🤖 AI, Job Security & Business Ownership | The Real Franchise Ep 64

Rhiannon Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Real Franchise, a podcast that goes where others simply won’t an unfiltered view of franchising, business mindset and everything that we stand for when it comes to supporting a community of small business owners. Join me, Rhiannon, the CEO for James HomeServices Australia, and Justin, one of our owners, as we unpack it all with no topics off limits.

Today, a topic slightly more controversial than normal for us and very topical for us. We’re talking about AI today, Justin, and the role that it plays in our workforce, how things are changing, what impacts that’s having on people and how that’s affecting our network too. So before we jump in, what has triggered us to talk about AI today?

I know that, I know that there’s a little bit more chatter than usual in your space around these. So can you share why we’re talking about it and why it’s relevant?

Justin I’ve got three people that I’m working with at the moment that inquired because, in their words, their roles. It’s two of them are marketing organizations. Their roles of being might have been made redundant because they this is what they words were. The impact of AI on their industry, that AI is doing so much now that it’s affected the companies they were working for.

And they’ve been shedding staff and they’ve lost their roles at the cost of AI.

Rhiannon Yeah. Interesting. It’s a heated debate, isn’t it? There’s some, there’s almost two camps of people. One. One camp of people that think that, you know, AI is going to destroy the world and the other camp of people who are excited, and who embrace AI. And then, you know, we all sort of sit on the spectrum in between.

And I want to say that today’s episode is not to sort of place us on the spectrum anywhere. It’s also not to, to try and incite any fear around the role of AI. I think that workforce makeup has always changed through time. And I think that AI is just introducing to us, another change in the way that our workforce is made up.

I have got some stats, whilst whilst we don’t really prepare for these conversations, I did think it was relevant to go and pull some stats, right? Because depending on what camp you’re in, either AI is taking over the world or, you know, we should embrace it. You’ve got some different opinions on whether indeed there’s a certain argument going around to say, well, sure, it’s here, and sure it’s having an impact, but like, it can’t really be taking people’s jobs, right?

You know, that’s not really happening. So here are some real stats. The company block, who is the parent company for Square and Afterpay, have just announced a 40% workforce cut. Wisetech. Which is an Australian tech company. 30% workforce cut. Pinterest online social media platform 15%. Amazon have laid off 16,000 people. Dow chemicals 4500 people. Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram 1000 people knock 775 people and Telstra 650, all of which these companies have publicly put those numbers down to the effect of AI.

And then you might be thinking, well, that’s not so bad, right? Like if I was meant to be as big as it is, like, those numbers are big, but they’re not huge, right? Here’s the kicker. That is just a handful of examples from January and February. This year.

Justin Only one. Yeah. Yeah.

Rhiannon So if you think that AI isn’t going to affect our global workforce significantly in the next years. It it will, it will it will change the way that the workforce is structured. Now I also went and pulled the only other thing I pulled was what are the, areas of work where the greatest impact is predicted? Because that’s really what we’re talking about, you know, because people will be displaced because of the impact of AI.

And so what are the areas where we’re predicting the greatest displacement? Now, this research has come from anthropic, which is a US AI safety and research organization. And they predict that the areas of greatest impact, i.e. the greatest job losses essentially will be management, business and finance, computer and math, architecture and engineering, legal, arts and media, sales and office and admin.

Which makes a little logical sense.

Justin Yeah, yeah.

Rhiannon And I guess really backs up that to, I think, two of the three people that you were talking to were sort of there were in that marketing space, weren’t they. Right.

Justin That’s right. Yeah, yeah. And the other was middle management. So AI was taking care control. So yeah. Yeah.

Rhiannon Interesting.

Justin Yeah. So it’s a big challenge I think that for a lot of people, like I said, there is a lot of theory out there and, and I guess you know, particularly we’re talking about franchising here and, and specifically our franchises. So I know you use AI so much and I’ve been dragged along and now I’m using it more and more or we just bought a new home.

And now I love fishing and creek at the front. And I just had the idea yesterday to put in, you know, like, it’s just incredible to help build anything up a whole map of where I should be fishing in this particular creek and what I should be targeting or what I should be using, like would have cost me.

years of building that, the knowledge from talking to local people to get that knowledge and bang it was it’s able to pull all this information just incredible. Yeah. So how do you feel as our CEO that AI could impact our businesses?

Rhiannon I think there’s two levels to this question. I think the first level is, how will it impact our head office operations? And then the second level is how will it impact our individual business owners. And so I’ll talk quickly about head office. But then I really want to focus on our business owners because probably for anybody listening that’s really what you’re here for.

So at a head office level, frankly, I would say every single member of our head office team uses AI now as part of their role. And indeed, I have run now multiple sessions with members of our team actually teaching professional, constructive use of AI because it’s here, it’s really helpful. And to not embrace it is to miss the opportunity to become a little bit more efficient.

Challenge your own thinking, get slightly better outcomes in the role that you’re doing. I see that AI has really helped our organization in all of those areas. Really, it challenges our thinking. You know, if we’ve got an idea or a concept, you go and you talk to a ChatGPT and you say, what do you think about this?

And it gives you some other things to think about. It helps us with basic scripting of, emails and documents and, and procedures. Frankly, things like we’ve just written, all of our cleaning procedures and we wrote the procedures, but then we ran it through AI to make sure that those procedures were consistent. They were thorough, we hadn’t missed any steps.

And it was a really helpful catchall. So at a head office level, enormously helpful. I will also say that what I have, observed is that I can send you down completely the wrong garden path if you’re not using it correctly. And so I think that as quick as I am to sing it’s praises in a lot of respects.

I also think that this is the key takeaway. It is never going to remove the need for people to problem solve and think critically about how to deliver outcomes in their roles. So personally, I have no concern about my job because I can’t think the way that I think. I have no concern that AI will ever cause us not to need business coaches.

Sure, I can tell you how to start a business, but our business coaches can’t be replaced. You can’t. You can’t get their amount of experience and compassion and empathy and a hands on willingness to help. You can’t you can’t get that in a piece of software. So it’s helpful. But it’s not the be all and end all. If I switch to our business owners, I will say that at the same time that I pulled those earlier stats.

I also asked Google how many cleaning jobs had been lost to AI, and the answer was zero. So I cannot replace physical labor. Now, of course, there are all sorts of arguments for robots coming in and doing things right. I don’t think that we are anywhere near a robot. Being able to come into a customer’s home and clean to the standard that a human can clean to.

So I don’t think that that’s part of today’s conversation. But maybe I’ll hand back to you, Justin, because there are ways that I will change how our business owners operate their businesses. You know, things like it will help us to generate more content, better content that we can market their businesses with. Are there some other ways? I mean, we’ve thought for a long time that potentially I could help us with quoting down the track.

You know, we’ve always tossed around and I and I’ve always been keeping my ear to the ground, so to speak, on using AI agents as admin, as an admin role in people’s businesses. There’s all sorts of there’s opportunity, I think, for business owners.

Justin From a practical sense, you know, I think of pick one of our cleaning businesses that in doing a bond clean and it’s got a take apart, you know, they’re doing an oven clean and some of the doors on ovens are real a pain to get it out, you know, you can just put into your AI, I, I’ve got to clean this oven or struggling with this whatever bang what do I do.

It’ll step or it’ll just walk you through. Or you can be a lawn and garden guy and, you know, you can take a picture and hey, I’ve been asked to do this, and what about this? And the clients asked me that they really want a tropical type garden. And this is where I am. And this is the setting.

And and it will just give you all this information. Yes. You’ve got to be the human to work out. Okay, well what’s going to be good. But just in the blink of an eye to get the information that you would have to run around town, talk, research done, like, in a practical sense, it’s such a tool for business owners.

And it’s one of those things that I’m speaking for myself here. It was like, oh yeah, we hear lots about it. And oh, it’s good. And you know, we got one of our staff that was using it every meal to create the meal plan or what he was going to cook tell it, what ingredients were in the cupboard and a menu.

And I was like, yeah, that’s all good. But it’s one of those things. Once you start using it, it’s like, oh my goodness, this is so great. You know, I can just jump in and and I think for people listening and for our business owners as they start using it, it just makes so much it makes information so accessible and, and in a way you can use it in your business.

Such, such a great tool for business owners. It’s not at all a threat to them. No, it’s just going to help them get better results for their customers and their business.

Rhiannon Yeah, I have I have a really cool example of one of our business owners using AI that I think nobody will probably. I don’t know, I don’t even know how he thought of this. Right. But it was one of our launches, and he dropped either a screw or a key into, like, a driveway that was like white gravel, white and gray gravel.

And he was, having one hell of a time trying to find this damn thing. Right? And so he got out his phone, he took a photo, he uploaded it into AI, and he asked AI. He said, I’ve dropped a key. Can you find it? AI found it within seconds, and it was exactly where I pointed to it.

Being in the photo, and I just. I love that example and it is an example because he shared it with our network and he said I had already spent ten minutes on my hands and knees looking for this thing, and then AI in like two seconds, told me where to find it. And I think that’s such a good example of what AI can do.

It’s it. Yes, definitely. There are areas of our workforce who will find themselves and their roles challenged and or displaced or changing rapidly because of AI. But there are other areas of our workforce that and our businesses fall into this. AI will support them in their businesses, operations so incredibly much, and we probably can’t even fathom completely just how much AI will support those businesses to operate into the future.

So, So I think, I think it is important just to remember this all in all, in context, you know, and these people that have reached out to you and commented in the last few weeks, hey, my job’s being displaced by AI. I guess the reason we’re talking about this is that we we are noticing a theme over the last few weeks of people reaching out because they’re starting to see self-employment as, frankly, a more secure income engine for their family and their household than a salaried position.

And this is the first time we’ve ever seen this happening. And if you’re starting to feel that you’re not alone, we are talking to people every day at the moment who are saying exactly that self-employment is a way, I can see of actually controlling my income engine. So I guess really we’re saying that, you know, if you are in one of those areas that AI might be challenging or displacing in the years to come, self-employment is a very real option to consider.

And particularly for people who haven’t started a business before, franchising is the runway that you might need, and the confidence you might need to actually be able to start a business on your own, as opposed to just simply jumping into another job that may be as under threat as your previous job.

Justin Yes, yes, yeah. And definitely service based businesses I can’t replace. You know, it’s a great yeah. I think that business owners it’s a tool for them. It’s that for us it’s a positive. You know, for those that want to use it and jump on board with it. Yeah, yeah.

Rhiannon Yeah, it really is. Well this one’s been short and sweet. So I think we, I think we wrap this episode right here. I think the message is if you’re, if you’re concerned about AI, you know, there are lots of positives as well. And if you are concerned, if you are in one of those industries impacted, you have time.

Whilst whilst we are seeing jobs being lost to AI at the moment, you do still have time to get on the front foot and in control of the sort of of your “what’s next?” And if starting a business is something that you’re considering as your potential, what’s next? Then we have developed a system that helps people take it from no experience in business at all to an operating business very quickly.

And we would always encourage you, even if you’re not sure, just reach out, ask some questions. We never mind having a conversation with someone just to help them figure out whether this is right for them or not. In deed that is exactly what we do. We just help people figure out whether this is right for them or not.

So with that, let’s leave this there. I hope that that episode has been interesting, and I hope to see very soon for another episode of The Real Franchise.