0:00 [Music] who are you and where are you going what do you [Music] want hello and welcome to people making money I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Wednesday at 10: a.m. Pacific time to talk about all matters relating to your profession your work life building a business and Building
0:37 Wealth and hold on one second I'm gonna close my email so it doesn't keep dinging in the background so as we head toward the end of the year uh it's it's a time I think to to take stock so I know the end of each calendar year I spend a considerable amount of time looking at the year that's ending looking at my professional progress what I achieved what I didn't achieve how I can go on to sort of you know bigger and and and better things
1:15 hang on just one second here there we go there's a weird thing going on here okay well I don't know how to figure it out anyway um and and as well it's a time to plan what's going to be happening for the future so the I I remember um this is uh quite a while ago now um when I had my real estate services company I was sharing
1:50 offices with one of my clients and uh it was a a father and son the the the father was the age that my father uh was or close to it anyway and he took us out he took his son and I out to lunch uh one one day and we were just kind of sitting and talking and he was musing about how much more difficult business was at that time compared to when he was a younger man our age and the the the competition was so much uh stiffer what
2:26 you needed to know was so much greater and and and by the way this this meeting happened I think in the uh early 1990s so 92 993 so um you know we're talking about 30 years ago and and it's the the the business world has only gotten more so not not only has it become more competitive has the the knowledge requirements have gotten greater but also regulatory issues have gotten far far more complex financing has gotten
3:02 far more complex so it it it's a really it's a challenging environment in which to deal and so whether whether you're an employee whether you're a business owner whether you're a professional with your own practice or uh you're within a a practice of of you know similar professionals no matter what are places in in the work work a day world it's it's a challenge to to keep up and it can be very anxiety producing I think
3:39 and I talked to um a lot of um military people coming out of coming off of active duty and looking to transition into civilian life and there's a tremendous amount of anxiety there es especially because they are making this transition and they really don't know what what life holds for them having said that I think that's true of all of us these days so many of the professions that exist today did not
4:15 exist even 20 years ago um I have a friend who's a data scientist and while there were probably people who did something similar in the analog world um you know decades ago this idea of of data analyst or software developer software engineer these are all professions that really were created during my lifetime okay now I'm I'm a bit of an older guy but but even so um you know there's all kinds of new
4:51 things going on AI did not or what's really large learning models is really what that's really what AI is at least right now those did not exist in any kind of significant way for most of us until maybe a few years ago at most um you know the internet was you know I was in business before there was an internet basically uh you know so I I was listening to you know a podcast yesterday with Mark andrees he was talking about he's the inventor of
5:27 Netscape which was the first um internet browser that really brought made the internet accessible to the average person like like you and me right so all of these changes have taken place in the last several decades and and it seems like the pace of change gets faster and faster as well so as as business people as employees as uh professionals how do we keep up with all of this and and more to the point how do we make sure that we don't get rendered
6:05 obsolete right and and and this is the big discussion going on now so it used to be going through the 70s and into the 80s the people who were concerned about losing their jobs were people who worked in manufacturing so so-called blue collar workers automobile workers and that sort of thing as as the automobile business uh um globalized and companies like Toyota and Honda and doson which became Nissan and the European car companies
6:40 became ever more competitive within the United States and also developed their own domestic markets so that the United States car companies no longer dominated car sales around the world the the um the the American car companies really faltered and their production shrunk quite a bit right and so there were there were all kinds of predictions that there was going to be no you know Blue Collar work anymore that the the the this was the end of of any kind of work
7:16 that that would give any kind of um decent salary um without having a college degree well here we are now about 40 years lateer later 35 40 years later and now it's the people who have college degrees and do work like drafting trusts and wills that are really faced with a a potentially cataclysmic shift in in the in in their
7:51 professional lives because large learning models and AI are very are developing very rapidly in so the idea that you're going to pay uh an estate planning attorney for example well used to be upwards of $10,000 more recently was $5,000 to draft the documents for an estate planning package a living trust a durable power of attorney uh durable power for Health Care those kind of things you know AI will be able to do that much more efficiently and quickly
8:28 than uh you know a lawyer ever could and you know candidly who needs a legal secretary uh when you can go on an AI and you can put in you know the relevant things like you know the name of of the grantors and the name of the trust and and you know 10 minutes later you've got the completed documents so and and I mean I I assume there are still legal secretaries still around but these days I think a lot of attorneys uh draft their own documents now when I was
9:03 a law clerk um back in the very early uh 1980s uh lawyers had to have legal secretaries and these were highly skilled individuals uh who could prepare legal documents pleadings Etc um and and could do so very accurately um because lawyers you know they could not type nearly as quickly as a legal secretary and so it made sense for them to uh maybe draft a document by hand and then turn it over the legal secretary who would turn it
9:39 into a properly formatted document that could be filed with the court or or a contract that could be signed by the parties Etc because this was the day this is in the days before word processors and and personal computers so we had IBM selectric typewriters for those of you who remember them with the little ball that would you know that the little Al turning was was revolutionary for typing because it allowed typists to move type much more quickly than a conventional typewriter where you had you know each letter was was one on the end of a shaft so you know we I've also during my
10:14 lifetime I've seen certain professions essentially go away like like legal secretary uh you know I wonder what's going to happen with paral leals um are those are they going to be necessary um anymore once large learning models uh reach reach a certain level of of quality and such I would say you know anybody who who drafts routine types of documents or or does that kind of routine work really should be thinking about how am I going
10:49 to change my position within the the the marketplace in order to maintain my viability because again anything that can anything written or or picture-wise that that can be replicated AI is going to end up doing it better than than a human being that that's you know pretty much inevitable however that doesn't mean that there aren't going to be there isn't going to be a necessity for people who know how to work with AI right so um this is
11:25 where I come to my my topic for today which is continuous skill uh knowledge and skill um Improvement and and and this is the key the key quality that we have to develop in order to stay meaningful in the workplace in the economy right so it's no longer a situation where we can get trained to do a job today and do the job for you know 30 years is essentially the same way and retire and now we're
12:02 done those those days ended a long time ago but the reality is today that we will probably go through many iter many professional or or career iterations over the time that we're working number one and number two we may never retire at least in the conventional way that it's thought of where we stop working completely and now you know sort of enjoy our Golden Years playing with our grandkids and traveling and all that kind of thing that that may no longer be possible for for a number of reasons one
12:39 is the the the demise of defined benefit pensions uh where when you retire you get a certain payment every month um and you know what that payment is and so you know you you you're able to develop a lifestyle like that pensions today outside of the government especially are almost always defined contribution uh pensions like 401ks IRAs that sort of thing and so it's not we we don't know how much is going to be available to us at the time that we decide to retire whatever and whatever that retirement
13:15 looks like so that's so there's there's a level of of financial uncertainty that we um that that um my parents generation for the most part didn't have um you know excuse me so here in the United States what is going to happen with social security so the fact of the matter is as our birth rate has declined more and more the
13:50 number of workers making contributions to Social Security and and we shouldn't be fooled by the so-called soci security trust fund there is no social security trust fund there's no big pot of money sitting somewhere waiting to pay us our benefits okay current Social Security taxes what's known as FICA Federal Insurance contribution act taxes pay the benefits of people who are already receiving Social Security that's how the plan has always worked so when Social
14:26 Security started there were eight workers for every one retiree now I think there's less than three for every one retiree and the idea that you know it's gonna it's going to drop to probably around two soon so the idea that there are two people paying into the system for every one person drawing money out of it is is not a financially feasible uh situation at least given the current level of benefits so the idea and and
15:01 and Social Security by the way was never meant to be a retirement income it was always meant to be sort of a a part of a retirement income it was it was meant to be a um adjunct is the wrong word but it it was it was it was never intended that people were going to retire solely on Social Security it was an additional uh retirement benefit that they were going to get so so um you know all of these things mean that financially we may not be able to
15:37 afford to retire the way the the the so-called greatest Generation did um and and even my my parents generation which was kind of that in between generation people born in the 1930s um that's they're they may very well be the last generation that that can afford to have a a retirement the way it's currently thought of and so we're going to be working all of our Lives also there's lots of of of data that shows that retiring and and and
16:13 doing you know nothing in terms of work isn't necessarily the healthiest way to live out our so-called golden years that it's it's good to have the the intellectual stimulation that comes from doing work it's it's good to have the interpersonal uh connections that come from doing work whether it's it's colleagues or customers clients um all of those are are very healthy aspects of of human life and so um it may be that it's much better for
16:48 us to continue working maybe we won't work full-time um but maybe we'll work we'll work part-time and so for all of these reasons we need to build into our professional and and work lives continuous knowledge and skill Improvement and so how do we do that that's that's really the the the key question for this show and and hopefully I'll give you some some thoughts on that to help you answer that question so the first thing
17:25 I can I would say is there we you need to have a plan to of of how you're going to upgrade your Knowledge and Skills on a regular basis it can't be halfhazard now for some areas it's easier than others so for me as a professional fiduciary more particularly as a licensed professional fiduciary here in California I'm required to take 15 hours of commun of continuing education in
18:02 order to renew my license each year now it's tempting to just do something so it's tempting to just do something that I can just sort of burn through and get credit for the 15 hours and just get it done with and and you know not have to worry about it and when I renewed my life since the first time I thought well maybe I'll do that and then I realized no that's the wrong attitude to take much better to look seriously at
18:41 places where I can take classes or do online education that will increase my knowledge which makes me more valuable in the marketplace so the more I know about administrating trusts Estates handling probates the better I can be at the work that I do and the less likely it is that I'll get replaced because if I can deal with more complex situations it will be harder to replace
19:16 me with some sort of AI based estate Administration model okay so that's that's one of the things I would encourage so for for any of you for if you're you're a professional you're a lawyer an accountant a real estate uh professional uh a medical professional um someone in in science and you have some kind of license you're required to carry a license an insurance license Securities license rather than taking continuing
19:51 education that you can just sort of maybe listen to recordings in the background while you're going through your regular work and claim credit for having done your your CE look for opportunities where you really have to engage with the material and and and doing so will increase your knowledge base okay so whether it's five hours a year or 15 or 20 hours a year whatever that is plan it out and look at where your profession is
20:26 going and so what kind of knowledge then will help you either go in that direction if that's if that's going to be fruitful in the coming years or will take you in a different direction and allow you to do something different than most of the other practitioners do and therefore give you an advantage in the marketplace okay so I I I had a meeting uh just just before doing the show and and I'm working with uh these are uh beneficiaries of an
21:04 estate and they're among the assets they're inheriting is is a company and they need to decide how they're going to handle the company going forward once they become the actual owners and one of my colleagues brought up a very interesting point and it's it's something that I had kind of thought of and and sort of understood but hadn't quite perceived in the way that he described it so um what
21:41 he what he told them was the the best the best way to look at any kind of business these days is to specialize to find a niche where you can be the expert and he said but here's the interesting thing some people think that if you specialize now you can only operate within that specialty but the reality is the way you're looked at in the marketplace is if you have the
22:16 specialty knowledge it's assumed that you're also have very extensive knowledge of that area in general so rather than overlooking you for a more plain vanilla service in that area people will say oh this person's so I'll give you the example that that my colleague used he's one of the top probate real estate people in the country he he's for sure the the top probate real estate
22:51 agent here in in Los Angeles there's there's no one who has seen more transactions that he he has there's no one who has the accumulation of data that that he has and so and he markets himself as being the LA probate real estate expert which indeed he is it's it's a legitimate claim on his part here's the thing being an expert in probate real estate people assume that he also is one of the most skilled people in real
23:26 estate in general right so he he's not button hold into only dealing with his specialty he can do nonprobate transactions as well and indeed oftentimes get gets called to just do a regular real estate transaction because people realize that when he has this this narrow expertise he must also be equally skilled at at General real estate transactions so this this is a phenomenon that we can all use in our professional practices and in our
24:02 businesses okay so in this in this case you may have a business that let's let's say you have a plumbing business it's one of my favorite examples to use because the the the tables are kind of turned now it's unlikely that Ai and large learning models are going to do away with plumbers the fact of the matter is we still need to have get water into our house and waste out of our houses and there's no AI That's going to do that what's going to happen I think is AI is going to allow plumbers
24:39 to work more efficiently maybe they'll be they'll be able to dnos plumbing problems more quickly more thoroughly fast quickly faster um and so AI will become a tool for plumbers right so the key thing then is if if you're in the plumbing business if you're a plumbing contractor or maybe you're a plumber working for a plumbing company how can you develop knowledge and skill of AI within your area of expertise to
25:16 make you even that much more knowledgeable and skilled maybe you can develop a very a specialty in um trouble shooting Plumbing Systems using AI right now if you if you're able to do that there's going to be an assumption that if if you're on the the that Cutting Edge of the plumbing business you must be an absolutely outstanding plumber when it comes to everything else
25:52 that's done in plumbing okay so again I'll give you another example from the plumbing business so um the main line um for my house um was was it turned out it was it was leaking um it was an old um what do you call it uh uh clay clay uh you know ceramic line basically and uh so the plumbing company that I called they were able to do the Diagnostics and and determine a couple of things one that
26:28 the roots had caused the clay pipe to essentially collapse and that's where the blockage was that was number one and number two that unfortunately because of that they were going to have to dig up a certain area of the lawn um because there was no cleanout valve uh because of the time the house was built they didn't put in cleanout Valves and so I was thinking oh my gosh they're going to have to trench the whole area all the way to the street it's going to be you know a mess and they said no we have this technique where we can go and slide
27:04 a liner pipe into the existing pipe in such a way that it will essentially recreate the pipe and we only have to dig a hole on one end and the other end we don't have to you know dig up a trench for the whole length of the pipe right and so when they were actually doing the work I I was I was watching for a little while and I I asked the fellow about it and he said yeah we had to go through specialized training to learn how to do this it was I think I think he said it was like a weekl Long training if I remember correctly and and
27:40 that he showed me the materials they were using they real very cool looking stuff right uh and and they they did a great job and the fact of the matter was although it was expensive it was not nearly as expensive as it would have been to have to trench the whole area lay new pipe fill in the trench and all of that plus the Damage Done to the lawn was was much less and so my landscape uh maintenance guy was was able to fix that damage much more quickly right so it saved me money on that end as well so
28:15 here's an example of a plumbing company that was continuously improving its Knowledge and Skills such that it was staying on The Cutting Edge Ed of the plumbing business okay and they you know they knew how to to you know put cameras down the the the drain lines and to to do things all all kinds of things that they were able to do in order to separate themselves from just your you know kind of average plumbing company now um you know presumably they're
28:52 continuing to do that now I I'm not an expert in the plumbing business as I'm as you can guess um but there are probably developments happening in that business that only people in the industry know about and and they're able to assess whether these are going to become viable products or viable solutions for plumbing problems whatever right but these are the kind of things that need to be constantly engaged in now in this case while plumbers have to have licenses to the best of my knowledge there's not a continuing education component of of having a a
29:30 contractor or subcontractor's license however there is a need to keep up with with new techniques new services in order to keep one's business not just viable but but really able to service customers as efficiently as possible and and keep competitive pricewise so as new technologies come out that require for example less time so so other companies can come in and say oh well I can replace this line it'll only take me an afternoon as opposed to a day and a half
30:06 or whatever it took you know the plumbers I did it and so it would cost a lot less and so if if they can do the same quality work in less time they can charge less and they can undercut other plumbers and increase their business right so all of these things need to be done to to keep your business competitive and that's that's across the board so I've given you two examples one for professionals who are required to do continuing education and and and I I I
30:41 recommend that you that you find meaningful continuing education that really will improve your knowledge if not your skills and we've looked at a business situation in this case of Plumbing business where there are new techniques out there and they the the company owner sent his people to get trained on these new techniques so they could deploy them in the field and and do the work more quickly less expensively and therefore maintain a competitive position in the marketplace so for professionals and business owners
31:18 there are some obvious ways of developing a plan of continuous knowledge and skill Improvement now for people who are in employees so they are neither Professionals in the sense of a licensed professional nor are they the business owner so what do you do how do you keep yourself competitive in the marketplace right um especially since doing trainings for example they may be very expensive and you may not be able to get time off of work so you know when do you do these kind of things right
31:53 that becomes a big challenge there's no there's no denying that that's the case right it would be easy to say well so just just pay for it yourself and go do it yourself but so when right uh you work five days a week you have family commitments you need to be able to you know get some some rest right and you know these days budgets are strained so where do the resources come in order to do these these classes so I think I think we you know you need to look at these things in in a couple of of ways and one is you you you may need to in
32:29 essence sell your supervisor on the value to the company of getting you additional educational and skill training okay so let's say you're um you're in marketing okay and and you do um copywriting for marketing right is anybody still doing that anymore I I assume AI has has already taken over a large part of of that business because it's so efficient for doing that right
33:05 so what does AI allow a copywriter to do well whereas a copywriter might have written copy for you know I don't know five ads in a day now with AI the copywriter might be able to write ads for 50 in a day or something like that right so if I if I were a copywriter I would be looking at how can I build AI into what I do to become more efficient so I'm a more valuable employee because I can produce I'm much more productive
33:41 than someone who's not using AI now the thing about AI is while I'm sure there are trainings around what I found is the best way to learn how to use AI is to use AI whether it's chat GP PT or some other I use chat GPT that's that seems to be the one that's that's most uh most broadly used um in the marketplace so I look for opportunities to use it in in my work whether it's helping me organize
34:16 thoughts about something whether it's uh to give me ideas um excuse me so so one of the first places I used AI was to give me ideas for topics for my various shows because sometimes it's it is difficult to think of you know another topic for another show right so I would go on to chap GPT and I would say you know give me give me 20 ideas for shows uh on on administrating trusts
34:52 and Estates and out of the 20 I might get five or six maybe seven eight that I thought were good ideas that I could you know develop and then I I would use the AI to help me develop an outline of how I wanted to present a particular idea right now by the way I could have done that with with this show I chose not to because I I wanted to speak more extemporaneously number one and number two this is something that I deal with all the time so I don't think
35:27 I I I didn't feel like I necessarily needed you know a boost from from you know from chat GPT to to work this topic out having said that I could have I could have used chat GPT to generate some ideas on on how how one can increase you know how you can increase your your your knowledge your professional career Knowledge and Skills right and and and by the way I think this is what it would have come up with first of all several of things that I've already mentioned but also reading trade journals or reading online trade
36:03 journals going to conferences to meet with other people who do the same kind of work that you do you can do those virtually now uh creating a group with other colleagues where you talk about challenges within your with within your your line of work so today to uh no it was yesterday morning yeah today Wednesday yesterday morning morning I started out my day uh in a in a what's called we call them water well the president of the group calls them water coolers it was a chance for a group of
36:40 independent trustees to get together and talk about challenges in the work that we do right so you know this was the second one I've been to and I plan to go there we do them about once every three months and I plan to go to them every time because in one hour I can talk with a dozen or more professionals who have different experiences than I do some of them have larger practices than I do some of them are just getting started and and in this case we had uh a woman there she and her husband are just kind of getting started
37:16 as private trustees and she had a whole list of questions she was asking and it was terrific because she would throw out a question and then several of us would respond to the question not everybody responded to every question and and for me who's kind of a mid-level guy in some ways so on one hand I could help her with some information on the other hand some of the questions she asked the the the the people who were more experienced than I did they gave information that was very valuable to me that increased my knowledge if not my skills right so
37:51 these are the kinds of opportunities that we can all take advantage of whether you're a professional whether you're a business owner whether you're an employee look for a a a group like that and if you can't find one create one okay there there's this there's this idea that oh I can't I can't meet with other people who do the same thing I do because they're my competitors in a way and I don't want to share information with them because then they're going to you know they're going to take my job away or my work away or whatever I I I
38:26 think that's the reverse of how these things should be looked at I think the more we share ideas information with our with other people the the better we become we hone our skills because one way of really embedding a knowledge and skill in ourselves is to teach other people how to do it I know over the years I I've taught one thing or another now for let's see it's been over over half a century and when I can teach
39:03 something that's when I know I really have mastered that that skill I've really mastered that knowledge set so to start a group in order to help people build Knowledge and Skills in your area in in in in your you know the area of your work uh is a great way to build your skills number one and number two if you're running the group right that gives you a certain cache because you must on some level be an expert because
39:38 you're running the group so give your group a name and put it on your resume you know president of the um copywriters knowledge Forum to use the example that I was using a few minutes ago and and get you know a half a dozen a dozen 10 dozen copywriters together and talk about how you use AI for ex as an example to improve your productivity to generate better copy uh to generate ideas all of these things it may sound
40:14 like well okay well so that we've got you know topics for three meetings what do we do after that no that's not how it works every time you meet new ideas new topics come up that you can write down down you will never be at a loss for things to think about now the the fact of the matter is you you know you want to sit the meetings for maybe 30 minutes to 60 Minutes you don't want to you know have a two-hour meeting first of all people don't have time for that second of all it will you you want to end it while people when it with a a sense that
40:49 people have more to say but unfortunately we ran out of time because then people will percolate over this stuff and when the next meeting comes up they will have more to say and and by the way you don't necessarily have to do it you know every month you can do it like like the the water coolers I mentioned where you do it only every quarter maybe you do it once a quarter or maybe you do it every other month so you do six of them during the year and and that's perfectly fine and that's and then that's just one part of your continuous Knowledge and Skills building
41:26 Okay so I'm going to sort of review here um because because uh I want I want to wrap things up in the next few minutes so first of all look for actual learning opportunities in the sense of online classes or or even live classes that you can take where you can interact with the the instructor and the other students that are relevant to your work whether you're a professional whether you're an employee whether you're a business owner owner where do you need to build build your skills what is going to be your
42:03 area of expertise and where can you find it there are so many organizations out there that that that teach classes and teach wonderful classes so if you're in anything having to do with trust and Estates for example the Americans American Bankers Association has extraordinary training in that field and in all other fields of banking by the way whether it's private banking Etc uh that's just one example I'll throw out there so so look for those if if you have I if you're having trouble finding them feel free to contact me drop me a a
42:39 note in social media Andor my email address will be in the show notes shoot me an email I'm happy to help you find a place where you can do formal education and when I say formal education I don't mean College by the way most college education is not on the Cutting Edge and that so that's not what I'm talking about what I'm talking about is is educational opportunities that are dealing with the real world and keeping on top of the changes that are happening within your field so that's one area the second area is to look at what new
43:14 things are happening within your industry whether it's AI coming in that I've talked about several times whether it's new techniques for doing your work like in the plumbing example look for those okay and uh talk with other people in your field what are the coming new technologies okay technology isn't just computers we think of it that way but it's not this system that the plumbers use to fix the drain line in front of my house that's a new technology right driverless cars are a new technology all
43:50 of those things look for those and talk to people about what which ones may become viable or are viable and you need to keep on top of and then start using them now if there's training that has to be taken in order to learn how to use them take the training maybe maybe you know as the business owner you'll take the training and see if you think it's viable and then send send other people in your organization to it if you're an employee in an organization and you learn about something talk to the people in in you know who run your the company you work for and say hey I'd like to go
44:27 investigate this on behalf of the company and and take this training it's a one or two- day training whatever it is and then I'll write up a report on it and and give you an idea of of of what this is all about and whether assess whether there's a benefit to our organization and more people getting trained or whether I think no this this is not really worth it this is not going to to end up being something of value for our company so look for new technology that's being applied and and and look for opportunities to use it and get trained in it and then finally
45:03 create your own opportunities to interact with with colleagues with other Professionals in your industry where you can exchange ideas where people can ask questions where you Mentor new people in the field and where you have people who've been in it for a long long time who can share their expertise share their stories by the way you may want to start a show like kind of like mine in your in in your area that that you deal with talking about these kind of issues and
45:39 then you you can invite people on to come and talk about them and and again you you learn from from being the person hosting the the show whether it's an audio or a video podcast whatever it is so those are the ways that that I recommend that you develop a plan of continuous Knowledge and Skills Improvement and it needs to be a plan a written down plan these are the things I'm going to do this year in order to increase my knowledge right so if you want to know
46:14 what my plan is for 2025 it's to complete the 15 hours of continuing education I'm required to have to renew my license okay and I'll do that through taking courses through um through Kaplan uh which is which has wonderful online learning um resources and I'm also going to be taking some courses through the independent trustee Alliance which also has t you know courses high level courses geared specifically toward what I do that's one thing the second thing
46:50 is I'm going to continue to produce three three shows on professional topics each week trust and Estates weekly on Mondays at 10 all all Pacific Time 10 a.m. Pacific Time all all all my professional Orient business oriented shows are at 10 a.m. P Pacific time so trust and Estates weekly on Monday business lessons from the military on Tuesdays and people making money on Wednesdays these are an opportunity not just for me to you know have have a a you know a fun
47:27 time U talking to people and and talking about ideas they an opportunity for me to learn as well as educate other people and and I bring when I bring guests on I learn from the guests when I do a show like this I'm hoping that I'm I'm helping you learn something and by teaching I'm also learning because those two things go hand hand in glove and so as I develop my my topics for my shows those topics will often revolve around areas where I want to or feel I need to
48:03 improve my Knowledge and Skills okay so those are my two main way oh and sorry and then I'll continue to attend the water coolers I'll go to presumably four of them next year once every three months right and and then those so those are going to be the three ways that I pursue my plan of continuous knowledge and skill development now I also have certain uh Mentor mentee relationships my friend Bill who's the real estate probate real estate guy I mentioned a few few minutes ago I'll
48:38 continue to reach out to bill for one-on-one mentoring uh we have kind of an interesting relationship because in some ways Bill reaches out to me for mentoring as well we have different skill sets and so we share them with each other so I'll we'll continue to build our skills and knowledge by interacting um I'll and I'll continue to I have other friendships that are also in some cases Mentor mentee relationships so my my friend Michael who knows a tremendous amount about machine learning large language models
49:13 so I'll continue to uh interact with with Michael on a regular basis to learn that so that's my plan for 20125 for continuously building my Knowledge and Skills now you may say wow how do you have time to do anything else well you know it it may sound like a long list but the time that it takes to do each one aside from my shows which obviously take a fair amount of time the the other ones are are specific times maybe once a week or TW or once every two weeks that kind of thing and sometimes they're after business
49:49 hours and so I I work them in in a way that's compat compatible with getting my work done as well so and and by the way if you're just getting started with developing a plan of continuous knowledge and skill development you don't have to do five things the way I am just choose one thing the the the idea is to choose one thing and habituate it so it becomes part of the rhythm of your life probably it's not going to be daily it may be weekly if
50:25 it's a some kind um you know Mentor mentee relationship or maybe it's bi-weekly maybe it's monthly okay but at least quarterly at least quarterly you I I can't encourage you enough to engage in some kind of knowledge or skill Improvement okay so set a goal for 2025 that if you haven't already done so you're going to Institute a program of continuous knowledge and skill
51:01 Improvement that involves at least once a quarter okay doing so now maybe it's only an hour once a quarter okay maybe that's all you think you have time for right now fine but schedule those into your calendar before 2025 starts okay maybe even plan them out what they're going to be and then when those times hit do them okay and then in 2026 maybe you'll go from quarterly to
51:36 monthly okay so the idea is to build this up year by year since so it becomes a part of your regular business work professional activities okay so that's continuous Knowledge and Skills development and I thank you very much for joining me had a couple of live viewers today and one who who joined in here just in the end so I really appreciate you joining me live always fun to see that if you have any thoughts questions comments please do drop them into social media Outlets the links are
52:13 in all will be in the show notes after this the episode posts on YouTube uh by the way for for if you're watching this not live um my all of my shows now are available on Spotify and apple podcast so if for any reason it's it's more convenient for you to watch them on those other platforms um you know instead of YouTube by all means uh every episode uh starting about uh I think a month and a half ago or so gets uploaded
52:49 to Spotify and apple podcast now and so I'll just go and search the way to wow shows and and you'll see you'll see the episodes as they come up so that's another uh trying to make it easier for you to to access um my my shows and and that's that's the latest uh uh development in that in in that uh respect um if you have something of a more personal nature that you don't want to post on social media you can always email me as I mentioned you can see my email address there crawling under the bottom of the screen so um I'll I'll do
53:24 my best to respond um all always with the caveat that it's got to be something within my area of expertise if it's not if it's some kind of technical question or something like that um I will do my best to refer you to someone else uh who can get you the answer you need so thank you so much for joining me really appreciate it I wish you a wonderful rest of the day and this is my last show for this week so a wonderful rest of the week and signing off as I always do Marie darling you are my bell courage at
54:00 all times my friends