Talent Transformation: Develop Today’s Team for Tomorrow’s World of Work with Eric Shepard on Episode #0275

Eric Shepherd [0:00]
This is Eric Shepherd. And you can find us on the web at www.talenttransformation.com. And you’re listening to EA Interviews.

Intro [0:10]
EA interviews, Episode 275, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round seven days a week. Join Mario Fachini for today’s Expert Authority Effect Interview.

Mario Fachini [0:24]
Are you concerned about the future? Are you wondering where you should be putting your team and what should be going on? Now that you know pandemics are going on? And what happens after everything is all said and done? Where do we go five years from now 10 years from now, I have thought about these myself. And that is why I’m excited to have Eric Shepherd on the show today. And we’re gonna be talking today about what to do in a post-pandemic world and how it’s transforming industries. I’m going to bring them up right after we thank our sponsor.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [0:56]
Every business needs a book, including yours, visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that’s freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com.

Mario Fachini [1:11]
Here he is. Ladies and gentlemen, Eric Shepherd. Eric, how are you feeling today?

Eric Shepherd [1:15]
Very well. Thank you, Mary. Great to be here.

Mario Fachini [1:19]
I am excited for you to share because it’s been one heck of a year hasn’t it been?

Eric Shepherd [1:25]
It has. You’re right.

Mario Fachini [1:28]
Where do you think we’re gonna be in five or 10 years post pandemic?

Eric Shepherd [1:34]
Well, I think if we think back pre pandemic, we never thought we’d be doing video zoom calls as our norm. As we went into the pandemic, people started doing more audio conferences because they couldn’t get into the office, then they realized the value of video conferences. And now so many people are just becoming experienced with that. So this acceleration that the pandemic has brought on the use of technology on how comfortable people are with technology is only going to accelerate post pandemic. And as we’ve seen job roles change. Before or during the pandemic, we’re going to see that happen afterwards. We know that the apps have all been accelerating like doordash, or or Uber Eats all of these delivery services. There’s been a lot more acceptance of online shopping on a regular basis, grocery shopping, food orders less going out to restaurants. So there’s going to be some questions about how our behaviors returned. Are they returned to normal? Or do we just become more comfortable staying at home, just the ordering delivers. But that’s just a small section of what’s changing. If we look at all of the money that’s going into home delivery services, it doesn’t take much to imagine how robotic delivery or drone delivery is really going to make sense. We could start to imagine the Amazon truck just driving down the street slowly, with drones popping in the back of the truck, picking up packages and dropping them on our doorstep. These are now within our grasp. We’re one year ago, we would have said what’s the point in that, we only get them once a week. But now with the number of packages being delivered from all these different vendors, we’re going to see that kind of change. That’s just one example, Mario. There’s many more.

Mario Fachini [3:34]
Now, do you think that people decided I want to start doing this stuff? Or do you think a lot of people were already doing it and they’re just doing more of it?

Eric Shepherd [3:45]
I think a lot of people were doing it, and now everyone is comfortable doing it. I also think that technology has accelerated. So the building blocks have been gradually building to enable artificial intelligence. So having devices that we could say, Siri, this question or Alexa, answer this question. We’re becoming so much more familiar with us.

Mario Fachini [4:14]
So said it kind of loud there, you might be activating her.

Eric Shepherd [4:20]
I used to have an Alexa in my office here. And I had to take her out because she did get triggered a bit too often. And I deliberately didn’t say the word Hey, before the word Siri otherwise she was. So we’ve got this.

Mario Fachini [4:36]
It’s funny to joke about but like you’re saying, there’s so much. I’ve actually had that happen many times on the show before where we’re just talking. I’m not even thinking twice. And it’s like, wow. But it’s interesting with all the artificial technology like you’re saying, you got Siri, you got Google, you got her. And I know Samsung’s trying to push Bixby and all kinds of other stuff out there. Where do you see this going five years from now, now that people are more comfortable out of necessity? I’d like to think I’m an early adopter and some of this stuff I’ve been pushing for 8, 10 years ago. We were talking about zoom, it’s nothing new. But now all of a sudden, everyone’s like, oh, do you want to do a zoom call? I’m like, no. I mean, if there’s no reason we need to be on camera. Why don’t we just jump on the phone? I loved taking phone calls, because they’re so flexible. You don’t need to set everything up. It’s like, hey, let’s just chat. But now people think it’s like you have to and you don’t. So how do you see this changing in the next three, 5,10 years, especially in a corporate environment, where you have teams of people and leadership going, maybe we don’t need to all return back to the office?

Eric Shepherd [5:55]
Well, you’re touching on quite a few subjects, they vary. So one, I think we could look at what the clubhouse is doing in audio conferencing and dropping into rooms. When I look at virtual conferences, they’re trying to simulate a real conference. And that doesn’t generally work for me, but the clubhouse really does work for me, you can find the interest, you can have an audio conversation, people don’t have to worry about the hair and makeup, they just jump in, and they can have intelligent conversations. But if we think of the other platforms, like Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, they’re wider or narrower they’re focused either on snippets of videos, or longer videos, so I think we’re gonna find platforms will tend to focus on a medium, audio, visual, whatever, and they’ll focus on a certain kind of content, whether it’s kind of a snappy kind of content just to get the point, or whether it’s getting into a deeper debate like clubhouse might do. I think the other thing is we’re going to ask our devices, more intelligent questions. So for instance, we might ask the question, what should I be learning to improve my earning capacity? or What job could I change to double my income? Something like that? or What should I be doing… And so to achieve those kind of levels of questions, these devices and the data in the cloud is going to have to be linked, so that we don’t have to go and update a dozen profiles on our personal information, we can just store a personal information in one place, and choose who to share that with, maybe we will not share everything with everyone. We just share with who we want to and we can start taking kind of assessments of our personality. So it says when I go into the clubhouse, it’s so well, bearing in mind, you have this kind of person, Eric, you might find this kind of conversation more interesting than that conversation. So we’ll be geared towards the experiences that we’ll enjoy, even the jobs that we’ll enjoy, the entertainment experiences that we’ll enjoy, based on our devices knowing about us, and giving us the choice whether to share it or not.

Mario Fachini [8:25]
How do you think it’s making the team and the employees feel?

Eric Shepherd [8:31]
Well, it’s really up to leadership to set the culture of an organization. And so some might operate in a command and control way because they have to, we don’t want to go to a fast food hamburger place and get an unexpected hamburger, we have an expectation of what we’re going to get. So those kinds of organizations, they’ll be in command and control. But other organizations, they’ll want to bring about creativity and say how do we provide autonomy to attract the kind of workers that we need to be creative, collaborative, etc. So there, with every great technology, there’s going to be benefits, and there’s going to be hazards. And so with any weapon, you can use it for good or for evil. And we will see the same with technology. We’re seeing facial recognition used in great ways, but also in very bad ways. We could apply natural language processing to understand emails that are being exchanged by employees. We could do sentiment analysis to determine whether they’re happy or sad, and we could have our computers intervene. Some leaders might choose that that’s a good idea. Other leaders might say you know what, we should just communicate with our people more often. And check in with them and make sure they’re okay. We shouldn’t have the machines be kind of monitoring them inappropriately. So we’re gonna see these organizations kind of split up into those that will run command and control and monitor their people and others that will be more open, which will, in my belief, provide more creativity within the organization.

Mario Fachini [10:20]
You know, it’s interesting, you talk about that, because I wanted to ask you about the whole privacy issue. And you kind of alluded to, I would guess, during the second camp of the creative and don’t monitor the emails as much. But the whole privacy issue? should people be able to monitor your emails and pull out key words? And I think it’s interesting to analyze, is the person happy? Because obviously I want them to be yes. But if you never communicate that often, you may never know. But the thought that went through my mind when you were saying that was also I’m a very happy person. But there’s sometimes I’m just, let’s get this…, I’m not using the language I would be right now we’re in an actual conversation, or actually how I’m feeling it’s just, I gotta get this done. I’ve got multiple emails in my box. I’m short for time, I got to film the show. And I don’t really check it before I film the show, to be honest. And it’s also why do all do everything the way I do, because I like to keep the energy high. But my point is, you might not be responding. So if you see 10 of the emails that are just strictly focused on me, they’re not going to sound like me, necessarily. So how do you combat that to get an accurate reading? And the second part was, which one do you believe is really the answer: the command or the controller, what’s the name of the other one, I’m not sure if you named that.

Eric Shepherd [11:48]
I don’t think I can name it, no, but it’s probably enhancing collaboration or having more delegates, and management structure. So just when we are interacting with our friends, we know that they have good days and bad days, then we don’t make judgments about them saying they’re having a bad day. So for they’re a bad friend, and we’re going to disconnect from that friend, that’s the same with employees, you know, we’re human, I think the Europeans have a good rule within the European charter. And I’m just characterizing it, but it’s that machines should be the slave of man and not the other way around. So we have to recognize these are just tools that we can use. And doing sentiment analysis is not a bad thing, as long as it’s used for good. And we don’t make inappropriate judgments about people, we use it as an intervention method to actually enhance our relationships with people. That which is, the better it will depend on the organization, there’ll be some organizations that need to be super creative, and there’ll be others that need to be super dictatorial. I think over time, there will be less organizations that are in command and control, because those kinds of jobs will be taken over by machines. So I use the hamburger…

Mario Fachini [13:15]
Okay.

Eric Shepherd [13:15]
Metaphor, we’re seeing automated restaurants that come along, and they can make exactly the same thing again, and again, again, you’re pouring raw materials on one side, it goes through a machine and it churns out beautiful meals on the other side. So that’s one of the risks that we have in society is that a lot of those repetitive jobs once we can automate them, we won’t need people to do them anymore. So we’ll still have chefs, but we won’t have so many short order chefs, because one would imagine that machines could take over some of those roles and responsibilities. So I don’t think there’s a right thing or a wrong thing, Mario, but I do think we’re evolving to a place where a lot of the repetitive work is going to be done by machines.

Mario Fachini [14:06]
Now, I just got a message here on the phone line, and someone’s wanting to know, I’m totally joking. That’d be cool, though, would it? But I know someone is thinking. What if all the machines are taking over all the jobs? And you alluded to it a little bit, just a few seconds ago? But what do you think is the breaking point that machines will take over 100% of the jobs? Do you think it’d be 95%, 90%, 60, 40? To what extent do we go okay, machines can do a lot of things because we’ve had the assembly line over 100 years, we’ve had a lot of automation, and it’s only getting more, but where’s the point where you go? No.

Eric Shepherd [14:51]
So that’s a decision that I think we as people and governments have to make, because theoretically, they could do that. They take over everything. But there is a time where we say, well wait a minute, we actually want to be running your own lives and we want to be enjoying ourselves. But to give you an indication by 2030, and I’m not going to get this exactly right, Mario, roughly 45% of tasks are going to be replaced by automation. So that’s not saying 45% of jobs, but it’s the 45% of tasks that people do are going to be replaced. Okay. So that’s by that’s within, what, nine or 10 years.

Mario Fachini [15:42]
So, I think that’s a great observation, because not necessarily the jobs may get replaced. But I think when people realize the nature of business is to be more efficient to have a better service to help more people, they might be able to wrap their heads around the whole, instead of just on my jobs getting replaced, it’s like this one is, but something new will emerge from it. You know, when I’m thinking of the burgers, when they were, the whole McDonald’s should get 15 an hour. And then they mandated the razor, whatever the heck happened. And then within a short period of time, they were all replaced, the cashiers were all replaced with machines. It’s like, I believe, people should be that creative because… I mean, we are created. But people are creative beings. And those monotonous jobs, like the assembly line 100 years ago, or even present day, no one wants to look at the truth. But the reality is, one of the main phone manufacturers, and I’ll say it’s not Samsung, they’re under a lot of scrutiny for the people in the factories jumping up the windows, because they hate what they’re doing. And it’s so dictatorial. Yeah, well, I get that it’s an assembly line process. But maybe you should be in a job that’s more creative and everything, because at some point, and you alluded to it, and I was like, oh, man, I wonder if I should still ask it, you said the chef. You can get assembly line food, but you know, what I like to go out and make it an event and then experience and actually have someone handcrafted. And I can think of pretty much every industry as something that can be handcrafted, even if it is a hybrid, like a car. The coolest cars in the world are not usually built on an assembly line. I don’t mean mass production, like a Rolls Royce that are all hand built, which they are. But think of the one, two, 5, 10 cars, that they’ve only made a couple or maybe two of them. And they’re all built by hand. It’s like those are the masterpieces. That’s where the art comes into this, as much as I love automation, and the whole show is set up to run smoothly. And I’m thankful for that. But we’re where do you see the artistic jobs and the creativity, going the next 5, 10 years as more gets automated?

Eric Shepherd [18:11]
Well, I think as automation comes in, we’re going to have the ability to be more human. And part of being human is being creative, and it’s communicating with other humans. And it’s not following a script in a call center. It’s actually caring and having empathy for our colleagues for people we work with. To your point about chefs, I’m lucky enough to live in Miami, and I have a number of good friends that are chefs. And I see the skill and creativity that they use. I’m lucky enough they come around to my house sometimes and cook me and my friends meals, and which is a great benefit of the pandemic. For me, I’m extremely lucky. And I watch the creativity. And I think this can’t be done by a machine. I mean, it would be extremely difficult. And anyway, I prefer it to be done by a person, just as I prefer to communicate somewhat with someone in a retail store as human to human. I don’t want someone to just read me a script. I enjoy going to a restaurant where a waiter will describe to me the preparation of the food. That’s part of the experience. I think, before the pandemic and I think it’s going to return after the pandemic, we were moving into what I would call an experienced age. We’re worried about employee experience in customer experience and so, yes, there was a time when it was efficiency, efficiency efficiency. I’m hoping that we can move to a place and say you know what, the automation will handle efficiency. Let’s be more human and have more engagement as customers, as employees, as contributors to an organization.

Mario Fachini [19:55]
I hope that’s the case too. Because one of the industries I keep looking at is the airlines, I wasn’t around when the original planes were like, oh, it was like a big to do to go on a plane and they, oh, well, we’ll be right back with your fillet and silverware. And they brought out the platters. And I just look at that I’m like, this is like… I’m trying to wrap my head around that more than if you were to say, we’re going to jump on a spaceship and circle the earth or something like that. I mean, that’s cool. And I definitely want to do it. But it’s like, I believe that more than you’re telling me the airlines treated people like this.

Eric Shepherd [20:35]
Well, I was lucky enough to enjoy that era briefly. And I think it’s far cooler to circle the earth, or even go to the moon. I think often we think that we’re at the end of our technology era, but we’re really at the beginning. What we’ve seen happening in the last 10, 20, 30 years, if you kind of flip that and imagine what will happen in the future. So just as airlines had all that luxury, 30 years ago, spacecraft will happen. And we will be able to buy a ticket at a reasonable price. And there’s so many of those kinds of experiences. I’m certainly convinced they’re going to happen. And I think if we look 200 years, there will be people, space nomads. I don’t believe colonizing Mars really brings us much.

Mario Fachini [21:31]
Do you think… I was just gonna say do you think we’ll colonize Mars?

Eric Shepherd [21:36]
I think the only thing that would drive us to colonize Mars or go to the moon is minerals or things that we’re running out of. It doesn’t seem like a very hospitable place, it might be a tourism thing. But to go there, it takes nine months to get there and nine months to get back. With all the risks associated with that it feels like in the beginning, they’ll just say no to sell one way tickets. And I’d really want a two way ticket before I bought

Mario Fachini [22:05]
Nine months?

Eric Shepherd [22:06]
I think it’s something like that.

Mario Fachini [22:08]
That’s a long flight.

Eric Shepherd [22:09]
It is a long flight.

Mario Fachini [22:10]
I mean, I think five or six hours is borderlining long.

Eric Shepherd [22:15]
I think it’s three days to the moon currently. That’s why I think the moon feels kind of practical. You can take a week off work and go to the moon, spend a couple of days there and come home.

Mario Fachini [22:26]
Wow, it’s interesting to talk about because these are not that far fetched realities. Now they better have some good food and plush seats on that ship. I’m just saying I don’t want to have some peanuts thrown at me or whatever. But especially for a nine month journey, but…

Eric Shepherd [22:43]
Where in weightlessness as well. So if you have silverware, you might end up getting stabbed.

Mario Fachini [22:52]
Yeah, and I know the whole muscle fatigue. But I think a lot of people have been moving around less this past year anyway. So having survived that, right.

Eric Shepherd [23:01]
Yeah, that’s right.

Mario Fachini [23:05]
So I want to ask you about the fourth industrial revolution. Do you think that we’re in the middle of one, we’re starting one or will there even be one?

Eric Shepherd [23:17]
So we are starting one. The concept of the fourth industrial revolution was brought about by the chairman of the World Economic Forum, and he wrote a book about it, and I think it was about four years ago. To put it in context, we can think about the other revolutions, the Industrial Revolution. So the first one was when we worked out how to make machines. So we have metal, we harness coal and steam, so that we could drive machines. So we produce machines, that was the first Industrial Revolution, let’s make clothing more easily. The second industrial revolution was about standardization, that production lines. So we could manufacture screws independently of producing a car, we could manufacture tires independently of producing a car. So then that enabled the production line capability, which was the second and then the third was kind of computer computerization, which a lot of that in the past has just been storing data, retrieving data. So we trust now that we can store data, whether it be photographs, videos, payroll information, human capital management systems, so we can store all that and we can retrieve it. And we can slice and dice reports and make some decisions on that. The fourth industrial revolution is kind of the next stage which is using artificial intelligence. So it’s kind of like us, but it can look at patterns of data with much more granularity and much more capacity than we can as humans. So the increase in computing power use of artificial Intelligence. Now, this isn’t just to be used for voice recognition as we ask Siri or Alexa to do something. But it’s also useful in things like flight control systems. So if we imagine that drone flying to and from the Amazon truck, the drone has to a certain extent autonomous to say, Oh, this gust of wind took me over here. And this downdraft took me there. So I’m gonna autonomously control myself, or lots of other kinds of examples like that. So as we increase computing power, we increases artificial intelligence, machine learning, we’re going to have devices that can sensors that can sense more things, give us feedback, and it will relieve us of mundane tasks, like getting out of a truck, walk into someone’s house and walking back to that truck. So..

Mario Fachini [25:56]
Or driving.

Eric Shepherd [25:57]
Or driving? Yeah, exactly. autonomous vehicle.

Mario Fachini [26:00]
You got me thinking about the freeways now that they’ve mapped a lot of them with LiDAR, you know, autonomous driving?

Eric Shepherd [26:07]
Yes, yes.

Mario Fachini [26:09]
That’s a lot of data. That’s a whole lot of data to process.

Eric Shepherd [26:16]
I think, in automated vehicles, we’re probably going to go through a period where we get frustrated by automated vehicles. So those of us that are still driving and we’re enjoying driving, we’re going to get frustrated by these over cautious, autonomous vehicles. And so people will tend to cut them off or in, so they’ll be safer, but they’ll be kind of frustrating to be on the roads. So we just…

Mario Fachini [26:44]
You really think so. You think they’re gonna be like the student drivers on the road?

Eric Shepherd [26:49]
I think so. Yeah. Especially in the cities, I think on the freeway, it’s going to be easy, follow the white line, and it won’t be too difficult. But when you get into a city, it’s more difficult to spot children running into the street by accident or someone leaving a black garbage can on the side of the road at night. So I was recently in a autonomous vehicle in Las Vegas. And they had put some cones out to signify that there were some dents in the road. And the car just became confused that he didn’t know what to do. And what was happening was that other cars were kind of cutting us off because they were frustrated and this one had a driver who could take over and then be a little bolder in pulling out into the traffic to get around these cones.

Mario Fachini [27:46]
Okay. Yeah, I think I’m personally looking forward to it in the long distance hauls on the freeway, I don’t like city driving really to begin with, because it’s so erratic. So any chance I can find a straightaway or a freeway, I’m taking it. But do not have to drive for hours straight to the destination. I mean, anything over two or three, I’m probably jumping on a plane anyway. But just for a longer distance. I think it’ll be great. Because maybe you and I could be on the phone, I could be doing something more productive than just… Maybe just relaxing.

Eric Shepherd [28:24]
I completely agree. I mean, long distance driving is for automation. But then of course, we get into automated trucks then. So it would be natural for us to automate trucks. But there’s about two people involved in the trucking industry. So it would have a massive impact on employment, should we automate all trucks? That’s probably, you know, we’re looking for that to be happening in probably 10 years. So now we get to the challenge of how we can upskill people and rescale people, because we don’t want to put them out of work and have them not being able to make a contribution to the world. I mean, they’re going to be frustrated and irritated.

Mario Fachini [29:08]
Yeah and I think there’s going to be a lot with just trucks with how big and heavy in the shipments and stuff. It’s like, I don’t want anyone to get hurt in a sedan or a normal vehicle. But when you have a million dollar, 2 million dollar payload, there’s the logistics, and also the safety issues. I mean, like you’re saying about those cones if the computer can’t interpret four orange cones on level ground, let alone throwing ice snow, a pothole or something into the mix? Maybe you start off with a pillow shipment or something. I don’t know. It’s interesting to think about.

Eric Shepherd [29:43]
Well, I think a lot of this is going to be…

Mario Fachini [29:45]
If you’re transporting oil, I mean, you could argue the machine can be more awake and alert longer than a person can but someone who’s done something for 40 years. I still probably bet on them.

Eric Shepherd [30:06]
The challenge, I think, is when automation starts looking after some of the mundane tasks like, keep lane control, then the drivers start switching off, they go, Oh, I don’t really have to pay attention. So now the risk of them falling asleep or not being engaged becomes higher. And we’ve seen now with Tesla drivers and other drivers that have automated vehicles that they just nod off, because they don’t have any activity to do to control the vehicle. So I think we’ve got to get to a point it’s one or the other. And the driver needs to know you are really in control of this or now we’re going to trust automation, because in this case, automation is probably going to be a very interesting transition.

Mario Fachini [30:54]
Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m glad we’re doing it. And I think it has its place because I’ll never forget, I had my driver pick me up, I was going to go speak in California, and to go to the airport and everything. And on the way back, I took a couple of detours. And he was like, you should just have me drive you every day because I was in the back making phone calls doing stuff. And then one of the rides I just relaxed. And I was way more productive than just like sitting around going oh, a card cut me off. This is nice. And you don’t want to, I mean, it’s very interesting to think about so I’m excited for it. I appreciate you sharing this. I have one more question for you before we thank our sponsor, and it’s the Wheel of Whatever. You get to pick yellow or black. Each one has a different question. Can’t you see them all right there.

Eric Shepherd [31:44]
Okay, Yellow. Do I pick one?

Mario Fachini [31:47]
Yellow. Okay. Yeah, yellow is fine. Okay, so it’s 50, 50 shots.

Eric Shepherd [31:56]
We’re gonna automate this in future.

Mario Fachini [32:00]
Actually I’ve thought about doing it. That’s been a work in progress, the last few 100 episodes, but I probably could get a trigger to spin it or something. I don’t plan on getting a standard.

Eric Shepherd [32:10]
I’ll pick it and do it.

Mario Fachini [32:15]
My question for you is the stuff from the Jetsons, we’ve got the watches, we’ve got the talking through intercom stuff. What about the flying cars when are those coming out?

Eric Shepherd [32:27]
I’m not a great believer in flying cars. But I’m not an expert on this. The reason I don’t think flying cars is so practical, it just feels like it needs more energy to lift something off the ground and move. And there’s better ways.

Mario Fachini [32:44]
But once it’s off the ground, you can go way faster, and there’s no one in your way.

Eric Shepherd [32:47]
Oh, well, what you could do is put tunnels under the ground with a safer controlled environment such as the boring…

Mario Fachini [32:58]
The vacuum tubes.

Eric Shepherd [33:00]
Or overhead where…so the idea of having autonomous vehicles that just turn up and will shoot you into a tunnel take you to from Miami to Orlando, and you get out of the other end feels like a more practical way to go just from an energy consumption standpoint.

Mario Fachini [33:22]
Well, I appreciate your honesty, and that was on my mind with everything we’re talking about. So thank you for that. We’re gonna thank our sponsor, and come back for the Imperfect Action Round.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [33:32]
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Mario Fachini [35:03]
And we are back with the Imperfect Action Round. Eric, are you ready to take Imperfect Action?

Eric Shepherd [35:08]
Yes.

Mario Fachini [35:11]
Excellent. I got three questions for you with 60 seconds or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Eric Shepherd [35:24]
Was I meant to write a book or something before I answer this question, I think the fastest part of…

Mario Fachini [35:29]
Oh, no, what do you think is the fastest way for a company to make more money?

Eric Shepherd [35:34]
Understand your customer, talk to your customer, understand their problem, make sure you match your solution with their problem.

Mario Fachini [35:42]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem your prospects are making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Eric Shepherd [35:50]
The biggest challenge that I see for my prospects, but also members of the town transformation guild, is how do people remain agile, remain relevant as the future of work is changing, as learning is changing, as leadership is changing. So keeping up, staying relevant is the biggest challenge.

Mario Fachini [36:14]
Yes, relevancy. Huge, thank you for that. The third one is what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Eric Shepherd [36:24]
Provide value. And it kind of goes back to understanding your customer, constantly seeking to understand the problems that they’re tackling, not only now, but what they expect to be tackling and keeping your business aligned to solve their problems.

Mario Fachini [36:43]
Very good. What books would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

Eric Shepherd [36:48]
I have a list on our website. There’s so many books that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. And so I would obviously recommend the book I’ve recently published called Talent Transformation, which deals with the issues of the fourth industrial revolution, and how you can use mindset and skill set to have a successful outcome. And then how can you assess individuals, teams and organizations and correlate that together? There are so many other books, one of the books, just picking one. Moving from good to great. It’s an old favorite, it’s probably 15 years old. Now. There’s another one that I thoroughly enjoyed a recent reading called the AI superpowers, which is how the Chinese are progressing with their AI systems.

Mario Fachini [37:43]
Excellent. Thank you for those. Where would you like people to learn more?

Eric Shepherd [37:48]
I would love them to learn more by going to the website, www.TalentTransformation.com. And there… there are a lot of free resources and also more information about the book.

Mario Fachini [38:02]
Excellent. Well, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this. I appreciate your time and expertise. It was a pleasure having you.

Eric Shepherd [38:10]
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Mario Fachini [38:14]
Alright, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. And God bless.

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www.EAInterviews.com [38:55]
Hey, thanks for listening to today’s episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out EAInterviews.com. For complete show notes, the full interview video experience links to the resources we mentioned and more. Have a blessed day and I’ll see you tomorrow.