Layoffs that seemingly keep coming, along with hiring systems that may reject an applicant before any person reads a resume, have left a great many professionals wondering where the next job actually comes from, and in the third episode of Better @ What You Do, host Ben Olmos brings back three former guests of DissedMedia: A Startup Story to work through that question from noticeably different seats. The conversation opens with Disney president Dana Walden's remarks at a Bloomberg conference, where she called the company's latest round of cuts extremely painful while signaling that restructuring will continue each year. Jack Oujo, who spent eight years as a professional baseball umpire before founding Oujo Wealth Strategies, draws on clients between 50 and 65 who have lived under the threat of a layoff for years, and his advice centers upon knowing your numbers well enough to weigh a consulting role or an equity stake when the call finally comes. Josh Rosenberg, who was asked to relocate six times in six years to keep his job at a global beverage company, pushes back on the public reaction to Walden, arguing that society has grown cruel toward leaders who speak candidly and that accountability between employer and employee may be closer to 50/50 than most people care to admit. However, Ben holds that a leader ought to open with the people affected before offering the business rationale, and Dr. Christiane Schroeter adds that no job stays safe for the rest of anyone's life, so the work of building skills and relationships has to begin well before any announcement arrives.
From there the panel turns to hiring, where research out of Stanford suggests that applicants screened by the same vendor can carry one result from employer to employer, and where the discussion keeps returning to the people a job seeker already knows. Jack notes that all five people his firm hired in the past year came through personal connections, while Josh describes how a referral can pull a screened-out candidate back to the top of the pile. Christiane, who teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at Cal Poly, explains why people tend to be hired for character and trained for skill, and she introduces the failure resume, an exercise that turns setbacks into some of the strongest material a candidate can bring into an interview. Ben's own interview advice centers upon asking what success looks like in the role before answering anything else and closing every answer with a quantifiable result, and the group questions whether sending 200 applications without following up on any of them can really be called a job search.
The final stretch centers upon paid mastermind groups, some of which charge $20,000 to $40,000 for a seat, and Ben admits openly that he struggles to see the value proposition. Jack suggests that a struggling owner may learn more by sitting down with customers and employees before paying anyone, and Josh shares that he has been let go from three coaching engagements in the past year because clients did not like what their own people told him. Christiane offers a behavioral economist's reading of the price tag, in which spending an uncomfortable amount of money may be the very thing that finally makes some people accountable enough to change.
Connect with the panel
Dr. Christiane Schroeter, leadership strategist, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Cal Poly, and host of Happy Healthy Hustlehttps://doctorchristiane.com Take the Superpower Scorecard Quiz: https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/680acbb35fb6f0001547ba20 https://linkedin.com/in/christianeschroeter 
Jack D. Oujo, founder of Oujo Wealth Strategies and author of Too Smart to Be an Umpirehttps://toosmarttobeanumpire.com Get the book: https://amzn.to/4xaM7lx Speaking engagements: https://bookjack.org 
Josh Rosenberg, founder of Forward Thinkershttps://www.forwardthinkers.io 
Ben's book: 10 Topics To Help Managers, Leaders, and Entrepreneurs Get Better @ What You Dohttps://amzn.to/4uDUC7K 
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DissedMedia?sub_confirmation=1 
Better @ What You Do is sponsored by Rostr Studio. Questions about topics or guests can be sent to podcast@dissedmedia.com.
www.dissedmedia.com  www.rostr.studio  www.dailypitch.news  www.benolmos.com

In this episode of Better @ What You Do, host Ben Olmos brings back three former guests of DissedMedia: A Startup Story to work through a question that has seemingly crept up on most operators in recent weeks, which is what remains worth measuring once somebody else holds the scorecard. The conversation opens with a recent Omni Calculator survey in which 40% of employees said managers who use AI come across as less competent and 36% said they trust those managers' judgment less, with Gen Z offering the harshest read of all. Stephanie Sylvestre separates what she calls lazy AI from the kind that gets real work done, while Rich Ashton argues that communication may be the most powerful tool a leader has, and that handing it to a machine can give some of that leadership away. Joshua Griffin adds the view from a growing agency, where a phone call between two people outperformed every automated outreach campaign his team had tried.
From there the panel turns to social media, where LinkedIn feeds have begun to read like the same post written fifteen times and where YouTube's changes to how a view gets counted may leave creators with bigger numbers that say less. Views and subscriber counts can look impressive on a channel page; however, the panel keeps returning to whether any of it leads to a sale, a relationship, or a conversation worth having. The final stretch centers upon what draws listeners to a podcast, the host or the guest, before taking an unplanned and candid turn into women in leadership and the idea that hiring decisions should rest on the knowledge, skills, and abilities a person brings to the job.
Connect with the guests
Stephanie Sylvestre, CEO of Avatar Buddy: https://avatarbuddy.ai | https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-a-sylvestre
Rich Ashton, Owner of Growing Your Own and author of Growing Your Own: https://growingyourown.net
Joshua Griffin, Co-Founder of Intrinzi: https://www.intrinzi.com | https://www.joshgriffin.co.uk
About the host
Ben Olmos is the founder of DissedMedia and the host of Better at What You Do and DissedMedia: A Startup Story. Find more episodes and everything else DissedMedia is working on at https://dissedmedia.com, with guest booking powered by https://rostr.studio and more from Ben at https://benolmos.com.
 

Grit, the blend of motivation and dedication that has long separated high performers from everyone else, may be getting harder to sustain now that AI can deliver almost any answer with a single tap, and in the first panel episode of Better at What You Do, host Ben Olmos and four returning guests from DissedMedia: A Startup Story explore what that shift means for leaders by way of the Meta social media addiction settlement and YouTube's new monetization requirements, along with the steady decline in new podcast launches.
The conversation opens with the settlement, which the panel compares in scale to the tobacco settlement; however, Adam Spector of Chore argues that it may be fighting the last battle, since the next wave of concern seemingly centers upon AI chatbots and the companies building them. Brett Schklar raises the contradiction of teenagers who reject anything that looks AI-generated while spending hours inside algorithm-driven feeds, and Rob Broadhead points to the age verification problem that has followed the internet since its earliest days. That thread leads into the heart of the episode, where Ben introduces the idea of a motivational quotient, or MQ, as the capability that may matter most once intelligence becomes available to anyone by the token, and Brett names it plainly as grit. Adam worries aloud that frictionless tools could leave all of us sitting in WALL-E chairs, while Rob offers a more hopeful reading in which AI clears away the grunt work so that people with real drive can aim higher than they could before.
From there the panel turns to the YouTube Partner Program and its higher watch-hour threshold for monetization, and the reactions vary considerably; Jeremy Yang expects smaller creators to lean harder into sponsorships, Rob suggests the change may push creators toward owning their platforms and audiences directly, and Adam takes the view that AI-generated content will eventually reshape YouTube much as YouTube reshaped Hollywood, while Brett, speaking as a viewer who has grown tired of AI slop and faceless videos, welcomes the higher bar. Ben's observation that nobody dabbles in social media, and that consistency and relentless improvement tend to separate the channels that last from those that fade, prompts Adam to widen the point to any career, since obsession with getting better at the work seemingly pays off whether someone is building a YouTube channel or baking pies.
The final segment centers upon podcasting itself, where celebrity shows and Netflix distribution sit alongside a decline in new launches, a pattern Brett attributes to the pandemic hangover finally wearing off. The group compares notes on podcast monetization and lead generation, with Rob, whose show has passed 1,000 episodes, describing podcasting as primarily a networking game, and they weigh whether being a guest on other shows can deliver more value than hosting one; Adam closes by framing the entire conversation around the ROI of your time, which may be the most useful lens any leader can bring to deciding where their grit is best spent.
Panel:Adam Spector, four-time founder of Chore and host of Entrepreneurial Excellencehttps://hirechore.com
Brett Schklar, enterprise futurist and author of AI Without the BS: The CEO's Playbook for Actually Getting AI Righthttps://brettschklar.com
Rob Broadhead, founder of RB Consulting and host of Develpreneurhttps://rb-sns.com
Jeremy Yang, founder of Digital Goliath and host of Marketing and Ops for SMEshttps://digitalgoliath.com.au
Better at What You Do is sponsored by Rostr Studio.
Questions about topics or guests can be sent to podcast@dissedmedia.com.
www.dissedmedia.com www.rostr.studio www.benolmos.com