In this episode, Lauren Jones, Founder of Leap Advisory Partners, and Rob Mann, VP of Sales at Newbury Partners, join us to unpack trends and the transformative power of technology in staffing. Lauren is a powerhouse in the staffing industry, known for her expertise in workforce technology, change management, and female leadership advocacy, while Rob is regarded as a dynamic figure in the staffing industry, renowned for his expertise in sales and recruitment automation. In our conversation, we delve into industry mergers, sales strategies, technology optimization, and the role of AI in staffing. We discuss the exciting new partnership between Leap and Newbury, how the different companies complement each other, and why it is a one-stop shop. Explore why aligning recruitment and sales teams is essential, the trend of optimization, and important considerations when investing in AI technology. Gain insights into why your tech stack is a living organism, experimenting with new technologies, actionable strategies for integrating AI into your recruitment practices, and more. Tune in to discover exciting staffing trends and how AI is reshaping the recruitment landscape with Lauren Jones and Rob Mann!
[0:01:16.0] DF: Hello everyone, thank you for joining us for another episode of The Staffing Show. Today, I am super excited to be joined by Lauren Jones and Rob Mann, from Leap Advisory Partners and hosts of You Own the Experience. Lauren and Rob, super excited to have you guys here, I think everybody in the industry knows you. You guys know everybody, you guys have been around and you’re doing great stuff with your podcast, some incredible things at Leap and I think I have some exciting news to dig in and talk to us about with Newbury.
So, maybe we can start with a little bit of background on who you are, what’s going on with Newbury, and then we’ll talk about some trends in staffing today.
[0:01:50.5] LJ: Well, so excited to be here, David. Thank you so much for having us. Yes, so lots of exciting things as we come into 2024. We have been complementary, not competitors really but complementary vendors or service providers in the staffing arena and so, on March 5th of 2024, we made our merge official, and put out the press release, super excited, Leap is getting a little bit of a name refresh. So, there’s a little more synergy between the brands as sister companies now.
So, it will be Newbury Partners and Leap Advisory Partners. So, just to – keeping the “Leap” that’s really, really important, we enjoy a neutral agnostic reputation and Newbury obviously is associated with being the Bullhorn experts, which they should be exceedingly proud of. So, we complemented each other really well. Even before the merge, we shared a number of projects and we bookend one another really nice.
So, Leap will be responsible for all of the advisory work and Newbury is the doer, they’re the implementor, they’re the developer, they’re the optimizer, and then we both share a passion for learning and development, training adoption. So, it’s a beautiful complimentary merge and we couldn’t be more excited. I’ll put this on the air, Chris Scouten is the most patient man on the planet.
[0:03:17.3] RM: Yeah, well, we had Chris on the podcast too. Hi everybody, super excited again to be here. I don’t think I’ve been – it’s going to be like three years now, David, since I was last…
[0:03:25.5] LJ: Hot minute.
[0:03:27.4] RM: Yeah, so, super excited to be here and grateful to be on with Lauren so that more audiences can experience our shenanigans if you let us start getting – going here.
[0:03:37.4] LJ: I think that’s cute though, everybody knows us because of the “Shenans.”
[0:03:42.7] RM: Yeah, we’re quite – I don’t even know what the word is, so I’m just going to skip past it but yeah, Newbury, like, I mean, it’s such a natural thing for us to work together but also, we had Chris on the podcast and his comment, Lauren, when he was like, “You guys only get to hear this once a week, I get it every day of…”
[0:04:03.0] LJ: We’re a lot.
[0:04:04.7] RM: Working together. So yeah, anyway.
[0:04:07.6] LJ: Yeah.
[0:04:07.9] RM: I thought that was quite funny.
[0:04:10.1] DF: And just so – because I know you guys have had – I mean, you guys are experts in the identifying, building tech and like, figuring out what should be in our tech stack, optimizing tech stack, we talked a little bit more about what – what are the advisory services that you guys are offering today?
[0:04:22.8] LJ: Great question, we’d love to tell you. So, on the Leap side, we, again, are going to still help firms. We call ourselves customer advocates, really, so we’re going to continue to look at data, we’re going to continue to look at resources, we’re going to continue to look at customers holistically, and then make a determination as to what is really the best technology to help them scale.
And scale is really the name of the game when we’re having these conversations with agencies that have reached an inflection point or just starting out and want to make sure they do it right. You know, if you’re talking about valuation, the tech stack is now a big part of a good valuation. So, if you’re a newer agency to the market, you’ve been in the market for a few years, and again, you’re at that growth inflection point, technology is going to be a big differentiator.
And so, you’ll continue to use Leap for building that tech stack, we will then turn it over to our sister company to implement it with Newbury and all of their experts ensuring good configuration. We’ll help them map out the business process and then we come back around together to optimize and ensure adoption. So, again, there are these just, complementary skillsets that allow us to be and offer a full spectrum of service offerings, this is like the one-stop shop.
[0:05:43.2] DF: That’s great, that’s great, so instead of you know, you’re coming in, looking at what’s going on, how to optimize then and then saying, “All right, here’s the plan.” Now, Newbury team implement –
[0:05:50.6] LJ: Now, Newbury team, go do.
[0:05:52.1] DF: Yeah, that’s great.
[0:05:53.1] RM: We get the hard job. We have the hard job, David, for sure.
[0:05:56.0] DF: You’re a team now.
[0:05:57.1] LJ: Yeah. It’s a hard job, I’ll give him that.
[0:06:01.0] DF: Well, thank you for the background there and I think, what our audience is probably excited to hear about is and I know you guys are always forward-looking and what’s going on in staffing. What are some of the key trends that you’re seeing in 2024?
[0:06:12.2] RM: Well, we’re going to start with sales, right? I actually sat down with some partners last night that are highly focused on top of the funnel. We’ve been seeing more and more partners coming in, top of the funnel, for candidates and for also engaging with your clients or your prospective clients but this really happened in 2023, right? We saw that flip when – well, we saw the statistical side of it when Bullhorn released their GRID report and we saw the number one priority for firms, was finding new business, finding new job orders.
So, that happened in 2023, nothing has really changed. What we saw before 2023 was you know, everyone was focused on the candidate, getting candidates, right? And now, what we’re seeing is that you still need candidates, I think it was ASA or I think it’s healthcare, like, we got so many – we got so many conferences in the middle or end of the year that like, they’ll blend together when I’m looking at and thinking about stats.
But there was like a graph line of focused on client, you know, new client, acquisition, and then that finally met the line for new candidate acquisition. So, they kind of both are at this high priority point and we were ordered. We were fantastic order-takers for a very long time, right? Where we just saw this, you know, we called somebody up, especially during the pandemic, and they were like, “We need your help.”
But that was happening before the pandemic as well. So, we’re really good order takers, and now, we need to start flexing muscles that we, you know, as SaaS sales or as people who have been kind of having to prospect and go to market in a very strategic tactical way with tooling, right? With some tools are doing and so I’m really excited to see tools coming into the prospecting for new client side of the house, where like, I would say I worked at Herefish so, Bullhorn Automation, had that.
It wasn’t fully flushed out to do as strongly as the candidate side was but it was there and if you were clever enough to set up your CRM to – or Bullhorn to take advantage of it, you could. Other systems have CRMs but we have really robust tools in the SaaS and e-commerce world to engage and it’s – we’re going to start to see, I feel like more of those tools and a lot of training and enablement coming into staffing and recruiting, at least throughout 2024. Lauren, agree? Disagree? How did I do?
[0:08:29.8] LJ: Agree. I mean, sales has been a big focus. You know, we saw a depressed market exiting 2023 coming into 2024 and so you know, it – the hustle is on and we needed to hone and sharpen those skills. So, there’s been a lot of focus on retraining salespeople, putting really good processes together, ensuring, and from an optimization perspective, we’ve done a ton of projects that are really looking at the sales process, is this the right process and is it reflected in my system through configuration?
And more often than not, as a matter of fact, I’d say, about 90% of the projects we’ve had, the new sales process is not reflected in the system of record and so, we were doing all of the sales optimization projects to ensure that if you’re going to get adoption, you have to make sure your process is represented in the system that you’re using because if it’s not, you’re going to end up in Monday or Trello or ancillary spreadsheets, you know, documenting all of these things.
So, it’s not just sales as a focus, it’s sales as a process and optimizing that, which leads us perfectly into this next trend.
[0:09:38.7] RM: Can I get a – yeah. Woah, woah, wait, take it easy. Hey, I have a quick story. I have a quick story before we get to that second trend. I’ve been working with these customers for – I work with a staffing company for a long time, probably since 2018, 2019, and saw him at Exec. Forum in Vegas and they were like, “Hey, we just implemented HubSpot, and we’re looking to improve our sales.”
So, two weeks later, I got on the phone with them. I’m like, “Hey guys, what are you going to use HubSpot for?” And they’re like, “Oh, just our website.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay, so like, what are you guys doing on Bullhorn? What are you guys doing in Bullhorn for your sales strategy?” And they were just like – their mind exploded. We have an engagement with them where we’re going to help them understand.
We’re going to understand the pros and cons of using CRM prospecting for new clients in HubSpot and Bullhorn, so either, we’re going to evaluate both and then we’re going to go and work through that configuration of Bullhorn with them, or the HubSpot to Bullhorn workflow. All that to say is, if you find yourself having to reevaluate how you’re selling or getting, acquiring new customers, you’re not alone. Besides, for us, there’s some really good people to talk to about this, so.
[0:10:50.3] LJ: Yeah, I do agree.
[0:10:52.5] DF: I’ve heard from a handful of customers, they’re pretty consistently, it’s like, “Oh, well, we do everything talent-oriented and our ATS and then we have HubSpot or some other tool for the sales team.”
[0:11:00.9] LJ: Right.
[0:11:02.1] DF: And yeah, I’m like, “Are they integrated, connected?” “No, not at all.”
[0:11:06.3] LJ: And that’s –
[0:11:07.0] RM: We can help with that too.
[0:11:08.0] LJ: Unfortunate.
[0:11:08.8] RM: That’s why I bring it up.
[0:11:10.2] LJ: Yeah, that right there, as an advisor, that is the biggest red flag. When you have a disassociated or disconnected sales organization to your recruiting organization and they’re not collaborating, you have longer time to fill, you have longer time to submit because we’re not working together to determine, “What are you selling, what am I recruiting, are they in harmony, and will I be ready when you close that deal?”
So, having these two disconnected systems is red flag number one. You need integrated – there is no transformation without integration, I’ve said it for the last 10 years, you are going to find yourself with a much better, more cohesive culture if you’re both living in the same system.
[0:11:51.9] DF: Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more and I always find it just amazing to think about having – it’s like, “Oh, you have a hundred-million-dollar business, you have two completely separate databases for the inside of it.” And it’s like, “Oh.” But you know, I think one of the other trends that you, Lauren, yesterday, brought up was just the idea of optimization.
It’s something we’ve been talking about in this podcast a lot is just, doing more with less is a trend in the staffing industry. So, why don’t we talk a little bit about what you’re seeing from that perspective?
[0:12:19.2] LJ: Yeah, the second trend as we come into 2024, and dare I say, you know, it was already starting to be a part of the conversation last year. This idea of tech bloat and so, “How do I get rid of the tech that is duplicative? How do I ensure that I’m spending the amount of money that I should be spending but I’m not wasting anything?” And so, there is a real focus on removing waste and tech bloats from the tech stack, and part of that is a few things, right?
So, you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got a good clear idea of your vendor partner’s roadmap. When you don’t have clarity or insight or you’re not being a true vendor partner working with them every quarter to determine what that roadmap looks like, you will not be able to determine if you’re going to see duplicative functionality because what if the vendor that you’re using today has a specific function that will be available in two sprints which is a month or a fortnight.
You know, we’ll go tell Taylor Swift on you, you know? Two weeks. Yeah, I’m obsessed with Post Malone’s Fortnite song. So, I can’t get it out of my head but anyhoodles, it’s how do we –
[0:13:26.8] RM: Do you know how long a fortnight is by the way? Wait, hold on. How long is a fortnight?
[0:13:29.7] LJ: Yeah, it’s two weeks. Two weeks.
[0:13:31.8] RM: Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Yes.
[0:13:33.8] LJ: Two weeks, yeah, a sprint or a fortnight, right? So, you’ve got to stay connected to your vendor partner to make sure you understand what’s on their roadmap so you don’t inadvertently go and buy something that is on their roadmap. Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have 27 throats to choke and you just had the required number to manage your tech stack?
And I think that’s the other concern when it comes to optimization is, just the sheer number of vendors that you have to manage in order to stay competitive. I think, everyone right now is very frustrated by that but I can assure you, listeners, that’s not going away. You know, it doesn’t matter if you’re on Salesforce, it doesn’t matter if you’re on HubSpot, it doesn’t matter if you’re on Bullhorn or some other products.
You are going to have ancillary vendors to provide specific technical needs. You know, think of it like the Apple store on your phone, right? There’s an app for that if you need something. That – that’s just simply not going to change as technology continues to expand and grow and so, optimization means a couple of things, you’re removing tech bloat, making sure that you have documented business processes, that are the shortest distance between A and Z.
Because, as you scale, those processes change, and we have to make sure that every quarter, we’re looking and we’re honing or we’re making it better. Optimization also means you need somebody running the ship. Do you have someone that is managing all of this, and if you don’t, can you outsource that? That’s another thing about optimization is we’re counseling and advising customers today on what can you outsource comfortably and responsibly, and what is better suited to be in-house.
And so, we’ve built a number of programs, the client success package being one of them, to essentially, be software support as a service because there are many agencies, particularly in this downed, soft economy, right? Where agencies have laid off their Bullhorn administrators or what is tech stack administrators or they have deprioritized that as a hiring priority or they simply have had that as a shared role amongst many people and that puts you at a disadvantage.
And so, how could we help? Our vision was, how do we help you be better at a reduced cost? And so we put the CSP, customer success package, together to do just that. You can now outsource the tech stack management and oversight and strategy and all of those things, to ensure you don’t have those problems at the end of the year.
[0:16:10.9] DF: Oh, that’s great and I do think just on – yeah, the trend of optimization not only is it you know, number one, like how do we get more sales but number two is how do we do more with less, how do we get more productivity fors recruiter, and how do we make sure that the tech is delivering on the outcomes that we purchased it for? It’s honestly when I look at the future of staffing, I feel like this is going to be, and everybody says this, something that any downturn slow down sharpens the tool next to that.
A year from now I think the companies that are investing in tech, investing in their strategy, and spending the time upfront are going to be the ones that are accelerating twice as fast you know, when things start to swing back a little bit more to the normal state.
[0:16:53.4] LJ: Agreed.
[0:16:53.9] DF: With that, I know you guys had another big trend that I think we talk about, or you know, we talk about ten times a day in every podcast.
[0:17:00.7] LJ: Oh, God.
[0:17:02.8] RM: I was going to use this as my example of duplicative software, so every platform has it now. So, go ahead, Lauren, I know.
[0:17:10.8] LJ: Oh, AI, again, I can’t go a podcast, I can’t go a meeting, I can’t go a conference without talking about AI. No, look, I am obsessed with technology. Obsessed, I eat, sleep, drink it, I look at almost a product a day, I am fully in for it. If Elon wants to put the chip in my head, like I’m here for it. Like, I am down.
[0:17:34.2] RM: You’re out of your damn mind, woman.
[0:17:35.6] LJ: I am out of my damn mind. I – just I’m obsessed with this idea of technology to help make us better. However, there’s a lot of noise right now and I don’t think all AI products are fully fleshed out, number one, number two, there’s a lot of products that boast AI and it’s not really AI and so, we have to get really discerning about the products that we are going to invest in when it pertains to AI.
You know, my focus has been just to educate your people, turn them into prompt engineering experts. If you do that, you’ll be prepared to leverage the tools that when they’re ready for you, you’ll rocket ship right past it because you know how to leverage these tools appropriately and sometimes, I have a love-hate relationship with the media I think as everybody else does because they sensationalize or sort of fear monger, “AI is going to take, you know, 80,000 jobs.”
But the other side of that story is it will create 90,000 jobs. There’s a net improvement in employment as it pertains to AI. So, AI is not going to replace you but somebody that knows how to use it will, so educate your people today. It’s advancing very quickly. If we look at how Claude has developed just over the last year and the amount of data that it can take in, I mean, it was that you capped out at like 200 words that it could consume and now, it’s over 75,000.
I mean, it’s moving so, so quickly. You’ve got other agencies that are already into RAG, which is you know, AI making interpretive decisions based on the data that it has and which I think is brilliant and amazing but I would like to see firms walk before they run and so again, you need to have a discerning eye if you’re going to invest in AI today and have a counselor, an adviser along with you just to make sure that we’re asking the right questions, and we’re looking at the right things and we’re looking at the right applications.
I was talking with Ashley Anderson from ClearEdge yesterday and I think there’s this – you know, I talked to a couple of customers who are sort of fearful of AI that it is going to really impair the experience, and if you look, Rod from Glide has got some great stats on you know, Gen Z in particular giving more information and talking for longer periods of time to bots than they would a human.
So, this latest generation is accustomed to talking to bots, and as a matter of fact, this, in some cases more comfortable doing so, and then when we talk about experience, you know, application and where it’s applied is really, really important. If we want to maintain the humanity of our industry, we’ve got to make sure that we’re applying these things in the right places and I think that’s different for everybody. That’s where the secret sauce is, I think.
[0:20:23.5] DF: Yeah, and are there any kind of immediate use cases that you are seeing bubble up from AI perspective? Like, when you are going in and consulting where you’re like, “Hey, this.” And I am sure it is different for every business because it depends on what challenges they are trying to solve but any exciting movements forward or any use cases that you guys have on a day-to-day basis that have changed your life.
[0:20:42.2] RM: I’m still seeing pretty status quo the stuff that we’re experiencing in ’24 dated. I haven’t seen anything that’s like mind-blowing. I did sit down with the guys from SalesStream yesterday, Lauren, and they could actually read notes with their AI and write the appropriate follow-up email directly for each person, like the theme is the same. Like, “Hey, we want to go sell this.” But the conversation is a little bit different based on actual stuff in a CRM, which I thought was probably a little bit more advanced than the average Gemini, “Hey, clean up my show notes.” Which I do every week when I write the show notes like that, so.
[0:21:17.4] LJ: Yeah, I think that there are two areas that I get a little giddy about. One is top of the funnel, right? So, I think the days of offshore, nearshore, sourcing offshore, near-shore sourcing, see? My mouth is not awake yet, it’s 7 o’clock here, okay? But I think the idea of offshore-nearshore recruiting or sourcing, excuse me, is going to be a thing of the past because we can now leverage AI to do some of those meaningful prescreens.
Look at a product like Glide, which I’m a big fan of that can programmatically distribute the job and then interpret that job and ask the appropriate prescreening questions, and then deliver those sourced candidates to recruiters. I think that’s really, really fantastic, and then I think one of the other areas that I see most impactful is the interpretation dissection of conversation.
You know, tools like Gong, tools like Ringover, a CloudCall that are taking all of the conversational data and making it so easy for recruiters to go back and ensure that we don’t have to ask the same question again. You can just have AI come back and ask AI, “What distance will this candidate work? Have I talked to this candidate about distance before?” or “Hey,” or “What have you,” and it will call through all of that conversation.
And tell you, “Yes, you’ve asked that question before, and here’s the answer.” How great would it be if your recruiters weren’t repeating themselves and calling candidates over and over with the same question?
[0:22:49.1] RM: Well, I think what you’re getting at is this idea of like reading through unstructured data, which –
[0:22:55.0] LJ: Correct.
[0:22:55.1] RM: Is super exciting, right? So, I was in New York City for a Salesforce event and they were talking about Einstein last week and the thing that blew my mind is like they just ask. They were like, “Hey, show me all the candidates who said that they’ve done X procedure before?” or if they’re at a hotel, “Hey, show me all of the guests ever that have done this activity or this, you know, excursion?” If you are on a cruise ship and it returned it, right?
And then you could build, like you don’t have to go sorting or remember or have static lists of like, “These people are licensed in California and they are ER physicians” right? That was something that I had. You can just do – so Tableau, you can actually ask Tableau to create reports for you, like, “Hey, Tableau, tell me all the guests that mentioned AI in the podcast?” and like the Tableau report builder will come back with all that info.
But that’s what we’re talking about, being able to rapidly recall from unstructured data is something that I am excited about, recall and do things with unstructured data.
[0:23:54.4] LJ: I think that to me is industry-changing.
[0:23:56.9] DF: It’s pretty incredible. I mean, I feel like I’ve went from, “Okay, this is a nice thing” or, “This is cool.” Something to play around with, I use it more than Google or probably about the same as Google at this point where it’s at night and when I am sitting on my phone and I want to answer to something, I don’t go to Google anymore, I go to ChatGPT. I’m going like sometimes I have to chat the answer, man, but it is a faster way to get a response and not have to deal with a bunch of ads, yet. Not yet.
[0:24:22.2] RM: Yeah, I like the – well, you know, you need something for free, you’re the customer but I do like Gemini, well, I use Gemini, and it gives me like a list of like six or seven things pretty quickly. Like right now my WiFi is – I messed up with this new computer so it gave me like a whole checklist of things that I could go check on my computer to make sure that my WiFi is functioning correctly, which I appreciated, so.
[0:24:44.0] DF: It’s insane. I use it, we’re HubSpot channel partners, been on HubSpot forever, and instead of going to HubSpot’s knowledge base, I go to ChatGPT and ask it how to do something in HubSpot and it is a faster, more concise answer most of the time. I don’t think this is wild, so I mean I –
[0:25:01.4] RM: Yeah, it’s doing a good job of boiling it down for us, which –
[0:25:04.5] LJ: Yeah.
[0:25:04.5] DF: Yeah, yeah.
[0:25:05.2] RM: There’s a – well, HubSpot has got some news too. So, they might be, HubSpot might be the content king of Google soon. Anyway, there’s so much cool stuff going on.
[0:25:14.6] LJ: There’s so-so-so much cool stuff and again, unstructured data, being able to summarize all of that I think is just going to allow us – think about our industry, right? Where billions upon hundreds of billions of dollars industry, it’s 700 billion I think was the last number, something crazy like that but we’ve created this entire industry as a middleman, right? We’re a middleman.
We’re a logistics company, right? We get the packages, we drive them out, right? And same thing, we get the talent, we drive that out. How are we as an industry going to continue to show our value if you know, we are going to replace that humanity, that experience with a bunch of AI? We won’t be around long if we do that and that’s why I say that application of AI, that’s the secret sauce, where you do those things.
And that data interpretation allows us to elevate the experience and sure, we’re not asking duplicative questions, and sure, you were giving the right information, “I see back in March we had this conversation.” Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, wouldn’t it be great if you could hear that? Like Rob said, I think being able to take unstructured data and do something meaningful with it from a level of service is really exciting to me because even though I love technology so much, I love treating people with kindness even more, so.
[0:26:38.9] DF: I hope the world that we – I mean, so what we’ve talked about on the podcast a lot, I know you guys have as well but I hope the future with AI, with all the automation is still the one where we are able to show up as better humans and focus on the relationship more effectively because we have tools that allow us to get the information we need to actually ask better questions and understand where things are at.
So, I think that’s what kind of what you guys are talking about. I hope that’s the path that this is going down, so.
[0:27:06.7] LJ: Me too.
[0:27:07.5] RM: I hadn’t thought about AI and I forgot and then I just remembered it when you said that. So, one of like the C-suite of Goldman or the CTO of Goldman said, “It’s no longer important to have good answers. What’s more important is to study philosophy to understand how to ask good questions.” Because of what AI can do for us but really, what that does is it brings us back to one of the most important things that Ted Lasso taught us is, “Be curious and not judgmental. Be more interested.”
[0:27:35.4] LJ: That’s right.
[0:27:37.0] RM: Be more interested than trying to be interesting.
[0:27:41.0] LJ: Yes, yes, amen to that, and remember, I was teasing with Josh Grambow of Newbury yesterday. I’m like, “I think I talked to these AIs more or these bots more than I do people often.” Because I love Perplexity for research, I love Claude for creative, I love Gemini for real-time information, ChatGPT for that logical output. I mean, they’re all good and really awesome at different things.
And if you can apply them just like you would apply experts within your organization on the right things, they give really great outcomes. Go experiment, go have fun.
[0:28:15.2] DF: Yeah and –
[0:28:16.1] RM: Lauren comes to me for banter.
[0:28:17.4] LJ: Yes, Rob’s my banter bud.
[0:28:20.8] DF: Well, you guys, I mean, you could even do that with ChatGPT at – gosh, I can’t remember the presentation at Exec. Forum but they – it was Butler Street did a presentation on using ChatGPT audio role play, which I had not thought about for it to use in sales roleplay but I’ve actually been on the run, I’m going to call somebody with a question, and then I think maybe I did call him and he didn’t answer.
And I was like, “You know what? I’m going to throw up ChatGPT and have a conversation about this challenge that I have right now.” And that’s not the real-time component of it, it is not perfect yet but you can literally have a conversation with AI right now on your phone and it’s kind of a mind-blowing experience and so.
[0:29:00.2] RM: Yeah, I’m going to hold off on doing that for as long as I can but –
[0:29:04.0] LJ: You do it every day, wouldn’t it?
[0:29:05.7] RM: Maybe when the baby is born and I need something like me time.
[0:29:09.6] DF: Well –
[0:29:10.0] LJ: Like the old conversation, “Hey, ChatGPT, I would like to have an adult conversation.”
[0:29:13.8] DF: Ask it to ask you the questions you need to understand to have it help solve a problem. That’s where it gets interesting because I’m like, “I don’t know what question to ask it.” And then I’m like, “What question should I ask to solve this?” They’ll be like, “And I’ll walk you through that.” So, just a wild, wild experience. But yeah. What else are you guys excited about? Anything else you want to dig into?
I know we’ve talked about AI, optimization, sales, kind of the three megatrends. Do you want to do some closing comments and go from there?
[0:29:38.8] LJ: Yeah, go ahead, Rob.
[0:29:38.8] RM: Yeah. So, most importantly is you got to understand how to set yourself up for success. There’s all these things, there’s so much tech, there’s so much media, right? Like, as an example, what inputs are you using to be successful to have good outputs? It’s really about the inputs, it’s really about you know, making it easy for your team to use something. Pick your inputs, pick how you’re configuring your business or the technologies that you are using, and go test it for a quarter.
You know, don’t change it that quickly, right? There’s things you can pivot on quickly and there’s things that you should probably let it run and see how it works and keep pushing through it. So, that’s what I got.
[0:30:22.3] LJ: I think there is three things that I would leave your audience with. The first one is your tech stack is a living breathing thing, treat it as such. It needs care and feeding, it needs consistency, and so if you can think of it as a living breathing organism, you will think about it differently and you will treat it differently and you will care for it differently.
The second thing is experiment. Right now, don’t sign any three-year-long contracts. Go and experiment, be part of a beta, be an early adopter of something that doesn’t require this 36-month commitment. Just experiment, experiment, experiment, and do what’s right for the experience you want to create for your clients and your candidates.
And then lastly, remember that AI – and a lot of things are about – there’s this trifecta in prompt engineering and its context, role, and outcome, and I feel like that applies to so many things. If you understand the context of the problem, what your role in solving the problem is, and what you want the desired outcome to be, it certainly gives you clarity on how to solve a problem or put a strategy together.
AI is not different, the core, you know, structure of a prompt is context, role, and outcome and so if you can think of it that way and not overcomplicate it, I think that you’ll learn to embrace, you know, this really, really powerful I think sort of level setting technology. I think it’s the great equalizer. So, those would be my takeaways for you.
[0:31:54.2] DF: I love it. I love it. Well, great summary, and hey guys, thanks so much for joining. It is always good to see you, good to hear what is going on in the industry, and super excited about Leap Advisory Partners and Newbury and where you guys are going from here. So, thanks so much.
[0:32:07.2] LJ: Thank you for having us. Thank you.
[0:32:07.7] RM: We’ll see you in two weeks, my friend.
[0:32:09.2] LJ: Yes, we will.
[0:32:10.4] DF: See you in two weeks at Engage.
[0:32:11.4] RM: All right, yeah, excited.
