Megan: Thank you so much for joining She Boss today. You are in for a treat. Trust me when I say that. We are joined by Kristin Scroggin with genWHY Communications. Kristin is so in tune with differences in generations and how that can impact things in the workplace, but also can be a lifesaver when it comes to parenting a little bit too, which I’m excited to talk about. So thank you so much for joining us.
Kristin: You are welcome. I’m excited about to be here. We will have a good time.
Megan: We will; I am excited about it. So you started genWHY Communications a couple of years ago. But prior to that, you were a communications professor at UA for a long time. And we are a little bit biased here at Flourish; we have a passion for communication in a variety of ways. But just talk to us a little bit about your background and how you got into where you are today, and then we’ll dive into what you’re working on.
Kristin: Sure, so weirdly, my dad was a professor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where I was raised, and he was the debate coach there. So he was in communications even way back then, and as hard as we tried not to duplicate our parents’ path, we very much end up doing very similar things. So it was interesting growing up; we never had rules. Everything was on the table; worth an argument. So everything was about communication—being able to talk your way around it from multiple areas.
So when I started at UA at Montevallo, where I went to undergraduate, I was going to be a very famous Broadway star. And then I realized that I didn’t want to be poor. And so I realized very fast that I would be poor because I was nowhere near as good as I thought I was. So I ended up switching into a communications class because it was the first positive thing anyone had told me in about two years. Someone said I spoke like a Kennedy, and because I did the music and theater kid, all they did was tell me I was trash for a while. So I got a little bit of good, and then I was in communications. Then I went to my graduate school of Alabama, and then I was able to get an internship at Calhoun, literally helping teach the communication classes there.
So before long, I just kind of fell into teaching. I feel like I was born to be a teacher anyway. And really, what I do every day is teach. I just teach huge groups of adults instead of small groups of people, but that’s how I kind of fell into communications. And I love being a teacher. I loved everything about it. The pay is trash. People really underestimate how bad it is, even at the college level. Every student I had made more money than I did, but it’s cool. But during that time, I started studying millennials and trying to figure out why they were so different. Because I had this great plan that I was just going to make them love me, and if they love me, they were going to work super hard, and I was going to get all the acclaim. And that’s not what was happening. So it was like, ‘Oh, this cool Scroggin loves us, and she’ll hook us up.’ And so I was getting all the trash work. So that’s how I kind of fell into studying millennials—to figure out how to get them to get them to maximum capacity. And then before long, everyone in Huntsville was coming to me and saying, “What do you know?” “What do you not know?”
Megan: ‘How do you do that?’
Kristin: And then it just took off. Last year, I was in 43 different states. I worked with about, I’d say, at least 23 to 24 different industries. So the good news is that it’s not just an Alabama thing. People are weird everywhere they go, and every industry is a little bit mad.
Megan: Yeah, the portfolio of clients that you’ve supported in the amount of countries and people that is so broad. It is insane. But I want to go back to something. So I share a love of debate. Debate class in college was a catalyst for me. I don’t know what it was, but it was something that just gave me a voice that I didn’t know I had. So I could see how that could, especially embedded at a young age, help you kind of see a different path in life and finding the confidence to find your voice.
Kristin: And I think it taught me the idea of argumentation—that we don’t have to even have a real emotional attachment to something to be able to play the devil’s advocate and make sure that you’re doing that. A lot of what I do is say, ‘I don’t know exactly how you’re feeling as a boomer, as a Gen Xer, but let me play devil’s advocate. What if it is just the person being the person? And it’s not somebody that’s just the jerk.
Megan: And I think having sympathy and understanding the other side is so important. And we were just talking before about kids; I have three, you have four, and always trying to make them understand the other side of the coin is so important. But going back to your dad teaching you at a very young age, what were some of the arguments and debates that you won that you’re like, “I made it”?
Kristin: So I consistently was able to out-argue things about going out because my dad would always do the whole–if everybody else was jumping off a bridge, then why would you jump off the bridge? You don’t need to be like everybody else and that sort of stuff. So I was always able to kind of come around from the tack of, social growth is important, and that based on my personality, I need to make my own mistakes, and so I need to go in and occasionally be best friends with somebody that’s going to throw me under the bus long term. So that I learned how to spot that in people later on. So I was able to talk my way around a lot of stuff like that. The other thing that was an advantage is that my mother taught gifted and talented first and second graders, and so all the praise for me was never on being smart. It was on being creative. It was always about finding the other thing. So she didn’t care if I got an A; she was interested in “Did you do a cooler project than everybody else?” So that was sort of the combination of those two things: being able to articulate what you’re thinking in a non-emotional way and then come at it from a creative way that other people aren’t looking at, gave me, I think, the brain to look at generations in a very different way than most people do.
Megan: What a powerful thing to just grow up with that embedded in your DNA.
Kristin: Two parents who were taught in early childhood education were able to implement those rules earlier in their lives.
Megan: So let’s talk a little bit about what you’re doing with genWHY. So genWHY Communications, of course, in preparation for this interview and just us watching you from behind the scenes in Huntsville, you have exploded with your business, and it has just taken off. And I remember a comment that was made a couple of months ago where you were pretty much booked for the entire year of the year.
Kristin: I am booked out.
Megan: So we’re very, very fortunate.
Kristin: It was one day left in September that I had.
Megan: We had to snag it, so we are so appreciative of your time. It’s very valuable, but talk to us just a little bit about some of the big things that most businesses are coming to you for. How do they know that they’re having a challenge with generational differences? And I love this quote where you’ve been called the stand-up HR comedian. I love so much because what you’ll see, if you haven’t already, is that Kristen uses humor to very eloquently deliver a message that is so impactful. But how do people discover a problem and then be able to come find you? What are some of the things that they experience that really is that driver to engage with you?
Kristin: So I think early on, I’m sure what you do, you touch generational stuff anyway, because it’s such a part of marketing. But I think that millennials and Gen Z’s are actually very different, and so I’ve had to kind of evolve in my approaches on this. Originally, with the millennials, it was the idea of, ‘We don’t know how to give them purpose.’ ‘They’re over ambitious.’ ‘They think that they can be the president of the company within three weeks of being here.’ And so the original thing that I was hearing complaints about was more about personality clashes, which actually makes a lot of sense, because in reality, baby boomers and millennials are very similar, and they’re in a natural power struggle, and that’s why they fight all the time. And Gen Xers walk around every day like, ‘Oh my god, marsha marsha marsha’, we hate all of you, and we still do our work. Why are you fighting about those rings and purple hair streaks? So they’re actually very similar. So at the beginning, it was very much the boomer versus millennial. It was like having your child that’s very similar to you, being in argument with everything. So millennials were really trying to flip rules and question things and ask why. And so a lot of the first realm was getting them to understand that people aren’t doing it to fight against you. And it was more about promoting understanding. Well, then the deeper we got into the millennials and the front end of the Gen Z’s, there’s a lot of research that says Gen Z’s are far more focused on the money than the purpose, which is funny because you don’t hear that a lot.
Megan: Feels like the other way around.
Kristin: 100% what’s happening. So people swung too far towards purpose, purpose, purpose. And then they started dropping behind on the money and then the Gen Z’s came in and said, ‘I don’t care about your purpose. Show me the money.’ And then everybody is like, ‘How dare you talk to us like that?’ And the millennials were like, ‘How dare you think that you should make as much money as I do?’ The same things that they were complaining about 10 years before. So it’s really fun. The millennials hate the Gen Z’s with the same passion that I, as a Zilennial, hated the millennials with. And so you’re always going to hate your little brother just a little bit. So I think that people are doing different things, but now the turnover rate, the bounce rate, is so high, people are having a hard time even getting, I’d say, the younger side of millennials and then the older side of Gen Z’s, to stay even past that 18-month mark. A lot of what I hear now is, ‘How do I secure more people?’ And so one of the things that I’ve been pushing lately is, ‘You need to do a better job with leadership development’, and ‘There’s no point having a succession plan if you don’t have a big fat of humans who have all been trained to become future leaders.’ So that’s one of the things that we are pushing right now: the idea that you have to upskill, and that means you’re gonna have to upskill socially also.
Megan: Elaborate on that a little bit.
Kristin: So the social upskill, if succession plan is the word of 2024, then I think executive functioning skills will be the word of 2025. And it’s very much the idea of listening effectively, resolving your own conflict, having self-motivation, being able to manage your own time, inspiration—that sort of self-inspiration. So that’s where I see there’s kind of a hole with a lot of the Gen Z’s, is they don’t have a lot of those executive functioning skills in place, and because, by their nature, they’re actually less face-to-face confrontational—Millennials are very confrontational. They are brave here, and they are brave here. Gen Zs are only; have only broken up with people over the phone, right? So they’re not as face-to-face confrontational. So you have a lot more ghosting happening. So what’s happening is that millennials would tell you, I’m unhappy and I don’t like this, and if you don’t do what I want you to do, then I’m going to quit. And now Gen Z’s are just like, ‘Deuces. I’m out, and I’m not even going to give you a two-week notice.’ So it’s a different set of problems, even though they are in this exact same generation.
Megan: So with that being said, where do you see the longer-term implications coming with stuff like that? I understand it and I get it, but how will that evolve into something either greater or worse for that individual?
Kristin: It’s gonna be an issue. We’re seeing that already, right? And actually, that’s why gig economy was so successful—you had so many people who said, ‘Forget this. I’m obviously not good at working for any human ever, so I’m just gonna DoorDash and sell crap on eBay.’ Like they’ve been able to figure it out. That’s great long term, but it means businesses have to pivot now, because now the old school rules that were 80 years old, now you’ve got a generation of people whose parents are perfectly fine letting you stay as long as possible in the basement, and you’ve got the gig economy, where you can make enough money to live and work completely, your own hours, your own time and your own clothing. So there’s a pivot point where we’re at, where businesses are having to really reevaluate what rules. Like, I tell companies all the time, ‘Do you really want to die on this hill?’ ‘Do you really want to die on whether people can have flip-flops on or not?’ You need human beings here, and you need their brains. So is a purple streak worth an argument? So there’s a pivot point happening there.
The big thing that’s coming, though, is the Gen Alphas, who are about to come up the back end. So Gen Alphas–just to give you guys a bit of perspective, Gen Alphas, the start line of them is seniors in high school right now. So a new group is coming, and they are drastically different. And the big thing we see in Gen Alphas is that they are obsessed with money. They’re terrified of debt in any shape, form, or fashion. We’ve seen that that’s actually linked to the fact that the front end of them were little kids during the great recession and then COVID hit for the younger side, so all the fear that parents have talked about around them and things that they can’t control are all linked up to money. So now you’ve got a generation of people who has no intention on spending $250,000 on a college degree and never making more than 60k. So you already have a labor shortage, even though with the biggest generation ever, and then you’ve got a way smaller generation coming in behind them who’s not going to get the college degrees that all these companies have been requiring for all this time.
So one of the things I’ve been pushing hard is that you need a pipeline. You need a pipeline from your high school to your company that where they can go, literally, 18, 19, 20, 21, and start doing some of those low-level administrative positions. Let’s just find out if they’re teachable, tolerable, working humans, and then you can go back and decide whether you want to help them get a college degree or not, really, how important it is. I think you’ll see a lot more certified apprenticeships and a lot more internships. Any company, honestly, at this point that can build a line from high school directly into their organization, is going to get far ahead of the industries that continue to require not only degree but certifications.
Megan: Well, and I love that the Gen Alphas are so driven with AI in their lives, and so, they’re, I hate to say this, especially since you have been a professor for so long, but do you need to go to college?
Kristin: I have four children. My oldest one went to college when he didn’t need to go. And he’s lumped out. He falls forward. He’s the lucky kid in our house. He should have debt given this, but he was able to get a scholarship in a different way. But my senior in high school, she’s freaking out because everybody’s running around talking about college. And I’m like, ‘You don’t do this. Why would you need to do this? Why don’t you go be an au pair? You’re not even a full grown human.’ Why wouldn’t you go see the world for a little while? Why don’t you go over to Huntsville hospital and get a radiology tech, the most in-demand job that you can get, the whole degree for $5,000, and go start doing that, and then figure out if there’s anything else, and then what you want to do? Or just go a cheaper route. There’s no reason to go spend two $20,000 to figure out I really hate English more than life in your first year. So as someone who was a professor, I’m still coming out on the back end with my own kids and saying, ‘I’m not 100% sure you need to do this.’ But what I hear from a lot of parents when I say that is, “Well, they need the college experience.” And I say, “Okay, that’s cool and all, but that’s a $200,000 college experience.” Can you just get them a little freedom? Give them freedom in a different way; let them live with you during that time if you’re just worried about that. I’m just not sure that the idea of partying in college holds relevance, and it’s definitely not worth payoff at the expense rate right now.
Megan: And I think that some of the trends that you’re seeing are not leaning towards that life experience anyway. I mean, drinking has gone down, and all of these things have declined significantly. My daughter is in Alabama, and she’s not digging it. It is not her jam at all. And it pains me to pay that bill every time or to think about what graduate school will be and all of that. And it’s not a good experience.
Kristin: I will pay for my kids college, even though, when we were in school, I would say, ‘I’m not going to pay for this,’ because I had so many students that would come through, and when they had a complete free ride, they weren’t interested in learning anything at all. It was just about the experience and that sort of stuff. So, what they don’t know is that I’m happy to help it on the back end, but I’m not going to help them on the front end. I need them to be panicked about every dropped class, so that long-term—
Megan: I like that strategy.
Kristin: I might in real life help you, but you got to get through it first.
Megan: That’s good in the game as well as in the decisions that they’re making. And they have a little bit more control over their own path and journey, which gets invested in that.
Kristin: I think that’s a lot of you know when you’re talking about replacing skills and long-term fallout, I think a lot of parents really go in on the idea of, ‘My number one job is to turn you into a piece of human being, not to be your best friend, not to coddle you, not to love you, not to even make you happy all the time, to make sure that for the whole—’ Listen to me, your children are children for this long; they’re adults for this long. So we want to make sure that we get as many skills into them as children so that they have a chance to make it as adults. And I think there’s been kind of a pivot point where we’ve lost that, and a lot of companies are now suffering and having to upskill on things that parents do. I hear that all the time, people will say, ‘Well, the parents should have taught them.’ ‘Well, they didn’t. So I don’t know what to tell you. Either you’re gonna upskill them or you’re gonna continue being mad. So, your choice.’
Megan: Let’s talk about what is happening in 2030, and that just in reading through some of the things that you’ve been talking about. So that’s a big year that’s been a little bit looming for industries as a whole. So share with us a little bit about that.
Kristin: It’s a massive pivot point. There’s some people in they are historians; they’re kind of the kings of generational theory. Right around when this 2030 stuff happens, we’re at the peak of redefining what the next version of work in America is going to look like—the cycle that happens over and over and over again. So 2030 is a big year for what ends up happening. But also, you’ve got so many of the boomers that they’re going to be gone. They’re going to be gone.
Megan: They are going to be retired.
Kristin: It’s not even about retirement. 38% of baby boomers said they plan to die at their desk anyway. So retirement for 38% of the people is not even on the table, but eventually they’re going to have a hard time getting to their building. And we know they’re not going to take an Uber because they’re convinced those people are going to kill them. So, just the idea—and I watched them; you did too during COVID; I watched some of your older boomers that could not make any of their software function, and so I’m thinking holographs in 2030 are going to be out of the question. So, like, there’s just basic things that they’re not going to be able to do, the AI is going to outpace almost everybody, and what they think is going to happen. So, that shift that’s coming, where the millennials are 100% going to be in charge, and it’s really going to probably happen in the next seven years. And then Gen Z’s, like me and you. I tell people all the time, ‘Stop looking at your Gen Z’s for being your next big leaders.’ We’re going to sell our grandma’s China and move to Costa Rica, but we are not working until we die. 57 is the number that I hear consistently is that most Gen Xers want out. So it’s that succession plan that’s coming, and that’s why that 2030 is such a big learning number. Boomers will be out, Gen Xers will be right behind them, and then we’ve got so many millennials that are not ready to move into upper middle management, much less moving into top management positions in the next seven years. So you’ve got all these companies that have 10-year plans; none of them are considering the generational shift that’s going to happen.
Megan: Are there any—I would imagine it’s across the board of industries.
Kristin: It is across the board; it does not matter the industry. I think that I’m finding there are some industries that are having a little harder pain points at this point. Utilities is having a hard time—because their gap is significant between the two. Utilities is definitely struggling a little bit. I think you’ve got certain groups that are so built into an old school world, like higher education, for example. The government is really having it, but what I’m seeing is that there are states in particular that I work with that are taking what I say in the research that they’re finding, and they are moving and shaking. Alaska’s dropping tons of requirements for college degrees left and right to be able to work for the state because they need they need the human beings. They need the pipeline. So there’s quite a few states that I’m seeing that are making their pivot points, and they’re doing it way faster. But then you’ve got old school states that are still run by a lot of old school people who are like, ‘No, we will make them conform.’ And so I keep saying, ‘No, but you won’t.’ The pain is going to be really real in 10 years. So the government definitely has banking behind the curve, law struggling. We’re finding fewer people go, especially your young people, especially younger millennials with a high moral compass, are having a hard time justifying the moral choices that have to be made as lawyers.
Megan: When they think about just the cultural and societal differences in those generations, even in political views, which play huge into the world of law.
Kristin: Exactly, so you’re seeing a slippage there. Architects are starting to have a hard time scrambling—a lot of weird stuff with architects, the landscape architects, in particular, across the country. Who would have thought that was even a thing?
Megan: But I would also assume this is the case, but do you see differences from the United States and then internationally?
Kristin: Yes, huge. So all the research that I do is—in my surveys, it says, “Did you live in America from years one to 12?” Like you have to be in the US, where it completely fits, because every country has their own wars, their own economy, their own pop culture, their own parenting trends, and school differences. So that’s really what shapes a generation. If you have an employee, for example, that was raised in China even though they might have been here in America for the past 25 years, they still have a high cultural overlay. So, I found it’s actually very difficult. Every country has their own sort of cycle with what each generation is made up of, but their numbers don’t correlate. So the more collectivistic, the more socialistic the community is, like in a lot of Asian cultures, a lot of South Europe, you’ve got a lot of that more collective—we pool our money, we put all our resources together. You say you have a lot more of that. And they are like two generations behind. Their Millennials function like our younger boomers. Interesting, because you have all the feel, your propriety, the social rules, and respecting your elders. So you see that that sort of backed up. But the more independent a culture is, the faster their wheels turn.
Megan: Interesting.
Kristin: There’s so many weird things.
Megan: So many things that you just don’t think about on a regular basis, and also, too, when you think about long-term strategy and how you’re planning, especially from a business perspective, like there has to be a huge variable that’s associated.
Kristin: It is a massive variable. You can’t go too far in any one direction. So I think we saw COVID as a great example, where everybody started, and we’re going to double down on getting millennials, and we’re going to build lunch rigs in our buildings, and we’re going to have ping pong tables and sleep pots. And now those same millennials, they built them for, have no intention of walking back into that office ever. So you can’t go swinging too far in any one direction; you just need to make small pivot points.
Megan: So let me ask you this, and then we’re going to switch topics a little bit. How do you, I mean, thinking about Gen Alphas and someone in your position, anticipate what some of those behaviors might be 10 years from now? Yeah, I would imagine that’s very challenging.
Kristin: It is very hard.
Megan: From the historical generations, you can kind of use that a bit.
Kristin: You’ve got a lot of that sort of backspin. I hear people complaining about Gen Z’s all the time right now, and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, so think about your people in the 1930s. They were idolizing mobsters. They were the super violent; they were showing their knees’, you know what I mean? The same thing about Gen Z’s. The big thing that I would say here is that it depends on if there’s a catastrophic event for the Alphas and how they pivot. So what’s always happened in America before is right around where we are in the fourth turning there’s always been a war. We’re babies compared to the rest of the world. So other people have had pandemics, social crashes, and things like that. But America has always had a war. So I say very often, I can make estimations on how Alphas are going to go if there’s not a war that comes in and changes everything. And this version of war would look significantly different than any other version of war that we’ve had at this point. Because, again, you’ve got the ability to do cyber security. It is the cyber side. I had so many great cyber security students that taught me tons at UH but they would say things like, ‘It’s the civilians who will have pain in another world war.’ The electricity grid goes down, or it won’t be just your son’s going to get picked up and sent off to Afghanistan in the same sort of way. You can’t access your money. Just think about a few months ago when we were all stuck in airports for almost a week.
Megan: Everything shut down.
Kristin: So I think it really depends on—I can make estimations, assuming everything continues in the path that it is right now. But if there’s a big thing that happens, then it resets it all, which is what’s always happening.
Megan: So this is a good segue into something I’m curious about your opinion on, especially as a mother of four; you’re also a foster parent, yes, which is just so—
Kristin: Hardest job i have ever done
Megan: We had Lee Marshall here last week.
Kristin: She is my bestie.
Megan: The best, and what an amazing interview and doing Over the Edge. I could go on forever about her. But I want to go back to—I think about my 11-year-old, who wants to be a YouTube star. And he’s like, ‘Oh, well, I saw it on the internet. So therefore it must be true, right?’ What’s your perspective on how technology has advanced so quickly that our brains have not been able to keep up with that? And you’re seeing so much around mental health and anxiety and depression and all of these things. What have you sort of learned in a lot of your research about how far we’ve come versus how far we cannot keep up, and how that’s impacting from a mental health perspective? Is there any correlation there that you see a lot in your research?
Kristin: Yes, I think the problem is that, by your nature, you always think it could be better as humans. You forget how good of a world that you actually live in. For hundreds of years, nobody had a warm shower. So the idea that you can just stand there in a warm shower is pretty darn good. You can cook your food in a microwave. You don’t have to spend eight hours or wash clothes in 30 minutes. So I think that’s part of the problem; we always think that things can be better and more efficient, and we don’t enjoy any of the things that we currently have—we are not thankful for what we have. That’s sort of the first kind of weird pivot point that I would say there. The other side is that you have young people who think they can all be YouTube stars. I call that the Bieber effect—the idea that one person did it and so everybody thinks that they can do it. But then there are people that are literally making fortunes off of gaming and streaming and things like that. With my kids, and I guess I can only really come from my perspective, I spend a lot of time kind of pooping on that dream. I say a lot of, ‘You’re more likely to be hit by lightning than to become a famous influencer.’ So I have a tendency to say, ‘That’s cool if you want to do that on the side, but you should always have that in your brain as a side hustle, not necessarily as your main life.
I spend a lot of time with my kids talking about life purpose and what you are made to be. What are you uniquely designed to be? So, for example, our younger two boys are adopted out of foster care, and they’re both black Americans. And so, one of the things we have—because we look different everywhere we go—it’s white parents with black children, and people are confused every time. So from a time we’ve been very young, it’s always been just because it’s weird to people, doesn’t mean it’s bad, so that’s sort of our conversation. We tell them, you were born with specific DNA that you have to be able to accomplish whatever your life purpose is. We believe we were designed to parent you, to get you to that. But you have your DNA for a reason. And so our goal is to help you figure out what that is; go be awesome in that way. So I think that’s where a lot of parents are kind of slipping. They’re not having those hard conversations with their kids and saying, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I mean, it might magically work out. You being an influencer, I’m not saying that you can’t go for that to some degree, but what are the other six things that you could do? What are some other talented things that you do? What are other options that you could do? There’s a thousand ways to make money. I tell my children all the time.
So I think that would be one of the parenting fronts that I would say is part of making sure that your kid doesn’t end up just being somebody who is always trying to make it and never actually launches, is to let them see that they have multiple capabilities and multiple talents. Highlight them when they do something really awesome in an interesting way, especially if you can’t do it. For example, my youngest is just the kind one; he’s the sweet one. He sees when other people feel left out. He sees that. And my nature is to come in and dominate the thing and make sure everybody else is having fun. So I go out and say, “Hey KK, that’s really super kind of you to let that person eat first or choose not to play on the video game so that your friend could; that’s really kind.” And kindness translates into all kinds of jobs when you have a natural heart for things.
Megan: That’s really sweet.
Kristin: So from a parenting standpoint, that’s what I would say: find their holes, don’t discourage them, and tell them they can never, ever do these kinds of things, because it kind of makes them want more, but the odds are so low. My son, Zach, is really talented, a beautiful athlete, and gorgeous. He is a 12-year-old who is six feet tall and a size 14 shoe, and he looks good in pads already. He plays on the varsity team already. But at the same time, I tell him the odds of being a professional football player are very low. So let’s find something else that you love that you can develop skills in at the same time.
Megan: I love the series that you guys are doing about; what would you call it about ruining our kids? The whole series title is Ruin Your Kids. My husband and I are constantly having those conversations where I’m like, ‘Where did we go wrong? In preparation for this, so many of the things that are always in my mind you have hit where it’s like I was legitimately told to not come home until the sun was setting and there was no filtered water and all of those types of things, and absolutely a latchkey kid, and now it’s like my son has to FaceTime me every 15 minutes, which I love at the same time; it’s so different.
Kristin: I spend a lot of time with him and say, “Why? Why do you want to talk to me? I don’t really want to talk to you.”
Megan: It’s interesting. Yeah, it’s just so different. But it just cracked me up about that.
Kristin: Yes, I’m excited about the series, because that’s one of the things that people come to me, every single presentation that I’ve done, and say, ‘I love learning this for my company, but it really helped me with my kids’. And people say, ‘When are you going to write a parenting book?’ I am not a parenting expert. So that’s scary to me to do.
Megan: That’s exactly why you should write it.
Kristin: Even with this lesson, I’m coming at it from the angle. I’m not trying to tell you what to do with your kids. I’m just saying here the impact, here’s the forces on them, like the one that we just went through was about when you remove the after-school job, so many lessons about doing things that you don’t want to do got wiped. Because you don’t need to have the money, and you don’t have to go out with your friends just to still have a good time. And it changes things and pivots things. So now you’ve got a generation of people who are coming in without the 16-year-old lessons. And so now you’re teaching 24 year olds. You’re looking at people with 4.0 from Alabama, Auburn, in Engineering. And you’re like, ‘But why are you still stupid? Why? How? How are you still stupid?’ And they’re like, ‘15 minutes isn’t late.’ And you’re like, ‘But Bill, it is.” Sorry that you didn’t learn that earlier, but this is the line, and that line has to be drawn.
Megan: I will say that learning several things from you and your research and Kristin’s website is amazing. It has a ton of resources. I’ll just be completely honest; I find myself when we do interviews at times, and we interview students who are coming out of college often, and they don’t have a notepad when they come in, and you mentioned that.
Kristin: ‘Bring a notepad. It is the easiest thing in the world to bring. Bring it even if you never write on it.’
Megan: ‘Even if you never write on it.’ I had a lot of anger around things like that at times, and I never really understood it. And my natural inclination was, ‘They’re lazy; they’re not paying attention.’ That’s not the case at all. And I really had to step back and have my ego a little bit on that, because I didn’t; again, it’s just understanding. I am sure that you understand both sides of the equation and are not being as judgmental as to just quickly cast an opinion on someone.
Kristin: Yes, I think we have a tendency to do that. ‘I’m the right version. You’re the wrong version’ on pretty much everything.
Megan: Maybe just because I’m older
Kristin: Just because I’m older
Megan: Which is not true.
Kristin: No, no, no. I’ll give you just a weird example. When I was a professor, everything about chat GPT terrified me because it was like, ‘They’re not going to learn, and they’re not going to do anything.’ and that kind of stuff. And now, every time I write an email and I know that I have to be professional, I will go to chatGPT and be like, ‘Here’s the thing I really want to say; say it in a way that’s not going to get me sued.’ But I’m telling you, I will mention that to Boomers and Gen Xers and ways that they can use that, and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, that’s like cheating,’ and I am like, ‘No, that’s like making your life easier.’ So I think that that willingness to be agile and mobile, we’re not in a world anymore where it’s just us teaching lessons to them. They have a lot that they can teach us. They might say like every third word when they say it, which might get on your nerves, but it doesn’t mean that when they say it’s not true. So I think it’s very much making peace with the fact that, in many ways, that outpacing of technology is putting them on levels of things that you need. I tell people all the time, ‘Don’t be mad that someone doesn’t have social adaptability, and then you refuse to learn how to convert a PDF.’ If we’re all learning, then we’re all learning, boo. So that’s one of the big things that I’ve been kind of focused on here lately: how do you upskill? What kind of leadership development programs are you putting in place to undergird that and make sure that they’re progressive?
Megan: I will say, I’m proud to say that I think I have learned just as much from those who are younger than me than I have from those who are older, and the group that we have here is phenomenal. And I always learn something, and I tell them that all the time. They run circles around me in many ways.
Kristin: Absolutely
Megan: And I hope that can be a good balance, understanding that.
Kristin: When you outsource certain parts, where you say, ‘Okay, that my brain doesn’t do that. So I’m just so and so’s brain is totally into that, so I’m just gonna outsource that, and then you give me a report.’ It does not have to be a competition. It does not always have to be me versus them. Show them they get too big for their bridges. Their bridges are big.
Megan: So we’re going to end on a fun note too because I learned that you are a bit of a Disney planning–
Kristin: You know all the secrets now.
Megan: I know I’ve never once taken my kids to Disney because I’m like, I can’t. I just can’t deal with all of the stuff. So talk to us just a little bit about that and how you got involved.
Kristin: Oh my gosh. This is the real truth here. So my husband’s work is supply chain management and product placement. That’s his thing. He is a pencil-necked geek. He does nerd stuff all day long. And I’m sort of the creative. I love variations; I’ll bring the lunch and not even eat that lunch. When we went to Disney for the first time, he looked at it as a puzzle. It was a system to be beaten. ‘How do we make fast pass and maximize our time and our money and that sort of stuff?’ And so once he sort of figured out the system and started being able to beat the system and having a better time than everybody after two or three, that was the only vacation he wanted to take. So because, again, he doesn’t like change, he doesn’t like noobs. And so I started a Disney blog at the time, purely so that I wouldn’t be bored out of my mind going to Disney. So I started going on the hunt for, ‘How do you stretch a meal for one person into a meal for three people, or what’s the best bathroom that you can go to that has the least amount of lines?’ So again, it’s a creative side, the idea of—I love that he loved it because who wants to go on a vacation with their spouse, and they hate it and act like a jerk the whole time? I only tried camping once with my nerd. Because he’ll make it miserable for everybody else if he doesn’t like it.
So I did that, and then he turned my son into a Disney file. My oldest son was in there with it. He’s obsessed with queues, like the lines. And then he was literally at four to five, being like, ‘Look at how the seashell is here and how it leads you to—’ he’s a perfect blend of art and earth, and so they became Disney people, and then all they wanted to do was go to Disney. So I built more and more of the blog stuff, and then I started getting tired of writing all the time. So I started hiring other people in to write for me who would write at Disney and Disneyland, Paris, and things like that. And then I started getting so tired of writing it when I would go to Disney that I started to vlog. And if I had just freaking stayed with that, I probably have tons of Disney money now, but I didn’t, but I would stop in the middle of a thing and do a video, “Here’s what I mean by taking this shortcut,” and be able to show people where that is, and it blew up very fast.
Megan: When was this?
Kristin: This was, let’s see, Logan was—this would have been 2004 till about; let’s see, when we adopted the boys, so that would be around 2015.
Megan: So a time when social media was not even a thing.
Kristin: Nobody was thinking about that. I had an actual Disney blog, tips from the Disney divas. And it was great, and it was fun. And I enjoyed it, and then I sold it, which is every business owner’s number one job; find how the heck you’re going to sell this thing and eventually get out of it.
Megan: How many Disney trips did your family take?
Kristin: So my son has 27, and we have done Disneyland Paris. We’ve done—I’ve become a Disneyland fan significantly more than Disneyworld. I feel like it has more personality, and there’s not as many angry people. I know that sounds insane but I think it’s because they’ve got more locals there, and there’s so many Disney World people there that are like, ‘This is my once in a lifetime thing and I’m gonna pack it all in.’ Our number one Disney tip for you is that you must sleep in the middle of the day; period the end. You must take a break. It is always quality over quantity. If you want to have good Disney trips. People will never remember how many rides you went on. They will always remember your yelling meltdown in the middle of Main Street. So our rule is you try your best to make it for rope drop, and then you sleep for two to three hours in a day and cool off, and then you pump your kid full of caffeine and you stay until the park closes, and then you do it all over again. Like when we design plans for people, to this day, I will happily write you over a plan of what you want and ask what your kids are into. And here’s the order you need to go in and how you need to get around things. And now you’re going to take a nap here. I love it.
My husband says very often that when we finally do the retire, retire, he’ll start like his own little guide trip business down there, because he’s way more chilled out about it than I am and he’ll just lead people around. We won’t have the little plaid vests like all the other Disney people do, but we’ll find our own version of that.
Megan: I love it.
Kristin: So, it’s just from repeats, but now my younger kids have been to Disney maybe three times, but they’ve been to London, and they’ve been to Costa Rica, and they’ve been through the Panama Canal, and they’ve been through—so eventually Kristin said, ‘I am tired of seeing the Cox version of Paris; we’re going to go see the real version.
Megan: Which is very different.
Kristin: But again, that helps when you finally get to the point where you have money. I say it all the time, my older kids got the fun version, and my older kids got my parents with money version.
Megan: Yeah, I love that. We’re in our own seasons as adults, too, and sometimes our kids forget that.
Kristin: That’s right.
Megan: That was something we were talking about before this, but I think it’s always important just for them to have that perspective. That word, perspective, is probably the most overly used in my house.
Kristin: One of the things I’ve started saying in my presentations regularly is you can only parent from your perspective. You only have your worldview, the experiences that you’ve had, what you have through from your race, your gender, or your socioeconomic background, and what part of the country you’re from; you can only parent from that. So that’s why your parents are going to have a very different perspective on how you have to raise your children. But one of the things I tell businesses constantly now is that your new employees and the children of today are built for a world that does not yet exist. They’re never going to have to go back and survive 1985; that’s never going to happen. They’re never gonna have to go back to hose water neglect. It’s not gonna be a thing. So they need to be able to survive 2045, so if we spend a hard time trying to tamp them down and make them into people that are from the past, then they’re not gonna be successful in their futures. And I think we’ve got a little bit of that playing out in real time in the workplace right now where we want people to go back to rules that don’t make any sense at all.
Megan: So if you want to survive—
Kristin: That is what I say to people: ‘You can continue your path, and you’ll go the way of blockbuster, and that’s completely up to you. But I’m telling you that the ones who are adaptable, who may make pipelines, who start figuring out, Who start making adaptations, who allow people that are under 35 to sit on their board of trustees are going to do better.’
Megan: 10,000% I can’t agree more. It has been awesome.
Kristin: I am glad you had a good time. I had a good time too. Thank you for having me.
Megan: We will have all of the show notes too, with links to your website. I know you’re booked out.
Kristin: I am booked out, but January still got some holes, February, March, or especially if you got to get rid of your budget by the end of October. I’m here for you, babe.
Megan: That’s a great point. Thank you so much.
Kristin: No problem; I had a great time.