The Power of Resilience: From Shoe Factory to Tech CEO with Kashif Aftab, CEO at SkillGigs

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to Kasia from SkillGigs about confronting failure and the staffing industry of the future. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:15) And I typically just like to start our conversation off with you explaining what SkillGigs is and why you're involved with it.

(Kasia at 00:00:24) Absolutely. So SkillGigs is a talent marketplace which uses AI to source and match talent for employers in two main categories. We do it for the healthcare industry and the tech industry. In the healthcare industry, we're really focusing on your RNs, CNAs, and LPNs and helping acute care facilities and long-term care facilities find contract workers. Our claim to fame recently has been what we did during the COVID time period, where we were able to supply much-needed nursing staff right in time to some of the largest hospital systems in the country, especially when the whole thing was just exploding in the marketplace.

(Kasia at 00:01:09) And the AI really came before then by being the main supply channel for a lot of, for example, some of the largest hospitals here in Houston, Memorial Hermann, HCA, which are some of the top ten biggest hospital systems in the country. We also help other companies like Facebooks of the world and HEBs and Amazons of the world hire programmers as well. And the way the whole system really works is we've taken the concept of e-commerce, and we have implanted that on top of the hiring process. And we said, okay, just kind of like how you buy stuff in an e-commerce tech, why couldn't we just do that for hiring as well? And take hiring away from being that boring resume application, recruiter-driven, applicant tracking system-driven process to more of a collaborative, transparent, bidding-based system, which creates better benefits for everybody involved.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:08) Oh, explain the bidding to me.

(Kasia at 00:02:10) Yeah. So when you come into SkillGigs, you come in and you build what's called your 3D resume. So SkillGigs, the name itself comes from the fact that instead of using a recruiter to look at your resume and decide if you're good enough for that job, we use what's called a skill density analysis within the 3D resume. And the system goes in, and the machine learning learns what you're really good at in your role. So, for example, if you're a software programmer, let's say you do Java, it asks you and figures out, hey, how long on your daily basis are you actually doing Java, JavaScript, XML, whatever stack you're using, builds up that data, and then matches that data against what the employer is looking for in a similar vein.

(Kasia at 00:02:58) And so when that happens and the employer, before they could engage with you or talk to you, they have to put a bid on you. And then you get a chance to show if you're interested in that bid or not. And if you are interested or not interested, that's when the conversation starts with the employer. Hey, maybe the bid is too low. I'm looking for $100 an hour versus you just bid me at 70.

(Kasia at 00:03:23) So we want to take that out of the equation right off the bat. And we want to make it really easy for people to make sure it's transparent and everybody can earn what we call their real market value. And by doing this right upfront, we remove these awkward conversations later on. And you go right into the hiring process with a clear understanding of what you're going to be earning. And therefore, you're able to then talk about the more other important things, like your skills and why you're good for the job, et cetera.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:53) Did any of your past companies prepare you for this or inspire you to do this?

(Kasia at 00:03:58) Yeah. I mean, the story behind SkillGigs is that, you know, I'm a serial entrepreneur, been in the staffing industry for twenty-plus years now, have built a variety of staffing companies. And one day when I had a nurse staffing company, I was talking to a customer about to go to the airport. I had to catch a flight. And the customer had just opened up a new floor, a hospital floor, and they needed nurses.

(Kasia at 00:04:28) But they were really struggling. And this customer, this nursing manager, actually, she was super stressed because if she could not get the adequate amount of nurses on the floor, she could not deliver the healthcare that she needed to deliver at her facility. And it costs a lot of money to keep these floors running without any customers to take care of or patients to take care of. So as I was leaving, I spoke to my recruiting manager in my company. I was like, look, she needs these ER nurses really badly. What can you do? At least can you give her a couple to just get started? And the recruiting manager kind of looked at me with a smile on her face, and we both knew it was not going to happen in a couple of days. It's going to take at least two or three weeks till we're able to create some kind of momentum for her and bring her the kind of talent that she's looking for. But this is obviously in high demand, even back then.

(Kasia at 00:05:25) And as I was leaving, I was calling an Uber, right, and the thought came to my mind, which is like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if this hiring manager could go in an app and select the people, or we could help her select the people through technology, which are fit for her, and she can engage with them directly without having to actually come to us, give us a requirement, and then our recruiters pick up the phone manually or email or LinkedIn or whatever and go through a cold calling session for her to find her pipeline of candidates. And that's kind of how SkillGigs started in my mind. But obviously, that was because I was coming from the staffing industry. I'd built companies in there successfully. And yeah, so that helped a lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:13) Help me understand a little bit deeper. Did you actually end up building a SkillGigs-like product at that agency to solve that problem, or did you not and then go do it for developers?

(Kasia at 00:06:25) Yeah. No, no. So I did do it at that agency. So then I set up a brand new company, called it SkillGigs, and went through a complete development lifecycle, came up with a prototype, came up with a beta, went to market, just your typical product development lifecycle, product launch, A/B tested the whole thing, trying to get customer feedback loops going, the whole nine yards till we came to a point in 2017 where the e-commerce system was working the way I'd imagined it to be working.

(Kasia at 00:06:59) And you could—I mean, when you're developing an e-commerce system from scratch and SkillGigs was entirely custom built, we didn't go and build on top of Shopify or any of these other e-commerce apps out there. We built the whole thing from scratch. So there was a lot of hard work, a lot of heartache, a lot of bugs that we had to go through and work through, and user experience issues, et cetera, till 2017 we felt really good about it, and we launched in the broader market.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:28) So you didn't ever solve the problem over there in healthcare?

(Kasia at 00:07:31) Well, we never solved the problem there in that agency. But what we did was that we came back, and so this is where it connects. One of the categories that we brought into SkillGigs was nurses, right? So there was no staffing, and it is the problem that we're solving. It's just that we're solving it in a different entity entirely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:52) Oh, so there's more than just software engineers on SkillGigs?

(Kasia at 00:07:55) Yes. So there's nurses on SkillGigs as well. So there's nurses and software developers. Those are the two main categories that we focus on.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:04) Well, there's a lot of money in software and healthcare, so not bad categories to pick.

(Kasia at 00:08:08) Well, we're trying our best.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:11) So you've been a CEO five times. Were all of those companies you founded, or were some of them you were just employed as a CEO?

(Kasia at 00:08:19) All of them I founded.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:21) That's awesome.

(Kasia at 00:08:22) Yeah. I always tell myself this is the last one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:25) It's never the last one.

(Kasia at 00:08:26) I'll never do it again. Yeah, I say I won't do it again, and I always end up being pulled in because of something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:32) Of course. Because the moment you declare that, the next day, some great opportunity comes out of nowhere that you have to take.

(Kasia at 00:08:39) That's the Achilles' heel, isn't it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:42) If you were to step back, obviously, you're able to delegate. You're able to build these large companies. So you've got these leadership skills necessary to do so. But I want you to take a moment and step back and look at your entire history of experience and find the one thing that you think is the most important thing as far as your personal progress and growing as a leader.

(Kasia at 00:09:10) Yeah. It's a great question. I mean, obviously, there is not one thing. There's a whole bunch of things. I could probably write a book on it. But if there was to be one thing, I think it's the fact that being able to deal with failure and being able to forget that failure really quickly and lesson learned and moving on, I think has been a skill that has probably served me the best. I don't let failure bring me down. I take it as a leverage to go back at it again and succeed. And I come from probably the same school of thought as Elon does, which is never give up. So I think those things combined have served me really well in every one of the businesses that I founded over the years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:56) Where did you get that? Did you get that from your parents or did you get that from a difficult childhood?

(Kasia at 00:10:02) No. I had a great childhood, sir. But I don't know. Maybe it's in my DNA. It's just I forget the failures fast. I don't let them linger. Maybe that's just how my biology is, if you will. But I leverage it to the hilt. Yeah. I think it's probably more DNA than anything else.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:20) Well, it's very efficient because, you know, you get punched in the face. There's two things you can do. You can cry, or you can get up and move on, and you just got to do that. Some people will spend their whole lives crying. Some people will spend their whole lives debating whether they should get up and move on. And other people are just like, well, I'm not at a fork in the road. I'm going that way.

(Kasia at 00:10:39) And I think I'm the secondary, if you will. And look, I mean, I think we both know that failure is always hovering around us as entrepreneurs, as founders, or anything, actually, what we're doing in life. And being able to deal with that failure in a positive manner, I think, again and again, that story has been told. It's always successful. So, thankfully, that's a skill that I have, and I think it served me well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:09) Yeah. I would argue that success is simply a collection of failures.

(Kasia at 00:11:13) Yeah. You go from one failure to the other, and in between as successes are.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:18) Yeah. It's a weird thing too because if you're always pushing forward, then you're failing regularly. So when people come from the side and be like, oh, look, you're successful. It's like, quiet. I'm busy failing. I'm trying to figure out this next step. Because if you sit around, then you just die. You get eaten alive.

(Kasia at 00:11:36) Obviously. And I liken it to kind of like creating a motion picture, right? You have these scenes that are going on, and people don't see how the scene's actually put together and what really creates a movie. And they just watch the movie and they're like, oh, what a great movie or what a bad movie, whatever it was. But everything that happens is in between those scenes and how you put the scenes together in the end. And you're always on to the next scene. You're always on to the next thing. And so, yeah, I agree with you on that. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:05) Did you build a family while you were building your businesses?

(Kasia at 00:12:08) I did. I did. I have a beautiful wife and three kids, two daughters and a son, a son who is a junior, a middle schooler, and a very recent addition to our family. She's fifteen months old. Yeah. The baby of the family, if you will.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:24) I love it. I have a five-year-old daughter, a four-year-old son, and a seven-month-old son.

(Kasia at 00:12:30) Oh, how beautiful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:31) So I'm right there at the beginning.

(Kasia at 00:12:33) Yeah. And then you understand how much that takes. So it's so important that your family is supportive of what we do. And I think they suffer sometimes with that fact, obviously, especially if you're sometimes on vacation or something and you're dealing with a work situation. But thankfully, I have a supportive family who I think has been—my wife has been a big bedrock in all of this, backbone to all of this. And if she did not take away some of the stresses of raising a family and take that on herself, I probably would not have founded five companies. So, yeah, I think that support is very important. And the kids as well, especially as the kids get older, if they are able to participate in it, it makes this a lot more easier.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:24) Yeah. And the kids are the best investment you're ever going to make, spending time with them so they know what a good dad looks like. Having kids has taught me it's an accelerated course in life. Just like here's incredibly difficult moments packed with unbelievable joy.

(Kasia at 00:13:42) Absolutely. And it is not easy to forget the failures there. It's easy to forget the failures here, but it's very difficult to forget the failures there. So that's a tough one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:52) Yeah. You need a wife that helps forget the failures too. That's a strong one. For the—I'm about six, seven years into this business currently.

(Kasia at 00:14:00) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:01) For the first three years, me and the wife were not on the same page.

(Kasia at 00:14:06) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:07) We weren't getting along. It was the first time we ever had kids. We gave up ourselves. You know what it's like? And then we just got to this point where I was like, it's either got to—that fork in the road. It's either—you can't live for so long with a foot out the door. And so I just committed, fully, and I was like, I'm in it. I'm papa bear. This is what I'm doing, and everything changed, right? Everything started getting better. It took a lot of time, but it's been about four years since that moment. And, man, I can tell you today without exaggerating, my wife's my best friend. Obviously, we still have the normal amount of interactions and disagreements and whatnot. But it is so much easier.

(Kasia at 00:14:47) It is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:48) Than it was before. When you have someone supporting you and being that foundation, and she really likes the mom role. You know, she loves the traditional role. She wants to be a good mom, and sometimes people from the outside will say things like, oh, well, he should take care of the baby half the time. I was like, look, you do what you want in your relationship. In our relationship, we both talked about what we're good at. We made decisions on what responsibilities we had owned, and that's how it came out to be.

(Kasia at 00:15:18) I think that alignment is key, right? And I think once you figured out that alignment, it just helped propel you in your professional world. And it is exactly that. I mean, everybody has to look at, you know, what skills or what am I good at, and what can happen to this relationship or to this family because, obviously, there's a lot of responsibilities. There's, you know, you have a vision for your kids. How do you want to raise them? Where do you want to send them to school? What kind of individuals do you want them to become in society? And it takes a lot of hard work to do that. And you know this. So I think a wife, or a partner, that understands that and, you know, both sides, right? I mean, the person who's providing and the person who's actually doing the work at home, they both have to align. And if they do, then magic happens.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:06) 100%. Now with the kids, you're farther ahead with me. You have much older kids. Are you watching how they're interacting and adopting technology? Is that helping you as an entrepreneur to see them engage with it?

(Kasia at 00:16:19) Yeah. So I think one of the coolest things is that I think I have, through osmosis, given my kids this bug for entrepreneurship as well. And, you know, we could be on vacation somewhere, and my son brings up a particular business problem that I was talking about. He wants to learn more about it. He talks to me about technology, you know, how he's seen other people solve it.

(Kasia at 00:16:44) Sometimes when I'm launching a product, I send it over to him, like, oh, take a look at this. Tell me what you think. How's the user experience? What is the UX like? Is it easy?

(Kasia at 00:16:53) Is it simple? Do you connect? And so, you know, I get a lot of feedback from the younger generation, if you will. And it's very helpful. I mean, this is the TikTok generation.

(Kasia at 00:17:03) This is the Instagram generation. Right? It really helps to understand that, you know, get their feedback on the way we're developing things. It always helps. Yes.

(Kasia at 00:17:14) Definitely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:15) What technologies are they really interested in on their own?

(Kasia at 00:17:18) Well, I've got AI. I mean, ChatGPT. My son is extremely interested in ChatGPT, ChatGPT-4. He's also big into video production and he's into cars. So, you know, he is all about TikTok videos and Instagram videos, and he wants to be the next big Throttle House, if you will.

(Kasia at 00:17:42) You know, so he's using a lot of these video technologies out there. He's using AI in video technology out there as well. He was showing me something he was playing around with the other day. And, you know, the same for my daughter. I think she is really into Instagram and TikTok and using those for and YouTube.

(Kasia at 00:18:01) I mean, she is really big into YouTube as well. She's an artist. She likes theater as well. So, you know, having this access to videos on TikTok and YouTube just opens up a brand new world for them, right, especially at their age. She's 13 years old.

(Kasia at 00:18:15) So it's just, you know, a bunch of mentors available for free. It's an amazing time to be alive in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:21) Absolutely. The materials to, I'm 35 for context. The materials for education today are such, they're so much more abundant and of such a high quality than when I first started. It's amazing. As long as you have that drive, you can literally do anything.

(Kasia at 00:18:40) It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:43) I told my kids, and, you know, they're young and you can tell me if this is, if this doesn't work in reality, if it doesn't scale as they age. But my current plan, I told them, I said, look, all you have to do is you have to learn to read, write, do basic mathematics because we homeschool them. So you have to do those things. And then after you know those things, then you have to come to work with me. This is not optional.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:09) You have to come to work with me, then you have to learn how to make money. They have to learn sales calls and processes. Now I don't care if they're an entrepreneur, and I'm not pushing them to own their own business. But as a father, my responsibility, if that's the equivalent of me teaching them to hunt a thousand years ago, I'm teaching them how to provide, how to generate revenue and generate sales.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:32) If they want to use it, great. They may not. They may wake up one day in their thirties and remember all those skills and decide to put it to use then. Right? But that's what I said.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:43) So read, write, basic mathematics, then learn to make money, and then I expect them out of the house by age 18.

(Kasia at 00:19:52) Age 18. It's funny you say that because early on in my life, one of the things that my dad did, which was something similar, our family used to own a shoe factory. And, you know, this was quite a large industry that we used to own. And my dad every summer would just send me over there. My uncles used to be the ones who ran it.

(Kasia at 00:20:12) It was my grandfather who had set it up. But my dad would send me to the factory in the summer to just hang out with them, to see what was going on. And I think growing up doing that every summer, it just completely changed my outlook to the world, right? You know, I think I learned a lot of what I've done over the years from there as well. So very similar to what you're talking about.

(Kasia at 00:20:38) And I think it's very, very important in the modern world, especially. It's super important, especially with AI coming in and everything else happening and some of these careers going away. What's not going to go away is the hustle, is learning how to sell, learning how to communicate and talk to people, learning how to put together a vision and then execute around it. It doesn't matter if you're trying to find a job, trying to make a movie, trying to make a product, trying to become something. I think these skills are helpful in all of those efforts, if you will.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:10) I want to talk to you about staying focused. But briefly before I do, let your son know that yesterday I saw one of the first movies made by AI. It was only 10 minutes long. It was somebody had posted it on LinkedIn, and they had, you know, the AI wrote the script. The AI generated the frames of the movie.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:30) And I'll tell you what, man, it was not that bad. It was, like, it was what I would expect a film school student's graduating project to be.

(Kasia at 00:21:41) Crazy, isn't it? And these are early days, by the way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:44) Very early.

(Kasia at 00:21:45) Right? These are early days. Here's the thing. What's going to happen, you know, 50 years from today?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:51) Well, you and I will be hanging out inside of the computer. Consciousness will probably be transferred inside the computer. It'll be sponsored by SkillGigs. So there'll be a SkillGigs area inside the computer.

(Kasia at 00:22:01) We're on Meta. I think it's like a book, as a right. We'll all be at Meta somewhere. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:08) I think they'll do all of this stuff, and then, like, some other company will build on top of their learnings and just, like, completely dominate market share. Did you ever make shoes? Did you ever actually go in the factory and make the shoes?

(Kasia at 00:22:19) I watched it get made. I never really did it myself. But, you know, there was a, you know, watched all the workers and, you know, chemical processes and the dyes being made and the burners and, you know, the warehouses being stocked and the distribution happening and then it getting to the various, you know, channels of distribution and the sales process. I was just a kid, kind of like in a chocolate factory, if you will. Right?

(Kasia at 00:22:44) I would just walk around, make friends with the foreman and, you know, all these workers and hear their stories and see what they did. And it was a fun time. It was probably the best summers that I ever had. You felt like an adult, right, inside this whole world. And it was very cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:04) Yeah. My dad would take me to work with him. That's how I got into technology. And they thought it was cool because I was, you know, eight or 10, and my dad would give me these little tasks on the computer, and then, you know, the 30-year-old engineer is surprised by the eight, 10-year-old doing stuff on the computer, and then that just fueled the fire more. Because then I thought it was cool that they thought I was cool.

(Kasia at 00:23:27) Exactly. You know, the genesis was happening faster, if you will, because of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:32) You started five businesses. I want you to walk me through the things that are top of mind when starting a new venture. What are you, as an individual, thinking about with all of your experience?

(Kasia at 00:23:44) Yeah. I mean, great question. I think the first thing that comes to mind is, how can I fail quickly? You know, what is the idea like? What is the go-to-market?

(Kasia at 00:23:54) You know, and then bring it out there in form of a minimum viable product or in form of a prototype or something where I can understand if there is any stickiness to it. And then, you know, you've got to go slow at it, as in you cannot go build it all in one go. So I'm always a proponent of figuring out the market fit, problem solution, go smart at it, get the stickiness, but get it to market fast, fail fast, understand what's not working. And usually it's in those lanes that you find success. Right?

(Kasia at 00:24:30) And then once you find, you know, it doesn't usually happen that you hit a home run every time. Right? So, you know, it's just a couple of ground balls that you figure out. What is the pitcher doing? What is the pitcher doing?

(Kasia at 00:24:42) And, you know, eventually, you kind of figure it out. And then you keep running those plays, and then they start ending up being home runs because you understand, you know, your dynamics. You understand your form and all those things, and then you start doing them better and better every day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:58) I started my first business at or I attempted to start my first business at 13. And since then, I've had about 20 ground balls, ground balls slash fouls. I've had one base hit, and I've had one home run. But the thing is you only need one home run. That's it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:15) That's it. I want to know how you test market pressure. That's a question that I'm always curious, and you've got this idea. How do you determine, I mean, you might talk to one or two people and understand that you're in the right direction, but how do you know there's enough pressure in the marketplace to actually build a scalable business?

(Kasia at 00:25:33) Yeah. Your test group has to be, you know, the right test group, if you will. And it's got to be unbiased. And I do not think it should be your friends or your acquaintances for sure because sometimes they're coming from an angle of bias, sometimes they come from an angle of protection, right, which, you know, sometimes is not good as far as the feedback loop is concerned. Your best bet is to go, I mean, in the modern world, what do we have?

(Kasia at 00:25:58) We have access to a lot of traffic, right? So for example, if you're building an e-commerce site, you can build a prototype and spend some money with Google and Facebook and, you know, TikTok and the world, drive some top of the funnel traffic, see how they're interacting. And then there's amazing tools out there that you can install on top of your tech. And you can watch what your customers, your potential customers are doing and how they're doing it, and then collect the data on it. You know, it's a data-driven world. And I think everything we should do today, as far as business is concerned, should be driven by data and seeing what the user experiences do with that data and connecting those two things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:40) Yeah. I saw this tool, I think, about four years ago called FullStory, where you could actually, like, watch the people as they went on. And I was telling this whole story about how I love this product once and, you know, and the guy I was interviewing was one of the original creators of it, and I didn't know.

(Kasia at 00:27:00) Yeah. But, I mean, that helps. Right? I mean, that's how you tell that the market pressure is there. And, obviously, traffic. Right? The data. You're spending X number of dollars. You know, what's your cost of acquisition? What's your CAC?

(Kasia at 00:27:10) What's your LTV? You're figuring those things out. Put it on a spreadsheet somewhere. Figure out the ratios, and you kind of get a blueprint idea of, hey. Is this going to work or not?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:21) How involved are you in the day-to-day of the business?

(Kasia at 00:27:25) Extremely involved. We grew cumulatively, we grew over 400% in the last couple of years as a business, and that has meant we have been moving at rapid speeds to be able to capture this growth and keep moving it towards the right direction. Because when a lot of fast growth happens, things go out of control. There's a lot of chaos, and there's not a lot of things in any control. So, you know, what we try to do is keep things as simple as possible, and I'm involved.

(Kasia at 00:27:54) Because for me, it's kind of like, again, I'm directing and producing a movie. I want to be the one to be able to afford the end result and show the world, look, this is what we have done together. But if I'm not at the helm, then, you know, that vision kind of goes awry. So till I'm here, that's where my focus is on the day-to-day, getting that vision right, ensuring the movie comes out the way I want it to come out, and it is doing the things I wanted to do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:25) So you're an entrepreneur, and you're farther ahead in life than me. As you've created these subsequent ventures, does it become easier because you already have some, you start to have relationships. You start to know specific types of talented people in areas, and you have more resources financially. Does it become easier, or is it still just maximum difficulty?

(Kasia at 00:28:48) I think it becomes easier because you have more resources. Right? I could not have gotten where I've gotten with SkillGigs without my team. Right? So when I say I'm involved daily in it, I'm involved daily in it like a coach, but there are other people who are really playing the game out there.

(Kasia at 00:29:03) So I'm that vision, the coach, the strategist with other people involved. And if you don't have the right team in place, it's so much more difficult to go achieve, you know, what you want to achieve. So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the team is very, very important in having the right team in place. And it's a constant challenge, I mean, because as you continue to grow, your needs continue to grow. So, I mean, when we were a $20 million company, our needs were different.

(Kasia at 00:29:35) When we are a $50 million company, your needs are a little bit different. When you're about to be a $100 million company, then your needs change again, and you've got to go replenish some of those skills. That journey never really ends, right, does it? You're always, you know, maybe you're short in one skill here or another skill here, and you're always looking and you're always trying to find people. So I think for growing companies, it's always a challenge.

(Kasia at 00:30:00) Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:01) What's the one thing that you're working on personally?

(Kasia at 00:30:06) Yeah. So great question. I think, personally, what I'm always working on is how to be a better communicator. Human beings tend to forget very, very fast, and practice makes perfect. So I think it's important to keep reminding yourself how to be a better communicator.

(Kasia at 00:30:26) Are you communicating properly? Is your vision coming across properly? Are you making an impact in the way we are communicating? And that's a skill that I'm constantly working on on a daily basis.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:37) Well, what's the continuous mistake that you've made a bunch of times with communication?

(Kasia at 00:30:42) Yeah. No. No. Too many to count. Look.

(Kasia at 00:30:46) I mean, we're not a perfect animal. Right? I mean, so, you know, in business, we make emotional mistakes. You know, sometimes we react too quickly to certain situations. We don't get enough data.

(Kasia at 00:30:59) We don't let time, you know, we don't let time do its thing. So probably all of the above, Joel. I mean, I probably get all of those mistakes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:08) You're not alone. Josh is probably laughing because his mic's on mute when you, because that is very me. I react pretty quickly, and then I, you know, try to remind myself that, you know, I can't just be like, nope. Not good. Because sometimes that'll kill people's stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:24) Like, there's a time to do it, to be quick, but there's also the time when you need to say, you know, either way, I'm going to have to figure out how to explain to you how we need to improve it. So sometimes I'll pull back. Other times, I'm just a little bit feistier that day, and I don't pull back. But I always try to improve.

(Kasia at 00:31:42) Yeah. I think one of the things that I have learned over the years, and I still make that same mistake sometimes, even though I've learned and I know not to make it. It's the fact that sometimes our reactions may be in the best interest of the company and maybe even the individual. But if we don't communicate that properly, if we are too heavy-handed in certain scenarios, the impact of that is not very positive. And so it's better to step back and not shoot from the hip and really think about what we're seeing and what the impact is going to be. So taking that moment to think about that, I think, is very, very important.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:20) For me, I've noticed from my twenties to my mid-thirties that it has gotten easier to just take a step back and to think about it a little bit more.

(Kasia at 00:32:32) Yeah. But in my twenties, though, I was too fiery, man. I mean, I wanted to be a warrior or something. But that's when you realize, like, no, that's not how that works.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:44) But you gave it the college try, though. Alright, let's wrap up with talking a little bit about the future of the staffing industry. Let's do the call to action before the very end. If developers are listening, they want to join your platform, they want to join SkillGigs, they like this idea of the bidding interaction because I have talked to different marketplaces. I've never heard of that, so that seemed pretty unique to me. How do they go about getting started?

(Kasia at 00:33:12) Yeah, it's very simple. I mean, they come in to skillgigs.com to sign up. They create their what's called skill listing. It's kind of like an eBay storefront kind of process. We help them build that personal brand with a 3D resume, and then they just publish themselves into the marketplace. Once they publish, they just sit back, relax, and all the traffic comes to them. And then all they gotta do after that is accept and decline. If they accept, it could turn into an interview. It can turn into a contract gig for them. If they decline, you know, they keep getting other bids from other options. So they always have an option of their next gig coming through the marketplace without them having to worry about, "Hey, do I need to pick up the phone and call a couple of recruiters, call a couple of staffing agencies? Oh my God, I'm stressing. My contract is ending. When will I get my next one? There might be a longer break than I'm anticipating." So all of those fears go away. The marketplace takes over, and we bring you the traffic, and you just sit back and, you know, move on to your next gig and go make the money.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:14) What type of companies do you have on there looking for talent?

(Kasia at 00:34:17) So, you know, companies like Facebook's on there. HEB is on there. Those are some of the tech-focused companies. Then we have hospital systems on there, like Memorial Hermann. We have HealthTrust or HCA's on there for nurses. At any given point, we have thousands of contracts available in the marketplace and millions of bids going out annually to these folks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:43) Yeah, I'm actually in Nashville, so that's the HCA headquarters.

(Kasia at 00:34:48) It is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:49) Most people think it's music. They think Nashville, they think music, rightfully so. There's a ton of great music, but health care is huge.

(Kasia at 00:34:56) Amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:57) What's the future of the staffing industry? What does it look like in five years?

(Kasia at 00:35:03) I think the future is being defined by SkillGigs and companies like us. Right? I mean, here is that market-based concept where you are removing the staffing company out of the equation. You're removing the recruiter out of the equation, and you're bringing technology in there and letting the two parties connect seamlessly and find the right fit for themselves, all transparently without any of the biases that exist by having human beings at war. And then human beings can exist outside in the periphery, but so much more work can be done. I think productivity increases dramatically. You fill more roles. You do it more seamlessly and with less stress. I think that's one of the things I keep saying, which is a hiring manager is always stressed because you're trying to get somebody into that role because you have something that you need them to do. And if it's not getting done, then your business or your work is suffering. But with the marketplace, you know for a fact that the inventory exists right there in front of you. And you can make a decision based on what is out there versus, you know, waiting for somebody to send you a resume or waiting for a phone call and stressing about the fact, can you fill 10 roles or not? So I think that is the future. Now within that, I think AI is gonna be a big thing. And that's what we are really, really, really banking on as far as what SkillGigs can do over the next two or three years in the roadmap we have for our product, which is that you're bringing in generative AI, and how can you, you know, from all the data that we've collected, which is what we are using for machine learning. So, for example, I said it earlier in our conversation that with SkillGigs, you come and create what's called a skill density inside your 3D resume, and the employer creates what's called a skill density analysis for their job. And then our technology matches up both using data percentages and weightages to say, "Okay, Java 50%, Java 50%, weightage does"—and I'm simplifying it for this conversation. And if it matches, well, you know, this is a good match for you. You are going to end up hiring this person. That's where this is going, which is that data over the years has accumulated into millions of bids and millions of bids accepted or declined. And now we're taking it to the next level with machine learning, you know, with AI algorithms and saying, "Okay, now start making predictive analysis on this and saying, 'Hey, HEB, you know, you hired a hundred people from us. And what we learned from the hundred people that you hired, these are the kind of people who were successful for you when you're hiring for this kind of a role.'" So taking it to that level is where I feel the future is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:38) That's kinda brilliant. Like, companies will pay a lot of money to know what success looks like within their organization because, I mean, hiring and turnover is a huge—I mean, people are the biggest expense often. Right?

(Kasia at 00:37:50) Biggest, absolutely. And then the opportunity cost. Right? I mean, when you make a bad hire, you know, what does it do to your project, to your bottom line, to your vision of your company, your success? So being able to use AI to make better decisions, I think, is gonna be the key for us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:08) What questions am I not asking, or what am I forgetting?

(Kasia at 00:38:11) I think one question perhaps that you're not asking is, can AI be dangerous? Right? I think broadly, we're not talking about that enough. I think, frankly, I come from, you know, the school of thought that, yeah, it can be very dangerous if we don't create the right paradigms around it and the right rules and regulations around it. And impact on humanity can be good and bad. And we just gotta make sure as a society to ensure that its impact is good versus bad because it's a very slippery slope into the bad very, very quickly with the way technology is evolving as we speak.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:50) Yes. It's, uh, the government operates in hindsight. Right? They put the laws in after a bunch of people die from not wearing their seat belts, or they put in the laws after a lot of pain has happened. Right. Musk went around for years trying to proactively get different countries, different associations, boards, panels, all of that to do something, and they just kinda shrug. That's one of the reasons why he made his first OpenAI investment. But, I don't know. What do you think is going to happen? If you had to bet how this would play out over the next several years with policy and the rise of AI, what do you think would happen?

(Kasia at 00:39:25) Well, I mean, all you can really depend on is history and see what happened when, you know, we went through industrialization. Labor was treated through industrialization, how we had to come in and evolve out of that and, you know, create labor rights and human rights and all that stuff, and how, you know, the robber barons of the day, you know, they leveraged industrialization to their favor. And, you know, how did that impact society as a whole? So I think there's a lot of history that's there already. We can probably learn from a lot of that. And main thing is exploitation, right? We don't want anybody getting exploited because of new technology. And I think that's where—that's a good start, which is how do you create an environment where the exploitation is something that's caged and is not allowed to come out as, you know, as a big gorilla in the room and just take over.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:27) Give me an example of what exploitation would look like with AI, labor, and so on.

(Kasia at 00:40:33) Well, look. I mean, if companies can figure out—okay. I'll give you an example. Airbnb. So there's a lot of Airbnb owners out there who are always trying to figure out what's the best price my property should go out and be rented for. And there's these new tools, AI tools out there. They're reading all of this data, demand and supply data, actual buy data, and they're coming back and saying, "You know what? Your apartment should go for this because of this, what's happening in the industry, whatever, data points." Now imagine if this data was available only to big companies and not to individuals like us. Let's say you're a job seeker. You don't have access to this data, but a bigger company like an IBM does. And based on whatever they have read about you or whatever they have accumulated about you as far as data is concerned, extrapolated it, and they come back and start negotiating with you, and they know more about you and your situation than you know about them, it can be a very exploitive situation. They could probably come and get you at 40% less than what you should be going in the market for. So we have to ensure that it's a fair playing field on both sides. Right? That's just one example. Now you can just go down the road, the rabbit hole with these examples. There's medicine. You know, how could you be exploiting people in medicine with AI? There's, you know, different industries where this could come in and become a big problem. So we just have to be careful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:02) And luckily, almost all the technologists I've met are optimists, you know. And they want what's best for society, and they're typically pretty good people. So I think because we have to—we, I mean, look, we're in the same position. We have to rely on these people who are in each specific niche to be making the correct decisions. And it's not gonna be perfect, but I'm just praying that it's good enough. Right?

(Kasia at 00:42:28) Yeah. I mean, you know, look. I mean, we went through an election cycle where, you know, there was two parties saying, you know, "We don't believe you and we don't believe you." I mean, who won the election? Who didn't win the election? And then we went through an early election cycle where we found out that Twitter was used and Facebook was used and all these other entities were used to sway public opinion one way versus another based on algorithms, right? That's what is that? That's early AI, basically. Eventually, what could AI do interfering in our election cycles? What can it do restricting our freedoms of expression, et cetera, behind the scenes that we don't even know about, right? So there's so much different stuff that's out there that we have to think about as this technology evolves. It's a great technology. It can do great things. You know, we wanna do great things with it, but we just wanna make sure that we don't go too far.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:22) Did you see that Joe—do you watch Joe Rogan ever?

(Kasia at 00:43:25) I do. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:26) Did you see that one where he had the guy on who, like, has the business or the charity that watches Google, and they talked about how Google has interfered with elections, and they've gotten letters from different—I'm glad you saw that because when you were talking about that, I was like, I watched that whole thing on that guy. That blew my mind, man.

(Kasia at 00:43:44) Absolutely. And it's scary, isn't it? Yeah. Now just imagine, you know, AI playing a role in that. And now just imagine at the speeds you're doing what you're doing, how exploitive that could be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:56) Yeah. AI could be exploitive, and we not, like, don't even know. And the scariest part of that whole interview that we're talking about is I believe that many of the people tinkering with, you know, running these experiments and stuff, they might have good intentions, but that amount of power to tinker, what can happen with you just kind of exploring, I mean, it's gonna get real crazy and real interesting, but, again, I just have to go back to an optimist. I live out an hour outside of Nashville on five acres. I got my little farmland. I have high speed internet. I built, you know, a structure, a recording studio for this, and then my main house over there. So I see my family frequently. And we live, like, thirty minutes from a grocery store, but we just hang out here. We're enjoying life, and we drive into town. That's something we do now.

(Kasia at 00:44:49) That's awesome. But, yeah, look. I mean, the Oppenheimer project happened. Right? I mean, we created controls around that. You know, there was for a whole long time during the Cold War, we were all scared about that bomb going off between, you know, the USSR and the US. This is quite similar to that. Right? I mean, this is a new technology. We don't know where this can go and where it can impact us. So we just gotta be careful and build the right controls around it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:16) Absolutely. I saw the flyers from the sixties or the thirties or something where the hardware stores actually sold these bunkers that you could bury in your backyard, and it was for, like, nuclear safety or whatnot. And I've never seen that in my lifetime at a hardware store, but I was like, that is a completely different time.

(Kasia at 00:45:38) Scary growing up as a kid. Right? I mean, imagine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:41) Yeah. Well, now imagine that the same scare with nuclear, it was pretty rare to get your hands on nuclear. The average American citizen did not have nuclear in their backyard. Now, we have it in the palm of our hand. And so now, we've got this nuclear device, this thing that has this ability to impact the world, and it's unlocked. It's opened up, and every single one of us has it on our device. It's different than the nuclear. Nuclear was easier to put laws on and to stop because you could just go find the sources of where it was physically and, you know, barricade it or do whatever you wanted to do there. But this is, uh, this is different.

(Kasia at 00:46:19) Yeah. I don't—it's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:20) It's gonna happen faster.

(Kasia at 00:46:21) In the first few years of recorded human history, a human being has ever been more powerful than they are today. Yeah. It's just—and we don't even realize that. I mean, we are so much more powerful than our ancestors ever were, and it's right there in the palm of our hands. It's just incredible.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:38) More powerful than Genghis Khan. Yeah. Dude, we did it. We made a podcast. How do you feel?

(Kasia at 00:46:45) I feel great, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:46) It was a great conversation. Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.