Ryan Vet on Straight Up With Steph: How to Communicate Across Generations (and Win Back Patient Trust)

Thanks, Steph. How are you?

Well, thanks. I am excited as well.

Yeah, great question. That's a familiar scenario. A lot of people have that conversation and they feel old, and it's not a good feeling. But it happens to everyone, so there should be some solace in that. My genesis with the generational conversation was really twofold. One, I had the opportunity really early, as a teenager, to be in executive leadership positions in the startup world. And so there were a lot of issues. Some people call it ageism, but it was just the reality. I was real young to be in a professional setting, so there was some natural conflict there, and I wanted to overcome that, so I started studying it from that standpoint. Around the same time I got several thousand Twitter followers. It was Twitter at the time. It was brand new, and that was a really big deal on Twitter. I still have, I think, the same exact amount of followers and haven't gained a single one since. But it was such a big deal that a couple of companies reached out to me and said, this was before influencer was even a term, but you've got this blog and all these followers, come speak at our conference and speak on why millennials aren't buying houses, or why millennials are lazy, or why millennials are still living at home with mom and dad. And I did it as a millennial. That was my genesis into it. And as I continued leading companies, I was practicing in real time from a business standpoint, an executive leadership standpoint, and also researching a little bit. I use the term researching lightly. I haven't truly gone deep into research until the last five or six years. Fast forward, after about 20-some years in the venture-backed startup space and the entrepreneurial scene with some mainstream businesses, I said, hey, it's time for me to step out of that world and focus on writing and speaking. I speak about 70 times a year, and I love it, and I really wanted to do it well, so I started doing some deep dives, and that's what you see or hear today.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll walk you through the major generations, as far as the ones that are currently living or in the workforce. You've got the silent generation, which actually makes up about 1 to 2% of the workforce, born 1928 to 1945. Then baby boomers, who we hear a lot about. They're quickly exiting the workforce. They just dropped down to about 13% of the workforce in 2026. They were born 1946 to 1964. And if anyone's listening to this on two times and all these numbers are coming out, I'm sorry. Gen X is 1965 to 1980. Millennials are 1981 to 1996. The last generation you have in the workforce, making up almost a third, and next year they'll likely be at a third, is Gen Z, born 1997 to 2012. And then the two other generations that are currently living: you've got generation alpha, which is 2013 to 2025, and generation beta, which was born this year in 2026. The final year on that is still, the jury's out. Some are saying it's going to be around 2039. So those are the generations that we have right now in the workforce and in society.

So a lot of employers, especially in dental, if we're looking at that, you still have a tremendous number of baby boomers that have held on to their practices. There was a huge decline in 2020, early retirement, early acceleration of retirement. And then this past year, from 2025 to 2026, you saw a multi-percentage-point decline in their percentage. Part of that is because of Gen Z entering the workforce, but also, if you look at birth years and how many people were born each year, a large cohort of baby boomers hit retirement age by Social Security standards. So you saw a big decline, but we still have about 13% in 2026, and they're going to be your practice owners. Gen X in dental in particular, you do see a lot of practice owners. However, that's unique to dentistry. Gen X does not have many executive or leadership roles compared to previous generations, and we can get into that later if we have time. And then the next generation is millennials. They're the biggest in the workforce today, and most of them are going to be your employees. Some are practice owners, fewer and farther between, but a lot of them, in the corporate world, whether that's corporate dentistry or outside of dentistry, are stepping into leadership roles that Gen X isn't taking as boomers vacate. And I know there's a lot of technical jargon here, so we can get into practicality too.

Yeah. So for boomers, one of the big things that we saw true of them is boomers as a whole are really big on titles, progress, success by what I'd call measurable earthly standards. Meaning they got degrees. They wanted the house with the two-car garage and the white picket fence and the 2.2 kids and the golden retriever. They birthed the American dream. That's boomers. And boomers today, if you look at the family, because the family unit is one of the best ways to analyze how generations have evolved, they're going to mostly be grandparents. That's the age bracket you could put them in. Younger grandparents, brand new grandparents, but that's where a lot of boomers are falling right now. And again, these are generalizations for the sake of our conversation. There are tons of exceptions. Gen X is going to be what I would call late career. Their kids are out of the house for the most part, or leaving the house right now, and they kind of swung the pendulum back. They are known often as a little bit more hesitant, a little bit less trusting of the government. You have to think about when they grew up: they saw the Watergate scandal, they saw the energy crisis of the '70s, they saw a lot going on. So they don't have a big trust for big institutions or big companies. A lot of that is because their parents that had pension plans and long retirement plans at these massive companies got laid off. The other reason Gen X doesn't necessarily love a lot of authority figures is their parents were busy working most of the time. A lot of parents in that era, in the '70s and '80s, were both working jobs. So the kids would come home as latchkey kids. They'd come home, unlock the house, go sit in front of the TV, watch the one 30-minute show after school while they're eating their sandwich and doing their homework, which they had to make themselves, and they weren't asked to do their homework. There were no cell phones. And then they'd go play outside till the street lights came on. So that was the latchkey kid generation, Gen X. And then when they started having kids, they actually had kids younger, for the most part, than their parents did. And they had the millennial generation as a whole, again, generalizing for simplicity. And they wanted to reverse the trend. So instead of being hands-off, saying, hey kids, go to school then walk home by yourself, Gen X had kids that were millennials and they said, hey, we want to be at every game, we want to make sure that you get exposed to everything. So soccer and then ballet and then basketball and then football, and you're going to do it all. And when you look at how much millennials worked, doing air quotes there, while they were in elementary school, the average was between about 48 and 55 hours a week between extracurriculars and school. They were programmed, and just thoroughly, because you had a combination of boomer and Gen X parents, but you had these Gen X parents who wanted to reverse and be ever-present, and so they became the helicopter parents. So you saw that progression. And now Gen X and millennials becoming parents, and even some Gen Z becoming parents of Gen Alpha and Gen Beta, you're starting to see some of that trend reverse. You're seeing a little bit more freedom, but at the same time there's more fear. So I call it freedom with a leash, meaning, yeah, you can go out there, but I'm tracking every movement on your cell phone. I don't have to ask where you went because I already knew. If you and your siblings got into a fight upstairs, I can just look up who started it on the cameras. It's a very different, monitored childhood.

So communication is a huge $1.2 trillion issue in the United States workforce. It's a hugely significant issue. The faster talkers versus slower talkers, I have not analyzed that particular problem, but I'm going to write that down because that's super fascinating. I have lots of thoughts on communication. My hypothesis, that I will go test after this, is a couple-fold. One, younger generations have the access to two-times a podcast. And so they are moving much more quickly. Their lives have always been fast-paced, which is funny because they also have a slow-to-adulthood life. They're later to get their driver's license, later to buy their first house, later to get married. But as far as everything else in their life, it's fast-paced. So that's one hypothesis. The other one could be the fact that as you age, hearing becomes more difficult. Certain frequencies become more difficult, which can blur speech. I've not researched the speed of speaking in particular, but I often get criticized for speaking quickly, and I do. Everyone that listens to my podcast says they have to slow it down when they listen to mine compared to others because I talk too fast. So I do realize speed is an interesting conversation, but I'll have to look at that. That's a fun research project I'll have to do.

That would be my guess. I think the other interesting thing that I have done studying on is when you look at dialect, even by region. Growing up in Chicago, people just talked faster in Chicago than they did when I moved to North Carolina, where people talked much, much slower, especially. So I've done lectures there, and I'm like...

Yes, it totally depends. And even school for me, you know, some of my professors that were natives to North Carolina, the pace was just different. So what's been interesting, and one change that we have seen, is we're almost moving, and this is a bold statement, but we're almost moving to a one-world society, meaning language barriers are evaporating because you can have instant translations, and then dialects are also minimizing. Even if you listen to recordings or videos from the '50s, or radio talk, just the way that Americans enunciated and spoke is so dramatically different than today. Part of that's because media has kind of flattened the sharper edges. A Bostonian accent compared to a South Carolina accent compared to a Texas accent to Minnesota, right? So we're seeing some of that impact dialect, because we're all being fed from the same sources. So that could also be a factor, but again, that's a fun research project I'll have to look up for your mom.

Yeah, I think one of the bigger communication questions, and what I challenge teams and leaders that I work with, is beyond even the age gap, it's remembering we're human beings serving other human beings. At the core, part of that is understanding and being empathetic to that person's unique situation. Sometimes that's age, sometimes that's stage. When you're delivering sad news, you're not talking as fast, you're being more deliberate, you're being more intentional. And I think at the end of the day, the whole generational conversation is dangerous, because we do label people, and you've seen a lot of departure from using labels. But I think more important than that is, it doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter what generation you're from, you're a human being communicating with another human being. And with the technology flying around us, that's something that can never be replaced. So understand and relate. No matter what your job is, whether it's a hygienist or answering phones or delivering packages or being a mailman or mail woman, you get into the habit of just doing it over and over and over again, that you don't slow down to remember who you're serving and who you're impacting. And I think that's the bigger risk than anything else.

Yeah. If you look at boomers and millennials, they conflict the most in the workplace, and they don't as much anymore because millennials are older now, but especially when millennials came on the scene. The first 'me generation,' everyone said, was millennials. It was actually written about first about boomers. So they were the me generation. It's all me, it's all mine, it's build my kingdom, build my empire, it's all about my name. So boomers and millennials both have that in common. They are going to be more inclined, from maybe a cosmetic standpoint, they're going to be more inclined and a little bit more vain. Generally speaking, again, those are huge generalizations, there's so much more to unpack there. Gen X, on the other hand, they're going to be more skeptical. And you're actually still seeing this, this is still pretty accurate, Gen X is going to not trust you right away. There are a lot of stats out there on Gen X not trusting their healthcare provider or getting second opinions. But interestingly, millennials and Gen Z are following the same exact pattern behavior, Gen Z even more so. You have to remember Gen Z grew up in an era, you know, fake news impacted millennials when they were in their teenage years up to their early 20s, the formative years. But for Gen Z, it was already a reality. They already were skeptical from day one of a lot of news. So you go to a Gen Zer and say, hey, you need a crown, here's why. They're immediately going to take a picture of that, and they're either going to go get a second opinion, or more than likely they're going to go on the internet, put it on Reddit and figure out what people say about their X-ray, or go to ChatGPT and scan that X-ray, and ChatGPT will give them some answer, and it will seem very accurate, but it's not a clinical diagnosis. And they'll come back and say, well, ChatGPT said I don't need to do it, and a crown should only be $22 because I can get it somewhere else or whatever. And you're just like, you're missing the point. But I think one of the tools with AI in healthcare practices, platforms like Pearl and stuff like that, are just so powerful, because you're eliminating the second opinion issue. You're saying, hey, here is a second opinion, here's my opinion, and here's the second opinion. And now you've just reestablished trust. And that's actually helpful across all generations. Whereas a boomer is more likely to trust you because you've got the degree on your wall and the three letters after your name. They're the last generation that actually has trust in that institutional-style education, and we see that decline significantly across the later-born generations.

Oh, absolutely. I think a lot of people have issues with AI in the practice, and I actually would say pump the brakes on a lot of AI in the practice, just because of security issues. A lot of the platforms out there are actually not HIPAA compliant. They're not SOC 2 compliant. They could get you in a lot of trouble. But some of the radiograph things like Pearl and whatever else are so helpful, because that provides a second opinion. And yes, you are circumventing and getting ahead, you're already removing an objection that the person might not have in the chair, but they have the second they walk out the door. Let's step back from technology for a minute. Rewind 30 years ago. You're still going to have a boomer that's going to get this diagnosis, this treatment plan, and even a Gen X, and they're still going to call their friends and say, hey, have you ever gotten a crown before? Did you pay 1,200 bucks? Oh, you only paid 1,100. Who was that? Did it hurt? You're still going to have that. It's not new. But now we have the tools to go ahead and take one step in front of it. They're always going to try to find a reason not to accept your treatment plan. They just are. That's human nature. It's not even dental. You go to the car mechanic and they say, well, we found your filter, we found your muffler, we found this rust, and you're going to look for every reason not to say yes to that, because you don't want to spend the money, it's unexpected. So if you can eliminate those things in advance. And you saw auto mechanics do it years ago. They plugged in a computer to your car and it printed out a receipt in front of you and said, here's all the things that might not be quite right. And so now it's not the mechanic doing it, it's your car telling you. It feels more sophisticated, even though the receipt paper is ugly as all get-out. And so it's the same thing with Pearl or these other AI tools.

Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

Great question. So Gen Z, what's interesting and what people get wrong a lot, people mistake millennials and Gen Z, and people mistake Gen Alpha, which is the generation after, and Gen Z. So it's really important to realize how old Gen Z is right now. Today, and I only know this in Q1 of 2026, the average median age of Gen Z is 21.4 years old, if you look at birth by year. So they're 21, they're just learning how to drink, right? That's their age. Now, some of them are as old as 29, and some of them are still just becoming teenagers this year. So think about someone who's 29 and someone who's just entering their teenage years.

Radically, radically different. But that's what we're talking about when we talk about Gen Z. It's not just the teenagers. So we have to realize that half of them have been in the workforce now for a decent amount of time, and that has real implications on what our workforce is looking like. They make up almost a third, actually they should be about a third depending on everything else of the workforce. So what makes them unique? Well, they were born into technology, and this is what makes them really different than millennials. Millennials, actually, by a lot of studies, Gartner just put this out, or it might have been Gallup, one of those two that start with a G, but they put out a study that said millennials are actually the fastest at adopting technology. And the youngest millennial is 30, the oldest millennial is 46 this year. So you have to look at that. But they're the fastest at adopting technology. And if you zoom out, it makes sense why. When millennials first got social media, it was MySpace, and then it was 'the Facebook,' then it was Facebook, and you started having this evolution. And every single time you logged in, it was no longer your wall, it was your timeline. And it was so frustrating because it was always changing. Every single time you got a new app update, the iPhone went from 3G to 4 to now we're at 17, but in those early days they were radically different every single time. Gen Z hasn't seen any of that. Facebook's always been Facebook. X changed, but they weren't on it really anyway. The iPhone hasn't changed much. Wi-Fi's always been here. They didn't know what plugging into an Ethernet cable was. So they haven't had a lot of change. And so while they're technology natives, they also don't love technological change. Why? They were slower adopters at generative AI, barely, but they still were slower adopters than millennials. So they're very change resistant. They've been very coddled, but they did grow up in the social media era, and social media without boundaries. And I think that's just really dangerous. You would never give your kids a lighter and say, go play with this and just make sure that you put the fire out before you're done. You wouldn't do it. You wouldn't say to a six-year-old, here's the sharpest knife we have, go cut up dinner all by yourself. And maybe some six-year-olds are trustworthy, I would not trust, as trustworthy as my son is at six, I'm not going to give him a sharp knife. Not yet. But you just wouldn't do those things. And yet we said, hey, here is the entire 6.7-inch screen in your pocket, and it's got access to anything in the world, the good and, more scarily, the bad and the ugly. Here you go, do whatever you want with it. And so instead of reading with a flashlight under your covers, reading your Hardy Boys book or your Nancy Drew book like Gen X and millennials did, they're watching videos and content that is completely unfiltered, and parents don't know what's going on. So that's one reality of Gen Z. The other terrifying reality of Gen Z is they've been raised by algorithms. So while they're watching all those things, clicking like, clicking dislike, commenting, their algorithm is unique. So where social media was supposed to make a community for us and say, hey, you and I can now communicate easily, and my pen pal around the world doesn't have to wait 12 weeks to get my letter, I can communicate with my friends in Bangladesh or Ukraine or wherever my friends are instantly, no letters, no worry about mail or getting lost. So community was supposed to be there, but the reality is they were only seeing one side of the real world. And the reality is there's their side, my side, and what actually happened. And so now they're raised by an algorithm, and their sibling in the next room, raised by the same parents, is getting a totally different feed based on what they've liked, what they've seen. And especially with young girls, ages like 12 to 16, we saw, starting in 2012, the suicide rate jump almost three times in that age demographic, and just really sad increases in eating disorders and so many other things. You get into the causation and correlation, so you do have to be careful, but at times too conveniently with social media and unfettered access. And just now, like in 2026, just now we're starting to see Facebook be held accountable with the lawsuit that happened last week, YouTube, and there are over 1,500 cases right now that are open in the United States. And the United States is still so far behind. Europe's already taken action. Australia's already put phone bans in. We're seeing some states restrict access in schools. But we've got a long way to go. And that's the dangerous reality. They've been exposed to adult concepts for as long as they could have a phone. And millennial parents and Gen X parents didn't want a headache with the kids, so they stuck them in front of a screen at a young age, and it became what's normal. And the reality is that's not normal.

Well, you just said something really interesting that I want to talk about first, and then I'll answer your question. You just said, 'what I'm seeing,' so that means you're interested in this conversation. You're liking and consuming content around the fact that phones and technology might not be the best solution for kids. There are other people who aren't seeing that. They're still seeing the stuff that we saw growing up, as you and I are about the same age, seeing, you know, we've got to get more likes, we've got to get more of this, and if not, you delete your post. So that's interesting in and of itself. But I do think there is some awareness. But if there were that much awareness, we would stop. Look at seat belts in the '60s, look at cigarettes in the '60s, we're not seeing that same reaction with social media. So there's a huge, what I call, the velocity gap. And this is one of the big things I write about. It's saying, hey, morality, right and wrong, catches up with us a long time after we've made a decision. Social media came about, let's call it mainstream, in the early 2000s, and by 2012, more than half of us individuals were on social platforms. 2012 is where we saw that tipping point. And now velocity is just catching up. And now we're 14 years outside of that tipping point, almost 20 years outside of the founding of most of these platforms, that they're coming to reckoning, and we're relying on the government to fix these problems. But a lot of that's parents. And I don't want to blame, I mean, I'm a parent, and I am not a perfect parent. I am always learning and often humbled, as I like to say, every single day I'm learning what I didn't do right, and shouldn't have said that to one of my kids or treated them that way. So it's not only the parents' fault, but we just weren't aware. And I'm afraid the same thing's happening right now with generative AI. We're just not aware. And if we're not aware, the implications of this are far more severe than anything we've ever seen, I think, ever in the world. And I'm a firm believer history repeats itself, but we're in a new era where we are writing some new chapters.

Yeah, it's a very scary reality, but there's a lot of hope too. If you look at millennial parents, they're going back to trying to deviate from screen time. They're trying to go to more risky play or dirty play. Those are not my terms, those are terms that they're using, to drive being outside. And I think there's a lot of hope there. You're seeing schools move. There are some huge movements within school trying to increase recess time, because they know it's better for the social communication between two people, and you just don't see that anymore. Kids are not raised in a communal environment. They're raised in their house. You don't know your neighbors anymore. You're not going to let all the kids on the street go play, and when the ice cream truck comes, they're going to run in and get a couple quarters, well, now with inflation, probably 20 bucks, and go do that. The parents would lose their minds. And it's just a different world that we live in.

I hear this one a lot, and I think there are a couple of different things. One, every new generation in the workforce is disrespectful. That's just, it's concrete, it's how it's always been. Boomers thought Gen X was disrespectful because they defied authority, they questioned authority. How dare you ever question authority? Boomers and Gen X thought millennials were disrespectful because millennials didn't have, and this is much deeper, we won't be able to unpack it, but millennials didn't have authority figures growing up. They had friends. Guidance counselors went by their first names. Their parents did everything with them and had conversations about the bigger things in life that the previous generation wouldn't even talk about. And they would watch TV shows that would have explicit scenes and it would be okay, whereas the previous generation was watching Leave It to Beaver with two separate beds for the husband and the wife. All these things cascade through. So millennials grew up with friends, no authority figures. So they come into the workplace, and in dentistry and healthcare, they're dropping doctors, they're dropping proper names, and it's because it's how they were raised. And again, huge generalizations here, we don't have time to unpack it deeper. And then you go to the next generation with Gen Z, they're questioning everything. They're very skeptical, but they're very big on authenticity. And so their BS detector is just through the roof. And that's a lot of times why they'll get, oh, my Gen Z employees, they're just never happy, or I can't get them to greet our patients with a smile, or I went to the Starbucks today and the barista just stared me down. And it's because they're being authentic. They're showing their authentic selves. They're not going to put on a facade. And so for them, every single generation has had its own version of disrespect in the workforce. And eventually, part of that's age, because you have to think about how you acted when you were 21 years old. You didn't have the finesse that you have now, and that's just experience. So that's part of it. Part of it's how they were raised. So my advice to leaders is quite simple. The question is, why do you practice every day? Or why do you lead the company that you lead every day? What is it that you're doing? And I'm not talking about drilling and filling teeth. I'm saying you're empowering and making people's lives better because of X, Y, and Z. That resonates across every generation, because at the end of the day, I said it earlier and I'll say it again, we are human beings serving other human beings. That is why we exist. We all want to be in relationship with other human beings, and we all want to be in community with other human beings. We've just really skewed and twisted what that's looked like over time, thinking technology and Facebook groups could be the group that makes us feel more like that. Whose idea was that? That didn't work. And so when we have a service-based business like dentistry or any healthcare profession, go back to the very core. Why do we exist? And realize that, if you hire someone, like culture shock for me when we first moved to North Carolina from Chicago. Chicago is very friendly. It's probably the friendliest big city in the United States.

Super friendly, in my opinion, for a big city. It's the Midwest, and we still have those Midwest hospitable vibes. We came down south, we go to a New York pizza place in North Carolina, sit down as a family, and all of a sudden this other family pulls up chairs next to us. We're the only people in this pizza shop, and they start talking to us. It's like, what in the world? And that's a massive cultural barrier right there. As friendly as Chicago is, you're not going to have any strangers pull up chairs and get to know you. This was a whole other level of hospitality, and whatever you call it. Now, that was an anomaly. It just so happened to be the first night we had come. Just bizarre.

That was our thought. And so part of that is what we do. We do the same thing. We label the generations. Is every Gen Z person like this because of X, Y, and Z? Is every millennial like this because of whatever? And I think that's one of the risks that leaders have. We have to realize that generational labels are relatively new. Millennials are the first generation to grow up with a label on them. Every other generation was named after the fact. So millennials and Gen Z are really the only sample size we have where, from day one, the media and research institutions have said, this is this generation, and here are the facts and stats about them. And now it almost gives permission for leaders to say, oh, they're Gen Z, that's their problem, oh, they're millennials, that's their problem. And it's really, really dangerous, and it's not being a good leader. So sometimes the biggest leadership issue is the leadership's not checking their leadership.

So every generation, interestingly, wants to be part of something bigger than themselves, which is really fascinating. And I think where we got it wrong with millennials entering the workforce is we thought they wanted money, so we threw money at them, but in almost every survey it was like, if they had a purpose for being at work, they would have been happier. Gen Z is panning out the same way. Now, I'm not saying money is not important, it's more expensive to live than ever. I've got an article on how millennials and Gen Z build their budgets, and it's one of the most revealing things to anyone that sets pay. They're like, now I know why everyone asks for a raise all the time. It's a really fascinating research essay, if I'm allowed to say that about my homework. But it answers a lot of questions on that side of things. But taking money out of the equation, Gen Z also wants authenticity. That would be their ethos. If they had one banner word for the generation, it's authenticity, and probably boundaries. Those are the two things. And work conflicts with both of those, because if I can't be my authentic self at work, because I don't want to be here today because I'm ticked off at the world and I don't like the political scene and what this person tweeted, then they're going to wear that on their sleeve. Well, their employer is like, they're disgruntled, they're a terrible employee. So there is an opportunity there to lead and say, hey, not, hey, leave your baggage at the door, but, hey, I realize you might not like what someone, you know, someone honked at you on the way in, or whatever it is that got them rubbed the wrong way. But here you have the opportunity to serve someone that walks through the door. And when you act that way, you're impacting the way that they have their day. So I need you to not say that that didn't happen, or not authentically relate to that, but I need you to realize that now you're impacting the next person, and it's your choice. It's a simple leadership conversation that half the leadership books have. And yet people are so afraid and walk on eggshells around these younger generations, because they're afraid they're going to lash out, and they might. But at the end of the day, you kind of have to think about where they are. While they might be in their 20s, the parenting that they've received, and the system of school that they've been raised in, chances are they haven't had as many conversations like that. And so they're going to react just like a teenager is going to react to that, until they've had enough of those conversations and mature. They just haven't had as many, because we're so afraid. And so part of that is just maturing, and part of that is on the responsibility of more mature generations saying, hey, you've got to have the tough conversations. And you have to realize, it shouldn't be your responsibility to parent, but that's the reality we're living in. So you need to have some of these conversations, and you need to explain why these things are important. You're not trying to change a behavior to get them to smile at the front desk. You're trying to say, hey, your actions are impacting the whole entire experience of someone that walks into our practice. And you start to shift that conversation. That's one of the big things. But then the other thing is the boundaries. So boundaries, they want work-life balance. They're not going to text you as soon as they leave the door. They probably need some decompression time when they come in the door too. Again, part of that can be coached, and say, hey, I'm paying you to be here, and there can be some healthy conversations, but boundaries are really important to them. So understanding what someone's personal boundaries are, this could actually be beneficial. Every single person you've ever employed has boundaries. Everyone, at some point, there's going to be a line that they're not going to cross, but other generations would never have told you because they were too afraid of losing their job. Gen Z will tell you. And they'll tell you exactly what it is, and you won't like it. But if you think about it, ask yourself, do other generations have similar boundaries, but they're just not willing to tell me? So there is a huge advantage to the truthfulness of the generation, but at the same time there's a lot of risk, because it's going to come back as offensive, and it's just going to be very different than previous generations. And so you have to figure out, where is it a generational issue, where is it a leadership opportunity, and you have to work on that. And sometimes it does take more work, and that's the hard part of being a leader. If you choose a position of leadership, it's the profession and job you chose, you're going to have to have tough conversations.

So the interesting fact is Gen Z actually will say that they don't want to work. But if you look at statistics, nine out of every 10 Gen Z members has a side hustle in addition to their day job. So if you look at that, that means 90-some percent are saying they do want to work, and they want to work, but they want to work on their own terms. Which is very reminiscent, if we go back in history, because the generational pendulum swings. It's very silent generation: let me own the corner store, let me own my barber shop, let me own whatever this is, and I'll work. Now, there are a lot of other differences between those two mindsets of hard work and what is work, because Gen Z's work is now, I can be a content creator, I can be a streamer, I can have an Etsy shop, I can use my 3D printer and tell Claude to go create this concept and print it out on my 3D printer, and I'll go sell it on eBay, whatever it is. There are all these new worlds of work. And so I do think there could be, there isn't yet, but I think there could be an opportunity for really entrepreneurial, innovative Gen Zers coming onto the scene. But right now, most of it is their side hustles, and a lot of their side hustles are going to fuel their leisure time. So they're kind of viewing their day job as the thing that pays the bills, and if they can make more money, that's the thing that allows them to go on vacation, which is healthy, actually, because it's moving from a salary-based society to a transactional-based society, which is almost like factory work. That's a big statement, can't unpack it all. It's like, in a way, Gen Z is showing signs, they're not there yet, that if they put in extra work, they get extra money to do extra things, which is very reminiscent of, if I'm the best on the assembly line, I'm going to get paid more in all these bonuses. So there is a really interesting underlying thing happening. We're not there yet, but it's interesting to watch, and it's something I'm looking out for, to see if we have a shift back to more of a transactional society instead of the subscription-based society, from loans to salaries and everything else.

Yeah, I think one thing here, millennials always get accused of job hopping. They were kind of the first job-hopping generation. And we have to realize that the bulk of millennials had their first job at about 22. Whereas every other generation was in their teenage years. And if you go back to the silent generation, they might be single digits, late single digits, because child labor laws for them and boomers as kids weren't there where they are today. So again, we talked about maturity a little bit ago. Part of it is this slow-life mentality. Even though we're doing everything fast, we're doing the major things slower. There's a reality where we all had to go through our first jobs, whether that was flipping burgers at McDonald's or squeezing ice cream at Dairy Queen or mowing lawns, we all did those things. We figured out the people we liked to work with, didn't like to work with, the clients we liked and didn't like.

My first W2 job was Target.

But before that, I had a marketing company. That's a much longer story. So you learn what you do like and what you don't like. And the problem is, when Gen Z is getting out and they're starting their first job at 23, 24, going to grad school, and now later, half of Gen Z isn't, but that's again more to unpack later, you're starting to see that, okay, they still have to experience all those things. And so they are going to quit their first couple jobs. But millennials and Gen X almost have the same exact number of first jobs by age 25. The thing is, Gen X did that over 10 years, millennials did it over three, because of when they started working. So you're seeing the same thing with Gen Z. I think there's a lot of opportunity to coach, and realize that it's going to be hard to retain young employees because they're still figuring out what they want in life and what they want in work. And they're doing at 22, 23, 24 what boomers were doing at 12, 13, and 14.

Yeah, I think you're completely right. Understanding what someone values is the core of leadership. And it's not one-size-fits-all. I think that's where people get hung up. When you take your leadership practices from Stephen Covey or whomever, which are great, love him, but when you start applying them blanket and you're not figuring out how it works for each unique person, that's going to be problematic, even if they're all the same age. And you mentioned the time versus money thing. For boomers, their security is their bank account. Their parents, most likely silent generation, they lived through the Great Depression if they were born early enough, or their siblings did, at the very least their parents did. And so, you couldn't rip open a gift at Christmas or the holidays because you had to save the wrapping paper. You had...

Yeah, exactly. Because there was this stability that they needed to have, and so their bank account is still their stability. Millennials and Gen Z lean on the stability of their parents, quite honestly. And there's no secret that there are trillions of dollars in the great wealth transfer coming on. And subconsciously, I am pretty confident that millennials and Gen Z know that their parents' security is also going to be their security. It always has been, it always will be. And they do value time. Time is something they didn't have as kids to play as much, because they were in programmed activities. And so they want their time back. They want their freedom, and time is their currency. I think flexible work environments are winning. I'm not saying that they're good or right, but they're winning, because that's what people value. People will leave a 9-to-5, five-day-a-week job paying beaucoup bucks for a huge pay cut if they can have flexibility, even a half day, one day, a day off every other Friday, or whatever it might be. And when you look at that, it goes back to exactly what you're saying, Steph, it all matters about what the person values. And if you're blanketing your benefits packages, and you do have to be careful with HR, you have to be fair, but if you're trying to have a one-size-fits-all, and you're realizing it's not working for some generations and others, it's because you're assuming everyone has the same values, and no one has the same values, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I have a free newsletter that comes out every week. It's usually 1,200 to 2,000 words. It's a pretty in-depth study. So I'm sure speed of talk will show up on there now, since that's been introduced. But I deal with everything culture and futurism. We're looking at where we've been as a society, where we're going, the implications of sometimes current events, not politics so much as current events, as well as technology and other things that are influencing. So you can find that at ryanvet.com/collide. That's a great resource, and, you know, tens of thousands of subscribers there. You can hop on my podcast, which does a narration of all of those. Join 100,000-plus people on YouTube with that. So those are probably the best ways to get in touch. And if there are any new and exciting books or anything coming out, my subscribers and listeners will absolutely be the first to know.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is, we're human beings serving human beings. We're using technology to take the place of a lot of things, but it can never replace the true human experience. So don't become too dependent on the machine or the processes, as good and as helpful as they can be. Realize they're tools, and that's what they are. They cannot replace a human being serving another human being.