems are internal. If you get profitable demand for what you're doing, all the problems are internal. And the usually the person asking you didn't have the insight or the fortitude to make those fixes happen. And so I interviewed a lot of times, I'd tell him not, this isn't a really good fit for me. And the reality is, I didn't think I could be successful because they really weren't ready to do a turnaround. So whenever I did, oh, I've done four or five of them different ways. And you, you prequalify, for that, it's always a risk that there still be organ rejection. But of course, I had been a Christian, I became a believer, when I was in my eyes when I was 27. Blew my mind, I was doing that first turnaround. And I looked at the scripture, and I went, I'm doing a turnaround. Here's the greatest turnaround in world history. And so let me ask you a question. If you know anything about the Bible, was everybody happy to see Jesus are the Pharisees happy to see Jesus? Who was happening? See, Jesus Romans weren't the whole tax collectors, the tax collector, nobody was happy to see Jesus, He came to do it turn around. So he gathered people around him, who were wanting to see aterna, the fishermen, and the people that were the deplorables. And he went, and they all gathered towards Him they liked the miracles are gone. Yeah, we'd like we'd like to turn round our life. And he went to the cross. And He created a turnaround for everybody, not just the deplorables. But the Pharisees and the tax collectors, if they will become emotionally qualified and ask Christ into their heart. So I realized, okay, this isn't the first time first rodeo that's ever been done.

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David Chung  

So this show, we talked about habits and their habits in personal life, but also in business, in the turnarounds that you've been on, like, have you noticed a common trend or a common theme, and why a business is failing? Is it the people the team? Is it the process opportunity?

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Kevin Miller  

Most organizations just don't have a astute leadership. And so they they kind of take it from the previous group of executives, most organizations don't even know what their steward of. So what are you steward of? And if you don't have that nailed, then you're not you can't ultimately Thrive you steward for the stockholders, you steward for the employees, or you steward for the customers. And as a Matt knows, the answer is all three, if you're a public company, if you're not a good steward for the customers, you're gonna go out of business, if you're not a good steward for the employees, you're not going to keep great employees. If you're not good steward for the stockholders, you go out of business, because the capital is not worth anything. So that's a balancing act. And it's often out of whack. In fact, it's always out of whack your competitors put it out of whack. So if you're sitting there as a retailer, and you think this is so cool, I am a major, major retailer, I'm in these malls all the way across America, nobody's building any more of these major malls, I have no competition, I'm really, really settled. I can be really great stewards here. And along comes Amazon going well, you know, I just don't need to be in your mall. I don't need a location to compete with you. So you suddenly your stewardship equation changes, then you have to be a knowledge worker executive to say, Okay, that's a change. I can't be in love with the old model, I have to say, how do I shift? So it's, it's, in essence, corporation, you're completely correct. Every organization good, bad or indifferent? You are looking to see what is the culture? And are they even willing or want the culture changed, and who's in power, if you do try to change it. And then again, there are many places that, that I would not take a slot with them, because I didn't perceive I can be successful. Because what I perceived to be the stewardship did not match up with theirs, or they didn't realize the price, they would have to pay to move from point A to point B, it may mean that they were fired, or whatever the case may be because they weren't qualified for the work.

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Caleb Roth  

So along those lines, I used to work for Johnson and Johnson, they had a credo. And so I worked for the orthopedic division, and they said, We exist, we're responsible to patients, the ones who get our product, obviously, we're responsible to the doctors, or responsible to the employees, and we're responsible to shareholders. And unfortunately, and I can't speak I wasn't really high up or anything, but ultimately stockholders that got inverted and they favorite the stockholders. Okay, we didn't return enough profit, we're going to make changes and it really wasn't like the idea was patients would come first. And that's theoretically that that one makes the most sense. But what happens is just because you say that's your intention, doesn't necessarily mean that that's how you

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Kevin Miller  

write, hey, the problem is always matching up intentions with actually going with the elbow grease to get it done. And the commitment and all the fights that happen. And that income that change with a j&j has to happen incrementally and have complete awareness. You can't let it get so far out of control, because then recovering it becomes a problem. So As the CEO who understands that then says, it starts with preparing the shareholders and says, hey, the landscape is changing, and we're going to be patient centric. Here's what's got to happen that it out of that. And that, that understanding that ability to communicate that ability to have the foresight to do that, well, is unusual. And a lot of times a founder may have it because they have their fingers on it a lot better, because they had a belt development from zero. You guys know that? Because you were founder developing it from zero. And then you even got surprised a lot of times you're going oh, we thought we were speaking for the customer. We don't know. We didn't speak very well. We learned

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Caleb Roth  

over and over and over to listen, we did a lot of data with Scout IQ. The idea was it's very, very knowledge. Yes, yes, yes. And we put so much data, we invented e score, we had all these like proprietary data metrics to make a better decision, should I buy this book or not? And when we rolled it out, we started asking for feedback. And I was thinking everybody would think like me, which of course is not the case. And that's a good thing for the world. But we kept asking, What do you love about the app? And our customers over and over said, I buy the Green Books, and I'm making

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Matthew Osborn  

money. I like when it turns green at the top and tells me to buy?

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Caleb Roth  

And I'm like, Yeah, but do you understand why they don't care, but I didn't care. And at first I was like, that threw me for a loop. And then I realized, okay, I need to be designing for them. It's not about what I want, right? Because that's just me. But if we're going to serve an audience, we have to figure absolutely

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Kevin Miller  

the greatest business in the world and nonprofits, that that only the person thinks that simple. You get offended by because, you know, what? Do you realize what it took for me to get you that green light? They don't care? No, but I'm really happy with you. Right? And you know, what about a car you go in? And how many of you how many people know how a carburetor works and a gas engine? They don't. But boy, they're angry when it hasn't. And they're perfectly happy. And on the end, when everything happens to work, right? And it's fairly complex build, and everyone's pretty much did it get me from A to B today. And then I slipped Was it too slick on the roads. It's really simple. So ultimately, the greatest business people, the greatest people who provide value to their customers, and frankly, to their shareholders, your shareholders don't care either. Stockholders don't care, either. They care once you get what you return, don't don't bother me with the details. I was comparing purchasing your stock versus buying Google stock. So I don't care about all the hard work you had. That's what I that's why I bought your stock. So only you have to get over yourself that they have to appreciate it. And just bask with the people do understand. And then take your stewardship somewhere else as you sell out. Excuse me, if you sell out or do whatever you do. Every every organization is in the process of failing. By definition, that's capitalism. Because explain

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Caleb Roth  

it's a deep statement, every organization is in the process of failing. Yeah. What do you mean by that?

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Kevin Miller  

mean, how many competitors of Johnson and Johnson have a lot? I mean, he does. A does a retailer. I mean, he does a college have. I mean, we have massive numbers of competitors. That's why capitalism is so hard. And that's why it's so effective at providing value is you don't get to hold you don't get to be the one handed economist and you hold everything constant. Or I'm only going to compete with Macy's. So I'll devise my whole thing. Now you have to compete with Macy's and JC Penney and TJ Maxx, and Amazon all at once, and they all have different business models, and you have vulnerabilities to all of them in several ways. What are you going to do about that? That's hard. It's super hard. And ultimately, it's very unsustainable in the long haul. And a fast especially see, if you have it worked 150 years ago, that you failed slowly. Now you can fail, fail quickly, especially in the tech world, you guys occupy so example, Blockbuster, Netflix comes to them and says, Hey, we're failing because they were they were during the mail they're mailing in at that stage. Remember, they were mail and they were struggling. And this is early 2000s. And they offered themselves for 50 million blockbuster, Blockbuster said, they pantomiming what they said, but the attitude of course, was Who are you? We have 9000 locations. we've nailed this. People show up. I mean, who's our competitor? Are you kidding me? Who are you kidding? They can come and do it overnight. You're doing it through the mail. None of that makes any sense. Because they didn't understand the landscape. And ultimately, Netflix became Netflix well beyond sending out the mail cassettes into the streaming. They didn't have anybody with the vision to say, Wait a minute. This is Ted. We aren't a tech area. We ourselves are doing tech. Those Those VHS tapes. Were new technology. 15 years before, and you put us You said our opportunities because we understood technology ahead of everybody else. And therefore people could do it at home and aren't we smart and say yes, but you didn't take it to the next step. So in our tech world Old, you have vulnerabilities because the technology destroys a lot of the value that traditional businesses have, which is physical locations, right? All that type of thing. So now I can get something from Amazon fascial, I can drive to Walmart and back, I'm getting it. I ordered something from my wife on a Sunday at 1145 was there by two o'clock on the same day, and I couldn't drive and didn't even write. So you're going, Wow, that's a radical, radical change. So technology causes it to be faster, but the shortest answer to what you're asking it, when you have you don't get to compete with one competitor. It's who does who gets to do that. You have multiple In fact, the US can't. We have multiple theaters we have to worry about. We have China we have, right Russia, we have multiple theaters going on. So they're all trying to put you out of business. They don't that isn't their ostentatious thing. While some some do. But most numbers I know I want to succeed. And I'm much better than everybody else. And when you have when you have that many competitors, all of them tearing apart your business model a little bit over here, a little bit over there, a little bit over here. And then everyone fades from you know, you know, we just don't go to that restaurant as much anymore. We don't. We don't go to Target as much anymore. We don't. And it just fades because handling multiple competitors. That lens is super, super difficult. And it's what causes tremendous prosperity secret to capitalism is failure. Failure. The fiction of communism is nobody fails. Everybody gets a third grade soccer trophy. Everybody's everybody's good. Everything's wonderful. Capitalism says, Miller, you're not going to play for the Lakers. Ferrari, no matter what. You don't get the participation trophy and get paid the same thing as LeBron, do you? No, no, no. So you're constantly saying, Hey, I'm going every time someone's competing with you for a space, they're trying to, to occupy that space and elbow you out. They don't have to have bad intentions, they just have good intentions to be a better steward of your customer than you are, they're

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Caleb Roth  

ultimately trying to serve the customer better.

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Kevin Miller  

And that's what creates huge prosperity, but also creates disruption for individual companies and individuals. And so the turnaround issue is that you don't get to hold everything constant, and you're going to be thriving for the next 20 years. That's why you have to be a personal knowledge worker, same thing, you can't do it without saying I have to, I have to continually grab new skills and trash my old skills.

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Matthew Osborn  

One of the back to the blockbuster analogy, we're talking about one of the things that I really found profound going through I forget which one of your there's the earlier class or later class in college. But as you kept talking about, you have to know what business you're in. And if you get that confused, it's gonna make everything else fail. And it's like you remember talking about one of the locomotive companies that train companies that they think they're in the train business, they take products from point A to point B, they're in trains, but really, there's no transportation business, if they get stuck on nowhere a train company, then once transportation starts moving to aircrafts, and different things like nope, no board, train companies like no, you're not, you're a transportation business. Just like Blockbuster thought, hey, we sell physical video is when they really are in the entertainment business. They're entertaining people. And if they had that mindset of, hey, we're actually in the entertainment business, not in the physical video rental business, they could have seen that shift coming from a lot farther away, but they got their business model, I think incorrect.

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Kevin Miller  

And it's so easy to do that because you have to the human brain, you got to get something settled the hang on to. But if you settle on the wrong thing, if you make that brittle conversation we had earlier, then you didn't understand what you were really doing. I one of the stories I love is Amazon, you know, they couldn't get anybody handle their data, right. And so they kept asking who can handle our data? So what they create AWS? And then what did what did Jesus do? He kept saying, and publicly, I don't know why we don't have a competition here. But we they built AWS for a long time before the Microsoft and Google types came in. But they waited because why they didn't perceive they were in that business.

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Caleb Roth  

What's interesting about that is that sustain them, that's the only part of their business until a few years ago that made money.

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Kevin Miller  

the only way they could make the the bits part of their business, the delivery of detergent and books was to subsidize it with a pure digital play, which is all margin with all margin compared to very low margin so that he got forced, he himself didn't quite catch Bezos himself got forced into looking at the second division of the company. And it was his lifesaver. That's a huge excuse me, he's one of the brightest guys ever. And he kind of got forced into it because no one else stopped. There shouldn't be that business. And they didn't say hey, we'll do that and you can be our primary customer. Where why would they even be alive today?

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Caleb Roth  

Oh, they would not have competed with Walmart. Exactly even COVID at accelerated the percentage of E commerce that's done. It's still around 15%. It was only 10%. Free COVID. And it accelerated quickly. But it's still most retailers done even Walmart target. You name those store? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

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Kevin Miller  

People look, the late perception is all Amazon must have 50% of that retail mark. It's not even remotely, as you're saying. But because it's four in the forefront of their brain, and it's still relatively new and still eye popping ly impressive, very much that you click and it shows up, you know, your next day. Yeah, whatever it is. And so all this, this is what makes business so hard, are nonprofits because I don't distinguish when business and nonprofit. And in terms of the same problems with a mission and making it work is everybody's ready for it ready for it to fail? They'll they because they're simply eating away. And what does Ibiza say? Your margin is my opportunity opportunity. He's going, Look, I don't have anything against you. But when you make that much money doing stuff, I can do it for a lot cheaper. So that's, again, secret to capitalism is failure, because then we all say I want to be steward of my pocketbook. I think I'll go with Amazon. And guess what Amazon, as hard as it is to believe Amazon will have problems the next 2030 years, as it gets in this constant slicing and dicing of all this stuff. It's on the end, he says so he's very blunt. He says, Have you ever heard him say that? I am visa? Oh, no, our company will be out of business. We got to plan on being out of business in a short period of time. He's trying to instill that wake up within his own. You can't. You cannot rest on these laurels. You got to say what are our vulnerabilities just like AWS was or don't forget, we have to be vigilant on all this.

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Caleb Roth  

That goes back our last guest, Mike, we talked about being the importance of playing offense versus defense. And if you just sit back and wait for your competitors to move, now you're playing defense. And sometimes you get caught with your pants down for lack of a better analogy. And it can be game over the most strike.

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Kevin Miller  

And I have a deal about that. In fact, I have a podcast on you can find it white stones, my podcast, Apple and Spotify. It is I always ask at a crucial point of every organization. Is this challenge offense or defense? And the answer is always both at the same time. Because if you don't go on offense, you're going to lose the company. And so every turning point for every company is you don't go around thinking, well, this is offensive, this is defense, you're probably in trouble. If it's not a good offensive move. That's not helping protect everything else, or at least phase them out and understand. So I think ultimately, if you say is this, it's really both and almost all of it like, like AWS being added by Beezus. Was that offense or defense? Well, it was kind of defense so that he could have his have his data handled

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Caleb Roth  

properly. He was essentially just building something he needed, right? He wasn't thinking

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Kevin Miller  

this is a grand new offense. But and he says so we didn't even think we we were stunned. He himself made it into offense, because there was a vacuum in the market. It's phenomenal how you how all of it works. And that's why you teach from someone like Bezos and say, you have to change your mindset. And you have to be a knowledge worker that constantly says, What am I lessons from Amazon? What am I lessons from Walmart? Why is Walmart better position than anybody else right now against Amazon, really? With an installed base? Can they make it work? Can they really make a full transition? All of it is utterly fascinating. And all of us in business or nonprofits, you should take those lessons and say, how does that apply to what I'm doing today? Because all of it applies?

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David Chung  

I've got a question. So you brought up this concept of a knowledge worker quite a few times. Yeah. And I'm just curious, in the context of this podcast, what are some Habits of Successful knowledge worker?

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Kevin Miller  

Yeah, the great question, let's go with what a knowledge worker is. That's someone who's at the top of the game in their, in their area in their space. And so in essence, it's a knowledge the point of a knowledge worker in our era, it has changed radically, that it helps to even make that understanding. I mean, for 1000s of years, your grandparents grew rice, parents grew rice, you grew rice, and so only with the Industrial Revolution, and that it's things started changing. And then there are a few dominant players. Now, it's radically changed down to every individual skill set, because suddenly, my job can be replaced by AI. My job is changing because of the tools. There's not a doctor, a surgeon who's above 50 years old, who hasn't had their world upside down about microsurgery type techniques, et cetera, et cetera, and everything that's evolving. So what they learned at the end of medical school was absolutely state of the art no matter what the school, but what they're doing 30 years later is radically different. The person at the top of their game 30 years later, that surgeon is the one who was a knowledge worker that said, Oh, I graduated from highfalutin school on the East Coast, and I'm the best at age 30. I am the alter surgeon that got the stand in place, they would have been, they would have been just wiped away by anybody else who then morphed their knowledge and said, Well, that's okay for service. No, it's true of everybody. How about about car mechanics 30 years ago, car mechanic had the greasy Ray and a physical wrench, like, like you'd get from Sears. And that was the whole idea of what's you know, what is now is the computer guy, they've got an understanding the diagnostics and understanding astutely what the reading really is, well, that's just a radical change, what we'd consider an easy job a low level. And so everybody has to be a knowledge worker now. And that mindset, that habit. See, it's an open ended habit, you don't get to say see habits used to be I get in a groove. And I'm going to do that over and over again, I'm gonna be super good at it. The problem is all the grooves change. So the habit of a knowledge worker is it that you're habitually growing as a knowledge worker, it's not that you got it in a groove, and you do the same thing over and over for 40 years, it's that you say, I have a great foundation nobody else has, because I'm at the top of my game on imH 30. And then the knowledge worker is I will morph and be ahead of all the competitors for the next 30 years because the technological change alone, in virtually every job will dramatically altered. So the knowledge worker mindset is, I have the habit of morphing my skills all of the time. And that's very counter. That's very counter to most people's emotions. We want to stop the world. I should be rewarded. I've worked hard, I've arrived. I've arrived. I'm 40 years old, I have 2.3 children, all I really want to do is buy that vacation home and Aspen, Colorado and go skiing every year and make you know, good money well into six figures, and coastal. I deserve this coast for the next 2030 years. That job doesn't exist. Or you can go to Bangladesh and do the same thing over and over and grow rice and have subsistence living Yeah, if you want that you can go do it. But if you want to be in a society like ours, that's vibrantly service oriented and really bettering people's lives. See the whole idea of capitalism. I love this term is betterment. betterment of others who you serve it from a Christian viewpoint. I'm a steward of my customer. I want to better their lives. What am I doing? Did Amazon better your life? Yeah. The Google better your life? Die. Right? For someone my age, you guys are really young. But the Google completely changed how you how you can get information? Yeah. Did they better it? Yeah, huge deal. So if you're in a betterment society, which is what we should want to be in, you don't get to make it a static response that I don't everybody else has to change, but I don't. So the irony of habit is, you have to be in the habit of growing. And isn't saying the habit is oh, I can again, everybody. When you say habit, everybody goes, Oh, I'm fixing that. I'm gonna do that over and over and over and over again? Well, yeah, you grow over and over and over you, you grow and you discard growing, you discard growing, you discard.

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Caleb Roth  

So let's get practical with that. So I buy the argument. We talked about it in the pre show, we built software, and we spent a full year putting it together, putting the features together listening to our customers, or who we thought our customers would be, we finally rolled that out. And part of me thought we were going to be done. We might add a feature or two a year later. But the reality is for the next five years, we never stopped developing. It just we had to, if we didn't, competitors would have eaten our lunch. Software is changing, the platforms are changing, the operating systems are changing. So I understand the only constant is change. You can't just sit there and be brittle, right? Otherwise you will break. So if I understand that, how do I make sure I'm studying the right things in terms of evolving myself and staying ahead of the curve? What are some practical things that you've seen or that you would recommend for someone that's 22 just graduating college and ready to start their career?

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Kevin Miller  

It largely it all depends on who you're hanging out with. And that means are you hanging out with people that are static? Are you hanging out with people that get that and they're driving for the change? And the good news is it is doesn't have to be inside people you see in the flesh and blood that you work with, because now we have so much access to information. Are you studying Bezos? Are you studying what they're doing? What they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. You got to study you got to benchmark to the best. Man knows I talk a lot about benchmarking. I love this story. Okay came from Southwest. It's my, one of my favorite all time story. Southwest Airlines started. And they were buying they were a regional airline at that time. This is Texas only across the major cities in Texas. And they realized they wanted to be a very low cost supplier of airfare. And so they knew if they're gonna buy these planes, they couldn't just do five flights a day they need to get the productivity of their planes up. Herb Kelleher was a very colorful CEO of Southwest. And so he said, Okay, if we're gonna buy those airplanes for X dollars, we want them up in the air five to 10 times a day instead of five times a day or whatever, that ratio. What do we do to do that? And of course, he said, Well, let's get him in and out of the gate faster. So he wanted to go benchmark benchmark is all idea. Who do we compare to? What is best practices? So did he did he go benchmark against American Airlines or United Airlines? Which one? Neither he went through Indy 500, he sent us a he sent his executives to the Indy 500. And said, they turn around a piece of equipment and six seconds, I want you to go study that. Forget about American united, they're not in the game of turning around planes. Like we want to, we're gonna blow it away. So you benchmark outside your industry, a lot of our problems are you benchmark to your industry, because you think they're your competitors? Well, the way you leapfrog your competitors is you benchmark outside your industry with a relevant benchmark. And they came back and they did it and to this day, whether you're a fan of southwestern or not, they've had their share problems partly because of software. Big deal. Big deal. They relied on software too long instead of refreshing. Yep, it was brittle. Bebel software, okay, I fly them almost exclusively. Yeah. And they're great airline. They're my favorite still. But they still have real problems with that kind of stuff. Because organizations have problems with that. It's awfully hard to when you pull the trigger. But when he did that, in essence, they blew away the competition. And they had extremely low cost flights compared to everybody else. Extremely low cost flights because he benchmark outside the outside his his domain, because he realized our domain sucks at this

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Caleb Roth  

well, and they stand they standardized everything. So they only fly 730 sevens, they got the 700 series 800 series and the max that's it

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Kevin Miller  

to this day when you disembark from D plan, I think they call it when you D plane from Southwest. Where are the flight attendants? If you're on row 30? Where are the flight attendants?

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Matthew Osborn  

The front right?

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Kevin Miller  

No the work on the way back, they were already trying to turn the plane on a quick turn. So they're back on when you're I'm up, I'm up, I fly towards the back, hopefully the aisle middle over the wing. And in essence, you get the Euro 20 when I'm when I'm in row 25. And they're picking up making shirts. They are still in their culture. They're trying to turn that plane around faster. Well, that's a good thing in their culture. But they have other things. And it can't be the only thing. But I don't the other airlines I've never seen that happen. Other airlines complained about it. They complain about Southwest this and that. But they How come they don't benchmark even to southwest or go, Look, here's the deal. The creativity and the curiosity, one of things I really loved about Matt is tremendous and still has great curiosity, always poking around on stuff, wondering about this stuff. One of the best students I ever had about that particular thing, it's what an entrepreneur has to do. And that is, let me break the mold and benchmark wherever I need to. And that will cause things to open up. And if I can import it in legitimately I can blow away my industry for the short term. And then do you wait, no, you look for the next thing you can do. So you're always ahead of the industry.

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Caleb Roth  

I went to a small Christian college called Grace College and Indiana and they call that transferable skills. Yeah, Steve Jobs had a quote, it wasn't exactly about this. But he talks about connecting the dots he goes you sometimes life doesn't make sense. But when you look back at it, you can connect the dots and go, Oh, that's what I was learning way back here. So I've kind of stolen that phrase from him. But it's transferable skills. It's when you read books, when you meet other people outside of your industry. That's why it's important to network, you take a great idea is somewhere else and you literally just plagiarize it, you take it and go, Oh, that works there. I wonder if that could work in our business. And often that's where the greatest ideas come from. Just because you were able to connect something from over there to

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Kevin Miller  

see that's a vital part of what you asked about the knowledge worker knowledge worker is never bounded by all the rules that are based things they're supposed to be bounded by, especially within their industry or within their company. And when a turnaround person comes in, or any executive comes in their job is to say I want to accept the job. Above anything less than this, because we're competing with way too many folks that are not bounded by your rules. Why do you have these rules that are fictional? And so the very first, I have freshmen that come in at age 18, and my business class and I asked them the first week, are you? Are you ready to be a knowledge worker? And that means you got to do this mindset. I am pushing you into this mindset. It is a lifestyle mindset. And it is a habit, a flexible habit. It's not a grooved habit, except the groove is the growth that I will. If I haven't grown in my knowledge in the past year, then I'm not I don't have a good habit of a knowledge worker, I should have said, what if you're a great knowledge worker, you should be able to tell me what what things that I thought were core? Have I discarded the last three years? What am I added? Because these things were negotiable. Now, not because you can think of it at the moment. But if once you get in that thought, yeah, I've done that.

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Matthew Osborn  

I remember in business one on one, one of the things you had everyone do was back then at least I'm curious if you're doing the same thing is to get a subscription to I think it's the Wall Street Journal. And talking about becoming a knowledge worker everyday, you should be learning something new, you should be reading, you should be keeping up on current events. And we'd have to read out we'd have quizzes and stuff on that, do you still subscribe to that same way of that kind of habit of learning every day taking something and giving you a new knowledge every day and doing that? Do you have students still do that? Or have you adjusted the means that they're taking a knowledge each day?

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Kevin Miller  

Far better than that? I read the Wall Street Journal every day to do that. I mean, because I think, okay, I know everything. This is this is evolving. So fast, new technology, new strategies enabled by technology, smart, smart people doing new things, and repositioning they're doing, they're doing that kaleidoscope, like Herb Kelleher did for Southwest, and then they put it together differently. And you go, Whoa, I can use the same principle. So yes, all my classes going big one on one, they get a quiz. They read three Wall Street Journal articles, they'll do it every time they I get tested on them, so that they start realizing here's the real world, this isn't theory. And you can look at this, you need to absorb it and understand put it in your toolkit. But as I said, Matt, it's for me. I mean, that's what I do. I'm reading every day going, how do I need to shift? What do I do I need to discard some is this affirming my worldview? Yeah. Is this an affirmation? Or, Hey, I held, I just learned something new here. And I'm holding it in abeyance permitted, I don't know exactly what it means. This has happened to us all the time in technology. And that's, I mean, to look at that, that's pretty interesting. That's a little one off, I hadn't thought about it, then suddenly, something else happens. Hmm, that looks pretty similar. And we keep and we started, don't let me do some little homework on we find the third and the fourth, we realize, holy cow. This is common, this is true. And it can change my business. And if I don't do it, my competitors will be. So you're always testing against against what you know, and we never know enough. But what you know, and do I how do I adjust my saying it's a total affirmation, no problem, right? Or is it a totally new thing? And it's so far off base? Because somebody is trying to act like they're an innovator. And it's just it's not there? Or they're years ahead? You're with me?

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Matthew Osborn  

Yeah. So route, slight rabbit trail was still somewhat on the same topic. One thing I've been super curious of, and I haven't got a chance to talk with you about this yet is, of course, everyone's talking about AI. GBT all that stuff. How has that impacted if any, your ability to teach and what's your thought on? I'm sure students are using this, I'm sure students are trying to use this. I know, a ton of my assignments I would have had in college would have not been the same if we had the same access to information and day. I know you don't want to discourage students from using it. You want to have them use the current technology. But how do you? How do you balance that learning aspect, making sure they're actually learning while knowing that this is out there now? How have you adjusted how you give assignments and how you grade and how has that impacted you?

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Kevin Miller  

This is a profound question. And I will make the first observation that the AI of today is not the AI of two years from now. 10 years from now. So it's like what we just talked about a moment ago, where it's the first phase, it's obviously profound, but it's nowhere near its maturation. So to drive your stake in the wrong one. Okay. This is clear, this is our path. No, the manner it's like any technology manifestation 10 years from now could be so far dramatic that you with me here. Okay. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, I'll give you I mean, it has it is very crude in many ways. When we did an internal faculty training, the Dean of theology got up and he said, Okay, here's what I did. I went in had GP, GBT, I asked them, What are the accomplishments of the Trump administration? And it came back with a message that said, we do not take positions on topics like this.

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Matthew Osborn  

Yeah, they always get those little certain questions. So anyway, answers, what are the what are

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Kevin Miller  

the accomplishments of the Biden administration and they listed 25 accomplishments so chat. GPT is built by human beings and it has its own biases. They were the same within seconds this the similar question was politically biased against one administration versus another. They were perfectly willing to what name all the accomplishments of an administration they apparently found more favor with? Well, that's a very revealing thing. So I, there's a come to in a minute, one data point, I just read this and sent it to all my colleagues in the School of Business. The computer science profit, I think it was Vanderbilt. His all of his computer science majors are very threatened by it, they're going to do we just waste our time on a degree because we're going to be replaced. Yeah. And so he actually created a fake student. I can't remember the name, but it was something like George Peter Thompson, which stands for GPT. And he had a bunch of graders. And they he gave assignments out and he had chat, do that. And then he had his independent graders. Grade. No, it was, it was GBT as the answer, because he wanted to eliminate the great bias, you're with me? Brilliant. It's a way a good testing would be right. So it came back and the first class that he had sorry about that first class that he had, it scored lower than every other student on this assignment. And the second one, it was in the bottom third, and he announces his students, and they were thrilled. But I caution you that was the first phase of AI. And so here's the way here's where I will tell you. I don't have much threat at CCU. And where I'm teaching at this Christian university, because chat GPT is not written by Christians who have any understanding of integrating the faith. So because I asked such integrated questions about the faith, there's no a chat GBT is gonna it's not gonna get an automated response. Yeah, it just doesn't understand the level I'm teaching at. Because most Christians don't talk about integration of the faith. They, they compartmentalize the faith, there's work. And here's my face on Sunday. And I as you know, I don't do any of that. So I'm not worried about it in the short run. But here's what I really told them. I announced this, I said, here's your problem. Chat. GP TL T is still an averaging. It may be a high average, but they're pulling from huge amounts of sources and they may be super fast. But the reality is the problems of tomorrow are like the Herb Kelleher story. Chad GPT is about to pull from the Indy 500 for an aircraft company, you with me here, because that's an association, that the that only Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines made by human curiosity empowered by the Holy Spirit in my world. And therefore chat. GPT is programmed by people who are often analytical programmers who make certain associations, therefore, you have like any program, the bias of the programmer involved, and I tell them, you've got two problems. One is you have a bias that, that you need to be able to ride herd on. And the second thing is, is that this is going to backfire on you, if you start doing this, and you get in the habit of this, what's gonna happen is, you're gonna have and you're really pleased, because it's better work than you can do. And you ship that to you're talking about people using chat, GPT, chat, GPT, including in the workplace, and you do it and you start shipping stuff to your boss, then you get into a meeting with the client. And your boss turns to you and says, Well, you know, you wrote about all this, how'd that work? And because you created a lion, and you didn't really even understand, because you were so lazy, you did it, you're basically cheating your own boss. And then suddenly, did you really go back and research it after the chat JPD and get all the ins and outs and improve at some because of the weaknesses? Or did you get that like, like people who do shortcuts, you just said, Oh, it's gonna work. And the reality is, you do that for five years. You're not a knowledge worker. You're a you're a searcher on a search and

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Caleb Roth  

you're outsourcing some of your outsourcing then,

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Kevin Miller  

I'm telling you know, if you want to be relegated to nobody, when you're age 35 Just spend 15 years doing chat GPD because that for anybody that's worth working for, that will not carry the water in the long haul, no matter how sophisticated again, because the human brain brings associations. And I think in my view, John 1426, the power of the Holy Spirit brings Association, as we've talked in classes and how it it brings associations that only God can bring in the human ingenuity can bring and chat GPT will that chat GPT it'll become phenomenal and replace a lot of things like the car mechanic issue will be it will replace a lot of things. But for the true knowledge worker who's trying to pull it all together, applies themselves to it, and then does human interaction explore meaning what they're doing and where they're doing and train other people. What do you do to train other people in chat? GPD gave you the answer. And they asked you a question. And you go, I'll get back to you on that. That's going to be the biggest response in corporate meetings. 1010 years from now is the personal go. They asked him a question about something that came from chat GPT, or it's a club and they'll go, let me think about that. And pretty soon everyone will know what that means. Yeah, it means you don't really have a clue what you're talking about. And you defer to you to go do more research. And so, in my class, as you recall, I can't remember what if I was doing this at the level when you took my class at the senior level? But did I do the groups the HBr? Groups? Yes. Yes, you did. Yeah. So that see, that's where somebody's talking about the presenting in front of the class with a group that will Yeah, so we have a group and I make them read, just explain

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Matthew Osborn  

that because that was, that was one of the most interesting things that the class I took, because there was no way for us to cheat around that. Or to figure out some loophole. It was something where you actually had to every class tells you read a chapter every week, very few classes. Can I explain the concept, please? Yeah, so he's the way he did his capstone class, we're all reading the same book, like normal classes do, we have to read a certain chapter. But as you guys know, a lot of times you're not reading the chapter every week, sometimes you'll read four chapters, very few people do the actual reading, what he would do is the beginning of every class, he'd select at random, you can be chosen multiple times, you could be chosen single time, but you would be chosen, you have come in front of the class and teach everyone the chapter that you read that week. So every single week, I'd be prepared to present the class and teach whatever chapter was supposed to be written. And so there was no way you could skip reading that week, because there's a very good chance you'd be called up to the front. And then you're like you said, we've been asking Chad GPT, for the answers, it's not coming to you when you're sitting up at the front. And at the

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Kevin Miller  

end, you're corresponding with other people. And they're bringing up points. Yeah. Which is what their normal human interaction is. They're saying, Well, what about this, when you thought about that, where at what happened here, then I would substitute your team members, you had to carry the thread forward from your key team member. So there are four teams, you'd have a total of 12 people in an hour. And you had to build on the creativity and the curiosity from people that are at all prep? Well, that the chat GPT will never work for you, because you went in not doing the work. People ask you what's the substance of why you said that? And so I don't really want someone to say, like Matt would have said, well, that's Amazon. And that's what they did with AWS with Amazon Web Services. And he did it off the cuff because he knew from his reservoir, and that have information and data and how he already process when someone asks him a specific question, he calls it up in response to this specificity. So what's going to happen is, it's a dumbing down at an elite level. But everybody shares the same data. And then the Herb Kelleher is always win, because they're the ones that really were creative, that really didn't depend on. I mean, this is how it really works. It's a constant, never ending deal. And the person who's on top of that is used to all that discarding and then we're used to a lot of effort that is failed. You know, Thomas Edison is, you know, I do a podcast, you can go listen to this. It's really profound. And his whole point was, every failure is a data point. This is awesome. Every Well, anybody who does software realizes Well, yeah, but but not when you did your first year, you thought, No, we're gonna get everything perfect. And then you realize some of the assumptions you had were failures in your understanding that I needed to have unbridled stuff, and I should have been more encompassing. And so Edison basically just kept saying, I know, failure, failure, failure, you're looking for failure. It's your friend. Failure is your friend. And so here's the beautiful thing about capitalism. Everyone else's failure is your friend go study the failures alongside the one. So I want to study success. I want to study failures. Do I want to find out who was arrogant, like black blockbuster? And that's why we bring it up here. Why did they fail? Am I falling into my falling into similar ways of thinking? If they have arrogance, because a human psyche is always about arrogance? You know, I've worked really hard I deserve this. I'm blockbuster were winners. Nope. Look, we got 9000 stores, who's going to even build 500 stores? And the answer, they were cracked. Nobody ever built 500 stores after 2002 they didn't need do nobody ever build another store for a video store. So they were asking the wrong question, because of their arrogance and hubris of well, you know, we're the top of the world. Anybody who does anything technologically and they're midstream, like they were with tapes, then they weren't aware that technology could really displace them really, when we were getting on the internet for years before that, I mean real Oh, well, the noise is going to handle that much traffic and to really show a video and that's pretty foundational that sooner or later that would would happen don't know when so this gets to your habits and I'd love your topic for your your podcast, it always gets back to habits and the reality is humility humility, humility, is it you never know And that no matter what, you know, you go to work every day going, I don't know enough. I need to be thinking, researching, pounding on this constantly. And the the sheer distribution of all the people working the same problem means somebody's probably solved it.

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Matthew Osborn  

So we have one more question I want to ask you real fast. So for people that are not believers, for people that are going about business, they want to be successful in business. Can they apply the same principles of the knowledge worker in the same way you're talking about? Or how, how would you say that's different? Or is that something that's easily overlapped? Or someone's listening to this? This? I don't know about the Christian stuff, the faith stuff, I just want to be better business. I want to learn these habits, is that the exact same application they can do to their life to become a knowledge worker?

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Kevin Miller  

Yeah. Yeah, it is, I guess God created human beings in His image. So he's equipped everybody with curiosity, ability to process in varying degrees. I mean, Steve Jobs was not a believer. And, and, frankly, so I'm not looking at saying, you are automatically better if you're a Christian, you are, you do have an additional equipping, that I think is really, really helpful and important. And I would invite anybody who's not a Christian to say, maybe ought to look into this. Yeah, I would encourage that. So go check it out. But inventors and people that are great at this have a gifting they've nurtured that's what and in fact, Steve Jobs is a great example, who where he loved where he was with PCs for a long, long time. And Apple was was was plateaued, because he wanted to be just the key guys, for all the nerds with a 2% of the, of the of the appliances. Then when then after he got kicked out of Apple, if you recall the history, and he got fired. And he did Pixar did genius stuff. And then he came back and he goes, this isn't good enough. I want to be the innovator, and become much more democratic, where everybody uses it. So yeah, he did his air, the air gear. And then he did he realized, wait a minute, let's pull all these other ideas out and stop doing the flip phone when they I saw the interview, he probably didn't do it. They said why are you doing phones? Everybody's done fantasies as well. It's not the phone, you're thinking about that? I'm gonna do. Yeah. So he is not a believer. But he developed the skills of being super curious and how things fit together that are new benchmarking well outside. So all the same principles can be applied. I want to encourage everybody, you can be great at business people have been great a business and aren't believers. But it has a terminus of how valuable it is. Because when you die, you have a destiny, you need to be thinking about

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Matthew Osborn  

Yeah, no, I like that. I like the the knowledge worker habit of always learning kind of Caleb, you said this in the very first intro we did where you said, you're the same person each day except for the things you've read and the people you've talked to. And it's, it's like you said, if you look back your life the past few months, and you think to yourself, I haven't learned anything, I haven't implemented anything new, then you obviously need to change the day to day habits of what you're doing to incorporate new knowledge incorporate, just like you said, taking random things, it doesn't make sense at first, but you have it in the back of your mind, it's sitting there and then suddenly overlaps with something you've learned in the past. And it suddenly makes sense. And so I liked that idea of the habit of becoming a knowledge worker and figuring out ways to implement that into your life each day to make sure you're constantly learning. Because your business, like you said, is being taken apart whether you like to sing or not, it's being taken apart. You have to fight for that every single day to keep that growing. So I really liked that. What what is your podcast name? And where are people able to find that right now and

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Kevin Miller  

find it it's Whitestone podcast, one word Whitestone. Podcasting, find out an apple and Spotify are on my website, which is whitestone.org, one word whitestone.org. And I have a couple of seminars on there that are about number one lasting greatness seminar, which I do, which is a Christian application of all this. And then last thing, greatness thing was the seminary probably well, you may have seen part of that maybe when you came Caleb, but also did the you know the series about platforms. Maybe you saw that. And I know you definitely talked about that the platform part can be of interest to anybody, whether you're Christian or not, because I compare this has been five, six years ago, but it holds up really well because the principles were there. But it compares Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the kingdom of God. And because they're all platforms that give away massive value for free. That's what Facebook does. It's free. Google is free. Amazon is better than free, because they actually lower the price of goods to you. It's actually better than free even though you said well, it wasn't free. I spent money on it. But at the price of goods in delivery and effort, it's better than free. And then I compare it and it may be of interest even if you're an unbeliever why the kingdom they've really taken the whole idea of the free grace of God for eternity or by manifesting at the cross. And those three companies who were all unbelieving companies don't even realize they have stolen the idea or they have stumbled I should not still stumbled into the idea by the human ingenuity of following the model that's been 2000 years old about about free when you can we can deliver the gospel to someone from Bangladesh. And it's just as valuable to them as it is to someone in America

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Matthew Osborn  

in contact with you, how can someone get in contact with you if they wanted to learn one of these your website? The best way to go to Yeah, yeah,

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Kevin Miller  

we can go to the whitestone.org. Or my email is K Miller. That's my first initials K mail, as in Kevin K. miller@whitestone.org.

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Matthew Osborn  

Perfect. All right.

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Caleb Roth  

I'll just leave it with one last analogy, Kevin, thanks so much for coming in and spending this time with us it was it was a delight to have you. When I worked for the orthopaedic company, our tagline was never stop moving. Because if you stop moving, it's terrible for your muscles, your joints, etc. So the key to keep them going is to actually just keep moving. And it's a little counterintuitive. You go Oh, My knee hurts, I need to rest. But the point is, just keep going. And the analogy I want to leave people with is imagine a treadmill, just moving one or two miles an hour, not very fast. But we always have this mentality in business or in life that we can just stay still and rest for a minute. When you're doing that. You're actually going backwards. Yep. So you're either moving forwards, you're either being curious, you're pursuing the edges of knowledge, or you're moving backwards. So my friend Stay curious. And until next week, we'll catch you on the Stacking Habits pod. Thanks

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