A HIRED CALLING!

Derek Wilson (00:08.109)
Go!

Jerry, where you at? How are you? Can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay. I don't have my camera on yet. That's alright. No worries.

Derek Wilson (00:25.422)
Second, my camera's not showing up.

Derek Wilson (00:34.254)
Hey Daisy, can you guys let everybody know I'm about to be on the call?

Derek Wilson (00:44.526)
Ahem.

Derek Wilson (00:56.27)
There he is. There we go. How you doing? I'm good, man. How are you? I'm in the dream over here. Yeah. Fighting Technology, doing a whole little setup over here for getting this bad boy started and launched. So we're just recording today, right? Yeah, we are recording today. OK. We're recording right now, actually. I didn't send you a waiver yet. I didn't send you a survey yet.

This is probably going to be in the making of series. yeah. yeah. No worries. No worries. And I'm actually looking forward to a lot of your, your coaching from going through this process. yeah, you know, you've been through it before too. You've, you've done podcasts and such, right? yeah. yeah.

I'll probably throw in a radio voice here in just a moment and I don't know how this stuff goes, man. I haven't done a podcast. I don't really listen to podcasts. I don't really, I mean, this is all new to me. So it's fun getting it started. Did you ever get a chance to talk to Mario? Did he ever reach back out to you? He finally messaged me today as a matter of fact.

He liked what I was doing and he'd get with me later. Did you reach out to him or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's been like just super busy, man. His daughter is pregnant, so he's going to be a first -time grandpa. And he's producing podcasts constantly. So he was behind quite a bit. I had reached out to him a while back, and I finally got to sit down and talk with him.

I think it was on Friday. But yeah, he's been super busy trying to get caught back up. Yeah, I mean, I totally understand and I appreciate you, you know, sending him a nudge. He's going to get on my calendar. Yeah, I pushed some buttons.

Derek Wilson (03:03.278)
So here comes that announcer, the radio voice. They said a face radio, whatever that means. But yeah, so thanks for joining me. Dr. Jerry Washington, it's very fitting that we met during research on this topic and it's very appropriate. And I'm happy that you're one of the first people to do this with me, considering this goes into the research that we both care about. This is Resume Revelators, a Hired Calling podcast.

And so when this all gets set up properly, I will send people to come on the show, a survey beforehand like we did, because this also is going to go into research. Because people that we're going to be working with are veterans or in the veteran community and can help out a lot in this space. So unfortunately, I'll probably ask you some of the same things I've asked you before, but not really going down the deep road in those things.

so tell me about your, before we get into the hard questions. So when you've done, when you've, so first of all, I guess, do you listen to podcasts? I do, I do. I, I do more the, the, just the basic audio podcasts. I don't really get into the blogs or the video podcasts. most of them are just, you know, audio. I do a lot of audio books mostly, but, do, do, review some podcasts every now and again.

What makes a good podcast to you.

You know, I think for me, it's the topic, of course, and the pacing of the podcast. And when I talk about pacing, I mean that we're not glossing over concepts and you spend time on the concept, you let the concept develop and not just hit the questions and go. Because a lot of times,

Derek Wilson (05:06.798)
There's a lot to say about a particular subject and sometimes we're so concerned about the next question that has to be asked that that particular topic doesn't get enough justice. Thank you for that. All right. So you are a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. What was your rank when you retired and how many years total did you serve? Yeah. So I was a master sergeant, E8, when I retired.

I had been a master sergeant for about four years. I retired at 23 years. It's technically it was 22 years, and 11 months and, some days. So when you retire, it's always at the end of the month. So I didn't make the 23 year mark. I was a day off. So I always say though, I retired at 23 years because essentially it was.

And so what was your, your main MLS or your final MLS whenever you retired? Yeah. So, as a combat engineer, you stay a combat engineer all the way through. You don't change MOSs when you reach, you know, E7 or E8 or something like that. so I was a 1371 combat engineer from, right out of MOS school. and I stayed, so I do have a few other MOSs under my belt.

I did recruiting duty. So I did that for a while. And then I also am a operations and tactics instructor, which later in my career received MOS exit later as well. So then your time on recruiting duty also gives you some perspective on military careers, right? absolutely. Yeah. And then so I know you and I know you have a doctorate degree. It's very...

It's a rarity for military members to get out and get a doctorate degree, let alone enlisted veterans like us go out and get doctorate degrees. What drove you to go all the way to a doctorate degree? You know, so education was always something I said I was going to do. And I spent a lot of time throughout my Marine Corps career dabbling in it and never putting, you know, my complete effort, I guess you could say, into it.

Derek Wilson (07:34.382)
So after I retired, I said, I am going to go as far as possible. I thought a master's degree was going to be it. And, but while I was doing my master's, I realized I wanted to dig a little deeper into certain concepts I was looking at.

Derek Wilson (08:01.806)
How many months after your separation from the Marine Corps did you begin looking for your first job? So I started looking actually well before I knew what I wanted to do. So right at so 2011 as I was leaving Japan, heading to 29 Palms, California, I knew what I wanted to do when I retired.

I had spent six years doing facilities management while in Japan. So I knew that I could relatively easily transition over and continue doing facilities management. So once I, in 2011, so that's roughly about five years before I retired, I started really looking at the facilities management field.

and what I needed to do to be able to transition into that field. So roughly about, I say 2015, 14, 15 timeframe, I really started looking at different organizations, reading job descriptions, and just figuring out how I needed to design my resume to show what I've done.

Five years is pretty early from what I've found from my research. So congrats on getting started early. What veterans support organizations did you use and what did you think of them? So I used a full gambit of them. So I did the regular TRS that the Marine Corps provides. I did what's called at the time VTAP.

which was veteran transition assistance. And that is still around. I think they've changed their name a little bit. But the VTAP was the most effective along with transition support, which is another program that provides training. Both of those were huge for me because they really opened. Both those two programs were,

Derek Wilson (10:25.966)
managed by non -military folks that just had a passion to help military folks. And so they brought a whole new perspective to the table. Not only that, both groups had deep connections in the HR field throughout Orange County, LA, San Diego.

So the network was really wide and you could get a chance to talk to a lot of different people. So through the VTAP, I had an opportunity to talk to several different facilities managers. I also had a coach that helped me with my resume, helped me before I had an interview, things like that. And then on the other side with transition support, I got OSHA training.

safety training outside of OSHA, Lean Six Sigma, Greenbelt, you know, all of those different services and they were free for me.

Thank you for that. And I'll figure out how to put the links and post those in here. Could you just... certain. I can share those with you. I know who they are. I meant for listeners or viewers, because those are two great organizations that you just mentioned there. Certainly. We should be able to have the right part of this, part of the purpose of people getting the right connections to the right resources, because there are people who don't know these things exist, right? VTS. Correct. I've talked to Russell Levy in person. I know how he did it. It's fantastic. Russell's done a great thing for this community. And I just want to help him advertise that.

Yes. Thank you for that. And I'm going to change gears on you a little bit here and ask you some questions and we can just respond with the one to five and you'll see why when this is over. Okay. So one being you don't five being you do all the time. Right. So I sometimes chat with strangers in the grocery store bank line. I don't tend to worry. I don't tend to worry or feel overly anxious about life. Three.

Derek Wilson (12:32.686)
I have tried some techniques to boost my intuition, such as mediation or meditation or just going to a quiet place.

I nearly always expect good things to happen to me in the near future.

3 .5. We'll go with three or four, buddy. Go with a four. All right. Making math hard over here. My computer is not cooperating very well either. I'm gonna go with four. I try for what I want from life, even if the chances of success seem slim. Five.

Derek Wilson (13:10.926)
I expect most of the people that I meet to be pleasant and helpful. Bye.

Derek Wilson (13:18.062)
I tend to look on the bright side of things whenever something happens to me. Or.

I believe that even negative events will work out well for me in the long run. Say that again? I believe that even negative events will work out well for me in the long run. Bye.

I don't dwell on the things that haven't worked out well for me in the past.

Derek Wilson (13:45.902)
or

Derek Wilson (13:49.71)
I try to learn from errors that I've made in the past. Five. All right, so that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.

I think I'm missing two questions. I had to find those. And so it's obvious here, you scored very high. And these questions are from the luck test from Dr. Richard Wiseman talks about how lucky people are, right? And some of these things, it's about actually here, here are the two other couple of questions. Yeah, it's about, you know, being able to change your luck. And I don't mean,

at the gambling table in the casino when you're trying to hit blackjack. It's about sometimes people get stuck in this rut where they think the world is against them. They can't find a job. They can't do this. They can't do that. They don't have friends or suffering, but they don't reach out, right? They're not extroverted enough. And all of these things I just asked you tie back into things that people say have made them lucky. And there's a whole...

set of research on this, Dr. Richard Wiseman that talks about ways that you can really improve your luck. So it seems like you think you're a pretty lucky person. Would you agree with that? Yeah. And I don't know Dr. Wiseman's definition of luck or what he's using as a term luck. I do have a nuanced view of luck.

And I can give that to you. And maybe it overlaps quite well with Dr. Wiseman. So there's probabilities that things are going to happen within our existence as we move through life. There's a probability that X will happen. So for example, the probability of me being born in the United States, the probability of me being born in 1974,

Derek Wilson (16:01.582)
and then the probability of this or that. Well, you know, we have no control realistically over the probabilities as we understand them right now. However, because those probabilities and we have no control over, there are some areas that we do have control over. And if we push ourselves into the areas that we can control,

and learn and even when we don't think we can control them, that we can learn how to influence them, then when those probabilities of situations arise where we're prepared enough to take on that probability of whether it's a good, positive or bad, we're in a position to influence which direction that may fall. And so that's kind of my...

understanding of luck is that, you know, it's kind of that whole saying of being prepared for an opportunity will increase the likelihood that that opportunity will be used or accomplished.

I think a lot of it does overlap to what you just said there, right? Cause it's about influencing and, and this, the, the question from Dr. Wise, about influencing your surroundings or being willing to be influenced by your surroundings, right? Having conversations with people you don't know, trying to like going and doing things you didn't do before. New experiences and part of that is influencing your surroundings, right? Yeah. I got a, I got a pretty cool story.

So I was on recruiting duty in Austin, Texas, and I was at a gas station and I had, of course, a government vehicle. And so we had to go inside, of course, the place to do the gas, right, with the gas card. So I go inside, I'm putting the gas or paying for the gas and everything. And I turn around to walk out. And as I'm walking out, I'm in uniform.

Derek Wilson (18:17.998)
As I'm walking out, there's a person, young guy walking in. And at that point I had a choice, right? I could say something to him or I didn't have to say something to him, or I could hold the door for him or not hold the door for him. Well, I chose to hold the door for him. And I also chose to say something to him. And I just simply said, how's your day? And he says, you know, my day's going okay. And I said, well, I hope it gets better for you.

And that's it. I laid a seed is what I felt. I didn't do anything else. Later that day, I'm sitting in my office and I get a call and it's a good friend of mine from Austin South. And I was in Austin North. He was in Austin South and he goes, hey, Wash, that's what they call me, W -A -S -H. Hey, Wash, hey, just wanna let you know, thank you.

And I had no clue what he was talking about. And of course, that guy went to the recruiting station, walked in there and decided that he wanted to join the Marine Corps. And he had always had an idea of something he wanted to do like that. But the way I engaged with him, tipped him to go in there. Now, probability would say, what if I stood there and talked to him? Maybe I could have put him in.

or maybe that would have been too much for him. So that's where the probability comes into play. I took the opportunity to say something. I didn't directly benefit from it. However, that person did benefit from it by deciding to join the Marine Corps and doing something that he had always had an idea he wanted to do.

That's a really good story and how to, how you influence his day. Yeah. And so, we're taking a small tangent here because you mentioned your time as a recruiter. And, so my, my nephew was just here. Actually, my nephew in law, he's my niece's husband, was just here this past week for, he was on leave. and he's a army MP by, you know, by training and just left recruiter school, going to be a permanent recruiter. wow.

Derek Wilson (20:36.91)
Yeah, because they've changed. They don't have army staff and CEOs doing military police stuff because it's all civilians. And so I wish them the best of luck going to do it. I mean, because I mean, probably not, you know, I'm not saying that being a military recruiter is the most important job right now individually, but collectively for our country.

are doing the most important job of anybody right now, because of the threats that we're facing and the inability right now to hit the demanding numbers across the board, except for the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is just... I mean, I'm not trying to scare anybody, but if you watch the news, the threats are real and it's getting kind of crazy right there. And part of this show is about creating, not creating, it's showing the success stories that veterans have.

about getting better jobs when they get out because all we see are the horror stories, right? But there are good news stories and where are they? And how do people get to that level? What are people doing? What's Jerry doing to get to the level where he is reaching career satisfaction? It's kind of the next set of questions I have. It's about how satisfied are you in your career? How do you reach that? How do you determine what is satisfaction in your career? And I don't think veterans...

As you're transitioning out of the military, we don't think about that. That hits us in the face when we're six months into this new job that we can't stand. And it's just terrible. And I mean, one person I did, I interviewed during my research, he was a Marine Corps Staff and CO, in psychology operations, is now working in New York City in finance. He had a really cool job in the Marine Corps, psychological operations. Now he is doing this really cool job working on Wall Street.

And he says it's still, it doesn't even compare to the military, not even close. He can't find job satisfaction despite making probably three times more, you know, now he was then working on Wall Street, getting a degree from Columbia, despite, you know, all the, all the great stuff that's happening there. so it's, it's, we got to figure out how do we define job satisfaction when you leave the military? And I think also that people.

Derek Wilson (23:01.55)
We know that people put a lot of their identity into their jobs. Some people do, some people don't. I think it's pretty obvious that military veterans, they've been doing that. It's been their identity forever, right? And they struggle to find jobs that they can work to bring level, the same level of satisfaction. But we got to figure out ways to teach them how to find that level of satisfaction elsewhere in their lives. And you may not get that from your career.

Yeah, so I agree. You know, what you're really speaking about is something that I had to figure it out for myself. And I think that's the important part is figuring it out for yourself. And then realizing that you may not have figured it out completely, but you have a process in place to continue learning, right?

Like you made a, you really hit me with it when you said you, you know, you may not find a job that satisfies you like the one you had before. And I think a lot of veterans experienced that. I know I did. And it really comes down to me and I had to give it a lot of thought is that the importance of my job, right? Like,

When I was a Marine and I deployed to Iraq, I deployed to Afghanistan, there were life and death situations. And I'm not experiencing that level of importance at my work. And so I have to find ways to still find that sense of belonging or that sense of importance within my job.

But one thing that I realized is that it doesn't necessarily have to be at where I work. It just needs to be part of my life or what I do. And that's how I've mitigated that by realizing that what I do as a facilities manager, I do keep people safe. I guess you could say that if I don't do my job as well as I can,

Derek Wilson (25:20.142)
could that maybe someone could slip on the floor and hurt themselves. But it's not the same level, right, as what I would find in the Marine Corps is making sure a Marine is very well trained to do their job when we go to, you know, Iraq or whatever. But I have to kind of spread that out throughout my entire identity and not just at my work. It has to be spread out.

And I've been able to do that for me. And it works for me by not only being involved when I do at work, but being involved when I do at home, being involved when I do a podcast with a good friend. And I find that I can find that level of satisfaction that I felt from the Marine Corps, but it actually feels even better because it's throughout everything that I do on a daily basis.

You know, I read an article years ago from, it's called On the Nature of Identity Work. And I took a lot of notes on this. And over the years, this was like 2016, right after I retired and I found this article. And I started reading, I wanted to, I really trying to wrestle with what is transition process? What is,

building identity around what I do, not just where I work. And it was a really good paper. And I'd like to offer a couple of different aspects for it. Is that one thing that we have to realize is that a lot of times we're speaking our identity to others. So we're letting other people know.

who we are, what we do, what we stand for, all of our verbal communications with other people is, I don't wanna say it's performative, but we're letting people know what we're about. And then our activities and behaviors really should try to balance that and match what we claim we are, right? And that will give you not only the sense of accomplishment, but...

Derek Wilson (27:43.95)
it aligns. If you say you are this to people and you actually do that, then there's no cognitive dissonance. You're not sitting back going, man, I let this person down because of X, right? So that, I mean, that's kind of a, I guess a deeper perspective on what you were talking, but I just, I found that really aligned to what you were saying. To summarize part of that, that I took away is,

you transitioned the intensity you had at work into the parts of your life that it wasn't before. And that's really what transitioning is about, right? Because you don't spend enough time in that space when you're on active duty, right? You're doing too much other stuff. So that's really what it's all about. And that's probably helpful in how you were able to transition to what you have to now. I think transition also is an ongoing experience. We go over and over again as we go through life.

It's not a one -time thing, the transition, that first phase outside the military is an important phase. And I failed to ask you this when I brought it up earlier, your time as a recruiter and then being such an important job right now, what piece of advice do you have for recruiters right now trying to get people to come join the military?

Well, I think it really comes down to what I mentioned right at the end there is when you're talking to these individuals that, you know, potentially would join the Marine Corps, is that what you're saying that your actions follow that, you know, if you're claiming that the Marine Corps is XXXX and you can join it and become XXX, you need to make sure that you are those intangibles.

that you are claiming or that you exude those intangibles that you're claiming. There are individuals out there everywhere throughout society that want to be Marines. They want to be in the military in general. And they have role models that they see. But as a recruiter, when you come in front of that young person, that...

Derek Wilson (30:04.206)
potentially could join, you need to put your best foot forward. You need to control your own behaviors. And you need to understand that this whole, you know, putting folks in the military is bigger than you and that you're doing it for the country. That's hard to, that's really hard to do while you're out there. It really is. But it, you can't do it.

I'll use the diet analogy. The goal of a good diet is not that you eat like that constantly, but majority of the time you're eating like that. So majority of the time you need to be putting whatever you're saying, you need to be putting that forward. All those behaviors that aren't conducive to that person joining the military, you probably need to get rid of it.

Maybe you even need to find out what those are. You may not know what those are, those behaviors that are exclusive to someone joining the military. Does that answer your question? It does. And that's just to the next part of this, and is that I know that sometime after you separated, you became a career coach. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about that experience and how many veterans came through your career coaching.

How many civilians did you have? Did you see differences with resumes? And how does that, how does that, how does your time as a recruiter relate to your time as a career coach? And what did you see with voter resumes during that time? Wow. That's a, that's a great question. And I've actually given it a lot of thought. So how did me being on recruiting helped me with career coaching now?

One thing that recruiting duty did do for me is give me a process to, I don't want to say use, but to evaluate myself. Right? And so I self -reflect a lot on what am I doing and am I actually helping, you know, the individual or am I doing something else? And so,

Derek Wilson (32:26.67)
With that, I did a lot of self -reflecting on what I did on recruiting duty and a lot of what I said earlier about making sure you put your best foot forward and repressive behaviors are self -reflective of what I had to do. And I use that now when I'm talking to individuals. So my career coaching has been pretty sporadic. I've helped a lot of folks. I'd say, matter of fact, I can...

I can open up what I call my mentorship folder and I can tell you. One second here.

I won't show any names, don't worry.

Derek Wilson (33:12.654)
So since 2016, or 15 actually, I'm looking at a folder that's older than that. So 2015.

Derek Wilson (33:26.414)
It's like 102 folks that I've worked with. And I'm looking at names that I still keep in contact with. Not everybody on here is military. And a lot of them on here are recent, meaning within the last year, last six months or so.

I connect with folks and we can be talking and we could be on the friendship level, right? Just yay, connecting here and there. And then it may come up, hey, Jerry, you know, I'm thinking about doing the X or doing, and the conversation goes to, you know, career development or career improvement. And we'll talk about it. And we'll figure out ways that we can either help each other, I help them to move to a...

you know, a different level. You know, I say level, whatever that is, but move to something else, right? And it can range from helping with resumes to just kind of thinking about what do I really want to be doing to opening up a business, all kinds of different areas. And it's ongoing. It doesn't really ever stop.

Sometimes I won't talk to someone for several months and then out of the blue, I get a call or I'll even reach out to them and be like, hey, just check it on you, you know, see how you're doing. But yeah, yeah, it's kind of organic for me. And it's something I do because I enjoy it. So I'm not getting paid for it. It's not a career for me. It's just something that I enjoy doing.

Wow. That's impressive. Yeah. So hopefully I answered your question. I think there was a little bit more in there that I may have missed. Well, I mean, you answered it just the way that you should have. It's great. So these people that you see that you're helping make the transition, is there a common theme, a common barrier you see that you have to help people with? Or what's the most common thing you see and that people need to be coached out of? You know,

Derek Wilson (35:54.798)
If there was a common quality, because each person, of course, is different. If there was a common quality that I could put a name to it, and it's something you and I have talked about so much, it has to do with self -efficacy. I'm always finding that self -efficacy is really key. Just hearing that I...

You know, anyone feels that a person can potentially do even more than what they're doing now or accomplish something that they may believe that at the time that they can't. Just hearing someone say, man, you could do that with your eyes closed or let's do it. Let's figure it out. That I found is huge. And what's even bigger than that, though, and you know how self -efficacy works,

is that over time, the continued persistent moving towards that goal, it builds that self -efficacy. And it's not a confidence, but it's, yeah, I can learn how to do that. I can accomplish that. And it's just gonna be incremental. It's just gonna take time. And then you realize that that's really life, right? Life is continuing.

reaching some type of goal and pushing the goal a little bit further. Yeah.

I'm so happy you said self -efficacy, because I mean, that is the other leg of this whole experience. And it was an invite as well. And there's questions about self -efficacy. And I think that we get trained in a way that we have group efficacy as active duty service members. Some of us develop self -efficacy. Not everybody does. But you see.

Derek Wilson (37:56.686)
I think I see a lot of veterans coming out of the military thinking that they are able to do what they were able to do individually, what they did as a group before. And those things happen in groups. People do things, you have help, you have support. And if you don't create that group when you get out, then you are by yourself and you are alone. But in the end, all the research shows that, and it's obvious on...

paper and some black and white and it's in real life, each individual was responsible for their own transition and their own success and that nobody is going to be able to help them do anything more than they can help themselves. So I don't think that we learned self -efficacy enough in our military training or in TAPS class or any other or most VSOs that I'm seeing and researching. I particularly didn't use a VSO while I transitioned out.

didn't use it till I was doing research for my doctorate. It is a key feature that has been researched significantly, but hasn't quite made its way to that space yet. Is there any idea as to why? So I agree with the statement, but I would call it

specific or organized self -efficacy engagement, right? Because self -efficacy is such a huge part of what we do, everybody. And the attempt is there, right? So they're teaching us how to write a resume. That's building self -efficacy. They're teaching us how to go to an interview. They're teaching us, but they don't...

What you're pointing to is that they're not specifically honing in on the four different proven ways to improve self -efficacy. It's not focused enough. And I think that's what you're pointing to because it's aggregate, right? It's there, but it's not, there's a word I'm looking for and I think it's not specific. It's not,

Derek Wilson (40:20.174)
specifically saying, okay, let's organize this program in these four different ways to help improve this service member's self -efficacy for the transition process, right? So they're doing it, you know, like, for example, you mentioned earlier, Russell, right? Russell naturally helps build self -efficacy in individuals. He just does it.

Right? And I think he does it without even knowing that he's building self -efficacy in people. If he was a little bit more aware and knew that there was a formula for building self -efficacy, he could take it even further. So yeah, no, I agree. They're not doing it enough, is what I would say, and that it should be more specific and pull in.

the tools that you and I know are out there to build self -efficacy, to build identity, to build group efficacy and see where that will take individuals.

I want to get in touch with Russell Levy and see what else he's up to these days. He's busy. I can tell you that right now. So I'm helping a friend of mine. We've been working together for some time. And this was a couple of maybe about a month ago. I told him, I said, hey, reach out to Russell and join this program. Matter of fact, just yesterday, I got an email from this person.

And it was there asking me to review their resume and their resume, you know, really the resume they're creating right now is based off of what they're doing with Russell, you know, the safety, the safety world. And so that's where that self -efficacy, you know, comes into play. So changing gears on you here. And I've, I've, I've used it most of this time. What we just discussed and I haven't brought up your book yet.

Derek Wilson (42:34.35)
And I get into the transition from what we just discussed, efficacy, career satisfaction, and go into this changing reality we have with what is happening in the workplace. And being an early adopter and implementer of AI in my business, I've watched this happen for longer than most people. And I just can't tell you how incredibly fast it has moved.

and the people who see it on TV now, and it's always, it's so much in the news that people don't even know how much relate to thinking what's real. And you're seeing different layers. And I think, you know, my position on AI is that integrated AI is gonna be the way to go. You know, having dedicated AI assistance will be cool. But the way we're using these large language models now as hit and miss is gonna...

dissipate as it gets integrated into everything else, right? So tell me about your book, tell me about your views on AI and the workplace and I'll be quiet. Okay. Yeah. So my book, I published it last November. Second edition will be published this November. I'm waiting for Sora to finally be in the hands of everybody.

So hopefully that'll happen before November. It's gonna be a huge part of my book. So, you know, what I'm seeing right now is an extension of ourselves. We always created tools, right? We always been tool creators, you know, the fire, the wheel, you know, the printing press. And so we've just created another tool that,

that really is an extension of ourselves, even more so than previous tools created. And the reason why is because this tool is attempting to mimic what we already do. It does it in a different way, of course, but it's really, you know, we've watched it over the last few years, really, really speed up being able to mimic what we do.

Derek Wilson (44:56.942)
And so these large language models that are being pushed out, and there's several of them. And I don't know if you got to see, I had a conversation with a gentleman just the other day, and we ended up talking about your concept about wrapping AI into species and into different domains and stuff. And he took a crack at it and there's actually,

looks really good. And I've been playing around with what he wrote for the last few days, because I think there's some utility in there. But what we need to do in order to use this analogy or metaphor is we really need to look hard at what we use the tree for, right? What do we use the genetic makeup for? How do we use it there and then start porting some of that over to how we?

we could use it to work with AI. Go ahead. I did see that comment and I was starting to respond and then it got to be really a difficult response because I saw what was there and I didn't give it full enough thought because it didn't have the feature that I think the taxonomy of things have a human. Yes. Is that as you're going down the scale, it's narrowing the funnel based on

features that no longer exist or do exist within that particular. And so I think before you can start going down, you have to identify what the features are and how important they are and relative to the existence and growth of this species or different, you know. And I think that is exactly what Herb

was looking for is he just put something together. He thought it was a novel idea. And I told him, I was like, well, you know, if you think it's so good, I said, jump on there, man, and say something about it. And I think that all three of us and probably whoever jumps in there, we might be able to come up with something pretty significant that would shed some light, you know, because it's

Derek Wilson (47:20.91)
One of the problems that I explained in my book is the explainability of AI and trust in something and its output. It needs to be explainable. And this may be just one of those tools that helps explain AI to the layman, to the person that may not know much about it. That I think is huge.

to be able to do. So more about that is AI, because it's an extension and it's a tool, it's doing and it's gonna do even more so if one, it's gonna allow folks that may not have been able to enter certain markets to be able to enter those markets. It's already doing that.

it's not only are people going to be able to enter that market, but they're going to be able to enter that market and quickly learn the things that typically could have taken three, four, five years for someone to learn. And that part is kind of where some of the contention comes from is because it is an equalizer.

of the source. And so then that puts into question the question, you know, the idea of merit. The internet did the same thing when it came to marketing, right? Like the small, you know, mom and pop grocery store could advertise as ubiquitous as these large grocery stores if they chose to just because of the reach of the internet. And so,

you know, AI is going to do and is doing the same thing. So you mentioned some of the assistants or co -pilots, agents, whatever you want to call it. I think that's going to be significant also, especially as they get better. One of the things that I find or am finding as I kind of show different people within my organization,

Derek Wilson (49:49.23)
on how to use Co -Pilot, Notebook LM, or one of the different AI models, is that the simple tasks that we really can do very quickly, not only can we do them quickly now, but the minor mistakes that we used to make are now gone. The misspelling in emails.

the forgotten concept in the email or the forgotten concept in the meeting. If you're using a co -pilot to record or make a transcript of a meeting, people are no longer forgetting concepts or forgetting tools or ideas, tasks. And so I think that kind of pushes us forward.

Because if we're not forgetting things, then we're not making mistakes as much, which means our accuracy is going up. We just talked about how much faster we could do things. And I don't think fast is really the answer we're looking for. I think accuracy is really what we're looking for. But with accuracy comes speed. And I think that's an important piece to go. And so my book is really trying to...

Just give us a way to discuss AI in a way that isn't scary and it's kind of balanced because I'm saying, hey, it can do this, but it also can do this, right? And those two things may not be compatible, but knowing that it can do this and that we should avoid doing that other thing.

I think it's important for folks to understand, especially when it comes to the ethical side. My future revision is going to have a deeper analysis on the ethics of AI. I wrote a medium article on medium about the, I called it the moral algorithm.

Derek Wilson (52:14.606)
And it really talks about the different elements of the ethical side, the moral side of using AI, which I think is something that we need to really discuss as well. Another factor that's going to come out, and because we've had some time now, you know, a year since I released it, is we're going to start talking about

you know, the Microsofts, the open AIs, the Metas, and that these folks, they have the power and they can be influenced by us. And so if they can be influenced by us, they can, then that's kind of a form of democracy. And so AI can be democratized. So they're trying to make a profit, which is

our money. That way, that means we do have some influence there. If we recognize it, if we do completely recognize what kind of influence we have, then we can influence it and make AI what we want it to be.

You're thinking that we can influence AI ethics with our dollars? We can, yeah. We absolutely can if we recognize it and if we want to. And if the numbers are right, absolutely. You know, you think about it. Let's say Apple is really producing a great product. Let's say, yeah, let's use Apple. It doesn't matter who, right? Let's say Apple is really producing a better product for AI.

Now this better product is morally and ethically charged, right? So it's really open. There's some explainability in there. If we put our money there, guess what has to happen? The others have to follow suit. However, if Meta is over there and they make something that works really great, right?

Derek Wilson (54:33.006)
And if we go over and put our money over there, but it's not ethical, then they're going to have the power. So if we pay attention enough to what's going on and put our money where the moral or ethical, where we believe the moral and ethical piece is, this is just democracy. We vote for a president that...

you know, maybe doesn't accomplish what we claim, that's democracy, right? And then we change it for the future and we can do the same thing. I believe that. And I think it's long as we can build the numbers around that, just like we would do with voting and things like that, that we can. So.

Thank you for that response. And one last question here. I think you might have to go at 4 30. I want to be mindful of your time. One thing I want to do, so this isn't the, you know, the world's first podcast. Obviously there's hundreds of other podcasts, thousands of podcasts. There's probably hundreds of veteran podcasts alone, right? And I don't want to go out and redo what they're doing. I'm not necessarily trying to re -interview the people they've re -interviewed. What I actually want to do is take the download them.

Feed the transcripts to AI and then summarize them and go, this is what every other veteran podcast already talked about. Here's the summary. Boom. Now here we are February, or May 6th, 2024 going forward. What are we doing? What else has happened? Because I found that the research in the veteran employment space, I was doing for my degree, that there were people would reference the past and then we would try to go and figure out.

you know, what they were saying, what it means now, but what is happening in this space, what has happened in this space that we can see if we pull all the data collectively. And that's kind of what should be happening in other fields too. And why I imagine other fields are doing, they're collecting data and they're figuring out ways to go use this now that they're smarter. But I don't know if anybody's really doing that for veteran employment. I don't know that it's that important of a deal because of.

Derek Wilson (56:51.214)
These rosy numbers we see on TV about this low unemployment rate that includes officers and all the other things that end with the discrepancy with the number of veterans actually in that pool. It's less than 200 people, right? It's less than 200 veterans in the U .S. make up the stat you see on TV. That's terrible. So because they're calling houses and, hey, whoever answers the phone for one, who stays on the call for two, that's the person that's responsible for the number you see on television.

and we should find a better way to see the truth and reality here. So what's your thoughts on what I just described there using AI that way? I think that's a great idea. I really do. I think there should be some checks and balances to it, meaning that the first output or challenge to output, maybe take a sample.

the output and validate it, just to make sure that what you're getting is accurate and then move forward. But I think it's completely possible to do that, to aggregate all the various different podcasts, transcripts, feed what you can into...

that probably the best one to use right now would be Gemini 1 .5. It's right now they're given what, 90 days free. And you're talking about, I think it's a million tokens right now. So that might be the best way to go about it. But yeah, I think that's a great, great way. I'd love to see the prompt.

that you use and the process of improving the prompt to get the output you want. I think the prompt is going to be key to pull the information you want out of it.

Derek Wilson (59:03.246)
I'm sure. I mean, the entire model, I think it's gonna be hard to collect everything too. So it's a lot of data. It is. It's a whole research project. But you know, the bigger picture of this is that, you know, I have all this data that already exists that I've already got. And I'm doing these podcasts with experts like you, you get a lot of these put together. There may be enough stuff here for a real documentary about the space. There hasn't been one in some time.

that's not sponsored by somebody who's, you know. Trying to accomplish something specific. Right. And I think that this is a topic that Americans really can care about and get behind and want to know the truth about because whenever I talk about how the stats are created and the fact that salaries for veterans are so under.

what they're supposed to be compared to the civilian antiparsons. People don't believe it until I show them actual data and stats and research. They're like, I never knew about this. It's like, you know, this is real and we experience it all the time. So how can we get better? So I appreciate you coming on this podcast, being here for the first episode and your advice and how to make it get to the next level of Netflix. Yeah, let's do it.

Appreciate it, brother. Thanks for having me on, man. Really do. Anything before I turn this recording off? No, life is cyclical. It keeps going. All right. I'm going to turn this recorder on.