January 26, 2026 – Restaurant Digital Ops Kevin Rice and Big Book of HR Cornelia Gamlem

0:04 Intro 1: Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion: Jim Beach. 

0:26 Jim Beach: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you survived the winter storm over the weekend, called the storm of the century by many people, and some of you are still frozen and digging out. Godspeed to all of you. I hope you are safe. I hope you have power and are staying warm, and maybe even getting to go out and play in some of the snow or ice that you have. Just be careful and do not break anything, please. We have a great show for you today, two fantastic guests. We are going to start off with Kevin Rice. He built an incredibly successful digital agency doing web design, and then went and fired customers like Pepsi. Why do you fire brand name customers? He did. He fired a bunch of them. We have an amazing conversation on bootstrapping, focus, voice AI, working with best friends, and a whole bunch of other things. It is an incredible story, and I am sure you will enjoy it. And then we have one of our favorite guests back, Cornelia Gamlem. She has been with us four or five times. She is the HR super expert in the world today. She has written The Big Book of HR, and it is in its 10th or 11th edition. Today, we are going to play some games, some HR games, and you can play along. We will describe a scenario and describe what should happen so that no one gets fired or sued or any of those things. So I am excited to have her back as well. She is a great guest. I think she has been on the show as many times, five or six times, as any other guest that we have had. So it is an honor to have her back. Anyway, big show. Thanks for being with us. We are going to get started in just a second, and thanks for being with us. Time to talk and no action on climate change, introducing The Real Environmentalists. 

2:40 Intro 1: Time to talk and no action on climate change. Introducing The Real Environmentalists, the bold new book by Jim Beach. It is not about activists, politicians, or professors. It is about the entrepreneurs, real risk takers, building cleaner, smarter solutions, not for applause, but for profit. The entrepreneurs in the book are not giving speeches. They are in labs, factories, and offices, cleaning the past and building clean products for the future. The Real Environmentalists is available now, because the people saving the planet are not the ones you think. Go to Amazon and search for The Real Environmentalists. 

3:11 Jim Beach: We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us today. Very excited to introduce my first guest. His name is Kevin Rice, and this is an amazing story. He built an agency to $43 million and some 250 employees. That company was called Hathaway, and it was sold for nine figures. I think it was $9 trillion, actually. That might not be 100% accurate, but we are going to go with it anyway. Nine trillion. After that, he has started giving back and has helped with other organizations. He is a very active investor, angel investor, looking particularly in AI, and he has a podcast of his own called the CEOs and ABCs Podcast. That is CEOsandABCs.com. 

4:07 Jim Beach: Welcome to the show, Kevin. How are you doing today? 

4:10 Kevin Rice: I am doing fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. 

4:13 Jim Beach: Congratulations on that $9 trillion exit. That is pretty impressive. 

4:17 Kevin Rice: You know, that would have been nice. I would have been giving Elon a run for his money if that were the case. 

4:22 Jim Beach: I saw he is up to $800 billion now. 

4:26 Kevin Rice: Yeah, it is mild. 

4:28 Jim Beach: And I think it is the space company now that is exploding in terms of valuation. Certainly, Tesla is not doing well now, stock-wise. But That is just crazy numbers, are they? Absolutely. 

4:46 Kevin Rice: Yeah. I live in Pismo Beach, California, and right down the way is Vandenberg Air Force Base. And so we get to watch a lot of the SpaceX rockets as they launch them every month. And it is pretty amazing to watch what they have been able to build with SpaceX. 

5:01 Jim Beach: It is an amazing company. So here is what is so amazing: the government, for 40 years, got so far, and then once he took it out of government hands, the growth has exploded. And I should stop using the word exploded when we are talking about the growth. The growth of the company has been exponential. And, you know, the technology too, I feel like NASA, I do not want to say bad things about NASA, you know, they certainly do not seem to be pushing it that far. Here we have Elon catching landers with chopsticks. NASA would never let, let me put it this way, NASA would never have tried to catch the lander with chopsticks. 

5:46 Kevin Rice: Yeah, not to get too off track, but there are not a lot of things that I would trust the government to manage, whether it is sending astronauts to outer space, healthcare, early childhood education, the list kind of goes on there. 

6:02 Jim Beach: Tell us the Hathaway story. What are some of the lessons you learned? Walk us through the highlights of that. 

6:10 Kevin Rice: Yeah, it was an incredible ride. My best friend from college, who I met day one in the dorms, after we graduated, we decided we wanted to build a company, really, because we did not want to go out and get corporate jobs at the time. So we just started freelancing websites, and that turned into bigger websites, which turned into larger enterprise software implementations. And we took a lot of twists and turns, but kind of midway through, we really focused the company around the restaurant industry. We made a bet that that industry was going to invest in technology. This was around 2015. So we burned the, burned the sales. We let go of clients that we had been working with for years. In some cases, these were multiple six-figure accounts, but they did not fit our direction. And once we made that commitment to focus solely on the restaurant industry, between 2015 and 2021, we grew to over 40 million in revenue, and we were acquired. We had this just amazing, amazing outcome. 

7:16 Jim Beach: When you say, just focus on restaurants, does that mean you are only building websites for restaurants, correct? 

7:22 Kevin Rice: Yeah. So we would do all the consumer-facing experiences for restaurant brands. And we worked with Wingstop and Dutch Bros and Burger King and Carl’s Jr. The list kind of goes on. You know, we had about 50 of the top 100 restaurant brands by the time we were sold. And in order to do that, we had to let go of other accounts that did not fit that direction. So we said goodbye to brands like Clorox and Pepsi, and we had a half-million-dollar account with Applied Materials that it just no longer fit our direction. And so we slowly, gradually sunsetted those accounts, helped them find new partners, and that allowed us to put all of our focus into one industry and build real expertise in that area. 

8:09 Jim Beach: Very, very interesting. Kevin, about 2010, I think I started a podcast called Restaurant Owner Radio, and the whole point, we did about 200 episodes. I met everyone in the industry, got a lot of free food, and got to be judges at food competitions and stuff like that. That was fun. But the idea, the business, or the show, the entire point, was to meet CEOs in the restaurant industry and then to sell them the handheld Visa technology so people could pay at the table. And I believed so much that I was willing to start a radio show on it, that eventually we would all pay at the table. Because Europe does it. Everywhere, Asia does it. But yet here in America, I still let my credit card wander around with Biff. God only knows who is copying it in the back, and that just never caught on. And now, what, maybe at 5% penetration of pay at the table in America, something like that? 

9:14 Kevin Rice: Yeah, the big shift was outside of restaurant, right? It was all moving outside of the four walls, and that was kind of the bet we were making. We saw this whole transformation in the retail industry and financial services, so much investments in technology and marketing technology, specifically, that we were willing to make a bet that the restaurant industry would follow. At the time, it was really just Starbucks and Domino’s that were doing more complex online ordering and loyalty programs through apps and websites, but that, but they proved to the market that this would work, and technology and investments and marketing would grow their business. And so we made the bet, and thankfully, it paid off. And obviously, COVID really accelerated that, because when COVID happened, every restaurant had to close their doors. So we became their only lifeblood to generating sales revenue. So 100% of their sales were coming through the online ordering applications and websites that we had built for these brands. 

10:20 Jim Beach: Very cool. About half a mile from us, over on the closest commercial road there is, I do not know what you call them, Kevin. Help me here. They are the kitchens for mobile restaurants. They do not have any signage. 

10:40 Kevin Rice: So it is like a ghost kitchen, right? So it is a fulfillment center. 

10:45 Jim Beach: That is right. Yeah. They are doing 10, 15 restaurants out of each one of those kitchens, from what I understand. 

10:52 Kevin Rice: That was a really hot topic and trend in kind of 2020 through 2022. It kind of fizzled out. It never really materialized. And there were some big companies getting a lot of investment to build those kind of like, you know, ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, but it never quite took off. I am actually, personally not sure why, because I was pretty bullish on the concept of just being able to have fulfillment centers, much like, say, Amazon has fulfillment centers all over the place to make delivery, you know, doable in a single day. But maybe just operationally, it did not quite land and did not become as prominent as I thought it would have been in the restaurant industry. And maybe it still will be, but as of right now, it has not really taken hold. 

11:43 Jim Beach: And then what about the industry at the macro level? What are we, down 25% from 2000, with thousands of units closed and hundreds of concepts gone? 

11:58 Jim Beach: Are we going to return? Or do you think that we have permanently quit going to movies and dinner? 

12:07 Kevin Rice: Well, there has certainly been a shift to ordering outside the restaurant, and the bulk of the experience with guests now does not happen inside the four walls. It is happening digitally, through different interfaces, social apps, websites, and I think that that will continue, as people do not go out to dinner as much. Like you said, they do not go to the movies as much. There is still a huge opportunity for restaurants to grow. It is just changing the dynamic of how they have a relationship with their customers. And like, one trend that I really think will start to materialize over the next few years is actually moving now away from interfaces and moving more towards voice and voice AI-enabled experiences. 

12:56 Jim Beach: Oh, God. 

13:00 Kevin Rice: Well, if you think about it like it takes a while to order on an application. Even the best applications. 

13:04 Jim Beach: People are willing to pay more, but they want to save time. 

13:09 Kevin Rice: If they can just speak into a microphone, whether it is at a drive-through, or their phone, or their Alexa device, put in their order and have it done in 15 seconds, I think that is the direction everything is going to go in. There is a bit of app fatigue or interface fatigue across all industries. And so my big bet, and places that I have been making investments, is in voice and voice AI-enabled services. 

13:45 Jim Beach: You have no response to that, Kevin. That is what I feel like we are getting into, you know. The joke I am playing on, of course, the meme, yeah, you know, Charlie’s Angels did a thing about it. Drove up to the box. It was squawking. She fixed it, and then it was working well. The voice recognition at McDonald’s was so bad, you know, and our city was one of the cities they tried it in. And by God, they are not ready. It is just not ready yet. Kevin, how close to being ready do you think you are? 

14:18 Kevin Rice: Yeah, I think it is coming to market in different ways, right? I have invested in a voice AI drive-through company, and you are right. Over the last handful of years, it has not worked very well. A lot of the companies in market did not perfect their products before they brought them to market, and so created all kinds of operational issues and guest relations issues for restaurants. But yes, the technology is getting better. I mean, we are seeing how LLM models are much more accurate today than they were a few years ago. Another example is that company I invested in called InStore AI. They are putting recording devices at cash registers so that they can actually record conversations between guests and store associates, and then use that conversational data to get better analytics around operations and human resources and even marketing. So I think there is just, there is a lot of different ways that we can be using voice and AI together to disrupt the current way that brands are interacting with their guests. 

15:28 Jim Beach: Call me before you implement it. Let me test it. you know, I just, I am all there for AI. I am completely addicted to it. The one thing, though, that still does not work is, if you go to Microsoft Word and type something in, using, not type it in, just dictate and let them use their voice recognition, it puts in punctuation every third word, and it takes more time to fix it than it did saving. 

16:01 Kevin Rice: You know, well, you are admittedly using Microsoft products. So that is your first problem. 

16:08 Jim Beach: Yes, I wish I, yeah. Anyway, Kevin, let us go back to Hathaway. What are some of the macro lessons you learned from that? Are you, it sounds like you bootstrapped and owned 100% of the company with your friend. That is correct. Congratulations on that. That is a huge achievement, or that. So obviously you are probably still a bootstrapper. What lessons did you learn? I, what, my best friend from college and I went into business, and we do not speak anymore. How did you stay friendly with your best friend? What are your philosophies of entrepreneurship? 

16:50 Kevin Rice: Go. That is like a lightning round. I will do my best. I think one of the biggest lessons was getting what I already shared a little bit about, but I will elaborate on, was getting really focused. In the beginning, we worked across all different industries, retail, consumer goods, financial services, B2B tech. And what that meant was we had to learn new industries every time we had a new client engagement, and that had a lot of internal costs that we could not necessarily bill with the clients. And so, and then our operating margin was not as good as it could have been. So when we got really focused on one industry, now we were building on existing knowledge. And what happened internally was our employees became more fungible. We could move strategists from one account to another, without them having to spend two weeks to spin up on an industry. We could move engineers from one account to another to fill gaps and increase our margins, without them having to spend a week spinning up on the code. So it created all these efficiencies. And ultimately, this is something I learned at a Tony Robbins event, is that, you know, complexity is the enemy of scale. And so once we got really simple about, like, focus on who we were and the industry we wanted to serve and the market opportunity we wanted to go after, everything started to operate more efficiently. Now, just because we knew we wanted to go after one industry did not mean we were necessarily going to be successful. What we had to do was change our go-to-market and change our positioning in a way that we actually had something that was truly differentiated. Because in this whole consulting world, every single company says we have the best people, we have the best processes, we have proprietary frameworks and methodologies. But if everybody says it, then, you know, it cannot be true for everybody. So what we had to do was invest in creating true IP, intellectual property, and for us, it was a code accelerator that we would use at the beginning of every client project to just kind of kick off the project with a bulk of code so that we could then build upon and customize it for each client. Once we built that IP, we had a true differentiator that nobody else, none of our competitors, had in market, and we could build and craft our entire sales cycle leading to that differentiator, because it did not mean that we would necessarily be cheaper. We actually charged just as much as our competitors, but we did it in half the time. So we were getting our clients to market more quickly, and that became our message. Like, that became our sales message was not necessarily you have to hire us, but you need to get to market as quickly as possible, because all of your competitors are investing and they are moving more quickly than you are. So once we get them bought in on, we need to get to market as quickly as possible, that is our primary decision-making criteria. We knew we would win every time, because we would always have the fastest timelines to implement. So, long story short, it was getting really focused. It was building IP that was a true differentiator, not just a kind of marketing message, but something that we could say we are the only company that has this, and then crafting a sales process around, or leading toward, that value proposition. 

Jim Beach: See that, I think. 

20:05 Kevin Rice: I went over 30 seconds. 

20:21 Jim Beach: But I loaded you up, and you gave me exactly what I wanted, you know. So you told us what you, your operational secrets. It was exactly the answer I wanted. Let me tell you, I thought of this. I met Tony Robbins. We sat next to each other at Star Wars, one world premiere. What was that, one with the little kid, Anakin? Phantom Menace. Phantom Menace. Yes, we were invited to the world premiere, and Tony Robbins sat next to us, and he protested until he was moved, because our seats were not good enough for him. So, like, 80% good in the theater. We were off to the side, or, you know, training our necks or anything. He considered it 0% acceptable, and he moved. So, he has got standards. 

21:13 Kevin Rice: He has got standards. 

21:16 Jim Beach: He does. But we were like one row over from Dustin Hoffman. Tony. 

21:26 Kevin Rice: Tony will say, you get what you tolerate. And in that case, he was not going to tolerate a partial view. 

21:33 Jim Beach: That is right. I wanted a complete view, you know. Tell us about CEOs and ABCs. Love the name of the kid. Reference you, single dad of three boys. God bless you. Tell us about the podcast, the show. 

21:55 Kevin Rice: Yeah, so I, I took some time off after the company was sold, and dollars would be nice. I took some time off and just really focused on, you know, kind of healing some of the things that I struggled with as I was working on building this company, right? Like, as an executive, whether you are at a Fortune 500 or you are starting your own company, there is a lot of stress, there is a lot of pressure. And for many of us, at least, the way that I dealt with that, my kind of coping mechanism was to just really shut down, like disconnect from myself emotionally, and get into what I call robot mode, which meant I was incredibly productive for very long hours. But when I would get home, I was still in work mode. I would never turn it off. So I would be with my kids. I would be making them dinner. I would be going through bedtime routine, and I would be rehearsing my next sales pitch in my head while I am reading them a bedtime story. And so, like, all of this kind of stress and pressure, ultimately, I knew that I needed to reset. So I took some time off. I did a lot of the internal work, and when I was ready to get back into some work activities, I wanted to do it in a way that was more meaningful and kind of honored the experience I went through. Because when I talked to other executives, they face the same struggles, and it is really difficult to grow a successful career at the highest level, but also be able to show up at home for your kids. And so, you know, after talking to a lot of friends in the industry, I came up with this idea to create a venue where we could have a podcast to talk about, you know, just kind of our experience, our strength, you know, our lessons learned along the way. And so I bring on Fortune 500 C-level executives, and we talk about life behind the scenes, life that you will not see in the press releases or on their LinkedIn, and just kind of what is going on behind the scenes as you are growing in your career. And we have had some amazingly touching stories. People are very open and vulnerable, who have literally never shared about their personal life before. Yet they have, you know, been on MSNBC talking about their earnings reports. So it is just a different angle of getting to know the life of, you know, entrepreneurs and executives. 

24:27 Jim Beach: And that is weekly show, found where? 

24:32 Kevin Rice: So, yeah, weekly podcast. We publish on Spotify and Apple. We post all of our video episodes on YouTube. There is a website, CEOsandABCs.com, and then I am pretty active posting about it on LinkedIn. 

24:47 Jim Beach: Can you share one of the touching stories that you just alluded to? 

24:53 Kevin Rice: Yeah. I think there was one executive who I had actually worked with, and so I had a professional relationship with him. And I did not know that when his son was born, he was born with some health conditions, and the doctors did not think his son was going to make it. And with all of his belief, he said, like, we are, you know, we are going to figure this out, we are going to get through it, and by the time, you know, you turn 18, we are going to run a marathon together. And, you know, 20 years later, they have done that, his son is still alive, and they celebrated it by running a marathon together. 

25:30 Jim Beach: That is a touching story, except for the marathon part. I mean, you California people, and you are crazy and insistence to run. Oh, well, that is an amazing story, though. You are right. That is very touching. Anything with little babies. 

25:47 Kevin Rice: Sick babies, yeah. At the same time, imagine going through, like, taking care of your kids, knowing that one of them is facing a terminal illness, but then still being the face of a Fortune 500 brand, company with multiple brands that are very public. And so that is a lot to carry for any human. 

26:12 Jim Beach: Yes. When my father was taking his board exams to become a doctor, medical licensing exam, I do not know why they did this, but about five minutes after he started, they came in and put a note on his desk that said, your baby temperature went to 105, and he got up and walked out, of course, you know. And the baby actually got spinal meningitis that night. But I do not know why you would tell someone that five minutes into their licensing exam. 

26:50 Kevin Rice: Well, you know, priorities, right? There are some things in life that are more important. And, you know, when it comes to a child that is sick, you know, you drop everything. I feel like my heart goes out for athletes who you hear about are pressured to play in a sporting event and miss the birth of their children. It happens all the time. 

27:12 Jim Beach: Yeah, birth of children you should be off for. You know, that is ridiculous. That is not right. I found out one of my kids was coming, and I was in Boston and had a plane that was, you know, six hours away, and a couple saw me and overheard and gave one of their seats so that I could get back in time. So that was lucky. 

27:39 Jim Beach: Kevin, it is an amazing story. Congratulations on the bootstrap, the working with your friend. We have not really covered that. Give me one minute on how you work with a friend and not get mad at each other. 

27:51 Kevin Rice: We had an amazing relationship. We often were referred to as like the yin to each other’s yang. Jesse was really a strong operator and technologist, and very analytical and logical, and, you know, would make maybe like more calculated, slower decisions than me. And I was a little bit more on the like, ready, fire, aim mode of operating. And so I, for many years of the company, I led sales, marketing, client services, and he oversaw, you know, kind of the operations, program management, and technology aspects of the business. But we had a really good relationship. And then, you know, if we came into disagreements, we would check in with each other and say, okay, you think we should do this? I think we should do that. Like, first of all, is this in your area of domain expertise? Because there are certain things that I would just defer to him and vice versa. But then if it was something that, you know, we needed to get a temperature check on, we would just find out, like, hey, how important is this to you? Because I might think one thing, but to me, the decision to go in that direction is a two, and you might think it is an eight or a 10. And so, in that case, how much conviction do you have on this decision? And we would allow that conviction metric to help decide, like, what is the tiebreaker? 

29:15 Jim Beach: So he never took payroll and went to France with it. 

29:21 Kevin Rice: You know, I thought about, you know, all of the trade shows being in Vegas. I thought about, you know, putting it all in black a few times. Black a few times. 

29:31 Jim Beach: All right, Kevin. How do we find out more, follow you online, hear the show, all of that, please? 

29:37 Kevin Rice: Yeah, like I said, the website, CEOsandABCs.com. We put all of our episodes there. You can find us on YouTube. Every episode airs weekly on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And then I am most active on LinkedIn. So if you have any questions or want to drop me a message, LinkedIn is probably the best way to reach me. 

30:00 Jim Beach: Fantastic. Thank you so much for being with us, Kevin. Great, great story, great lessons, and we would love to have you back. 

30:05 Kevin Rice: I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on. 

30:07 Jim Beach: And we will be right back. 

30:22 Jim Beach: And we are back again, still so very appreciative that you are with us. Very excited to welcome back to the show Cornelia Gamlem. She is most famous for being the author of the great big HR book. It is on, it is like 10th edition on that Amazon thing, and it really is the Bible of the industry. What is that one called? 

30:46 Cornelia Gamlem: The Big Book of HR. Here we go. 

30:49 Jim Beach: And Cornelia has been on this show four or five times. She may be one of our most frequent guests, because we always have fun. She is, of course, a HR genius. She spent 15 years at the head of an HR department for a Fortune 500 and then went out on her own. And for the last decade or so, two decades, has been an award-winning author, speaker, consultant, HR management expert. Her latest book, the one we talked about last time, I loved it because I got to say the question mark, they did what? Unbelievable Tales from the Workplace. But today we are going to talk about her newest, it is an ebook called Essentials of Employee Engagement, or Solutions for Today’s Challenges. Cornelia, welcome back. 

31:35 Cornelia Gamlem: Thank you so much. I am delighted to be here. Jim. 

31:39 Jim Beach: How many times do you think you have been on? 

31:41 Cornelia Gamlem: Between my writing partner and I, probably a good six times. 

31:46 Jim Beach: Yes, yes, I think that puts you in the lead. Probably. I do not know, but it is impressive. We always enjoy having you back. What does the market look like right now? Lots of people unemployed, lots of companies announcing layoffs. What are you seeing in the market in general? 

32:09 Cornelia Gamlem: Yeah, it is a little bit bleak out there. In fact, I was reading that while companies are planning on hiring, it is selective jobs. And of course, everybody is concerned about AI. Is it replacing jobs or not? And I think the jury is out on that, because there is the mindset of, if we are not bringing people into entry-level positions and training them, how are we ever going to develop leaders for the future? So there is a lot of discussion around that. So I would not panic over AI just yet, but it certainly is a disruptor at this point in time. 

32:48 Jim Beach: Is it a differential advantage for people who want to get hired? 

32:53 Cornelia Gamlem: I think being somewhat comfortable with using AI is certainly going to be a help. I am not sure if it is going to be an absolute differentiator. It is going to depend on the position that the individual is looking for, but I think having that skill set will certainly help somebody in the long run. 

33:19 Jim Beach: I am using it and just finding more and more stuff, and I got addicted to it for a while, for writing chapters. I have written a couple of books that I am trying to get out, and eating what I consider a done chapter in, and just saying simply, grade, and having the AI say, this is an 8.7 and here are the reasons, and here is what you need to work on and stuff. And I just got addicted to trying to get it to a 9.9 for every chapter. 

33:55 Cornelia Gamlem: And I do not think any human is ever going to get it to a 9.9. The thing I find interesting is, I know, in the publishing industry itself, if you are not self-publishing, when you sign a contract, you are basically saying that you are representing this work to be your own and that, you know, nobody else helped you with it. And of course, you can have citations and all in it, if you are doing a nonfiction book. But it certainly is changing up a lot of things in a lot of different industries, and, you know, and in some cases for the good, in some cases, with some caution around it. 

34:35 Jim Beach: So the process that I just did, is that an unfair process, according to McGraw Hill? You know, I do not want to comment exactly. 

34:42 Cornelia Gamlem: But I would say if you are using it to try to improve something, or if there are portions of the chapter that, you know, you liked, say portions of the chapter that you were struggling with, and this is giving you some prompts on better ways to word it, I think that is okay. The problem comes in, it is, if you are not using your own original ideas in, and I think that is when they would reject it. 

35:13 Jim Beach: I mean, what about Grammarly? You know, where is the line between Grammarly and, yeah, you know what I mean. This is just, yeah, exactly. 

35:22 Cornelia Gamlem: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, we, I think we have always looked at Grammarly as a tool. It is like a check my spelling, check my grammar, versus write something for me. And I think that is the key. If you are depending upon AI to write something from scratch for you, versus, is there a way, yeah, yeah. Is there a way that you can use it to improve, you are kind of using it as an editor? 

35:47 Jim Beach: Yes, exactly, yeah. Yes. You know, did I ever tell you my editor story? I was so disappointed. You know, I saw like Romancing the Stone and all these movies where the author or the editor or their publisher are best friends, you know that meme, that idea, right? Supposed to be best friends with your publisher. And so I went to New York, blew up, had a meeting. She gave me 90 seconds. 

36:18 Cornelia Gamlem: I was, when I was, yeah. Was this just to pitch the book to her? 

36:24 Jim Beach: No, the book had already been, ah, you know, they had already committed to it. It was maybe already come out. For no particular reason, went up to meet her in New York, and, you know, I thought you go meet your publisher because they are supposed to take you to dinner. 

36:45 Cornelia Gamlem: I think, I think those days are over, but that is interesting, because, you know, we have a wonderful relationship with our agent, who, you know, kind of bridges the gap to the publisher. But while I have never met the editor in the publishing company, I have met some of the other folks that work for them, pretty much virtually, but we have had wonderful conversations with them. Well, it depends, so I am sorry to hear that. Yeah, I think it does. I think it does. 

37:14 Jim Beach: There are multiple reasons companies like McGraw Hill are dinosaurs. It is not just digital. You know, their employees are dinosaurs as well. So Cornelia, do you want to play a game? 

37:36 Cornelia Gamlem: Sure. You and I always play fun games. Yes, we do. What do you have in mind? 

37:41 Jim Beach: Well, we could talk about how to keep employees well engaged in the workplace. 

37:58 Cornelia Gamlem: I think that is how we, we have done it in the past, and we are always playing for a Tesla, right? 

38:02 Jim Beach: Yes, yes. 

38:09 Cornelia Gamlem: I have to make more royalties on these books, though. 

38:15 Jim Beach: All right, why do not you start us off? 

38:17 Cornelia Gamlem: Okay, so when I talk about employee engagement, how would you describe, or would you say that that means throwing a lot of parties and making people feel good all the time? 

38:36 Jim Beach: Well, that is certainly, you want to have, you know, an appropriate amount of fun function so that you can bond and stuff. But employee engagement means you sit your butt down on their cubicle every once in a while and ask how things are going at their cubicle. As a matter of fact, Cornelia, we, the last office that I designed, they had a pull-out rolling file cabinet, and we put the company red on top, and we would pull it out, and that would be a chair for someone to sit in as they came into your cubicle. So I would pull out the rolling cabinet, sit my butt on the red, and ask, what is going on here? How is that? 

39:21 Cornelia Gamlem: That is my answer. That is actually very good. I think you may be on the path to winning that next Tesla, because probably one of the most important things about employee engagement is making sure that people have the opportunity for input and that that input is really being heard. It is not just doing surveys and then putting the surveys away in the proverbial file cabinet. It is really listening and acting on their input. And if there is a reason that they come up with an idea and it is not going to work, then explaining to people that, while we value your idea and it has some merit, we really cannot consider it right now. Maybe, you know, maybe in a year from now, when we have some other things in place, or it is just not going to work within the resources that we have today. And at least they know that they have been heard, and that somebody is listening to what their ideas are. 

40:19 Jim Beach: You know, that is especially hard as an entrepreneur. You know, we got our business up and running, and we found our model and replicated our model, and it worked. In replication, we had 89 locations up and running, and then my brother, with his MBA, came to the company and wanted a job and had all of these ideas. And, John, we tried that two years ago, shut up, you know. Because it is hard once you have your model and it is working, the last thing I really want to hear about is you tinkering with my model that is working. You know, I was here when the model did not work. You want to fiddle with the edges. You see what I mean? 

41:02 Cornelia Gamlem: Exactly, exactly. And you are right. Yes, sometimes a little fiddling, you need to do some adjustments as the environment changes, like new technology comes along. You know, is there a place now to introduce AI, for example? And those are the kinds of things that certainly merit some consideration, but just to fiddle for the sake of fiddling, and without really understanding, like your customer base, for example, is this new idea that you are proposing, how, how will our customers adjust to it? You know, how is the marketplace going to adjust to something like that? 

41:46 Jim Beach: You know, they announced that Chick-fil-A french fries were going to change, and I wonder if I had not known, if I would have tasted the difference. But having known that they were different made them taste different, and I did not like it. 

42:05 Cornelia Gamlem: So, okay. Number two, when we are talking about inclusion and employee engagement, or even customer engagement, are we talking about giving people perks, giving them discounts on something, or are we talking about something much broader than that? 

42:33 Jim Beach: Well, you said inclusion, and then did not mention that again, and so that kind of threw me off a little bit. Okay, you are talking about engagement, though, of customers and employees with perks and employees, correct? 

42:51 Jim Beach: I think my answer is the same. Everyone loves a good perk, and I am going to take it and certainly not object to it, as long as you still know my name and, you know, give me fuzzies and make me think that you care about me, you know. So all of those are important. I will take the perk. I would rather have you know my name. 

43:13 Cornelia Gamlem: Perfect, perfect. Yeah, because I think too often people go, well, if we, you know, and I have seen it happen so many times in organizations, somebody is unhappy about something, let us just throw some money at the problem. Let us give them a small raise, let us give them a little bonus, but we are not really addressing what it is that the employee is upset or concerned about. And we, you know, there is often the mindset of, if we just pay them, they will either go away or they will be quiet. And there could also be that ripple effect, if you treat, if you are treating employees that way, because they are not going to speak kindly of the organization. They may not necessarily go out and badmouth your company, but they are certainly not going to encourage other people to either come and work for you, or they are not going to encourage, you know, say, new clients or customers, to do business with you, because they are going to feel that you are really not taking them seriously and you are not taking the issue seriously. 

44:22 Jim Beach: How much management by Glassdoor are we seeing? 

44:30 Cornelia Gamlem: You know, I think we have seen a shift, and it is kind of going back and forth. You know, we came out of the pandemic where everybody was at home, and then people started trickling back into the office. And, you know, initially there was still this, well, you are back in the office, you have to be here. But managers were not necessarily paying a lot of attention to people, or they would call meetings. And if the organization was still hybrid, so everybody that was physically in the office was still getting on their computer to attend this meeting, so that the people in the office and the people that were sitting at home or a remote location could all participate at the same time. And we went through a period where managers would think, I am having face time with all of these people. But it really is not enough, you know. So there was still that glass door, as you described. It was still there. I believe now that managers in particular are starting to realize we have got to go back to paying attention to people, you know, having that face time with people. And even if they are remote, then having a one-on-one meeting with them, so that they know that they can reach out and there is an actual person that they are speaking with who is listening to them, who is listening to their ideas, is talking about, you know, the progress that they are making on a project that they are working on, and they can get some really good feedback. But I think, I think we have been in flux for a while, and we really have got to pull it back. We have got to tighten it up a little bit more than has been going on. 

46:20 Jim Beach: Tighten it up a little bit. What do you mean? I think I mean, go ahead. Go ahead. 

46:25 Cornelia Gamlem: No, I was just going to say, tighten it up in terms of, you know, making sure you are spending more time with your employees, and not just assuming that because you are having all of these virtual meetings that that is going to suffice, you know. 

46:39 Jim Beach: So Jamie Dimon has demanded that all of his employees come downtown and work. We are seeing a lot, a lot of companies say, no, you need to get your butts back in here. Where we are. How far are we? Where are we on the spectrum? Where are we swinging one way or the other right now? 

46:57 Cornelia Gamlem: I think what they are seeing is, is the loss of a lot of people, and particularly women, because they are especially, you know, parents of younger children. They have been struggling with trying to balance childcare and commute time and having enough time to, you know, to take care of family matters. There have been some studies that have looked at this and have said, you know, women are just deciding, I would rather take a lower-level job where I have more flexibility and even sacrifice some pay, if that means I do not have to commute every day. And I can, I can better manage some of the responsibilities that I have, rather than be forced to go into the office every single day and have to deal with some of the craziness around that. So that we are, we are seeing some exits from the workplace around these return-to-work mandates. And I think it is a shame, because I think you can strike a happy medium if you really sit down and, you know, talk to people and see what it is that they need to be successful, both for the organization and in their personal lives. You know, that kind of gets back to, you know, what we were talking about. What are people’s needs? And are you spending the time listening to them, rather than just assuming that there is a one-size-fits-all model that we used to live by? And is that still working in the 21st century? 

48:37 Jim Beach: Do you believe that people are as productive at home as they are in the office? 

48:42 Cornelia Gamlem: Oh, I think people can be more productive at home. 

48:46 Jim Beach: You think that the average person is more productive or not? 

48:50 Cornelia Gamlem: I think the average person can be more productive if they are really committed to their work. I see value in spending time in the office, but having worked both in an office and then on my own, and, you know, in my own home office, I know I got a lot more done when I did not have all the distractions of somebody dropping in to talk to me and the chit-chat kind of stuff, not, not important kinds of discussions. If people are working on some kind of project that really needs focus, a few days a week at home, I think they can get things done a lot more efficiently and a lot quicker. They are away from the distractions. 

49:42 Jim Beach: The flip side, the laundry and the kid who ran out of milk. 

49:46 Cornelia Gamlem: No, no. 

49:49 Jim Beach: Fax machine. You mean those, no options? You mean those? 

49:52 Cornelia Gamlem: No, I am talking about the distractions of your coworkers in the office. Yeah, where I was kind of going with it, I see the need for a balance in that. I certainly see the value of working at home part of the time and being in the office part of the time. And I think, you know, I think the mandate that says you shall always be here is a little misguided, you know. Give people that opportunity to have that quiet time that they know that they can find at home. You know, the kids are off at school, the husband is off at work. Or I have got a quieter place where I can go and work and concentrate, you know. And then, then there are the situations of, I may need to take, to take the day off, or take the day away from the office and work from home, because, oh, I have got a contractor coming that is going to fix the plumbing or the air conditioner or something like that. I do not know for sure what time they are coming. So why can I not work at home? I can probably, in six hours, get eight hours worth of work done if I am at home and things are quieter. And yes, I will have that period of time when the worker is there, but I will still be able to accomplish a lot of what I was able to accomplish. 

51:40 Jim Beach: All right. Number three, we need to go fast here. Okay. 

51:43 Cornelia Gamlem: Number three, Jay, let me say, what do you think contributes to the success of both the individual and the organization? 

51:59 Jim Beach: There are a billion answers to that question: shared goals, mutual communication, continual learning. I could go on. 

52:08 Cornelia Gamlemr: What are the top five? What are the top three? 

52:14 Jim Beach: Strong communication, okay. 

52:14 Jim Beach: Honesty and openness, absolutely. 

52:14 Jim Beach: And accountability. 

52:26 Cornelia Gamlem: Yes, absolutely. I think you nailed those three. I think, I think there is another Tesla on its way to you. Oh, once, once I make enough royalty money. 

52:41 Jim Beach: Cornelia, you are always great. We love having you just to play the game and just to talk about HR issues and stuff. You know, what I think it all comes down to is just taking a breath and, you know, doing what your mama taught you by the strongest standards. You know. 

53:02 Cornelia Gamlem: And a lot of common sense. I think we lose that in the discussions. Just have some common sense around it, yeah. 

53:09 Jim Beach: How do we get in touch with you? Find out more, get a book, find the new ebook, all that, please. 

53:17 Cornelia Gamlem: Okay, the best thing to do is go to our website, www.BigBookofHR.com, and right on the landing page, there are links to all of our books, and you can find out a whole lot more information about both myself and my co-author, Barbara Mitchell. 

53:36 Jim Beach: Fantastic. Thank you so much for being with us, and we cannot wait to see you again in six months or so. 

53:40 Cornelia Gamlem: Okay, Jim, we always love coming on the show. Alrighty, bye-bye. 

53:48 Jim Beach: And we are out of time for today, but you know what that means, we will be back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, and go make a million dollars. Bye now. You.