Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the episode today, we have Jason Grant. Jason, welcome.
Thank you for having me, Thomas.
It is my pleasure. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah, sure. My name is Jason Grant. I live and work in downtown Toronto in Canada. And I own and operate – I don’t want to say operate that way – but I own a business called the Automated Method. And I’ll be honest with you before, like a few years ago, I would have said something different than what I’m about to say right now, but I love shortcuts like in terms of getting operationally free from things you don’t have to do. That’s what the automated method is. For me, it’s a business that is like an agency that travels with my message because I’m the advocate of do less, you know, like as much as possible. And the message used to be that I thought it would offend because you don’t want to ostracise people that like working. And I’m not saying that what I’m saying is that if there’s an easier way to do something digitally that you don’t have to do analog, especially in operations, I would target administration, like administration is ridiculous.
The amount of unnecessary layers and workflow and it’s crazy, right? Anyway, so that’s where we are now. The message I try to get across is that there’s a better way of doing it or like to say you’re working too hard. Okay, well yeah, I think it’s kind of cool, you’re looking for the automated method on business activity. And one of the topics that I was going to open with, because I think it comes into what we were briefly discussing before we were recording, which is the difference between the owner and the operator. And then perhaps anything you want to add from that. Well, the thing is it is when you do small, medium business, a lot of business owners, the owners will call them owners. They don’t own multiple businesses, right? So they’re usually just operationally heavy in one business, maybe. Right? And so when you try to call them an owner trying to remove them from that business is odd to them because what are they gonna, you know, they’re not they don’t have other businesses to run so they might as well be in the operations, right?
So, you gotta watch when you say owner and operator because there are some owners that are good operators but minimal, minimal operator in the business, right? Not. And I mean that because I’ve you know, taken away responsibilities from not taking away, but I’ve really taken responsibilities away I guess so from like an owner by implementing like a perfect stack of, you know automated workflow and they have nothing to do, right? So because maybe they’re not salespeople, maybe they’re not marketing. You know, maybe they’re not interested in these kinds of creative ideas. They just, it’s a service business or product business that just exists. So, like getting into the operations makes them feel like they’re valued in their business. So it’s like, you know, like I I prefer to work for the people. Like the automated method does very, very well with companies that want to go as hard as possible, the most optimised, efficient, all cloud natively integrated app stack possible. That’s like the, that’s the world that I like to be in for when it comes to like business. Right? So, do you spend any of your time or perhaps help anyone with that?
If I were to take away all of your tasks, which could be automated and you get a load of free time. Do you help anyone with how they can maybe use that time? Well, this is the thing. You should have a strategist, right? Everybody should have a floating strategist. Someone, you know, whether it’s on retainer or whatever and you know, people say business coach, I’m like, listen, get AVI CMO or get like a VCI or get someone that can help you creatively think of stuff right, while you’re while you’re still in the business, but you’re still around the business and that’s kind of like what probably generate a new type of revenue or drive the revenue line, right? It’s this creative spirit. But people try their own strategy too long and that’s when they get like, you know, they pigeonhole themselves and then that those businesses should be owned and not operated right at that point, right? Like if you’re if you built it to the point where you’re not like it’s not going anywhere, well then you just put it aside and then you get someone else to tell you what you can do to enhance that, right?
You know, like it’s like a module now, business one, let’s go move on to business to let’s go move on to business three, right? So, would you say that the customer of the automated method is more and more entrepreneurs than you are business owners, quote unquote entrepreneur. The thing about entrepreneur is it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have what it takes. I think entrepreneurs sometimes that word is an excuse. So, you know, like in the beginning entrepreneur was, I don’t want anybody to tell me what to do, that’s how I look at it, right? Or I wanted to, you know, like I’m working for someone and their invoicing my time. I want the whole invoice entrepreneur, you know, like that kind of stuff. And so what that word to me is it’s tough because I agree with it. Yes, I’m an entrepreneur, but I’m also super, you know, I have routines like crazy, I’m like I use my OCD to my advantage, like I’m super motivated and ambitious already, so it doesn’t matter what I do, I’m just gonna do something a lot, you know?
And I’m quick. I like to be like that as an entrepreneur, you know. Anyway, say the question one more time so I can concentrate on it – not because the word is triggering as you can tell, Thomas. Oh, no worries. I mean, it would help if I gave you a definition of terms. So my definition of is someone who is into multiple businesses solving multiple problems where as a business owner is someone who perhaps owns that business but has no intention of going into other ones. So in terms of your prospect, which one of those to do you would you say is preferred different than both? I would say that I would say that someone that totally They get it like they just they just get this flow of how business should work now. Like you know when people say business 2.0 and stuff like that, like this is like business X zero, right?
Like you just keep enhancing so it’s not really, I would say that the people that want to own businesses are the final type of person that would want to work with the automated method, right? Because like that’s when you can start to really because this is the thing in my history of talking interviewing whatever you want to call it. Like the one thing I noticed is that business intelligence is like not even on the spectrum of a business owner right? Like they’re literally adjusting things to their own manufactured data. It’s fantasy data and I’m like you know that the whole world has more data. You can tap into more information that you can apply to your business to like win if that’s what it is. But they’re not. So the owner that gets that you know where they can get their systems so perfect that now they can start to put injection into certain you know corporate areas of their business, whether it be modern marketing or whether it be modern sales then it starts to drive like the business differently.
Does that make sense? Like that’s the person that that’s the person that goes through the scope. So like you know, I’m not really I don’t want to plug it but like the two things in my head are the scope and the formula. So to me the scope is the interview process to try to figure everything out. That’s where you get people talking, you interview different agents with the customer and you try to figure out if the potential is there for them to get to the next level and then you start to roll stuff out. That would be what I would call the formula. The formula is where it gets fun because that’s where you can adjust things right. Like I have the automated method has a formula. I know exactly what the google spend is. I know what I want monthly spends on social platforms for ads, you know like these kind of things, right? That’s like not really like most business owners can’t think of all that by themselves at once. They leave it up to the SAs products Thomas. That’s the worst part. They literally leave it, leave it to the SAs world. Oh yeah, that’s why we use this platform. It does this, I’m like, but you have to do it, you know, like it doesn’t just do magic on its own.
And I say that so often, it’s so funny anytime I talk to anybody that works for like a SAS platform, they’re always, I was like, what’s the magic that someone’s not going to use if you go perhaps a favourite example or a case study where someone is, let’s say doing too much and then take them through the automated method. Yeah, sure. Okay. So yeah, yeah. So I don’t want to attack people of certain age group, so I don’t want to separate people. But it is usually first we’ll call it this digital when they’re first adopters to a digital world. That was not, that was different than what they were doing before. And then, so they have a process that they carry over to the, you know, 20, and there I call them, process defenders. Process defenders are my favourite because you can really show them efficiency like so fast, right? Because they’re doing things because it’s like what I said before, it’s unnecessary workflow. So that type of business is the one where you can build like a disrupter stack, I’ll call it, which is you can get you can make choices to stack all the applications for that industry together that are perfect for that industry instead of them making those decisions, right?
So when you push that all together, in in terms of the case study, I’m working on right now. It’s like they were very heavily or they are very heavily operation centric with Excel and you know, like file based management of information. No CRM, they’re cloud account, it’s not a cloud accounting, it’s like, you know, an enterprise level of QuickBooks, desktop on a virtual machine, whatever. It’s like all this stuff, Every decision that we help, you know, enhances by 50, Like it’s just it’s crazy. They’re so operationally heavy, so operationally heavy. Anyway. The case study I would say is that when I started showing this R. O. I so not me, the team. So when the team starts showing R O. Y. It’s very easy in the in the applications, right? Once they start using proper SAS products, the KPI is right there, you know, and you can extract at a P i if you want, right? And so like that’s where I say that the best case studies are the ones that are really interested in data box or data box, right?
Which is I would say the winner of sass platforms for KPI marketplace and they’re the ones that show you like they have not to go off the rails man, but they have benchmarking, you know like benchmarking a dashboard of SAS that has benchmarking so like you can finally know where you stand as a business if you push all the data into, you know this one pane of glass. So you’d have like multiple panes for certain things. I like to label them you know like modern marketing, modern sales, modern whatever and you know whatever and they’re all different slides on your iPhone, let’s say iPhone you know that whole idea of looking at it through KPI lens it really makes that’s when that’s the testimonial I’d like to show because after that it’s executive decisions and dashboards only man. Like I’m like go show off, go buy an iPhone 12 pro max right now, put data box on it, log it in, walk away from your business.
Have fun, right? Like that’s literally what happens because you don’t really need to come if they’re an owner, they don’t need a computer, you hear what I’m saying? Because if you have people taking care of all of these pieces of your business – we’ll call them remote departments – and each one of these agents has a role and responsibility? They manage. Supervise and you know train when necessary. That SAS platform for you for your team. What else do you need to see other than where you see what the ideas are and where you’re spending money and where you can adjust those gauges done like, but making this data doesn’t get you anywhere And it’s like, that’s why I love mentioning benchmarking because there’s so many business owners out there that think their business in their market is operating at a nine out of 10 And there are four and they don’t know How to grow from a 4-9 and they’re in disbelief for the first time in their life in their business career life, whatever entrepreneurial career they finally get to see, you know, it’s like humbling.
I’m humbled when you know the math works like that but it’s like finally that you can get you get through to someone so they’re not ego business anymore, you know? Yeah. I mean one of the topics that I’ve got as a potential, shall we say um, on your profile, is how to get more optimised by using less people. Yeah. I can imagine if you’re talking about drastic change like you are, I can imagine some jobs going because it’s just like a bunch of people. Oh yeah. Okay. Well then, I mean that’s, that’s what I was going to ask you about. So what’s your, what are your thoughts about? Should we say that either disappearance of jobs or where those jobs go. Well, what I’ve noticed is like say for example these ecosystems like fibre and up work and this gig economy and that kind of stuff. You’re right now. It’s like everybody. I call it smaller businesses, right? So what’s happening is that people are getting extremely addicted to you know, their specialised task and they promote that specialised task.
But those people may not have had that type of job before. So these platforms are giving them an opportunity to do that one thing. Right? So these people these independent like it’s the gig economy and I don’t I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole. It’s another thing that I have, I can go and go on and on and on about that. But what I noticed is it gives people the opportunity to do something else. Now there’s going to be like a lot of jobs that are probably you know connected to automation and a lot of large corporation. That’s the thing. You know that that’s the changing factor where there’s going to be a lot of unemployment and a lot of that kind of stuff, right? But I’ll be honest with you, I think that there’s way too many jobs not being connected with people right? For the job. Okay. And so if you start, so if you start if it’s like a you know like point A point B and you start just collect solving problems, tasks or outcomes, right? Not ours. You people will have, you know there’re those jobs are available or those tasks, those specialised tasks are available to be solved.
You know what I mean? Like faster and better instead of like I’ve never worked out the math but maybe I should, you know, like the amount of people that are working and how many tasks per day what they’re good at. I don’t know it’s kind of that kind of stuff. But I think you know where I’m going here. It’s not as bad as people think. You know there’s like so many things that are changing all at once. I would say a lot of the manual stuff is the biggest issue, like kiosks, automated kiosks and like large commercial businesses right? Like large corporate businesses. That’s where automation scares people into that unemployment conversation. But you know it’s a tough one. I stand and I sit on the line, right? That’s why I try to sit in small, medium business and I like to optimise you know things that are already being optimised by SAs influence, right? So like it’s our so you know, you know villain not really because the SAs products already there, all we’re doing is just putting all the pieces together and then it just becomes more optimised, it’s not like I’m going in there and being like oh you’ve got 10 people, you’re gonna have five.
I mean that’s usually what happens, but that’s not the motivator, you know, sure salaries are expensive. Don’t forget these businesses are blood, sweat and tears. Someone, you know, their baby, they built it, it’s got their investment. The amount of bloat operationally for a lot of unnecessary positions that I think even those people probably don’t want to do right? Don’t forget there’s a lot of people that are probably not happy doing something. So that’s where you can kind of pivot and you can give them new roles and new responsibilities and a better automated optimised ecosystem like that. And that’s how you scale, right? I think now by re titling your internal team, right? If you’ve got all the tricks and you’ve applied all the shortcuts and you applied all the, you know, the integrations, everything’s turned on auto flow, this that then you got your team. Well, what do they, what do they want to do? Well, guess what? You might find a sales manager in there and that’s that person was like a, you know, just like an office manager.
Whoa, that’s a difference. That’s a change. Big time. Right? Really. Got it. Really. We really got to give people a chance to open up a sass platform they like, right, because I think the problem is a lot of people don’t like the software, they’re using the UX or the UI and what happens is they’re like, I don’t think this is just work, well that’s the definition of work needs to change because if you give someone an app that they like, they’ll go their modern proficiency goes from beginner to expert like overnight because they’re like, oh I love mail chimp, like I don’t, I mean I use it, but what I’m saying is that people, there are people that really love using it, you know what I’m saying? You know what I mean? Yeah, I spoke to someone previously about this particular topic and people who said basically that people who get twitchy about these things to think of it, like you’re, you’re basically freeing their future. So, good way of putting it.
Presupposing that someone is not going to be better off when it may be the case that they actually are better off under a, you know, a different, different feel better. They, it’s like people feel better, I feel better, you know, like say for example, can I, do you mind if I roll for a second and something like say for example, cowardly, like I wouldn’t be doing this if that company didn’t exist, That whole idea changed my life because I hate stealing people’s time. I hate email. I hate stealing people’s time, you know, and that’s how business works. Businesses like up until like a lot of this automated stuff inside the SAS platforms or even cloud in general, like we’ll say new, classic front. So cloud, UX, right? The stuff that’s like web-based and then an app on a store, right? That kind of like cloud not like web or online.
We’ll talk like that when that started coming around. It’s like, you know, people were still using the same old technologies in a traditional way. It was like, oh, you know, don’t worry. I’ll just email me. I’m like just, it’s like, it’s like a reservoir of maybes. It’s like, and also it’s like, how do you, you’re projecting expectations. So when cowardly came along and I know there are other you public, you are L links like built into HubSpot, et cetera, for like booking and scheduling and stuff like that. But that whole idea being like, here’s my time I offer to you that’s available. That is, you know, probably somewhere in there. You can find something more than just sending me an invite and then we can agree on something together without back and forth. And then we’re playing tennis all over again, right? Like if I didn’t have that, I’d quit, I’d quit today. I’d be done. I’ll fold it all up. I’ll fold it all up. I’m gonna dump tech. I’m done with tech. I’m over it. See, because it’s like all my whole life coming from IT, is get it done now. Find him, get it done now. Find him, get it done now. Do you know how annoying that turns you into it like that’s that turns you into an asshole. You know what I mean? It does because you’re like on call all the time and everything is broken. So when you, when you have the ability of protecting your time and then also politely offering your time to somebody else and it’s there, you know, free or not. But I mean it is there. You just changed the game, you know, game changer and then I ostracised people that say negative things someone posted. I should have posted on Twitter. Someone said something. I can’t remember if it’s someone in the ass world posted something about cowardly and how it’s forward to ask someone to jump into your calendar. You know what I mean? Like it was like they were saying negative things about it and I was like block that guy. Like literally what? Don’t say anything negative about that. That’s the world that we, I want.
I don’t want to go back to like asking people over and over and over again. And then also forcing like a Zoom invite into their calendar, you know what I mean? Like yeah, 8 30 in the morning is pretty good For 16 people and five different time zones. Let’s rock and then you can see Putin. Yeah, exactly. All they know they know they know. I say that word as often as I can. So how does the automated method exist? What inspired you? well the operations of a business that I wanted to have where I love this whole spokesperson idea. I loved I loved I guess the way that it started over the pandemic was I was just spending a lot of time you know interviewing business owners and finding out what they would buy, what do they need, what do they buy? And in terms of like the automated method it started to really develop into like more of a passion project because the message is what I think I’m doing for the business itself.
So it’s like a snake eating its own tail, right? And so it morphed into like an agency of just other people that do better things for business owners. I started to look at what I would want my in a business and when you do that you get really addicted to the operations in a in a different way you start figuring out like well everybody’s gonna be remote. Everybody’s already remote anyway, right? So let’s just go one step further and let’s find organisations that are absent. Trick and that’s probably when it just hit, it was like it was so easy because now I basically broke apart an agency. Now I would consider the automated method and agency but the SAS products I was using to build my ecosystem really got it moving. So I was like I wanted to get to know Monday.com and I was like, yeah why? Because it’s the project management is a disaster in and out there.
It’s a disaster. So I need to get and I was like, let’s go see what they are doing. Once you get interested in an SAS platform, jump in their scope, find out what the feature releases are. Where are they going as a product? Well, once I saw this, like I call it auto flow, which means they’re building automation inside the platform that’s communicating outside of the platform and not with or without zap here, right? So once you see that, I was like less for me to do so I can do more of like say this and talk to you Thomas, right or whatever. But then I was like, well how do we get multiple people, multiple businesses communicating. And then I got addicted to slack connect. I was like, oh, slack connect. Thank you. Finally, business-to-business workspaces with slack. Right? And then I was like, okay, so now you got Monday.com, you got Slack. I’ve like basically just influenced people to use HubSpot that want to work with me hopefully or work with us and then start building a community on that whole concept of slack connect where business to business operational connections automatically.
Cloud to cloud is the future because that the business to business-to-business communication is why cowardly is so amazing. But we won’t mention it again. But I’m just saying business-to-business communication is broken. Internal communication is broken so big consumer. This is the thing be to see what happens is because it’s a sale or it has some sort of, there’s a lot of like urgency there. Right? So it’s like a little different people will use any method to get a hold of somebody because there’s something a product or service attached to it when you will be to see right? But I’m talking like all of that – it started to become fun again, Right? Like it wasn’t like I was 60 tabs in Google Chrome. I was just like a few and the communication like I don’t want to use my phone very often. So I turned it off like my notifications on my phone is dark. It never, it doesn’t do anything. I go to it, it doesn’t do anything, nothing, no vibrations, no nothing zip.
Only the phone calls because I have two phones, right? First off, there’s your trick to two different phones. But the thing that I’m getting at is that I know my calendar. So all I have to do is just respond to that and slack because I, because slack has, you know that bought automation stuff that people don’t even tap into and it’s basically your like it’s serving you, right? So it’s your assistant. It’s a virtual assistant of a lot of things and you just have to basically know how these ecosystems work to remove yourself from as much as possible and then you can get down to deep work only right. Like I know exactly the, the times a day of where I’m going to be deep work today and that’s it. And then everybody that’s in my calendar that I’ve offered time for certain things. So I look at the calendar and I’m like, that’s what I should be focused on nothing else. Just the calendar. You see what I mean Really, if you really want to, if you really look at the workflow you want and what you’re doing in it and you, you, you’re, and you’re not looking at the big picture, you’re probably working too hard and having no fun.
It’s interesting though because I was about to say that you’re, I can see the passion about tech comes across, but on the other hand, you don’t want to touch your phone and it’s dark. You know what that is Live a 10-month-old daughter and to me legacy to – I can’t even palette like when people say work smarter, not harder. It drives me nuts because they’re not and they’re also super distracted, super distracted. And so I see a lot of business owners may have gotten to some sort of whatever they consider success, but they’re like addicted to their phone. So I told myself when Aurora’s born, I’m like, you are going to show her how the world can operate with as little phone use as possible so that you can interact with the reality of the world and they’re not gonna be like, you know, she can’t not see the phone.
That’s what’s so wild. It’s like it’s there, and she wants to know what’s going on. But I’m talking about business owners that think they’re raising their kids, you know what I mean? And they’re on their phone all the time, all the time. And I don’t want to do that for her and I don’t, so that’s my legacy. Is that if To I’ll be like, she’s 13 now and doesn’t have that social media poison that is like really disrupting the awareness of kids today. And that’s kind of one of my motives, one of my goals. It’s just like people just interacting like human beings, you know what I mean? Don’t even get me started on the metaverse. It might be interesting because I actually haven’t discussed that on the, on the podcast yet. But you see, I am I right in saying you see tech as a means to having a better life rather than anything else. Yeah, I think about just imagine a sci-fi future, right?
Where there’s where it’s like, we’re at the point where there’s a lot of, you know, pre ai which is I just call that replicate human behaviour replication, you know, that kind of stuff? And then there’re robots, whatever that form is and then, like, what are people doing? You know, like what are they doing? Like I just imagine it being if it was a utopia would probably be way more interaction with present reality. You know, I would think that I would think that would be the next level versus like just like this cacophony of everything on every device. It’s just like, I imagine it being like the world turning into like Vegas, you know, where it’s like everything’s digital and everybody’s just glued to their phones. That’s not what I want. I don’t want that. I think it’s got more of like this like serene, you know, find you found yourself type of world. So what do you say to let’s say there’s a business owner and they might be a little bit guilty of maybe using spreadsheets, having files, all that manual stuff?
How do they get started? like how did they get started? Just in general advice would you give someone who’s maybe not tech savvy like you? Okay, so process this is what’s crazy. Take tech out, take software out. What does the, what does this process look like? You know, what does the process look like? You can get a pen and a piece of paper and draw a process like what does it look like, you know, then once you look at it, then go to software, then start to ask questions. But this process like when you go and say a 25-year-old business that wants to go to like level you know to and they want a totally modern environment, they want to do a disrupter stack. They want all that kind of stuff and then you go and you talk to the business owner or their team and you’re like, yeah so can we see the documentation of your process, your current process that you have? None? None. Do you want to know how rare it is? It’s like the rarest thing that I found on my journey, like a process map, maybe a binder maybe and like they’ll have HR stuff because it’s legal but I’m talking like and not have training manuals but they’re dated or it’s not the same thing, but I’m talking like how does everything interact in your business who’s responsible for what, how does it reflect on what their corporate areas are and, et cetera et cetera, it’s not there.
So a business can’t be optimised if there’s nowhere to start at all. Like and then you’ve got this idea floating around, which is like a core value or something. It’s just like aloof, you know, or a mission statement. It’s like somewhere and then and then you’re and then you’re here and it’s like, so you just got to look at it like build it up slowly, you know like look at the processes, look at first of all, why are you in business that’s obvious that it should be, you know, that should be an obvious one. It is not either. And then that’s where the strategy comes in and that’s where the process comes in and it’s just a slow build or like, you renovate your mind in a way, right? But I would say process kills me because it’s like, that’s why the people that work with the automated method have to do like cat hurting stuff or homework check. You know, I would have never imagined that I would so mentioning to a business owner that what a stand up is like or determining what a stand up is revolutionary, right?
Because they what they’ve done is they’ve just done, like, throw a task into the team and everybody just does whatever you’re supposed to do to finish it, you know, like, like that kind of stuff. And then when you say stand up, it’s like, it blows my mind that they don’t have, that they have people calling meetings. I’m like, no, no, no, no. You just need 15 minutes. You know, you just need 15 minutes and you need it scheduled, you know, which is managing expectations, which is why you should use some sort of shared calendar in your organisation, which you probably don’t then that, you know what, you know, and that’s because people don’t want to be supervised. And I’m like, man, it’s digital already, everything’s digital. What’s the difference? You know, it’s going to benefit you. It’s going to give you time. Isn’t that what you want? I hope so. Well, that’s not what I was going to say was the normal objection there is that they don’t have time to do those types of process mapping things, but I mean that you can hire someone. See this is yeah, this is this is the thing I’m talking about just to kind of flush it out in the first part, you know, like the first part is just get it out of your head, get the cobwebs out of your head and then just flush it out.
Go get, you know, go to a workspace, go to a white board, just go to town, get like a Starbucks, Starbucks coffee and just go to town. Just draw it out. What does your business look like in like, you know, modules or workflow. But the, the professional side of that is you can get someone that’s like um, Euro expert, right? Mural dot com. That’s like the collaborative team sharing, you know, flow chart, whatever. Some people will use lucid charts, charts. I’m really all about the word collaborative, because obviously that means team, So that’s as product, there’s so many people and, you know, like we work with one here, raise you, this is a shadow to you and we just go back and forth, and you can map the process out digitally and then you’ve basically gotten past that, that hurdle, it’s and it’s great because once you start stacking apps together and I just go I’ll go I’ll say this really quick. But once you start stacking apps together, you have so many entry points. Like, you know, there’s like so many different ways to use things when they’re all connected.
So then you find the path of least resistance and entry points because you have it mapped out. So now, you know, who does what when you know that could be. And then also that’s a shareable board. So now you share that board with your team. So who does what? When they don’t have to see this is the thing. That’s what the game changer is. Is check first Ask second. Like that change. That’s because everybody is ask, ask, ask. I’m like check. But it’s because they’re not all using the ecosystem properly, so they’re not updating things or they’re not doing what they’re supposed to with the SAS platform that they have to just ask all the time. But if you remove the ask first, then there everybody’s on their own right, in a way and that you don’t have to manage them. Micromanagement is over. That’s what the platforms do have fun. I have heard the term management is dead. Oh, that’s a that’s a I’m glad that you said that first. I like this one though. How has the meaning of work?
And our relationship ship to it changed. Well that’s because of the word work, right? I’m doing this right now. I’m going to do a I’m going to do a talk for an hour for grade 10 and 11 students are 11 and 12 students sometime in July. And that’s going to I’m going to focus on that because I think the word is so distorted because of labour, you know, maybe it’s manual and then minutia because you know like rep repetitive administrative tasks. Is that work being online professionally and being paid for it? Is that work like when what is work, right? Like is it the transaction of money for your time? Which I mean I guess so that would be the root of it somewhere. But it’s changed so much that if you like say for example the organisational culture or the culture of a business. If you define what work is in the business first to the people, the team, you might have a different outcome, right?
Because it’s they’re finding out everybody’s finding out what work is. And it’s a negative word. That’s the like that’s why things like anti work exists on Reddit. You know what I mean? It’s like this whole idea of not getting your worth. You know like your mortal worth is like so you’re basically check, you’re cashing out time for money and that whole work. That’s the word is so all over the place Thomas, you know what I mean. Like it’s literally I know I don’t like this is the thing, here’s how screwed up this is people, when people say I open my computer in front of friends or family, right? Say I opened up the MacBook and then you know something, you know what someone says to me? They go like this, they go like this, oh are you gonna are you working? And I go what, like every time I want to correct them, every time or if I’m like in another room on my computer, they’re like, oh yeah, Jason’s working over there and I’m like no I’m not, I’m like I’m not working. Like I’m almost phobic to the word because I’m getting operational joy out of this, you know what I mean?
I’m not looking at it as the function of this rudimentary transaction of time and money, you know, like I don’t I’m not looking at it like that I’m really engaged and I love it. So maybe I’m recording a video, maybe I’m typing some notes out whatever, but it’s not work to me and it’s crazy, I am phobic to the word people like because so that’s why I like literally use my computer sometimes in like private, I’ll just be like, okay, I just need to go and use a keyboard for like 15 minutes and I’m just like alright, alright, alright, alright, okay, okay, okay. And then hide the notebook, like it’s almost like I hide it back in the bag before anybody could see it. I’m like, yep, that’s done, do you have a definition that you use then for work? I, you know, I don’t, I’ll be like, I would say I’m figuring out redefining work is what my definition of work is, I’m constantly in that conversation, so it’s it really, it works because it’s an organic word and so I don’t lock on to a definition because if it’s something that someone doesn’t want to do, then it’s work, you see that’s like, and I I can’t put it any other way and then that, you know, oh you’re going to work, probably don’t want to, but you have to work, you know?
So that’s, it’s like, I’m good at the opposite of the definitions, even though it’s kind of ethereal, so I’ve got the last question, I want to ask you from the list is what does the future of work and entrepreneurship look like? Well, I mean, I think it’s going to implode a little bit because of the amount of options, right? So I did mention that there’re smaller businesses, like it just keeps breaking down until everybody is an independent contractor, right? And also if they’re super-efficient, well then there’s going to be, you’re only gonna need so many, right? Like I think about it as like stocks, like I said, checking boxes, so, you know, there’s a lot of boxes to be checked, but now it’s like finding the people to check the boxes or to connect those two? I think it’s good. I think there’s too many people, I think social media has changed people’s idea of work. And it’s also changed their idea of like that gig economy or like, you know, um, hustle the side, hustle, right?
The side hustle. I don’t think the world can exist with all side hustles, look at it. The way that it would go. The trajectory we’re on is everybody is a social media influencing side, hustler. What, where, what, what, what does that world look like? You know, it’s like no one has, no one’s we’re working for it in an organism. Yeah. And that’s and that’s so that’s why I think it’s going to implode a little bit because you know that can’t just break up two infinities of like, you know, it’s like broken glass, it’s all over the place. And they I think that a lot of people are going to monopolise on finding the best people though. So that when you because like, I tell everybody, if you’re looking for, if you want to find, if you want to find and I don’t want to say job, but let’s say if you’re trying to, you know, figure out what you want to do for money, we’ll call it. How do I always like to say, how does the world pay you, um, whatever that is, once the thing that you as an employee, I don’t want to say employee, but let’s say a team member that’s looking to belong to a team, right? What that person should do – because, you know, owning a business isn’t for everybody, that’s fine, I totally get it – but like look for these modern businesses that are advertising their internal operational efficiency on the outside because what you’re doing is you created a world where people want to work because you’re not ripping them off with time, right? Like, and so these skill sets, like these people that are like magicians and wizards. They’re gonna like, they want to work for you for those companies, right? So the future is gonna be, there’s gonna be a huge divide. I think there’s going to be like super stacked super teams and then everybody else, right? Because the super stacked super team is where everybody’s gonna want to work if you call it that word, right? So it’s very easy, like big companies in technology Silicon Valley. They started that organisational culture like Google and Apple.
But I mean you could be a business and not mimic it, but just say like, hey man, we use Teams, we use Monday.com, we use Slack. You know, we don’t have any emails after five. We obviously do a four-day workweek because it doesn’t even matter, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then you go, oh by the way, here’s an opening, you know, how many people are gonna want to work there, if that’s the word we’re using. It’s that’s the future. Future I see is it’s gonna be like so easy for these weaponised businesses to just, you know, destroy the competition, destroy it. Like, like it’ll be it’ll be like, like, you know, tanks versus like a pellet gun, because like, it’s I don’t know how else to put it, but I see it right, because once you get a bunch of people together that want to do the same thing and they’re really good at it, just your business, just, you know, changes overnight. Well, I’ve certainly got the passion through and you have me, I’m sure the audience as well, but from speaking for myself, you have convinced me to perhaps look into more automation. At very least. Automatic technologies, automatic technologies, automation is an industrial word, right?Like, like to me, automation is that’s when it gets robotic and industrial. But when you say automatic technologies, that’s just using the features in the SAS platform that are already there, you know? So yeah, the summary for me is basically that there’s time being wasted, that is unnecessary for that to be the case and that it does squander. It does help when someone points that out for sure, but I’m interested to know what your goals are. I’m gonna say it, I want to finish this book, literally, I’ve because it’s you know, google docs are, it’s awesome to things I can say for anybody that’s creative, you know, is always write it all down somewhere. And the other thing is Otter.ai like audio notes, right? But the thing what I’m doing is I’m compiling all this information into what I call is like, you know, the beta name is like the new protocol. So I wanna I wanna use this reset opportunity to like re-establish the better protocol of communication in in business.
And that’s driving me right now because by implementing these like small protocol changes, it’s like people, people feel better. I’ve been saying the same thing for so long that now that I’m you know, dad and husband, it’s like if I know all this stuff, why aren’t I telling everybody as much as possible, you know? And like and to me the reason why a book of course, because then I just feel like that guy at Starbucks on LinkedIn when I should be finishing my book, you know what I mean? Like opening a computer in Starbucks, I will never do just like sorry, but like, you know, that’s the book would be a compilation and it would feel like I kind of put it out there because it’s not the same when you I think it’s okay medium dot com and article writing and all that kind of stuff, but you know, I’m 42 I like to read, I just like that idea that it’s done, it’s you know, it’s tangible and it’s complete and then I can carry it around with me and I also feel like that would be some sort of an achievement, you know?
But that’s my, so that’s my goal, is that just get it out, get it out there, man. Because it’s like when you think about it, if you can change the operational lifting of a business by like even like 25%,, like that’s a huge amount, that’s a huge amount, you know? But it’s and it’s like three things that they have to change too, and that’s it, but everybody’s brute force and everybody’s strategy is selfish and so they just try all these things without asking and they’re like, no, no, I’m doing well, everything’s fine. I’m like ask or go read, you started it, when do you expect to finish it? I want to have it by July something by July something because like there’s it’s just notes, that’s the problem, you know, when you’re all over the place like me when in my head it’s like compiling notes and so I that’s all, but I do I do want to put it out there because it’s like motivating to know that I could let myself down, you know, and then be that guy always saying, oh yeah, I know Jason’s writing a book and then next year, oh yeah, how’s that book coming, you know, like that’s made a public commitment.
So it may be the case. Exactly. Send you this episode just as a little general, I’ll just, I’ll listen to it on loop, you know what I mean? When I go for a jog, I’ll just listen to it on a loop. Is there anything that I should have asked you about today? I don’t know, I’m not like, I like it to be organic. There’s like, pretty, like, I would say that there’s a lot of bases covered here. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of um, conversational material to digest here. For sure. You’re happy. Have you got any closing thoughts? Well, yeah, time is more valuable than money. Period done. Like literally if I have a type form that you can, that, that is like a questionnaire that’s also educational in a way, because every other pain is like telling people like what a CRM is and then asking a question, it’s not very popular. Not many people who do it, but all I’m going to say is that as I’ve been on this journey, the questions, you know, the vetting questions that you want to ask people, it’s like, time is more is time more valuable than money is like pushed itself all the way to the top because I know how a band with the vampire abandoned with the breaker when I, when I see one now or when I meet one because I’ll ask that question.
And if they stumble for a second, I’m like, not a client, bye. Because what’s the point? You know, making it as efficient as possible? You’re gonna break our bandwidth. You’re gonna break our bandwidth. You’re gonna argue with yourself. You’re gonna argue with us. You’re not gonna see what you – it’s not gonna be anything you want because money is more important than the time, right? That’s a great point to end on Jason. Where can people find you? Well, I mean, LinkedIn. I’m trying to get on LinkedIn a little more to clean it up. It’s just because I’ve never really been a huge LinkedIn fan, but I’m getting there and like, you can just – so the automatedmethod.com, which is a website that was built by friends of mine at reflector.digital. It’s awesome. I really enjoy that because it really shows what the automated method represents. Some of the copy has to change. But you know, I know how google SEM and SCO works. So if you just google Jason Grant, I think my LinkedIn profile comes up first, I think. No, I know that for a fact, but like I said, there’s me and then there’s the automated method. It doesn’t matter.
But I mean I do like to be removed sometimes at the same time. I understand why I’m obviously messaging that, you know, like sending a message to that business because that’s commerce.
Well, I think you’ve been a great guest and I love the passion, Jason Grant. Thank you very much.
Thank you.