UPS is laying off 30,000 more workers, and some are worried about what AI is going to do to their jobs. In this episode of the B2B Development Podcast, we talk about how to prepare for the future and what to do about it.
00:00:00.940I'm Kelly Kennedy. I've been called a hope dealer for leaders and with over 300 episodes of the Business Development Podcast, we'll guide you and we'll always be in your corner.
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00:00:24.180Investing is all about the future. So what do you think is going to happen?
00:00:28.200Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point.
00:00:30.900I think it would come down to precious metals.
00:00:54.000You know, you hear stories right now with UPS cutting 30,000 jobs in sweeping cost savings push.
00:01:03.700OK, so this is UPS. Bloomberg story came out yesterday.
00:01:07.240Rob, I don't know if you got a clip on this. Go for it.
00:01:10.400UPS announced it's slashing an additional 30,000 jobs on top of the 48,000 jobs it cut last year.
00:01:16.720The new cuts are all operational positions, including drivers, according to the company, part of a massive restructuring, winding down a partnership with Amazon and turning toward automation.
00:01:27.220You hear that word in the same announcement about the job losses.
00:01:30.320The company reported that fourth quarter profits had jumped to nearly one point eight billion dollars, beating Wall Street expectations.
00:01:37.560How many of these jobs that were fired were union, Rob? Do we know? Is it 100 percent of them?
00:02:19.960Some of these people that are worried about what AI is going to do.
00:02:23.120Well, I would say I wouldn't worry about getting replaced by AI.
00:02:25.700I would be worried about getting replaced by someone that's leveraging AI.
00:02:30.700You know, I think these 30,000 jobs that are being cut is really just an investment in UPS future.
00:02:37.740You know, AI is definitely going to make an impact.
00:02:40.480And if someone is not aware of that, they need to get aware real quick because it's crazy.
00:02:46.640So so I think, again, UPS is looking at the numbers and realizing it's all about profit at the end of the day.
00:02:52.760I don't think I don't think that's a sign of of decline.
00:02:56.160I think that's a sign of, you know, the the the facts and the bottom line is starting to, you know, shape up to where AI is just going to take out a lot of these jobs.
00:03:07.100What should they do? These are regular guys that got jobs.
00:03:13.140One thing I learned, if you want to be financially successful, you need to get in the position to receive commission one way or the other, whether whether it's a salesperson or or or an entrepreneur.
00:03:25.060But to sit back and think that you're you're just going to, you know, rely on how it's been.
00:05:40.360And if you were working for UPS and you were delivering, you were getting overtime hours.
00:05:44.860You were getting extra shifts on weekends if you wanted them.
00:05:47.160And they were hiring more people in sorting facilities and in the small vehicle deliveries because not everything is a giant brown truck for UPS.
00:05:57.600And then it's all come back down to earth as over the last three years, people are back to driving their SUV to Costco and picking the stuff up themselves.
00:06:05.620So they said this is where their reduction is going.
00:06:09.900But they also came back and announced that they were more profitable.
00:06:13.340So for people that have a 401k UPS, there's UPS stock in the 401k.
00:06:18.880Not only is that smart for the business, they're helping the people that are staying there.
00:06:23.060Your point, investing in the people is dead on because they're helping people go, wait a minute.
00:07:04.680I mean, I think that whether it's unions or whether it's minimum wage requirements, I think that's the main cause of less jobs being available to people.
00:07:11.740Like, is it really a $170,000 job, the value that they're providing?
00:07:24.060But looking at this in a way of panic, I think it's a glass half empty mindset.
00:07:28.740I think there's so many opportunities with AI and especially with just like the data centers being built alone.
00:07:33.700Like a lot of people who have gotten wealthy, I've noticed, like they just go in the direction the government's going in terms of like where the money's flowing.
00:07:40.460Like a lot of people made money in real estate when the government was incentivizing people to build houses during the World War II time period.
00:07:48.040A lot of people made money when defense contractors were going crazy during World War II.
00:07:52.480But right now, data centers are – the money's being poured into that the way it was during like the World War II or like the dot-com bubble.
00:07:59.740So like think of all the inputs, like the small little things that you could attach yourself to that go into building a data center.
00:08:05.040There's like probably a couple thousand different inputs, just like the simplest things that go into a data center, like the wiring, you know, the HVAC, the raised up floors, every little piece of the infrastructure.
00:08:18.700It said that vendors that involve themselves in that, even if it's something like putting out SOPs for data centers, they could have a 10 to 14 times multiple just for having that system in place where they could set up a certain aspect of a data center.
00:08:30.020So that's where – I think that's where people's minds should be, like where the money's flowing rather than the scarcity mindset of, oh, my God, all the jobs are going to be gone.
00:08:37.800Like the cycles happened over and over again where half the jobs get wiped out by new technology and then a bunch of new jobs that we never thought of appear.
00:08:45.040Yeah, I mean if you force a company to pay $170,000 for drivers, okay, and you have to do it.
00:08:56.740I'm just looking it up right now on how it is to fire union and non-union.
00:09:02.320It's companies like UPS, when it comes down to firing people, they typically go to non-union because it's easier to cut with non-union than union.
00:09:10.840Union makes it difficult to cut them because there's all this red tape.
00:09:14.500You have to go through this process, that process.
00:09:16.420Non-union, you can just be like, nope, we're moving on union.
00:09:20.180That's obviously not a good thing when you have the control.
00:09:22.320But the more and more and more companies push to force certain things happen under union, more of these companies are going to sit there and say, all right, let's double down on AI even more.
00:10:32.780So many years ago, I realized the size of your income, your network, your lifestyle is a pure reflection of the size of problems you solve.
00:10:39.260So for me, going back 20-some years ago, I was a good salesperson.
00:11:28.380In America today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we have 13.4 million salespeople in America that go out selling every day working for commission.
00:11:35.720We have 132,000 VP of sales, according to LinkedIn, and we have roughly 8,000 chief sales officers in America.
00:11:42.820Now, when it comes down to putting the hat on of being a sales leader, it's a very different accountability, tough conversations, challenging, transferring your knowledge on how to get referrals, how to follow up on leads, how to properly follow up where you don't offend the person.
00:11:57.660The script you use when you DM versus when you email, which is when you make a phone call, how to give better presentations, the types of phone calls to make, the types of contests to run, how to hold them accountable and drive them and not upset them.
00:12:24.620To attend this, you need to do a minimum of a million dollars a year and have five salespeople that report to you.
00:12:30.820If you want to join us at this year's Sales Leadership Summit that happens end of March, we'll go through a 200-page manual together on how to go through A through Z of being a great sales leader.
00:12:57.480Can you click on a link just to see what it looks like so everybody sees it?
00:13:00.480So go, if that's you, click on a link.
00:13:02.660We'll spend two days together at Trump Doral, and we go through A through Z, and it's a great place to network with other performers that are also doing well.