Leaders and Their Stories

Richard Lowe (00:00.989)
Hello y'all, this is Richard Lowe. I'm the host of Leaders in Their Stories podcast and the owner of The Writing King and Ghost Writing Guru. I'm here with Joe Rocky Jr. and he's gonna talk about how he's the cause of the recession. Joe, why don't you talk about yourself a little bit.

Joe Rockey (00:16.814)
Yeah, something like that. Well, first of all, thank you for having me back on the show. I love doing it and just love, hopefully the audience gets a grasp of what we're going with here. And, you know, to me, we really sit back and look at what causes problems. And this is globally speaking for any sales environment is people like to talk to normal people. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's not like, let's talk to a robot and hope this works out.

Richard Lowe (00:42.332)
I do, I do.

Joe Rockey (00:46.542)
And the problem is, and this is honestly like, this is almost guaranteed human nature going to cause the recession, the next recession, but in an economist wouldn't see it this way. And it's a little bit different way of looking at it what you guys can do to fix it. But the simple fact is, is from a sales and a buying perspective, people want to actually talk to people and have.

individuals solve their problems. I'm sure you might have the same uniform on as everyone else in your company, but it's a connection with you. That person that they're connected with, you're the car dealer. You're the guy who actually sold me this forward. It's not Ford overall. It's Jerry. You're the guy. You're the reason I bought this Tahoe or whatever. So, okay. So that's awesome. And the real cause behind all of this and why I think the whole thing's going to implode into affinity beyond is because of AI.

And this isn't to be like, AI scary avoided like that. Like that's not what I'm trying to say here. What I'm saying is, is that we have to dive into the real reason that AI is taking over. And this part to me is kind of like an unavoidable fact.

Richard Lowe (02:00.188)
So you're saying that the terminator's coming.

Joe Rockey (02:03.352)
Dude, I did this some days. kind of just wish it would cause it would make life so much easier. Like there's for, I think there's times that I am built to be in a post-apocalyptic society. Like I could do it. I would win with it. Let's do it. No, no, I don't think I would buy the, I'd be able to do those little click noises that the predator can do. So I got that. It's all good. So from the, the

Richard Lowe (02:16.274)
But would he have an Austrian accent? That's what I want to know.

Richard Lowe (02:25.53)
Anyway, sorry to keep going. Sorry to interrupt.

Joe Rockey (02:32.142)
problem of why AI keeps getting pushed out is getting revealed in little snippets here and there. So Gallup last week just released an updated response of how many people are actually engaged at work. It's 23 % for the American workforce. Yeah. So, I mean, that's, that's less than a quarter of the people who are actually coming into work and giving their all.

Richard Lowe (02:50.012)
Sounds high to me, actually.

Joe Rockey (02:58.478)
And you can back out and go, there's lots of reasons why, right? mean, our phone dings every six seconds. Um, but that's part of it, but we've always had distractions at work. It's not like there wasn't radios bringing out the Yankees game when Babe Ruth was coming up the bat and everyone was following him. You know, there's always been distractions at work. People got pregnant, people had life events that they had to think about. How am going to do this, that or the other? So distractions in and of themselves are not the reason.

It's not Twitter's fault as much as everyone wants to blame Twitter for everything. It's not Twitter's fault on this one. The fundamental reason, and this goes in cycles is that businesses are in a phase where they don't care about their employees anymore. And if you want to test this, go back to the nineties. What was your benefit package? Like back then you were seeing people getting golden handcuffs, first class, just think about how much it would cost you to again.

if you are that age to pay for the hinge actually having a kid, your insurance covered the vast majority of it because your company bought the insurance that would now they're cutting corners everywhere along the way and you get a very natural human being response, which is you don't care about me. I don't care about you. And then the ultimate office space event occurs. I'm going to do just the least amount not to get fired.

Richard Lowe (04:24.274)
So they call that quiet quitting.

Joe Rockey (04:26.126)
That's exactly what's going on. Gallup also reported that 52 % of people are looking to work somewhere else than where they're at. This is the problem that we are having. as much as people want it. So, what is, what does businesses realize this? Like, you know, when you're about to get broken up with, you can feel it. And when you're getting that from 50,000 people, you got to come up with a solution if you're a major employer. So what's the solution? AI.

Richard Lowe (04:55.504)
Obviously, AI, yeah.

Joe Rockey (04:56.706)
The AI will figure it out. And that's not the real problem. Shutting down the AI is not the solution. Shutting down, not caring about your people is the solution. And it is so many little societal things that you can build in easily. Actually spend time with your people. Do it outside of the work environment. Don't micromanage.

all of these little basic things that people do actually take an interest in their lives like you would with anyone else, like your friends. And there's just so much in society and lawyers that make people want to not do this because all lawyers see is lawsuit, lawsuit. You talk about their family. You talk about their girlfriend. Uh-uh, don't do it. Well, if you want them to actually care and you want them to show up and put the extra time in,

If you want an attorney to give you 60 hours a week, fresh out of law school, his girlfriend dash spouse needs to know why they're doing it. And it's got it at the end of the day is the check ain't enough anymore. And that's the default problem from the business's standpoint globally that we're at. Well, I'm paying you so you better care. That's not how human beings work. Might be how robots work, but that's not how human beings work. And again, this is.

Richard Lowe (06:13.81)
Right.

Joe Rockey (06:16.556)
why there's going to be a recession. None of this is an economics response, but it's a human being response and we still control the economy, not the robots.

Richard Lowe (06:26.322)
Well, except for the trading floor, probably has a lot of AI in it.

Joe Rockey (06:30.914)
Well, it does, but that's a side story.

Richard Lowe (06:35.43)
Yeah, indeed. That sounds very interesting as a theory. I definitely see that the employers are less engaged and they're actually starting the process of quiet quitting. It's actually their fault. And they always say, well, the employee is quiet quitting. It's employee's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, I mean, first of all, you've got companies that give way too many benefits. The old Twitter comes to mind before Elon Musk bought it where

I mean, I've heard stories of things like, my God, it's like they were catered.

Joe Rockey (07:10.466)
Well, there's a reason for that though. The reason you do the benefits is because it's, this is an economics answer because it's cheaper to go out and have catering, to have a ping pong table, to have whatever benefit you're giving. Then it is to be in a price war for the top 3 % of the most qualified people in the world.

Richard Lowe (07:31.866)
Unfortunately, the Twitter employees tended to be the lower bottom, 20 % of the people for the most part.

Joe Rockey (07:36.386)
Well, that's just poor management at that point.

Richard Lowe (07:39.814)
Which is what we found, because Twitter's doing fine now, as far as I can tell.

Joe Rockey (07:43.81)
But, but the concept of the benefits is actually the solution. It's, it's you take care of your people so that they want to come to you.

Richard Lowe (07:49.358)
intelligently applied benefits, I would say.

Joe Rockey (07:54.478)
Yes. Yes. And that's the thing. So, so one of the ways that people do this is, is earned benefits and quite frankly, earned benefits, I think are my favorite thing ever. So, you know, back, mean, you're even going back to the nineties. If you earned this threshold, you got a huge bonus. wasn't just, were on the team and everyone gets the bonus. It's no, you were special. And I'm not going to turn this into the generation below me, got everything handed to him, participation trophies and blah, blah.

Richard Lowe (08:04.498)
Mm-hmm.

Richard Lowe (08:11.132)
Right.

Joe Rockey (08:23.352)
but that is coming to roost. There's certainly an element of this here.

Richard Lowe (08:27.74)
Well, participation trophies are absolutely worthless and they are counterproductive. You shouldn't get a trophy just for being there. You should get a trophy for going beyond.

Joe Rockey (08:36.78)
Yeah. Yeah. So, so I mean, that's, that's, that's where these, I push for earned benefits overall is because if you're, if you say, know what, whatever the goal is, you put a hard goal out in front of someone and they accomplish it. There are so many psychological wins that your company gets beneficial from too. So say, for instance, say you're a programmer, say you're one those guys at, at X and you're like, we need to have it.

make it so that every post uploads faster and there's less air rates. Well, that's a very measurable thing. And you just measure these are the accounts you're in charge of these accounts you're in charge of your challenge. You're in charge of blah, blah. Who's going to put up the best numbers over the next quarter. And whoever does gets X, you know, whatever X is in your business culture, that's what pushes people.

Richard Lowe (09:24.583)
Well...

A good benefit I would think would be, let's say you've got a bunch of salespeople and you offer them an incentive such as, maybe attending a cruise. That would be really good. know, a cruise and speaking engagements so they get a little work in while they're there, have a good time on the cruise. That's something as an employer you could offer the really high performers.

Joe Rockey (09:34.999)
Yeah!

Joe Rockey (09:46.234)
Absolutely. And, and I appreciate the plug there, but yeah, as the owner of elite business cruises, that is, that's exactly what we do is it doesn't matter what your company is, but sales is certainly the easiest one that the economically see is, you know, you know how much it's going to cost for any of your benefits. have cruises, obviously part of them, but it can be a steak house dinner. can be a special event on Broadway, whatever, you know, what that cost is.

And you also know the tangible result in the profits you get from them doing well. If Twitter uploads faster, has less errors, you save money or you make money. Either way, it helps your bottom line. Rig it so that, you know what you guys ended up making that's going to be six times the cost of a steak dinner or wherever we're taking you. So instead of doing it quarterly, we're going to do once every month. And the closer it is in front of people's eyes relative to the magnitude of the reward.

the harder people work. The problem is, is that in so many cultures, business cultures, this incentive package doesn't work because they're afraid of things like competition or someone getting their feelings hurt because they don't win newsflash. Every business is in competition period. Like where, when did this take over? maybe softness is the real reason I should have come up with why this AI is taking over, but it's, all correlated.

Richard Lowe (11:05.266)
Yep. Yeah.

Joe Rockey (11:12.78)
And it all goes back to, you don't care about me, I ain't going to care about you. Look at any second grader out in American playground right now. It's basic human nature. You ain't changing human nature because you want it to be different. It is what it is.

Richard Lowe (11:21.308)
Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Lowe (11:26.492)
No, of course not. It is what it is. And that's an interesting point. So tell us how you're going to cause the recession. That's what I'm curious about.

Joe Rockey (11:37.004)
Now, well, the one answer would be to just be silent. another way that literally could cause this is a lot of insecure people hearing this basically go, well, you know, screw that guy. I'm not going to do anything about this. And then next thing you know, your company implodes because that's the end direction. I mean, yeah, there is convenience factor of the AI and there's a production factor of it, but we still have to make sales to exist. We still have to have our customers.

Richard Lowe (11:55.676)
Yes.

Joe Rockey (12:05.288)
want to stay subscribed to us want to stay in our in our influence base. And if that doesn't happen through a robot, it happens through someone actually going, this is a thoughtful message I want to send to someone I want them to connect with me. And guess what you deliver on it.

Richard Lowe (12:22.034)
tell you, I'm getting so tired of those AI robots, the ones on the websites or on the phones that you're caught in AI hell. And you just get over over and over. Like, just want a person. Nope, we're gonna have ask you these questions first. Then you come right back up on the same screen. You I just want a person. Nope, nope. can't, what is this? What is he gonna do? It's like, look, I need to talk to a person.

Joe Rockey (12:42.348)
Yeah, they don't have the cheat code like the old phone ones did. Like when you got caught onto a call center, you could just press zero five million times until the thing broke. And then eventually you'd get to a person. You can't do that anymore. That's infuriating.

Richard Lowe (12:53.062)
or the IRS, go on the IRS, you call like one, press like one, one, zero, one, you know, get to the, code, there is a code, but you just skip all the menus and you get straight to a person and it's published somewhere. And you just basically you're answering the menus in the right order. If you answer in the wrong order, you're in AI hell.

Joe Rockey (13:04.696)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rockey (13:10.478)
yeah. But it, it, it's infuriating to me that, that, that people think that this is a good idea because sure, not everyone's ready to buy for you. Not maybe not even people in that may never buy for you. They may have already mind that, you know what I'm buying a Toyota no matter what, but I'm still going to ask for this question to learn something. And guess what? Maybe it does change something deep down. Maybe, maybe it does start to open a door because

One of the hardest things that got to be solved in Henry sales situation is well, why now? Why are you considering doing anything now? And it might just be, I don't know if I am considering it, but if I get information from you, I might get sucked in your Rome. And next thing I know I'm at a closing table and I'm driving out with the Ford like, okay, because I was, they were willing to teach me something or entertain me or whatever, but people stuff.

Richard Lowe (14:01.906)
Yep, yep.

Richard Lowe (14:08.582)
Yep. Yep. So you've written a book called Casino Salesmaster, which I take it is not about selling casinos. It's an interesting title. don't you give a little two minutes about that.

Joe Rockey (14:14.55)
No, it's not.

Yeah. So I mean, it's actually about people connecting to people. and this is in a ways the book is the architecture about why this recession is happening. If you look at your average casino and basically all Americans are run this way, all American casinos are run this way. The people you actually interact with on the casino floor, the dealers, the servers, all of them from the, from below the pit boss level, which is basically the managers. They're all paid on minimum wage plus tips. So the,

the 30 cents an hour plus tips. But the thing with gamblers is they don't tip the dealers. They'll tip their waitresses, you know, here's your standard buck or whatever for the drink you gave me or whatever, but they don't tip the dealers, regardless of how much money they're up or down. They don't tip them. And the reason goes back to very core human nature experiences. You took something away from me. I ain't giving it. I ain't giving you something back.

Richard Lowe (15:00.188)
Right.

Joe Rockey (15:17.536)
It's the exact same mechanism. So if you can figure out that reality, plus the fact that most people, when they lose, they add alcohol to cope with them losing and then angry alcohol ends up being very bad experience for the dealers themselves. So I literally just looked at this, just as I looked at it from the employee's perspective at the beginning of this, I did the same thing from the dealer's perspective. They are surrounded by people who are in general angry, don't like them.

They don't have any ability to control who comes to their table because they're told you have to be nice and open to everyone because anyone might lose money at our table. So bring them here. So then it was like, okay, that's a really shitty starting point. How can we make your life better? And then how can I do with people who actually can control the outcome? So I started with that second question in a casino. There's really three games that the dealer has complete control over.

The chuckle luck wheel where the sometimes it's like literally from like the old church bingos, where they little dollar bills on it they spin it. And if it lands on 20 bucks times 20, so there's two versions of that. that and roulette, every single card game in the casino is auto-shuffled. So it's basically, they might as well be a robot just passing out cards, but again, they're people, but on roulette, they can control it hundred percent. They're actually trained how to do it. And the reason they learn how to do this,

It goes back to the first primal element. There's people coming up to them and that's the only way they can get rid of them. I make you lose enough. You won't have enough money to be here. So I'm going to learn how to miss your numbers. So they do. Um, which also means you learn how to hit specific numbers. You can get into the whole book, the whole scheme, but that's essentially it is I figured out how to make their lives better, made it great for them. And that's why even in the most one sided sales environment, a place that guarantees you to lose.

Richard Lowe (16:57.202)
Interesting.

Joe Rockey (17:10.464)
applying human nature experiments, human nature thought processes to real life is how this applies and actually makes people want to see you succeed. How to create win-wins to the max.

Richard Lowe (17:22.353)
interesting.

Well, that's very fascinating. Listeners, you should go run and buy that book immediately. It's a, you'll get a lot. I've skimmed through it. It's a, a very good book. You'll get lots of interesting things. It'll help you in your life. It'll help you in sales and you know, you'll help out poor Joe who needs the money. And you got any last words to say before we end off?

Joe Rockey (17:37.955)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rockey (17:42.299)
All for that. Sell more copies.

Joe Rockey (17:49.998)
You know, like I said, I don't want there to be another recession for something that's as basic that literally has been talked about since the days of the Bible. Treat each other right. Actually care about your people and your business will skyrocket because caring less about people has never been more in style since Carnegie. This has been, and we saw what happened there. The companies that did care about each other. Boom, took off and skyrocketed. And some of them are the household names of America now.

Your company can be that just by caring about your people and doing it correctly. And personally, I vote for earned benefits. And one of the best ones are Elite Business Cruises. And you can find us at EliteBusinessCruises.com.

Richard Lowe (18:32.838)
Very good. Thank you for appearing. So this has been the Leaders In Their Stories podcast. I'm Richard Lowe, the writing king and ghostwriting guru. I have a book coming out called the Ghostwriting Advantage. And I'll soon have a link for that coming up that you can go pre-order it. And it'll be out probably in April. And it's a great book. I wrote it myself. It's a great book. It talks about ghostwriting from the client point of view. So how to find a ghostwriter, what to look out for, what are the red flags, what are the green flags, all that stuff.

Joe Rockey (18:34.723)
Thank you.

Richard Lowe (19:02.97)
So, you can find me at the writing king.com or ghost writing.guru. And this has been the leaders in their stories podcast. Thank you very much for appearing.