The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests
Welcome to The Third Growth Option, where we're not just talking about growth—we're making it our mission.
At TGO, we understand that success isn't a fixed destination; it's an ongoing journey with twists, turns, and unexpected detours that take us to new places. Those moments are our Third Growth Options, where we throw away binary choices to create our own path.
Hosted by Benno Duenkelsbuehler, O.G #GrowthNerd, we're on a mission to redefine success inside and outside of business, one episode at a time. From humble beginnings to Fortune 500 companies, our stories are not just about business—it's about the relentless pursuit of greatness in every aspect of life.
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The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests
The Revolution of Youth in Today's Workforce
Are you looking for a Third Growth Option ℠ ?
Are young people equipped to navigate the ever-changing job market? Join us as we explore the essential skills needed to thrive today. From underemployment to the gig economy, we break down why adaptability and emotional intelligence are must-haves. Moreover, we examine the critical role of personal finances, and understanding governmental processes in fostering entrepreneurial mindsets and responsible citizenship.
This episode is essential for anyone passionate about preparing the next generation for a dynamic and unpredictable job market.
Always growing.
Benno Duenkelsbuehler
CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN
Hey, welcome to the Third Growth Officer podcast, where we talk about all things growth, yes, even and especially those hard parts where you shed some skin and pick yourself up by the bootstraps. Hey, I'm Benno Dunkelspüler, growth Sherpa and OG hashtag growth nerd. We're on a mission to redefine success inside and outside the business, one TGO episode at a time.
Speaker 2:Hi, this is Hilda Castillo and this is the TGO Podcast.
Speaker 1:And I'm Benno, the host of TGO Podcast Truth in Advertising. Ilda and I have been married for 26 years. We are partners in life and partners in business and we align with the podcast. Ilda is also the founder of Black Sheep Law Firm in Mexico City. We're both doing this podcast together from Mexico City today, and what we want to talk about is the topic of young entrepreneurs. How do we help young people become entrepreneurs? The job market today is very different than it was when I was 20, 25 years old, when Ilda was 20, 25 years old. Let's talk about the job market a little bit. It's cooling down.
Speaker 2:It's cooling down and, according to some stats in the States, four in 10 recent college grads are currently underemployed.
Speaker 1:Underemployed.
Speaker 2:Underemployed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's a big number when you think you spend all that money paying for college and you are underemployed. I don't know if you drive DoorDash or you work in a restaurant and you have a bachelor's degree. So how good is really to have that bachelor's degree if you cannot even find a job for what you studied or even not going to develop something with your studies? I mean, we have to question that. I'm worried about kids these days because, as you know it and everybody knows it, social security is going to be gone.
Speaker 1:Everybody knows that social security is going to be gone and if you don't get a stable job in a stable company like P&G, for example, you would have. No, I mean, and that idea of a stable job, right Like working for Procter Gamble or Coca-Cola or whatever it's gone.
Speaker 2:That's gone right, it's gone or whatever.
Speaker 1:It's gone, that's gone right. I mean like I grew up, like I remember being in college and all these fortune 50 companies were on campus to recruit and the goal was to get a management internship program with a fortune 50 company. And then you know, over the last 20, 30, 40 years that idea from working for one or two companies and then you get a golden watch at age 65 is gone right. I mean the average tenure in a job you know is closer to three years, not 30 years.
Speaker 2:But that is because you have to change jobs every two or three years to get knowledge, to move forward with your salary, to get a better title. It is the right thing to move every two to three years to get your salary going Right. So I don't. But to have a stable job and a stable city on it is difficult. That is not there anymore and I think even in technology companies they are slashing jobs because now they have AI. So I think that there are several points that are important to young people. They do need to have a job to learn and to have the capacity to understand how you know the influence in a company matters and basically to learn, but after that they need to start having a sidekick that can grow into something else.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about our two daughters right, 19 and 24 years old. The 19-year-old is in the middle of her undergrad studies in computer engineering. The 24-year-old, alexis, finished her bachelor's degree, is doing a law degree, going to law school right now, working with me part-time, working with you part-time. Both of them are trying to and we are actively encouraging them to get side gigs, side hustles, because you know people talk about the gig economy and more freelance. And what do you think is the from the girls' perspective, from our girls' perspective? What do you think is? What are we doing that is helping them the most, or what could we do to help them more in this new environment?
Speaker 2:I think the most important thing that a parent can do is develop their abilities. So most people that I know Mexican and in the States they want their children to be a doctor, they want their children to be lawyers, but maybe their children are not fit for that life and they forget to develop abilities and emotional intelligence that are important to develop a gig, because in any gig, like it or not, they're going to have to do things that they don't like, and I don't think parents are developing that part of a child, of an intelligence of a child. So I think that is the most important thing.
Speaker 1:So when you talk about adaptability, is that the word you used?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You said ability, right, yes, but I think it's both adaptability ability creativity.
Speaker 2:Listen, in the States, in Mexico and in every country. I always look at Germany when I speak to these, because in Germany a carpenter is a good carpenter, because they have trade schools and a carpenter is no different from a lawyer. I'm sorry, but it's not. I don't know how to do what a carpenter does and from a good carpenter carpenter does and from a good carpenter, yeah, no, he. I mean we have to develop those skills for children that do not want to go to college but have some other trade, and it's a valuable trade that every country needs and it's going extinct and we are not seeing it.
Speaker 1:So I I I think that's a super interesting point about trade schools, right, the trades plumber, carpenter, mechanic, those trades were sort of neglected, I think, for decades, certainly in the States. Germany has done a good job with with trade schools, um, but but I think the trade of being an entrepreneur and thinking entrepreneurially, uh, and sort of having the guts to go out there, uh, find a problem, find a need and then create a solution for it and have the confidence to do that, learn and to get the confidence right to.
Speaker 1:you know, face a problem and say, gee, I really don't know what all is entailed here. I don't have all the answers, and that's okay, but let me find, let me really understand what the different problems are, and then let's throw some solutions against the wall. Let's talk to each other about creating a solution.
Speaker 2:But we have to understand that in the States and in Mexico there's no time, there's no family time, there is no time to find those you know, to find those abilities, to have to chat. Time is empty in both countries. You have to dedicate time to develop Intentional.
Speaker 1:You have to be intentional, intentional.
Speaker 2:And you have to. You really have to think about this and to develop emotional intelligence. Everybody puts emotional intelligence on the side, Nobody cares about it, but you have to have it and that is something that you have to have emotional intelligence and you have to have education.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:In whatever state, but you need both. You can have an education at a community college, you can have education at Coursera, which it is valid. It is valid to say I don't like to go to school, but I'm going to get some small diplomas that will get me through, you know, getting a job. Or, you know, take some pottery class and sell my pottery in the market, something like that. And as parents, I don't think we dedicate enough time to develop that. That is something that we just don't.
Speaker 1:I think all of our lives, you know, have become too compartmentalized. Right there is, you know, whether you're a single or a double-income family. You know mom and dad go to work, kids go to school maybe there's mealtime, maybe there isn't mealtime.
Speaker 1:Maybe we spend weekends together or maybe we just take them from the soccer tournament to the Taekwondo tournament to the next one, blah, blah, blah. But unless we spend time as a family, also talking about work and also talking about ways that they can take their you know high school diploma or college degree and applied in some kind of entrepreneurial, creative way, I'm not I'm not discouraging our kids or anybody from taking whatever job you know, sort of W22 payroll job. That's great, but let's also have a side hustle and teach them some of the business basics that you know in a big corporation. If they're stuck in a specialty, in a department, you know, in accounting or in research or in operations or in marketing, they're not going to learn the basics of business and working. You know our daughters, working with either or both of us in our firms, are learning basic stuff about hey, you know we need a business plan.
Speaker 1:What's the budget? You know. Do we have money for this? You know, should we spend more money on that? Um, and and, and I think your point about emotional intelligence, what? What struck me there is, um, well, beside the fact that you have more, more emotional intelligence than I do, and you always harass me about not having enough and you're teaching me to have more, which I appreciate, but I think your point about emotional intelligence is becoming more and more and more important as AI takes over more and more capabilities, flexes its muscles.
Speaker 2:But it's okay.
Speaker 1:It's okay Because that's one thing that AI does not have emotional intelligence.
Speaker 2:That's correct, but it is okay that I don't have anything against AI taking over things. I am okay with that because I know how to use it. What I see is that now kids want to just ask AI and and and. Ai gives you a general, you know. It spits out general information. You still need to have to, you know, learn how to train it and and the important thing is that kids that are going out of college need, they need and that is I need to say this they need to be able to train an AI, chatbot or anything. They need to be able to train artificial intelligence. It is, it's going to become like Microsoft, like using Microsoft or Excel. You need to be able to use it, you need to be able to train it and you need to be able to come up.
Speaker 1:You need to train AI.
Speaker 2:So you can train it in different ways, like different AIs have different information, for example, chatgpt have different information, for example, chat GPT. I can ask chat GPT, can you draft a petroleum contract? And it will do that. The information is not absolutely correct, but if I train it, if I put laws in it and if I ask the right questions, ai will start learning from all the questions and start digging. And if I say, well, I'm going to input this law that just came out, chat GPT will get trained with my questions in my subject. So it's an absolute need that kids start training chat GPT.
Speaker 1:So okay, now I get what you mean by training, chat, gpt. You're basically like another way to say, that is to say, we need to ask the right questions of AI.
Speaker 2:But in AI language is training.
Speaker 1:Okay, fair enough good questions because I think, you know, in my line of work, helping companies grow new, you know channels of distribution or new adjacent product categories or what have you you know we work with owners and executives of midsize companies where, you know, half the battle is asking them the right question to so that together we can come up with the right answer. Because the client, you know, the reason they bring us in, is because they're so used to, they do what they do all day long. They've been doing it for, you know, five years, or 20 or 35 years, and they forgot to ask some of the important questions, right, and so it's. I think it's got to ask some of the important questions, right and so I think it's. And you do that as a lawyer, right? I mean you have to ask your client the right questions to.
Speaker 2:Correct. But yes, I do have to ask the right questions. But in this era, I think, for asking the right questions you have emotional intelligence education and then you can trade your chat GPT. I'm scared for the kids to use artificial intelligence. In some colleges they say no, no, no, you have to use. You know chat GPT and it won't matter. But you have to use it because I think it's a tool that you have to start using. And also, kids need to start learning about personal finances, because some of them have credit and then they don't know what to do with it. They don't know where the buckets that you know are available to them.
Speaker 1:They have credit like a credit line, credit card Like a credit line.
Speaker 2:I mean you, even an 18 year old. You know they get the first credit card and then you know it's a two thousand dollar limit and they think that they can spend two thousand dollars without having two thousand dollars. But that is something that they are not teaching in any college, in any school, in any. I haven't seen a personal finance class. In mexico they used to have a personal finance class and and they taught you about. Well, you have to, you know, have a salary and pay taxes and you know and see the function of the government. They need to know how the government function. If you do not know how the government function, you will have big roadblocks as a business owner.
Speaker 1:You'll vote for the wrong party.
Speaker 2:Well, you can vote for whoever you want. I think the vote is a right, that you have to exercise, and that is your right and you will exercise the way you want to exercise it. But if you do not know how the government works, you're cooked. I don't see future in that and you know most people do not know how Congress works or how you know you get how the elections work, and that is another part of being an entrepreneur. You need to know where your country is going to see what pieces of the puzzle are going to meet what your place within the country is right.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, and what pieces of your you know business are you going to move? What pieces are you going to keep?
Speaker 1:And they don't know that, they don't know how it works been involved in and maybe one is this one jump to your mind that's been particularly eye-opening for them or helpful for them.
Speaker 2:Well, I usually take them to do adulting. It it's just going to the government agencies and file for taxes or opening a bank account, or see how the government admits in litigation, how you can file online litigation paperwork. That is eye opening because and it's so much that you need to learn it Sometimes we do one thing at a time and they are exhausted.
Speaker 1:So you basically take them to work.
Speaker 2:Take them to work.
Speaker 1:yes, Take them to work with you, and you've done that since they were before they were teenagers.
Speaker 2:Yes, and in different countries mean different things. So in Mexico, filing paperwork can be difficult and somewhat tricky and you need to know where to file it, when to file it and having the right paperwork to file it. So, and if you're missing a little something, they say you know what. You can file it because you are missing a signature or you signed with the wrong ink color.
Speaker 1:Color pen.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is. It is Originals are signed in blue. And that little thing Alexis learned.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know now she carries a blue pen because that's a way to sign.
Speaker 1:And you know one thing that I have loved about, you know, bringing Alexis into Realign at the beginning of this year and just asking her essentially to work with me as an executive assistant slash marketing coordinator function. You know, I just sort of opened the books to hey, here's what we do, here's how we do it, here's the stuff that's really difficult and where things get sort of stuck in the sand or the pipeline a little bit. And then I just asked her hey, what do you think is a different way, or maybe is there a better way to approach future clients, right, potential prospective clients? And she's doing an amazing job getting word out there. You know, producing content. It was her idea to turn the TGO podcast from an audio to a video podcast. She's doing little, you know 30, 60-second video snippets with a creativity and a perspective that I would not. That's not mine, I wouldn't have come up with it. And you know she's doing it through the lens of a 24 year old woman. That is is different from my lens, right, and and I think it's helping.
Speaker 1:I'm letting her, but you're letting her.
Speaker 2:And in most companies they don't let them, so you have to let them. They decided that we were going to develop an app. I do not know how to code. Julia is doing an amazing job coding it I I. I don't know how to code right I do other things for the app, but you have to let them. You have to. So colleges and companies, they need to let kids do their thing. You can put rules and- 24-year-olds are not kids.
Speaker 1:Anyway.
Speaker 2:If you had called me a kid at age, 24 I mean not kids, but they're younger than you are and they know things that you don't know.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:And I see people just stopping them. And if you do stop this generation, you will be in a bad place in 10 or 15 years. The advancements will crash. So I just let them do. Sometimes I'm uncomfortable because I don't know what I'm doing in the app, for example. I don't know what I'm doing, but it is a good thing to feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:That's never stopped us before right, you have to be outside the comfort zone. That's never stopped us before right, you have to be outside the comfort zone. I think this is probably a good place to wrap it up for today in terms of how just this I think it's a really important subject of how do we encourage young adults to not be discouraged by a tougher job market than maybe you and I found at that same age, and how do we encourage entrepreneurship? Because I think, with the way the world is changing towards you know, gig economy, freelance, ai, um, being entrepreneurial and having just a growth mindset, entrepreneurial mindset is so much more important for young adults today than it was for, you know, for us back then. We could sort of get plugged into a machine that, okay, do that job for five years and that job for 10 years and that's going away.
Speaker 2:Pensions are gone.
Speaker 1:What is gone?
Speaker 2:Pensions are gone. Pensions are gone. Don't count on one. No way Long gone All right.
Speaker 1:Thank you, sweetheart. Sweetheart, I love you. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of tgo podcast. You can find all episodes on our podcast page at wwwrealign4resultscom. You can find me, benno, host of TGO podcast, there as well. Just email benno B-E-N-N-O at realign4resultscom. Let's keep growing, thank you.
