Jonh: You're listening to The Present Professional, where we explore the intersections of personal and professional development.

John: To change your experience of life and work with every episode.

Tony: So tune in, grab your notebook, and let's go. Let's go.

John: Welcome to another episode of The Present Professional. Today, we're here to talk about the evolution of the online ecosystem and how it's changed the way that we live and work. And speaking from experience and how it's changed the way that Tony and I live and work and interact with each other and even interact with you guys on this podcast. We're both millennials, so we've been around when, you know, I remember when my mom had one of the first bag phones that came out. You know, we know what it's like not to have a cell phone. So we feel like we're the last generation to kind of experience what life was like before this ecosystem started to develop. So we want to talk about some of the tools that have really change the way that we are doing business, change the way that we're living our lives more recently than not, and share that with you guys and just talk about how this landscape is changing.

Tony: Yeah, and I think that you brought up some good points just to kind of reflect on the way we grew up and what we've seen. I love that I'm part of the generation that played outside right before, you know, the big boom of tech. And, you know, even though, you know, I had the fortune to grow up with a computer in my room, which was a big deal for growing up in early 2000. So I did get a chance to kind of be like that techie kid. I think that's why I'm like super into tech. But at the same time, you know, having that blend super important. And I think even watching or being a part of the generation that worked in the office five days a week, to going to hybrid, to remote working, remote learning, like everything has changed and it's changed right before our very eyes. And so I'm curious to know what else is going to change and happen in the future. But of course, we're talking about the present. But, you know, I'll say that, you know, great, great insight there with you sharing that. And the ecosystem has changed quite a bit. You know, I know for me, I truly enjoy it. I was doing some reading before COVID happened like prior to 2019 just about the way that other countries have work-life balance. I think Australia is one of the leading countries to study when it comes to work-life balance. I was a little jealous, I'm not going to lie, when I was reading that and seeing that. Then boom, COVID hit. I was like, man, I told you all, I knew this was possible. I knew it was possible to have real work-life balance and only work three or four days in the office and stuff like that. Um, very, very, very good episode ahead. Um, and I'm looking forward to diving into the online ecosystem and talking about how it's changed a lot. I mean, we can't even get into every detail because so much change, but we can definitely cover some of the high notes, right?

John: We could. This could be broken up into a full on workshop series. And, you know, we talk about work life balance. You know, I've also found that, you know, some of my clients and Some folks that I know personally, working from home almost took some of their work-life balance away. I think that is also a testament to your discipline as well, Tony, and being able to still separate work from home even when it's at home. I think that's some place that folks that now that can work from home, but now it's also, everyone else knows that you can work from home everyone else knows that you're available you likely have your phone near you that you can hop on a zoom call so it's you know i know it's a little late but could you take a look at this you know you mind jumping into this meeting real quick And it can pull us in a bunch of different directions. So I feel like the interconnectedness of things has also made it increasingly important to be able to say no to things as well and be able to manage your time and energy really well.

Tony: Yes, you're right about that. I think I did a workshop recently where I talked about how you have to tell people how you want to be treated and you have to be clear in that communication. And I think that that's part of it. You know, it's harder depending on where you work if you work in a global company, then you got time zone issues, you know, you got um, you know, maybe massive projects that are requiring your Time and attention and deliverables to be done ASAP So it also depends on what you do and I think who you work with too I think having that ability ability to share your personal life with people and give them an insight to who you are what you do makes a difference because For me, I know that people around me, I try to be clear in how I work, but I think I'm probably more on the demanding end as opposed to the receiving end of that. But even in that I mean, I don't expect people I work with to do stuff outside of work hours If anything, you know work smarter maybe schedule your emails to go out Let's here we go talking about the online ecosystem a bit me. I like to schedule things in advance Um, if i'm working late at night, I may schedule it to go out the next day like midday or in the morning just to respect other people's time and even Recently, I had to send an email to someone who was out of the office on vacation. Instead of sending an email while they're out and on vacation, I scheduled it for the day they came back. That was rescheduled like a week ago. I'm like, hey, I hope your vacation was great. Here's some things I'm working on and need your help with. Just thinking about how you can work smarter is a part of this process too with the evolution of

John: what's happening online and i think that there's so many tools within the tools that you can spend days and hours like watching youtube or taking classes on some of your favorite tools and learning hacks to even become more proficient wow i mean talk about conscious communication just thinking about what's going on with your audience what's going on with the folks that you're reaching out to and you know being conscious of you know how that might impact them so that's really thoughtful tony and You know, something for everyone to consider when you're sending that one last communication that maybe could wait. And you touched on a couple things that, you know, even just in passing, because it's so normal nowadays just to talk about how easily we have access to information. And you mentioned going deeper into these tools by just watching a couple of YouTube videos. And we've been here for the days where that just wasn't possible. Like, you had to find a teacher. You had to find a book. You had to find, I mean, and if you think about it, you know, this is in our lifetime. There was not a repository at the tip of our fingers for anything that we want to learn in the world. It's like if you have the drive to figure something out, you can at any moment just by picking up your phone. And you know, now it's even just think about how easily that was woven into our conversation, right? Like, oh yeah, you want to learn more about this tool? Just watch. Watch couple YouTube videos. You'll find tricks that can save you time that can deepen your knowledge. Yeah, just passing in conversation. I'd say I've learned so much from just googling things, from watching YouTube videos, from listening to podcasts. I mean, there's so much information out there. that it's coming to the point where you have to be really good at managing your time and energy, curating the content that comes to you. Do you really want to take in all the information or do you want to specialize in an area that's going to take whatever you're looking for forward? Because how many times have we looked on YouTube for that solution and got caught up by the algorithm watching like 18 videos that we think are hilarious?

Tony: Yeah, I ended up in a group chat where everybody thinks things are hilarious. Yeah. And that's that's another piece of it. Yeah. I mean, you're right. I think, you know, just the the ability to innately say, oh, I just watched it on YouTube. Um, it's definitely different and you know for me, I think that that's showing Our age a bit By even recognizing that that's something that our kids will be like, huh? a lot of you went to the library learned, you know, and Like you're saying about having a mentor or somebody show you things. That's that's great good insight And I love that that is available to us and one thing I wanted to point out is you know, I talked to a lot of gen x and baby boomers and I read and even um The silent generation. I've talked to someone recently from I believe they might have been in that generation, but certainly a baby boomer and um, I For the baby boomer. I'll tell a quick story. I watched this guy navigate on sharing his screen on zoom and It was amazing to watch how he shared his screen navigated everything searched his inbox like he needed help I was troubleshooting something with him and he just was so spot on with without with everything and I just was so impressed and then I have a mentor who's gen x an older gen x and he He is always in the know Of what's happening when it comes to new development new ways of doing things, you know So many things that he's up on and it's impressive To see that and he stays ahead of the curve and even he always talks about when he goes back to his high school reunions He looks around and he's always look he always looks the youngest and it's like Doing that, the whole piece of staying in the know and keeping up with what's going on in the next generation and paying attention, I think that is a superpower, actually, when it comes to you really just keeping your development on track and really always being someone who is ahead of the curve and being able to produce. I mean that what he what he's done what he's done and his ability to stay ahead of the curve has impacted his career It's impacted his pay. It's impacted his status at work and in the community And so I just love that and I want to point that out because if you're listening to this one thing to know that's true even if we want to If we want to debate it, but I believe it's true is that the next generation determines what's cool. It's not us anymore So we need to stay connected to know what Gen Z and the one after that, or how they do life. Because we are one day going to be, as millennials, we're one day going to be the boss, the CEO, the manager, the supervisor, director, all the things. We're going to be managing Gen Z. So if we don't know how they think, live, work, and play, then there's going to be a disconnect and you will see that in your workplace, you'll see that in your company, and you'll wonder why Gen Z and others are not staying.

John: Well, they're also the consumers. So forget about what your current product portfolio is or what your service offer is. If the next generation isn't going to buy into it, you are going to become obsolete. Who are your consumers? Unless you're doing strictly industry type B2B sales, anything that's going to be direct to consumer is going to be rapidly evolving and changing with generations. I know that a lot of larger corporations and marketing firms and things are really aware of this and there are lots of studies on Gen Z buying patterns and millennial buying patterns and how to communicate with each of the generations. I think there's also, you know, something to be said for the small businesses and, you know, small, medium-sized businesses that might not have, you know, as much marketing firepower and information at their fingertips. It's, you know, what are some of the key sources for them to reach out to, to learn from, and you know, what I would say is, you know, don't hesitate to hire the right people. at the right time and you know a lot of times when you're starting a small business or you're running a medium-sized business with more a tighter budget you hesitate to bring on the marketing firm to bring on the consulting firm for a little bit And, you know, if you got to hire, you know, if you have to hire an expert for something and, you know, you understand what the goal of hiring that expert is, go for it. You know, don't, don't wait until it's too late until you're trying to play catch up and wondering, you know, where your sales are going to then, you know, to then reach out and try to save your business. get ahead of the curve and find out how to best communicate your product to the newer generations, to multiple generations.

Tony: Yeah, I love that because that leads into what probably where you may have been going, which is to work smarter by using third parties, right?

John: Yeah. Yeah, exactly, man. I mean, so if you've been been with us on the episode for this long now, we're going to start going through some of the things that have really made a difference for us and some things that you may be able you may be able to utilize on your side hustle, in your corporate career, in your small business. And one of those tools that I want to talk about is Fiverr. And it's F-I-V-E-R-R. And it's essentially an online marketplace for, how do I say this, more like task-based workers so and it rates and it rates all of the different contributors so if you're looking for something that can be a one-off task that you need someone to produce like for example my company logo animation I went on the fiber search search for logo animation and you get immediately get a list of all of these. Task base workers from around the world that have different offerings in this competing marketplace that want to get your business are very responsive and. do great work and there's timelines on it. I've never had a Fiverr offer and a deal that I've done on there go past the originally subscribed due date. So I've had where I've done revisions and things that have gone past the due date that I've driven, but I've always received at least a finished draft of what I was asking for by the due date that's on there. And it's always for a price that is competing at a global scale online. So you're getting the best work for a low price. And if you're a small, medium-sized business, this can really save you a lot of time and money and be very low risk when it comes in financially. So that's just one example with the logo animation. You can get everything from graphic designers, copywriters. you know, people that will write blogs for you, that will design whole websites for you, that will maintain websites for you, that will produce a podcast for you, that will mix and master audio. I mean, anything that you can do specifically seated at a computer, it can be done through this online marketplace. So I'd say that for any small business, medium sized business, if you're not leveraging Fiverr or some other type of online third party work marketplace, this is going to be a huge win and a huge step up for you and your business.

Tony: Yeah, I'm a big fan of Fiverr, um, is every with everything you already mentioned. Um, Fiverr is, Amazing tool. It reminds me of the first time I came upon Airbnb Where we were going to LA to 2014 or something and she found it, of course and I was like, what is this? How'd you find this apartment? You know And fiber is is is that if you haven't used it is literally over Airbnb of the gig economy It is one of the one of the one of a kind i'm sure there are others out there if it I'm sure they have competitors. I'm sure there are others out there. There are others out there for sure but Man, you get stuff done. I love how you pointed out that piece about The the time sensitiveness of when you get work done. I agree. I've every time i've seen a project of fiverr They're on time and it's crazy because they're not necessarily They're not on the the individual um Contributors are folks that are working with fiber. They don't report to fiber They are just good at what they do and they own their own company because the ratings that you leave Are based on their direct performance and so the stars and the ratings all that stuff matters. It helps them Boost and be seen so it's it's a great platform. Um I definitely uh tip my hat to the creators, um of that program, but if you haven't used it please do that. It's definitely one of the key evolution pieces of the online ecosystem. I wanted to talk about one that is very obvious, that's Zoom. And if you haven't used Zoom, where have you been? Just curious. And I mean Teams as well, Microsoft Teams, but for me it's Zoom. Zoom is clear, We also have Google Meet too, which we use. I love Google Meet because it connects to the Google Suite, but Zoom is the standard for me in terms of if I have to conduct a webinar or have a meeting and it's with a large crowd or it's with, you know, a vip meeting in my mind I would prefer zooms in terms of the the lack of glitching and thing and things like that, but Just the fact that we have all these options in these video platforms that connect us to a global network It's just incredible. Um, I had an opportunity to meet with people that I probably would have had to schedule time to go to their city or just have a phone call. These people are, you know, different parts of the country and all over the world. And the thing about that is, it shortens our time of trying to get to know people, right? Because you talk to someone on the phone, it's like, okay, that was great. Now I need to come meet you. I need to shake your hand. I need to take you to lunch. I need to have coffee with you, right? To really build a relationship. You can do that right over Zoom. You can have coffee. right with somebody, right over video screen, and it's like y'all literally are getting to know each other in a serious way. So I just want to point that out and talk about how so much power in today's modern technology to where even relationships are being built, established, and not just built and established, but managed and massaged through these video platforms. And of course you have FaceTime for friends and family, but for your business, for your life, and for things that you want to have an opportunity to establish new relationships, these platforms are amazing.

John: And, I mean, we talk about the revolution of Zoom. You know, I wouldn't really be in the profession that I am now, you know, as a professional coach without video conferencing software, without the Zoom, Google Meet. And you talk about building relationships. Man, I've been, you know, I've been coaching some clients in, you know, very deep relationships where I know more about them than maybe anyone in their lives, and we've never seen each other in person. It's all over Zoom. So I believe that there's something about a group meeting space that's a little bit, that I think there's more of an in-person dynamic once you get over, you know, over three people and you have, you can have side conversations. There's a lot more dynamics in the room with, you know, body language and interactions and I think there's something about getting a bigger group together in person that will never die. But there's something about a one-on-one conversation over Zoom. I feel really connected to people. I haven't felt disconnected from any of my clients, any partners that I've worked with one-on-one like that. I think you can develop a very intimate relationship, very sound and trustworthy relationship over Zoom, especially one-to-one. And it's opened up the doors to so many things. I mean, think about taking video conferencing and stuff to the next level. Think about streaming. You know, I live stream, I live stream yoga classes and meditations right from my room. And you know, broadcasted to, you know, sometimes up, sometimes up to like 80 to 100 people. And you know we're all we're all there together practicing and it can bring you can bring those teachers to so many people. I mean even now you're seeing some gurus be able to connect with people through social media through certain live events. So there's another way that we're spreading this information and education, but also spreading the ability to connect with people that you maybe never would have been able to connect with in your whole life. And now you can do things like that. And if you're not taking advantage of getting to connect with people that you never would have without this technology, then you're not just missing out on an opportunity to grow or better yourself. These are the opportunities of life. Get to know people. See things and other perspectives, other cultures that maybe you don't have the capital right now to go travel. Somewhere globally, but you have the means to be able to connect with people from around the world Right from where you're sitting so take advantage of it learn from other people You know see what's see what's popular and in other countries learn see different perspectives You can all do that from your home right now, which is just incredible And from that, I do wanna give a little shout out to Insight Timer for that. I've been a publisher on that platform. It's like a global meditation, mindfulness, yoga platform that, I mean, there are millions and millions of app users, and it's been really amazing being able to share my practice and teachings with people on that platform. So, you know, big ups, big ups to them. And that's one of the streaming platforms that I'm on every single week.

Tony: Yeah, I love that. And, you know, I've got to give a shout out to a platform that I use as well. It's called the Arise platform. And so I use that platform to help connect independent contractors to job opportunities, customer service. And we've been doing that for four years. It's been a pretty cool journey. We've helped thousands of people. Well, we've connected to thousands of people. We've helped hundreds for sure. Get an opportunity to scale themselves from where they are to an opportunity where they really want to be, which is having a secondary income. It's great for me as a social entrepreneur. I mean, it's literally what I love to do. We fell into be able to do that without the online ecosystem that exists.

John: That's awesome. That's awesome. And there are so many other tools like that now that are coming alive. I want to give, well this is a an online ecosystem tool shout out for people. So If you're looking for a platform to manage your small business from a contracts perspective as well as a CRM or customer relationship manager, I use DubzAuto. I love it. It's really built for more folks in the creative industries, like say photographers, wedding planners, event planners. Things like where you're going to have, you know, one big client or one big project and everything comes in as a project. I mean, we could do a whole episode on Dubsado, but I, um, I really, and that's D-U-B-S-A-D-O. If you guys are interested in checking that out, it's, it's been a great combination of a contract management system and customer relationship manager for me. And, you know, I really, really enjoy using that software.

Tony: Yeah, we can definitely go on and on. I'll shout out Zapier just because Zapier is a way to interconnect so many different apps. If you have used one software over here and one software over there, Zapier can create code and API tools to connect between softwares and make your whole process efficient and seamless. I mean, without them, They're like the telephone system. They're like the people that make stuff happen. You want to pick up the phone and call somebody, you got to use AT&T, Zapier is AT&T of software.

John: They're great. You can really integrate everything with them and automate the whole processes across so many different platforms. It's amazing. And now all of these things, you know, we talked about how easy it is to learn now and your access to information. But, you know, think about how much that's revolutionizing the education system. I mean, I can remember when we first got laptops in the classroom. And it was like they weren't even fully integrated into what we were doing yet. It was funny, they like came out on a cart and everyone had something to log into. They just pulled it off this cart to use for certain different programs. And that was like revolutionary and we got some grant and they were a bunch of a bunch of macbooks that you know most of the kids in my school would never even held a laptop. And it was it was just really really cool to see it start integrated and then we also had these. smart boards that people would use i mean this was in the very beginning of this technology but you know now i think of a education platform like mine valley and it's i'd say right now it's a lot of things that are more body, mind, soul, entrepreneurship, leadership, like more soft skills, interpersonal skills and things that, you know, you can take in for personal and professional growth. But, you know, I feel like, you know, the founder vision, you know, really has a vision for taking this platform to, you know, more specific areas of education, you know, to where as things become more renowned like that that you'll be able to get a full on education that can take you into a career on a platform like this. Now you have access to some of the world's best experts and that's what they do is they pull in a lot of experts on these topics and get them to teach these full on master classes where they are starting to really master the ways that they're delivered to people so i thought having a membership for a year on that platform was really interesting to see how you know they're evolving their content delivery yeah i check them out

Tony: for just so I can understand more about it when you mentioned it earlier today. And I thought it was impressive. I thought it was impressive period because there's a whole movement behind ed tech. There's a whole movement behind educational technology that's coming. I think that there are a lot of people that, I've been wondering where these people were. I think there are a lot of people that get it and they see what's happening with our education systems. They see what's happening with K through 12. and people are really um doubling down on Ways to create alternative education models and systems that connect with the human experience and I think that we just lack that um as The old guard, you know still rules the day of public education and I was looking at an article yesterday about You know just updating they've updated the star test in texas, which is like the primary assessment for kids And i'm like, okay, you know you updated small tweaks and made made it a little bit more You know open-ended for kids to write more and they but it's like we need a complete overhaul of the whole system That's a whole nother conversation, but I just want to point out that These educational or alternative educational solutions are there As you mentioned, um the one you talked about and there's so many more That are out there and I think that for me personally being able to have Opportunities to sign up for master classes sign up for um folks offering courses, um paying paying out of my own pocket to learn from other people and other programs is what's truly helped my personal and professional development and I think that If you are a person listening to this and you've ever considered Paying for a course or a master class and you've been scared you think it's a scam or you think all these things you think Don't don't do your research and see who the people are and what they do. But I mean Honestly, that's the way to grow and sometimes yeah, you may not get a lot out of it Like you like you hope for but I know when we talk about this online ecosystem It has truly been me listening to a person's podcast doing my research, finding out that they had a course, signing up for the course, learning, taking the information, applying it to my own life and business and career, and advancing. It's just that simple. I wasn't sitting on the fence scared to spend X amount of dollars to try when it's there to learn. So just take that in as well. There are other ways to learn that are legit and If you want to get ahead, you have to not be afraid to try and fail, even if it's a private failure. Oh, I spent a thousand bucks on this course and I didn't really learn anything. Okay, that's a thousand buck lesson. Maybe you learn something, maybe you see the platform they use and you can adopt that to your own practice in the future. I mean, there's so many ways to look at things, but there is an online ecosystem of alternative education that I want to point out as well.

John: Oh, yeah. And I mean, traditional education is following suit. I mean, I'd say from the top down, you know, starting from the adult level, because, you know, at the adult education level, We are at a point in our careers where finding these alternative areas of education are helping us specialize or learn certain things that we want to do specific to another position, so that are taking the place of a lot of these post-secondary degrees or these more graduate degrees. I feel like those programs are evolving a little bit more with online education and even just thinking about, you know, you doing the doctoral program with a vast majority online. It's just like, it's incredible to see even institutions like that evolving as well.

Tony: Yeah, and I think it goes back to, you know, just people that are forward-thinking. Um, you know, I wouldn't be able to take the program i'm taking online and others that are that are out there that exist If there weren't leaders Who were willing to jump out there and say that online education works? there are uh opponents of online education, um at different levels and so It's a real fight. You know, it's not. Um all pretty it seems like a brilliant idea now but at one point or some point there were people that hated the idea of people learning online and getting advanced degrees online and they're still they're still fighting for for some of this but you know it's just it goes back to what I was mentioning earlier the the revolution is here the old guard has to acknowledge that things are not the same I've been to two big conferences this year and in both times there were speakers and primarily even keynotes that said that the world will never go back to what it used to be. The world will never go back to how we remembered it. And if you think that it will and you're still holding on to the past, you're just going to be sitting there isolated while the rest of the world advances and moves forward. So instead of holding on to the past, you might as well hold on to your seat and get ready for what's coming because everything's changing. And if you evolve with it, like I mentioned, my Gen X mentor, if you evolve with it, so much easier. The medicine is so much more productive for your body if you just take it and just roll forward. But if you fight it and you think it's the worst thing ever and it needs to go back to 1990, you'll be just sitting there. And that's my that's my two cents on that. I mean, argue with me offline, folks, if you want to contact me on Twitter or Instagram. But that's how I feel.

John: Yeah. I mean, it's I mean, the world's going to move forward either way. So that's you know, that's your choice. That's your choice. And, you know, we respect anyone's personal choice on that on that end, you know, and And sometimes it is nice to retreat, but retreating into nature, retreating into stillness, back to the way things were, not being so connected, not being so driven forward, there is a place for that as well. And at the same time, you can continue to move forward and iteratively take rest and move back to the way things were, to move back to the simplicity of connecting with people one-on-one and having great conversation over a cup of coffee is not going anywhere, right? So bring those values and all of the great things from the way things used to be and bring them forward but that doesn't mean you don't move forward now the next we're gonna have to get into the biggest revolution you know that we've talked about before on the next episode so artificial intelligence this is a whole different ballgame So there's, you know, we're talking about all of the tools that have changed the way that we do business right now, where we're at. And then, you know, artificial intelligence is taking that to the next level. You know, it's amplifying these tools to where you can ask the tool directly to create something like this for you. You can tell the tool what you want, instead of learning how to create what that tool is purposed for. So there's a whole different conversation for all of the tools that are emerging around artificial intelligence and where that's going to go. And we're going to save that for an update on our, I think it was December episode that we published. when chat GPT was first in its beta. We're going to do an update on that moving forward as we expand a little bit more on the evolution of the online ecosystem. But for now, take stock of the tools that we talked about on this chat. Start trying some of them and implementing them in your life and business and seeing where there are areas that you can learn. There are areas that you can improve what you're doing right now. online, managing your time, energy, business, career, see where these tools can help you move forward, save time and energy, and maybe have, free you up some more time to spend like the way things were. You know, sharing that, sharing that coffee, sitting around the fire, having a, you know, having a nice barbecue out back or something. So allow them to free you up that time. But for now, my friends, have a good one. Thank you so much for being listeners. And check us out at the presentprofessionalpodcast.com. And we'd be happy to hear your feedback. And then anywhere that you're listening to the podcast right now, rate us and review us. It goes a long way to hear your thoughts and have your thoughts shared with the online ecosystem. So thank you guys so much. Until next time.