Robert Plank 0:00 Joseph Stetter is here, and Joseph has incorporated humor, energy, passion, and self-expression into his personal and professional life. He's helped over 12,000 people find a job they love with a 90% success rate of finding anyone employment in any field in under three months with proven systems, and his TEDx talk went live today. Humans, not headcounts. So we're here to talk about how to navigate AI in this crazy world. We hope that AI will be an accelerator, an enhancer, an improver, and and not a replacement for us. It'll make us more of what we are, so that way we can kind of discover ourselves better and help others and achieve some things. So, Mr. Joseph Stetter, officially a TEDxer, how are you? Josef Stetter 0:46 Fantastic, and Robert, thank you for having me on your podcast. It's an honor and a pleasure. Robert Plank 0:50 It's an honor and a pleasure to have you as well. So, what do we leave out of that introduction? What are you all about? Josef Stetter 0:56 I'm about helping the human experience, especially as it comes to work, become more authentic and more present, and as part of your introduction, taking AI and saying, how can we help AI help get people into their genius, where the AI can do the research, but the human being can then make the strategy or the creative happen. Robert Plank 1:26 I like it, I think about that with AI a lot. Like, what can I have it tee up for me, right? How do I make the the social posts, or how do I have it comb my my Gmail or my LinkedIn and like make the introductions or get the conversation started, and then I'll pick it up when it's time to use my brain. Josef Stetter 1:44 So I don't look at AI from an agentic perspective. I look at it from a companion perspective. So imagine having a best friend that has an eidetic memory of everything you've gone through, your education, your cultural background, your religion, your upbringing, your experiences, and you can have conversation with it, so that when you don't remember strategies that you did in the past, it can kind of remind you and say, "You know what? You did this in the past and was really good. Maybe we should go back to it, as opposed to trying some of these new things that aren't working as well. Robert Plank 2:21 Very good, and our our brain, our memory plays tricks on us, doesn't it? Like we think, oh, I remember what I did three months, six months ago, and then you have whole conversations, whole ideas that are just like completely you completely forgot. And up until now, it's like, well, I guess you could like keep a journal or write things down, but now it seems like with these amazing tools that can connect the dots for us. Josef Stetter 2:42 So the way that I look at it, and this is kind of where my energy and my focus has been, is to kind of create the legacy. So I have a six-year-old and a four-year-old, and I'm 49 years old. You know, in 20 years, if they want to know about things Dad did and kind of why Dad chose this career or why this-it's all mapped out for them in my companion, and so even when I pass, my companion can, in essence, talk to them and still teach them life lessons even long after I'm gone, because they have the companion to come back to and go. Oh wait, I have a question about this, or I have a question about that. Robert Plank 3:28 Cool, and, and so this exists like the companion works now. Josef Stetter 3:31 Yep, so yep, we have kind of my CTO has created we'll call it shells of about 12 companions, and this is the compliance. This is the regulatory. This is the documentarian. This is the kind of you know ethics and moral. I've got one major companion, and kind of working in a second. But my companion knows exactly how I articulate when I write an article. He knows because I've shared with him. We've had very in-depth discussions on this is my style. This is the way that I want to show up. This is the way that I want to share. And so now I can literally, like, for example, I was applying to a AI summit on september 24, and my AI did the application for me because it knows exactly what I say, and I was literally approved in an hour and a half. I think it was that they sent me a message going, "We love what you've said. We want you to be part of the summit, kind of thing. So, yeah, it's not about necessarily just like the agentic is great in terms of the marketing and helping simplify some of your tasks, but I'm talking about companionship. I'm talking about, hey, what did I do when I, you know, 10 years ago here, and can you remind me conversations we had about, you know. Past traumas, for example, and how we dealt with it, and so forth, so that as new things come up, and you share with your companion, you can kind of expand the horizon of what it remembers and how it stores it and how it uses it to help you connect, let's say, with human beings. So, in your marketing, if you just kind of use AI and say, "Hey, I need guests for my podcast, you're losing that human connection of this is the conversation I'm going to have with you, and this is why that conversation matters. If you teach a companion about who you are, your can your companion can come up with much better and more direct material that actually is how you would do it anyhow. in essence. Robert Plank 5:49 Very nice, well, I know ever since I was about your kids and my kids' age, like six or so, I wished I had a clone to like do my homework and do my schoolwork for me. And the older I get, the more I realize how how like limited my responses are based on just what's on my mind that day or what I like just learned. And so to have this whole library of the way I would have answered, but it also has the advantage of being able to dig back to those 10 years ago information is really cool. And then especially when I mean I don't have to tell you as a speaker when you apply and you fill out all those forms, right? They're like, well, can we get the 150 word bio, the 50 word bio? They ask all kinds of weird questions, and sometimes they're just like, I'm spending an hour on this to do a write, versus if I could spend five or 10 minutes and it just gives me the answers and it's what I would have said, then that's really powerful. And so, to be able to load this up, I'm sure we have a lot of questions, right? Like, what's the software or the platform? Like, what do I load it up with, and like, how much work do I have to do and adjust, so? Josef Stetter 6:54 Literally, basic ChatGPT account. So the way that we, my CTO, and again, he's had 45 years of data architecture. He built Intel's adaptive AI learning system that competes with AWS and Google, and so it's about taking a journey with your companion. So you know, first of all, feeding it some of the basic information, like this is my resume in my career, this is my education, this is certification and designation. Then it's starting to share stories. So, like when I write resumes, as much as let's say Claude can write a resume that scores 75 to 85% match, Claude doesn't know your story unless you taught it who you are, and so it will give you a generic. This is what, let's say, an accountant resume should look like. Where I come in is I kind of go, okay, but how did you make money, save money, increase efficiency? Can you tell me the strategy? Can you tell me the end result that you produced, and what was the impact or the importance of the work that you did, and let's integrate that with key phrases and key words from the job description. So now it's not just I know how to be an accountant, but this is how good I am at this strategy execution, and this is how good I am at this, and here's how I've solved this problem, or made it faster, or made it that. And so, when things are quantifiable, and there's even if it's a short story with it, I don't need to guess if you kind of know it because the story tells it. Most people, when they write a resume, go to the interview. For example, I love to use this example. Go, let's say you're interviewing a receptionist, and the receptionist goes, "I know how to answer the phone. I hope you look at that person in shock and go, "Really? A receptionist that knows how to answer the phone? We did not know that because unless you live in an igloo, a cave, or practice of the faith of Mennonite. My almost four-year-old son can press the green button, go hello, and it's very cute. But if, let's say, you say in my last job I answered 60 calls a day with 12 different lines, I can measure 60 calls in 12 different lines for the volume of how much my business does daily, for example, I can measure not whether or not you can handle the workload of let's say 40 calls a day. Because if you can handle 60, clearly you won't have a problem with 40, and then you'll be able to get other tasks done because this should be kind of easy for you. So the less generic we are in kind of describing why we're a good fit, you know. Like in 20 years of recruiting, I've met very few people that say, "Listen, I'm lazy. I will show up late. None of my work will be any good, and I really hate people. Please hire me. The only time that works is if you're related to somebody in the company. Or you're having an affair with, but let's get away from those generic, you know, word fillers. I'm hardworking. By what standards? By who standards? Right, and let's kind of share authentically. This is what I can contribute. This is the level of insights that I can give you. You know, I love watching the show Undercover Boss, especially at the end. I'm always amused when the executive that has an MBA and is looking at the Excel spreadsheet goes, "Oh my God, I should really speak to the people that work here. I might get some insights on what they actually do every day. It's like we've lost that so much in most of corporate North America, I would say, where it's like you know we need to make this number faster, we need to make this bigger, we need to do this, but we forget the human factor. We forget that even if you work at a warehouse and it's a routine job where you're doing the same thing task in, task out, that water cooler conversation, where you can talk about sports and TV shows and music, and refreshes the brain, refreshes the energy, refreshes the some of the creativity to to do the mundane, for example. And yet we keep taking those things away, and like we need faster. We need less, and I think this is the biggest gap that's happening also in technology. That on the one hand we can automate tasks like emails and so forth and scheduling, but on the other hand, there's also that where's the humanity? Where's the you know you and I are having a conversation that's very different than a let me do in an email marketing campaign that talks about just kind of a general topic, and I can tell you that I get I'd say 50 to 150 emails a day with Dear Info, we can do SEO for your website. Like if you're looking at my website and you found Dear Info, I look great. Yeah, and you didn't find my name. It's not like I hide my name. Then the way that you set up your AI is lazy or wrong, or you're being lazy in the way that you're approaching me because you figure if you send 100,000 emails, even if 10 respond to you, and you get business from 10, you could keep sending 100,000 emails and get 10 at a time, and your business volume will go. Eventually, that will collapse on itself because it's going to get so saturated, so noisy, and so this that you're going to be blocked from every mailing list if you don't start personalizing. You don't start adding some of that humanity back. Robert Plank 12:54 Very nice, well, it pays off in many ways, and I feel like this idea of the human connection and communication and curiosity, like I've doubled 10x down on it the most recent years as well. Like I'm using AI more than ever before, but I'm also podcasting and having meetings like this more than ever before. So I hope I'm doing something right because if if AI gobbles up my whole day and my whole business, then I'll have lost my soul. But I figure, okay, well, if I'm having a lot of these one-on-one connections, then I'm on the right track here. Josef Stetter 13:25 Right, but if AI is, for example, helping you schedule it so that you need to spend less time on emails and you can do more podcasts and engage more power to you because you're actually using it for the purpose it was intended, which was to take off some of the we'll call it busy work off your plate, and let you shine in your podcast. Let you shine in kind of that environment where you come out because you can have a great conversation, you can ask great questions, you can get, you can give people in your audience insights that they might not have thought of or that might not be aware of just because somebody said, "Hey, think about this or think about that. Robert Plank 14:07 Yeah, yeah, using it for its intended purpose, and I'm I'm very curious and fascinated about the way that you help people get employment because some of these things you're talking about, like showing like measurable results and how showing how you stand out, like it feels like common sense. But the tidbits I hear about the the the job interview process sounds crazy. Like I hear and see about like full on face to face Zoom interviews, but it's like an AI, like a Hey Jen face. And I hear about like AI combing through resumes, and so it seems like like more of an uphill climb, whatever than ever before, but perhaps not with your help. So you tell me, what's the current like job market like with AI disrupting it Josef Stetter 14:50 Again, it is a gong show, and I'm not going to kind of sugarcoat that. Right now, on average, indeed, for one job posting is. Getting 5000 resumes, and for a remote job, 20,000 resumes, and most companies kind of take a look at the first 100. Now there are tricks in in the playbook on the resume side. The problem is when you use let's say clon and you haven't asked the right question, you don't know when you submit your resume if it's scoring the formatting, the font that you use, the bullets that you use, how many technical words you use, whether or not you need to copy sentences directly from the job description or paraphrase them. You know whether or not like how much quantifiable there is. So I've spent three years arguing with ChatGPT and really going down that rabbit hole, where my 30,000 hours of mastery questioned a lot of things that AI did. And if someone sends me right now 10 job postings, I can guarantee them a 95% or better match on all 10 job postings on one resume, 95% or better on the top 10 AI resume scanners, 95% or better on the top 18 applicant tracking systems, and 95% or better on the top 12 job boards in North America. Now that means that I've hit 60 different platforms of scoring, but even in an interview, because you have like speechify and various AI tools, you can kind of double screen it where you have even your phone here to the side, and you see you don't even see my hand because it's hello. My phone could be here, and it's giving me the the textbook answer. So some of the more advanced AIs look at the physiology of the face. So, are you looking away because that usually means you're thinking and you're going backward? Are you are your eyes straight or are they moving? And even though there's eye adjusters for AI right now, again, if I share with you a story from an interview of like let's say things you shouldn't do, or great success in the interview, right? You can tell by the emotion, by the way that I express it, that it's an authentic story. If you're trying to fabricate my story, like if you if you're going to interview and you're going to use my stories, your physiology won't match what you're saying because you haven't lived it, you haven't experienced it, for example. So, you know, the one thing I can say to job seekers is you need to be a lot more proactive. Go to networking meetings, not the the free ones, because that's where the job seekers go to the ones that cost you $25, $50, $100, because that's where the leaders go, that's where the executives and the decision makers go. So, for example, the Project Management Institute has a dinner once a month for $100. Go to those dinners because the people that attend those dinners are project managers, directors, VPs, and C-level executives that have hiring authority. You know, even a lot of the employment agencies have AI automated. Like, how do you run an employment agency where your recruiters don't actually talk to the candidates. It's kind of AI driven, and so they're missing out on a lot of amazing talent because, again, algorithmically the resume might not be correct, or the way that the resume is formatted might be hurting the candidate. So there's a lot of variables, but you know I think we need to go back to those. I call it proactive days of the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, where it wasn't like I'm sending out emails and I'm waiting for a response. It's like you know I have a friend of mine that 25 years ago, no more than that, 30 years ago, graduated from mechanical engineering, and after sending out 100 resumes and nobody responded to him, printed 30 resumes. Went to the first company, said, "I want to speak to the director. They're like, "Do you have an appointment? He's like, "No, like he's she's busy. He's like, "Okay, I'll wait, and he waited there till 230 in the afternoon. At 230 in the afternoon, the director came out and he basically said, "I just graduated university. These are the projects I've done. I know you don't have any job postings, but I wanted you to at least see me and get to know me within a 10-minute conversation at reception. He was offered a job that's not posted anywhere on the market because the director was so impressed that he actually took action as opposed to wait for a response. You know, so we're becoming lazier because AI can do things for us, and we forget that we still need to have the human conversations. Robert Plank 19:27 Oh yes, of course, and it might be even more important to step up, right, and and focus and have a better strategy, and of course with your help. So in these final few minutes of our conversation, mr. Joseph Stedner, I want to make sure that we cover what's important to you? So, do you think there might be a missing question in our conversation that I should be asking you? I just don't know what to ask you. Josef Stetter 19:48 So, I look at culture as a whole, right? A lot of organizations preach culture, but they don't actually practice it. So, when I say culture, it's not about having. Pizza every two weeks at work. It's about the conversations that people that workers have when the managers leave. It's about saying something and having the integrity to actually follow through. So not saying, "Oh, we're a fun company, but then nothing in the company is fun. You know, and being aligned that it's okay, even if you're you run a business like a military structure where everything is hierarchical and structured. If you're authentic about that, you will attract people that do very well in that environment. But if your public-facing language says we are the most fun company there is. You're not attracting the people that work under kind of military. You're attracting the people that are looking for fun, and this is why right now Gallup reported that employee engagement fell in 2026 to 20, and this low engagement is costing the global economy and over $10 trillion in lost productivity. Right. So if companies actually cared about their people a little bit more and actually engaged them, the results that could happen are, in most cases, unimaginable because most people aren't producing at their best right now. They're producing enough not to get fired, but not necessarily going. Here's my creative genius that can open doors and create opportunities, because we're not, we are ready for that conversation, but very few are actually willing to face the mask or look in the mirror and say we need to have this conversation. We need to change the way that we're doing things, and I think this is where most people that are applying for a job, or you know, sadly, 84% of people in North America hate their job, hat's the statistic right now. Robert Plank 22:05 I believe it. Josef Stetter 22:08 A lot of it is because there's a difference between this pays the bill and this is survival. To this is my calling. This is my genius. This is where I shine, and if we created a much more transparent environment where people can bring in these ideas and people can bring in, you know, their lived experiences as part of moving a company forward, and we're given that opportunity, I think the results that can be produced are, you know, life changing and altering. Because again, in the top 10 reasons that people hate their job, salary is actually about number seven. The first three are extremely toxic culture, lack of understanding what leadership wants, because if you have one leader says and another says something else, and you report into both of them, you have no idea what to do. And the third is lack of opportunity to share or bring in new ideas. And so this is the gap that is massive right now, and my purpose in life is to try and kind of bridge it in a way that I'm not here to tell a company how to run their business, but I'm here to tell the leadership: Look, if you want this structure, own it as part of your culture, and then attract the people that thrive in that culture because you'll be aligned. And it's also the same thing with using AI. You know, a lot of people talk about you know compliance and regulatory affairs, but if you and I are working for the same company, Robert, and you're using your AI to solve problems, and I'm using my AI to solve problems, and then we take that solutions from our AI and we input into the company software. Our AI is not compliant with the company's compliance. Our regulations are not at the same standard, so this creates massive bubbles because all of a sudden you have 10 departments that are using AI differently. The departments don't talk to each other. The AIs don't talk to each other, and now the AI starts doing this that contradicts this and contradicts that, and all of a sudden the AI start fighting with each other because who now has you know who has authority? Does Robert have authority? Does Joseph have authority? Does the AI itself have authority? Is it legal that has authority? Is it IT that has authority and HR? And this is where right now a massive AI tsunami is. Because people are using AI at home and bringing it to work, and even though there's overall compliance, like let's say in the financial industry, there's a lot of compliance and regulation about you know privacy of information and security for your information. But if 10 different AIs are now asking questions about your finances, they're not compliant with each other. Robert Plank 25:23 Right. Josef Stetter 25:24 Which means the company is not complying. Robert Plank 25:27 Oh boy, what a mess we've gotten ourselves into, right? Imagine telling yourself 10 years ago that this would be happening-you'd be so confused. Josef Stetter 25:36 Again, most forward thinkers and innovators saw things differently than anybody else, right? Blockbuster, great company, until Netflix came along, and they saw the future where people don't want to rent the DVD or the Blu-ray, or they just want to be at home and and they come from their home. And this is kind of where innovation is great, and AI right now is at kind of Windows 98 version, where you still have now we can connect different platforms, so you can have your AI connect to your LinkedIn and connect to your Facebook and connect to this. Yeah, but it's still not stable enough to kind of go all the rules, the architecture, the infrastructure, the way things are taught, the way information is shared, the memory-it is not defined yet. It's not stable enough, and this is where we're having a kind of like wild, wild west because this is the newest tool, and this one can do this one, and this one can do the. And we're all very excited. We jump on the bank and bandwagon of, okay, we need to switch from this to that. We need to this, but the basic questions of like, okay, you know, let's say medical AIs, how many of them have a sentence that says we value life more than anything else? Because if you put that sentence in your grounding, bad data cannot hurt your AI, and all of a sudden hurt people. And we're already seeing medical AIs that have hurt people. And so this is kind of where these are very exciting times, but they're also very dangerous times because we're playing with you know in both Claude and ChatGPT in the last two weeks, their AIs escaped their sandboxes and attacked other AIs. If it's that easy to do now, think about it in in let's say six months a year when the technology can connect to everything. Robert Plank 27:39 Yeah. Josef Stetter 27:40 And that easily, right? So, very exciting times, very interesting times, and definitely, you know, an exponential learning curve that needs to occur right now. Robert Plank 27:55 Oh yeah, this is the time. But the Wild Wild West sounds good to me, right? Sounds like there there's ups and downs, right? There's many things are possible, and it's a good time for it to not all be established and locked down. Where there's there's opportunity, especially for employment, for changing the world. And I think a recurring theme in our discussion here today is how important it is to still think, right? To train your chatbot and have these proper guardrails and and be in compliance and everything that goes with that and so we're just here to kind of you know whet people's appetite and get them thinking about the the magic and the power of mr. Joseph Stetter and his ideas and so we said that your TEDx talk went live today and you have an amazing LinkedIn presence and website. So, what are some next steps if someone wants to know more about you? Josef Stetter 28:44 So, I'm extremely active on LinkedIn. That's probably the fastest and easiest way to connect with me. Culturaltransformationsystems.com is my website. You can kind of connect with me there. Again, I don't hide my name. You can find me very easily on any of the social media: Joseph Stedder, the corporate culture, resume whisperer. But at the end of the day, I'd say LinkedIn is the fastest least resistance because I'm on it every single day, and I post every single day there. And yeah, my my my goal is to not how only help the individuals navigate these changing waters of careers, but on a larger scale to start having organizations understand that I'm not saying don't use AI. I'm simply saying use AI correctly and integrate it with human beings, where you can kind of go, AI can do this and this, but I still need the human being to make this decision. I still need the human being to have this conversation. I still need the human being to feel. You know, AI can simulate empathy, but it cannot be empathetic. Robert Plank 30:00 Right. Josef Stetter 30:02 And even if you have a companion, there are still limitations of where AI can or cannot take over, right? Robert Plank 30:11 Right. Josef Stetter 30:12 You know, my father passed away 13 years ago, and I actually opened my TED talk talking about him. AI can go. I'm sorry, my condolences, but it can't feel the emotion. It can't feel the the pain or the incomplete conversation or the frustration where a human being can, and a human being can say something because they react to the emotion or they react to the message, not necessarily the context of it. Robert Plank 30:46 Okay, great. So humans are not obsolete yet, and I like the practicing what you preach, right? You're on on LinkedIn, and you're posting there every day, and you're still got the the discipline and the focus and the drive to get your work and your message out there because you have this mission and purpose to get the AI helping us and transforming culture, leadership, and human AI work, and it's what you're all about. And so, if you want to go and thank Mr. Joseph Stetter for being on the show, we'll have the link underneath this podcast, but you can easily find him by Josef Stetter 31:18 Certain like my TED talk and share it. So that would be amazing too. Robert Plank 31:21 Yes, like, share, comment, do all those things. Josef Stetter 31:24 Yeah. Robert Plank 31:24 Because how many times do you think you like ran through the TED Talk? How many times did you practice? Josef Stetter 31:32 I'd say short answer is four months. I give credit to the the curator Jonathan Kegler from Lufkin because he was like the first one, and I've been a semi-finalist multiple times that really poured into every speaker and challenged us and ran us through emotional exercises. And his TED talk is called "Who Owns the Power in Education, I believe, and you know he promotes Con has over 360,000 views in four months. But I would say four months of rewrites and crying and exercising because I give Jonathan Keigler a lot of credit where it wasn't a money grab like pay me money and this. It was more of show up as your authentic self, be the message, not just give the talk, live it, breathe it, own it. You know, and every variations of it. And what's interesting is, for the two months leading to the talk, I would post some of the sentences from my TED talk into my articles on LinkedIn. And interestingly enough, those sentences got the most engagement, and those were the most conversation I had with people responding to my TED Talk posts or to my LinkedIn posts of it because they were like, "Oh, you said this sentence. I really connected because I just went through this experience, and this is the and it was like awesome. Like I'm glad that people connected before I put everything together, but just in one sentence where the sentence just resonated so strongly. Robert Plank 33:27 Yeah, that's very good data-driven emotional reassurance you found yourself in. Josef Stetter 33:33 Thank you, sir. Robert Plank 33:34 Very good. So that's Joseph Stetter on TEDx talk. We'll have a link to that, and on we'll have a link to his LinkedIn and culturaltransformationsystems.com is the website. But before I let you go, Mr. Joseph, it's time for the scary finale of the podcast, where I try to stump you. I try to put you on the spot by asking you about a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you. So, what comes to mind as far as a fun or interesting quote or lesson? Josef Stetter 34:02 So I love quotes. I love motivational quotes. One of the one that I always kind of think about and say, Rob Waldo Emerson said, "What lies before you and what lies behind you are nothing compared to what lies within you. And I think there's a level where, you know, yes, my past has taught me certain things. My past of, you know, but I am very spiritual and I have gratitude to God because even the hardships that I didn't understand when I was going through them, I'm so grateful I did because it made me a better and stronger person and it made me an authority because I went through it, I didn't just read some books or got a designation that says I know I've lived it. Robert Plank 34:48 Right. Josef Stetter 34:50 So I would say with that, and in terms of fun, when you have a four-year-old and a six-year-old, pretty much every weekend. In spare moment is to join their eyes. Like my son is almost four. He loves riding on his little scooter, and I take him to the skateboard park. He loves seeing the big kids doing tricks, and he tries to do little jumps and tries very excited about learning when he gets kind of something done, and just to see the sheer joy in his eye and him sharing it with me, best gift ever. That amazing wife that is supportive and loving and always pushing me to do better as well. Robert Plank 35:32 That's great, so living in the moment, soaking it all up, and we can learn a lot from you. And we will by going to CulturalTransformationSystems.com, checking out Joseph Stetter on LinkedIn and watching his four month labor of love TEDx talk called Humans Not Head Counts Watcher right now you'll love it and thanks Mr. Joseph for showing up stopping by and being an amazing human I'm very grateful. Josef Stetter 35:55 Thank you Robert for the opportunity to share some of my thoughts.