Does Revenue-Per-Employee Matter? & Random Stuff - William Tincup - #185

Summary

Podcast Summary: Directionally Correct, A People Intelligence Podcast

Episode #185: Does Revenue-Per-Employee Matter? & Random Stuff
Host: Cole Napper
Guest: William Tincup (Editor, Analyst, Advisor, Host at Work Defined)
Date: August 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Directionally Correct, hosted by Cole Napper with guest William Tincup, is a wide-ranging, energetic, and at times eccentric deep-dive into people analytics, HR tech, and the intersection of AI, workforce planning, and data-driven HR. The conversation candidly examines the current business obsession with revenue-per-employee as a metric, the impacts of generative and agentic AI on the workforce (and workforce analytics), trust in HR data, and what real innovation looks like in HR and recruiting. Along the way, William and Cole veer into the philosophy of creativity, mental health in leadership, the value of contrarian thinking, and tales from their personal and professional journeys—peppered with humor and genuine insight.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who Is William Tincup, and What Is Work Defined?

[03:07 – 04:41]

• William describes his multi-hyphenate role: editor, analyst, advisor, podcaster.
• Career path: 25 years of software/HR/TA analysis, advising 32+ exits, currently running the Work Defined podcast network with Ryan Leary.
• Work Defined: “All the shows are all work related in some form or fashion—payroll, compensation, belonging, you know, they all kind of hit the spectrum somewhere.” (Tincup, [04:41])
• Podcasting as a medium: Why he bets on it over long-form text now, given changing content consumption.

2. What’s Hot in HR Tech & AI Right Now?

[08:56 – 12:26]

• It’s a “scary time for entrepreneurs”—AI is disrupting traditional SaaS business models.
• “Two guys in New York can create ADP over a weekend... That’s terrifying for a lot of people.” (Tincup, [08:56])
• AI’s economic model (token usage) is fundamentally different from SaaS (ARR/MRR).
• Rapid pace: “The velocity in which change is happening is soul-crushing for practitioners.”
• Example: A visa-assistance AI that automatically updates with legal changes, removing traditional “randomness” in the hiring process for visa holders.

3. The Art of the Interview & Creativity

[12:26 – 19:20]

• William’s approach: No prep, no notes—“I’m Jay Z, baby, that’s it.” ([12:37])
• Influences: Terry Gross (“She was prepared. Probably more prepared than they were.” ([14:18])), Andy Rooney, long-form writers.
• William’s personal creativity: Lifelong painter, currently creating mosaics from chemistry slides, an Art History degree, and a deep respect for all artistic expression.
• Parallels between creativity in art and in people analytics: “I tell people that your career never makes sense in the windshield, it always makes sense in the rearview mirror.” ([17:35])

4. Data, People Analytics, and the Emergence of AI Agents

[20:34 – 26:15]

• The core analytics/HR challenge right now: “Where people need to be and don’t need to be.”
• AI as “non-person” workers: “If we don’t want to look at them as humans...at least look at them as part of the workforce.” ([20:51])
• Dramatic productivity differences emerging: “If this person’s skills are drastically better than someone else doing the exact same job, why are we paying them the same?” ([22:57])
• The impact of agentic AI: A major reset for people analytics—old benchmarks and measurements no longer suffice.

5. The Revenue-Per-Employee Obsession

[26:30 – 32:04]

• Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and VCs now favor “doing more with less” over headcount growth.
• “Your headcount now works against you... The folks that have the money have already made the decision: No, we want you to have less employees. And that’s terrifying.” (Tincup, [28:51])
• Consequences: Fewer entry-level jobs, a looming leadership crisis, and “unintended consequences” of pushing the metric too far without accounting for hidden AI costs.

Notable Quote:

“Have we factored in all the money that we’re spending in AI? You have five people and you have $5 million in rev... You’re also spending $3 million in AI. So what have you really saved?”
— William Tincup, [29:57]

6. Organizational Secrecy & Lag in Industry "Best Practices"

[39:45 – 43:24]

• High-performing organizations don’t share their real recruiting/HR “secret sauce”: “If you’re doing it well...Why would you ever tell anyone?” ([40:41])
• Most conference and podcast content is “dated”—by the time practices are public, the real innovation has moved on.

7. Why Recruiters Don’t Trust Analytics

[38:45 – 40:02]

• “Recruiters are salespeople, so it’s asking someone to do something unnatural...they don’t trust it. They don’t trust the data.” ([36:45], [38:45])
• Solution: Incentivize use of ATS/data—“If you want them to believe in the data...you put money behind it.” ([39:00])
• High-performing organizations that do this keep it secret for competitive advantage.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On location-based pay biases:

  “If you choose to live in Los Angeles and I choose to live in Cedar Rapids...why are you making three times more than I?...I think we should get rid of location-based pay because it’s just inherently biased.”
  — William Tincup, [24:00]

• On “AI Native”:

  “It’s got to be AI native. What does that mean? I don’t know, but it’s gotta be.”
  — William Tincup, [31:02]

• On directness in vendor selling:

  “Stop talking about AI. It’s assumptive. At this point...You’re beating people over the head with something they don’t want to learn. And they’re not going to learn.”
  — William Tincup, [44:51], [47:07]

• On mental health and openness:

  “You have a moral obligation to tell people...[because] if you keep it quiet, no one gets better. You might personally get better. But the world doesn’t get better.”
  — William Tincup, [57:11]–[58:46]

• On contrarian thinking in innovation:

  “Homogeny is the enemy... You want the contrarians, you want the people that go, ‘Yeah, I don’t see the world that way.’...Because the fact that they’re in the room disagreeing gets you to think.”
  — William Tincup, [91:26]

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Noteworthy Segments & Timestamps

• William’s backstory & Work Defined: [03:07]–[04:41]
• Current state in HR tech & AI/SaaS disruption: [08:56]–[12:26]
• Creativity lessons from art to analytics: [17:31]–[19:20]
• People analytics reset with agentic AI: [20:34]–[26:15]
• Revenue-per-employee dangers & consequences: [26:30]–[32:04]
• Recruiter distrust of analytics, incentives: [36:45]–[40:02]
• Secrecy in best practices: [41:05]–[43:24]
• Advice for analytics vendors (don’t sell the ‘how’): [43:30]–[49:59]
• Mental health transparency story: [53:54]–[58:46]
• Cole’s Corner – Rapid fire questions & divergent paths in HR: [60:30]–[64:05]
• Political views influencing hiring, homogeny & innovation: [83:45]–[91:26]

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Additional Topics

The Personal Side: Mental Health, Mania, and Creativity

William candidly shares his experience with manic-depressive illness (hypomania), its impact on his creativity, and the importance of breaking stigma by openly discussing mental health as a leadership and community responsibility ([53:54]–[58:46]).

The American South, Beach Rankings, and Sweet Tea—Culture as Context

Lighthearted detours explore regional culture, highlighting the diversity (and stereotypes) of Texas, southern U.S. distinctions, and what sweet tea consumption reveals about social identity ([66:29]–[69:49]).

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Essential Takeaways

• The Next Workforce Reset: Agentic AI is forcing a fundamental rethinking of how work is done, measured, and rewarded. Old people analytics benchmarks are rapidly becoming obsolete.
• Beware the Revenue/Employee Trap: Investors’ push for the highest possible revenue-to-employee ratios is creating incentives with dangerous downstream consequences—leadership shortfalls, workforce instability, and masked costs.
• Innovation Is Not Public: What you see at conferences, in “best practices,” and on podcasts is already old news—true innovation in HR stays confidential.
• Skepticism in Recruiting: Recruiters are structurally disincentivized to trust analytics; building a data-driven culture requires real, tangible incentives.
• AI & HR: Vendors should stop pushing the “AI” buzzword on HR practitioners and focus instead on clearly articulating business outcomes—they simply don’t care how the tech works.

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Closing Reflections

William’s appearance is a blend of irreverence, deep wisdom, and unfiltered honesty—whether he’s poking fun at the latest HR buzzwords or making a case for transparency about mental health. The episode is as much about challenging sacred cows in people analytics as it is about reflecting on what makes the field—and its people—innovative, resilient, and genuinely human.

“It’s a revolution that has to happen from within...the old models don’t work.”
— William Tincup, [51:10]

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Find William: wrkdefined.com or just “Google him”
Directionally Correct: Subscribe and follow for more cutting-edge people intelligence insights from Cole Napper.

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Note: For clarity, all timestamps are in MM:SS format corresponding to the provided transcript sections.

Transcript

[Cole Napper]

Hello friends of the podcast and welcome to Directionally Correct, a People Intelligence podcast with your host Cole Napper and today's guest, William Tencup, Editor, analyst, advisor and host at Work Defined. In this episode we will cover why William thinks there's a car crash coming as Silicon Valley and Wall street fall in love with revenue per employee, the work that's being done and the workers who are doing it, and even maybe the AI workers as well. Well, if you want all that thing they affect things like revenue per employee, why recruiters never fully trusted their numbers, and whether gen AI makes that better. Do recruiters trust data and analytics?

[William Tincup]

Not at all. Not at all. And the reason is it is recruiters are salespeople.

[Cole Napper]

Why? You should stop selling AI to HR buyers altogether and start selling to it instead. Every vendor out there is selling AI into HR in the HR tech space. Now let's get down to business. Hey Directionally Correct fans. This podcast is dedicated to you to help democratize people intelligence for the world of work. If you're looking to support the podcast, please make sure to listen weekly. Subscribe to the Directionally Correct Substack newsletter. Sign up for the Data Driven HR Academy at data drivenhracademy.com Purchase Cole's Book People analytics or check out everything [e-mail] before we get into it, a quick word about HR bench the company powering this podcast. You know, when we all started in People analytics, we wanted to do strategic work building predictive models, workforce planning, advising the C suite, and most of all, quantifying the impact for the business. Instead, we spend months building dashboards and reports that should already exist. HR binge eliminates that entire phase. Your HRIs connects, metrics, calculate, your benchmarks, populate. This is not novel. This is day one, not quarter two. That means skipping straight to prescriptive analysis, storytelling, and taking action for the business. Want to learn more? Book a [e-mail] Directionallycorrect find out more about the company powering this podcast and building the future of people Intelligence. As always, all opinions are our own and thanks for being a listener. This episode contains strong language. Listener discretion is advised. Well, William, I've been looking forward to having you on the podcast for a while. This is going to be a weird and different and interesting episode than most of ours. Because you're a weird, interesting cat and I've really enjoyed everything we've ever done together. That's the crazy part. But you are. I would not define you as an analytics guy by any stretch of the Imagination.

[William Tincup]

No, I think that would be a failure for all of us.

[Cole Napper]

Well, what, what are you and what, what is work defined too? Which is like your latest thing that you're doing of nowadays.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, that's why my title is so long when really it shouldn't be that long. Editor, because I do a lot of writing. LinkedIn and other. Other places, but I do a lot of writing and have always analyst because I've studied the space for 25 years. Software in particular as it relates to HR and TA. And so the vendors see me in that way. They're like, hey, come to our analyst event, give us advice, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, Advisor. I've advised 32 exits. So technology companies that have exited, one exited last week. And I've got probably on the roster right now. I got about 20 companies that advise. And so I advise and I just advise. I don't do like they're interacting with me to give them advice. That's it. And it worked to find. That's Ryan Leary and I's. It's our full time gig. We left recruiting daily because we kind of saw content sites kind of going just the numbers weren't really being supportive. And that was before ChatGPT and all the generative AI stuff. But podcasts were still in fact gaining in popularity. And we had podcast and so we said, well, why don't we build a network? Because we couldn't find one. We wanted to join somebody else's network and we couldn't find one. And so we just said, well, okay, we'll just build it ourselves.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

And so all the shows were up to 96 shows. All the shows are all work related in some form or fashion. So payroll, compensation, belonging, you know, they all kind of hit the spectrum somewhere.

[Cole Napper]

And which, which podcast on the network is your favorite?

[William Tincup]

Well, the one that, the one that does the best, I can tell you that is baffling to many is directionally correct. No, you're kidding. The downloads and streams kind of week in, a week out, month in and month out. You're at the top of the list. Occasionally Lori's Punk rock HR or occasionally ours, you should know, podcast kind of. We're around you. It's like nascar. We're, we're, we're, we're right behind you. But your podcast gets really, really well consumed and so does your substack.

[Cole Napper]

Well, thanks man. And I appreciate you having us on the network. I think you have been. You're great for the HR technology community. Actually. Honestly, a lot of our analytics listeners will have no idea who you are.

[William Tincup]

100%. 100%.

[Cole Napper]

I'm going to describe you for a second and I hope you. I'm actually going to describe how we met.

[William Tincup]

Fair enough.

[Cole Napper]

Which we've talked about before. But it's been a while, so it was probably 2021. I was at the Greenhouse conference and it was at a party that one of the vendors that at the company I was working at the time was hosting. I, I wasn't at the vendor, but I was a customer of theirs and they were hosting it and they're like, we have the biggest treat for you guys. William Tincup and another person I'm not going to name are going to be here and there are guests have already came in. I looked at you, I was like, this is the thing. I just went up and introduced myself and you're like, hey, you're super nice. The other guy you were with, I'm not going to name he very well known person in his own right. And I end up striking up a conversation with him and I said, oh, I'm thinking about starting a podcast because it was right when this thing was about to.

[William Tincup]

Oh yeah.

[Cole Napper]

And he patted me on the head and he goes, good luck with that. And he walked off.

[William Tincup]

Oh yeah, yeah. He's one of my dear friends and I'm trying to talk him into doing one, but doing one kind of like, like a, like a, like a 5 to 10 minute, just rant, like a weekly, here's what kind of took me off this week type of deal. If you remember 60 Minutes, you'll remember from years ago. You'll remember at the end of it there was a Andy Rooney. And Andy Rooney had about a five minute segment at the end and was random. It was like, here's why paperclips are not important. You know, it's. And then he just go into his bit and so I'm trying to talk that person into doing that bit. Audio, no video. Just, just get on there and what, what made you angry that week. And just. So I'm trying to bring him over, I'm trying my best to bring them over to the podcast world. But I think some of that for him is because he is a writer and a long form writer at that. So not the 700 word, you know, types of stuff, 6,000 word writer. It's deep, well researched. And so, you know, podcasts are kind of the antithesis to people that do long form content writing. And so, you know, the funny thing

[Cole Napper]

to me is what people don't realize, like you're like one of the most known and recognized people in the HR technology community. And I counted earlier because I'm an analytics guy, that that's 50 companies you've advised. 51. That's, that's stratospheric in terms of like what you're doing. And so if you want somebody who understands HR tech marketers, specifically the recruiting tech side of things as well, William's the guy and I guess that's probably a good tee up. Just what's hot right now in that space. Like what are you seeing that maybe other people aren't seeing? And what should we be paying attention to?

[William Tincup]

Well, it's, it's a scary time for entrepreneurs because, you know, two guys in New York can create ADP over a weekend and using Claude code. And so that's terrifying for a lot of people. And so you start with the investment community from Wall street all the way to private equity to, to VCs and, and further their fell in love with a SaaS model because it was predictable. You got so many clients, yes, you churned so many clients, but you get so many new ones. And there was a monthly mmr, ARR, et cetera. AI doesn't have that same pricing model and even if we try to sell it like that, the vendors are going to get caught with their pants down because the token economics is completely different. You know, if someone uses, let's say your software, people analytics software, and you use it a lot. Good. Congratulations. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't make them like get an extra server farm or anything like that. Like they're already covered there with AWS or whomever they use. AI is not that beast. So I think what we're kind of seeing right now is a massive amount of new things. Like I looked at like this week I looked at a visa AI that basically maps the entire visa process up to code. So however the laws change, it's up to date and it helps the person that wants to hire someone on a visa. So an H1B or any of the, any of the classifications, but it does it all automatically. So you don't have to do use employment law. You don't have to do any of that stuff. I get just like you want to hire someone from Egypt. Okay, what's the job? What's the process? Boom, boom, boom. I've used to sponsor, years ago I would sponsor H1BS. I think I sponsored probably 30 H1BS. I had a immigration attorney and the whole bit and it was really weird back then. Late 90s, early aughts. It was really weird back then because it was depending on what country. Like if they were from England, easier if they're in India, not as easy if they're from Mexico, not as easy. Like just random. And so that randomness is still there, but their technology that they've created takes all the randomness out of it. So I think seeing those get stood up fast I think is really interesting. I think it's also very hard for entrepreneurs to stay innovative in a SaaS world era. If you'd like, you could iterate once a month, once, once a quarter and you were doing great. This isn't that. And so I think the pace, the velocity in which change is happening is soul crushing for practitioners because they had a hard time actually with the amount of change that was going on with SaaS. And even on prem. If you want to go further back, but AI is like you're never going to know what you're using.

[Cole Napper]

One other thing I know about you, you might be the most impressive interviewer that I've ever encountered. And the reason why is because you don't prep and you have no notes.

[William Tincup]

That's right, Jay. I'm Jay Z, baby. That's it.

[Cole Napper]

Just go in the booth and it's always really, really good. Like I would say the two things I've ever done with you, the one at HR Tech last year and then we did one at Sherm Talent earlier this year. Two of my favorite interviews I've ever done publicly.

[William Tincup]

Well, the one, the one it sure at, at HR Tech last year. It's. Both of these are on work to find so you can find them. But the thing is, is you had a flight, you were leaving and like you, I had to talk you into getting on, on, on the set and I'm like, you know, you're like, I got to, I got, I got to do. Come on, let's just do this bit. So yeah, I think interviewing, I think some of it is, you know, Malcolm Gladwell. As much as I don't like a lot of the things that he does his 10,000, you know, bit I think I fell in love with people that do good interviews like Terry Gross and Tom Snyder and Charlie Rose and there's Roy Firestone, etc. So there's a bunch of people that really informed how do I like to interview? Like it's a, you know, if I, I'll tell you how. If you want me to fail, it would be reading a script. In fact, when PR agencies send me when we book a client and they send me a list of questions. I just delete it because I can't ask those questions. I can't even think about those questions because it's. It's. It's selfish of. Of sorts. I. I'm curious, and so I want to. I want to ask the questions that I'm curious about.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

And so I think it. I think a lot of it is if you. If you want to be a great interviewer, you've got to find somebody that you really, really like public, you know, somebody that's out there that does it really well and go, how do they do it? Like, Terry Gross, I still remember to this day her interviewing members of the Wu Tang Clan. And I'm like, how's this gonna happen? I just wanna. I wanna be in a room. I want to be in the room. And you know what? It was fantastic. It was absolutely. I mean, Old Dirty Bastard. She's asking old Dirty bastard questions like, how would this ever happen? And it's because she's a pro and she does a lot of research. She. She's very, very meticulous on her research. So she listened to all of her albums dissect and lyrics and all this stuff. So, like, she was really prepared. Probably more prepared than. Than they were. Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah. They probably don't even know all the words. Their own songs.

[William Tincup]

100%. 100%. I saw them. I saw them. Oh, hell. This is 2007, 2008 at Rock the Bells in San Francisco. And it was fantastic. It's. And you're right, Cypress Hill was up on stage as well. And. Because in San Francisco, there's weed, like, just, like, pouring out of the stadium. And so every act coming on and Rage against the Machine was there. Like, they had. It was a solid lineup, but Wu Tang didn't disappoint.

[Cole Napper]

The funny thing to me about you, William, is. I mean, we've known each other for a few years now.

[William Tincup]

Yep.

[Cole Napper]

We live probably 45 minutes from 1 another. We've never seen each other in person.

[William Tincup]

Correct.

[Cole Napper]

Not at a conference, somewhere else.

[William Tincup]

Yes, that is correct. That is correct. It's. Well, some of that's. I'm a hermit. Some of this is something that I have to put on me. And. And some of it is. Well, it's just. I'll just stay with hermit. I'm just. Just. I'm not. I'm totally comfortable being.

[Cole Napper]

You got some beautiful artwork in your background. Tell me about that.

[William Tincup]

Sure. I've been painting since I was seven. And so when I tell people it's floor to ceiling. It's literally floor to ceiling all the way around my office. And I've got an easel about four feet from me, brushes, paints. And so I'm painting on chemistry slides right now.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

So it's completely new. I haven't. I've painted on glass before, and I painted on Plexiglas before, but I've never painted on glass slides. The little chemistry slides.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

So I'm gonna make a mosaic out of it once I get done, and that'll be interesting. I. It's. For me, I think some of it is just trying different things. I think everyone has something creative in them. Yeah, it might be poetry and, you know, could be whatever. But for mine, it started very early. And my mother was just like, passing me, you know, crayons, pens, watercolors, you know, just the whole thing, like, just go knock it out. What.

[Cole Napper]

What's your muse?

[William Tincup]

Well, I have a degree in art history, so.

[Cole Napper]

So that's why you did recruitment marketing.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, that's it. They tie together very well. I. I tell people that your career never makes sense. The windshield, it always makes sense in the rear view mirror. Like, you make that step. It's like, okay, I went from Walmart for six years of my life, about to have my own show store in West Texas, to going to the University of Alabama and studying art. Okay, like, that doesn't make sense. You can't make that make sense. But it absolutely makes sense to me. And so I think, I think I know there's artists that I've just. I've always loved. The more I kind of get to understand their, Their art, kind of get into it. I'm not a snob when it comes to art. Like, if you like it, great, let's just stay there. If you don't know the meaning or don't know the story of the artist or don't understand the story of the. Who cares? Do you like it? Are you in front of it? Because it's supposed to evoke some type of emotion. The emotion might be hatred. That's fine. But if someone loves something, then that's really. That's. That's all that matters at the end of the day. Now there are art critics and art historians, snobs, that will tell you that that's all not right and you should love the things that. That they love. But I kind of liken it to Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway. So if you read Oscar Wilde, it wasn't written for you. It was written for six People he was writing to six people he would publish, and it was written specifically for these people and everyone else that read Care. Whereas Hemingway.

[Cole Napper]

I feel like there's a. There's a parallel to the things that I write about People Analytics.

[William Tincup]

Right, right. There's six people, basically. Well, but those six people love you. So that. That was his bit. That was. That was his bit. But Hemi way he chose to write in the way that he chose to write that anyone could read his. His work and get something from it. And so, like, the difference between those two, the snobs of. Of. Of art would have you. Have you believe that Jackson Pollock was everything about Abstract Expressionism. Well, yes, there was some very important things that he did. He stood on a canvas, which in the history of art, 5000 years, no one's ever stood on a canvas.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

So, okay.

[Cole Napper]

Disrespectful.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, definitely in some areas, you'd probably. The Pope would probably slap your hand on that bit. So, you know, it's one of those bits, but they'd make you believe that he's the only. Whereas when you really look at Abstract expressionism and you step back from it, there's about 20 artists that really were great.

[Cole Napper]

Well, this is going to be interesting for me. What are you seeing in the people analytics, workforce planning, talent intelligence, behavioral science side of things? Because I know you pop in.

[William Tincup]

Oh, yeah.

[Cole Napper]

Pop in and you pop out.

[William Tincup]

That's right. That's right. The thing is, what everyone's trying to figure out in people analytics, especially today, is where people need to be and don't need to be. So the question I think that was asked maybe five years ago is, are we getting what we're supposed to be getting from this person and kind of looking at all the people holistically and especially when it's tied to workforce planning, do we have the right. If you use competency models, do we have the right competencies? If you use skills, do we have the right skills? So doing some type of inventory on skills and then projecting what our needs are and forecasting, like all that stuff, extremely useful. But I think there's a reset insofar as agentic AI, where agents can do some of that work, not all, but some of that work, and we need to look at them. If we don't want to look at them as humans, totally fine. But at least look at them as a part of the workforce. So how do we measure that is really fascinating. The other thing is people that have a stronger command of new technology versus someone that's doing the exact same job that doesn't have that command. So let's say you and I are doing the exact same job. We're a financial analyst and we're doing the exact same job. I can do the job in five hours because I've got everything programmed. I've got Claude, I've got ChatGPT, I've got everything programmed around me that literally it takes me five minutes to review the things that it's doing, clap my hands and basically, you know, watch TV for 35 hours. Whereas you haven't adopted and probably aren't going to adopt. And so it still takes you 40 hours to then complete the same task. So now what's interesting from an analytics perspective is, well, who gets promoted? Who gets paid? More like the pay equity has been a fascinating discussion forever because no one does it well. And now all of a sudden you layer in, okay, but if this person's skills are drastically better than someone else's skills doing the exact same job, why are we paying them the same?

[Cole Napper]

Yeah, you're actually hitting on a very central theme of a few people I've talked to. You don't even know it.

[William Tincup]

It's scary. I mean, it's scary because it's like, okay, what do we measure? How do we measure? And I think we were getting almost to a point where we were getting a feel for what we could measure and what we couldn't measure and what to look at. Like having an idea of, okay, you can look at everything, but here's the five things that you should look at. And so that they watershed off of those things. All that shit's gone. Like, it's. You just take a wipe off board.

[Cole Napper]

It's almost like we need a theory of like whether everybody gets paid the same or not. I don't know.

[William Tincup]

I don't think I actually took a. Indeed asked me to write an article during COVID and I, of course, I don't. Not sure why they asked me, but I did it anyhow and I. My article was, you need to get rid of location based pay because it's inherently biased. If you choose to live in Los Angeles and I choose to live in Cedar Rapids and we do the same job and we do it at the same level. Why are you making three times more than I?

[Cole Napper]

It's almost like a global wage rate.

[William Tincup]

Right?

[Cole Napper]

You know what?

[William Tincup]

Yeah. So you chose to live in la. I didn't. So, but, but the thing is, and so they came back to me like, you understand that everything that we do at Indeed is Location based.

[Cole Napper]

It's like you're breaking our business model. So thank you.

[William Tincup]

Pretty much. I'm like, yeah, but that's the problem. I mean, I mean, you know, you want me to write an article and I think we should get rid of location based pay because it's just inherently biased. It's built in bias. So now you want to play with some gender stuff or racial stuff. It's like the woman in Cedar Rapids who's doing the job and the man that's in la, they're getting paid the same or no, excuse me, they're getting paid completely inequitably for what they do. And so then it looks like, should you be paying for them for their output?

[Cole Napper]

Like, I'm sorry, Like this is like all the time. And so you're just like baiting me to want to like get into it.

[William Tincup]

I know. Oh no. But it, but it is fascinating. So when you ask, okay, what do you see now? I see a reset if. Whether or not we like it or not and whether we were getting to a place where we're getting good. And I think we were. Yeah, pre, pre agentic AI. I think we were getting to a really good place in analytics people analytics and people intelligence in a place where we could really cut to zero in on the things that were causing us harm or pain or whatever. Whereas now it really is. It's going to take a lot of really smart people to just hit the reset button and then figure out work is just not being done that way anymore.

[Cole Napper]

Well, what's interesting about it is the work that's being done and the workers who are doing it, and even maybe the AI workers as well, if you want all that thing they affect things like revenue per employee, which I know is a hot topic for you.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, well, it's, it's one of those deals because. So you follow Silicon Valley and the funding of companies. It's astounding that they're not funding headcount, they're not rewarding headcount. Okay. So that. Which they used to. Yeah. You had 50 employees, you got 5 million in Revs and SaaS. Okay. So we can kind of predict where we can go with this. We can make it a hundred million dollar firm exit out at 3 or 4, 5, 10, $100 million, whatever. Yeah, they're falling in love with how few employees can you have. So that revenue to employee ratio, we used to do one with HR to total employees. I don't know if you ever kind of got into this, but it was like how many HR people should you have per 100 or per thousand employees that you have, and no one could agree, but neither here nor there.

[Cole Napper]

Well, Gardner and Josh Burson know all the answers.

[William Tincup]

I love Josh. I love Josh. The last time I saw him was actually at Cornerstones Analyst event. So he and I are talking. I've known him forever. And so he and I were talking. I said, did you have to name your bot Galileo? But of all the names, like, was Einstein taken seriously? Like the arrogance in which you would name it Galileo? He just started laughing. He goes, I don't know. It just came on up on the list. I have no idea how, how we got there.

[Cole Napper]

Well, and funny enough, Einstein is taken by Salesforce.

[William Tincup]

So, yeah, see, yeah, I mean, it could have just been Josh. Jb, jb, sjb. Done. Done deal. But I think. I think the thing is, is okay, so when Silicon Valley falls in love with a model, it's terrifying because that model now becomes the model that all the other investors that come behind them look at, including Wall Street. So your headcount now works against you. And no one wants to say that out loud or publicly and go, yeah, you just need to have fewer employees. Okay? And we're not at a great place with AI where it can replace people fully. You still have to have the humans that do stuff with AI.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah, we're like at an impasse.

[William Tincup]

We're at a weird impasse. But the financial. The folks that have the money have already made the decision, no, we want you to have less employees. And that's terrifying. The Harvard Business Review just did an article which I think is fascinating about entry level jobs. And the lack of entry level jobs now is creating a leadership void later. And they tied it all together really well because they basically said, if. Where do you learn? Where do you get the opportunity to learn what's good, what's bad? How you can be a good leader, be around bad leaders. Like, where do you learn? You learn that early in your career. Like, my first job outside of business school was 18 months of learning what not to do as a leader, which was extremely valuable. So it's a really interesting. Okay. If we're in love with less employees, that's terrifying on many levels. The other is it's creating kind of unintended consequences that we haven't fully thought through. So let's have a higher revenue to employee number. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. But have we factored in all the money that we're spending in AI? So the number looks great. You have five people and you have $5 million in rev. Okay, that's a million dollars of employee. Fantastic. You're also spending $3 million in AI. So what have you really saved? I mean, what you've automated, you've augmented. You know, there's things that are good, things that are bad, but again, it's not perfect. It's going to be a while before it is perfect. And I think it's kind of a weird place because of where SaaS is. Like, you can't start a SaaS company now. Like, if you do, you're dead on arrival. It's got to be 8i native. And so now you're dealing with a conundrum.

[Cole Napper]

Provocative. No one knows what it means, but we all agree that's what we call ourselves now.

[William Tincup]

It's gotta be AI native. What does that mean? I don't know, but it's gotta be. All right, great, fantastic. You've done nothing for me other than confuse me. So they've gotta figure out the pricing. But then now when we work with employers and talk to them about whatever the solution is, we've got to talk to them really directly about having less employees. And no one wants to entertain that discussion. Like there's not a chro that's out there just kind of clapping their hands like, okay, less employees. No, no one's, no one really wants this, but it is the future.

[Cole Napper]

Well, the Silicon Valley, counter to it, because I was on an investors podcast last year and they said, yes, but a thousand flowers will bloom. And you know, you won't have big companies anymore, but you'll have hundreds of thousands of smaller companies and one person organizations and fractional work, and it'll all be this utopia and we'll all get along and nothing bad will ever happen again.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, automatically discount all of that. It's like when I was at Alabama, I did a lot of poli sci as well, just because I was curious about it. And I, I did ethics. There was an ethics class in poly political science I found absolutely fantastic. And the teacher, professor gets in the front of the room like, this is like first, maybe second class. He goes, how do you like your racism? And everyone's like, in the right class, he's like, would you, would you rather be out in front like clan rallies and understanding, you know, like, like, would you rather have them put flyers on your car? Would you rather know that racism exists and it's right over here? Or would you rather your racism be in three piece suits? Never act like they're racist and the class couldn't agree. It was fascinating because I'm one of those. I'd rather know. I'd rather pointy hats. Got it. Cool. I don't care. Like, it doesn't change what I'm going to eat that day or whatever, but I'd rather know. And I think that's one of the things about the thousand flowers. It's like, okay, would you rather have one mosquito that you're battling, but the mosquito can kill you, or would you have rather have a thousand mosquitoes? Okay, I'd rather have one, because I can focus my efforts. I can rally other people to focus our efforts on the 1000. I'm dying.

[Cole Napper]

We'll workshop this analogy a few more

[William Tincup]

times, but I got bit by 126 bees at the 1981 Boy Scout Jamboree. And so. So the Boy Scout jamboree, I'd step off the bus. They cleared the land. This is a. This is an army base, right? So they cleared the land for the jamboree, Fort A.P. hill. And I get off the bus and I'm walking around, just kind of getting my feel for things. I'm 13, maybe 12 years old at the time. And I step on a beehive that. It just like, they had plow. And it just. The beehive was just on the ground, as in the grass. You could see it. And all of a sudden, 126 bees sting me. And once they sting me, they're just hanging off of me so I don't freak out. It's. It's kind of interesting because I'm like, okay, well, bees, what I do, go to the medic, and they're just plucking them off. 2, 3, 4. I've never been afraid of bee sets, hornets, a wasp, anything that flies like that. I'm like, you're gonna. You're gonna need more people. Go.

[Cole Napper]

I think you're the opposite of most people, William.

[William Tincup]

Well, I've caught a couple rattlesnakes with my hands. So, like, I like rattlesnakes. And I have a lake house down in Belton towards Austin. And we have rattlesnakes. We have copperheads. I don't like copperheads because they don't tell you that they're there. Rattlesnakes are awesome because you get close to them within 15ft, and they're like, I'm here. I'm really. I'm here. I don't want to be bothered. Please don't bother me. You know, they're kind of nice in that way that they're letting you know, as opposed to a copperhead. They're like, you step close to a copperhead, you're bit and good luck. Because you've got to get to a hospital, you've got to get to a place and you hope that they have anti venom in 45 minutes. Whereas the rattlesnakes, because Texas has so many, we have anti venom at every. At every dock in a box. So you can get bit. Be like, all right, let me get in the car. Go drive in a docking box. All right, yeah, I'll be bit by a rattler. It's not that big a deal. It's only a big of a deal. As you. As you make it like you're bit by a snake. You're a rattlesnake. You were bit by a snake. Okay. You can't change that. It happened.

[Cole Napper]

No.

[William Tincup]

Now what do you do?

[Cole Napper]

I think I'm just going to double down on the weirdness of this episode and just lean into it. But I do have other stuff.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, no, break, break, break, break, break. Like we take all comers.

[Cole Napper]

I'm doing my best. So you have. I've tried to lead into this a few times. You have background in recruitment? Recruitment marketing.

[William Tincup]

Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

That's like a huge. Like every company that starts out analytics. Not every, but most of them, when they start out, they start out doing it for recruiting.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

Especially back in the days when hiring people and growing fast was in vogue.

[William Tincup]

Yes.

[Cole Napper]

The recruiters trust data and analytics.

[William Tincup]

Not at all. Not at all. And. And the reason is, it is recruiters are salespeople, so it's asking someone to do something unnatural. So this is why ATS is built both for compliance reasons, that's why they're there, so that we can make sure that we're compliant with the laws of the land. But also when a recruiter goes out and you get a new job, a new rec, you interview the hiring manager, you do an intake form. Okay. You can figure out what they want. And then you go to Indeed or LinkedIn or Zip and you post it. What they don't do is go back into the ATS that they have and the 3 million candidates that have already applied to a job and look to see if there's anyone that's already relevant because they don't trust it. They don't trust the data. They don't trust. They don't. They just don't trust it. And it's just. It's become a thing. It's become a thing in modern talent acquisition that the people that do trust analytics are naive. And so they're even looked down upon recruiting analytics because, okay, it's like statistics. You know that joke about statistics and analytics isn't that. But they think of it like that. It's like you could get whatever number you want. You just gotta fuddle with the, you know, the numbers a little bit. And that's not true, but that is a. That is an absolute current belief.

[Cole Napper]

And what is true and what should

[William Tincup]

we be doing in recruiting?

[Cole Napper]

I mean, to. I mean, you might just say it's like a lost cause. And, you know, data is just always going to be arbitrary or something like that. But if you actually did want to be data driven, and you did want to increase people's trust in it, and you did want to make data driven decisions, and you did want recruiters to actually use the things that are in front of them.

[William Tincup]

Not just totally, totally, totally easy. I mean, super easy. You incentivize what you want, what you desire. So if you want them in the ATS, and you want them to use things in the ats, you incentivize them.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah. Like, so it's like sales people, but that's it.

[William Tincup]

That's it. You. If you want them to believe in the data. Well, first of all, they've got to get into the data. Okay. To get into the data, you got to reward them. It's too easy to say, oh, this is a part of your job. Using ATS is just. It's the technology that helps you do your job. Most recruiters like, actually, no, I can do my job in Excel without all of this other stuff. But because of compliance, you have to do it with an ats, you know, for a lot of good reasons. Right. But they don't. They don't like doing it. Okay, so how do you change that? You change it. If you want a behavior out of an employee or group of a class of employees, you put money behind it. That. That's it. I mean, you could add training and

[Cole Napper]

communication better than I do. How many organizations, or do any organizations do that?

[William Tincup]

Oh, oh, the ones that do it. This is really fascinating. So the ones that do it never talk about it, really, because it's a competitive advantage.

[Cole Napper]

Mm.

[William Tincup]

So recruiting can be a competitive advantage if done well. But it's the last people that are gonna write a book or be on stage at a conference, because why would I go tell you the recipe to Coca Cola? I'm not gonna tell you that. So if you're doing it well, this also proliferates most of HR like, if you're doing compliance really well, if you're doing compensation really well, rewards and recognition, et cetera. Why are you. Why would you ever tell anyone? But I actually know of some companies. I actually know of some companies that do this. They just don't talk.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

They're prohibited, both legally and from a PR perspective, but because it's a competitive advantage.

[Cole Napper]

So I want to, like, find a way to dig into this. If you go.

[William Tincup]

If you.

[Cole Napper]

If you follow that line of reasoning.

[William Tincup]

Okay.

[Cole Napper]

And you read articles and you go to conferences and you listen to podcasts.

[William Tincup]

Yep.

[Cole Napper]

What are the odds that you're actually learning the opposite of what you should be doing?

[William Tincup]

You're. You're. I don't think it's the opposite. I don't. I don't think that. I think it's dated. So you have a chro from. We'll just pick a company. Gm. Actually, no. My global head of town acquisition at Ford, Melissa, she actually lives up there by you. What she would be talking about publicly is probably two years ago, but she would never be talking about things that they're running in beta.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Or things that are working at such a level that she can't talk about.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Right. So I don't think it's opposite. I just think it's dated.

[Cole Napper]

Well, let me. Let me give you a personal example.

[William Tincup]

Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

One of the things that is interesting to many of my listeners who actually know me in person is I never talk about work I've done in the past on the podcast.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

And it's because I think every organization I've ever worked for, I might be missing one I've done under non disclosure agreements.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

That are never, never voided. Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Yeah. No. What was secret there is secret now. Yeah. Okay.

[Cole Napper]

And I probably could get away with saying some really basic banal things, especially for some of the older ones.

[William Tincup]

Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

But I just don't want to mess with it.

[William Tincup]

Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

And so I always try to find ways. This little inside baseball here. I try to find ways of bringing on guests.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

Say the things that I want to say, but even then, it's usually dated because it's hard to get people to say the new hot thing when the new hot thing is happening.

[William Tincup]

That's right. And some of it's the risk. I don't want to be too far ahead of talking about something and they look like a clown. And some of it is I don't want to give away the secrets.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

And I think that that's appropriate, by the way. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think we just have to, as conference goers or attendees or people that read and listen to podcasts and all that stuff. I think we just have to understand that, that what you're hearing is great and innovative two years ago, and it still might be innovative for you, depending on where you are in your maturity.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

Well, then, then let's, let's extend this line of reasoning.

[William Tincup]

Sure.

[Cole Napper]

Every vendor out there selling AI into HR in the HR tech space, is that the leading thing they should be doing? Is that the wise thing they should be doing? What should they be doing differently?

[William Tincup]

It's absolutely unwise. And the reason for that is you're talking about the how and you're not talking about what do they get? Okay. AI gen, AI agentic, AI, blah, blah, blah. There'll be about 19 other different types of AI. Okay, great. Who cares? The point is you're still talking about the how, how the technology works. And the last thing anyone in HR or recruiting wants to know is how technology works. They, they want to know, as you should as a buyer. They want to know, does it work? And if so, what do I get? Yeah, it's like buying a Tesla. Right? I, I've had this longstanding debate with myself that I, I don't, I believe there's like six people in, in that are buyers of Teslas that actually know how the Teslas work. The rest of these frauds have Teslas and basically go in, there's an iPad, I hit a button, car goes, okay, Tells me when it's getting low on battery.

[Cole Napper]

Oh, my God, that's a Tesla. The Tesla people are vicious. They are going to attack you after this.

[William Tincup]

Come on, bring it.

[Cole Napper]

Because I, I, I brought up twice road bikers because I think they're annoying.

[William Tincup]

Oh, they're absolutely. They have to have special highways. That's just special name special operators and

[Cole Napper]

they reach out with a furor. But even. And you know him?

[William Tincup]

Oh, yeah.

[Cole Napper]

Our podcast editor is a huge Tesla guy.

[William Tincup]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, but the thing is, is they can't back it up. That's the thing. You shouldn't know. And there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with not knowing how something works. There's nothing wrong with it. But don't act like you're an engineering genius, because you're not. Now leave that to the engineering geniuses to be engineering geniuses. So why are we talking about AI to a group of people that could care less? You're forcing them to Learn something they don't want to learn. And they're not going to learn, by the way. They didn't learn SaaS, they didn't learn on prem. They're not going to learn AI. They just want to know what do I get? What does it do for me? How do I interact with it? How do I know that it works? Okay, but like getting into. Let me show you. Here's how you spin up and here's how. Dude, just stop talking about AI. It's assumptive. this point. You're building new technology, it's assumptive. It's like saying the Internet, back in the day, we'd say HTTPs://forward/forward/www.whatverthehell.com. we didn't, after about seven or eight years of that nonsense, we stopped doing that. That's AI. It's just assumptive. And it's okay that it's assumptive. Let it be assumptive. Don't beat people over the head with something they don't want to learn. Like that's, that's just, that's just mean. Like, like really, like it's just if you, if you, if you, if you deconstruct it, it's like I'm gonna beat you over the head with something that I know you don't like.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Why, why do that?

[Cole Napper]

You know, one of the things that.

[William Tincup]

By the way, there's a reason for this. Boston Consulting Group, two by two, if you're, if you're into those types of analogies or if you're a visual learner, put likability on one law and one axis and put, put meaningful on the other. So something that's meaningful and from someone that's likable. So you're looking at the top right corner saying this is meaningful and that person was likable. People still buy and will forever buy from people they like. So it's the people that have kind of already figured that out in, in software that like they, if the person drives towards an AI discussion then they'll. Okay, yeah, yeah, cool. You know what, let me bring in Barney and we can, we can all geek out. We can put on our propeller hats and put in our, you know, pencil pocket protectors and all that stuff and we can all geek out on the tech. But how many of those people actually will take it to an AI discussion? It's fractions of fractions and fractions of zero. It's nobody, nobody wants to talk about that. That again. That are non technical people.

[Cole Napper]

Sure.

[William Tincup]

Technical People want to. It's the opposite. They want to talk too much about the tech and how it was built and, you know, all that stuff. They want to like CTO, CIOs, et cetera. That's another. That's altogether different problem because they want to get in the weeds, whereas HR and recruiters, they. They want to hover above all the tall grass, and they should. That's actually what we want them to do. And we're gonna go to HR Tech in the fall and we're gonna go booth to booth and it'll say AI some. And you just like, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Because you don't need to do that. You don't need to beat them over the head with something that they don't need to know and will never know.

[Cole Napper]

But they're AI native now, you know.

[William Tincup]

Well, yeah, I don't think we want HR or recruiters to be AI native. The technology needs to be like, that part needs to be, because it just needs to be built different than SaaS because of modern integrations, needs to be

[Cole Napper]

cheaper and faster and all those things.

[William Tincup]

All those. Yeah, all of those things. But, you know, it's. I don't think that we want our HR professionals, our comp professionals are, you know, learning and development professionals to be AI geniuses. I think structurally we want them to be competent, and I think we need to put training behind that and tools behind that so that, you know, getting people to where they're competent at something is. Is an HR goal and should be an HR goal of. And across all kind of skills levels is getting people good at something.

[Cole Napper]

So, like, one of my motivations for doing the podcast, because this is like a really thankless thing most of the time. It's a huge pain in the ass and.

[William Tincup]

Oh, oh, and it costs you money.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah, that too. And it's just like, I just feel like, especially in the analytics field, because, like, you would be surprised that the percentage of the audience has like a PhD.

[William Tincup]

Oh.

[Cole Napper]

Or at a minimum, a Masters.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

And. And this is not to disparage anybody who doesn't have that or anything like that. It's just you do get filled with a lot of facts about what the world of work is supposed to be like. And a lot of times they're. They're not directionally correct. They are 180 degrees wrong.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

And one of the things I try to do is to bring on people who can kind of share life lessons. I've heard people refer to as, like, there's a world Uncle Shortage of like uncles that used to tell you how the world really works and no one does that anymore.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

And so you've been incredibly funny so far, but you've also shared a lot of like these, like, here's how the world really works, here's what people really need. And I hope, I hope folks that are listening are actually taking that to heart because there's actually a lot of really good wisdom in what you're sharing.

[William Tincup]

Well, it's a revolution that has to happen from within.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

That the old models don't work. So it's. If we can keep pushing those older models and say, yeah, we want to measure this and we want to measure that and we want, you know, we're just going to look at employees. We're not going to look at any of these other things. We're just going to. You're going to basically argue your way out of a job and make yourself irrelevant. So I think adapting and kind of coming to an understanding that all the things that we've done in people analytics through the years has always been fluid and now it's probably the most fluid it's been up to now when.

[Cole Napper]

And there's a part of it too, which is. And I think we actually share this. Like, I always felt like I was an outsider in HR because of my scientific background and being in analytics and analytics, people are not accepted in the HR function. Don't let people tell you otherwise. And I feel like you're kind of in a similar background in the sense that you don't come at this even from a recruiting spot. You came from marketing.

[William Tincup]

I did.

[Cole Napper]

Right. And so tell me, and you're one of the most well known influential people in the HR industry now, what does

[William Tincup]

that feel like to never have worked an HR job or a recruiting job? I came up through web development, had a web development agency, sold it, had a marketing agency for a decade, sold it. I fell out of love with marketing and fell in love with HR and recruiting and for different reasons on, on both sides, but I fell in love with it. So I threw myself into it. But the way I would talk to people or write about things was still from a marketing perspective. Like, why do we do onboarding this way? Like, like, like handing people a binder and doing it in a day and telling them where the restroom is? Is that, is that really the most critical things that they should know during onboarding, especially after the romance phase of recruiting? So I think most of it is my learning of HR from the lens of marketing and then Asking questions of hr, going, why. Why do we do it this way? Other than because we've always done it that way? It's like a parent saying, because I told you so. So, you know, you got to take me through it. I'm a very logical person, and so if you can break, if you can bring the logic, okay. But most people can't.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah. Well, I'll say this as a policy. I try not to, like, hipaa disclose anybody on the podcast, but I will say I do have my own bouts with mania at times.

[William Tincup]

Oh, yeah?

[Cole Napper]

Is that. Is that something that is central to your life at all?

[William Tincup]

Oh, yeah. I went through a psychotic break in 2015 where I didn't go to church with my wife and kids, which. Okay, there's that. I watched Manchester United, my favorite football club. They lost. The next thing I know, as I'm driving around in my car looking for other cars to run into, like, I. I was going to die that day. And I'm looking for different cement pylons. I'm looking for, like, okay, how can I make it look like an accident? But I just want to. I want out. I just want. I'm done with this place. I just want to. I want to go. I was praying to God, take me. Just let me go. And I ended up at the Parks Mall in Arlington because I was. I needed to buy some stuff for a trip. So I still. Like, half of my brain was still functioning in a normalish way. And I called my wife and I said, I'm. I'm in a really dark place, and I don't know how to get out of it. And so she dropped what she was doing. She came and picked me up, brought me home. It was about three months of going to, like, mine wasn't. And not to disparage, mine wasn't mommy and daddy issues. Mine was brain chemistry. It was just straight up brain chemistry. So we found a pharmacologist, a person, an expert in brain chemistry. And so we went to him, and they tried. He tried one thing, you know, then he tried another. They tried another, and she would report because I couldn't tell. And so she was my. She, you know, she would be the one saying, okay, yeah, he's starting to kind of. Kind of fixate on so certain things. And he got down to, you know, 10 milligrams of Prozac, 300 milligrams of Wellbutrin, and what that does. What I was diagnosed with back then was manic depressive and a specific type of manic depressive hypomania, hypomaniac, where you spend a lot of your time in mania. And the time that you spend in depression is serious. It's not the dropsies. It's not, I need to take off a day and kind of reset. No, it's, I want to kill myself. So the medicine, I mean, it's actually, you know, right here on my counter. I take it every day. And I've, you know, I've come to the understanding that that makes me level. I can still go into mania and I can still have some bouts of depression or moments of depression, but it's never as deep and it's never as high. So I'm okay with that. I mean, most of the art that you see came out of mania. Like, I would start a painting and I just couldn't stop. And four days later, I haven't slept, I've done an eight ball of cocaine and I'm just flying through a painting because that's what mania does. You, you just can't let go of something. And, and you also, you think that you're the most creative you'll ever be, which is kind of a lie we tell ourselves. You could be creative without being in mania.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah, but, yeah, I guess I have like a, a question I want to ask you about it, which is, sure, how are you able to talk about it?

[William Tincup]

It's real easy. It's, it's, it's one of those deals. It's a person's journey. I love people telling me about kind of their mental health journey and kind of things that they had to overcome. And so I think, you know, the more we talk about it, the more it's out there for everyone to kind of consume and then go, okay, I can, I can see a little bit of that in myself, or I can see that in my uncle or my brother, my son, etc. And so it's, it's really, I believe you have a moral obligation to tell people because if you keep it quiet, no one gets better. You might personally get better. Better. Living through chemistry, you might get better, but the world doesn't get better. And so I think that talking about it and telling people about your story, you don't have to beat them over the head with it. But at the same time it's like, hey, listen, this is one of those bits. I take this medicine to keep me at this place because I've been at these other two places and, and it's not pretty. And so I think it's, I think it's Just important once you get to a calm place. It took me a year or two of just kind of coming to grips with it, taking medicine and coming to grips with it. And then after, after that I'm like, ah, yeah, hell, the world can. I don't care. Because the more people that know, the more people that can kind of, I don't think in self diagnose, but they can see something and then go talk to somebody, talk to a professional for

[Cole Napper]

a while on my resume because I had done 360 degree feedback earlier in my career and one of my customers, which is horrible. Well, whatever. It was fine. They said Cole has a maniacal focus on adding value to the business. And I put it on there kind of as a badge of honor. But there were two things in there.

[William Tincup]

That's a compliment.

[Cole Napper]

It was a huge compliment. But they were like, I knew the person who said it.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, it's a backhanded.

[Cole Napper]

First of all, Cole's a maniac.

[William Tincup]

Yes, Maniacal.

[Cole Napper]

We'd actually like him to be more of an HR person than just focusing on the business. But I put it as like a badge of honor.

[William Tincup]

No, it's absolutely a badge of honor. They taught us in business school, what's the executive team to a business? And everybody got it wrong. So they said, you're agents for the shareholders, stockholders of the business. That's all you are. Your title might be VP of this, but you're an agent for their, for them and their. And their growth. So being focused on the business is exactly what you should have been doing. Maniacal. Okay, that. We probably could have used a different word there, but because intentional. Oh, it's definitely intentional. No one uses Herculean for no reason. Maniacal is one of those words too. It's like, yeah, you know what you're doing? That's a backhanded compliment. It's like, I'm. Okay, I'm a compliment on his work ethic in this way.

[Cole Napper]

He's just, you take the thing and I'm gonna take it back from you.

[William Tincup]

That's right. That's right.

[Cole Napper]

Yep. Well, William, do you want to join me in Cole's corner?

[William Tincup]

Yeah. Heck yeah.

[Cole Napper]

Welcome to Cole's corner. All right, well, let's start out with some rapid fire. It's actually this first question would be kind of interesting for you because you've done so many things, but if you weren't doing what you're doing today, including all of those different things, what would you have done with your career?

[William Tincup]

I was this close to being A manager of a Walmart in West Texas. So when I say this close, I was the youngest assistant manager of Walmart's history. I worked for Sam for a period of time in Bentonville and I was this close. I was a golden child. Like I, I could have my own store. I would be retired now.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah. I mean, don't they make like $500,000 a year?

[William Tincup]

Yeah, I'd be, I'd be retired and a good retirement at that. But the, the thing is, is I wanted, I felt like other people were doing things that I wanted to kind of do. But I've always been in love with retail. I don't know why, I mean, but it's, it's, it's. I think somebody told me at one point, it's, you're a food service person or you're a retail person like the Beetle, Beatles and Elvis. Right. You're one of the other.

[Cole Napper]

What's the difference?

[William Tincup]

Food service is what from their perspective was all about making customer delight. Raving fans for a Blanchard person. And retail is about maximizing profit.

[Cole Napper]

Interesting. Because I've worked in both back in like high school and college and. Yeah, I never really, I guess, thought

[William Tincup]

of it that way. It's a game. Retail's a game of. I'm going to put three or four things together to then get you to buy one of them. Okay. All that stuff that's at the, at the registers, those impulse buys, those are all purposeful.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

You know, they're all, they're high margin. So one of the things you should know is everything by the register is all high margin.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

You know, they don't put dog food next to the register because it's like. Well, well no. Once you get to a retirement home, that's what you should look forward to. But it's, it's, it's really, it's really, it's really. There's 8% margin on dog food.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

So you can sell, you know, a ton of dog food and you've made, you know, $12. So like. Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

So I love that capital today. 8% is basically no margin.

[William Tincup]

Fair enough. Fair enough.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

I like that game, that game of getting people to buy. That's still a fun game.

[Cole Napper]

That's so interesting. Oh well, if. What's the place you've never been to that you'd most like to go and

[William Tincup]

why at this point? Let's see, I'm a, I'm a beach person. I love being at the beach. I don't have to do anything at the beach. Like, I don't have to get in the water. Just there's being under, you know, an umbrella, smoking a cigar and just staring at the water is the. A form of peace that I can't find elsewhere. And so I'm looking at, like, Bali and Fiji and places like that. I'd like to go there. Not, not for the. It's just a different beach. I've been all over the Caribbean. I've been all over Florida. I've been all over California. It's like, okay, I'm tapped out on the things that are close to me. I gotta start looking at, you know, other places that are outside of that to get me to a beach.

[Cole Napper]

What, what's the best beach that you've been to?

[William Tincup]

Cayman's. Grand Caymans.

[Cole Napper]

Okay.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, it's, it's one. It's beautiful. It's 11 miles long island. So it's tiny. You. You know, super blue water and really interesting history. The fishermen back in the 1800s used to go out fish, and before they'd come into port, they, they, they, they got all the fishes. So they, they prep. Do all the prep out at sea. And so all the stingrays and all the animals got used to through hundreds of years. Well, hundreds of years, tens of years, you know, 200 years, let's say, got used to. That's where they eat. So you go out and it's. It's like a sandbar. I mean, you know, it's still deep enough for a boat. You can stand there and you're surrounded by stingrays. And the, the females are the ones that are really big, and the males are the ones that are really small and they've got a stinger on their tail. The males stay away from you. They could care less. But the female stingrays, they just kind of come. They're like a. Like a cow. They just kind of come up to you like food. Where are we? Where are we at? What's going on? So, yeah, the Cayman Islands, it's, It's a really, really wonderful experience. But if you stay in continental US the redneck Riviera between Pensacola and Panama City, there's a little necklace called 30A. That's where seaside and watercolor and a bunch of different types of beaches that are there. They brought in sand, white sand from China years ago. And so it's the same water in the Gulf of Mexico. There's like, it's not different, but if you go to Galveston or you go to Padre, it's brown.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah, right.

[William Tincup]

And the water Is kind of muddy or murky.

[Cole Napper]

It's not nice.

[William Tincup]

It's not. No. No. I haven't back to. To Padre island since high school. I used to go there for spring breaks. Other than that, there's no need. I have to take my sons there, so. But. But there's a. There's an area over there for Fort Walton beach where the water is blue green and the sand is white. It looks like the Caribbean.

[Cole Napper]

Okay.

[William Tincup]

And so it is gorgeous.

[Cole Napper]

You mean the Gulf of America?

[William Tincup]

I'm gonna still give it to Mexico. They need, you know what, they got knocked out of the World cup early. Come on, let's just give something to Mexico. Let's. Let's let them have that. It's not that big a deal. It is an interesting. Because one of the arguments is coastline. How much coastline? But I don't think we've ever. Like the Baltic Sea, I'm not sure. The Mediterranean Sea, I'm not sure.

[Cole Napper]

We really do not care about the naming convention.

[William Tincup]

You know, like, I don't think we've, you know, use that as a standard before. And seeing as people already know it is one thing. Let's just leave it at that. But, yeah, it's the same water. It's just different sand. And so it's fascinating to look at Galveston and go, I don't. I can't put. I can't go in there that something bad will happen there. And then you go to Destin sand dustin or 30A and you're like, hell, I'm getting in the water. Let's go. It's the same water.

[Cole Napper]

Well, the one is west of the Mississippi river outlet and one's east of it. And that makes a hell of a difference.

[William Tincup]

Does make a little bit of a difference. But it's the same water. It. It circulates. When you. When you look at it on a map and you study the water patterns, it circulates. Same one.

[Cole Napper]

The funny. The funniest thing to me about, like, when I get, like, deep into just some, like, Southern United States talk.

[William Tincup]

Yes.

[Cole Napper]

Is there's people right now listening in, like, Singapore.

[William Tincup]

Oh, 100.

[Cole Napper]

And there's like, what are they talking?

[William Tincup]

I have no idea. Well, there's 11 different. I think. I think John. Sums are kind of. But it might have been somebody else. Is that, like, there's 11 different Americas. So. So at the United States of America, there's actually 11 different Americas.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

And so you start looking at that and thinking, you know, Texas and maybe one or two contiguous states. That's an area That's a territory. That's its own place.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah. And so I took a cultural anthropology class in college. I remember our professor was fascinated by the map of the United States of where people drank sweet tea and where they did not drink sweet tea.

[William Tincup]

100.

[Cole Napper]

Like, there's one America and there's another America.

[William Tincup]

Mason Dixon. Mason Dixon line, which actually goes all

[Cole Napper]

the way up through Ohio, I remember, really, where, you know, like where the Kentucky Derby is, and it goes up into Ohio and then it goes. And there's actually parts of the southern United States that don't drink sweet tea. Especially Florida does not that.

[William Tincup]

Well, Florida is not south, but even,

[Cole Napper]

like lots of Texas doesn't drink sweet tea.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, I, I don't know those people. I, I, I grew up with the, with, with, you know, the sun tea that would be made, like you put it out tea bags and put it out in a jar and tea would be made. And so that was tea. So I, I've gotten away from sugar tea. A sweet tea.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Mostly because I looked at the caloric intake and I looked at the numbers. I got water, burger. And I looked at them like, that's 900 calories. It's, it's good, but it ain't that good.

[Cole Napper]

No, it's no joke.

[William Tincup]

Yeah. So I did it for that reason. But I still love tea.

[Cole Napper]

All right, I got another rapid fire. That's not going very rapid. If you, if you were a character in any book, TV show or movie, who would you be and why?

[William Tincup]

James Bond.

[Cole Napper]

Which one?

[William Tincup]

Daniel Craig's James Bond. I like the violence. I like the, of course you do. Quasi, quasi society person. Whereas the James Bond that came before, you could kind of see him in a society kind of thing. Like, okay, they're going to, you know, alone and garden party and all this type stuff. And like that Daniel Craig, you couldn't see him there. You could see him fighting somebody. And so I, I like that. Daniel Craig specifically. And so I think, I think the thing for me is, like, I've watched all the James Bond movies, but that particular James Bond really kind of took from some of the things out of the Jason Bourne series and some of the things out of some of the other more modern movies and violence and like, real, real aggressive fighting and things like that. Like, I like that, I like it on tv. I don't like it in my personal life, but I like it on tv. And so if I could escape, I'd escape to that world. I like espionage. I love, like, all the Navy SEAL stuff, all the Stuff on Delta, like everything. I love all of that. Counter espionage, counterterrorism, I love all that stuff. So. Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

Huh. I do. I do have one big question for you.

[William Tincup]

Oh, yeah?

[Cole Napper]

Since you're. You kind of. These aren't your words. They're my words. You kind of treat your career like a portfolio, right? And you've got multiple items that you're investing in something you're going up and other things are going down. If you just look at yourself and what's in your portfolio and you look like two or three years out into the future, what's paying off for you and what's not?

[William Tincup]

Well, I still have my original Walmart stock from the 80s. It split, I think 50 times since then. So every time the, the Merrill lynch thing comes, I just tear it up. I don't even look at. I don't even know what it is. My wife wants to look at it, but I get to it first and I just tear it up. But I think, I think it's. I think the thing is, is giving back to people is actually where I get the most return. It isn't in an exit where, you know, you make $600,000 or whatever the bid is. Like, that's cool because you can buy some stuff with it, I guess. But I'm a real low rent kind of person. Like, I have four Toyotas, they're all 20 years old, and they all have over 200,000 miles on them. Like, could I buy a new car? Of course I could buy a new car. Why, why would I? You can't kill a Toyota. So I don't, I don't look at investment, at investments. I think that's why I make a good advisor for some companies, is because I look at the entrepreneur and fall in love with the entrepreneur. And the idea that they're trying to solve like, the conundrum that, like, okay, this and then look at the market opportunity, but if it never goes anywhere, I'm not brokenhearted. I enjoyed the, the banter with the entrepreneur. I had fun with the entrepreneur, which is really where I get the most out of, is just talking to entrepreneurs. Because, like, it, love it, hate it, whatever. Entrepreneurs, all entrepreneurs. Hewlett Packard, all the way to Steve Jobs. They looked at something and said, there's got to be a better way, which is inherently arrogant and at the same time inherently creative. And I love, and I love that and I love being around people that, that just like, there's got to be a better way. It's like, all right, let's Go. I mean, you might not find it or you might find it. It might be too early or it might be price wrong. Like. Okay, well, there's a lot of other business things can go wrong, but I like the journey of discovering that, like, that new way. That's fun.

[Cole Napper]

That's cool. I mean, that's part of. I mean, this is the fourth startup I've worked for.

[William Tincup]

Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

And that's part of the. It's part of what makes it look exciting or make. Not makes it makes it exciting, not look exciting. It is exciting.

[William Tincup]

Yeah. I love my current employer. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I.

[Cole Napper]

No, the thing I always tell people is, like, when you're at a startup, it's like life on 11, you know? And it's like you could have the best day and the worst day of your life all in one day. I'm going to move into. What am I reading? And by the way, do you have a hard out at the end of this?

[William Tincup]

No, I'm good.

[Cole Napper]

Okay. Because we're already. I got four articles for you and we're already in some of the longer episode territory, so let's make it happen.

[William Tincup]

You're good. Joe Rogan.

[Cole Napper]

All right, so this first post is by a guy named David Haber. He's a general partner at A16Z, and I guess he must be an investor in startups that do surveillance because he said most work discussions are being recorded now by default. You should probably assume that everything you say at work is getting recorded from here on out. The key insight that you need to onboard AI like you would onboard employees. You don't tell the new employee to pour over your existing CRM system or company wiki and expect them to get up to speed. You invite them to the meetings and let them go through, like, osmosis. And he goes on to say a bunch of stuff about why we should be recording everybody all the time. Like it's a good thing. And I think that's crazy. So what did you think about this one, William?

[William Tincup]

Well, it's. It's happening. So it is happening. The train's leaving the station and you're

[Cole Napper]

either going to it already.

[William Tincup]

And that's not just at work, that's at home. So. So, you know, it's one of those deals if you want to opt out of that. There's a really. It's an easy path, and I'll just call it the Ted Kaczynski path. You write a manifesto and you go find a little cabin in the woods and you get completely off the web.

[Cole Napper]

Sad thing is, at one point I actually knew the name of that manifesto.

[William Tincup]

I read it too.

[Cole Napper]

Here's a fun discussion. Was Ted Kaczynski wrong? No, no, no, he's totally right. He just shouldn't have shipped bombs to people.

[William Tincup]

Yeah, well, that's, that's the thing. You don't, you're not gonna, you're not gonna convey them of your brilliance and your idea by shipping bombs. Just keep doing your bit. But I think that he's on to something in the sense of like, chat. GBT has access to my Gmail and it's read every. Consumed all of my emails. Right.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

I can go write something and say, put this in my voice. It puts it in my voice. It writes it as I. As if I wrote it. And it is literally just like I always write it. So I think the thing is, if you're looking at how do you make some of these things better? Yeah, just give them access. They're going to.

[Cole Napper]

Haven't responded to my emails.

[William Tincup]

They're going to get access regardless. So you're fighting an unwinnable war again.

[Cole Napper]

So, William, who is they?

[William Tincup]

They is probably big data. Probably. Probably the data companies that resell the data. But in this, in this case, he's talking about the AI companies that are selling you agentic AI as in the form of a workforce or employee.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah. So let me ask you this. I mean this in a very serious way.

[William Tincup]

Sure.

[Cole Napper]

The way you're presenting is like, it's just a foregone conclusion. You might as well, you know, like, if bad things are going to happen to you, might as well. And the thing I would say is anytime that an employer is doing something that like, let's say, invades the civil liberties of an employee, there should probably be an equivalent trade off of something that happens that is then in the employee's advantage. Do you agree with that?

[William Tincup]

Well, first of all, I think the flaw in it for me is why do you have civil liberties? You chose to work there. You chose to work there, work there by their rules. If you don't want to work there, quit.

[Cole Napper]

So we will just make sure that everybody gets naked when they come into work. And again, that's on their hands.

[William Tincup]

If that's their culture and that's what they allow, you, you get what you allow. Right. This is actually a discussion about battered women. You get what you allow. And no one wants to talk about it that way because it's really harsh. But this is true about employment.

[Cole Napper]

Are employees allowing this because they don't have the Ability to opt out.

[William Tincup]

Not in the US but in other countries they do. Clearly, I don't think that they should have the ability to opt out. I think the company has a bit more of a responsibility of saying, we're doing this, we're tracking everything. It's. It's like that ring or the Aurora ring. It's on everything.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Everything you do in touch, both in your personal and professional life. We've got access to it. They need to be more transparent about that. And they can even say why.

[Cole Napper]

Why do they need to. If it's just the employees like you, like, they don't have a choice.

[William Tincup]

I think to make sure that they have a choice of employment, say this is the rules. These are the rules.

[Cole Napper]

Do they have a choice of employment if every employer does it?

[William Tincup]

Well, again, make your own company, Ted.

[Cole Napper]

A thousand thousand flowers.

[William Tincup]

Build your own cabin, go. I mean chop your own wood. Make your own clothes. It's, it's one of those deals. If everybody's doing it, you're the statistical outlier, which is.

[Cole Napper]

So then could you make an argument? Because I feel like the inverse of this is like you could be an employer and market yourself as like the surveillance free employer. And that actually might be seen as like a positive.

[William Tincup]

Good luck.

[Cole Napper]

Good luck.

[William Tincup]

Good luck. Because you won't be competitive. Because everyone else. Well, because everyone else has data that they can then leverage for competitive advantage. And because of your. A strat. A failed strategy. Because of course at one point it'll be broken and people will look at other people's emails, et cetera. But you're going to surveil. You might not do it as overtly as other people were would, but at one point you will, you're going to be forced to. So I think, I think it's. For me it's one of those deals. Just go ahead and embrace it. Like people. I think sometimes this is the argument around identity theft. You've got a lot of things out there on the Internet, your email and your. This is that if someone wants to take my identity, Godspeed, good luck with it. Have fun. I mean, be a, be a porn star at least. Like just go do fun. But I don't care. Like, like if I cared, I would be on the Internet. I wouldn't put things on the Internet. I wouldn't be on the Internet. And so like the people that wall off, like all my children, I don't put my children on the Internet. I'm like, yeah, okay. And I guess you, you know, you, you peel your own.

[Cole Napper]

I Am one of those people, by the way.

[William Tincup]

Yeah. You grow your own onions. Good for you. Like, yeah, you recycle. You have a compost pile. You're perfect. I get it. I don't. I. I don't. I, like, Henry just made eagle. And I'm proud of. Because when I'm dead, he goes, yeah, well, I've got one and I'm about to have another. But it's one of those bits. It's like, I. I want to show that I'm proud of. Not child number one, I'm proud of. And when I'm dead, he'll be able to go through my Instagram account or Facebook account and see stuff like that. I've had both my sons go through my Instagram account on their own and come in and ask me about stuff like, hey, where'd you take this photo?

[Cole Napper]

This is like part of the retail versus service sector discussion.

[William Tincup]

It is. It is Beatles and Elvis.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah, yeah. Because, like, I'm. I'm realizing, like, the funny thing is when you do recruitment marketing, you realize that, like, intelligence is king. The funny thing is when you do people analytics, you realize intelligence is king. And you can come to wildly different conclusions based on that result.

[William Tincup]

100%.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Yeah. Because it's a crystal and you just, you turn the crystal a little bit to the side and you see something different.

[Cole Napper]

Well, and I actually think it's. That is almost the perfect segue into the next article I've got, because if you have two sides to something, sometimes that's like politics. And so this is from Minerva Psychology. It says, do political views influence hiring decisions? And they look at a new experiment based on research that suggests that candidate politics impacts hiring above and beyond demographic factors like gender, ethnicity, characteristics. Because many, many people have done studies on, you know, whether your gender or whether your ethnicity is affecting you in a variety of hiring contexts. And I'm not going to carry to get into that, but the thing that was new and different about this is a study that came out in the International Journal of Selection Assessment is they added in political orientation, basically whether or not somebody was right wing or left wing. And they found that those results swamped the other things like gender and ethnicity in terms of the bias and specifically that people in the left wing were seen as less hireable, but people on the right wing were significantly seen as less hireable if they were judged to have political beliefs. Yeah.

[William Tincup]

And so no one, no one should be shocked by this. There should be. If you're shocked, I'm shocked that you're shocked, because if you take a look at America and you take a look at, like, a community of people that have come from a different country, they're insular. Like, there's a large Vietnamese community in Grand Prairie. Right. They could live everywhere. They could live and pick. Pick a different town. They all live in the same place because they like being around each other, because it reminds them of home and all kinds of things. The, like me bias, which is what you're describing or what's being described in hiring, there's six hiring biases, and that's one. And that does touch gender and race. But in politics, it's even more. Because politics in America has been more politicized. But I think it's always been there. I think it's always been there. Like, and you get there by, you know, like, hey, what do you drive, man? We roll in. If you're rolling in a Prius, I know how you vote.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

If you're rolling in a Ford 350, I know how you vote. So you can get there without talking about, hey, what do you think about Trump's new policy of blah, blah, blah. You don't have to. You can do it in such a. Such a sublime and easy way. I remember a period in Texas where you put your church affiliation on your resume.

[Cole Napper]

Wow.

[William Tincup]

Yeah. Like, resumes were submitted. It's like, yeah, I volunteer at Saint, Saint Maria Goretti. And, and, you know, this, this, and the other. And people would know. Okay, you're Catholic. Got it.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

And. And again, would that factor in? Of course it factors in. You can't not know what you know. Like, that's dumb. Of course it factors in. Can you put it at bay? Can you acknowledge it and say, okay, I understand religions there. I understand. I don't necessarily agree Catholic Church. Okay, now let's get back to, like, it's. You got to acknowledge it. Like, it's people that used to say, I'm colorblind. That's the most moronic ever. Because what you're basically saying is, I don't see you, which means I don't respect you enough to see you. That you can't be more offensive. I guess technically you could, but, yeah,

[Cole Napper]

I think maybe way more offensive.

[William Tincup]

Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, is, like, no, I see you. I understand. I understand and I love and I accept. Okay, we're different. That's cool. And, and, and in our differences will create conflict. In that conflict will create innovation, and in that innovation will create market share. So I, I think if you, if you if you create a homogenous culture one way or another, I mean, it could be all liberal and everybody's liberal and everything's fantastic and all of a sudden you got all like minded people, nothing will get done. No one's going to say anything to disrupt that and same thing as right wing, no one's going to say anything. You know what, we should probably rethink this DEI thing. I mean, you know, maybe not go as far as we did in 2019, but we should probably think about it at least. You'd get fired. So homogeny is the, is the enemy.

[Cole Napper]

Interesting.

[William Tincup]

You don't want to be homogeneous because homogeny, it's easy. That's the thing, that's the attractive part. That's the drug of, you know, if you're in Silicon Valley and all your partners went to the same business school or same types of business school, they're all married, they're all men, they all married the same type of woman. You know, imagine conversations are pretty easy. Yeah, everybody likes golf, everybody likes hiking. You know, we've all got a Patagonia North Face, we've all got our jackets. Like that's an easy work environment. But is it innovative? No, not at all. Because they can't, because they can't force themselves out to be, to be bring conflict to work, to bring that crazy idea. And that's what it takes. You have to have a crazy idea. The hairs on the back of your net need to sand up. It's like, ah, it terrifies me. That's a scary, you know, proposition. If you're in homogeny, no one will do that.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah, I've been sitting on that article for like a year and I keep like, I'm like, who wants to talk about this one? Oh yeah, wouldn't lose their mind over it.

[William Tincup]

Super easy.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Fight, fight homogeny at every turn. Fight homogeny. You can call it whatever you want to call it. Just, you don't want to end up with all of the same, like people with the same, like views on everything.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah. When I think what, what I take away from that back to the article is if you're trying to create a homogeneous political organization, that's pretty easy. You're hurting yourself.

[William Tincup]

That's, you're, you're hurting yourself. Yeah, you're cutting off your nose, bite your face, whatever the robbing Peter to probably pay Paul, whatever the bid is, and you won't feel it until later. And so that's why sometimes people get away with it because they just do it because it's easy for them. And then later on they don't really care about that it impacted the firm and that it impacted the innovation, impacted market share and they stopped innovating and all this other stuff because no one wanted to bring a crazy idea to work. Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

I'm gonna think about this later.

[William Tincup]

It is easy though. That's the, that's the thing that you gotta really kind of open your, your mind to. Working with people that are similar to you, really similar to you is easy. Like you gotta.

[Cole Napper]

I'm thinking on it. It's just like, because like, I mean I went to graduate school, we studied a lot of this stuff in terms of self directed teams. You want to increase innovation, you want to increase motivation, all this stuff. I think the, the thing that I keep reflecting on is we live in a really polarized time.

[William Tincup]

Yep.

[Cole Napper]

And I don't think people put two and two together of this one person on one hand would say, I really only want to talk to Prius drivers. Yeah, right.

[William Tincup]

100.

[Cole Napper]

And on the other hand they would say I really think that our company needs to be innovative. And they wouldn't realize that those two things are in conflict.

[William Tincup]

Absolutely.

[Cole Napper]

Vice versa is probably true as well.

[William Tincup]

It's absolutely, it's.

[Cole Napper]

To me that's the interesting intersection of those two things is the understanding of it in one context and the, the blindness to it in another.

[William Tincup]

That's where leaders, real, actual CEOs and boards etc, that's where they look at the long term and, and they want, they want that in innovation because you're either going to build it or you're going to have to go buy it. And buying it is failure.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

In, in a lot of ways it's, it's like I got to go because somebody else did it and they allowed their company to create those things. I now have to go overspend and buy that innovation. I could have made that innovation myself if I would have allowed my company to grow in a certain way. And again, you want the, you want the contrarians, you want the people that go, yeah, I don't see the world that way. I think we should be looking at it this way. You want those people in the room, you might not agree at all at any point, but the fact that they're in the room disagreeing gets you to think and that's what you want.

[Cole Napper]

Well, I got another one for you. I got two more articles, but I want to make sure we hit on this one, which is not true of today's discussion at all. But it is true in the aggregate.

[William Tincup]

Oh, by the way, before you tell me the article, when we say that this is the divisive. Divisive times, technically, the Civil War was more divisive.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

I mean, if we want a history lesson, sure. You can go back to this.

[Cole Napper]

It was the most polarized time. It says it is a polarized.

[William Tincup]

It's definitely a polarizing time. But there are people on both sides of the spectrum that think this is the worst it's ever been. It's like. Sorry, if you go back, I mean, most people don't know, like, when the Constitution was written, all men are created equal, but slaves were three fifths. Now, who do you think wrote that in, naturally?

[Cole Napper]

Slave owners.

[William Tincup]

Incorrect. Northerners. Because if. If. If blacks were one for one, if they were all equal, they'd get one vote, and the south would help have more population than the north, and so they could run the table on everything political. So it was actually the northerners that didn't like slavery that put the caveat in there.

[Cole Napper]

Interesting.

[William Tincup]

But this is. But the south gets blamed for it, which they. They were a little bit ambivalent, quite frankly. They. They knew how they were going to treat slaves. Like, no one's going to change that. But when it came down to voting. Wait a minute. Hold up. My slaves can vote. All right, cool. I. I'll get my slaves to vote on these things. And now all of a sudden, the south is running the entire country.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah. I don't know enough history to.

[William Tincup]

So this isn't the most divisive time. And that's. That's. That's the lesson is there's been other times that we've been more divisive and we went to war. So, you know, and until that happens again, you know, it's just. It's polarizing. But.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah, can.

[William Tincup]

Can you imagine. Can you remember a time in your life where it wasn't polarizing there?

[Cole Napper]

I can remember when it was less polarizing.

[William Tincup]

I could definitely remember that. Tip o'. Neill. Some of those things where they. They'd argue on the floor and then they go have a beer. Yeah, like, this doesn't happen anymore.

[Cole Napper]

I'm going to do a hard pivot here, William.

[William Tincup]

All right, do it.

[Cole Napper]

Tell me, because I've been sharing my screen for another article for a few minutes now. So this is another post that has nothing to do with what we're just talking about from Jonah Berger, Wharton professor. He said, feel like you're talking less than you used to. You're not alone. New research suggests that people have been speaking almost 350 words per day, less each year. Over a 15 year period, there was almost a 30% reduction in the number of words spoken per day. Have you seen this, William?

[William Tincup]

Well, not for me because I'm on that little plot. I'm a statistical outlier way on one of the ends of that deal because I talk for a living.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

So I can see that with people that talk to their phone. So I'm really interested in that from the perspective of they don't talk to humans as much, but I see a whole lot of people talking to. Chat. GPT asking and answering questions or Gemini or Claude, you know, whatever the bit is. I see a lot of talking there. And so I'm interested. Are they not talking? Are they not talking to human beings?

[Cole Napper]

Well, that's. That is an interesting point. And I was wondering, because you're. When you're not traveling, you're remote, right?

[William Tincup]

Yep.

[Cole Napper]

You don't go into an office. And I'm. I'm the same. And I have noticed I talk considerably less than when I used to go into an office.

[William Tincup]

Oh, 100.

[Cole Napper]

Like considerably less.

[William Tincup]

Hey, Janet, how you doing today? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Cole Napper]

And I think it makes me weird.

[William Tincup]

No. If you evaluate those conversations, most of that was non. Not substantive. It was. It was polite. It was getting to know people. It was all this other stuff. I would call it just trash. Because when you really wanted to talk about substance, substantive, you do that.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

And you still do that. You crack a crack open, a zoom, and then you talk about something substantive. But most of the words that you used at work when you were going to an office had nothing to do with substance. Had everything to do with making you feel good, the other person feel good and everything. Like, it was just.

[Cole Napper]

There's been a lot of stuff coming out about, like, younger people not being socialized and not being able to like, have small talk anymore.

[William Tincup]

I'm down with that. Small talk is down. Small talk is for idiots. Like, stupid. People believe in small talk. Like if someone comes up to me at a party and talks about the weather, I don't even say goodbye. I just walk off like I have nothing to talk to you about. Like, first of all, that you believe that you can actually know what weather is in Texas. I can't talk to you anymore. You're stealing brain cells from me. You're robbing me of IQ points. I can't talk to you. Small talk is for small people. That. And that again, is. It alienates me from people in a good way. For me, it's a filter. I don't want talk to you. If you want to talk to me and I want to talk to you, it's going to be about something real.

[Cole Napper]

You know, you never met my co host back when. So when for about three and a half, four years, it was Cole and Scott on the podcast. And you would like Scott because this is how he always envisioned it.

[William Tincup]

Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

Like, yeah, we're just gonna curse the whole time and really alienate everybody. Like, great.

[William Tincup]

Well, the thing is, is again, the way you create filters as a human being, that's purposeful, it's intentional. You create these filters. And some of my filters are, you know, small talk, things like that. Some of my filters are people that can't handle adult language. Like I remember when at an ad agency on every first client call I would say a curse word. I won't do it now but. Because you'll beep it out. But I'd say a curse word just to see how they'd respond. Because if they're going to responded negatively or just be on there.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

You could kind of feel their getting kind of pinched.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

We're not going to have a long term relationship.

[Cole Napper]

No. They're actually. God, we. This has been years. Early in the podcast we covered a research article on this.

[William Tincup]

Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

And said like, if you are willing to share a curse word in like a first conversation with somebody, that's a high trust behavior.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

And if it isn't reciprocated that you're

[William Tincup]

just you like, I know where I stand.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah. So you, you, it might have come from you for all I know.

[William Tincup]

I, I know where I stand and that's what I want. I want to know where I stand. And again, it's one of those bits. It's not shock value. I think maybe at one point in my life. Now it's just words. It's just woven into how I talk. I talk to my priest this way. So like I, I don't change myself depending on the audience. It's just like, this is how I talk. If you can't handle it, I've said it. It's now on you to choose how you take it and how you consume it. I've already said it. I'm done with it.

[Cole Napper]

So William, I try to explain because I'm on like year number six of working almost primarily with people who live in other places.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

You know, and a lot of times this thing happens to me where I say, oh, I live in Dallas. And they say, oh my gosh, I love Austin, and it drives me crazy.

[William Tincup]

No, that's. I got a bit on that one. So, first of all, when someone says they love Texas, you. You automatically go, you've been Austin. Oh, yeah. I went to south by Southwest, and it was like the most amazing. The hills, the barbecue, this, that, and the other. They say, okay, yeah, here's the deal. That's actually not Texas. So, like, as the Hopi reservation is inside the Navajo reservation, Austin is inside of Texas. It's not Texas. So as long as you understand, when you go to Laredo or El Paso or Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, you're not going to have the same experience. You go 30 miles in any direction into rural Texas, you're not going to have the same experience.

[Cole Napper]

Well, and the funny thing is, because I'm not from Texas either. I'm from Louisiana, which is a surprisingly different place. It is than Texas is. Even though they're pretty close geographically and there's a lot of intermingling between the two, it's a very, very different place. And I really struggle to explain to people what Texas is like. And now I'm not going to struggle anymore, because I'm just going to send them this podcast and be like, william, this is Texas.

[William Tincup]

Yeah. There's a little hole down in the central part of Texas. It's called Austin. And there's just draw circle around it. It kind of ends it like Salado and Dripping Springs. And. Yeah, that's not Texas. I mean, it has our capital as the University of Texas has a lot of cool there, but it's not Texas. And as long as you kind of know that, go, oh, okay, I get it. Yeah. And then you can. Then you can fall in love with Texas, and you can still be in love with Austin. Like, it's okay. It's just knowing that the difference between Dallas and Fort Worth is the difference between Saturn and the moon.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah, it's very different.

[William Tincup]

It's very different. And it's okay that it's different. I. I like things in Dallas. I like things in Fort Worth, and

[Cole Napper]

that's why I live in Arlington.

[William Tincup]

I made it easy. I mean, easy. I can go to both. I'm 12. I'm 12 miles, technically from both. I'm good. Yeah, just go to either one of them.

[Cole Napper]

All right, I'm gonna hit you with this last one, and then we can wrap this baby up. This is a famous Y Com guy. Paul Graham writes these essays. Some of them are really good. This one's called how to Earn a Billion Dollars. Because there's this notion floating around nowadays that anybody who has a billion dollars got it through ill gotten means and they're a bad human being. Which he does address in the essay. But he, one of the things I thought was interesting about this is he said if you really want to be a billionaire, create a startup. And he does a little, this little math problem in here. I'm trying to find it where he said, what I look for is a startup that is growing at a 15% growth rate. If your revenues grow 15% a month, how much more will you be making five years from now to calculate that? And he goes through and does a little bit of math and he essentially says within five years you're essentially making $44 million a month. And there therefore your valuation is above a billion dollars. So in five years you become a billionaire if you're growing at 15% per

[William Tincup]

month, which focuses on growth, which is great in some ways. It's like here's the indicator. Growth, which means that you have to not be churning, you have to have great customer service. Like there's a lot of cool things in there because growth just doesn't happen. You know, great sales, marketing. Yeah.

[Cole Napper]

So then he talks about like, well, how do you get things like that growth? Well, you go and tackle a problem that the world actually needs to be fixed. And how do you know what that problem is? He said by feeling the need yourself. He said you're young. Usually young founders make something that they themselves want. You don't have enough experience yet that you to know what other people need, but you have the experience that you have and you can go build that for yourself. And then he goes on and talks about how yes, there are people that are getting a billion dollars through extractive means, but the mo. The group of people that is most likely to become a billionaire now nowadays are startup founders. And as a serial entrepreneur, yourself and advisor, I thought this one would, I know, strike a nerve with you.

[William Tincup]

It's, it's, it's, it's great. It's brilliant on a level because as an employee you'll never be a, a billionaire. It doesn't matter what company that you work for.

[Cole Napper]

Invested in Walmart way back then.

[William Tincup]

I, I don't know because I don't look at the statements. But the, the bit, the bit is, is you, you can only make so much. Even if you're highly paid. You make $700,000 a year unless your top wage earning years is okay, 20 something years. Okay. At one point you just realize you can't make A billion dollars. You can't get there from here. So you have to create or steal. But let's deal with create. You have to create it. And I like his take on solve a problem that you have and that you've experienced. I like that because I also like people that buy things that, from companies that they like. Like, I like this company, I'll buy from them. So you support the people that you like. This is the same thing in a problem setting. It's just like you look at a problem. Like I, you know, most of the recruiting technology actually came from non recruiters. It came from people of founders of other companies and other industries that basically said recruiting is broken, they had a problem with it. And so, you know, I, he's right. And, and so you have to create your own wealth. Now, is it only by tech startup? No, you can do it in other new company ways. Like you can, you can, you can figure out different ways to make money. But it's definitely being an entrepreneur gives you the best chance. Now the problem with being an entrepreneur is obvious. There's no stability whatsoever, which I don't believe there's stability in corporate America, but that's a different issue. Yeah, but the thing is, is being comfortable with ambiguity all the time. Like there's nothing that's actually settled. Whereas when you're an employee, there's certain that's, that's settled and so you can kind of, you can gain some confidence and like, oh yeah, yeah, the CS team, they got that covered. Well, when you're an entrepreneur, it's like it's never covered, it's never done, it's never done at the level that you'd like for it to be. So work never stops. Like, like I'm always fascinated with people because they're like, yeah, you know, I stop work at 5 and I'm like, for 30 years of my life I've never felt that feeling. I don't even know what that feeling is. Like, I work when I want to work and I like to work. So like I get enjoyment out of work. I also have a bunch of other hobbies that I like as well. But my point is, is if you're going to create a billion dollars, you're not going to do it by being an employee. You have to create a company or you have to become a master thief. You know, you can steal it, but you're going to have to really get good and you're going to have to do a bunch of jobs. So. And there's a lot of Risk involved in that.

[Cole Napper]

Sure.

[William Tincup]

So there's a lot of risk in startups and that ambiguity, what some people find out when they do it is they get into it for all the right reasons and only to find they're not built for it. They're. They're chasing, they're chasing stability, they're chasing the things that employees want to chase when even there.

[Cole Napper]

And I don't know if this is as true today, but there was a point in time where working at a startup was considered a very high prestige thing to do. It was like a pathway into the VC class of people 100%. And I think a little bit of that has waned somewhat. So it is more people or who, who are in it for the love of the game more so. But, but yeah, like, I actually really, really like the point that you made that corporate America, especially right now, there's no stability there either.

[William Tincup]

Yeah. Good luck.

[Cole Napper]

You will work for startup, at least for the startup. You control your destiny to a certain extent.

[William Tincup]

You do, you do. And again, getting back to that, you fall in love with the problem and then you fall in love with how you solve it uniquely and then it's all go to market after that. It's just, how do I get this in front of people to get advice and you know, to get it tested, beta tested, alpha tested, et cetera, to make sure I'm not too far off. Because one thing that he's saying without saying it is don't solve a problem that nobody cares about.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

Which absolutely happens every day. It's a solution to a problem that no one cares about. And so he, I don't think he stated that, but he meant that. And implicitly find that problem that you care about and that you'll prove that others care about it as well.

[Cole Napper]

Sure. Right. Yeah. I think they're kind of the Y Combinator folks are kind of with the mind that, you know, the Airbnbs of the world and the Ubers of the world, they actually solved a problem that nobody actually thought was a problem.

[William Tincup]

Right.

[Cole Napper]

And then they convinced them that it was. But yeah, I definitely get where you're coming from, William. I am extremely curious what the reaction of this episode is going to be. And thank you so much for joining me today. 100 brother, 100 laughed a whole bunch and been flabbergasted many times and just all over the place. So thank you.

[William Tincup]

That's the range of motions most people have with me. So you're good, you're good.

[Cole Napper]

So yeah, let's, let's See what happens if people want to learn more about you or about work defined or any of the other things that you do, where can they reach out?

[William Tincup]

Google. Just put my name in Google. If you can't find my email address, you probably shouldn't email me. Like, it's to that point where it's so many different places. It's just put in my. Just put in my name. But all kidding aside, work define is without an. Okay. Wrkdefined.com and we just went up to 96 shows today, 8,400 episodes, so I believe you.

[Cole Napper]

You've said publicly that your goal is 100, so. You're right. You're right there.

[William Tincup]

I. I already. I already have the next four in a queue, and then. And then I'll set a new goal. You know the game.

[Cole Napper]

Then he's gonna start kicking people off.

[William Tincup]

No, no. I mean, the thing is, it's. It's natural selection.

[Cole Napper]

Mm.

[William Tincup]

Some shows just don't make it. You know, not all. Not all salmon make it up the river.

[Cole Napper]

Yeah.

[William Tincup]

And so that's. That's just life. I won't. I won't prune because I don't. I don't think they'll need to prune. They'll prune them. They'll prune themselves.

[Cole Napper]

Sure. Well, William, this has been a lot of fun. You've been listening Directionally Correct People Intelligence podcast with your host, Colin Appert. Today's guest, William with 10 cup. Thanks for joining me.