This podcast is designed for business leaders and human resource professionals who are challenged with expanding their workforce. Workforce Therapy Files, an Employer Solutions Podcast, is hosted by 3 separate business owners who operate in the staffing and human resources space. They'll provide perspectives, tips and advice (along with a little humor) to help you prepare for and manage your workforce challenges. Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: • Jamie Swaim, SPHR – www.ParcelKnows.com • Molley Ricketts – www.IncipioWorks.com • Jason Heflin – www.CrowdSouth.com We hope you find it insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
Listen to episodes
60 recent
October 19, 20266 min
2026 KYSHRM: Interview with Erica Harris of Goodwill Kentucky
Erica Harris, MSM, SHRM-CP, Total Rewards Manager at Goodwill Kentucky, joined hosts Jamie Swaim and Jason Heflin at the 2026 Kentucky SHRM Conference to discuss her role overseeing benefits, compensation, and wellness. She kicked off the conversation by reflecting on conference keynote speaker Maggie Harlow, praising her as a true business leader in addition to being Jack Harlow's mother. On the operational side, Erica revealed that she has spent two years leading a massive system implementation to transition Goodwill Kentucky to ADP as a new HCM vendor, balancing this project alongside her daily HR responsibilities. When asked about a hypothetical forced karaoke scenario, she selected Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club," explaining that she and her daughter love singing it together during car rides. For her personal keynote walk-up anthem, Erica chose T.I.'s "Bring 'Em Out" to bring high energy to the stage. Passing a question along to the next podcast guest, she proposed asking what single superpower they would want. She shared that her own choice would be teleportation to keep up with her two active kids' sports and cheer schedules across town. Erica, thanks for stopping by to speak with us! To Learn More about Goodwill Kentucky: Website: www.GoodwillKY.org To Watch the Episode Recorded at the Goodwill Opportunity Center: Website: https://www.workforcetherapyfiles.com/podcast/womens-health-is-a-workplace-issue-what-leaders-cant-ignore/ That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. Jamie Swaim: www.ParcelKnows.com Molley Ricketts: www.IncipioWorks.com Jason Heflin: www.CrowdSouth.com We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
October 12, 20267 min
2026 KYSHRM: Interview with Chris Dietrich, Simple VMS
Chris Dietrich, Sales Executive with SimpleVMS , joined hosts Jamie Swaim and Jason Heflin at the 2026 Kentucky SHRM Conference to discuss how modern technology transforms contingent workforce management. Based out of Cincinnati, Ohio, SimpleVMS has served North America for 15 years with a 96% client retention rate under month-to-month agreements while preparing for global expansion next year. Many companies still manage temporary agency programs using spreadsheets and email chains, creating severe visibility gaps. SimpleVMS modernizes this process by delivering a single platform that streamlines four key operational areas: job posting, timekeeping, reporting and analytics, and consolidated invoicing. Additionally, the platform provides multiple layers of protection to mitigate complex co-employment risks associated with managing temporary staff. When asked for his hypothetical keynote walk-up song, Chris selected "We Are the Champions" by Queen. He concluded his appearance by asking future guests about their favorite Louisville spots, recommending the pretzel beer cheeseburger at Monnik Beer Co.. Chris, thanks for stopping by to speak with us! To Learn More about SimpleVMS: Website: http://www.simplevms.com/ That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: • Jamie Swaim, SPHR – http://www.ParcelKnows.com • Molley Ricketts – http://www.IncipioWorks.com • Jason Heflin – http://www.CrowdSouth.com We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
October 7, 20267 min
2026 KYSHRM: Interview with Dana Syme, Incipio Workforce Solutions
Dana Syme, Director of Client Experience at Incipio Workforce Solutions, joined hosts Jason Heflin, Jamie Swaim, and Molley Ricketts as the first guest at the 2026 Kentucky SHRM Conference. In her role, Dana acts as the bridge between clients, internal teams, and service partners to ensure an outstanding client experience across all operations except invoicing. Core challenges she solves for clients revolve around finding the right talent and keeping employees engaged over time. While organizations often make grand promises during recruitment, retention suffers when the daily workplace reality fails to align with that advertised culture. Drawing on a diverse career path spanning talent acquisition, employer branding, marketing, and HR consulting, Dana brings broad industry expertise to her work. She considers her ultimate superpower to be a connector who lives by the motto "I don't know, but I know who knows," connecting clients to specialized experts when complex issues arise. Continuing the podcast's tradition of connecting guest insights, Dana asked the next participant what their walk-up song would be if they were a KYSHRM keynote speaker? She shared that her own personal hype song is "So What'cha Want" by the Beastie Boys. Dana, thanks for stopping by to speak with us! That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: • Jamie Swaim, SPHR – http://www.ParcelKnows.com • Molley Ricketts – http://www.IncipioWorks.com • Jason Heflin – http://www.CrowdSouth.com We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
September 22, 2026Episode 4349 min
Women's Health Is a Workplace Issue | What Leaders Can't Ignore
File 43: Recorded before a live audience at the Goodwill Opportunity Center in collaboration with LeadWell, File 43 of the Workforce Therapy Files features nurse practitioner Gaby Jaggers discussing the critical intersection of women's health and workplace retention. Jamie Johnson introduced LeadWell's mission to destigmatize topics like burnout, the sandwich generation, menopause, and fertility in professional settings. Gaby debunked prevalent health myths regarding severe period pain, postpartum recovery, and menopause, noting that 100% of women experience hormonal transitions that directly affect their productivity and well-being. She urged business leaders to take accountability by actively asking employees what they need through anonymous feedback rather than allowing chronic stress to drive turnover. Through integrative medicine, Gaby advocates for discovering root causes of symptoms rather than relying on quick pharmaceutical fixes. Essential interventions discussed include comprehensive lab testing, whole-food nutrition, and targeted supplementation with magnesium, vitamin D, and methylated multivitamins. Additionally, the episode stresses that executive leaders must model healthy boundaries and enforce real PTO usage to foster sustainable organizational cultures. All ticket proceeds from this live recording were donated directly to support the Goodwill Opportunity Center. Episode Transcript: Molley Ricketts: Thank you all for coming in, getting your breakfast. I hope it was delicious. The folks at Black Coffee put amazing food together and their coffee is spot on. So we'll let everybody get their seats and then we'll kick off. Jamie Swaim: Molley, before we do that. Molley Ricketts: Yeah? Jamie Swaim: I have a confession. This is also my first live podcast recording, so we're going to get this unlocked together and I'm excited about that, but I'm a little bit nervous about it. I don't know about everybody else. This is an ad hoc conversation. If you ever spent any time with us, sometimes we spitball… Molley Ricketts: And wing it? We're not going to wing it though, once we start. Jamie Swaim: We actually had one recording where we had to start over. So that could happen today too because whenever we're together, we like to laugh and sometimes we need to edit that out. You know what I mean? Molley Ricketts: Because the laugh's a little too much. Jamie Swaim: That's right. So there might be some things that we need to do that today. We'll try not to, but… Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: Alright. Molley Ricketts: Okay. Jamie Swaim: Everybody's taking a seat. Molley Ricketts: Good morning and welcome to the LeadWell Live Audience podcast recording with Ms. Gaby Jaggers. Yay. We are so excited that you're here. And before we kick it off, I would like to introduce a dear friend, Ms. Jamie Johnson, and she's going to let everybody know a little bit more about LeadWell and how this all came about. Jamie Johnson: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to hear the conversation today, because I think this is much needed. So LeadWell was really started about a year and a half ago. There's a group of seven women that we came together and decided that there's things that we need to talk about that are not discussed in the workplace. There's a lot of things that women have to deal with that men do not. There's the burnout, the mental load of taking care of everyone else. There's the sandwich generation right now where a lot of women are not only taking care of their own kids, but their parents too, and how that affects us showing up to work. Menopause, fertility issues. I mean, the list doesn't end. So we just wanted to create a safe space where women could come together and talk to each other about what's going on, find solutions, and really just empower you to know that you can still show up to work, be your authentic self. So we're excited today for the women's health conversation because that is one piece that I think is not talked about a lot at work. Molley Ricketts: I agree. I think we can all agree with that one, right? So before we kick off in our interview with Gaby, I'd like to give a special shout out to a few of our sponsors and one in particular today, our presenting sponsor, She Knows Best. We've got our table set over here in the room, the international bestseller that I'm so proud to have been a part of with another group of amazing women that I have in my circle. And that's truly what it's about. It's lifting your circle for that next season of life that we all tend to find ourselves in. And here's the other page. It's on the other side. Nothing like live audience for that. Many of our sponsors such as Junior League of Louisville. So grateful for your commitment and the support of this community that we've had from Old National Bank, V-Soft, United Healthcare, Humana, USI Insurance. We appreciate you investing in these critical conversations because like all of us in the room, the more we know, the better that the workplace culture can be. So looking forward to prioritizing women's health and the life that we lead. As we're also going through our in-kind sponsors for today's event, obviously we're in this huge, amazing Goodwill Opportunity Center here off of West Broadway. It is an incredible space. If this is your first time here, I highly encourage you to take a tour, learn more about the facility. It's a great space to be and hold events just like this. The Print Refinery for all of the paper that you see and the signage that we have, they're a great partner for us. The florals, these are incredible. Jamie Johnson: I could have never done that before. Molley Ricketts: No. I though it was fake. Jamie Johnson: Yeah, it's real. Molley Ricketts: That's incredible. Jamie Johnson: I didn't know that was part of the event. That's gorgeous. Molley Ricketts: It's great. Yeah. And Robin, she's around here shooting her camera. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So for this live podcast experience, are we ready? Gaby Jaggers and Jamie Johnson: Let's do it! Molley Ricketts: And now I love that. That was great. That wasn't planned. That wasn't planned. All right, so without further ado, I'm excited to kick off today's podcast in front of a live audience and introduce our special guest and a great friend of mine. I'm so stoked that she's here. Today's topic, women's health. Unfortunately, we only have about 30 minutes to talk, but I know that this is going to create so much curiosity for all of us to continue to learn more. So with that, women's health isn't a moment. It's literally a span of many, many careers. Workplaces should be treated based on retention, performance. Leaders can't afford to ignore the opportunities that we have and that we need today, right? So I'm excited to introduce Gaby Jaggers. Gaby Jaggers is a nurse practitioner with nearly 20 years of nursing experience, passionate about helping individuals optimize their personal health from inside out. Gaby specializes in integrative and functional medicine, hormone health, wellness optimization, and aesthetic treatments. She believes true wellness begins with intentional living, and I can say as her friend, she really does. Real food, movement, mindset, spiritual wellbeing, and creating conditions for the body to heal and thrive. All right. Jamie Swaim: Welcome, Gaby. Gaby Jaggers: Thank You. I'm so happy to be here. Jamie Swaim: Yes. Well, I like to kick this off because we are going to get to know all kinds of things about you while you're here, but we're going to play a little game called Fact or Cap. Gaby Jaggers: Okay. Jamie Swaim: Cap is what the kids are saying for "lies", or they were at least five years ago. I don't even know if they still are using that one. Gaby Jaggers: Define this for me earlier because I had no idea what Cap meant. Jamie Swaim: Well, let's go back and call it something that might be more generationally appropriate. This is myth-busting. Gaby Jaggers: Okay. Jamie Swaim: How about that? Gaby Jaggers: I got that. Jamie Swaim: Okay, great. So I'm going to throw out some statements that I believe there are still some people that anchor really hard to, and I want you to tell me whether or not they should or whether or not it's cap. Gaby Jaggers: Okay. Jamie Swaim: Okay. So the first one is severe period pain is just something women have to deal with. Gaby Jaggers: Cap. Definitely not right. You don't have to deal with it. Jamie Swaim: Even through your different phases. Gaby Jaggers: Yes. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Gaby Jaggers: Totally. Jamie Swaim: I think it's one of those things where people don't really know that those things can change throughout your life and how, hey, if it starts feeling really hard, you don't necessarily have to work there. Gaby Jaggers: I think that people, women in general, we think that we are supposed to be dealing with certain things and that it's just normal for us to be fatigued or in pain or just feeling totally awful all the time. And I don't think that that's true. Jamie Swaim: Yeah, because Jamie gave this amazing list of all the things that women navigate. I think the part that I would add to it to complement that list is that, and you have to get up at 8:00 AM and act like it's not happening. Gaby Jaggers: Oh yeah. Jamie Swaim: Right? Yeah. Okay. All right. Number two, menopause is basically just hot flashes. Gaby Jaggers: No, definitely not cap. Jamie Swaim: Cap. Gaby Jaggers: I forgot. I'm supposed to say cap. Jamie Swaim: You supposed to cap. Okay. Yeah, cap. Yeah. So tell us more about some of the things that might impact how women work going through menopause. Gaby Jaggers: Well, menopause is not just hot flashes or night sweats. I mean, we all, or if you have not gotten there yet, I think we're all kind of in that place in our life. We're in that perimenopause place. But it can be fatigue, weight gain, intimacy issues with your spouse or your partner, just the way you feel. You don't feel like yourself anymore, and that is all just part of it and you don't have to deal with it. You can actually come back from that and feel better. Jamie Swaim: Okay, that's very helpful. All right, number three. After having a baby, you just got to tough it out. It'll all kind of fall back in place. Gaby Jaggers: I mean, cap? Cap. I mean, things do kind of fall back in place. If you get with the rhythm of having a new baby, you just burst this thing that you now have to care for 24/7. A lot of us, if you didn't have any children before, it's totally different. You lose yourself a little bit. Jamie Swaim: 1000%. Gaby Jaggers: So, getting back into the rhythm of your new normal, I think is something that we all go through. Jamie Swaim: At one employer that I had, there was a general manager that I worked with that I credit with both teaching me how to be a mom and also teaching me how to use the F-word in a lot of different creative ways. But I didn't even know how to advocate for what my child needed because I'd been a professional for so long when I decided to have a child. And some of these are kind of tongue in cheek, obviously, but it's also because it feels like this is what you're supposed to do in certain professional settings, right? Gaby Jaggers: Yeah, totally. Jamie Swaim: Alright, so here's another one. If your labs are technically normal, you must be fine. Gaby Jaggers: There's a meme that I brought with me today, and I think it says a lot about how we are told constantly that we are normal. I go into the doctor and I say, "I feel really bad and I have all of these different symptoms." And my doctor looks at the labs and says, "Well, your labs are normal," and that's all they have for me. It's like, "I know I don't feel well, but you honestly have nothing to give me." And oftentimes they'll hand you your handy-dandy antidepressant. "Here, take this in place of actual care or validating how you feel." Jamie Swaim: The list of the panel they put you through wasn't even the complete panel they should have. Gaby Jaggers: I can tell you 100% as an integrative provider, it's not. I get people's labs and I'm like," Oh gosh, I wish they'd just drawn a little bit more here. And I give people lists all the time. "Take this back to your doctor and ask them if they'll draw this for you." Jamie Swaim: Yes. Gaby Jaggers: And a lot of times they won't. But, it's not even anything crazy. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Molley, didn't mean to step on your words. Molley Ricketts: No, you're good. Jamie Swaim: What'd you say? Molley Ricketts: Now I can't remember. Jamie Swaim: Okay. Molley Ricketts: I didn't write it down. Jamie Swaim: I know a good nurse practitioner. Molley Ricketts: It'll help with memory. Jamie Johnson: Brain fog. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Brain fog is real. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah, it is real. Jamie Swaim: But to that point, if you go back and listen to prior episodes of the Workforce Therapy Files, you'll hear that I reference social media reels and clips with an unhealthy obsession, if I'm honest. But there was one that I saw about women's health that was a biopsy, a cervical biopsy, but they used it with the tool and then had an orange and it was talking about the lack of anesthesia and showed the process. And I was furious after watching it and being like, "There is no way." So I can only imagine the kind of stuff that you see regularly around how women are treated in the healthcare settings at times. Gaby Jaggers: Well, I just feel the fact that we're not really validated for our feelings. One of the things that I tell my patients all the time is, "I believe you." And I've had people just burst out crying in front of me when I just say, "I believe you. Whatever your symptom is, I believe you." Because so many people go to the doctor and they're telling them, "I feel like this, I feel like this. I feel all these symptoms." And they're just like, "Well, your labs are normal." Jamie Swaim: Yeah, so it must be in your head. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. All right. So our last one for Fact or Cap or Myth-busters, whatever you choose, is women's health benefits are nice to have, but they don't really affect the bottom line. And I feel like this is the one that kind of gets us into the rest of today. Gaby Jaggers: I mean, I think that employers could be doing so much more for us just in general. I worked for a major hospital system for a really long time, and I was an educator at that hospital for a while. And I remember going into leadership meetings and just saying, "We need to do more for these nurses." It's not so much to expect that these people can do a better job if we just give them the tools that they need or some relaxation. I mean, nurses in the hospital are taking care of so many different patients. It's literally life and death, and it wouldn't be a bad idea if we brought in a massage school and asked them to do some of their clinical hours on our floors, just come circulating the hospital, moving to different floors and giving people a 10 or 15-minute massage or having them set up downstairs or something like that just to show them we know you're really working your butt off and this little thing is just a tiny little thing, but I think it will just add to your day and help you get through these hours. And so just investing in your people, giving them a little bit extra or just telling them you hear them. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. I feel like the pandemic, if we were to say that there was anything positive that came out of it, it was almost like this giant spotlight on everything that you just said, that there were all these women that were in these critical roles and also playing double duty with now a teacher and somebody that's planning all of our meals, not just dinner and breakfast. Some people do breakfast. I don't really do that part well. But anyway, there was all of these things that were happening and now all of a sudden companies had to make adjustments that they had never even considered, right? Gaby Jaggers: Yeah. Well, we were talking about this before starting this taping, that I was a nurse in the hospital during COVID, and COVID was the first time that when you ever called in to the hospital, you have to talk to the house manager and the house manager would routinely say, "Well, what are your symptoms if you called in before the pandemic? What are your symptoms? Do you have a fever?" Justifying, "Can you come to work because we're really short, we need you." But once the pandemic hit, all of a sudden you called and you said, "I have a fever or I have a cough or I can't taste anything or anything like that." And they were like, "You need to stay home." And it was just relief for all of these nurses in the hospital because finally we didn't have to justify the fact that we actually felt bad and we needed to stay home and it was the first time. And that sounds crazy. I know people always thought that was kind of nuts that nurses are calling to say, "I'm sick," and they're coming in to take care of people who are sick, but they're like, "We really need you. You have to come in." Jamie Swaim: Yeah, you would think that would be the company that would do it better. Gaby Jaggers: Well, the shortages, I guess, just makes it really hard. Jamie Johnson: Yeah. One thing I like to think about too, I mean, when companies are not willing to add benefits or things like that that are going to support these issues that we're talking about, 100% of women will go through perimenopause and menopause. Is that correct? Yeah. Fact? Yeah. Okay. So why are we not building those benefits and that education into the platforms that we already have in place? Jamie Swaim: Especially when you think about the period of time where individuals are going through perimenopause and menopause. I mean, it's when you've collected the largest amount of work experience, where you've learned the most efficiencies, where you've built the strongest networks. I mean, when you get into 20 years plus of your career, presumably, then you know how to do it better than you did whenever all of the things worked easier. Jamie Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. Gaby Jaggers: And it spans an amount of time. I mean, you can be in perimenopause and menopause for 10 years, so… Molley Ricketts: That's fun. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah, don't suffer through it, you guys. There is help. Jamie Swaim: I think you just had a lot of people sign up to see you. Did you bring an appointment book? Gaby Jaggers: I didn't, but you can contact me. Jamie Swaim: Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. Jamie Johnson: So I am monitoring questions, so feel free to keep scanning the QR code. There is one that I was going to ask since it feels like the right time. Molley Ricketts: Okay. Jamie Johnson: Why is perimenopause still such a mystery? Why do even health professionals not know how to advise women on their wide variety of symptoms? Molley Ricketts: Preach. Gaby Jaggers: I wish I knew the answer to that. I really do, because it's not rocket science. We all go through it. We've been going through it since the beginning of time, but when you go to talk to your gynecologist about your symptoms and that you need help, for whatever reason, this person who's supposed to be the expert in the field is like, "Well, we all go through it. Just suffer through it. Suck it up." They don't even offer you anything when you don't have to be that way. You literally can have treatment. I mean, hormone replacement therapy is lifesaving if anybody has ever gone through any hormone replacement therapy. Molley Ricketts: Amen. Gaby Jaggers: You can tell that it changed your life. It brought you back to your relationship with your spouse. It made you stop yelling at your kids. It allowed you to sleep. That's one of the things that everybody always talks about when they see me is I just want to sleep. And it's like, you can, we can get you back to this place. So I don't have the answer for why they don't know how to treat you or don't look into how to treat you, but there are a million books and there are providers out there that are educated in this field and are willing to help you. And I would just say seek help elsewhere. Whenever you don't get an answer, be an advocate for yourself and definitely check with somebody else. Get a second opinion. Molley Ricketts: So Gaby, what's one thing that you wish women knew 10 years earlier? Gaby Jaggers: That you don't have to suffer, that there is a solution or we can be working on that solution. I'm not going to say that you're going to come and see me and all of your problems are going to be completely gone, but I will work towards that. Let's find the root cause. Let's not just treat the symptoms because a lot of times we're giving a pill for this, a pill for that, and those two pills is causing another symptom. So I think there is help out there. And like I said, if you don't have a provider that is listening to you or that you feel has given you an answer or that you're not starting to feel better from what they're offering you, then seek help elsewhere. Molley Ricketts: So what are you hearing women say over and over again? And it's just making you stop in your checks and think, "We've got to start talking about this." Gaby Jaggers: Well, there's a lot of things, but one of the things that came to my mind as soon as you said that was that they don't have an intimate life anymore and they're young. I have taken care of men and women and they will come to me in their 40s or early 50s and I'll ask them about their intimate life because I like to get into people's lives and really find out about that. Intimate lives are very important and they'll say it's just more hassle than it's worth. And I think that that's really sad because sex is great, orgasms are great. I think everybody should be having them. And I feel like that's one of the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause is that things feel different and sometimes things hurt and maybe you don't even feel like you want to get into it, but I feel like there is help for that. And I do see patients in my hormone therapy business where I have a 75-year-old who comes to see me, an 80-year-old who comes to see me and gets her pellets, and she has a very active sex life, and I love that for her. So I think that is one of the things I think about. And intimate life really should be something that you can enjoy for a long time. And the other thing I would say is stress. We get so used to chronic stress and stress causes inflammation and inflammation causes everything bad and that we have to be treating stress like it's going to cause cancer or that it's going to lead to unhealthy outcomes because it is. Jamie Swaim: For a live recording, there were a couple of little bullets there that I'm surprised we had no reaction to. Nobody wanted to give it up for the 80-year-old lady. Molley Ricketts: I wanted to clap. Jamie Swaim: You see what I'm saying? Molley Ricketts: Goals! Gaby Jaggers: Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Molley Ricketts: So what do you think employers should be doing to recognize their culture or their shortfalls when it comes to women's health? Because oftentimes, much like at the doctor, it feels like you're here, take a pill or get over it and manage through this, read this book. What is it that employers really need to do to take more accountability for the folks on their team that maybe need some extra attention? Gaby Jaggers: I think they could just ask. They could ask their employees what do they actually need to do the job well? What do they perceive as a problem? Like an anonymous questionnaire that really just allows people to tell them what they need. If we had asked the nurses in my hospital, I bet you they would've said that they feel burned out working the job of three people. And we see that in workplaces all the time where just because somebody can do the job of three people doesn't mean they should be doing that job because it's causing them to be burned out. They quit, they have frequent call-outs, they have chronic pain. They have a lot of different things that could be benefited from the fact that if we just ask them what they need and then try to provide that. Molley Ricketts: That's a revelation. Ask. Jamie Swaim: Ask. Molley Ricketts: When you think. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Jamie Swaim: Well, because Gaby may not know this. But in prior episodes on Workforce Therapy Files, if there are individuals that are listening that would like to understand ways to ask, we have done episodes on the use of employee surveys . We've done episodes on benefit construction , and we've done episodes on just overall employee engagement and how do you advocate for your people in order to be able to enable your work. So I would encourage you to go back and listen to some of those because I think that there might be a deeper click, a double click?, that sounds better, into some of those topics. Yeah, I think that's really good. [Sponsor Message – Junior League of Louisville] Molley Ricketts: You're up next. Jamie Swaim: Okay. So I'm an HR person, career. I've been in HR now for more years than feels normal to say out loud, and HR people love programs. So if you had $100,000 that you could dedicate to a program for an employer that would improve? Molley Ricketts: $100,000? Jamie Swaim: You can put whatever number. I don't even. You want me to be like Dr. Evil? $1 billion that you can use for improving women's experiences, women experiences in the workplace. What would you use that money for? Gaby Jaggers: Well, as an integrative provider, I think that maybe we should put an integrative provider in there. We should allow for time for people to have mental health days without being critical of when they call in with those. I know a lot of places do have so many allotted mental health days, but it seems like you're afraid to call in with a mental health day or they will make you justify what that mental health day, why you need it. I still think we should have masseuses at the job. If we have this endless billion dollars, then I would love to have some kind of little lounge for your employees to go in, take 10 minutes. They maybe have some aromatherapy in there. Even a massage chair, like one of those ones with the leg things that's like you're just kind of trapped in that thing, but it's massaging you so well. That would be good. Jamie Swaim: That's why I have my Planet Fitness membership, just so we're clear. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Jamie Swaim: Shout out to Planet Fitness. Massage chair! Gaby Jaggers: Yeah. No, but I mean, just taking the time to give people the time they need. And with the integrative provider, I think that I feel like when you talk to an integrative provider, they're listening to the things that you're saying and then are genuinely trying to find what it is that's causing those things to help you. Jamie Swaim: We've talked about this before as well, but I'm going to punctuate this because I think it goes with this. I would also caution employers to think about the fact that what you offer, you also have to enable people using it. Molley Ricketts: Right. Judgment free. Jamie Swaim: The culture has to be there for people to use it. It can't be one of those like, "Hey, we've got the ping pong table so you can get a brain break," and then be like, "Dude is always at the ping pong table." You have to balance. If you're going to offer mental health days, you can't be like, "And they always use their mental health days." It's got to be a space where it's okay to take advantage of those benefits. Gaby Jaggers: You might even incentivize them to use said days. How about that? Let's give a shout-out to the person who used five mental health days this year because that person is taking care of themselves and therefore they're a better employee. Molley Ricketts: That's right. Jamie Johnson: You've got to have leaders that are leading by example. Especially us women leaders in the room. Take the break for yourself. Show your teams that you are taking the break and you're taking care of yourself so that they feel more comfortable doing that. Molley Ricketts: So speaking of leaders in the workplace, I have a question that in discussing benefits and how culture and environment work within the workplace, a CEO says, "I care about my employees, but their health is personal. Why is this my responsibility?" What would you say? Gaby Jaggers: Well, their personal health information is personal, but you caring about how that employee shows up and how that employee is feeling so that they can show up the way you want them to, I think that is important. That's why they should care because somebody who's overstressed, overworked, feeling having an upset stomach or migraines all the time because they're working too hard and just feeling totally overwhelmed and they're calling out all the time, that's an issue for them. So when we put into our employees, then they'll give us more. Jamie Johnson: We also spend a third of our life at work. Gaby Jaggers: Totally. Jamie Johnson: So why shouldn't our employer help us if we're going to spend so much time there? Gaby Jaggers: Yeah, they really should. And those places that do care about their employees, the people who work at these companies, they feel so much more loved, validated, heard. I don't know a whole lot of them because it seems like there's not a lot of jobs out there that have this kind of stuff, but imagine the utopia that it could be when you're spending so much time at work, you spend more time at work than you do with your family. I mean, it should be a place that you actually want to be at. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. One of the things that I think works well from a wellness perspective, but also actually has a bottom line impact as well is the ability to require individuals to take a minimum amount of PTO. So it helps from a burnout perspective, but there's also other things you find when people take PTO. You find out whether or not the rest of the team is capable of picking it up when someone's out. Molley Ricketts: Exactly. It's not just about the time off sometimes. Jamie Swaim: You get to see what kind of controls you currently have in place and whether or not those controls are working, and those kinds of things in different environments are actually really important. It's when you find out that, "Oh, well, we can't do that because Gaby's the only one that knows how to work that, so you can't take PTO. Gaby Jaggers: That's a bad thing. Jamie Swaim: It's a bad thing. Gaby Jaggers: Gaby could be hit by a bus tomorrow, and then what are we all going to do? Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Or Gaby wins the lottery. Let's give her that kind of thing. Gaby Jaggers: Oh, that's even better. Here I am thinking of the bus and you're thinking of the lottery. Molley Ricketts: I'm thinking of the Bahamas for the rest of my life. Jamie Swaim: Lots of reasons people leave a job. Yeah, lots of reasons. Gaby Jaggers: Be the employer that nobody wants to give the middle finger to when they're leaving, because it seems like a lot of people talk about that. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd be like," Boss, eat it." But you could be the person that's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I'm so sad I have to leave here because I love you guys so much." Jamie Johnson: Maybe I'll stay. Gaby Jaggers: Right. Or maybe I'll just come see you guys. Molley Ricketts: Maybe they can come visit me in The Bahamas. Gaby Jaggers: Right. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. [Sponsor Message – Old National Bank] Jamie Johnson: We talk a lot too about multiple generations in the workforce right now, and I think this is something that when an employer is showing that they care about your health as an individual, no matter your age, that's something. We're all humans. At the end of the day, your employees are humans who want to feel respected, heard, and understood. And so if you're giving them these resources and this flexibility to be able to take care of themselves, that goes a long way. Jamie Swaim: That's really good. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah. And I definitely do think that when whoever said it before, we should be encouraging people to do the PTO, take their PTO. America is one of the worst places for work-life balance, but you go anywhere in Europe and they take it seriously. Why shouldn't we be like that? Molley Ricketts: Because in some organizations, they've got PTO policies. Real quick, for questions, don't forget to scan the QR code. Jamie's watching them. I think sometimes it's a badge of honor. If you have PTO policies and it's use it or lose it, I think that encourages people to take it. But then there are some that they still don't. They're like, "Oh, I still have two weeks left, and I'm not going to use it." I don't have that problem. I do know people that suffer from that, but I'm not one of those. So thinking about how you encourage people, to Jamie's point, you as a leader take the time. Show, lead by example. Because when you come back fresh, I know when I come back from vacation, my team isn't really excited because I come back fresh with 10 new ideas and they're like, "What? Now we're going to do what?" But they're brilliant. I don't know how it's going to happen, but they're brilliant. Gaby Jaggers: Rest and relaxation. That's how that happened. You come back. Molley Ricketts: Brain fog. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: One of the most amazing experiences I personally had with a leader that demonstrated that was it was a holiday, and I'd come from an employer who had never heard the word holiday. So when I came to this employer, it was one of those new words that we were learning together. And she had sent a message It worked well for her to send that message. And I responded immediately to which she responded, "Why are you checking your email? It's a holiday." I'm like, "Because you wrote an email on a holiday." But what was cool because we ended up chatting whenever I came back to work from the holiday to say, "How should we do this?" Because neither one of us wanted to do. She was like, "Well, when I send an email, I'll let you know if I expect an immediate response or if I need an immediate response." And I was like, "Okay, so if something comes through, I can just ignore it on a holiday? Let me check and double check and triple check that." Because I didn't want to not seem committed or responsive. And having a leader be explicit about what was okay to do was very empowering and actually set a model for me for everybody I've led since. Gaby Jaggers: I think that's a good thing that leaders could do. They could set that expectation. When I sent out an email on a holiday, I really am just wishing you well. I am not expecting you to email me back. So setting that up and saying, "I expect you, when you come in as an employee, to take your PTO, to take every three or four months, I want to see you off for a long weekend. Get out there, enjoy your life and come back rested and refreshed and ready to do the job even better." Molley Ricketts: So one thing I want to mention to that is I am dedicated from noon on Sunday until noon on Friday. I had to give myself permission to not work from noon on Friday until noon on Sunday. You say, "Well, why Sunday?" Well, me, because of the way I'm twisted, I have to be ready for Monday on Sunday. So I don't go in on Monday morning thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm already behind." That's me. So in my email on my signature, it says, "Feel free not to respond if you receive this not during your working hours." But one of the things that I've also done intentionally is emails that I send out to my team on Sunday, I wait for that send. I postpone that send till Monday morning because I don't want them to think, even though I've told them, you don't have to respond, that they're behind. Jamie Swaim: That schedule send feature is a gift. Molley Ricketts: Oh my gosh, I love it. Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. Molley Ricketts: And then they don't know that I'm really whacked out when I'm sending emails at 3:00 in the morning. I'm like, delay till 7:03. Yeah, that's my time. Exactly. Because it's 3:03, so four hours later, right? Yeah. Sorry. Jamie Johnson: It's all right. We've got some really good questions coming in. Is it okay if we pause for some questions? Okay. Can you address at a high level the concerns or worries around HRT? Gaby Jaggers: Well, recently the black box warning has been taken off - Molley Ricketts: What's HRT? Gaby Jaggers: Hormone Replacement Therapy. Thank you. The black box warning has been taken off, which thank God, hallelujah, it should have been taken off a long time ago. But so many people were scared off of hormone replacement therapy back when the Women's Health Initiative came out. And it was wrong in a lot of ways because it talked about certain types of hormone replacement therapy that weren't necessarily bioidentical. It used a synthetic form of progesterone, progestin. It really scared people. And as a result of that, we have seen a rise in osteoporosis and Alzheimer's and so many different things because all of these women got kicked off their hormones and all of a sudden they felt terrible and it lasted for 20 years. So we know that hormones do not cause cancer. Bioidentical hormones do not cause cancer. Some of us, one in eight of us is going to have breast cancer. We know that already. With or without hormones, exogenous, endogenous, we are going to have cancer, somebody. So keeping up with those screenings, living the healthiest life that we can, hormones are not going to cause us to have cancer and certain cancers are fed by estrogen. So just knowing what our risks are of that, but certainly not saying that we can't have hormones just because we're afraid of something. There are certain things that we're all willing to accept risk with. I mean, if you listen to commercials on TV at all and from the mouth of babes, children, they are listening to these things. One of my children was listening to one of these commercials and he said, why would anybody take that? Did you hear that list of side effects and death? I mean, we're willing to go ahead and take that for eczema or different things like that instead of looking for the root cause, might I add, but we are not willing to take a risk and try using something that does not have an association with causing cancer to have relief of all of these symptoms that all of us are going to feel at some point. I don't know if I answered that question appropriately. Jamie Johnson: I think so. Yes, absolutely. And I think something that goes along with that, what are some supplements or nutritional choices we could make during perimenopause to lessen symptoms or just help our bodies in general? Some natural remedies. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah, yeah. My favorite. So everybody is different, but for the majority of people, most everybody should be taking a comprehensive multivitamin with methylated B vitamins in it. So just making sure that we're getting that foundational stuff to support our body and our thyroid. Our thyroid is such a big deal. So many people, there is actually a statistic that 50% of people are walking around with undiagnosed thyroid disorder, and I see it every single solitary day, but let's support our thyroid by getting - Jamie Swaim: But the panels came back clear. I'm healthy. Gaby Jaggers: They didn't even test the whole panel. By the way, a TSH is not the only thing that we should look at to determine whether or not somebody has a functioning thyroid, and I see it every day. A TSH, a T4, those two things are not the end all be all for thyroid health. And I manage people's thyroid every day. But a comprehensive methylated multivitamin, I think. Magnesium, none of us are getting enough magnesium. Magnesium is like a wonder drug. Vitamin D, a lot of us are vitamin D deficient. I see people come in in the teens. The optimal vitamin D is 60 to 80, so they're way off and your thyroid's not going to function well and you're not going to feel good and your gut health is going to be down and you're going to be depressed and that's all vitamin D. Jamie Swaim: And you're going to lose your hair. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah. Iron, another one. Iron level. Molley Ricketts: This list is worse than the side effect list. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah. Jamie Johnson: Take all the vitamins. Gaby Jaggers: Not everybody needs to take all of these things, but I would say most everybody needs the multivitamin. Most everybody needs the vitamin D, and most everybody needs the magnesium. After that, we got to individualize. So just making sure that we're looking at your labs, a comprehensive panel, not just the standard CBC, CMP, TSH, but looking at a comprehensive panel and making sure that we get to the root cause of what's going on with you and listening to you and detailing all of the symptoms that you're having and then trying to figure out what is it that's actually causing this, not just patching it with this pill and this pill and this pill and this pill. Jamie Johnson: So to that point, if we feel like our current providers are not doing a deep dive into our blood work and we don't really know where to go, where would you suggest that we start? What do we research? How do we find a provider that will listen to us? Gaby Jaggers: So I obviously love an integrative provider because I think that they are looking to get to the root cause of whatever is going on with you. We've never had a time when there has been so much information and I have so many people coming to me and telling me they watch this influencer talking about this and this influencer and functional medicine, integrative medicine is huge. People are talking about everything. So just doing your research and trying to find yourself an integrative provider or I do know of a couple primary care standard people that really do care and get deep diving into labs and looking at your symptoms and not just trying to patch everything. So just asking people about who they go to see and do they feel heard and finding that person and then praying to God that they are still accepting patients. I wish, and I'm not going to get on my soapbox since I know we only have a little bit longer, but I wish that insurance would come to the table about what we need because an integrative provider, we don't take insurance unfortunately. And I too spend a fortune on insurance a month and it really does absolutely nothing for me. But I wish that it was something that they would allow us to do is use an integrative provider, pay for comprehensive labs because I just feel like we're not getting anything but the pharmaceutical runaround when you go to your primary care doctor because that's all they have. Integrative providers are looking to prevent disease and we can see disease coming from 10 years away if we're looking at the right thing. So the idea is to prevent. And I see people all the time and they'll tell me they went back to their primary doctor and their doctor was like, "Well, this isn't a problem." And I was like, "That's because they're waiting for you to have disease." I'm trying to prevent disease, but I can't really fault them because they only have a couple tools in their toolbox and it's surgery or pharmaceuticals. And until you need one of those things, they really can't help you. Jamie Johnson: I talk to employers all the time about encouraging preventative visits. That's the only thing that can really help to control the spend that we have. I mean, the cost of insurance and healthcare in general has gone up so much because people are waiting until they're sick to go get seen. Gaby Jaggers: Right. Or you go to these preventative appointments and they still don't really tell you anything. It's really frustrating for me as being in medicine as long as I have been and choosing intentionally to go to integrative medicine instead of working in the primary care regular way of practicing. It's because preventative medicine, you go to talk to them and they really don't have anything for you. I will tell you the secret to health is a hundred percent diet and it sucks because we are Americans and the standard American diet, acronym SAD, not an accident I don't think, is sad. And you really are what you eat, garbage in, garbage out. So we really need to be intentional about what we eat. And in functional medicine, I always say if it grew out of the ground or it had a pulse, it's probably good to eat, but to stay away from bags, boxes, cans as much as possible, drive-throughs, just trying to eat things that actually look like food. Molley Ricketts: Sugar. Sugar is my… Gaby Jaggers: Everything in moderation. Molley Ricketts: Well, what's moderation? Is that individualized? Jamie Swaim: It does. It feels relative to the person. Molley Ricketts: Yeah, I think so. I'm going with that. Jamie Swaim: One of the things that hearing you talk that I have a question about is access to integrative medicine. It feels like, and I'm just thinking about the broader population, I already spend what I can on insurance if I have insurance, and then the expense of the things insurance doesn't cover may take all of the discretionary income towards these types of choices. So I'm curious, I know that your practice and practices like yours offer various types of options. So what would you tell our listener that's like, "That's just for the rich folks." Gaby Jaggers: I hate that, and I completely understand it. I wish that the system would just collapse already so that we can start over from the ground up because we have been slowly circling the drain in healthcare, I think, for a long time. I wish I had a better solution for you. I know there is a practice that was in town that was in an integrative practice and they were accepting insurance, but it wasn't actually allowing them to keep the lights on, so they had to go back to a cash model, which is really unfortunate. But I keep trying to convince my husband to cancel our insurance and just go to a catastrophic plan, which is not for everybody and he won't do it because he's afraid. But I mean, if I put that $1,400 a month into a savings account instead of putting it into my insurance, because I still have a $5,000 deductible, so when I get my thyroid labs, which I have a diagnosed thyroid issue and half of the thyroid, they still are making me pay a fortune for my labs and then are making me justify why I need this medication. So I wish I had a solution for you. Jamie Swaim: It sounds like pay for it now or pay for it later. Is that where you're heading? Gaby Jaggers: Pay for it now or pay for it later. Yeah. Thank you for putting that into words for me because that is truly it. If we don't take care of ourselves now, we're going to be paying for it in the medications that we have to take later, the surgeries that we have to have, the nursing homes that we might end up in. I mean, I know there's nothing scarier than thinking about ourselves with dementia or in a nursing home or anything like that. So trying to do our best for ourselves now when we can. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. We are at a place where we're going to wrap up this episode. Jim's given me the four behind the camera, but there are a couple things we like to wrap up with, and we will put this information in our show notes for anybody who's listening, and then we can continue the conversation locally because that's the benefit of coming to one of our live events. But how can people reach you if they were like, "You spoke to my soul and the only person I trust with this conversation is you." How do they find you? Gaby Jaggers: I work at Center for Beauty, which is in St. Matthews, and you can call us there. I would love to see any of you, any of your friends or family. It's definitely a passion of mine. I love to look at labs, good comprehensive labs. We are developing an - Molley Ricketts: She does geek out over it. Gaby Jaggers: I do. I really do. We are developing an integrative wellness program, individualized precision wellness is what we're calling it. And I hope that speaks to all of you because it really is about what we see about you that makes us guide our care. So Center for Beauty. Molley Ricketts: Jamie, do you have one last question from the audience? Jamie Johnson: I'm going to ask one more to wrap up. If you could recommend one book or podcast to learn more about perimenopause, do you have one in mind that you could recommend? Gaby Jaggers: I don't have a one. I'm a geek and I read books all the time, so I cannot help myself. I couldn't even direct you to just. I can give you a list of them later, but I would just seek out anything that you can find really about integrative medicine, functional medicine, because that's going to be leading you to a holistic approach. And there's so many different podcasts out there, so many different people talking about integrative and functional medicine now, but that really is the trying to get to the root cause of what's going on with you. So I'm sorry I don't have an answer for you on that. It's just too many. Jamie Johnson: That's okay. We usually send out a post-event kit, so you all will be receiving an email. We'll try to include some links in there. Maybe we'll list a few of your favorites. And there were some other really good questions in here we didn't get to, so we'll try to address those in the post-event kit as well and make sure that you all know how to reach us with additional questions. Molley Ricketts: So with that, just one final huge shout-out to the Goodwill Opportunity Center and so that all of our guests here today know, all of the ticket sales from today are going to be donated to the Goodwill Opportunity Center so that will hopefully give them a little bit more to continue to invest in our community the way that they are, and it's really fantastic. If you don't know, I definitely encourage you to take some time to learn more. Jamie Swaim: This is my first time here. Molley Ricketts: Is it? Jamie Swaim: And I would just like to offer a couple of supplemental shout-outs, because driving down the road that's right here beside the parking lot and seeing the barber college and seeing the bank and seeing all of the different places that have such an opportunity to integrate services and talent and support, it is inspiring to see how many companies have come together to make this beautiful location. Jamie Johnson: You got the Norton West Hospital right here, too. Jamie Swaim: Norton West Hospital right here, too. Jamie Johnson: Beautiful hospital. Yeah. It's gorgeous. Molley Ricketts: And speaking of which, they're right across the hall. So if you want to grab your free screening before you head out, might want to run over there. It's pretty quick. Jamie Johnson: No excuses. It's right here. Molley Ricketts: What are you going to say now? I got to go. Gaby, thank you, friend. Love you. Gaby Jaggers: Yeah. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Molley Ricketts: Thank you for all your wisdom. Gaby Jaggers: Really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Jamie Swaim: All right, Jim, let's close that file. To Contact Gaby Jaggers: Website: www.MyCenterForBeauty.com Clinic Phone: (502) 897-7546 Gaby's Book Recommendations: Estrogen Matters – Avrum Bluming – Amazon Link The Miracle of Natural Hormones (3 rd Ed.) – David Brownstein – Amazon Link Outlive – Peter Attia – Amazon Link Good Energy – Casey Means – Amazon Link To Learn More about the Goodwill Opportunity Center: Website: www.GoodwillWestLouisville.com To Purchase of Copy of the She Knows Best Book: Amazon: Click Here That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. Did You Enjoy Today's Conversation? Visit WorkforceTherapyFiles.com to listen to additional WTF files or to let us know you'd like to be a guest on an upcoming file. Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: · Jamie Swaim, SPHR – www.ParcelKnows.com · Molley Ricketts – www.IncipioWorks.com We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
September 10, 2026Episode 4534 min
$60 Billion Hidden in Plain Sight: How Small Businesses Can Claim Thousands in Tax Credits
File 42: In this episode of the Workforce Therapy Files, hosts Jamie Swaim and Molley Ricketts sit down with Ben Reno-Weber, CEO and Founder of Essential Innovations, to explore how companies can unlock over $60 billion in underutilized federal tax credits and training incentives. Ben explains that while programs like the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) can provide employers with up to $2,400 to $9,600 back per eligible hire, less than 1% of small businesses take advantage due to perceived, administrative friction. Essential Innovations removes this barrier by streamlining workflows to help employers hire and retain essential frontline workers, including veterans, individuals coming off SNAP, and those overcoming past convictions. Beyond hiring incentives, Ben emphasizes the need to solve root workforce barriers such as childcare subsidies, transportation, and long-term career upskilling pathways. When building his own team, he prioritizes curiosity, optimism, and durable skills over simple technical execution. Discussing artificial intelligence, Ben explains how technology itself is a commodity and that real innovation comes from using tools to eliminate human friction rather than replacing human relationships. Key Themes: · Unlocking $60+ Billion: The Hidden Tax Credits Small Businesses Leave Behind · Hiring for Curiosity: Building High-Performing Teams in an Era of Change · Workforce Pell Program: A New Program for Shorter-Term Trainings · Breaking Workforce Barriers: Childcare, Transportation, and Upskilling Pipelines · AI is a Commodity: Why Human-Centered Relationships Still Drive Real Value · Lessons from Microsoft: Data, Automation, and the Shift Toward Durable Skills · Conclusion Episode Transcript Molley Ricketts: Welcome back to this episode of Workforce Therapy Files. Jamie and I are super excited to have an incredible guest with us today. None other than Ben Reno-Weber. Jamie Swaim: Yay. Welcome, Ben. Molley Ricketts: He is the CEO and Founder of Essential Innovations. We are looking forward to this episode and can't wait to get into where you're at with all of the wonderful things and follow up from a previous interview. So I'm going to kick it over to Jamie so she can catch us up to speed on where we are. Jamie Swaim: Perfect. Hi, Ben. Ben Reno-Weber: Howdy. Jamie Swaim: Ben is typing, right? All right, Ben, before we go in and dive into all the amazing stuff that we know we can talk about with you, I'm going to ask you a random question that just gets our juices flowing. But the cool thing about this segment is that we all answer it. Ben Reno-Weber: Okay. Jamie Swaim: Okay. So I want you to imagine that you're stuck in an airport for six hours. Ben Reno-Weber: Okay. Jamie Swaim: Seems like it happens. Your phone is dead. You forgot your charger. Okay. So you cannot use your phone. Ben Reno-Weber: Sounds glorious. Jamie Swaim: So you've got your laptop. What is the non-work thing that you open first? Ben Reno-Weber: It's a non-work thing on my laptop. So, I have been using AI to make art, and so I've been playing around with a couple of different things where something that I'm feeling or something that I'm experiencing, trying to use interesting prompts to make that into fun images or videos. Jamie Swaim: Interesting. I really want to see some of these. Ben Reno-Weber: So that's probably what I would be doing if it were laptop bound. Jamie Swaim: Okay. Molley, what would yours? Molley Ricketts: That's a great question. Golly. Honestly, truly opening my computer, it would be one of the other interests of business that if it weren't Incipio, then it would be one of our other businesses that we have going on probably to check in on them and make sure that we've got notes. Because like we said on a couple of conversations that we've had in the past, there's never a dull moment when it comes to the things that Molley is doing. Jamie Swaim: It also sounds like Molley cannot answer the non-work side of the question. Oh, Molley Ricketts: That's probably. Ben Reno-Weber: So can I offer a though on this? Jamie Swaim: Yes, please. Ben Reno-Weber: I think we make this artificial distinction between work and life that when I talk to my friends who live in Asia, they're like, "That is the dumbest Western concept that exists and that's a statement." Your work is part of your life. Molley Ricketts: For sure. Ben Reno-Weber: And so I think the more interesting thing is does it cost you or does it build you? Molley Ricketts: I'm that writing down. Ben Reno-Weber: Molley, if something that. I love writing pieces for LinkedIn. It gives me joy. Is it work? If you were using an accounting perspective on it, sure. But from a holistic life perspective, no, it brings me joy. Molley Ricketts: I love that. Jamie Swaim: Okay, that's fair. Molley Ricketts: I think too, I have always leaned into what I feel like I'm best at, and I feel like I'm really good at working. Ben Reno-Weber: I agree. My experience of you is that it brings you joy. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Ben Reno-Weber: Not all the time. Every job has dirty diapers, but you're a joyful warrior in my experience. Molley Ricketts: Thank you. Thank you. So thank you for helping me be okay with that and not guilty. Ben Reno-Weber: Or maybe I'm just making excuses for my own workaholism. I'm willing to acknowledge that possibility too. Jamie Swaim: I think the spirit of the question is just trying to understand something about you that's not work- related because we also have multitudes and I know Molley is one of those that contains that. In fact, last night my husband and I were having a conversation about whether or not Molley likes to drive fast cars. Did my face freeze? Molley Ricketts: No. I'm just scared of what you're going to say. Jamie Swaim: No, you're talking about how Molley likes to drive fast cars, right? So it would not surprise me to hear Molley talk about like, "Oh, I would be Googling my next opportunity to go and go to a track and drive a fast car. She also enjoys travel." So it's meant no judgment because I'm so glad that I'm surrounded by people that are doing work that fills their bucket. But I was also just trying to learn those kinds of things. Yes. Molley Ricketts: What about you, Jamie? What's yours? Jamie Swaim: Oh, I do not do things that necessarily build me in my free time, Ben. Sometimes I spend way too much time reading books that offer no intellectual value or for just pure entertainment. And I think it's because the life that I have is serious. There's so much. I guess it does build me because it adds a little levity, a little bit of ridiculousness. So I watch TV and I read books. That's what I would be doing on my laptop. Molley Ricketts: Nice. Unlocking $60+ Billion in Tax Credits and Programs Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Okay. So Ben, the last time you were with us, it was in a loudy conference space. It was a really loud conference space, and we were talking about this company that you established to really solve some problems. So I want to give a couple of highlights and then we're going to dive deeper because we felt like our time together just wasn't long enough. Okay? Cool. So here's the highlights that we captured and you feel free to edit any of them. The first one though is that there is $10 billion hiding in plain sight. That was evident when we met last year. Okay. Ben Reno-Weber: Yes. More than that, but yes. Jamie Swaim: Okay. There's over $10 billion in available tax and training credits like the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) that companies could be claiming for hiring essential workers, yet less than 1% of small businesses take advantage of it. That was something big that we took away from our time together. Number two, that it's not about awareness though, it's about friction . People think about it being this really hard thing to go and get those credits, and the main reason employers leave that money on the table is because they either don't know it exists or that the time commitment and paperwork would be too much to go and get it. Molley Ricketts: Truth. Jamie Swaim: Okay. And then the third piece is that the math is surprisingly good for a surprisingly small lift when a company like Essential Innovation enters the chat . Around 10 to 15% of typical workforce is work opportunity tax credit or WOTC eligible. That includes veterans who can qualify for up to $9,600 and people coming off SNAP or long-term unemployment. Most eligible hires net up to $2,400 back, and the setup takes about an hour, with just one extra form plus your monthly payroll expert. Ben Reno-Weber: You can come do my pitch anytime. Hiring for Curiosity Jamie Swaim: Okay, fantastic. Well, the good thing is we're going to dive a little bit deeper today and ask you a couple of questions that we put together, but we also want to make sure that we close one essential loop from that chat. You left us a question for our next participant. You asked whether or not what the 10 out of 10 hiring attribute that an individual would look for? And now we have to turn it back to you because that feels like fair play. What is it that you look for in building the right team to do all of these amazing things? Ben Reno-Weber: Curiosity. Jamie Swaim: Tell us more. Molley Ricketts: Interesting. Ben Reno-Weber: I think in the innovation ecosystem where we live right now, where what used to be hard in many ways is now easy, the number one thing I look for in people that I want to work with is, are they curious and interested in learning with us around what the next set of things are? I find associated with curiosity is generally an optimism and a positivity, and there's lots that come with that, but beyond the durable skills or whatever we're calling them now of I want to work with you and you're not a jerk and you execute, this idea that we're going to explore new things together is the most important driver for building our company. So within Essential Innovations, we have a super curious group and actually we've got behind us our values. If you go for the base, we're focused on people because what we do is help people, particularly people from difficult spaces, people who have a felony conviction, people who are coming out of a domestic violence situation, veterans who are returning, people who have been long-term unemployed. And when you're working with those populations and with you working with the people who work with those populations, you got to be focused on that individual because you can't mess up. If you're working with somebody and you create a bad experience for them, that's a setback for that segment of the population that it's not for a white-collar tech worker. So for us, we want to be human-focused. We want to be accountable to ourselves. We want to be connected to one another. That's part of the fun. Within our Essential Innovations team, we have a lot of fun and that is one of our values. And then we want to be using all the systems that we can to be flexible and efficient because hey, it's so much easier than it used to be. Workforce Pell Program Jamie Swaim: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. Now, when you mentioned in our last time together that the barrier to work opportunity tax credit, that getting that wasn't about awareness though, it was about friction. Now we're a year later. Do you feel like that's gotten better, gotten worse, stayed the same? Ben Reno-Weber: It has not gotten better. I think what we have discovered is that that central insight, these resources exist for employers. We also are piloting right now for workforce nonprofits. They're not net new things that have to be built or policies that have to be changed or a grant that has to be written for. These resources exist. They exist at the hiring process, that's the work opportunity tax credit, but they also exist in the training space and they're increasingly vibrant in the training space. The country has just launched this Workforce Pell Program where all of a sudden Pell grants, which are grants to support low-income students getting degrees, are now you can use them for shorter-term trainings, right? Okay. Well, who's going to figure that out? I know this is relatively new just in the universe. Who's going to figure that out for them? We are. And then also there's programs that are there to support both employers and non-employees and potential employees with subsidizing childcare. Oh, well, we were in E-town a couple months ago with the MI2, the Metals Innovation Initiative, and we were looking, oh, if you make up to, I think it was $50,000 a year, your childcare can get partially subsidized because the state wants you to work. Now, there's a whole bunch of things that have to be true to make that work. And part of what we do is really deep dive into, well, what needs to be true and then what are the workflow pieces that need to happen from a paperwork perspective for you to be able to offer that? And that's what we do. So the central insight, this is a matter of friction, still true. The universe that we're dealing with now, I said more than $10 billion, we're cataloging $60 plus right now, $60+ billion that's just lying on the table and more than lying on the table. It's like bouncing on the table asking for somebody to pick that up. Jamie Swaim: And will likely go away if people don't. Ben Reno-Weber: Maybe. I mean, they're pretty stable programs because for the small group of people that are taking advantage of them, they're incredibly effective. So these work opportunity tax credit's a good example. It's been renewed 16 times. Knock on wood at the time of this recording, we are hoping that it's going to be in the fall continuing resolution that's currently before Congress for its 17th re-up. So there's a broad bipartisan consensus that work is the best social program. Jamie Swaim: Understood. Molley Ricketts: So you've talked a little bit about beyond WOTC and what those underused credits and the incentives are. How is it best to approach an organization that doesn't take advantage of the WOTC form even to start? So you've got a small to medium-sized business and they see that as, oh, great, something else that I have to do, something else that I have to check the box. How might we change the narrative to help organizations understand attracting top talent that may not otherwise be available because of not having resources to go to work? How do you get those leaders comfortable with even filling out the form to be filled out.? Ben Reno-Weber: Yeah, absolutely. Molley Ricketts: Because to me, all I hear from a senior leadership when you're introducing new things oftentimes, not every time, you got to have a curious leader that helps. But oftentimes we'll hear, "We can't add another thing to our onboarding. That's another piece of paper that I have to have my new hire complete, and they're already filling out 50 forms." So talk us through that. How do you overcome those objectives? Ben Reno-Weber: Well, I think like with everything else, and I've heard you say this, you got to start with listening. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Ben Reno-Weber: You've got to understand what their actual pain point is. And no matter how much I know that what we do is good for them, if it's not something that they feel or see, they're not going to act on it. There are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who've done Amy Romine's sales training and people who have not. Molley Ricketts: Amy Rudy . Ben Reno-Weber: Rudy, sorry. Yes. You got to say, "Oh, my pain point is that I'm struggling to attract and retain frontline workers." We don't do generally white-collar work. We do the folks who make stuff, who move stuff, and who serve people who they look in the eye. Those are our people. And we serve the populations of people who want those jobs. And so for an employer, we had our first full circle. We have a really strong partnership with Goodwill, and somebody who had gone through Goodwill's stabilization programs , who had been homeless, then worked in the store, gotten stability, gotten transportation, and was ready to work somewhere else. A client of ours was hiring. We were able to say, "Okay, here's a position. We have vetted the position. The person can get there and they're looking for something else, and they got hired from Goodwill into that organization." Now, what we know is that that organization is going to be able to offset 40% of that person's first set of wages for between three and four months. Awesome. That person is more willing to take a risk because they've got that. Well, they know they're going to be supported by Goodwill, which is more than most of the people they hire can say. Most of the people they hire on a frontline, if their tire breaks or they need something, no one is going to hand them an Uber card, and you get some salary offset. Awesome. So now that person is accumulating credits right now, and hopefully what that leads to is a more active hiring pipeline for that company. Breaking Workforce Barriers Molley Ricketts: So, this is definitely a passion of mine, the essential worker category, and one that I definitely think does not get the credit they deserve. And if we could just go to the past for a minute, I know that COVID was a time that was very stressful for everyone, really in particular outside of the healthcare industry, then I would fall to HR. And the category of worker that makes up almost 65% of workers nationally, were finally lifted to a stature of honor and glorifying their role of keep on keeping on, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, warehouse, construction, all of those things, all of those roles, they had to stay or we would've crumbled even more. So how do we help get over 105 million people nationally? There's only about 170 million workers nationally, and 105 million of them are this category of worker that we're talking about. Ben Reno-Weber: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think that's exactly right. I think we are, one of my friends said so eloquently, we banged pops for them and then we forgot them. Molley Ricketts: Yes. Ben Reno-Weber: So I think to me, there are two parts to that. The first part is how do we really successfully identify the barriers that are actually keeping them from working? Because to me, the metric we should be watching as a country is workforce participation. So unemployment, that's a metric, but that's only of the people who are actively seeking work. What that doesn't capture is the people who've stopped seeking work, who've just given up. And we know intellectually, we know the reasons that they stop. They apply for jobs that they're not eligible for. I have a felony conviction. I can't tell whether or not this employer is going to hire me or not. And it's super discouraging when you do this over and over again. Side note, it's super discouraging for everybody when you've got all these phantom Indeed postings and AI's making the postings and AI is making the applications, and that is super discouraging for everybody, but it's particularly discouraging if you've already got some barriers. Then we know for the workforce age population, many of them have kids. Well, who's going to watch those kids? I remember talking to a huge appliance manufacturer a couple years ago, and their drop-off between they have done the first week of training on site with somebody and then their first day of actual work was something like 40%. Well, why? Well, because the first week you can get your mom to drive you, your buddy to drive you, and a lot of this is third shift work, and your mom will watch your kids, but that's not a sustainable system. Molley Ricketts: Right. Ben Reno-Weber: Okay, so how do we build the sustainable systems? Now, this is where our universe is so interesting is there are resources for this. There are the CCAP programs that are childcare subsidies, the ECAP programs that are sponsored by employers where there's a match. A lot of this is tax deductible. There's programs, but uniting those programs, making them obvious and easy is where the opportunity for innovation to reduce those barriers to hiring on the front-end are. That's the first part, and then there's the second part. You want to talk about the second part? Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Molley Ricketts: I'm leaning on the edge of my seat. Ben Reno-Weber: You are actually leaning forward into the edge. The second part is creating a career path for that person so that it is not, "I get in and what I'm going to do forever is mop the floor in this healthcare facility." What it is is, "Yeah, I'm going to start mopping the floor, but I can see how the employer is creating a space for career development and increased income." Jamie Swaim: Really like the ease of your environment. This is amazing. Ben Reno-Weber: Yeah, the lights. We're shining a light on this important issue. That's right. Molley Ricketts: There you go. Yeah. Ben Reno-Weber: Most people are in the dark metaphorically. No, so I start as a tool runner for a construction company and they say, "Hey, do you want to get certified in this? Are you interested in a path to being an electrician?" Okay, that means this. Well, we have within every state a program for doing that upskilling. We have federal subsidies that exist for the purpose of helping people to get from, "Oh, I start in food safety, but now I get a culinary certification and then I can do this next thing," particularly through the community college systems. But administering those programs both for the individual and for the employer is cumbersome. And that's the other problem we have to solve. We have to solve the "how do we build that upskilling pipeline?" Because the traditional paths to those things are not working. My daughter is doing an aircraft mechanic program at her high school. She might want to be an aircraft mechanic, but I really hope that what she does is explore that, decide whether or not that's a thing she wants to do before she spends four years… Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. Yeah. Ben Reno-Weber: In an electrical or aircraft mechanic apprenticeship program. And that's where I think there's such an opportunity right now. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. My daughter started a program around biomedical, and she wants to be a pediatrician when she grows up. And she's like, "What if I get into this and I hate it?" I'm like, "Then you found that out at 15." That's amazing. Ben Reno-Weber: Yeah! Exactly. You don't want to find it out after med school. And then I think the third prong of this is recognizing that it is, from an economic development perspective, that the jobs that are going to get disrupted are the white-collar jobs that are about essentially protected bodies of knowledge. And where we need to be growing the workforce and the economy is around actually making stuff, moving stuff, and directly serving people in ways that are not going to get AI'd. It is much harder to displace atoms than electrons. Jamie Swaim: Value created by Susie's spreadsheet because she's the only one that knows how to run it. It's just not going to stand. It's not going to stand. Absolutely. Ben Reno-Weber: Yeah. AI Is a Commodity Jamie Swaim: Ben, one of the things that I'm curious about, because I'm hearing this, you've got this giant population that could be served by the work that your team does. You've talked about the lack of information and the amount of friction that's involved. This feels like a giant undertaking. I know you're probably not the only place that's exploring how to help people with this, but you're the one I know. So, my question to you though is how thick is the AI layer now to help you and your team try to cast as wide of a net as possible? How much is AI involved and where do you still have humans in the loop? Ben Reno-Weber: So, this is the most fun thing that I've been able to do over the last year as participate in the Techstars Workforce cohort . This is this national program that supports startups, and this one was entirely geared around workforce. So we got access to these national though leaders and it was just amazing. And what we are increasingly hearing is that this idea that AI per se is the solution is just misplaced. And if you as a company are focused on the technology itself, technology's a commodity. It is as easy to build for anyone who's an expert in the space. Where the real value is going to be created is in solving the problem, which is often going to involve a human. And what I mean by that is this. So many of these federal credits are actually administered at the local level. And when I mean local, I'm talking about county level. There are 10 workforce boards in the state of Kentucky , period. Molley Ricketts: Wow. Ben Reno-Weber: And each one has a set of priorities for the high growth or high demand industries in their area and the populations they're trying to serve, and they get to decide strategically where that money gets distributed and how it gets distributed. Well, you know where that lives? Myra's head, right? Jackie's head. It is not on their website. It's on the minutes of their board meetings, but that's not really how it gets done on the ground. And so part of what we are doing and building is a proprietary database of our human interactions with those people, which then we turn into bits and bytes and feed it into a data system and use an algorithm that helps them. Again, we are human-centric on their business needs. They are trying to connect employers and workforce. If we can be a bridge that makes that easier for them and technology sits underneath that, great. But the technology is not the forward-facing part. The technology is just the tool to solve the problem. Jamie Swaim: Ben, I think we're going to need a third episode at some point. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. I know. I'm looking at the time going, "We haven't even cracked this open." Lessons from Ben's Time at Microsoft Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. All right, so we are going to wrap up with one final question just about Ben Reno-Weber. So you've gone from studying the future of work at Microsoft to living it as a founder. So if you had to hire your past Microsoft self for your current company, would you? Or is there a question that would've trumped up that version of Ben? Ben Reno-Weber: Oh, if I could have a second version of me running around next to me trying to do the same thing? Hell yeah. I'd do that in a heartbeat. Jamie Swaim: No, would you hire your Microsoft version of you, that chapter of your life? Would you hire that person for what you're doing? Ben Reno-Weber: When we were talking about the future of work, what we got right was the universe in which data becomes the capacity to really drive insight and create value. Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. Ben Reno-Weber: We were absolutely right about that. Jamie Swaim: 100% Ben Reno-Weber: A lot of our time was spent being like, "Okay, how do we collect that data in a way that it is useful?" Well, what we learned was to do that, whether you're on the shop floor or in the ambulance or wherever, getting people to have good fidelity around their data meant you had to create value for them in the data. Molley Ricketts: Okay. Ben Reno-Weber: Why is the ambulance driver going to correctly record all the things that they did? Because you provided some sort of value. Ben Reno-Weber: Why is Marcus, the guy who is the Mr. Fix It for machine number 52 on the line, going to spend time training Abdul to be his successor? Because you've made, or train an AI bot to help whoever comes next, you're going to do that because you created value for them. Well, to do that, you got to understand what they value, which is where the human is in this. Oh, what is the biggest pain in the butt for the guy who knows how to fix Machine 56? Workflow. I don't want to order my parts. I don't want to record what I did. If you can tell me that I can talk through what I'm doing on 56 and that will manage all my paperwork, you've created value for me. And by the way, you now have captured good data, you could use that to train either the algorithm or Abdul. Sweet. That's the human-centric part that we got right. We still haven't executed it very well, but we understood that insight. The part we got wrong was this idea of teaching a specific set of skills, particularly electronic skills, was going to create value. We trained thousands of people in coding…Sorry. Jamie Swaim: How could you have known? Ben Reno-Weber: Dangled the promise that these entry-level coding and customer support and all these things were going to be like a family supporting wage. Claude Code enters the chat. So, we got that wrong. Now, the piece that sits with that going forward is these durable skills, this idea of curiosity, but also I know how to show up and my life is not just durable skills, but a stability and durable transferable skills. People will learn and adapt. Jamie Swaim: For sure. Ben Reno-Weber: If… Jamie Swaim: If they can get a brand new cell phone and not have to read the book, I think it tells us everything we need to know about what people are capable of. Ben Reno-Weber: Right. I think that's exactly right. Well, but now cell phones have spent generations making that onboarding process as easy as possible. Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. Absolutely. Ben Reno-Weber: I mean, I think that's actually, Jamie, that's a brilliant analogy. I'm going to credit you and steal it. Jamie Swaim: You can steal it without crediting me. I'm good. Ben Reno-Weber: No, no, because everyone can unpack an iPhone. Jamie Swaim: They can. Ben Reno-Weber: And get themselves to - Jamie Swaim: And transfer their photos and figure it out. Ben Reno-Weber: Right. But in that process, it speaks 200 languages. It's super intuitive. It does a lot of things. And presumably you're not trying to do that while also sitting in a house that's on fire. And that's why you're able to sit and do that and have processing speed. And I think if we take that into the idea of workforce hiring and upskilling, we have made it easy and we have stabilized you or help you to stabilize yourself and your family. Man, now we get to unlock all of these workers. Our website is Essentialinno.com. And what we talk about from the very beginning is unlock resources, unlock potential. Conclusion Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. Well, Ben, thank you so much for joining us today. As always, when we spend time with you, we leave with all kinds of insights and about a million more questions. So, I thank you for the time that you spent with us to deep dive a little further than what we were able to do at the conference. I'm going to look to Jimbo and ask Jimery to close that file. For more Information about Ben and Essential Innovations: Website: www.Essentialinno.com Ben's 2025 KYSHRM Interview: https://www.workforcetherapyfiles.com/kyshrm/kyshrm-2025-ben-reno-weber/ That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. Did You Enjoy Today's Conversation? Visit WorkforceTherapyFiles.com to listen to additional WTF files or to let us know you'd like to be a guest on an upcoming file. Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: · Jamie Swaim, SPHR – www.ParcelKnows.com · Molley Ricketts – www.IncipioWorks.com We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
September 3, 20263 min
WTF is Back for the 2026 KYSHRM Conference!
The Workforce Therapy Files team attended the 2026 Kentucky SHRM Conference, in Louisville. We took the opportunity to interview over 25 professionals who stopped by our booth. At the 2026 Kentucky SHRM Conference, the Workforce Therapy Files team is broadcasting live as the only podcast at the event. Hosts Jason Heflin (CEO of CrowdSouth), Jamie Swaim (HR Professional at Parcel), and Molley Ricketts (Head Honcho of Incipio Workforce Solutions) are inviting attendees to record quick sessions about the work they do and the problems they solve. This appearance marks the podcast's third year broadcasting from the Kentucky SHRM event. This is the group's 3 rd consecutive KYSHRM conference. Because these live sessions are brief, the hosts remind guests that they can easily schedule longer, more in-depth interviews to elaborate on their ideas. Listeners who want to hear from specific professionals can also suggest future guests by reaching out via the contact details in the show notes. To make participation even easier, the podcast has recently adopted the ability to conduct interviews remotely via Zoom, or in person. The team closes by wishing everyone a great show and expressing their hope that these brief episodes prove helpful to the audience. Finally, be sure to watch or listen to each of this year's interviews at WorkforceTherapyFiles.com , and wherever you go for your favorite podcasts. That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening! Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals ? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: · Jamie Swaim, SPHR – www.ParcelKnows.com · Molley Ricketts – www.IncipioWorks.com · Jason Heflin – www.CrowdSouth.com
August 27, 2026Episode 4131 min
The Death of Paper Time Cards | How Agentic AI is Revolutionizing Construction Payroll
File 41: Jamie Swaim and Molley Ricketts sit down with Nigel Coelho, General Manager of Agentic Compliance at Lumber, to discuss how agentic AI is transforming workforce management and compliance in the construction industry. Lumber is a payroll and time-tracking platform purpose-built to handle complex construction rules, such as certified payroll and union reporting. Nigel leads Lumber's agentic AI features, including a "headless" Paper Time Card Agent that digitizes handwritten paper time cards using Google Gemini's multimodal capabilities. This tool meets workers where they are, seamlessly bridging the gap between paper records and digital back-office systems like ADP. The platform also utilizes geo-fencing and biometric facial scans to prevent buddy punching, optimize labor spend, and assist with real-time job costing. Additionally, Lumber's "funding agent" automatically identifies opportunities for tax credits and federal funding by tracking apprentice ratios and prevailing wage compliance. Ultimately, these tools relieve administrative stress so subcontractors can focus on their skilled trades. Core Chapter Themes: What is Lumber? Purpose-Built Software for Skilled Trades Meeting Workers Where They Are: The Paper Time Card Agent Biometrics & Geo-Fencing: Mitigating Compliance & Buddy Punching The Skilled Labor Shortage: Apprenticeships & Infrastructure Navigating Prevailing Wage & Unlocking Tax Credits with the "Funding Agent" The Environmental Cost of AI: Water, Energy, and Task-Specific Models Episode Transcript: Jamie Swaim: Hello friends, and welcome back to the Workforce Therapy Files. We're trying a video podcast approach again for this file, and we are joined by Nigel Coelho. Hi Nigel. Nigel Coelho: Hey, Jamie. Hey, Molley. Thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it. Jamie Swaim: We really appreciate it. Molley Ricketts: Thanks for coming on the show. Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. Nigel, one of the things that you may not know is that Molley and I have both founded companies that have worked with individuals in the construction industry. And you also work for a company that basically exists to support the construction industry, correct? Nigel Coelho: Correct. Exactly. And there's just so much opportunity in construction. It's crazy. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. So the company that you work for, tell us about. Nigel Coelho: Absolutely. So I'm the General Manager for Agentic Compliance at Lumber. Lumber is a workforce management solution. Specifically think of time tracking, payroll, onboarding, scheduling. You name it, we have it. It's purpose-built for the construction industry. And the reason is there's all these nuances for compliance that need to be taken into account, like unique payroll or certified payroll reporting. Nuances, you wouldn't take into account in any other vertical. And so the idea is if there was going to be a payroll module purpose built for this, why not have those compliance rules built in? And that's exactly what Lumber is. But what I lead is a lot of the specific activities that happen outside the payroll module, specifically around the labor of reading long documents, trying to get a lot of information out. Those are perfect use cases for agentic AI. And so how do we apply that and make people do their job faster? That's my job. Jamie Swaim: Well, typically we like to get to know you as well as the company that you work for. So we're going to pivot for a second and do today's random question. Okay? Molley Ricketts: Drum roll? Jamie Swaim: Sure. Wow. I don't know if I'm ever going to ask Molley to do another drum roll. Okay. So let's imagine that you were stranded on a job site and all you have is what's in your vehicle. What would be the most useless thing in your vehicle? And what would be the thing that you would thank "past you" for putting in your vehicle? Nigel Coelho: What was the second part, again? Jamie Swaim: The most useless thing in your vehicle. Like, this isn't going to help me. And then what's the thing that you'd be like, way to go "past me"! Way to think ahead. What's the thing that you'd be most excited that is in your vehicle? Nigel Coelho: For a job site, believe it or not, if you had, for example, your time tracking app, I think that's the thing you got to take on site, partly because the amount of compliance issues we run into where people aren't clocking overtime and tracking their time correctly and how it flows in a payroll and what they get wrong. Oh my God. It's just crazy. And people don't get paid. So if I was on the job site, I wouldn't get paid if I wasn't doing my time tracking correctly, literally. Jamie Swaim: I love that you took a random question and plugged your product. Nigel Coelho: No, I'm serious. Jamie Swaim: Yes. No, I'm proud of you right now, Nigel. Nigel Coelho: It could be that because on the back end, I just see how messy it is if somebody doesn't log their time correctly. So I'm like, put me at the job site. Let me make sure I log it in correctly. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. What's the most useless thing in your car? Nigel Coelho: The most useless thing, I would say probably a wrench, because I'm not the best with the handyman kind of equipment. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Nigel Coelho: I could do a decent job, but the idea is I'd leave it to the experts. I feel like I'm more of the back office guy getting things done and the messy things organized. But if anything on the, let's just say front lines and front field, if it has to come down to the handyman stuff, I'll leave it to the experts. Jamie Swaim: I love this. Molley, what's your answer? Molley Ricketts: Well, let's see. The most useless thing in my car. Shoestring. Why? Jamie Swaim: It has a large number of applications. Molley Ricketts: It does. But at the same time, in your car? Jamie Swaim: Okay. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: All right. Molley Ricketts: So glad that I did. Let's see. Advil. The little travel Advils. Jamie Swaim: That's fantastic. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: Okay. So I believe that the most useful thing in my car is that I always travel with my soccer mom chair. So I don't know when I might need it, but it's actually come in handy in a number of places I didn't expect to need it. Molley Ricketts: So you really bring to the table, pull up a chair. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. And I have more than one because I'm always around somebody that doesn't have a chair. It Nigel Coelho: Always happens too as on the picnics. We always miss a chair. Now I'm seeing the value. It's high utility, right? Jamie Swaim: That's right. And there's no reason. I mean, it's not like it's taking up that much more space than I had other plans for. Okay. And then the most useless, I also have 17 pairs of sunglasses in my car. I don't know that I need them. Molley Ricketts: Do you have a bus? Do you drive a bus? Is that for all your passengers? You can hand them out. Jamie Swaim: I hand them out as people crawl in. I don't, that would probably be more practical than the way that we're approaching life. Nigel Coelho: 17's a good number. One for each day of the week and just in case kind of a switch out in case. Jamie Swaim: I mean, it's about what I'm wearing. I don't know. Okay. So your product name is Lumberfi. Is that correct? Nigel Coelho: Yeah, that's our domain name, but the actual company's name is Lumber. Jamie Swaim: Lumber. Okay. What an appropriate name. Have you been with the company since its start, Nigel, or how long have you been there? Nigel Coelho: I've been with the company since the beginning of this year in 2026. So the way I joined was through an acquisition they made. So they acquired the company I was running before. And so as a result, that was an AI company that got pulled into Lumber. And so right now I'm leading a lot of the agentic AI capabilities at Lumber. A lot of people think when they hear our name, we're a wood company. We get that a lot at a lot of conferences. We should actually start a house swag, which is like woodblocks. I don't think people could carry it home or fit it in their bag. That would be the issue. Molley Ricketts: You could do little travel Jengas. Nigel Coelho: Travel? I'm getting ideas. This is fun. I like this. I like this. Jamie Swaim: We do this. We solve problems for people on every episode. I don't know. It just randomly happens. Nigel Coelho: And you know what? Now that I'm thinking about it, they would come to our booth just by seeing the Jenga tower. It's just like we'll get a huge line going. It's funny, we tried to do something else. We try to have a open bar and then have drinks that were HR-themed. And guess what the most popular drink was? We named it something. Guess what it was? Jamie Swaim: Was it the Jamie Swamey? Nigel Coelho: That could be the second best. Guess what the first one is? It was called the "HR violation." Molley Ricketts: I like that. Nigel Coelho: People were coming up to the booth. They were like, "Give me an HR violation." I was like, "They're coming right up." And we were filling them drinks. But I think the Jenga tower might be a close second after the open bar we had. Jamie Swaim: Yeah, I don't feel like you have to choose between them. Nigel Coelho: Exactly. Jamie Swaim: I think we just figured out the perfect formula. Nigel Coelho: Yeah. Lumber - Purpose-Built Software for Skilled Trades Jamie Swaim: Okay. So you talked about the messiness of the construction industry. Tell us what problem the company started to solve. Nigel Coelho: Yeah. So we ended up thinking, how can we end up solving specific problems around workforce shortages in the field? The number one problem, and the founder of the company, the CEO is Shreesha Ramdas. He had started and sold several companies. So he was really ambitious with the vision for this one, which is how do I make sure that I can tackle something that's a big problem across America, but more importantly, in the construction industry, how do we really make sure we can solve an issue there? And so we had a contact at DPR Construction, kind of asked him, what is the one thing we could solve across the board? And what came up over and over again is the labor shortage in the workforce staffing and kind of the workforce management piece of construction. So he ran about 200 interviews and then figured out that construction payroll, more of the workforce management on the backend was a consistent theme. And so we started with a core module of payroll and time tracking. Those were probably the two most popular. You have a lot of smaller subcontractors that need to do with this reporting, like certified payroll reporting and so on. So this became a way for them to track time in the field, make sure it flows directly into the payroll module and run that certified payroll. And everything was pretty integrated and made for much more seamless back office operations so people could focus on the bread and butter like HVAC, electrical work, things that they want to do in their business and not have to take care of all the paperwork on the backend. So that's how it started. And then we just got more market pulling in different directions like onboarding, ATS, applicant tracking. You name it, we were able to do it. And then we ended up being able to cross-sell a lot of these products across the portfolio. Now we do almost anything you can think of on the workforce management side on the back office. And it's really paying dividends because it's one single source of truth for anybody to go in and find the stuff. Jamie Swaim: With states growing their privacy expectations as it relates to agentic AI, how does your company navigate all of that? Nigel Coelho: It's funny, the complexity has always been there. We've been through several decades where people have been trying to solve this. I do think the inflection point where things started to make sense was obviously in '23 when AI was really taking off around the flavor of generative AI. And three years in now, agentic AI has come a long way. More importantly on something called multimodal capabilities, which is the idea to read things in the real world. One of the models that's really good at that is Google's Gemini model. And so in the field, if you're taking a picture of something or barcode or kind of paperwork or even time cards, it's able to really ingest a lot of that and get the best specific output from it in terms of taking a lot of values in the real world and digitizing it so it flows seamlessly in the backend. That's just one example, but the idea is agentic AI now lends itself well to really be the bridge between the physical world and kind of the digital world. And that hasn't been as possible before. And I think that's why it's such a special time, but more importantly, why this is such a big opportunity. Meeting Workers Where They Are: The Paper Time Card Agent Molley Ricketts: Nigel, when you think about what it is that the tool is bringing to the table and how it's creating greater efficiencies within the workforce of construction, what is it that gets you most excited about AI in general? What is it that you're like, that's going to be the game changer for all things in construction when it comes to this tool? What are you most excited about? Nigel Coelho: Yeah. Specifically on taking things from the field that weren't able to be captured before. It goes off that theme, like I mentioned, where we're in a once in a lifetime opportunity where you're able to use agentic AI in these models to really take things in the physical world and start to digitize it. But what does that look like? And I'll give you a few examples because then it kind of puts it in a practice to understand that. An example of this is like our paper time card agent. We have people still clocking in on paper, clock in and clock out when they do their shift. The issue is it's really hard for people to switch over to an app sometimes or adopt new things. They're just used to the way they are and they've always been doing things like that. So what we do is we say, how do we use agentic AI to meet you where your process is today? And I think that is really powerful because change management seems to be the hardest thing for any organization. And every firm is at a different point in their journey of digitization. But agentic AI says, don't change your stack, don't change your process. We'll meet you where you are and we'll use the capabilities of the models in AI today to get what we need in order to do the back office processes. So I'll give you an example. For paper time card agent, we're able to take a picture off their paper timecard literally, and it's able to digitize those values. It's able to see. We've tried all different types of handwriting. It's able to figure it out. Molley Ricketts: That is incredible. Especially for construction. Nigel Coelho: Exactly. Molley Ricketts: It's a lot like doctors, the chicken scratch. Nigel Coelho: I know. We're really testing the limits. My handwriting is only so bad, but I'm pushing the AI to its limits. Trust me. We're at a breaking point. Biometrics & Geo-Fencing: Mitigating Compliance & Buddy Punching Jamie Swaim: Nigel, are you guys using geofencing or any type of tracking capabilities as well? Nigel Coelho: Yeah. So that's one more use case of the multimodal capability I was telling you about. So one thing we do is biometrics and then also geofencing. So biometrics as in sometimes a buddy might punch in for you and so on, we want to avoid that. And so the idea is you can do a facial scan and then it can figure out, oh, you're actually the person you say you are. And they can cross-reference it with geofencing to figure out in that specific area, that's the exact coordinates you're in right now. And so you're able to take all these different inputs to really make sure you can streamline and check on everything going according to the plan, but more importantly, the efficiency of how people are doing their job. If you're an HVAC technician, how many houses you're hitting in a short amount of time? How many people and field folks do you need to do a job? Do you need to ramp that up? So the idea is one, you can even take into account your job costing, how you're going to do this job, but then two, how many people it takes to officially do a job end-to-end and then really optimize your workforce labor and spend to make sure you can improve your margins as a business. And it goes all the way from a small HVAC contractor to a general contractor. This problem stays across the board. Jamie Swaim: I'm hearing you talk and I can hear all of the very positive use cases. And then I also hear things like biometrics, surveillance. There's all of these pieces that, especially in unionized environments, have some really hard challenges to overcome in terms of how they get applied. So what do you do to help companies with adoption for their employees? Because I would imagine that this, especially if it was new to a group or to a company, might be a little bit hard to swallow initially. I remember when ADP came out with those Palm scanners that would go on time clocks and nobody saw the wrath of our employee base coming that we received. So I'm just very curious about that. Nigel Coelho: No, that's a really good question. And like I said, it goes back to change management. That's quite hard. And to get people and force them to use this is not the way to go. You kind of have to get buy-in from the end user. So the idea here then is if they have to move to this app or do the stuff that we were talking about, it's going to be a hard pivot. We usually see pilots being really useful. And then we can do a kind of an apples to apples comparison of like, this is how you do time tracking in the field today. This is how it is in the app. And this is how you are seeing the time savings. So usually the pilots are able to really quantify the ROI to them and more importantly, give them a feel of how easier it could make life for them rather than having to do it through pen and paper, have to make sure they're doing it right and then getting paid late. But if everything can be streamlined, that's great. Another is we're taking that approach here of using agentic AI, like I said, to meet the people where they are. So say you do have your time tracking app and you've been always used to it. We actually don't force you to move to our app. We say, you know what? That's totally fine. We'll pull in and usually through APIs we're able to pull in the right information, but also through Agentic AI, like I said, if they were doing paper time card, what we can do is use our paper time card agent, but then make sure that you keep everything the same. So if you do use ADP and you do use some paper timecard in terms of logging your hours, we say, you know what? Don't change anything. Lumber is going to do the hard work of stitching together everything on the back end. So the idea here is we'll do the paper time card agent. We'll extract the values from that paper timecard. It flows over and then we're able to populate it directly into ADP. And so from a user perspective, nothing really changed. Everything was pretty much the same. You just log time the way you do and you do payroll in ADP. But in the backend, we've done more of the orchestration layer to make sure everything's been taken into account, the accuracy and compliance have been taken care of. And then we plug it back into your system so you can run your daily operations. It's kind of a flavor of agentic AI we have today called headless, which is the idea that you don't really see it. It's working in the background. And happy to talk more about that, but that's kind of the trend we're seeing now that's getting a lot of market pull just because people want to use AI, but they don't know how. So this is the best use case right now. Jamie Swaim: Okay. So Nigel. Molley Ricketts: Oh sorry, Jamie. Go ahead. Jamie Swaim: No, Molley, go ahead. I was just reflecting on what you said. Please continue. The Skilled Labor Shortage: Apprenticeships & Infrastructure Molley Ricketts: So Nigel, when you speak about this and the industry and this tool, you can see your passion for it. Why construction? What is it about skilled trades, the construction industry that gets you so psyched up about what it is that this tool could do for the workforce in general? Nigel Coelho: No, 100%. You think about it and very timely for America's 250th year. We've come a long way as a country. Construction's only getting started. We have so much to go. And you just think of the opportunity across the 50 states we have. There's so much getting built. We have the data centers we got to build for actually being able to have AI be able to transform these industries. Energy infrastructure that has to power a lot of what's going on in our economy right now. And so for these infrastructure builds and so on, there's so much to do to actually get more and more built across the 50 states we have. The problem is right now, there's that demand on one side, but there really is that shortage on the other side of enough people feeling empowered to go in and go into the trades and really make sure they can make a dent, but more importantly, fulfill this demand we have. And that's why I'm a big fan of registered apprentice programs, getting apprentices involved. A lot of legislation actually in terms of federal funding for these infrastructure bills, for energy infrastructure, ties to getting apprentices involved on projects. Because we have a shortage of labor, they want to maintain something called a journeyman to apprentice ratio, which is you get a certain number of hours for an apprentice on a project and you will have to basically work with a full-time journeyman. But they're mandating this because they want enough of a pipeline coming into the construction industry to serve our country. And so the way I look at it here is it's a fulfilling field to be in because there's such a big opportunity ahead. And where else do you get to make as big an impact in this country as construction where so much is getting built, but there's so much more to go? And how do we empower people to really pick up the trades, go in and take on a lot of this demand to make sure we can fulfill it? And I think that's where we are. We're at the nexus between the two. The demand, but also supplying a lot of the talent and helping manage the workforce to do it. And where else would you rather be in terms of really making sure this country is set for the next 250 years? Molley Ricketts: Nice. That's exciting. Navigating Prevailing Wage & Unlocking Tax Credits with the "Funding Agent" Jamie Swaim: It is. Nigel, once a company starts seeing the real labor cost and productivity, what do you think is the most uncomfortable truth that your tools reveal? Nigel Coelho: Oh yeah. We see a lot of messy stuff on the back end. So what the tools reveal, and what's really interesting is, and a lot of people don't know this, are you guys familiar with the concept of prevailing wage? Right? Jamie Swaim: Our listeners might not be. Nigel Coelho: Exactly. And I'll just outline it real quickly. Prevailing wage outlines the baseline wage within a state for a specific trade, like an electrician, an HVAC worker or someone. The idea is it keeps changing sometimes and a lot of it is updated online. And so you have to make sure you pay this prevailing wage for that specific state. It's very strict. And any specific construction project that touches public works funding in the sense federal funding or state funding. Think about a public school, a library, a public university. All of them are eligible for state and federal money. But if you do work such as HVAC work or electrical work, you have to do certified payroll. You actually have to be able to pay that and show that you've paid the prevailing wage for that state or for the federal rate. A lot of the time people don't want to go with that. And maybe they're a private shop. And so they're like, "We don't do any public works. And so we're just going to pay them what we want to pay them." And sure, kind of on the micro, it seems like you're saving costs. Okay, I'm saving this much on wages. But now, like I said, with a big amount of funding going into infrastructure, especially the energy infrastructure and the data centers and so on, there's a lot of funding and tax credits tied to making sure you pay the prevailing wage. So even if you're not doing public works, if you just paid a little more to that prevailing wage rate, it unlocks so much more in cost savings that people don't even know about. And it actually introduces what one of our products does, which is called our funding agent. It literally finds the delta in what you're paying and says, "If you end up paying a little bit more, this is how much money in terms of tax credits or federal funding you could be eligible for by just paying prevailing wage." And so I think a lot of people get that wrong and they miss that part. They're like, "Oh, prevailing wage just means I get to work on public works projects." But no, it really unlocks so much more about what you could do for the bottom line for your construction. The Environmental Cost of AI: Water, Energy, and Task-Specific Models Jamie Swaim: Nigel, I feel like I could talk to you for hours, but I have one more question and then I'll stop putting in the hot seat. When we talk about agentic AI and all the infrastructure that it takes to support an environment where agentic AI is getting added to almost every application that we utilize, how do you respond to customers who have some concern about the impact on the communities and environment where those data centers are placed? Nigel Coelho: And that's what I think a lot of people hear about AI and they're like, "Okay, it's using up a lot of energy. It's kind of impactful." Is that the kind of the thought of thinking? Jamie Swaim: Yes. Energy, water, the grid, the power grids in the communities. There's all kinds of things that people have talked about. Sound levels. I'm just going off of the stuff that people. There was a data center that was going to go in our backyard and the reaction was very strong. Not technically in our backyard, but close. And the reaction was very strong from the community. And so I hear all these amazing things that AI can do, and I recognize what's happening in our population that we're declining in terms of our overall population. So we're going to need solutions that help us do this. But I'm curious from a company that's selling an agentic product, how do you feel about the impact on the environment? What are the things that you have to share with individuals that might choose a product like yours? Nigel Coelho: No, 100%. And that's where I think it's unique in the sense that we're in the construction industry. Because a lot of the time it's such a full circle moment where we're using AI, but what's powering that AI is data centers, which we're helping companies build to do that. And so it's like an end-to-end. But the idea here is I do get it. There is a lot of pushback for these data centers and especially for water consumption and so on. The approach I would take there is how do you bring in the community? Especially the fact that you and a lot of people are living close to it. It is driving energy prices up. Water consumption is huge. How does at least the development of it give back to the community and empower the community that they feel that the kind of backyard tax, if I would say myself here, is worth it? And that's where we're trying to actually come up with good playbooks and actually like an ROI calculator where that prevailing wage that I was talking about, that actually feeds into the mechanism of how we can deal with a lot of this. Because if a data center comes into your backyard, the next big thing is, is it doing enough for your community? Sometimes even hiring a lot of people locally and making sure that if it's going to be there, it can be at least benefit from it. And prevailing wage kind of ensures they can get paid enough of a high wage for the job that they're doing with a big amount of investment in data center. But I do get it on the water consumption side, on the energy side, that's a big concern. And we need to keep our eye on that. And so we constantly do a lot of stuff to really optimize the tokens we end up using. In fact, there's this thing to think about here, which is enterprises could use AI themselves and they end up racking a huge bill for Anthropic or OpenAI for how much they're using. Or they can use a third-party vertical AI solution like Lumber that abstracts that bill, because we get more efficient with the models we use for the specific task. So there's this trend now where in an application you can break down the application, but you can choose for that model, sorry, for that use case. Say for example, a paper timecard. Maybe that's using more optical character recognition or more image analysis. And so we can choose a model that is very efficient in terms of energy consumption. So it doesn't burn a lot on the backend, doesn't incur too much cost, but it's saving those kind of like micro-moments in the long term that make a big difference. Same thing for text generation or document analysis. So I think we have a responsibility and obligation to optimize that, but more importantly, the tooling is there to really make sure that we can make sure for the entire workflow, we're choosing the right model for the right task. So it's energy efficient that we don't spend a lot. And in the grand scheme of things, that ends up actually saving a lot more than what organizations themselves would use, just using ChatGPT or Claude. The idea is we're able to optimize that on the backend and make it more industry specific to them because we know the workflows already in construction. And so by even just abstracting this layer for them, we end up doing our part to really save on costs and energy and water consumption at scale in a world where people want to use AI, but they want to be conscious of how much they're using it. Jamie Swaim: And you're also not putting people's personal information into a tool that wasn't created for. Nigel Coelho: No, 100%. And in fact, a lot of the time people are very guarded about doing that with the traditional ChatGPT and Cloud. And so we are able to really have governance and security to make sure how much of what you want is stored in the agent and what is not. We try to make it contextual. Sometimes people are short-staffed and they add a new payroll manager. A person's like, "What were the exceptions again I needed to make for this union and for this electrician?" And so we can turn that on if you need it where the agent's able to say, "Oh, for 9 times out of 10, we see you have to apply this rate for this plumber." So it can be a huge productivity booster for newer employees. Or if you care about security and governance, then we can make sure it doesn't retain anything and just make sure workflow for document processing much easier. Jamie Swaim: Very good. Conclusion Molley Ricketts: Awesome. Well, Nigel, I know that we went back and forth for a few days and times to make this happen. And I'm so glad that we were able to come together this morning and spend some time with you to learn more about you and your company. And I have to say, as an organization like Incipio, to be able to hear about things like this that are on the market to help our clients become better employers and create a workforce that is truly engaged and excited to come to work on Monday morning. So thank you for your commitment and dedication to figuring out new ways to streamline and create efficiencies for employers and the greater benefit of grace to employees. Thanks for coming on the show today. Now, Jim, close that file. That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. To Learn More about Lumber: Website: www.LumberFi.com Did You Enjoy Today's Conversation? Visit www.WorkforceTherapyFiles.com to listen to additional WTF files or to let us know you'd like to be a guest on an upcoming file. Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: · Jamie Swaim, SPHR - www.ParcelKnows.com · Molley Ricketts - www.IncipioWorks.com We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
August 13, 2026Episode 4030 min
The New Era of Workforce Therapy Files: A Strategic Pivot for HR Leaders
File 40: Jamie Swaim and Molley Ricketts announce a strategic pivot for the podcast as Jason Heflin steps back to focus on his agency, though the show will continue to provide "real talk" for HR professionals. A central theme of the episode is Jamie's shift from annual to monthly engagement surveys , which allows for "micro-movements" and real-time agility in responding to employee needs. This approach fosters anonymous, two-way dialogues that help leadership stay informed about the workforce's current mindset during town halls. Molley highlights the challenge of survey exhaustion but agrees that hearing from people, even if they are upset, is better than the silence of disengagement. The hosts also discuss the "three-legged stool" of organizational health, asserting that HR, Finance, and Operations must be equal partners at the leadership table. Molley emphasizes that a top-tier HR leader should be capable of assuming an interim CEO role because they understand the people, compliance, and operational direction. Furthermore, they explore the necessity of tailoring benefits to accommodate five different generations currently in the workforce. The duo looks forward to upcoming live events, including a recording at the Goodwill Opportunity Center on September 16th—which happens to be Jamie's birthday. Core Chapter Themes: · The Pivot: A New Season for Workforce Therapy Files · Agile Culture: Moving from Annual to Monthly Engagement Cycles · Anonymous Magic: Bridging the Communication Gap with Real-Time Data · Generational Gut-Check: Why "One Size Fits All" Benefits are Failing · Leading from the Seat: Why Your HR Leader Should Be CEO-Ready Episode Transcript: Molley Ricketts: Welcome to this episode of Workforce Therapy Files. Jamie and I are excited, disappointed, but looking forward to what it is that we're going to be able to do together. And we have some news for everybody. So, I am not great at drum roll as I've been told, so we're going to mentally think of drum roll, please. Jamie Swaim: Done. Molley Ricketts: Got it. What do you got for us, Jamie? Where are we headed? Jamie Swaim: So excited that we didn't try to generate a drum roll. Molley Ricketts: Do that. Yeah. The Pivot: A New Era for Workforce Therapy Files Jamie Swaim: Well, if we were to go back to the beginning of Workforce Therapy Files, it started when Jason, Molley, and I sat in a room and identified that our three companies were really targeting the same type of partnerships with companies. We were trying to find places where we could be long-term partners, solving problems to help companies thrive. And we were all approaching it from different angles, and we realized there wasn't any competition. If anything, there was a lot of complement in how we work together. So it started as projects that we would co-op for clients. And then we were like, "We should really let people hear the way that this conversation goes because we just enjoyed each other's company so dang much." And that still is true today, but we are making a pivot because of a number of different reasons. But ultimately, Jason will be devoting his time and energy to continuing to grow the amazing services that CrowdSouth provides to its clients. And Molley and I will continue to produce Workforce Therapy Files with the help of none other than Jim Ray. And we are going to highlight things that are still happening in our space. It is a little bit easier for Molley and I to get together because we live in the same community and have an opportunity to do that. But we are also using this type of approach more because Jim added white couches. And so now we are going to be virtual, because I don't think he trusts me to sit on a white couch. And I don't blame him if I'm honest. I don't blame him. Molley Ricketts: Well, when I get on a couch, typically I like to get comfy-cozy, get a little snuggle blanket, watch a good movie. So we want to make sure that we're focused and really generating those right questions to ask our guests. Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. Jamie Swaim: So, our hope is that Jason will continue to come back, from time to time, because I know that our listeners have really appreciated the way that our trio has chatted. But Molley and I believe that with the continued focus on having great interviewees for us to talk to and people who are out here blazing their own trail, we'll continue to have that kind of content. And we also have a couple of opportunities where we will be in person. Molley Ricketts: That's right. So a few things that we're going to be able to do in person. One coming up in particular is the SHRM Kentucky Conference that's going to be held at the Galt House in Louisville, Kentucky. We'll have our booth set up for guests to come and chat with us about who they are, where they are, and the topic of the year. What is really impacting workforce and the development of individuals within their organizations and how do leaders become better guides for individuals in their careers? So really excited about the conference this year and what that can bring. Not only as opportunities for people to talk and listen to the keynotes, which are some great keynotes by the way, we are going to be able to get their time and interview them while we're there at the conference. So looking forward to those opportunities. And I must say really excited about an upcoming partnership with SHRM Kentucky for the year of '27. So thinking about what we're going to be able to do to bring some more excitement and gathering behind all of the wisdom that the SHRM Kentucky brings to all of us HR folks that definitely need help when it comes to all of the regulations and things that change that we may not always have the greatest insight to, but the greatest benefit of being a part of something like SHRM is there's always an expert that you can lean into that can help you find the right answer. So really looking forward to the SHRM conference coming up. And then of course, what it is that we're going to be able to do, Jamie and I, along with the broadcasting wisdom of Jim Ray, we're going to be able to do for the year of '27 with SHRM Kentucky. And then we are looking forward to having a live podcast recording. The Goodwill Opportunity Center here in Louisville, Kentucky. It's an amazing space that they have agreed to let us come in and have some guests. We're looking for about a hundred guests as Jamie, me, and our guest, Gaby Jaggers, where we are going to have Jason come in and support us on that episode. So we're really excited to look forward and look forward to seeing you guys in person at that event. But really just going into the new year and what it is that Jamie and I want to do is continue to bring information to our listeners and the folks that have grown up with us over the last three seasons and learning more and bringing people to the show that you may not otherwise have met given their industry and the support that they can guide. So thank you, Jamie, for continuing on this journey with me. It would've been a different, what some may say easier decision to say, you know what? We're just going to say that this has been a great game and continue on as we have as business colleagues, but sticking together and continuing this into the next season of Workforce Therapy Files, we're looking forward to it. Jamie Swaim: I think collectively, if we were to look retrospectively, we have probably interviewed about 50 people at the SHRM conference. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: And last year we were able to speak to each one of the keynotes. And I'm really excited to continue to grow our footprint at that conference. Excited about the placement of our booth. And if you haven't ever stopped, we're easy to talk to, I think. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: I mean, it's pretty cas. So if you want to come and hop on a mic and tell us about your company, your experiences, the things that keep you up at night, any of those topics are fair game. So we look forward to chatting with folks as you can stop by the booth and share with us. Also, I don't know, I'm a little nervous about the Goodwill experience because we'll have a live audience while doing this is a whole different thing. So I hope that you're able to tune-in for that whenever we launch it. And Molley, I don't know that there's many journeys I wouldn't go on with you. So I'm excited to be able to continue. And if you got one of the OG Workforce Therapy File stickers, that means that you got in early. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: Jason, you've always been one of our favorite people to talk to and will continue to be, and I hope that we have an opportunity to partner with you and more in the future. Molley Ricketts: That's right. Jason's a cool cat. Jamie Swaim: Facts. Facts. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Yeah. Well, before we wrap, I want to make sure, is there an opportunity for you and I just today to wrap up this file and maybe touch on something that is burning for either of us? Jamie Swaim: I have a really random topic. What is the date of the SHRM Conference? Molley Ricketts: Oh yes, sorry. SHRM Kentucky Conference is August 25th and 26th. Jamie Swaim: In? Molley Ricketts: Louisville, Kentucky at the Galt House. Jamie Swaim: At the Galt House. And the Goodwill event is September 16th. Molley Ricketts: Why do you know that date right off the top of your head, Jamie? Jamie Swaim: Because it's Mexican Independence Day. And also my birthday. Molley Ricketts: There you go. Jamie Swaim: But it's also Mexican Independence Day, which I feel like is very impactful. Molley Ricketts: Yeah, it is. Monthly vs. Annual: Moving to Agile Engagement Surveys Jamie Swaim: The thing that I had this aha moment recently and I thought it would be worth bringing up. Okay? So Molley, I'm going to talk about engagement surveys for a second. Molley Ricketts: Okay, let's do it. Jamie Swaim: Every company I've ever worked for has done engagement surveys annually or biannually. Usually the cycle would look like this. We would go prepare our file. We would go out and survey our population. And then we would put it together. We'd put together the results, share them with leaders, and then we'd create a pretty robust action plan based off their results. And we would work on that action plan between the survey completion and the next survey. But sometimes those actions would be a year-long, in terms of how long it would take. So I've been working with a company who recently moved to a new platform, and we are surveying our population monthly. I was so nervous about doing this in the beginning, but what's been very interesting, and I wanted to share this because I am interested in hearing any of the reactions, because monthly sounds like a big ask, especially if you tried to match the same cycle of how you dealt with the data that you received. But what's been interesting is the platform that we've been using has the ability for individuals to add comments, to react to those comments and interact with those comments. And it gives us the ability to gauge how we're performing every month as a point-in-time view. And what we've been using it for is micro movements because there's so many things happening in this environment. So the ability to do one giant robust action plan would not be feasible for the environment that we're in. And I've never seen this type of agility as it relates to the use of employee data. And it felt really bizarre and awkward at first. But now it's become such a regular cycle of communication and touch points and, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know that was happening. Let me get somebody on that immediately." And solving somebody's in-the-moment question or concern or thing, it's just kind of blowing my mind. So I wanted to share that because I've had an opportunity to reflect now a year into using this approach. And I probably spent the first six months asking myself, "Is this the right way to do this?" Molley Ricketts: So Jamie, with the first question, I have a lot of thoughts, so I'm trying to think notes over here. So is this company, is it an established company or is it more of a startup? Jamie Swaim: It's more of a startup. Molley Ricketts: Okay. So that helps. And the reason why I say that that helps is because if it were an established company, and what I mean by that is, I mean, there are some companies that are 10, 15 years in and still behaving like a startup, right?. But let's say that you've got a really solid foundation of the services that you produce and the key things that you provide, whether it be the widget or the service or whatever it is that you're doing as an organization. If you've got that solid foundation, I feel like monthly would be a lot, right? And plus all the data is in HR that you have to deal with that you're getting, especially if you're not doing anything with it. But my original thought, a startup, I totally get that. You want to constantly keep your people engaged and the culture and the environment is still being created at that point. And oftentimes we find that the folks that are helping deliver the startup that are building the foundation and creating those consistencies and compliance are definitely going to be a different season of those 5 to 10 years down the road. So I understand getting a monthly survey for a startup, a company that's evolved and is more a solid foundation and continuing to grow the organization. I feel like that would be tough. Jamie Swaim: I think it's tough regardless. The only thing is that when I look at companies and the way that technology is growing and shifting and changing, there's so much about what makes a startup, like the markers of a traditional startup, that a number of companies are starting to feel like regardless of how long they've been in business or the things they put in practice. Because systems and tools, gosh, generations that are in the workforce, how to engage with folks differently, the type of industry that you might be in terms of how people connect. So if your company is more introverted just by nature of the type of work that you do, is this kind of anonymous platform the better way to engage folks, potentially? I think there's so many things that I don't know that startup and non-startup is the right differentiator. It might be what works for your environment. But I just have never considered doing anything like this with this kind of regularity. And it felt like I would fail the moment that we decided to do it that way. It was like, there's no way I'm going to be able to create an action plan and show people that we want to do something with this data. But what's been really interesting is every town hall is now informed by what's on people's minds. Okay. Gosh, how many times have companies missed the mark with how they communicate with their individuals? A lot. A lot. It's the number one thing that comes up on every engagement survey. Right? Molley Ricketts: And I think to your point, keeping your workforce engaged with the results and letting them know that they're being heard. And not only are they being heard, but you're addressing it in town halls. There's power in that for sure. The thing that would worry me the most is people experience survey apathy or survey exhaustion. It's like, we have to do this again? Jamie Swaim: Same questions? Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: Yes. Molley Ricketts: What are we doing about this again? Because this problem that I've had, because if you get… Jamie Swaim: I agree. I understand. Molley Ricketts: …the volume of people, then they're like, "Well, they're not listening to my concern." Meanwhile, there's this other group that all of their concerns are always addressed. So how do you balance that? I mean, I'm starting to get overwhelmed and we've been talking about it for five minutes, so I can't imagine how you balance all of that. That's like a full-time job. Anonymous Magic: Bridging the Communication Gap with Real-Time Data Jamie Swaim: Yeah. But here's the crazy part. So imagine I've got the capability that somebody has put in a question or concern. I send back a response because I know from the rooms that I'm sitting in that the way that you've read this is not accurate. So I can say, okay, but here's some information. And I can tell you based off of the information that. Sorry, I got distracted. They're asking a question voicing a concern. I'm able to respond to them. Even though I'm identified, they're anonymous. They can respond back to me. So we can have a whole conversation. They remain anonymous because I can't tell who it is. But there have been times I've had multiple conversations that have come out of the survey tool that never would've happened, which is magic to me because there's so many things that by the time I've gotten through, at other companies, the survey cycle and by the time we are doing action planning, it's sometimes two and three months after the survey closed before we are really at a place we're ready to firm up what we're going to do with that information. And that can be really stale. And at times, I feel like unless companies are doing things like focus groups or things like that to really gauge whether or not they're even responding to the data appropriately, sometimes companies put actions in place that completely missed the mark. Hey, you saw this trend and you went and you added Pizza Fridays, but that wasn't what anybody was talking about. Molley Ricketts: Right. And when you think about, I mean, that really empowers the workforce in your organization. So just like how many organizations, while they have amazing founders and the launch of why the company started is fantastic, but when you're really able to empower people to have their voices heard, you get some really cool stuff too. Companies like Ford and what they did originally to empower the people and we want your ideas. We want to hear from you. What is the next thing? The Post-it, right? It was created from somebody that worked at the company and they made this glue and it didn't work the way that they thought it did, but now you have Post-its. Jamie Swaim: I really though you were going to make a reference to Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion with the Post-it reference. And I don't know, this much sad that you didn't. Molley Ricketts: Well, I mean, we could do that. We could go on the road and say… Jamie Swaim: I thought the Post-it was created by Romy and Michelle. I really. No? Molley Ricketts: Yeah, no, it wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. Jamie Swaim: The point is valid. I just got distracted by the Post-it. I apologize. Molley Ricketts: It's okay. They're pretty powerful. Jamie Swaim: They are. And hot on the school back to school supply list. Molley Ricketts: Oh, Interesting. Jamie Swaim: I just wanted to share this with you because I know that is bizarre. And I knew that you would have some sort of reaction of what are you talking about? Because that is not what we ever would've recommended to any company. Molley Ricketts: Never. Jamie Swaim: Doing this regularly. But when I worked with Zappos, Zappos used to do this happiness question of the day. People were surveyed as they were walking through the building, but they would aggregate that information. And so you're talking about answering a question every single day. So I don't know. I think it's something to continue to watch. It's working for us now, and I think there'll be a point where it probably won't because of survey fatigue being a real thing. Molley Ricketts: But we've also eliminated a lot of our other surveys in order to be able to focus and make sure that the questions that we want to ask our employees with some regularity are part of it. But it's interesting, nonetheless. Molley Ricketts: It is. I would definitely want to hold you and me accountable. And I think we should definitely have this conversation in more in-depth planning. I would love to better understand, because we do within Incipio and the clients that we have, when we do just recruiting, we have day one, week one, 30, 60, 90, six months and a year. So those are typical for new hires for both the individual and the leadership. So I always thought that was a little aggressive. But for a new hire, again, trying to make sure that they're familiar and comfortable with the pattern. So I'll be interested to learn more about the consistencies and the concerns that come out of [it]. You want to give people a platform to express themselves, but you don't want it to become that session, right? Jamie Swaim: I don't know that I don't want it to become that. Molley Ricketts: No? Tell me more. Jamie Swaim: Okay. And I guess mainly it's because I have never once been worried about somebody who voiced concerns, even if they did it in a way that I didn't love how it was packaged. I get worried when people stop talking to me Molley Ricketts: Yeah, that's true. Jamie Swaim: I get really worried when people go quiet. I get nervous whenever we're not hearing that this isn't going well. When somebody doesn't feel compelled to be like, "That moment was trash and I need you to know why." Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: That's when I get concerned. And look, if there is a cause to have a session where people are really upset about things, then it probably meant that I should have been listening earlier. So I don't get worked up about those kinds of sessions. I get disappointed because I feel like something missed earlier. Molley Ricketts: And that's why I love you, Jamie. You just look at it in such a different way. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's a face-palm moment. You're great at that. We should hand out Jamie Swain face-palms. Jamie Swaim: Face-palms. Oh, that's the brand I was going for. I want to be the kind of person who makes you feel like smacking your own face. Molley Ricketts: Dang it. Jamie Swaim: Yes. Yes. Molley Ricketts: Well, what is it? One more time. Jamie Swaim: What's on your mind? Generational Gut-Check: Why "One Size Fits All" Benefits are Failing Molley Ricketts: Oh, man. This has been a really game-changing year for me as a human and just the evolution of Incipio. And as we're continuing to evolve and working with organizations and the opportunities that we're hearing about as people want to partner with us to help solve for their workforce alignment, those are the things that I'm having conversations with potential partners about now. And it's funny that you bring it up from a survey perspective because I just had this conversation Tuesday, a couple days ago, and I said, "When was the last time you posted an employee engagement survey?" They were like, "We've never done that. So where are the things that you guys are doing, the add-ons like a discounted cell phone plan or same-day pay cards that you guys are looking to roll out to the organization? How do you know that that's what you need to do?" And the answer was, "Well, that's what everybody else is doing." So going into organizations and having these conversations, it's almost like that's not the right reason. If you're doing it because everybody else is doing it, then scratch that record. Right? You want to be the company that, to your point, people do feel comfortable opening up and expressing their concerns, even if it is what some may consider a session of therapy. But being able to pull it back and really do some self-reflection, that and the amount of emotional intelligence or the lack of emotional intelligence that so many leaders are working through and helping them see, where has that been this last decade? So it's hard to help. It's not hard. It's difficult to help leaders understand that they're working with five different generations and there isn't one generation that communicates the same. So when you have that first generation and the fifth generation, when we look at the differentiators and the demographics of our workforce, then they get frustrated that no one signs up for health insurance. Well, what's that age group? Most individuals up until the age of 26 can still stay on their parents' plan. So that's why that demographic is not going into your insurance plan because they still have insurance and they don't need to go anywhere else. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Molley Ricketts: And then you have this other demographic of human where they want more insurance and less vacation or less of those things that they're already used to because of where they are in life, the season of life that they're in. And then the groups in the middle that some of them want more vacation and less healthcare because they are healthy people because they're living a sober life and gluten-free and making sure that their diet and exercise is really balanced. So being able to offer your workforce differentiating benefits, you've got to start thinking about that as we're moving into a new season and making sure that you're allowing people to give them an outlet to be heard. And to your point, monthly, annually, however you fill it in the middle, as long as you're hearing from your people is definitely a game changer too. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. It's been interesting too, because it has been a gut check for us about, "Hey, we communicated this and then this is the way it was received." The ability to course correct before it's six months out is amazing. So what you guys can't see is that our producer sometimes gives us notes. So if you see me get stumped, it's usually because Jim has distracted me. This one was "Frigging HR" was what he wrote on his board. Molley Ricketts: And I want to touch on that. HR. Jamie Swaim: That's what he meant. Leading from the Seat: Why Your HR Leader Should Be CEO-Ready Molley Ricketts: I want to say that this year's been eye-opening as well because as more and more organizations that Incipio is talking to and learning more about the workforces and differentiators that they want for themselves, the emphasis that we're walking into oftentimes is HR is a necessary evil. And I know some may say that I'm a little biased, and probably so, but to really think about the person that's leading your HR, the person that's leading and driving forward, if they don't have a seat at the table, even if the table's two people, to make these decisions, if the CHRO and your organization can't quickly assume the role, even if it's interim of CEO, then you don't have the right person. And I say that with confidence because while they don't necessarily have to have the financial or the situational circumstance from a CEO perspective as this, as an interim, they know your people, they know your compliance, they know where you're headed from an operations standpoint. So at least the direction and drive forward can be handled. Many people argue and we get into the discussion and free to do that too, Jamie, and we may need to take that to a whole other episode of - Jamie Swaim: I would like to. I think this would be a good topic. Molley Ricketts: "Well, that should really go to the COO. "No, no, it should be the CFO. And I'm like," Okay, you're going two different sides of the fence on both of those, operations and finance. It's either going to blow up or they're going to tighten the purse strings, right? Jamie Swaim: Or both. Molley Ricketts: Or both. So I definitely think let's put that on the list of an episode. Jamie Swaim: I'd like to call it the three-legged stool, Jim. That's what we're going to call this because I think that it's an opportunity to talk about the people, finance, and operational requirement that those three functions partner heavily regardless. Molley Ricketts: I'm writing it down Jamie Swaim: Yeah, that three-legged stool. Molley Ricketts: Well, Jamie, it's me and you, kid. Jamie Swaim: I can't wait. It's going to be great. Molley Ricketts: It's happening. Jamie Swaim: Yes. Molley Ricketts: Here we go. Jamie Swaim: Are you milking a cow? Molley Ricketts: No, I'm driving. Jamie Swaim: Oh, you're driving. That makes more sense. Molley Ricketts: We had to get off the exit and now we're getting back on. Jamie Swaim: Makes way more sense. All right, Jim, I think now's a great time to close that file. That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. Did You Enjoy Today's Conversation? Visit www.WorkforceTherapyFiles.com to listen to additional WTF files or to let us know you'd like to be a guest on an upcoming file. Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: · Jamie Swaim, SPHR - www.ParcelKnows.com · Molley Ricketts - www.IncipioWorks.com We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
June 8, 2026Episode 3937 min
AI Change Management: A Practical Guide for Modern Organizations
File 39: In this file of Workforce Therapy Files, the hosts sit down with Jenna Ahern, founder of Guardian Owl Digital, to discuss the rapid impact of artificial intelligence on business, leadership, and the future of work. They explore why organizations need intentional AI policies, stronger data governance, and ongoing employee training as AI becomes more integrated into daily operations. Jenna emphasizes that leaders must approach AI as a change-management challenge rather than simply a technology initiative. The group stresses the importance of creating learning environments where employees can safely experiment and build competency. Jenna also shares lessons from her entrepreneurial journey, including the importance of betting on yourself and recognizing that hustle alone does not scale a business. The file encourages leaders to embrace continuous learning and proactively guide their organizations through a rapidly evolving landscape. Key Themes · Meet Jenna Ahern · Entrepreneurship, Resilience and Betting on Yourself · AI is a Leadership Challenge, not Just a Technology Challenge · Why Every Organization Needs an AI Policy · Building AI Skills through Practice and Continuous Learning Episode Transcript Molley Ricketts: Welcome back to the Workforce Therapy Files. We are here today with an amazing guest, Mrs. Jenna Ahern. How are you doing today? Jenna Ahern: Hi, I'm so grateful to be here. Thank you all for having me. Molley Ricketts: Jenna is here with us today. She owns Guardian Owl Digital Agency. Look at me. I remembered. I usually just say Guardian Owl. So, the digital agency is the new part for me. We are excited to have you on the show today. Before we kick off though, Jamie has to ask one of her very unique questions. Drum roll. Jamie Swaim: But today we're going to do something a smidge different. Molley Ricketts: Uh-oh. Jamie Swaim: Because I like to keep it spicy. Okay. Jenna Ahern: Same. Jamie Swaim: Choose between door number one or door number two. Jenna Ahern: Two. Jamie Swaim: Okay, number two, tell us something that you think is ridiculously overrated. Jenna Ahern: Ridiculously overrated? Jason Heflin: Podcasts. Jenna Ahern: Podcasts. I know that's a really good one. I think right now and relevant to this, what's really, really overrated is Sintra.AI. Call it out. Jamie Swaim: Why? Jenna Ahern: Because I think that it has a lot of hype and they have a lot of marketing and they're doing a decent job. But I think that that to me is a very much hyped-up AI tool, just like a lot of the AI tools are. And so I wanted to say AI is overhyped, but I can't say that because it's not. It's real. It's serious. It is definitely here. I'm like, some of the tools are, so I went Sintra. Jamie Swaim: Okay. Jenna Ahern: That's how my brain operated on that question. Jamie Swaim: Alright. Jenna Ahern: Do you want a personal overrated? Jamie Swaim: Sure. You can do it however you want. Jenna Ahern: I don't have one. I need like a cross. Jamie Swaim: You can also point to anybody else here and ask them to popcorn it. Jenna Ahern: Oh, I know those Stanley cups. I think those are overrated. Jamie Swaim: They spill way too easily. Jenna Ahern: I don't have one. I never bought one. I think those are overrated. Jamie Swaim: Tell me, you don't have a teenager at home without telling me you have a teenager. Jenna Ahern: Exactly. I'm like, that's ridiculous. Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. Jenna Ahern: There you go. That's overrated. I probably had made a lot of people angry right there. Jason Heflin: So, what's underrated right now? How about that? Jenna Ahern: Water. Jason Heflin: Water. Jenna Ahern: I think we should be talking more about water and sustainability and ethics. AI is new, sure, but virtues and our environment hasn't really changed. There's still water around hopefully. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Lots of question marks there though. Jenna Ahern: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Jenna Ahern: But that's underrated right now. Clean drinking water. Jamie Swaim: Jason, what's overrated for you? Jason Heflin: What's overrated? The McRib. Jamie Swaim: The McRib? Yeah. Jenna Ahern: Overrated or underrated? Jason Heflin: I think it's overrated. I mean, you know. Jenna Ahern: Have you last sampled? Jason Heflin: Oh, it's been years. I don't know. Jim said it. Jim said it. So I'm stealing Jim's answer. Jenna Ahern: Well, I heard they had a reckoning. That's why I was like, oh wow. Jason Heflin: Oh yeah. No, I don't know. Jamie Swaim: Alright. Molley, what do you think? Molley Ricketts: Yeah, and I knew this was coming around and I still can't think of anything. Jenna Ahern: I gave you like three minutes. Molley Ricketts: You did. Jamie Swaim: Want me to go first? Okay, it gives you a little bit more time though. You need to be thinking. Okay. For me, socks. Molley Ricketts: Oh, that's a good one. Jamie Swaim: I think socks are incredibly overrated, except on cold days. I'll give you a caveat there. But the amount of energy it takes to wash them, match them. The number of times you only find one. To me, forget it. I'm just going sockless. I don't want socks. Jason Heflin: What about… Molley, what about washing jeans? Molley Ricketts: That's overrated. Jason Heflin: Some people don't wash their jeans. That's overrated. Molley Ricketts: You're not supposed to wash your jeans. Okay? Jenna Ahern: Agreed. Molley Ricketts: A couple of times a year. Jason Heflin: I over-wash my jeans. Jamie Swaim: Do you have it on your calendar? Is it like today's jean wash day? Molley Ricketts: No, it's just that they're standing up straight. Then you turn them inside out and wash them. Jenna Ahern: And you can smell them. Jamie Swaim: If they're standing up straight? Jenna Ahern: Smell. There's a stop. Gets to a point. Jamie Swaim: It's got food on them. Jenna Ahern: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: Remember earlier when we were talking about values and ethics, the virtues? I don't know. I feel like we're crossing over some weird line here with the jeans conversation. Jenna Ahern: I mean, I think it's right in line with the WTF. Jamie Swaim: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Molley Ricketts: Okay, so back on track. Agree? Jamie Swaim: Yes. Molley Ricketts: Okay. Ms. Jenna? Jenna Ahern: Yes. Entrepreneurship, Resilience and Betting on Yourself Molley Ricketts: I know that you started Guardian Owl. You've launched it. Jenna Ahern: I did. Molley Ricketts: Got it going. Congratulations. Jenna Ahern: I blacked out. How many years has it been? Molley Ricketts: Having a brown out moment? Yeah. How many years has it been? Jenna Ahern: 12. Jamie Swaim: Congratulations. That's incredible . Jenna Ahern: Wild. Thank you. Wild rollercoaster ride. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. Wild one turns upside down goes way far down. Jenna Ahern: I know. But I like rollercoasters. Molley Ricketts: Yeah, I do too. It's the excitement of it, not the fear. Right? Jenna Ahern: Thrill of the ride. Molley Ricketts: So what was the moment? And I feel like as entrepreneurs sitting around the table, we all have this moment where you were just like, I can't keep doing this. I can't do this anymore. And what made you keep doing it? Jenna Ahern: In corporate America or running my business? Molley Ricketts: Running your business. Jenna Ahern: You know, I think that we all, I call it have you ever seen the reds? And so sometimes I think when I get to those states, it's oftentimes a buildup or 10 things went wrong in two days. And it is just usually this small sample size. And when I'm in that moment, that's when I have to work on. And again, this is a learned skillset, breathing and trying to ground myself into a reality that isn't myself. So, really just getting out a little macro because what I'm doing is not that important. I'm not saving lives or anything. So, oftentimes when I get to those points where I want to give up or I want to quit or I want to break, I think I just have to really zoom out. And it starts with just quick breathing. If I have two minutes before I'm going to freak out or if I have more time, I really have gotten into just being more still. I used to be a runner and would burn a lot of my rage, my reds, with training hard, training heavy. And I think that that was great for the season I was in. But one of the things that I've recognized is I am clearer and more steady when I am more still and not moving. And so I think yoga on a weekly basis has helped me with that. Reading. Just taking time away from the screen. Walking for 20 minutes. Standing up. Actually doing those things. I mean, we could talk about it, but getting into a rhythm where I'm doing that every week at least one time a week has just helped my reds go from happening every two weeks on this rollercoaster ride to maybe once every two months. Molley Ricketts: So that's the point of what keeps you going. So why did you even start? What was it that was that trigger that was like, I got this, I can do this. Jenna Ahern: I think that my mom really helped push me over the edge. I was burning the candle from both ends when I was working full-time in corporate America and then also growing the business. And I was trying to do both. And I'm sure a lot of people who've grown business did that for the time period. I really struggled to let go. And what made me choose my business was if I was going to work that hard and pour everything into it, I wanted it to be mine and not for another company. Not at that time, not in that season and not at that period of just the internet and search engine marketing. And so that, betting on myself, that was the moment and that was the bet I took and I'm really glad that I bet on myself. Molley Ricketts: Yeah, you're pretty kickass. I'll give you that. Jamie Swaim: For those of us who aren't as familiar as Molley is to your business, tell us what Guardian Owl does. Jenna Ahern: Guardian Owl is a digital marketing agency. We also have a GO AI division, and we help you be seen and chosen when somebody is searching for your product or service across the internet. Jamie Swaim: Very cool. Jenna Ahern: Yeah. Jason Heflin: And AI is a huge part of that right now. Jenna Ahern: It has and is and is going to be a big part. Yes, absolutely. Whether we like it or not, it's here. AI is a Leadership Challenge, not Just a Technology Challenge Jason Heflin: So that's the topic we want to talk about today. You are an expert and we want to tap into that a little bit. Jenna Ahern: Well, that was like an hour ago. So much has changed. Jason Heflin: Yeah, by the time this airs. Jenna Ahern: Yeah, I'm no longer the expert. Jason Heflin: So like we talked about, this podcast is about the workforce. And so where are you seeing things evolve in the workplace from both an employer's perspective and the employee's perspective with AI? And I know that's a really broad question, but just fire away and let us know kind of what you're seeing out there right now and what needs to be addressed. Jenna Ahern: Well, it's the wild, wild West on both sides I would say. And I think that it's change. We're in a period of change. And I want to make sure too, we're also in an environment that is most would say unstable, more chaotic. We're coming off of COVID. Now we're in an arena that has had a lot of change, not just from a business standpoint, but from our country. And so on top of that, now you are asking humans to make incredible changes in their lifestyle with AI and implementing it just for one and using it. And then two, being able to neurologically change and the way they think about things and the way they work. And to me, that's asking a lot of humans right now. I think to that last part, what do we need to talk more about? We need to just talk more about policies. How are we being intentional about creating these policies for our organization? It doesn't matter if it's an organization of 3, 30, 3000 or 30,000. I think that the leadership needs to understand not just how we're using these tools, but what's the impact of these tools within our organization and how we're deploying. Because bias and certain things can scale just as the good can. So, I think we need to have more of those conversations intentionally at a leadership-level and we need to have more policy and data governance. Jason Heflin: Would you say true or false? Most companies do not have an AI policy. Jenna Ahern: True. Why Every Organization Needs an AI Policy Jason Heflin: True or false? Most companies should have an AI policy. Jenna Ahern: True. Jason Heflin: Okay. How do they get one? Let's say I'm a leader. I know nothing about AI, but I know it's a thing (air quotes) and I need to be addressing it. My team's using it. How do I get started? Jenna Ahern: Don't they just put that into ChatGPT and just say, what's the right policy? Jason Heflin: Should I just put into Chat? Jenna Ahern: And believe it or not, people are doing that. Let's just call that out, right? Jamie Swaim: Got HR policies every day. Jenna Ahern: No, stop doing that. And some people put it on their website in the footers on their privacy policy, like their AI policy. I'm like with the prompt there are hyphens. And oftentimes it's from 2022, 2023. If your AI policy, to your point, if you're not checking that now quarterly, you're behind. And that goes for Guardian Owl, as well. We're actively updating one from July. So that's where we are. And to go back to how should you approach this one, don't go to ChatGPT, but two, when we're talking about change management, I see a lot of managers out there talking about AI and not leaders. And I think we need to be intentional about how we are approaching this conversation with our organizations. If you're automatically going to humans and saying, here's our policy and not giving them a say and how do you think that this should be covered? How do you think that you're a valuable part of our organization? What are your thoughts? And addressing these concerns and the scarcity mindset and everything that comes with change, fears, addressing those and making sure that voices are heard before then you roll out a policy that one, nobody's going to know half of the stuff in there anyway, right? Because we're all learning it together. So, I think the biggest thing is make sure people know that they're seen and their voices are heard. Whether or not they approach you. Everyone's culture is different. But I think allowing, especially your leaders to have a seat in the table with just a conversation before you craft this policy is important. Jamie Swaim: I really like the way that you're heading here sometimes on our podcast, I like to give a little Parcel policy moment, and I've never seen a topic more like AI in the workplace that requires the cooperation of literally every division. So, things that make my chest super tight, for example, is using AI to create harassing images or harassing limericks or something like that to bully an employee. Jenna Ahern: Or for me, uploading financial information of clients to do analysis. Jamie Swaim: Yes. Or for the legal team, they're probably going to have some question marks about whether or not anything that you're uploading to get some insight on releases confidential information or IP. If you were to go over to Finance, they're definitely going to be like, please don't put our financial data out there. And a lot of times people are using these systems without removing names or identifying information. And we definitely see a lot of headlines about how AI can be used for surveillance and be able to be data that can be sold or shared with another company without your permission. So I don't know. I got lots of question marks here and I think it is definitely, I love hearing you say, let's get everybody together to start talking through how we should be managing this stuff so that it is being hit from every angle. Jason Heflin: Let's say I'm that same leader and I go to my team and I say, let's write an AI policy, but we need help. Is that something Digital Owl does? Jenna Ahern: Yes. Guardian Owl, but I love that you call us Digital Owl. Jason Heflin: It's a subdivision. Jenna Ahern: It's a subdivision. It's growing. It's growing. We just launched today. Jason Heflin: It happened just now. Jenna Ahern: We hatched. Now I forget the question. What was it? Jason Heflin: So can Guardian now help with writing the policy? Jenna Ahern: Yes, of course. But I also, I think that too, in organizations that are moving fast, you might even have an AI consultant or you might have, yes, we can help with that and help train, but depending on what your organization does, we might not even be the right fit for you based on your needs or your location or your wants and desires or the problems you're fixing. So I think that's why getting all your leaders together and understanding, okay, do we want in this policy? And then two, yeah, do we need external help? Do we want to bring in, based on these concerns? Because it's something that everyone needs to be on the same page and be really strong in the charge and being on the same page continually, when you're running a company. This is some serious stuff. If you have data leaks or you do have employees that are, it's just a lot of ways that this could go wrong. So, I think that if you're not all on the same page, and yes, we do that, but I think that you can also lean into external sources in your local area, or even if you have a franchise. A great example is Cushman & Wakefield . They have commercial, Kentucky is their separate entity, but Cushman & Wakefield has an overarching policy. Well, they use that to then help craft their own. And we came in and are a part of that as well as the training component. Hey, here are the do's and don'ts, here's how we want to think about how we're rolling it out. Because even in every organization, they probably have 20% of their people that are actually going to be actively using and engaging. And then they're going to have a big chunk of people that are going to need handholding. And this can be a big change. And then they might have people that might not make it. So again, it's like that is something that yes, we like to do and we can do, but I also think that it needs to be a good fit for everybody in the organization because it should be a long ride, long partnership. Building AI Skills through Practice and Continuous Learning Jamie Swaim: I think one of the things that also stands out to me is that this is going to be such a pervasive topic over the next however many years, maybe just the future of work in general. I'm curious how people grow competency, because business leaders are not going to want to outsource a hundred percent of the things they're responsible for. How do people learn what they need to know? Because this is brand new for a lot of people that are in the workforce. Jenna Ahern: And how you learn everything is practice and there becomes the human variable of change. Because if you aren't practicing and you aren't utilizing different models, you're not going to understand the languages and how each one operates. That to me is going to dramatically affect the hiring process because if we operate on Claude and you aren't familiar, you're very familiar with Copilot. Okay, that might be a huge factor for me in the future because it already is now. If you're not using it because we need that as a skillset. But to me, I think if you're not practicing just as an individual, then it's going to be a challenge. And then also I think from a company standpoint, I think giving some time for your team in the work day to actually go play and create and learn. And I almost want to say instead of prompt engineering, context engineering, because that's the real practicing. How do you practice giving the AI models contextual information? And the people that are good at that are going to be the ones that get hired to me. And that's what I foresee. And the people that are good at that are the ones that are just practicing and that's it. It's practice. Jason Heflin: Do you advocate for training? Jenna Ahern: Oh yes. I advocate for training. I'm training. I mean, I go to, gosh, Jermaine Watkins and Dan Murphy actually started just a group of, it was like, Hey, come learn AI. So Tuesdays we'd be building, I started an AI Distilling Co. We host monthly events and we have speakers and just for everybody in the room to learn about a different topic, whether it's legal, whether again HR, so much is changing so fast that not only do we need training, but I think it's just, it's a lot. So we need to hear it a lot. And because we're not going to be able to get all this in one in a six-month time period. Jason Heflin: Well, and when you think about training, how often do you need to renew that training? How often do you need to go back to the well and say, okay, it's changed? I mean, is it just an ongoing thing? Jenna Ahern: I think that this is going to be instead of social networks, learning networks, creating learning networks where people feel safe to grow this skill. I mean think about when computers came out. I remember my mom, she was a guidance counselor and she had to stay after work to get training with the mouse because she didn't know how to use the mouse. Think about that. If I asked you right now, how much training do you need to use the mouse? It's like, well, I don't know. It might take you depending on also on Apple, Microsoft. I don't know how familiar you are with the platform. So to me, I think that we're really going to see a surge in learning networks and collaborative communities where people feel safe to practice and get better and build. And I think that that's where this can be exciting because you think about AI can be really isolating, but if you're creating community around it, I mean, this could be a really, really cool thing too. Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. I think for me, there's also this, everybody learning how to behave in the era of AI. It's not any different in some ways from using Google. If you go to Google and you Google something and you pull data from a not trusted source. So sometimes even in prompt or context, I'll ask for source data so that I can go find the article to make me feel good about what it came back in my AI information. Jenna Ahern: Exactly. Or I'll give you a great example. I had a manager call me and they've been using AI. They embraced it and we've used it in their social media. I mean they're killing it. ChatGPT, it's like, man, don't you just get annoyed that you can't, if I'm on my mobile ChatGPT, and then I go to my desktop that they're not connected? They're not synced. I'm like, well, you can always just share the link, share your chat. How do you do that? And so again, I think getting people together and just practicing and building almost like a sports activity. How do you learn soccer? We get into a group and we practice. I think that's how people are going to learn is we get together and we build. Jamie Swaim: Yes. Jenna Ahern: I think that that is, to me, the oddest thing that's going to hopefully come out of AI is maybe it'll bring people together. Molley Ricketts: I'll never forget when I first started using AI, it was last summer, summer of 2024. So I was the polish or refine or what are some ideas? And then January of 2025, I committed to 31 days of learning different platforms. I went through, is it cursive? Yeah, I think so. I did that and learned so much and within three or four months I was writing what I felt was very close to code, to put into Chat for my prompts. So Sher, my COO, I sent something to her and she was like, where did you get this? How did you do this? And I said, I got it out of Chat. And she goes, Jamie Swaim: I wrote a code. Molley Ricketts: She goes, how did you get this out of Chat? So I sent her the prompt and I mean, it was like a paragraph, right? Because if you do it right, she was like, well, how did you learn how to do that? And Molley Ricketts: And I'm like, remember the 31 days of dedicated learning I got from AI? Now, I say that to say everything that I learned 15 months ago isn't so far beyond now, but it helped me to learn about different inputs to put into my Chat. Like Canva. What is that thing called? Jenna Ahern: The different models. Yeah. Molley Ricketts: Yes. Jenna Ahern: Different ones are different. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. HR business partner is a link that you can put into Chat. So all of these different ones, and as I've learned more, then I can go, okay, I don't want that one in there anymore. I want this one in there. And then I can go to those different categories when I'm doing HR specific policies because I'm so gifted in that area, Jamie, for sure. And just really using it to the benefit of what it's for, not to polish and refine the way an email's getting responded to. That's not what it's for. And I think the, I'm going to say this and it's probably not going to be real popular, so listeners give me some grace. Jamie Swaim: Or plug your ears right now. Molley Ricketts: It's very careless. Jenna Ahern: Yes. Molley Ricketts: The tool is too powerful to use as an elementary adventure. I'm not going to say that you can't learn from that, but there are so many other ways that you can learn, without using the tool itself, about the tool that you should really take advantage of that if you're going to learn to use it, in my opinion. Jason Heflin: AI uses the data it has access to, and that data's not always accurate. Jenna Ahern: You're right. It hallucinates. Jason Heflin: Yes. Jenna Ahern: It's very biased. It lies. Molley Ricketts: Yes. Jenna Ahern: It is a toddler. You have to train it. It is going to lie to you. Jason Heflin: So master prompts. Tell me about that. How can we use master prompts to be better with our AI? Jenna Ahern: Define what is your definition of master prompt? Jason Heflin: Like educating the AI on who you are, what you do, and how you need it to work. Jenna Ahern: I see. So I mean, again, good data in, good data out. So the more, and again, I recommend getting on a paid closed version before you start giving the model all the information about you. But I would give as much as you can data wise. I mean email you can connect, you can upload Google Drive documents, I mean about yourself websites. I think mine, I have little GPTs for different things now and my voice tone. You can also set rules. So, I think over time even went with the master prompt. I guess what I'm saying is I can build different voices of myself based on the data that I have shared and curated and uploaded, specifically. So, I say all that because I think that's important because to your point, that's the data it's going to be working off of. And so then I think from master prompting, I mean to Molley's point about code, I think it just really being intentional, as detailed as you can be about exactly what you want. Demographics, location, giving if it is imagery, giving the actual images as detailed as you can be. And then from a prompt standpoint, I think I don't have a template to say here's the master what you need to do. Jason Heflin: It's probably unique to everybody. Jenna Ahern: Yeah, exactly. But I think that you can then, once information is populated, the one thing that I always like to do is remember it's a toddler trained it. So then give it feedback of no, that's not aligned with who I am. That wasn't correct. And so I think that feedback part is something that also will help your overall prompting. I don't know if you experienced that too with it'll even say, sorry, some of them, they want to be… Molley Ricketts: I'll say, try again. Jenna Ahern: Yeah, exactly. But I think even with your negative, yes, the master prompts, but also your responsing, your responsive feedback in your coaching and your guidance is such a big part too of getting it to understand the context and learn. Jason Heflin: Yes. Jenna Ahern: And I mean, to Molley's point, I'm getting better. I was an expert 30 minutes ago and now I'm not. So I'm like, I'm still trying to get better about how to intentionally write my prompts. Jason Heflin: And you can ask on most language models, you can ask the source. You can ask it, what's your source for that information? Jenna Ahern: Or you can say, always show me the sources. Jason Heflin: Yeah, always show me the source and then don't use this source again or use this source more. Jenna Ahern: That's right. Set the rules. Yep, exactly. And this is where you can go down the rabbit hole of bias because it's like, Hey, this is not accurate, or this is not what I want. So I'm filtering out specifically curating a vacuum for myself. So I think that's something again that you just have to be really careful about. Molley Ricketts: One of the things that I learned too is that you have to tell it to tell you the bad. Jenna Ahern: Yep, exactly. Molley Ricketts: Because what I learned early-on was if you just ask it for the one thing or a specific prompt that isn't detailed enough that's going to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly, then it'll just give you the good. Jenna Ahern: Correct. Yeah. Molley Ricketts: And yes, we're all rock stars a hundred percent, but we still fall. I'll even say make this from human points of view with references or testimonials from sources with those provided in this example of X, Y and Z. Jenna Ahern: Exactly. Molley Ricketts: Because will never tell you that you're wrong. Jenna Ahern: No. Molley Ricketts: Will never tell you that. You need to look at it from a different point of view. And for those that are just using it as a good time and not really learning it, as with everything, don't pretend to be an expert if you're not. And the scary part for me in AI is that there are so many people that are claiming to be experts and there's no one that's an expert. And then to expect to know, just to your point, you were an expert 30 minutes ago. Jenna Ahern: I didn't proclaim that, by the way, just for that. Molley Ricketts: We're giving her that title today. That's the scary part to me, is the people that are misusing it. Jamie Swaim: Even people who graduate with it six months after they graduate, they're done. Jenna Ahern: Correct. Entrepreneurship, Resilience and Betting on Yourself Jamie Swaim: So Jenna, I appreciate the intensity around policy, structure, intentionality, alignment within the organization. There's so many things that we've talked about on this podcast that really lean into those as concepts. But I'm going to make a hard pivot. You ready? I heard something about you before you got here today that I'm going to bring up. Molley Ricketts: Drum roll, please. Jamie Swaim: You have done something that is on my vision board. Jenna Ahern: Oh my gosh! Jamie Swaim: Yes. And it's that you have helped write a book. Jenna Ahern: Yes. Yes. Jamie Swaim: I think that is phenomenal. Jenna Ahern: Thank you. Jamie Swaim: So congratulations. Jenna Ahern: Thank you. Jamie Swaim: So tell us what the name of the book is. Jenna Ahern: So, She Knows Best is the book. And I am very grateful that someone in this room right now, Molley Ricketts, invited me to be a part of the anthropology. Jason Heflin: I wasn't invited by the way. Jamie Swaim: Because she knows best. Jenna Ahern: And that has always been on my vision board too. My mom passed away last January and it was kind of around that time where I made the decision to go forward. And it was really a therapeutic process for me. Being a part of this collective of these powerful women. And then also being able to be the first to read these stories and sharing it with the world has been pretty fun. Jamie Swaim: Well, I have a copy on my desk I think right now. And I'd love to know, are there any highlights that you'd like to share from your chapter? Or you just want to let people go and buy the book? Jenna Ahern: I think one of the highlights, it's a low light actually. It would be that I really thought that I could scale by just hustling and just keep doing it. And I really have a thick skull and I'm probably still doing it. And so I think what I'm going to say is those that are have read the chapter and do read the chapter, I think that that part in it about you just can't scale hustle or hustle doesn't scale. Jamie Swaim: You can't hustle your way to glory. Jenna Ahern: Yeah. I mean I really waved that flag for a while. And so that was really hard for me to say. Okay, no, and especially with AI right now and everything that we're talking about, that's definitely not going to get you there now. That to me is a part that I would want to highlight. Jamie Swaim: Yeah, no, that's great. We have the amazing assistance of Jim Ray in the room Jenna Ahern: Amazing. Jamie Swaim: Yes. And one of the things he does for our podcast is he puts some show notes together that highlight things like where to find your book. So he'll plug the book in the show notes, right, Jim? Yes. He's given me the nod. Jenna Ahern: Thank you, Jim. Jamie Swaim: But he'll also share how people can get in touch with you. So tell us how you'd like people to reach out to you for your services. Jenna Ahern: You can email me directly at jenna@guardianowldigital.com. Our phone number is (502) 822-6695, and our website is GuardianOwlDigital.com. And if you just search Jenna Ahern in an AI model. Sure. I'll populate. Molley Ricketts: I can't wait to try it. Jenna Ahern: Or She knows Best. Molley Ricketts: Yeah, book. Jenna Ahern: She Knows Best book. Sorry. Molley Ricketts: She Knows Best is completely something different. Jenna Ahern: It's a 180. Molley Ricketts: Stick book in there. Jenna Ahern: I'm a little nervous now. Jason Heflin: And what's the one thing you want those listening, let's say leaders in their organization. What's the one thing, the takeaway that they need to take from this, today? Jenna Ahern: That this is change management. And if you're a leader, you're managing change right now. This is your time to lead and that means that you need to practice. And so, if you are leaning away from this, then maybe you shouldn't be in leadership right now. Molley Ricketts: Mic drop. Jamie Swaim: I'd drop the mic, but Jim would get mad. Jenna Ahern: That it. Jason Heflin: I like. Powerful. Jamie Swaim: Thank you so much for joining us today. Jenna Ahern: Thank you for having me. Molley Ricketts: Thanks Jenna. Jason Heflin: Alright, Jimmy, close that file. That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. To Contact Jenna Ahern: Website: www.GuardianOwlDigital.com Phone: (502) 822-6695 To Purchase a Copy of She Know Best: Amazon Link Did You Enjoy Today's Conversation? Visit www.WorkforceTherapyFiles.com to listen to additional WTF files or to let us know you'd like to be a guest on an upcoming file. Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: · Jamie Swaim, SPHR - www.ParcelKnows.com · Molley Ricketts - www.IncipioWorks.com · Jason Heflin - www.CrowdSouth.com We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
May 25, 2026Episode 3835 min
Behind the Mic: How Great Podcast Production Builds Strong Brands
File 38: In this episode of Workforce Therapy Files, the hosts turn the tables and interview podcast producer Jim Ray about the growing role of podcasting in business, branding, and thought leadership. Jim explains why authenticity is one of the most important elements of successful business content. The conversation explores why podcasting creates from deeper, more engaging conversations that build long-term brand equity, as compared to traditional blogging and social media. The team validates the coaching and strategic guidance Jim provides clients beyond simply recording audio. This approach helps professionals communicate more effectively and confidently. The group unpacks how podcasting has strengthened their own communication skills, leadership presence, and team collaboration. Listen as the group shares humorous behind-the-scenes stories while also highlighting the discipline and consistency required to build a successful podcast. Today's conversation reinforces podcasting as a powerful platform for education, relationship-building, and business growth. Key Themes: Turning the Tables: Interviewing Podcast Producer Jim Ray The Hidden Work Behind Great Podcast Production What Separates an Average Podcast from a Great One Why Authenticity Matters More Than "Going Viral" From Blogging to Podcasting: The Evolution of Content Marketing How Podcasting Builds Confidence, Communication, and Brand Authority The Future of Podcasting and Why Long-Form Content Still Wins Episode Transcript Jamie Swaim: On this file for workforce therapy files. We are incredibly honored to welcome an amazing guest, and I know I say that often, but today our guest is the person who makes the workforce therapy files possible. Molley Ricketts: Yay. Jamie Swaim: You may have heard him referred to as Jim Jimmy Jumbo. Jason Heflin: I called him Jimothy. Jamie Swaim: Jimothy is one of my personal favorites. Absolutely. The Jumbotron. Molley Ricketts: Did that just happen? Jamie Swaim: It just did. Alright. Jason Heflin: Wow. Jamie Swaim: Yes. Our producer, Jim Ray, welcome to the show, Jim. Jim Ray: Hey, thanks for having me on. Jamie Swaim: Absolutely. Jim Ray: Good to see everybody. Jamie Swaim: So I like to start with the most random of questions. So I'm going to ask you to suspend belief for a second and act like you are a burglar who just does pranks. Okay And you sneak into people's homes just to mildly inconvenience them. Okay. So I'm going to give you some examples like mismatching all of their socks, mild inconveniences. What would be the signature prank for Jim Ray? Jim Ray: Throw pillows in the refrigerator because they have to wonder, how did I do that? Why did I do that? Jamie Swaim: He did that that so fast! He was like, I thought about, I've been waiting for the day that someone would ask me. Jim Ray: This was yesterday. What are you talking about? Jamie Swaim: Yes. I love this. I kind of want to round robin this for a second, Jim, because there's a lot of questions we want to ask you, but I'm also curious about the answers of other folks that are on this amazing file. Heflin, what's your prank? Jason Heflin: Oh my gosh. I would probably put different drinks in different bottles so they kind of see what… Jamie Swaim: Yes. Jason Heflin: Milk is in the orange juice and, you know. Jamie Swaim: Yeah, I like it. Molley? Molley Ricketts: I would probably do random things like put an egg in the mayonnaise or put the ketchup in the mustard. Kind of like your drink thing. Just everyday things. And you're going to do it and be like, what the, why is there an egg in the mayonnaise? Jason Heflin: Yeah. What I really like to do is I usually go over to Jamie's house and a hide her keys somewhere. Jamie Swaim: That's you that's doing that? All this time, I thought I was disorganized, you know what I mean? Jason Heflin: No. I sneak in on the weekends and before Monday. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Molley Ricketts: So what about you? Jamie Swaim: I think I'd break in and leave stuff I no longer need from my house and people would be like, where did this come from? That is what I would like to do to people. Molley Ricketts: It'd be a great way to get rid of stuff. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. Because I know I need to declutter. And this would be like two birds, one stone . Yeah. Jason Heflin: I've got a cat. I'll drop off. Jamie Swaim: You'd be like, this dog really gets on my nerves. Jason Heflin: Yeah, yeah. Jamie Swaim: Yes. Jason Heflin: We've got two cats. One of them I like a little. Jamie Swaim: I do have a second alternative and we can put this up to a vote and that would be just in honor of my husband is to go in and just turn all the lights on or put the thermostat to the actual comfortable that everybody's got their degrees. They put it on in the winter. Jim Ray: 68 degrees. Jamie Swaim: 68 in the winter? So then I would go in the winter. Jim Ray: Well, 67 winter. It's an ambient temperature. Jamie Swaim: Oh. I would go in and put Jim's on 70 and just see what happens. You know what I mean? Because the kind of stuff that just… Jim Ray: Next thing you're going to be adjusting my mics and everything else. I get you. Be that person. Jason Heflin: We have one of those thermostats you can control from your phone. Jim Ray: Oh, wow. Jason Heflin: And it is constantly changing. It's probably going to go out within the first year because I'll be like, why is it this temperature? And my wife will be like, why is it this temperature? I'm like, what? I don't know. I didn't touch it. Jamie Swaim: That's when you change it from your phone phone and you're like, it wasn't on there. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. Good to know what kind of prankster you'd be. Jim Ray: Well, that and leaving random Post-It notes. "Hey, thanks again. Really appreciate it." Jamie Swaim: Who wrote this? Jim Ray: Who wrote that? What is this? Jamie Swaim: I'm not losing my mind. Molley Ricketts: Nice flush. Jamie Swaim: Yeah, nice flush. Wash your hands. Jason Heflin: Yeah. Jamie Swaim: Good reminders. Molley Ricketts: That's great. So today we're interviewing Jim Ray, our producer, and can't wait to learn more about what he does behind the scenes. We get to come into the room and he's got us all set up and ready to go and we crack jokes and he records and then the magic happens. Jim Ray: That's called massive editing. Molley Ricketts: Massive editing. So most people hear the final product, right? They hear us and they see us online producing everything, but we never see what it takes to create it. So today we're flipping the mic. So what does a podcast producer actually do, Jim? Jamie Swaim: Yeah. What do you do? Jason Heflin: What do I do? I've been wondering. Jim Ray: Let me justify myself. No, I think a lot of it really, you guys actually came up with a concept. I mean, you all called me. We literally recorded episode number one in Molley's office just on a, Hey, come out, come over and let's just see if we can figure this out. We went from title, to concept, to what are we going to talk about, to episode one being recorded in about two hours. That's probably the fastest implementation plan ever. Molley Ricketts: So you're saying we're easy to work with? Jim Ray: Well, yeah. It helps when you guys really know why you want to do this. Jamie Swaim : Yeah, I heard "decisive." Molley Ricketts: That's what I heard. Jamie Swaim: Action-oriented. Organized. Jim Ray: Results oriented. Yeah, that's what I heard. No, but you guys all get along and that helps tremendously. You guys feed off of each other so well, and I think that comes through in the content, right? So that makes the editing a lot easier. There's not a lot of times where you guys get stuck when you're doing multiple people on the mic at the same time, somebody else can step right in. So there's not any dead air in there. It's just a great conversation. You guys each have your respective competencies. So from that standpoint, you're constantly, okay, here's the next level, the next level, whether it's going deeper or just going further in the conversation. That makes it easy because I don't have to pull you along and try to help you guys come up with the messaging. You have it and it's just a matter of delivery. My job is just to make sure that one, we sound as good as we can on the mics, which is fantastic for you guys, in terms of what we're able to do with the mic quality. Beyond that, you guys just keep bringing guests. You guys keep bringing ideas, your ability to kind of walk into the room and sometimes the episodes are really well planned out. Other times it's, Hey, okay, let's come up with something on the fly. And actually some of those are the better episodes just because it's organic and it's right there and you guys just play off each other. So the big part of my stuff is making sure that the sound is good, making sure the distribution is ready to go, and then kicking it over to Jason's team for uploading to the website and social media. But you guys execute and that makes it fun. Molley Ricketts: So what do you think separates a good podcast from a great one? Jim Ray: Interesting. I think knowing the purpose of the podcast. So many times I'll have somebody who's interested in doing a podcast and they walk in and they think they're going to be the next Joe Rogan, and it's just not going to happen. Molley Ricketts: What? It's not going to happen? Maybe in the next year. Jim Ray: You guys are on your way. But you haven't arrived, but it's keeping you enthusiastic along the way. No, you guys understand the "why" each of you work in the HR space. Each of you work in staffing and workforce development, so that helps. Even from the marketing standpoint, a lot of your clients, Jason, are large hirers who need help. And so you're in this game as well. And so again, you guys all have a common mission and that works well. What's interesting about you guys is you're actually three unique businesses and you guys are coming together as a collaborative podcast, which I think is a great way to do it. But you're coming at it with different perspectives. You're not getting the same sheet of music, you're not getting the same lines that are inside. So the fact is you guys know what you're looking at and what you're trying to accomplish, and I think that makes you much better than average. Great? We're still going. I think eventually if we can get into video, I think that takes it to another level. But right now, I mean you guys are overperforming, you're always enthusiastic and you've got really good content. Jason Heflin: So this is the Jim Ray way, by the way. We're asking him questions about himself and he just turns and starts talking about us because he's a complimenter. He brings other people up. That's what he does. Molley Ricketts: And he does. Jason Heflin: And I think that's what makes, I mean, I'm going to go ahead and put it out there, but I think that's what makes you such a great producer is you're constantly, you're part of the process too. We're in here doing this, but you're that other voice of reason and you check us. Well, what if you tried it this way? What if you tried it that way? What if you started this way? So you are a bit of a director as well. It's not like we're in here just talking. I mean, before we get started, we map everything out on the board. You help us do that. You kind of check some of the things we say. You think about it from the audience perspective versus just us. Here's what we want to say. And you talk about how it's going to be received. So I think there's a lot of directing too, not just producing in it. What do you think about that? Jim Ray: No, that's a real good point. And I think that's more and more you're seeing little podcast studios pop up and people going, Hey, come on in. We'll do a podcast. And really what it seems to be is more of I've got a mic and the software, you bring your voice and talk. Here's your recording. And that's only going to go so far. That's why a lot of people burn out. The majority of podcasts never reach 10 episodes. They literally never reach 10 episodes. I just think it's different. I think it's more involved than what people think. A big, coming back to your point, Jason, a big part of this is the coaching aspect is being able to watch outside of the bubble saying, okay, here's what you guys are doing. Does that make sense? Hey, what if you tilted it this way? Some of what we do process-wise was because early on, you guys let me become a little bit more involved in the origination and how are we going to set up this process? And now you guys have got it. You run with it. This is what you do when you come in. So yeah, I think the coaching aspect is my differentiator rather than, Hey, I've got a place you can come in and talk on the mic. That gets boring real quickly. Jason Heflin: You work with a lot of podcasters or professionals that are starting podcasts. Do they all come in with a fully formed idea? Jim Ray: Not really. Some of them know they want to do it. Some of them are unaware that podcasting might be a marketing option for them. They're thinking blogs. They're thinking social media. They're thinking, I got to buy a Google pay-per-click ad or something like that. They haven't really thought about podcasting because they're thinking more of the Joe Rogan's, the Martha Stewarts, the true crime novels. They haven't really seen it as business content. But very quickly, I can kind of take that kernel and turn it on its side and go, no, this is why this would be more important to you and the organization at large. And then when I can get a group of professionals who are talking, that becomes a lot more interesting because it's not just one person droning on and on and on like I'm doing in this very answer, but it's more that feedback and that playing off of each other that it just adds to the conversation. Jason Heflin: And I think a lot of people come in thinking, I am going to be the next big podcast star. I think one misconception that I see is that those people that are really successful at podcasting typically have stardom to begin with. The Martha Stewarts, the Joe Rogans. Jamie Swaim: Don't forget Amy Pohler. Jason Heflin: Yeah, Amy Pohler. Jason Bateman, all the big podcasts out there right now. Jim Ray: They're playing off of a foundation. Jamie Swaim: Yeah, they've already got that. I think for us, it took a while to get some steam in the engine and we're at several thousand listeners downloads whatever now. And you've got several podcasts that are in that bucket, right? I mean, among all your podcasts, you probably have tens and tens of thousands of listeners. So I mean, that's a testament to creating good content. And I think if anyone out there is thinking about creating a podcast, Jim's the perfect person to talk to because he's going to coach you through it. He's going to question some of the things that you're doing so that you can make it better. Any idea that comes out of your head's not going to be fully-formed, so it needs a little bit of massaging. And Jim's a great masseuse . He's a great podcast masseuse. Jim Ray: There you go. Molley Ricketts: Podcast masseuse. Jim Ray: Podcast masseuse. I'll put that my business card. Jamie Swaim: I don't why it wasn't already. Jim Ray: Well, Molley's got head honcho on hers, so maybe podcast masseuse. There you go. Jason, Jason actually runs, owns and runs a marketing agency down in Bowling Green. And so you kind see some of this, and I really appreciate the fact that you're pointing some of that out because I think, again, a lot of people just don't know what to do with this medium. They like the idea, but what am I going to talk about? Who's going to listen? It's about consistency. It's really about consistency. You guys have gone several seasons now. There are things that you guys are doing. We've been to the Kentucky SHRM conference a couple of times now. There's just a rhythm and it becomes, I think, a little bit easier, but it also builds up that audience expectation, which is, again, that's fun when you're getting feedback, when you're getting other guests coming on going, oh, I really like this. It's just some validation for the people who are actually trying to do it. So it's not always, Hey, I got this new client. Some of it's just the brand positioning and each of you have your own respective brands, but I think this combined conversation actually helps with that. Jamie Swaim: I think it feels way less intimidating now, too. I don't know about you guys, but whenever we first got started in my head, I was picturing the tens of thousands of people that were going to be listening to us (side eye), but I didn't know how comfortable I'd feel, and it felt very much like a public speaking experience versus now, it feels very much like we're hanging out in an office together and talking about something that we all feel really excited to talk about. I'm curious though, Jim, because I'm a people person, so I want to know your hero origin story. Is this the career you thought you would have whenever you graduated from college, or how did you get here? Jim Ray: Absolutely not. This is not at all what I thought. I grew up with my grandmother. My grandmother was actually blind, so the way I communicated with my grandmother, even as a small child, had to be much more descriptive. So verbally, I was always pretty good. I ended up in sales. I did sales and sales management for 20, 30 years now, and then eventually in my own company when I was doing things such as web development and coaching and things like that, that was fine, but that became commoditized. When Google finally blessed podcasting is a legit form of content for search and everything else that made perfect sense. Within three months, I had a product and a service on the street and did very well that first year. And you learn as you iterate, you just get better and better and better, and you learn ways to improve the quality. Ways to improve the efficiency, and ways to talk a little bit differently with different groups of clients. This is what I do. This is the majority of my revenue stream now as a business. It's just fun. I mean, it is really fun. You guys had asked when you first came in this morning about something that I'm excited about. We just launched a podcast for a different organization, but it's a nonprofit that I got to have a hand in and we hit the deadline, we got everything going. We went from concept to delivery, and it's been a great journey. So that kind of stuff, I like when the light bulbs go off and you're helping somebody. I don't have to be in the spotlight. That's why I don't mind being the producer. I don't need to be in the spotlight, but I get a tremendous amount of joy on watching you guys have a great time and knowing that we're putting something else out there in the ethos that's actually going to help promote your respective brands. I love that stuff. Jamie Swaim: Yeah. I would imagine also that being in the seat that you get to sit in, that you've learned all kinds of amazing things that you had no idea you even wanted to learn about. So what was the topic that you were like, I get to know that information today, or I learned something new and you were super excited to learn it? Jim Ray: Well, I think as we started looking more at video podcasting, I was a purist, right? The reason I like podcasts is because I think I can put my earbuds in and I can multi-task. I can do other things, but I'll still listen to that content. As someone who was a content creator, I used to write a tremendous amount of blogs for law firms all over the state of Kentucky. I used to do a lot of video work, and I really liked those media, those formats. But when you're doing this and you know it's a podcast, I always thought, well, the reason it works is because I'm not competing for your attention. I'm going to ride along with you. I'm going to go with you while you're shopping, exercising, whatever, driving the kids to school, whatever you're doing. I held back on video for a long time, but now it's becoming more and more prevalent, and now I'm able to step in. I'm going, you know what? I'm actually beginning to pull that off, that it's actually looking better and better. I've got a long way to go. I am not a videographer, I'm not a video producer, but I understand the reason for the media format and how to put it to work, and if I can continue to do that on a bigger scale, so much the better. Yeah. Jason Heflin: This is a business question, how much bandwidth do you have for those listening? If they're like, I want to start a podcast, but this guy sounds like he's busy or expensive, or maybe he's a little bit more advanced than what I'm capable of, maybe I'm not ready. Dor those listening that are thinking those thoughts. What would you say? Jim Ray: Well, let me start with this because I think this is one of the more important impediments there. If you have headphones or earbuds and an iPhone, you could do conceivably a podcast, whether it's effective or not, or the quality that represents your brand best, that's up to you. That's personal interpretation. As far as what I do is I give you guys back something you don't have enough of, and that's time. I tell my clients, look, I need you for about an hour and a half, once a month. Come on in. We'll do a couple of episodes back to back. I'll fully produce them. I'll edit them and I'll dose them out. Usually every other week, a new episode goes live. So my bandwidth demands are not that much in terms of, oh my gosh, I'm just totally swamped right now, because I can choose when I decide to edit that episode. If I know you've come in and you've put several episodes together, I've already got them recorded. I don't need to chase you down. I can wake up early on a Saturday morning and knock out an episode. I can stay up late on a Wednesday night and just take care of some other finder points on the editing process. It's not all that, I won't say it's not taxing, but I've got a lot more bandwidth because again, as a solo, I choose when I want to do this. If I want to stay at work, because I love what I'm doing, for a couple of extra hours, I get to do that. All I have to worry about really is hitting the deadline. When does this have to go live? And for most of my clients, we have a scheduled go-live date. It's usually in the morning and it's a certain day of the week. So once we have that scheduled out, I've got time to get there, and it's just a matter of how I want to actually get there. I get to do all the sausage-making that you guys don't have to see. That was the theme of this episode, I guess. But yeah, the bandwidth is there. Will it get tighter and tighter? Yeah, it's supposed to, but that doesn't mean I can't bring on somebody else to help out with some of it. And there are ways, there are just things I'm learning to do now that I didn't know three and four or five years ago that make me a little bit more efficient today. Jason Heflin: Yeah. What do you think the future of podcasting is? Jim Ray: I think this becomes the predominant medium, and I'm not just saying that because, hey, Jim has a hammer, so every problem starts to look like a nail Jamie Swaim: Well, when Netflix started to add podcast as something that's on their streaming platform, I felt really surprised by that because it's not normally considered a visual medium, but it's become a lot more than that. Jim Ray: This is what blogging was 10, 15 years ago, and if you were in content production or content development or any kind of marketing, you understood the impact that blogs were having. This is just a different format of blog. I think people are getting so tired of the short form, the TikTok oriented format where, okay, it's entertainment value, but you can't really get substance out there. Whereas in a podcast, you can do a deep dive. You can really explore a topic, and this may be an episode that I later on forward to a prospective client to give them some more insights into how I think about a certain topic, or maybe we had a great conversation, I can record it one time and distribute it to 300 different clients if I were a larger organization, had the need to do so. It's evergreen. It lives forever. Even if you stop producing new episodes, it's still out there as long as you're paying the hosting fee, it's still out there. So again, you've got residual equity. I've always told people, look, if you're going to do any kind of marketing, make sure you're building equity so that if you stop, it's still producing for you. It's not a pay-per-click ad or a television commercial, a radio commercial, a billboard. Once I stop, it goes away and nobody ever knew it was there to begin with. Something like a podcast, which is a deep dive discussion, actually has residual value day after day, week after week, quarter after quarter, year after year. Molley Ricketts: Yeah. So Jim, when you hear ideas that people may bring you, what do you think that business leaders should really understand about podcasting as a platform? So you said this is the new blog. What are some things to consider when you're talking to a business leader about considering a podcast? Jim Ray: I think you've got to be willing to be authentic. I mean, if you come in with a mask, over time, people are going to see that mask slip. You're going to make a comment that doesn't align with that image you were trying to convey. If you're just yourself, most of the time, that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for authenticity because I get sales pitches every day. We all do. If you own or run a business, you're inundated with sales pitches, and some of them are pretty daggone good. But I don't know, okay, once I buy it, is it going to deliver? Is it going to meet the expectations? The same goes for you if you're doing a podcast, depending on what the idea here is. I want to have thought leaders who want to come in and share their knowledge, and that's what the three of you guys do. You're not actively hard selling. You're providing terrific information in an entertaining format that makes me want to align more closely with your brand. You heighten my curiosity. Jamie Swaim: You actually remind us to, don't forget, say your company's name from time to time. Jim Ray: Yeah. We put that in all the show notes, links out to everything. I mean, yeah, sometimes you get wrapped up into it. Again, because I'm outside of the bubble, I get to look at the other little aspects that are actually critically important. Oh, by the way, here's how you get ahold of me. Things like that. But once you kind of get that down again, for somebody that's thinking about doing this, especially a C-level executive, do I have the time? You don't have the time not to do this, because if I'm going to hire the company, I want to know what the leadership thinks. I want to know how you think. I want to know why I should be considering that. And wow, okay. So now you're conveying it at a time where I can consume it when it's most convenient to me. Now that shows that you're putting me first as a client. Now I'm more interested because you're more aligned with my value system, ideally. I mean, we're not selling retail products. These are corporate strategies. These are important topics. It's a different way to go to market Jamie Swaim: For leaders that are listening right now. One of the things I'd like to highlight that I don't know that I've ever told you this, Jim, but since starting this podcast, one of the things I've gotten more comfortable with is those moments where you're in ad hoc conversation with somebody that doesn't know you very well, and finding new ways to communicate that resemble more clearly my tone and voice. It's one of the reasons, for example, why blogs are starting to feel stale to me because of how many creators are using AI as their content source. Right? But whenever I feel like whenever we get on a microphone and we're able to have a conversation and be ourselves, that has now translated into my work life. So I will make small videos for my team, giving them updates, answering questions that have been posed, rather than just responding in the written way or doing something that's more stale. It's in the moment, and my team loves it. Absolutely loves it. So to me, this is skill-building. And with your tutelage, That's a thing, right? Yeah. Did I make that word up? That's a great word. Molley Ricketts: This just came from nowhere, but I'm impressed. Jamie Swaim: We're growing skills because of the opportunity to be able to do this with you. Jason Heflin: And vocabulary. Jamie Swaim: Vocabulary and vocabulary. Yes. Jim Ray: No, I think when you're on the mic, even though we're not live at any given time, we still have room to edit. It brings out your truest sense of self. I mean, if you've ever written a blog post, how many times have you gone back and self-edited? Okay, wait a minute. That doesn't sound right. No. What are people going to think? You put all these friction points in the process, which is why they take longer, and they usually don't get done consistently. Whereas when you're talking, you're just having a conversation about something you already know with people whom you like. And I think that's what your truest sense of self actually comes out, and that comes back to the authenticity, which is really what the market wants most. And so, yeah, no, I appreciate you saying that. It's a confidence-builder for all the other things that you're doing. Jamie Swaim: It's a comfort builder as well, just to be who you are and to lean into what are the things that you know about a particular topic, because that shows up in a lot of different ways, whether or not you have it or you don't. Jim Ray: Well, what's funny is if you go back and you go back to episode one, file number one for Workforce Therapy Files… Jamie Swaim: I don't know if I ever want to do that. Jim Ray: Well, no. Listen to the first two episodes and ask yourself, wow, how much different do they sound now? The flow is there. I mean, you guys are on lock and it, it's not really work. It's not, oh my gosh. We have had times where we come in and said, okay, what are we going to talk about today? And we put the outline on the board and went, and it actually turned out great, because again, you guys have the process down. This is about reps and muscle memory. Once you get that down, you're already subject matter experts. So you just allow that to come out. Again, let's get the friction out of the way and let the knowledge flow, and that's what you guys do. Jason Heflin: And I'm going to connect a few dots really quick because it was kind of under an undertone, but we talked about blogs and how I think a lot of people are still like, well, I'm a blogger. I'm blogging. Blogging is how I get my content out. But then you mentioned show notes earlier, and it made me think, one thing that I think folks don't think about who are currently blogging and using that as their content medium, is that Jim produces a transcript of every episode. It's chock-full of keywords and things that we talked about and the topics, and that all goes into blog posts. So if you're concerned about, let's say, your website's SEO, and oh, but my blogs really contribute to my SEO because they're continually feeding the algorithm. Well, this is just more content. So you can continue to blog and supplement with podcasting at first, and then at some point, some people just say, I'm just going to do more podcasting and just upload that content. So it's a new way of thinking, and sometimes it's hard, but it still ties back to all the old platforms we use. Jim Ray: And again, you run a marketing agency, so you guys blog. You guys produce a tremendous amount of content for your own clients, I would imagine. So I look at it this way. I used to get paid a decent amount of money to actually sit down and write a six paragraph blog post for, say a law firm, on a consistent basis. And I know how much time it took me to come up with a title, come up with some subtitles, maybe a nice image, some bullet points, and some pithy content ultimately to get down to the call to action. Molley Ricketts: So we're just Webster here today. Jim Ray: Pithy you like that? You like, okay, great. So I knew what it would take to do that, and they'd get six, seven paragraphs maybe. If we have a 15 minute conversation, how many paragraphs did we just create? It's infinitely more. It's infinite. So much less time to create and much more in terms of context, content and just overall quality of experience for the listener. Now you start looking at derivative products. Now, okay, so I've got that. I've got the blog post and I've got this say, audio podcast. Now I can splice that up into outtakes snippets, if you will. That can go on the social media. I can take the transcript and now I can convert that over into a separate blog post from the transcript or the audio. I've got that. And then I can break that down even further for additional social media. And oh, by the way, the whole time linking it back and forth to previous and related pages and websites. It's just so much more effective. Jason Heflin: The mileage you get out of it is incredible. Jim Ray: Exactly. Jamie Swaim: I also really appreciate that the show notes, and Jason mentioned this, but you're very careful not just to provide a transcript, but you get a link to each of us in the bottom of the show notes. Jim Ray: To your guests as well Jamie Swaim: To our guests. We've used it as an opportunity to plug books that were mentioned from previous guests. And I don't know that every podcast provides that level of content to serve as supporting information if somebody wanted to go and reference it quickly, instead of having to go back and try to be like, was that at minute 20 or 21? And I really appreciate the production of those show notes. It's been very helpful for me in figuring out which episode I wanted to refer back to for different engagements. Jim Ray: Well, yeah, and there's always going to be a key phrase in there that might relate to a previous episode or something like that. But again, that comes back to that coaching mentality, those competitive advantages that I think I bring as a podcast producer is I'm not just saying here, just talking to the mic and I'll give you a recording. I'm going to do all these follow on assets that make it more powerful, that make it much more effective, and that serve additional purposes. All of this should be weaving together a constant theme based on what you do. You guys are in HR, okay, great. You're in marketing, so it should be doing all of those different things together so that you're just pounding your website and all these other social media platforms with great on-point, consistent, authoritative content. That's why I think podcasting, when you ask, where's it going? I think podcasts becomes the preferred medium. Molley Ricketts: Okay. I've got a very important question to ask Jim. Jim Ray: Five seven. Molley Ricketts: I thought it was 6 7. No, thank you, Jim. Jamie Swaim: Jim, starting a new trend. Molley Ricketts: HR nightmare. So Jim, what do you think is the best episode for Workforce Therapy Files? So far? Jamie Swaim: Putting you on the spot. Wow. Molley Ricketts: Your favorite the best? Jason Heflin: This one. Jim Ray: The ones that talk about me. Let's see. You guys did a Halloween themed one , which was kind of interesting. That was creative. That was good. Jamie Swaim: Spooky recruiting stories. Jim Ray: Yeah. Early on, you guys were bringing in much more data. I think you were bringing in Bureau of Labor Statistics data , and that was informative. Jamie Swaim: That one was one of my favorites too, though. We went through the Workforce Report. Molley Ricketts: That was two episodes, wasn't it? Yeah. Jim Ray: You guys have brought in other, just thought leaders. You brought in Dr. Deborah Clary , who really is doing her own thing after just a terrific executive career, and now she's off into coaching and it launched a new book and things like that. What I love is the miniseries. The miniseries that we do from SHRM where we'll go do a popup podcast there for two days and we'll come back and we'll get 20-30 podcast episodes, mini-interviews, out of that. And it keeps producing for you all. But at the same time, just the tone of those many impromptu discussions are just fun. I mean, watching you guys just be in the moment and just having fun at a conference, a trade show, whatever. Molley Ricketts: I mean, we're a pretty good time. Jamie Swaim: Yeah, that's true. Jim Ray: You guys are a good time. Jamie Swaim: You should hear us when we don't talk about work. Jim Ray: No. So to come back to say just one, no, there are different styles and formats that you guys have done that I think each have their own benefits and they're going to resonate with different types of audience members, right? Not everybody wants the casual, they want the more authoritative data-specific. You guys deliver that as well. Jamie Swaim: I think I'm hearing Jim say it's hard to choose which one says favorite. Molley Ricketts: That's what I think too. Jim Ray: The answer is D, all of the above. Yeah, there we go. Jason Heflin: Which one of your kids do you love the most? Molley Ricketts: So do you think of a conversation and think, man, Workforce Therapy Files needs to talk about that? Jim Ray: Yeah. I think from time to time, I'll send you guys an email with just a, Hey, here's a video that I saw, or here's an article, or, Hey, this is interesting. You guys could develop something off of that. And I think, again, having something that's also looking to promote your authoritative information. Sometimes you just don't think, we all kind of get in our own silos and we're thinking, well, this is what I usually talk about. And then somebody throws something over the wall and you're like, oh, that's cool. Let me see where that goes. I try to do that as well. I think that, again, it is part of the coaching. How can I make you guys more successful at what you're doing? Sometimes it's topic selection. Some topics just seem to resonate and everybody's in it. Sometimes not as much, but it's still good information, right? So if we can start to look at different sources of information for a potential topic, I like doing that. It just keeps it fresh, keeps it fun. Not that you guys have the problem with keeping it fun. Jamie Swaim: Jim. So the listeners are saying, I can do it. I can do a podcast. I know I can. Now I feel confident. What's the first step? How do they get in touch with you? How do they get started? Jim Ray: I appreciate you saying that. I think the easiest thing is let's have a conversation to make sure that your expectations are realistic from the outset. Not that they can't evolve into something even bigger, but let's have a conversation. There are a number of different ways to get to me. My website is JimRayConsultingServices.com. You can just call me here at the office, (502) 208-9639. Probably the easiest way to grab me, just say, Hey, send me a text to that number. Actually, Hey, I heard you on the podcast thinking about doing my own. Can we chat? Easy, easy, easy, easy peasy. Jamie Swaim: Jim, will you put that in the show notes? Jim Ray: Yeah, great idea. Okay, great idea. Yeah, I'll put links to all that. Jamie Swaim: And if Jim doesn't answer the phone, he's probably recording an amazing podcast, so he will call you back ASAP. Jim Ray: Or a podcast that features me. But yeah, so it'll all be good. No, but guys, I appreciate it. This is kind of fun to turn the tables a little bit and actually be on the mic with you. So I really appreciate the opportunity here. Jamie Swaim: I think you were just as good on this side of the mic. Jim Ray: What? I mean, I've done this a couple of times, just once or twice. But no, I appreciate you guys saying that. But thanks for the opportunity. And the fact is you guys are producing just different types of content at a higher-level one than when you originally started. It's just come that much further, but it's just fun watching you guys in your zone. Anytime I can watch a group of high-performers just actually get together and actually do what they do best, it's just fun. I mean, it's literally fun. Jamie Swaim: Well, thank you for agreeing to get on this side of the table and Jim Ray of Jim Ray Consulting Services. Close that file, close that file. That's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We'd love to hear from you. To Contact Podcast Producer Jim Ray: Website: www.JimRayConsultingServices.com Phone: (502) 208-9639 Did You Enjoy Today's Conversation? Visit www.WorkforceTherapyFiles.com to listen to additional WTF files or to let us know you'd like to be a guest on an upcoming file. Need Help Supporting Your Company's Recruiting and Staffing Goals? We're here to help. You can contact us via our individual websites, depending on your specific needs or questions: · Jamie Swaim, SPHR - www.ParcelKnows.com · Molley Ricketts - www.IncipioWorks.com · Jason Heflin - www.CrowdSouth.com We hope you found this file insightful and helpful. Thank you for listening!
Is this your show?
Claim this listing to keep it up to date, reach guests who want to pitch you, and manage bookings with Guestify.
