#8 - How to Challenge Corporate Culture and Redefine Leadership [TRACY GREEN]

Chris Miller: You are officially in the dining room studio. We have the studio dog here. He's kind of like the mascot. I'm still trying to teach him how to talk, but you're the first out of state guest.
Tracy Green: Uh oh, actually, I'm not, though, dang it because I live on the Kansas side of Casey know, but I work Missouri, so I spend a fair amount of time, uh, there and, uh, uh, abroad, if you will, a lot of other places.
Chris Miller: Was the family growing up in Missouri?
Tracy Green: No, I'm actually, uh, a Kansas native.
Chris Miller: How do you go from small town Kansas to Big World Disney?
Tracy Green: Oh, well, UM, yeah, through existential crisis, I think so I had changed my major in college about six times within the course of three semesters. And that was about the time that I realized, hey, maybe you don't know what you're doing. UM, I had an advisor, which, sadly, I don't even remember their name. This is how out of focus I was at that age, uh, who was like, maybe you should take some time to figure this out. And they were the first adult to ever say that you could step away from that and be like, you don't need to rush through this. It is a step that you'll take, but it might not be in this time frame. And I went home for Christmas break, and I remember being very nervous. And I told my mom, UM, I didn't enroll for next semester.
Chris Miller: Wow.
Tracy Green: That I was dropping out. And, of course, family disappointment, but my parents never, ever show that sort of stuff on the outside. They were just like, that's your decision to make. And they were like, well, it's always, what's the plan? Right? So what will you do instead?
Chris Miller: Yeah.
Tracy Green: And instead was to move here to Lawrence, Kansas. UM, I worked two jobs. I worked at a bank, and I worked at a department store in the evening.
Chris Miller: Why Lawrence?
Tracy Green: I had friends here. There was an opening in their apartment. I was, at the time before that, living in Hayes, Kansas, which is way out in western Kansas, where my rent for my single bedroom apartment that I lived in alone cost, uh, $280 a month. Can you imagine?
Chris Miller: Wow.
Tracy Green: What a beauty.
Chris Miller: What a beauty.
Tracy Green: It was definitely eye opening to move to Lawrence and then pay $600 for one bedroom of a condominium that I was in, which was crazy. And I was like, how are you going to save money? Well, I'm getting two jobs, like, blah, blah, blah. UM, and I was making more money here. I think the opportunity these were friends from high school. I already knew them and all of that. Well, I did that for about six months. I saved up quite a bit of money. I was able to pay off most of my loans from my first to what was my year and a half of college. So I kind of was I was close to debt free. It wasn't completely debt free, but I felt comfortable. I got conned into moving abroad. uh, a friend of mine who was a German exchange student at college, she was like, if you want to just go see the world, which is something that I was interested in. She's like, you could go to Germany and work as an apparel, and then on the weekends, you can just take the train to wherever. And she signed me up for a website, and I was like, okay, you leave on Monday. So I'll just unsign up for this website in the vastness of the Internet, thinking that I could just delete something. But I was like, I'll just remove myself from this. But Monday came around, and I had had 20 families reach out to me and were like, hey, we're very interested in having you come over and we'll pay for your flight. You would teach. Your main job would be, like, nannying and also speaking English to our children, because they do learn English and daycare in primary school there, but, uh, they prefer to have a native English speaker. These more well to do families. So I was, like, really considering it. I was like, well, maybe this was a sign. This is a very long story to get to. Why did I go to Disney? UM, so I moved abroad, broke that news to my mother on Mother's Day that year. And she was just like, yeah, okay. uh, I think my parents have always held optimistic disbelief in the crazy schemes that I bring to them. But, uh, much to their probably, uh, regret, i, uh, have a very clear follow through when I set destinations for myself. And so I moved abroad, and I worked there for about eight months. And in that time, I got to travel around quite a bit. I went to about one location a month. I went somewhere else. So I traveled to about eight different countries wow. While I lived in Germany. So that was very 22 at the time. I'm 20 going on 21. Yeah, 20 was a big year for me. But I turned 21, UM, that year, uh, while I was over there. anyways, so I travel around all of Europe, right? I come back to the States, and I'm like, you know what? Tourism is big. Tourism is a big thing. We don't even advertise tourism in the Us. I feel like that's a missed opportunity. You could have a tourism for Kansas, like campaign. A lot of people want to do the American road trip. A lot of people from foreign countries come here. They rent those rvs. Cruise USA rvs. Those rental rv companies. UM, not branded, we're not sponsored. So you can cut that out. Reach out to please. UM, they must be making money. It's crazy expensive. But they'll rent these rvs, they'll pick them up in La. And they will just make these huge grand road trips across the Us. And stop in places that I'm sure they're like, I've never even heard of topeka, Kansas. And it's because we don't do any sort of external advertisement. We do company advertisements, but we don't necessarily do tourism advertisements in that way. I think it's getting better. I think you're seeing more and more states taking ownership of that. I know, like, Tennessee has a really big UM, and Michigan, they've all dropped pretty large ad campaigns for their tourism. But it's not like the national parks are, like, collectively being like, come visit us here's. The national parks advert. UM, yeah, it could be amazing. uh, anyways, I saw a big opportunity in that area, and so I was like, how do I get into tourism? Where can I go? When I moved back to the States, I moved in with my brother. He lived at the time in Manhattan, Kansas. uh, my dad and him are both K State alumni. Sorry, I'm in a ku household right now. But I lived here first. Okay. And then I moved and then I moved to Manhattan. I studied hotel and restaurant management at K State. And, uh, to graduate in that degree, you have to have a small internship that takes, like, a semester. You work in, like, a local hotel. You write different essays about the work that you're doing in that place. And then you have to have two large internships for large companies, preferably, UM, International, if possible. So you're talking about the hiltons, the marriotts, the disney's of the world. And so Disney was one that I was interested in, and I went to work for them in 2010.
Chris Miller: That's so cool just to say, this is such a good example of you don't have to get your college degree in four years, all the things you did. I think if we were to take everybody five years out of the picture maybe not everybody, but the majority of people, and they hear your story of going to seven different countries in seven months and yeah, moving to lawrence and moving to Manhattan, and then you are getting a little bit more of a dialed in. Like, hey, this is something that could work. Like that's. So cool.
Tracy Green: Yeah. And now you think about what I do. So how do we get from there to where I am now? I work in, UM, it, uh, software project management. How does that work? What's the step there, Chris?
Chris Miller: Well, were you working whenever you were at Disney? Were you working at Animal Kingdom? At, ah, one of the hotels?
Tracy Green: Uh, I was at hotels. I was in lodging, UM, because that's what made the most sense. I actually worked in concierge services, which, UM, sounds very pansy, but it just means I sold park tickets and made reservations for people. UM, my first internship, 2010, I worked at the wilderness campground. Which campground? How does that work? Well, let me tell you a campground, if you've never, ever thought about it, is like running a hotel where every door is unlocked and you can just go wherever you want to go. So you could set people to go to this site. UM, they show up to that site and then somebody's already there. So it's a lot. If it comes down to it, guest recovery is what we call that. A lot of, like, problem solving and making amends to your customers in the very Disney esque fashion of let me make this right. I hear you. I hear what you're saying. I understand exactly how this problem happened. UM, but let me make it right to you.
Chris Miller: As a cast member, I want to resolve it right.
Tracy Green: Absolutely. I don't want this to impact your downstream effects. This is going to be a great vacation, great family memories. We want you to have the ultimate experience. Let's brush this aside and let's focus on making things right. Like, how do we move forward from here? UM, honestly, some of the best training that I've ever received in De escalation and, uh, outside the box thinking, UM, which is something that I still use every day in project management as far as to say, okay, here's the problem. We could handle it the way that it's always been handled, but obviously this problem keeps happening. How do we address this further? Like, how can we move forward with this action? So I use that stuff all the time now. UM, I came back and finished my degree the next year, and then I went back to Disney to do my second internship. So my degree was pending. This second internship. The internships. Yes. You do caveat to anybody who's listening to this, going, I'm going to have my kid do a, uh, Disney internship. They are not going to make money, UM, in the sense they're not bringing money home.
Chris Miller: They're making money to survive where they're at.
Tracy Green: Right, absolutely. Because Orlando is incredibly expensive. UM, it is a tourist town where people have to live. So somehow amongst the tourists grocery prices, the tourist gas prices, the tourists food prices of eating out and things like that, there are locals somewhere who are trying to also pay those prices. And that's why you see more and more suburbs or smaller towns that are starting to get swallowed up by Orlando. UM, because, like, cast members and universal calls, there are people, teammates, uh, or team members, they all have to work and live somewhere that's close enough to get back to those locations. It's a real challenge. But additionally, any money that you do make that isn't spent on living is immediately filtered back into the parks. It's the greatest scheme that Disney has ever hatched. Because when you work for them as an intern, you have free, UM, transit. They give you, like, a public transit system. So, having lived in Europe, I was like, oh my gosh. Buses. This is great.
Chris Miller: Around the park.
Tracy Green: Yeah. To the parks, to your work locations. UM, there's a couple that go to downtown or to the shopping centers so that you can get to those places as well. So you're kind of stuck in the loops wherever those buses go, unless you have your own vehicle and you can afford gas. And then additionally, your other big thing that they give you is a free park pass. So you get to go into the parks anytime you want. There are a few blackout dates, right? You can't go in on Christmas or you can't go in on New Year's. UM, but that would only be like one of the parks. Like, you couldn't go to Magic Kingdom, but you could go to epcot or you could go to Animal Kingdom or something like that for the day. So your form of entertainment is the parks, right? Like, that's free. You can go into the parks for free. But here's the thing, and if you're ever given compensation at Disney and they're like, hey, we'll give you, uh, you had a bad experience, let's give you another park day. You you can have the opportunity to make that up again. For every person who goes into those parks, they anticipate that they will spend approximately $120 a day per person. So them giving you a free I think the park tickets now are, like 140. So them giving you a free 140 day ticket, they're not worried about it. They're not worried about it at all. Because even if that was a loss of that $140, if you're one person, you spend 120 ish food, merchandise. Maybe you want the fast passes that cost money now. Maybe you have to pay to park whatever your situation is as a cast member who goes in there, even if your park ticket is completely free to go in, you're still going to drop whatever money you have left to get a bottle of water to, uh, buy, uh, a thing of popcorn. Like, maybe you want a churro, whatever your situation is. And if you're a kid who spends literally all day there, we used to go from park open, like, 08:00 a.m. Until fireworks at midnight on your day off because, yeah, you have to eat that whole time. I mean, I was eating trash. But you're also running around like crazy. You're burning crazy calories when you're there. So, yeah, if you're a parent who's like, I'm going to send my kid to Disney, that's a great experience. Just understand that they will be broke and indebted to you. Do not give them a credit card. Do not give them a credit card. That credit card will be spent on, UM, extreme food that is outside of their affordability. I think I ate at every high end restaurant that was on Disney property. I was like, it's educational experience. I have to book these things for my clients so I can tell them what it's like. Yeah, exactly. How can I possibly book someone, uh, the restaurant that's at the top of the contemporary if I myself have never been there? Man, I'm a great salesman to my parents. UM, and they believed me.
Chris Miller: How can I book this restaurant to.
Tracy Green: These millionaires who are more than happy to waste their money and would just completely believe me if I told them that, oh, it's great. It's the best dinner I've ever had. Meanwhile, I've never been there. I could absolutely do that. But instead, I conned my parents into paying for me to go to all these restaurants.
Chris Miller: And you did get the experience, I.
Tracy Green: Mean I did, absolutely. Yeah. No, it's a big win.
Chris Miller: Whether or not it was necessary is something, but the fact that you got it how many college interns do you think there are at Disney?
Tracy Green: Oh, I, UM, think they make up they used to make up, like, a third of their employment, which is both good and bad. Post, UM, pandemic, it's probably significantly less than that. And I don't even know if they're doing I guess they probably are. I was there for Christmas this year. Well, Christmas time, I was working on a project in Georgia, and I drove down to visit my friends who still live down there. UM, I do know that they have started the international internships back up. So, UM, a lot of international students also come and work for Disney. I would say that that number let's say there's, like, 68,000 cast members. Probably a good 20,000 of that is interns.
Chris Miller: Wow.
Tracy Green: Yeah.
Chris Miller: Wow. And you mentioned still pretty close to.
Tracy Green: A third and bad. UM oh, yeah. Like anything, there's pros and cons to it. UM, one of the biggest pros for me, which at that phase of my life, I feel like I was a lot older than a lot of those other interns who were going into those projects. And for me, I felt like I wasn't going to worry as much about the social aspect. I had a friend who was also there. ah. And I was like, oh, I can hang out with Dan whenever I want to. That's fine. Or my roommates. Because you get put into doubled up housing. So it's like in a two bedroom apartment, there are four girls, and trying to make that work, that's a social nightmare. But, UM, you would hang out with those people a lot, or you, UM, get really close to the people that you work with a lot of times. But those relationships, I wasn't anticipating them to be anything crazy, but I still have a lot of friends that have now gone on to work for, like, the marriott and the hiltons and, like, all these other big companies. UM, you know, people who are, like, managing very nice, massive hotels, UM, managing hundreds, thousands of people on their payrolls.
Chris Miller: Wow.
Tracy Green: And those relationships are probably the most important thing that I took away from my time at Disney. I mean, I've been in like five weddings. And, UM, I'm like godparent to like three or four different sets of kids from those relationships. And it's been great. It's been fantastic. From a social outreach.
Chris Miller: Any Disney themed weddings.
Tracy Green: Not overtly Disney theme goofy? No, mickey didn't walk anyone down an aisle, UM, in any of these weddings. But, UM, I think they all have a little bit of like a pixie dusk fling, if you will.
Chris Miller: A little of the magic.
Tracy Green: A little bit of the magic. Maybe they have ears on the guest book table or one of my best friends from college, he was at the internship the same as I. He just got married. Not this past December, December before. And they got married in New Orleans. And he's a big, uh, fan of jazz. And, uh, there were a few nods to the Princess and the frog, UM, in their wedding, but nothing, again, overtly like Disney.
Chris Miller: She wasn't wearing a mini dress.
Tracy Green: Yeah, she was wearing a black dress. It was kind of crazy. It was very elvira esque, UM, but I loved it. uh, yeah, I didn't know that or I didn't really take notice of it. Their invitations said on there, UM, the bride requests that nobody wears black. And thank God, uh, I had a friend who was like, you're not wearing a black dress, are you? I was like, I, uh, don't know. I haven't bought a dress for this yet. And he was like, well, it says on the invite m. And I was like, oh, thank God you read that.
Chris Miller: The bride request.
Tracy Green: This is the bride request. UM, I skimmed it for the, ah, site location details. And, UM, I called it good. I sent off my rsvps and was like, thank you very much.
Chris Miller: You're like, I'll be there with a black dress.
Tracy Green: And they're like, all caps.
Chris Miller: The one thing we don't want you to have. And you were the intern. You come back to Manhattan?
Tracy Green: Yes, I came back. I finished my degree, and then I had to do one more internship with a local place. No, I'd already done that one. I'd been working at, UM, a hotel there in Manhattan throughout most of my return to college, if you will. And I got to move, uh, up the ranks in there. It was really nice because they didn't really have an, UM, onboarding system, if you will. So I got to kind of write some of their training materials, which was really great, and transitioned me into my return to Disney. So when I came back to Disney, I worked in hotels again, I worked on the luxury line, UM, series of hotels. I worked at the boardwalk Hotel, uh, which is themed after New Jersey, of all places. UM, again, sidebar people vacation in places that they feel comfortable in. The boardwalk hosts a lot of our guests who come from New york, New Jersey.
Chris Miller: How funny is that?
Tracy Green: UM, it's very much like the shoreline, and they feel comfortable there. UM, likewise, I think people who enjoy maybe more like, californian vibes, they, UM, either go to Beach Club or to the Contemporary. It's one of those weird things, UM, people just feel comfortable where they're comfortable. So when I came back and I worked in the luxury line, I was presented with an opportunity to do onboarding for Disney University for the lodging line of service.
Chris Miller: Okay, so Disney University?
Tracy Green: Yeah, Disney University is what they call their introductory onboarding school. So if you ever go to Disney and you interact with a cast member, and then you go somewhere completely different inside the Disney bubble to another location, you interact with a cast member and you're like, wow, that was very similar. They have, like, a very standardized way that they greet people. It always feels genuine and unique, but it is the same sort of down to the hand movements that they'll do, uh, where they'll open palm gesture, or they'll do the two finger point at, uh, Disney to kind of direct you places. That's all part of an onboarding process that Disney does, and they host that through Disney University. So when you get hired, you go through what's called tradition. It's an eight hour session of familiarity with the brand in one day. Yeah. UM, and you start this is not slander by any means. This is the reality. You can start that one day of being like, I kind of like Disney. It seems like a pretty cool place. And by the end, you will be like, we at Disney believe that magic is all around us.
Chris Miller: Brilliant.
Tracy Green: Yeah. uh, you're suddenly in a bad relationship with Disney, UM, and you believe in it. It's real. So that's the first of the trainings that happens at Disney University. And then depending upon which branch of service you go into, like food and beverage, or housekeeping, lodging, custodial, all of them have different levels of training that they then go through for lodging line of business. There's a 40 hours, like a full week of classroom training that takes place. And then you'll be asked to go back to your host location, your actual hotel that you work for, and you'll do another 40 to 80 hours of site specific location, UM, where you get familiar with the location, and then also the processes of front desk. And then if you go into concierge service, there was another 40 hours training classroom setting of all of the systems that we used for see, I'm still we that they use for, UM, booking services, selling tickets, things like that. And then one piece of that is troubleshooting, problem solving troubleshooting, things like that. And then you go back to the hotel where you do a shadow process for another 40 hours or so. So it's a lot of training. Yeah, it's a whole month of familiarity and there's usually actually about, UM, it's a month just to become familiar within a singular role. So, front desk would take you a month, and then you would go and come back, because there is the 80 hours of training, both in the classroom and then on site. And then for two weeks after that, you'll see all the cast members. They have their little badges, right? UM, look like clouds with Disney on it. uh, underneath it, there'll be a little red banner, and it says, Earning my ears. That means they're in training. UM, and so you do two weeks of earning your ears. It's kind of like your bandaid to say, like, hey, don't hurt me. I'm new, please stop yelling at me. I'm just earning my ears in hopes that it will lessen your interactions with some of our less, uh, forgiving guests, if you will. UM, and then you go back to Disney University to do that concierge service with your ears. You now have ears for front desk, but you have to earn your ears again to become a concierge. So, it's a lot of training now. UM, I don't think they do that. I think it's like, gosh, I've been gone so long. uh, I think it's like a standardized process. Everybody who works at the front desk can also be concierge, I believe is the situation.
Chris Miller: So, what I'm hearing you say is, anywhere you go after Disney, maybe not anywhere the majority of companies you go to after working for Disney, you're thinking, this is it for onboarding.
Tracy Green: I'm so glad you said that, because, yes, it really is. uh, like, that where you're just like, okay, UM, I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but I do not know how to do my job right now. And, yeah, it sets a very unrealistic expectation of what your career life will look like after that. And I would say that my number one issue with most of the jobs I've worked since then is that there's no onboarding that you don't feel confident, you just thrown to the wolves. And, uh, it's so funny you say that, because I really, UM, have probably never pieced those pieces together before. But, yeah, I feel like maybe my, uh, uh, expectations are unrealistic. Now I'm questioning myself. UM, yeah, when I left Disney, I had not had a personal vacation. And, like, going on four or five years, I didn't feel like I could take pto. UM, you didn't have any extra money to do any of that stuff. Once you leave the college program, and I rolled into being a full time cast member, I was still living, like, six people deep in a three bedroom apartment. It was a slightly nicer apartment. It wasn't built in the 80s, but it was still a situation where you're like, wow, this feels a lot like college. And I thought I'd be building more of a career. Also, advancement in Disney is very tricky, so a lot of growth happens laterally. So I would have started in hotels, and I would have moved to being a manager of custodial or of housekeeping or something like that. I wasn't interested in lateral growth in that way. UM, and I had a very wise mentor who'd been a leader at Disney for a very long time. She unfortunately retired during the pandemic, but she said to me, tracy, your personality is not one that will probably rise in Disney. And I was like, I could have been very hurt by that, I think. But what she was really trying to say is that my overly active moral compass was going to get in the way of a lot of, UM, m potential movement, potential growth. Because I very much was the sort of person who would be like, that's not right. We're not doing that. Like, UM, or like, oh yeah, you.
Chris Miller: Deserve the promotion over me, or right. Things like that. Like, yeah, right.
Tracy Green: If I was going to, like, I'd be the one who was seeing, like, m white male counterparts who were mediocre raising through the ranks, and I'd be like, wait a minute, what's going on here?
Chris Miller: Right?
Tracy Green: That person's an idiot. Why are you promoting them? uh, like I said, it could have been very hurtful advice.
Chris Miller: Sure.
Tracy Green: But I think it was kind of yeah, absolutely. I respected her. She had been my manager on my first internship. And then when I came back from my second internship, I was actually on the tour of the facility that I was going to be working in. And she stopped me in the hall, and she goes, do I know you? I know you. You worked at Fort wilderness with me. And I was just like, oh my God, somebody remembers me.
Chris Miller: Thousands of faces.
Tracy Green: Yeah, I was like over a year had passed. She sees thousands of faces every day. UM, but she remembered me from being an intern the previous time. She was great. She was a great mentor. Her journey at Disney had also been very convoluted. She'd had, uh, movements up and then movements down, and she had been promised things that had never happened. And she kind of towed the company line for them. But, like, all with, like, kind of a slight jaded edge to her. Yeah. No, I respected the heck out of her.
Chris Miller: Me too. And you have in your management style because I got to work under your tutelage, you have similar vibes of that idea of being real with that, uh, this is a large corporation, and there's a lot of nuances here, and opportunity looks different for everyone. And there's all these things we need to consider. So I can tell that with the mentor that you talk about, it makes sense. Kind of explaining some of your leadership style.
Tracy Green: Yeah. Thank you. I think, UM gosh, if I could become Ellen at any point, ellen. Rowe, who is my mentor there. um, if anybody could say that I am like her, I would feel incredibly honored by that. um, you're like Ellen. Oh, my gosh. Thank you, Chris. um, do you know the enneagram personality test?
Chris Miller: I don't know it that well, though.
Tracy Green: Okay, so I'm an eight. Eight are kind of like aggressive, no bs sort of people sometimes who are detriment. I also am not good at vulnerability, I would say. But being self aware of that is something that you then can work on those things. Right. The one thing that I absolutely cannot stand is unnecessary lies, which make up a good chunk of what I think corporate lingo corporate communication is, and specifically in the HR realm, like, just towing the company line and being a little dishonest about things. I just can't fathom the why of that.
Chris Miller: Give some examples.
Tracy Green: Oh, um, okay, so a, uh, good example of lies that are impressed upon us by, uh, corporate would be well, when they talk about growth or the potential for growth, and to be like, if you do all these things, then you will absolutely get a pay raise next year. uh, that's a lie.
Chris Miller: Right?
Tracy Green: That's absolutely a lie. um, mostly because those budgets have been approved the year prior. Right. Our company, um, previously has made those decisions. Like the budgetary team, who does not know anything about your work or about my work, or the work of our teams, those HR teams and the budgetary teams, the finance guys, they all have made those preapproved budgets six to eight months in advance. Right. The fiscal year. Absolutely. Yeah. And so then they say that project, uh, management training in the federal space or wherever you work, you're going to get blank percent of that. And then that has to be divvied up amongst the people. And it can't be in an extreme way. Right. Because if you get a 3% and somebody else on my team gets a 0.3% raise, then that's going to come back to being some sort of favoritism and be like, that kid, those numbers don't count. And I could present them with all of the information that I actually keep on my direct reports, um, and say, well, here's why. But they would be like, that's too grossly overweight or whatever. So me telling you in a one on one, even though that's encouraged upon by many of the HR team leads, uh, would be me saying, like, yeah, you're going to get what's owed to you. You get what you're deserved. um, this place is here to support you now. This place is a business. I'm happy to support you as an individual. But also, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that if you do the best work ever, you're going to get a 5% increase next year. That's not happening. um, you're going to get 1% if you're lucky, because I'm going to get a total of 5%, and I have five people.
Chris Miller: That is totally the case. It kind of creates this expectation you talk about within Disney. Disney in itself is almost like a conglomerate of companies. Right. And how, in order to advance it's, these lateral diagonal movements. I think a lot of people have gotten used to that idea of if you're talking about money in order to really make a lot more money, it's like going to a different company. And I can see how that would kind of perturb you a little bit, like, oh, absolutely.
Tracy Green: And I'm not a zealot for the truth, by any means. But I do think that there's certain things that corporate America needs to just stop pretending. Stop pretending that you care about attrition mhm. Stop caring about, stop presenting that we're trying to keep people in these spots. No, you're not. It's cheaper for you to hire someone brand new every year. Give them minimal to no training. They work for you for two and a half years. You give them minimal what you have presented as normal. uh, pay raises. um, they've never worked for anyone else ever, in their life. So of course they think that that's pretty great. And then they start to talk around year three, and they're like, hey, wait a minute, I could go to X, Y, and Z and make twenty K more than what I'm making. Is that normal? The more people they talk to, the more they realize it is. And the greatest lie that's ever been told by corporate America that my parents still believe to this day, is that you don't talk about your salary. It's personal. And I understand that money is personal. I also think that, like, transparency is everything mhm as a society, and it makes you question things that you might never have questioned before. I have a great friend who works with me. She has more experience than me. She has more relevant experience than I do. She has a higher degree. She was hired a month before me. She makes about 4k less than me. And some of that might have been that I was very honest when I came in about what I was willing to accept, and I negotiated a little bit of that. The other part of it is she's black. Like, straight up. That's the reality of it. Is that fair? Absolutely not. Would she have known if I hadn't been like, oh my God, I'm making this amount of money. I can't believe that they would do that to you. Of course not. You have to have real conversations about it, and you have to also be appalled by your privilege.
Chris Miller: Do you think that hearing that you made more money than her, do you think it ended up in a positive outcome?
Tracy Green: Maybe not so much for her. um, fully, honestly, transparently, brutally. uh, maybe not so much for her. I don't think she was surprised by that at all. I was surprised and upset by it, which didn't stop me from trying to get raises, obviously. But it did shine a different light on how I felt about my employer. It did open my eyes to go, oh, you're actually kind of gross. um, I don't really care for that. And I see you I see how you treat people. I'm aware of it and noticing taking notice, I guess.
Chris Miller: Yeah. And if you're not careful, then it's almost like you hear that and you put the onus on yourself, as if, maybe, um, I shouldn't go for a raise because I want that money to go into her pocket. It's not your responsibility. It's this major conglomerate. And I think the reason why a lot of people don't talk about salaries is because it benefits the one cutting the checks.
Tracy Green: Right, absolutely.
Chris Miller: Why would you want your employees to talk about salary? You don't want there to be any tension. You don't want there to be any.
Tracy Green: And I don't know how they've done it, because it is illegal to tell your employees that they can't talk about it. I don't know how it's transcended so far into our society that, like, my mom, who was an accountant, my dad who was an engineer, they firmly believe they were never an upper management of any of the companies that they worked for. They firmly believe it is taboo, and you do not talk about it. I think the one thing that I've always brought to the table at any company that I've worked for, that I manage people, is that do not be afraid to grow. Even if you outgrow this location, even if you outgrow this company, your growth is what I'm here to invest in.
Chris Miller: Come on.
Tracy Green: Yeah. Like, your growth is what I want to see happen. And I think that that's a beautiful thing with the new generation of managers that we're starting to see come into power here. um, I've only up until this job worked underneath Baby boomers and Gen X. um, and we're starting to see millennials come into these managerial roles. And I won't. Being a millennial, it sounds like I'm tooting my own horror. I'm like, we're so great. uh, we're just the best. We're not the best. We're damaged. We're very much like we're all in therapy. We're all trying to be self aware of our triggers and things like that. um, but I think that self awareness as a generation, um, is a different breed of managers where we are investing in you, and you being at the happiest and healthiest is the best outcome for this company. Maybe not so much on our high horse as far as, like, I'm your manager. You do what I say. um, I think it's more along the lines of if I overstep my boundaries with you, I'm not afraid to apologize. If you say that I stepped on your toes in some way and you confront me about it. I'm going to say, you know what? I apologize. I'll take ownership for my action as long as you take ownership for your emotional reaction. And that's okay. And I think you're going to see a big shift in what the workforce looks like because of this tonal change of management of HR, of these direct lineup managers who are a little bit younger, a little bit more self aware, self reflective, and have experienced the exact opposite of what they want as management. I never wanted to be some of the bad managers that I've had. The people who brush off your concerns or say, well, that's just how it's always been. That's not what I want to hear. Mhm if that's how it's always been, let's reflect here. How do we fix that? I want to help find solutions to that.
Chris Miller: Let's adjust the status quo.
Tracy Green: Yeah.
Chris Miller: Why is it that case and hearing you, I'm thinking about the middle managers, right? The people with those drag reports. How do you think it's going to adjust whenever these same people move into, like, executive spots?
Tracy Green: Oh, it's going to be huge. It's going to be groundbreaking. Now the question is, is it going to happen fast enough? Because corporate America as we know it is kind of a dying breed. It doesn't need to exist that long. And I'm not saying that there's going to be an uprising in the streets by any means.
Chris Miller: Are you saying, like, startups and little things like that are much more agile?
Tracy Green: I think yes, absolutely. They're agile. They're moving quickly. I also think that the structure of big corporations is changing. We've seen that with remote workforces, right? There are a lot of remote workforces. They may have someone that they report to, but they don't meet with that person. They have no interaction with that person. Middle management could potentially disappear completely, which is terrifying for a lot of us, um, in the sense that, like, we are the Henry Ford carline, uh, workers. We are the factory workers of our day and age. Like, our job will become obsolete at some point, right? Because there's not going to be as much paperwork for me to manage when it's all done virtually, and there's not going to be, um, an algorithm could very easily say that you've done 80% better this year than you did last year.
Chris Miller: Oh my gosh, it's wild. I spent so much time learning audio production for this, and I kept dealing with all this different software and I found this AI solution and you plug in the tracks and then vo, it spits out this mastered result. And I was like, oh my gosh. And the more that I've looked into all these different tools, they're like, yeah, we're utilizing AI to generate blog ideas. And then once you have a blog idea, plug it in here and we'll write your blog. And I was on the computer the.
Tracy Green: Other day and it was that chat, whatever it is. Yeah, the opening. I think I was just talking about that with a friend of mine who's in grad school. And she's like, this is going to help me pass my finance class. And I was like, stop feeding it. The machines will take us over. I mean, I want it, but I.
Chris Miller: Also don't want it's not connected to the Internet yet. So imagine what happens when it gets connected to the Internet. Little things like that.
Tracy Green: Well, I think the question that I always fall back to and maybe this is more my spiritualness than anything, which is like, how do you keep it from becoming evil? Because if you release it onto the web okay, and it's using that to learn from I'm a wholesome midwestern girl, right? I only use a fraction of the Internet. But I know that the dark web exists. And if you're talking about, uh, an AI that's able to just consume information, I don't know if the percentage of the web that's available to it, I don't know what that looks like, because again, I only use a fraction of it. I use it for my personal gain. So, like random web searches and then social media and maybe communication systems. But there's a lot that's out there. prolifically, uh, utilizing the web. And that's what I'm saying. And I guess not to ramble about it, but how do you control that? I feel like it's a snowball effect. It will amass not an endless supply of knowledge, but maybe a greater amount of knowledge than any system or person before it. And there are parts of that that sound beautiful and majestic, and there are parts of that that scare the living mess out of me that I do know. I absolutely do not want anything to do with that. And you're talking about a complete nerd me. If you could beam me up, scotty, to Star Trek and I was on the Enterprise and I could enjoy a holodeck. I love that I'm here for it.
Chris Miller: Um, but once it's this robot that knows everything about anything. I had a company recently reach out. Well, that sounds a lot more official than it is. Someone at a company reached out m.
Tracy Green: Do not downplay yourself here, Chris. Okay? Stop. They reached out to you. They want you.
Chris Miller: And they said, hey, we have this role. And essentially it's generating content on blogs, writing about different things for their website.
Tracy Green: Did you know that an AI could.
Chris Miller: Seriously so the pay rate was like, whoa. And then I got on this thing and I'm like, generate me 15 different blog ideas for X Topic and spits it out within seconds. And then I can take all of those and I can say, okay, write a two page blog post about this and put it in this structure, and then boom, it kicks it out. And then I could say, make it more conversational. Boom, it makes it more conversational. And then injects some humor here, it then injects humor. And it sucks at humor. That's one thing.
Tracy Green: That's one thing. Thank God for our ability to be a self deprecating and be also find a light of humor inside that.
Chris Miller: So that's one thing we got. But there's a story about artificial intelligence that a group of scientists is working on. And they're like, okay, we need to figure out how to like, we got to give it a task. So they're like, we don't want to give it a scary task because we see all those sci-fi movies of you give it a task and then it ends up going well beyond the means to justify the end. So they're like, we're going to make it make paper clips. That's all we're going to do. It's just going to make paper clips.
Tracy Green: So what happens when that's not enough for it? uh, when it gains enough self awareness to say, I wish I was fulfilled even this.
Chris Miller: So they say, all you're going to do is make paper clips. So then it spends a lot of time figuring out, well, what's a paper clip? They give. uh, it a lot of different examples of paper clips. It starts to understand what paper clips are made out of. And then they give it like, the raw materials to make a paper clip. So it's making paper clips. It gets really good at making paper clips to the point to where it's like, okay, I can make more paperclips if there were more AI like this.
Tracy Green: And my one goal creates more AI. No, stop.
Chris Miller: So it creates more AI. And they're making a whole bunch of paperclips. And then they're like, okay, we're not getting enough raw material here to make the paperclips. So then it begins to build mining equipment. All this metal around us, we could use it to make paper clips.
Tracy Green: Oh, no.
Chris Miller: So then it starts to destroy the buildings. And then what? It realizes that the humans living here are actually not the most beneficial to their goal of making paperclips. So then there goes the human race extinct. And there's all these different stories which just emphasizes the importance of whenever you're dealing with artificial intelligence, you have to be so comprehensive and you have to be so thorough before you quote, unquote, connect it to the motherboard. And that's what we're in the middle of right now. Like, ethics behind it all and strategy behind it all.
Tracy Green: It's funny that you say that, but I feel like we've been on the ethics of AI since the invention of AI. um, I remember a news article that came out when first generation teslas were released because the conversation was, is this responsible or irresponsible to release a self driving car? And how do we ensure that? Because everything is welcome to our society. Welcome to capitalism. How do we insure for this? Because is it the driver's fault? Is it the person who's been injured's fault, or is it the car's fault? And then how do we sue the car company? It all comes back to money, of course. But I remember this thing that was released and it was like a hypothetical, uh, situation where you're driving on a very windy, like, s shaped road and half of it's a cliff, and the other half is like, I don't know, suburban homes. And little susie kicks her ball, it goes out into the street. Your car is driving on this sharp curve turn. Well, the rules of AI are what? To not injure the owner, to not injure the car, and to not injure pedestrians. Right. To other people. So which is the most prevalent? Does car hit little susie?
Chris Miller: Right?
Tracy Green: Does car throw itself off a cliff, uh, to save susie, thereby injuring car and also driver? Does car self implode? Like, what is the situation there? And so then that becomes the question of like those rules sound great, but life is not black and white. And that was something that was being thrown around with Tesla. One. Like we're still sitting here talking about the ethics of AI. And I think we will be for the rest of my generation. I think there is a future down the road where maybe people have not necessarily solved that, but put in the safety brakes where safety breaks need to be, and we see it integrated into a global phenomenon. um, but do I think that will be solved now? It hasn't been solved in like the last 15 years, so I don't know if it'll be solved within the next 15 years.
Chris Miller: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, ideally the car breaks and nobody gets hit, right? What you program, something you do is how it behaves. So they will go in and program. And I know there's already with those teslas, they have a whole bunch of cameras all over the car. And with each camera there's visual recognition, so they can sense the lights and they can sense all that jazz. So I can only imagine that they've put millions and millions of different types of data in there to resemble like human beings and what to do in response to that. But still they refer to it as agi artificial General intelligence. And that's like the Tesla. That's like siri, that's like whenever you um, get online and you plug stuff in and all of a sudden it spits something out. There's general intelligence there. But they say as agi gets more and more and more advanced, like, they refer to it as moore's Law, right? Like exponential growth with technology. Then it turns into artificial super intelligence. And then that's whenever the artificial superintelligence can train artificial superintelligence how to learn quicker, and then it blows up, right? uh, so, yeah, we're at a really interesting time here.
Tracy Green: What a crux. Because it really does feel like as somebody who branched no technology into technology. um, I feel like we're living in a future we couldn't even fathom right now. But at the same time, we're so far away from what we thought would be happening. You know, like, when Back to the Future celebrated the day that he went forward into time, like, that's already past. And we don't have, like, flying cars.
Chris Miller: No flying cars.
Tracy Green: Yeah. um, what a bummer. No hoverboards that would, uh, be utilized as skateboards. I mean, I guess we have, like, some of that stuff, but, like, not at the extreme.
Chris Miller: Levitation yeah. Figured out yeah.
Tracy Green: We really haven't figured, you know, nobody has their personal jet packs, really, to take you anywhere.
Chris Miller: Yeah.
Tracy Green: Gravity is yeah, gravity is still really messing with us. It's really, like, slowing us down, if I'm being honest.
Chris Miller: Yeah, it's a drag.
Tracy Green: I do enjoy a good pun, and that fed my heart a little bit. We're so far into the future. We're we're dealing with things that I think that, you know, even my older cousins wouldn't have ever pictured or fathomed with their, like, 1980s hairdos, you know, like, giants sprayed out versus, um, now, like, what we actually and then there are some really extreme things that, like, I think people just thought that, like, technology would happen. And that these questions that we're bringing up, like, what are the ethics behind that? How do you manage that? How do you stop it from becoming this ever generating force that's continuing to grow and learn in a way that obviously humans don't keep up with. Like, the sheer number of people who kind of get to an age and they're like, well, I'm done learning, and I won't learn anymore from here.
Chris Miller: They can't manage. I have to check out. There's so much in my brain. It's full.
Tracy Green: I think my dad is very much like that. um, he's a very analytical person to begin with. And I think there is some point in the early 2000s where he was just like, I'm done. I don't want to learn any new technology. I'm not interested in this whole cell phone situation. This is a man who had computer motherboards scattered around our, ah, house in his office. He did a lot of soldering and building these big chips that would go into computers because he's a biomedical engineer. So he has a lot of, like a vast amount of knowledge as far as electronics go. And I think he just got to a point where he's like, I've learned a lot, and I think that's enough. um, yeah. God love him. He's about to turn 75, and he's just like we gave him a cell phone. He knows how to use it, but he stubbornly will not to, um, the point where he's like, I'm never going to text you. And I was like, okay, right. If you're dying, please do so.
Chris Miller: Do you feel somewhat similar to that? You see this new technology coming through, such as cryptocurrency and the Blockchain artificial intelligence man crypto.
Tracy Green: Yeah. I think there's a stubbornness to say, um, I don't need to know how that works. I think there is that stubbornness there that says, that's not for me and I don't need to know. But I think the other crux to that is that, again, as a generation that spanned no technology and technology, you have this inability to turn off your brain to it. We've always been modifying from playing snake on your phone to now playing really intense. You can play call and duty on your phone if you wanted to. Yeah, absolutely. I think that we as a generation are kind of programmed to adapt. We're malleable, if you will. And so it's almost impossible to turn off your brain and say, I'm done here for that malleable adaptive people. I have friends who have said to me many times, I will never download TikTok mhm. I'm not interested. I don't need another social media thing telling me what to do. And inevitably, after I've spammed them with 50 tiktoks in their text messages, they're like, I downloaded tik tok. And I'm like, yeah, because you fell to the peer pressure. And I'm not afraid to put that peer pressure on them. But additionally, I'm sure there's something else coming down the pipeline. Do I think I'll be late to every technological advance that's coming up? Yeah, absolutely I do. I think it'll always be like, oh, I probably need to know about this. um, I'll wait. But I think you will stumble into some sort of proficiency with it at some point. I don't think that there's probably a world where I'm like, 60, 65 down the road. And I'm just like, I'm tired of this. And I understand enough to get through the next 10, 15, 20 years, whatever I have left.
Chris Miller: Um, you have these kids saying, hey, this cube is the whole metaverse. And you're like, whatever.
Tracy Green: Like, oh, wow. I once read a book about the downsides of the metaverse. And, uh, someday you'll have to come back and live in this hellscape that we've created. And the realization that you could have done more instead of going virtual.
Chris Miller: That'S going to be a thing too. I've been thinking about that. uh, I've already made up my mind. And of course, as we talk about, for instance, your friend with TikTok, how they ended up reneging on, um, the decision they made. I already have this decision in my head that's like, I'm not going VR. I'm doing everything in person.
Tracy Green: Because you could talk to so many more people, though.
Chris Miller: I know, and that's something I'm going to have to figure out. And that's something that I've had to run into lately as I build this is prior to this, I had a Facebook that I didn't really use, but then I was like, okay, I'm going to build the podcast. I should do social media marketing. But my whole reason for not doing social, uh, media, for the most part, was I want to engage with the people, like face to face. annie, she did relational communication. She studied that side of the house. And there's this idea of richness with the medium and how facetime, for instance, is much more rich than texting because we got different data coming in. senses, visual, audio. But then whenever you see someone in person, it activates. There's touch. You can see what they smell like. All of these other much more data coming in. It's much more rich. uh, so because of that, my whole thing was I'd rather focus on people face to face. But then it's like, hey, but in order to grow something, it's beneficial to have access to a whole bunch of people. But then, that being said, just like, right there, there's attention. So I'm already imagining, uh, with virtual reality. I feel like I'm going to be the guy that's like, hey, no, let's do it in person. And we're going to be able to learn much more in person. But it's going to be so much easier doing virtual reality, and it's probably going to look cooler, and the sky is going to be, like, light purple, and the trees are going to be light blue.
Tracy Green: I love this world you're creating.
Chris Miller: Right? Like, I'm imagining the lorax.
Tracy Green: Yeah.
Chris Miller: And them being like, hey, could we discuss that deliverable? Let's meet. And, um, they send me a link and I click it and I'm in the lorax.
Tracy Green: I've always been a traveler, right? Like, I've always wanted to travel. And just in the last two or three years, I've really been like, man, I wish I worked completely remotely. Even though I love meeting with clients, and I love the face to face interactions of project management, I really would love to be 100% virtual. And then that's not true. That's 100% not true. I just want to meet people in my own time and place.
Chris Miller: Right.
Tracy Green: And like, the other side of that is that, uh, I don't really want to work anymore.
Chris Miller: How many people can relate to you right now?
Tracy Green: Maybe this is my 30s midlife crisis or whatever. My 30s coming of age. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I 100% know that I'm at a transitional phase for tracy.
Chris Miller: I'm excited.
Tracy Green: I mean, it's unfortunate that I know what it feels like enough to be like, it's happening. But, um, the other side of that is that if I could if I had my rather, I would homestead. I would grow my own food, and I would just go and interact with people. I don't know, run a farmers market booth or something like that. I need wifi. I need to scroll. um, no, I don't necessarily want to be off the grid, although I will be the first to say that I'm not, like, a TV person. I don't watch a ton of television. I have my fandoms or. Whatever that I'm into, but I don't watch much of what's on TV. And I also wouldn't say that I get on social media all that much. um, I may be three or 4 hours out of the whole week. um, we'll do that. They may all happen at once. But then I'll be like, woo, that was enough. um, I'm done with that for the week. But I will say that I am self aware enough to know that if you put me out in the middle of nowhere, Kansas, I need high speed Internet M. I need it. I can't exist without it. I need, um, Google Sheets or Microsoft Office or something that allows me to organize myself in some way. I can't be completely unplugged like some people are. But I do yearn, I think, for a simpler life than what I've currently approached. And also, I think, additionally, having bought a house, starting to move into this next chapter of my life, have decided that I hate corporate America. I, uh, hate corporate greed. I don't want to be involved in that. I'm starting to question a lot of my ethical decisions that came to this point. I, um, did not mean to have a breakdown on this podcast, but, um, I think for me, uh, now I'm starting to be like, okay, is this really the you that you're wanting to portray to the world?
Chris Miller: Here we go.
Tracy Green: That's what's happening is that when you interact with people, they think that you represent this company that you work for. And I'm like, oh, I don't know, I want you to think that I represent this company because, like you said, I come at it from an almost jaded, honest perspective. Especially when I was still managing people to be like, hey, if you need to leave, leave. Do what's good for you. Do what's good for your family, man. Don't.
Chris Miller: Look what happened.
Tracy Green: Yeah, I know. uh, you're here running a podcast. It was great. I was the first to say, like, hey, I know you feel guilty about being walking away from this. Yeah, don't feel like you are stuck here, right? You have the whole future ahead of you. It's very easy to say to you, Chris, uh, it's very hard to take my own advice for myself. And I think additionally, you have the beautiful support of your wife and having that dual income family household that you had the luxury to step away, that's a very beautiful privilege. I am a single family household. um, and, uh, if I'm not making the money that I'm currently making, then how do I supplement that? And additionally, I have a lot of skills that are marketable. But I've done this thing. I saw a TikTok a few, like, it's been a year or so ago, but it said something that really dug at me and stuck in my mind a little. Like, spur in your mind, um, that prickles me every now and again, and it says you can be very good and build an incredibly successful career around something that you hate. And I'm mhm worried. I think the thing that's like, pushing this next crisis of tracy forward is like, have I done that? I love working with people, I love solving problems. I would have probably been the best PA ever. I could have worked for a, uh, Jeff bezos and run his life completely perfectly and just gotten my paychecks and walk away or whatever. That's not the route that I took. I went into project management. I work in healthcare. It and so I've really built myself into a niche. And it's like, how do you escape all the things that I need from this job? And not just financial needs, but validation and, uh, my competency is incredibly important to me. Knowing that wherever I go next, I'm not going to be competent at that job potentially scares the living mess out of me. But how, uh, long can I ignore that feeling before it weighs on you to the point where you're like, well, I'm just going to rage quit one day and it is what it is.
Chris Miller: Yeah. And that TikTok says you can build a great career around something you're not crazy about. And the other way too, is you could fail at it. And you realize, oh my gosh, I've spent all this time doing something I'm not crazy about and I didn't even.
Tracy Green: I wasn't even good at it.
Chris Miller: Yeah, like, I got fired. And I hear stories of people who think if I could lose, uh, doing something I love or doing something I hate, well, I may as well lose at the thing I love. So if we were to take a crystal ball here and look forward in two years, what do you think? You mentioned you're not the craziest about the corporate structure, particularly with really large companies. Mhm, so what's the alternative?
Tracy Green: Yeah, um, well, for me personally, I think that the alternative is to induce or create change. Right. If I don't like it, and I already see the industry changing in a lot of ways, I have to get involved in something that can cause change. I personally think that I would be good at, but not necessarily maybe enjoy working in the government spectrum to work in local city government and be able to make some encourage small business growth in Mission, Kansas or work with downtowns or be able to like something that I've always thought would be very interesting would being the person who introduces small businesses to each other. Why isn't the library and the brewery working together to host an adult scholastic fair? That sounds awesome. Those are things that should happen. They're right next to each other. Why aren't we doing that? Have they ever even spoke to each other?
Chris Miller: That'D be awesome.
Tracy Green: Something great. uh, just one example of something that could be good. How to get into those spaces because it is so vastly different from where I come from, is like, well, am I even qualified to do that? How would I get hired to do that? Not saying I wouldn't be good at it. uh, there's definitely a learning phase that happens there. But how do we change ourselves enough? I was talking to a former colleague the other day and she was talking about her job search, um, because she has left as well from the company that you left. But um, it's normal. It's a mass exodus. um, a lot of changes happening in that workforce. But she was taking some time. She took the whole holidays. Basically. She left before Thanksgiving and now she's, you know, as post, she's like, I've been on like a vacation for two months and now I'm starting to realize I need to buck.
Chris Miller: What else?
Tracy Green: Yeah, okay. This is where I now start to find myself, essentially. And she uh, was talking about when you apply, you can spend like 5 hours building a resume, right? Or you can put it into that I have the AI and have them build.
Chris Miller: You write me a resume that qualifies.
Tracy Green: Me for X. Yeah, man, wouldn't that be great? It's there. It does that. But she was like saying, I've revamped my resume. It took me like 5 hours to do. uh, she's like and then I realized I had revamped my resume for a job that I didn't want. And she's like and now as I've started to go through, I realize that every time I find a job that I want to apply for, I'm going to have to revamp that resume again. And it takes about 2 hours to really, truly apply for a job. And I was like, don't you miss the days? Because she's a little older than I am as well. And uh, I was like, don't you miss the days when you could just cold walk in to a building in professional wear with your printed out resume? They wouldn't even look at it. They'd be like, you came in here, you're hired. I was like, Wouldn't it be great to be cold hired again just based off of your tenacity, to walk into this building and ask for HR? It's crazy, but those were the Wild West days of corporate America.
Chris Miller: Yeah. Now you have to create a separate workday login to look at the application. And then once you upload your resume, then it says, okay, please fill out these forms. And it's everything on your resume.
Tracy Green: Mhm.
Chris Miller: So you have to put all that on your resume. Then you submit it and it says, thank you for submitting. Like Amazon. They don't tell you why they rejected you?
Tracy Green: No, most don't anymore.
Chris Miller: Right?
Tracy Green: They just say, we're going on with other candidates.
Chris Miller: And I was actually like three interviews deep for a role. And they said, we're not going to fill the role anymore. And then I had messaged the recruiter back, radio silence. So all of these corporations unfortunately, one of the downsides of there being such large corporations and kind of some of the things that we've critiqued and talked about is another thing. Whenever you do leave your job, it almost feels like you're not qualified for any other job because you look at all of the qualifications that you need to have for roles that may interest you, and it's like, man, I don't know if I have that. So that same thing that you feel of, am I qualified to do X, Y, or Z? oftentimes? It's up to us to go for it. Right. And if it works, it works. But I'm excited for you. Have you been on a lot of podcasts?
Tracy Green: This, um, is my first one.
Chris Miller: You're natural.
Tracy Green: I appreciate it. um I really enjoyed it. I want to thank you and I want to congratulate you. It was a pleasure to be a manager for you, and it's a pleasure to see you come into your own with this podcast and to see how I'm just excited for the potential and where it goes from here, because I know you have a lot of big plans.
Chris Miller: This is one of them right here.
Tracy Green: Yeah, I'm the big plan. uh, mi moi. uh, no, I really do appreciate you for hosting me. And then also, uh, the podcast, I need to get it set to give me an alert. How do I do that?
Chris Miller: Okay. I'm going to have to say that, uh, please.
Tracy Green: I'm old.
Chris Miller: Yeah. it'd be funny if you saw my vision boarding at the top was tracy Green.
Tracy Green: Oh, my gosh.
Chris Miller: It's like Barack Obama and Bill Gates living at the top.
Tracy Green: If that's the case, I'm going to have to sit you down and have some realistic expectations of where I fall in that line. I, um, love myself, but I also know worth. If you get Barack Obama on here oh, my gosh, can you imagine? Have you dreamed? Do you consider this a success? And if not yet, what will be the measuring mark?
Chris Miller: Yeah, that's hard because I remember whenever I was building it on, the very first thing I said, it's not about views, it's not about controversial guests. And that's certainly a thing. And then once you get inundated with.
Tracy Green: Analytics, uh, then it's like, that's my nightmare.
Chris Miller: It's really hard to separate yourself from that. And immediately, people start throwing around percentages of you should have this many downloads in the first week. And if you have X amount, that puts you at X percentile. But the goal of it all is to get to improve it, talking to people, and then just to create content. Because for the longest time, I was a content consumer, and I was never on that content creator side of the house. And I hope that I'll be able to contribute content that doesn't, uh, melt people's minds.
Tracy Green: Oh, yeah.
Chris Miller: You know what I mean?
Tracy Green: Well, I can tell you from being a listener, um, that it's very easy listening, which I prefer in my I don't need to have an existential crisis outside of the one I'm currently going through.
Chris Miller: Yeah, you can't afford I can't listen.
Tracy Green: There'S only so much century overloads the real thing, but it is very smooth. And I also just like conversation. I mean, we've talked about that coming into this, and I think that that's one of the great things that you guys are promoting here. um, and I love when you talk about, um, why you wanted to like, why your one question or your one thing was like, just talk to people.
Chris Miller: Talk to people. Right.
Tracy Green: Um, I think that's beautiful. um, and I think that when I look back over my life, the things that have encouraged the most change have come from conversations. My conversation with my friend about maybe I should just go work abroad, or, like, my conversation with my mentor in college who was like, m maybe you should take a step back and figure out what you want to do, because you can't keep changing your mind like this. And my conversation with my boss at Disney that was like, this is probably not the place for you. If I hadn't just had conversation with people. And those are all key people, obviously, but even nuanced conversations with strangers, I mean, have been influential in my life. It's crazy. Yeah.
Chris Miller: Uh, and now you are going to be one of those strangers for a lot of people. So thanks for being here.
Tracy Green: Thank you.
Chris Miller: We will see you next time, folks.
Tracy Green: Yeah. Thank you so much.