997: Reclaiming your role as CEO w/ Jason Gates

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian Lofermento, and I am so excited about today's guest because this is someone who thinks in such a strategic and intentional way that it's going to benefit all of our businesses, especially in a way that I would argue we all need to think in terms of chief level executives and chief level officers of our business, whether it's a COO role, as a chief operating officer, or a CEO role.

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Today's guest is going to give us some insights and challenge the way that we view our own businesses, so let me tell you all about him.

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His name is Jason Gates.

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Over the past two decades, jason has successfully built businesses through consulting.

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His extensive experience lies at the intersection of marketing, technology and business, enabling him to implement solutions with a deep understanding of how businesses operate.

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I love the way he talks about this.

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He talks about operational puzzles and the intentionality behind attacking the problem with multiple plausible scenarios via gamification Some cool stuff that Jason's going to get us into.

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And before I dive straight into my interview with him, I also want to plug the fact that he's also a published author.

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Now, it's been so cool.

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We've been exchanging emails for what feels like months now, as Jason's been wrapping that up, but he is also the author of Reclaim your Role as CEO, which I'm excited to hear about that firsthand, because I think it's a perfect segue into so much of what we're going to talk about today.

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So I'm not going to say anything else.

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Let's dive straight into my interview with Jason Gates.

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All right, jason, I'm so excited that you're here with us.

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First things first, welcome to the show.

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Thank you, brian, excited to be here.

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Heck, yes, I feel like my intro for you just touched the very tip of the iceberg into all the cool things that you're up to and, of course, all the reasons why you got here and all the things you've done in your career.

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So take us beyond the bio.

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Who's Jason?

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How'd you start doing all these cool things?

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Oh, my goodness.

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Well, you know little fun fact about me I've actually never been on a job interview.

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I've.

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You know a little fun fact about me I've actually never been on a job interview.

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I've.

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You know, I started my businesses when I was in college, started off doing a lot of web development where you could basically spell HTML and away you go.

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You could, you know, scoop up any amount of work that you wanted.

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You could break my career up into kind of three segments.

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You've got consulting years.

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Then you know kind of that intro, the agency years where I ran an agency called get fused was the CEO of that place and we worked with some really cool clients, including the Ultimate Fighting Championships, the New England Patriots, legal Seafoods, aerosmith, and then met a girl and decided, you know what I wanted to get back into consulting.

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So I've been doing that for about eight years, since my first daughter was born, and you know kind of away we go.

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Yes, I love that, Jason, especially because you clearly have to work with so many cool clients along the way.

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But what I really like, leading up to our conversation today, I've gone deep into your messaging, the way you talk about business, the way that you view business, and it's those two roles that pop up so much in your language COO and CEO.

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Jason, you clearly place a lot of emphasis on the importance of those two roles and I feel like we've all heard those terms in those labels before.

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Most people in their careers never rose to that level.

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But as entrepreneurs, we all are, whether we're ready or not.

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We are CEOs and in many ways, we have to operate as our own COOs as well.

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Until we get to a certain point, jason, you've got to demystify and go beyond just the labels.

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For us, what's the role of a CEO?

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What's the role of a COO?

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Why is it those positions that are so prevalent in the way you talk about business?

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Yeah, well, I mean, a CEO is going to be that visionary, they're going to know what this world needs.

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So they've identified a problem, they know they have a solution and they generally can articulate why their solution is better than anything else.

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And a lot of these CEOs they start off.

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You know kind of using the poker terminology with a chip in a chair.

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They don't have much, they're scrapping it by, and then, you know, they start hiring people.

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They get some success, they get some wins and then, ultimately, they get to a point where they've got their hands in everything and they need to begin to start to delegate.

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And this is where a operational kind of focus starts to really take hold.

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They either learn a lot of the business and the operations themselves or they seek to go out and get an operations person.

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An operations person is essentially a thought partner for that CEO.

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They help not only implement the vision of the company and implement what needs to be done, but they're also strategizing and giving that CEO what they need in order to be successful.

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Yeah, I love that overview because I know that a lot of people they've heard that term before on business podcasts or in business books of working on your business versus working in your business.

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And, of course, as business owners, we all hope to be working on our businesses, not just in our businesses.

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Otherwise, we just gave ourselves a job and, Jason, you're one of us.

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You are a fellow entrepreneur, not just a business consultant and strategist like you do for work, but we also have that responsibility to build our businesses while we're also launching our products and services into the world.

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So with that in mind, a lot of listeners might be thinking well, jason, what are operations?

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Isn't every single thing I do operations, because they're used to being also the chief operator in their business, not just on their business.

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Talk to us about what is the scope of operations.

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When you think about operations, what does it encompass?

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Because we're all busy and we're all doing all the things?

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Is everything included?

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How do we start making sense of what our actual business operations are?

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Absolutely.

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I mean, in a lot of ways everything is included.

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But you know, you can kind of sum up a lot of this stuff from an operation standpoint into a process.

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You're dealing with the process of actually getting the product out the door, whether it's, you know, building a website.

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You know you're going to have a discovery, you're going to have a usability phase, you're going to have a design phase, you're going to have a build-out phase, you're going to test it, you're going to launch it and at each one of those points in the the process, you're going to have to figure out uh, what is working, what isn't working, how can you optimize it?

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Uh, how do you can save money, how can you make more money?

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Uh, you know, those are the types of things that I kind of look at from a process standpoint.

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You also have the people component of things, uh, where you have to deal with a lot of the in-house talent.

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One of the things that I really love to kind of put out there as a pillar is I don't like to create jobs.

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Jobs are boring.

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I like to create careers.

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If you give someone a career, they tend to have a reason to stick around.

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They have a reason to be passionate in what they're doing.

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They have a reason to be passionate in what they're doing and they have a reason to be passionate in their growth trajectory.

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So you got the process, you've got the people and then you've got the money component.

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You know common sense finance a lot of entrepreneurs overcomplicate the finances.

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In short, you just really need to make sure there's more money coming in than there is coming out.

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Very easy to say, very difficult to do sometimes, but it's really those three kind of pillars that I look at, that kind of encompass the operational component of things excited for us to talk about here on the air together, because I know that part of your process is an operational audit and you kind of just gave us a very high level overview of that, as well as teasing some of the questions that you go into and that you ask yourself and that you ask of your clients, the businesses that you work with when you go through that operational audit.

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Give us some more insights there, because a lot of people it's probably, I would imagine, a little nerve-wracking to have someone from the outside walk in and say, hey, I'm going to peel back all the layers of this onion and we're going to figure out exactly what's going on underneath the hood.

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It's probably very exciting because they do get that fresh set of eyes, a fresh vantage point that they can't read the label from inside the jar.

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It's probably it's transformational in a lot of ways, I would imagine.

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So talk to us about those operational audits and how you attack them Absolutely.

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I mean well, first off, let's get into why, why someone would need an operational audit or what are the kind of the symptoms.

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That kind of get into that.

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And generally a CEO is going to eventually feel stuck in their growth.

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Maybe it's a revenue amount of money that they can't kind of get through.

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Maybe there's certain challenges that they're facing that they can't, you know, kind of break through.

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I always say that a successful company is a culmination of the amount of challenges that it can solve.

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So if you're not solving problems or you're not solving challenges or you keep trying to solve the same thing over and over again, generally means you're not solving problems or you're not solving challenges or you keep trying to solve the same thing over and over again, generally means you're stuck and you need something like an operational audit to kind of unpackage everything and help you figure out what is the breakdown and how can it be broken down.

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Now I'll get into the.

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You know what the audit actually is.

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So typically when I go through these, I enter in, do a discovery phase, figure out what that CEO is looking for, kind of get an idea of what they feel.

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The issues are almost like a hypothesis, if you will, and then I start taking a look around.

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I look at their contracts, I look at their processes, I look at their kind of template deliverables, look at their finances, and then I interview just about everybody at the organization, generally, starting at kind of the the most junior folks and then working my way up, more senior.

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After all that data is collected, analyzed, the interviews have occurred, we've either proven the hypotheses or, in a lot of ways and then a lot of times bringing in insights that, oh okay, this is how we need to kind of restructure things in order to break through these challenges that the CEO has been facing.

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Yeah, jason, I want to ask you this question.

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It's not fully fleshed out, but I trust that you're going to lead us somewhere that's very insightful with this, and that is what's your goal.

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Of the questions that you're asking people, are you asking?

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You mentioned a hypothesis, for example.

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Are you asking questions in line with either proving or disproving that hypothesis?

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Are you asking questions in line with what you strategically know the business's long-term goal is?

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Are you asking them from a completely blank slate, so that you can start painting a picture on truly a blank canvas?

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What's your mindset going into asking these questions?

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Because, as a podcast host, I know that leading questions are a thing and we can sort of guide conversations to getting where we want them to go or is it a case of you just saying, hey, let's paint the real picture from scratch?

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Yeah, so it's a couple of different ways.

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One, that CEO hypothesis definitely is something that I want to prove.

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I mean, if they have something that they feel needs to be changed and they aren't sure how to change it, I need to either prove that or demystify that before they're even ready to go to the next step.

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Especially if it's a disprove.

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It's sometimes very difficult to tell a CEO no, no, no, you're wrong, here's, here's why you know.

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But Outside of that, I do try and keep a very open mind when going through a lot of these.

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And you know it's, you know it's very interesting.

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A lot of people think my company is special.

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My situation is different.

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Typically it's not.

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You know, most of the time you're going to find that there's a pretty healthy overlap between the challenges that you need to solve that other companies have already solved, and that's the benefit of bringing in outside eyes.

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They've already kind of seen that 80-20 rule, that all businesses make the same mistakes.

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I'll give you a few examples Meetings.

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I mean how many of your guests or how many of the people that you may end up talking with, say I am in too many meetings?

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That's something that we try and combat, you know, as one of the recommendations.

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Try and turn that meeting into that in-person meeting into a phone call.

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Try and turn that phone call into an email and earn that time back.

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Yeah, john, that's such a great.

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I saw a meme it was long ago, it was 15 plus years ago that said meetings the alternative to work, and I've always loved that because, you're right, when we're sitting in a meeting, we're talking about things, but we're not actually doing things.

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And I think that that leads naturally into somewhere that I definitely want to go with you in today's conversation, which is, of course, being that chief executive, being that strategist, having that role of the visionary, of here's the direction that we're going into versus the actual, the soldiers, the ones who actually do the work, and, of course, I'm going to throw this out there for the benefit of all listeners that all of us, when we start our businesses, we are both.

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That's the beauty of solopreneurship is that we have to plug all of these gaps, which is why I think it's important for us to understand and carve out time for us to think as a CEO, to think as a COO, but also to think as the executionist, as someone who needs to actually do the work.

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So, jason, with that in mind the fact that we have to carve out this intentional time to fit these roles what are the types of questions and responsibilities that a CEO should be looking at versus a COO.

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Well, I guess it really I'm going to answer this in a little bit of a different way.

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Well, I guess it really I'm going to answer this in a little bit of a different way.

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I look at a CEO in their role to, yes, ask questions so that they can inform themselves, but they always have to be selling their vision.

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One of the jokes I make to a lot of the CEOs that I meet and talk with because they're just so darn busy, is the trap of what I call the CEO decree.

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All right, they make a fantastic PowerPoint, they have all the right answers, or at least they think they do and then they stand up in front of that virtual room and decree to all of their team that this is how things shall be.

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That usually happens once a year with an annual plan, and unfortunately the biggest mistake that happens is there wasn't a lot of follow-up.

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So I call it that CEO decree because they decree this is what will happen and then by the end of the year all those goals don't seem to really come to life.

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So a lot of the questions that should be asked by a CEO to their senior leadership team, or even just the folks that they're working with should revolve around leading them and themselves to buy in.

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They need help.

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They need to not only say what it is they think this world needs and how that team is going to do it, but they.

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That CEO needs a team in order to execute upon it, so they need buy-in.

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No buy-in, the decree happens and their plan doesn't happen yeah, I love that you call it the CEO decree.

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I'm gonna keep picking on that because I think that that's such a great launch point for us to spotlight this problem Because, jason, you and I are having this conversation on the eve of a brand new year and everyone's going to be sitting down and jotting down all their big ideas for 2025 and beyond, and that's kind of the equivalent of the CEO decrees.

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We're going to make this promise to ourselves of all the things we're going to do, and inevitably, we're not gonna do all of them, and that's okay, because I would argue that where we go wrong with New Year's resolutions is it is that one-time occurrence, as you said, it's that once-a-year PowerPoint.

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How can we make sure we don't do that?

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What does that look like to keep that momentum and keep actual action moving forward?

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Is it weekly check-ins?

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Is it monthly reviews?

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Is it quarterly assessments?

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How do we actually bring it from the CEO decree to real, tangible action that continues to move forward every day?

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Yeah, fantastic question.

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The number one thing is buy-in and participation.

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No one likes to be notified what their job is going to be over the next 12 months and notice, I use the word job there and I'm going to tie it back to that other piece.

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There I'm more interested in helping people build careers as opposed to doing the job.

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So I want that senior leadership team to be working with the CEO to figure out what is that charted path forward.

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If the CEO has buy-in from the team and the team is participating in it, then you have some passion that team can actually execute against.

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Once you have that team with the buy-in, do the presentation.

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You get everyone jazzed up.

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Now, instead of it just being you saying I, the ceo, say you will now do this.

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You have five or six people within, say, a 25, 30, 40 person organization that are all saying, yeah, this is what we're doing, this is what's going to add value to the company, this is what's going to get people bonuses because we're going to sell more, save more, do more.

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Uh, without breaking our necks while doing it.

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Uh, so that's kind of step one.

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You need to have that buy-in uh.

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That next phase of it is not necessarily the weekly check-ins, because that just feels like the micromanaging kind of part of it, but breaking down that plan into bite-sized chunks.

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You may need a project manager in house to be able to say great, I see what the 12 month goal there is in order to do these kind of 10 projects.

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It's going to require this chunk of work.

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How do I break this up so that I can see how long this is going to take?

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You know a lot of folks have heard you know how long this is going to take.

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You know a lot of folks have heard you know how long does it take for you to walk from boston to la?

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I don't know.

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I can make a guest, probably not going to hit the broad side of the barn.

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I can tell you how long it's going to take me to get to the end of the road.

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I can tell you then from there how long it'll take me to go two, three more streets.

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And if you keep breaking it down into bite-sized chunks each mile, you can get there and you can do a lot more in that case.

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Yes, jason, oh gosh, I'm going to piggyback off of that with a sports analogy.

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I know that you've worked in sports pretty extensively and, as both of us being fellow New Englanders, I feel like I can leverage this, which is you talk about buying and we look at some of the best Boston sports dynasties I'm going to pick on the Patriots, even though I'm not a football fan is Bill Belichick, obviously a legendary coach in the NFL and he set the tone.

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But when it comes to buy-in, it wasn't just his voice amplifying that tone, it was Tom Brady as an incredible leader.

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It was every single guy on that roster echoing the vision that had been set from above.

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And so that's why, the more we have this conversation, jason, I'm almost kicking myself for not putting you on the spot even earlier on in our conversation to talk about what does that CEO vision look like?

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What is that tone that we're supposed to set?

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Because in business, a lot of us think in terms of revenue, in terms of business size, but what does a successful, buy-in-able CEO vision look like?

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Yeah, it really starts with kind of the three basics what do you do, how do you do it, why do you do it better than anyone else?

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If you can answer those three, that's the seed that you need in order to grow a company From there.

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It does get into a lot of the execution elements that we've been talking about today.

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You know, that kind of natural path of a CEO starts as them alone doing that thing.

00:20:53.128 --> 00:20:58.011
Then they start to get to a point where they're going to get their first hire or first two hires.

00:20:58.011 --> 00:21:15.980
They start to train, they start to delegate and then, as time goes on, they keep that ball rolling and eventually they do get to that kind of critical point where they're doing more execution and not necessarily paying attention to the vision or selling the vision.

00:21:15.980 --> 00:21:27.205
And that's when they start to need that help from a COO or a you know some type of director of operations to get to a point where they can execute.

00:21:27.205 --> 00:21:33.948
But in short, it's what do you do, how do you do it and why do you do it better than anyone else?

00:21:33.948 --> 00:21:41.067
If a CEO, especially at an early part of their career, doing that, if they can nail those three things, they're going to do well.

00:21:41.734 --> 00:21:48.509
Yeah, jason, I'm a big fan of frameworks and the fact that you're making it so simple for us, guiding us what to focus on here today.

00:21:48.509 --> 00:21:51.597
I am so appreciative of that perspective that you bring here.

00:21:51.597 --> 00:21:57.984
I want to ask you this just knowing that you've worked with so many successful CEOs, I think back to when I started my first business.

00:21:57.984 --> 00:22:01.669
I didn't feel like a CEO, jason, because, let's face it, I wasn't yet.

00:22:01.669 --> 00:22:12.680
I had truly zero experience in being a CEO, and I know that a lot of people look at the big CEOs in modern entrepreneurial history.

00:22:12.680 --> 00:22:14.345
I mean, I can pick on Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates.

00:22:14.345 --> 00:22:23.148
There's so many examples of different types and styles of CEOs and leaders that it's hard for people to put themselves into that mix.

00:22:23.148 --> 00:22:26.464
So I want to ask you, what are some of those common threads?

00:22:26.464 --> 00:22:37.930
Because stylistically, we can all be different, but what are some of those common threads of successful CEOs that you've seen and witnessed and things, most importantly, that we can practice on our road to becoming a CEO?

00:22:39.816 --> 00:22:40.057
Yeah.

00:22:40.057 --> 00:22:50.342
So a lot of these folks that I work with are founder CEOs, so they have founded the company and they are kind of pushing that ball forward.

00:22:50.342 --> 00:23:06.858
They generally have knowledge within their craft, their craft, whether that be, you know technology or marketing or PR or SEO.

00:23:06.858 --> 00:23:07.840
You know they have that craft knowledge.

00:23:07.840 --> 00:23:10.547
So a lot of the things that those folks you know.

00:23:10.547 --> 00:23:15.740
Again, we talked about challenges all companies face, and this is no different.

00:23:16.300 --> 00:23:35.670
A lot of folks, a lot of CEOs that are starting off, invariably kind of reach a bridge where they have to stop doing the work, and that is one of the most challenging parts of being an entrepreneur and being good at what you're doing.

00:23:35.670 --> 00:23:39.266
You know, maybe you're in the early days of doing your podcast.

00:23:39.266 --> 00:23:59.825
You do the, you know the post editing and all that work to try and get it published and you figured all that stuff out and then, ultimately, you get a few successes under your belt, you're making a little money and you sit back and say you know what be really good if I can outsource some of these other pieces.

00:23:59.825 --> 00:24:06.897
That's kind of the easy part, because you start delegating some of the things that you already know.

00:24:06.897 --> 00:24:08.381
You figured out that puzzle.

00:24:08.421 --> 00:24:09.805
A lot of entrepreneurs.

00:24:09.805 --> 00:24:18.294
You know, once it starts getting repetition, you know you want to hand that off to somebody who hasn't done that before.

00:24:18.294 --> 00:24:20.199
You know, for example, hasn't done post editing before says you know, I'd really like to learn that off to somebody who hasn't done that before.

00:24:20.199 --> 00:24:23.144
You know, for example, hasn't done post editing before it says you know, I'd really like to learn that.

00:24:23.144 --> 00:24:25.008
Great, I got a project for you.

00:24:25.008 --> 00:24:39.259
But you ultimately get to that thing that you love that zone of influence and you know it's perfectly okay to reach this point and say you know what I like doing this and I'm going to keep doing it.

00:24:39.259 --> 00:24:43.155
And there are a lot of organizations that stay right there.

00:24:43.696 --> 00:24:44.259
I'm one of them.

00:24:45.020 --> 00:24:47.896
As a consultant, I love doing the thing that I do.

00:24:47.896 --> 00:24:52.862
I love coaching and growing businesses and helping organizations make money.

00:24:52.862 --> 00:24:54.958
I love helping people build careers.

00:24:54.958 --> 00:24:59.037
I don't have aspirations to go out and be the next Bill Gates.

00:24:59.037 --> 00:25:01.704
That's a totally different animal.

00:25:01.704 --> 00:25:03.417
That's a totally different CEO.

00:25:03.417 --> 00:25:05.903
I enjoy the stuff that I do.

00:25:07.186 --> 00:25:14.461
So you kind of reach that, that tipping point, and that tends to be where a lot of folks have friction.

00:25:14.461 --> 00:25:18.151
So we talked about the company side of things.

00:25:18.151 --> 00:25:22.554
You know what do you do, how do you do it, why do you do it better than anything anyone else?

00:25:22.554 --> 00:25:24.792
But there is also a human aspect of it.

00:25:24.792 --> 00:25:45.874
You got into being a CEO because you wanted freedom, you wanted to control your own destiny, you wanted to do the thing that you're passionate about and staying in tune, not only as a CEO but as a human being, as someone who needs to take care of your own mental health and physical health.

00:25:45.874 --> 00:25:58.054
You need to be able to be in tune with continually asking yourself yes, this is what the company needs and what the company needs to do, but what do I want to continue to do?

00:25:58.054 --> 00:26:02.656
Where does my personal professional career go in the next year or two?

00:26:02.656 --> 00:26:08.278
A lot of CEOs make that mistake and they just focus on the company and they don't focus on themselves.

00:26:08.278 --> 00:26:10.953
They end up sabotaging themselves a little bit sometimes.

00:26:11.825 --> 00:26:13.833
Yeah, so well said, jason.

00:26:13.833 --> 00:26:15.330
This is the real stuff.

00:26:15.330 --> 00:26:19.151
I really appreciate these insights from you here today because you're giving.

00:26:19.151 --> 00:26:25.467
First of all, the fact that you use podcasting as an example makes me so happy, because these are growing pains that I've experienced myself.

00:26:25.467 --> 00:26:29.026
You're right, for a couple hundred episodes of this show's history, it was all me.

00:26:29.026 --> 00:26:33.445
It was truly a one-man show behind the scenes, and that's something that I've had to give up control of.

00:26:33.445 --> 00:26:48.030
And then the fact that you're using yourself, a fellow entrepreneur, as the example in making those executive decisions, not only for your business but for your personal self, to maintain that sense of well-being and happiness which, at the end of the day, that's why we do all of these things.

00:26:48.030 --> 00:26:53.836
So I think it's so incredible that that's the importance that you've placed and emphasized for us in today's conversation.

00:26:54.165 --> 00:27:02.734
Before we let you go, though, I've been so excited to hear your thoughts here, because AI is the elephant in the room in so many entrepreneurial and business conversations these days.

00:27:02.734 --> 00:27:03.896
I personally love it.

00:27:03.896 --> 00:27:11.678
I almost view it as an extended part of my CEO brain and I definitely tap into it as a COO brain.

00:27:11.678 --> 00:27:16.885
Just the other day, I was in there for a client project saying, hey, I'm looking for you to be an expert project manager.

00:27:16.885 --> 00:27:18.488
Here's the people I have on my team.

00:27:18.488 --> 00:27:20.290
Here's what the client situation is.

00:27:20.290 --> 00:27:21.492
Please map all of it out.

00:27:21.492 --> 00:27:24.218
It's a really cool extension of my brain, jason.

00:27:24.218 --> 00:27:25.766
What's your view on it?

00:27:25.766 --> 00:27:28.031
How's AI play into all these things?

00:27:28.031 --> 00:27:30.277
Not only today, but what you see moving forward?

00:27:31.664 --> 00:27:33.189
Yeah, there are a couple points out there.

00:27:33.189 --> 00:27:46.516
It is super exciting Just on a personal level, having started my career in the late 90s where if you could spell HTML you could scoop up as much work as you can.

00:27:46.516 --> 00:27:49.952
This has two letters, two less letters in it.

00:27:49.952 --> 00:27:59.320
I mean, if you know how to say AI and you have a little bit of direction, you can just about scoop up any type of work that you want.

00:27:59.526 --> 00:28:04.431
It's really fascinating to kind of watch this all unfold, how I've been treating AI.

00:28:04.431 --> 00:28:14.414
I treat it like a junior fill in the blank and it doesn't really matter what the role is.

00:28:14.414 --> 00:28:20.733
So let's say you have a contract that is a little complex.

00:28:20.733 --> 00:28:23.894
Most CEOs I work with don't have a legal team.

00:28:23.894 --> 00:28:30.594
Most people that I work with don't want to send a contract out for $300 an hour to be reviewed.

00:28:30.594 --> 00:28:37.930
But you could feed it into an AI and say turn this to English for me and it'll actually tell you.

00:28:37.930 --> 00:28:40.071
You can then ask it questions.

00:28:40.071 --> 00:28:45.108
What do I have to be worried about?

00:28:45.108 --> 00:28:47.776
How is this different than what a normal contract would be?

00:28:47.776 --> 00:28:55.133
Is there anything that seems overly lopsided in the language, and it can give you answers.

00:28:55.133 --> 00:29:07.525
So you know you can treat AI generative AI, very much like a, almost like a junior employee that has a knowledge base that you can ask questions against.

00:29:07.525 --> 00:29:14.997
And that's the key is looking at it as if it is a human, almost.

00:29:15.596 --> 00:29:17.480
Ask it questions, be curious.

00:29:17.480 --> 00:29:23.365
Assume that they know more than you, which most of CEO staffs.

00:29:23.365 --> 00:29:29.336
They do know more than them, especially in their specific zone of knowledge.

00:29:29.336 --> 00:29:36.296
Same thing can be said for marketing doing a marketing plan, have an HR question.

00:29:37.765 --> 00:29:40.114
You have to take everything with a little bit of a grain of salt.

00:29:40.114 --> 00:29:42.354
You have to have good intuition to look at it.

00:29:42.354 --> 00:29:46.669
You know, look at the answer that comes back and say, all right, is this BS or is this good?

00:29:46.669 --> 00:29:50.037
Should I ask a different question or ask it in a different way?

00:29:50.037 --> 00:29:53.449
I mean, heck, I even use the thing to write code for me.

00:29:53.449 --> 00:30:06.106
I'm writing full scale applications and tools to make a lot of the repetition stuff that I do a lot easier or automated.

00:30:06.106 --> 00:30:20.653
So you basically have in AI a developer, a HR professional, a paralegal, a marketer, a strategist, a doctor.

00:30:20.653 --> 00:30:22.948
I mean it's, it's all there.

00:30:22.948 --> 00:30:41.232
So if you treat it like a, an actual expert on a subject matter, and you ask it questions, it can do so much more for you than what a lot of folks are doing, which is hey, can you summarize this article or hey, can you write me an 800 word blog post on this topic?

00:30:41.232 --> 00:30:43.792
It's so much more powerful than that.

00:30:44.476 --> 00:30:49.731
Yes, especially I think you nailed it those two examples are so powerful Legal and HR.

00:30:49.731 --> 00:30:55.131
Those are services that every business needs, that typically a lot of people can't afford, and you're right.

00:30:55.131 --> 00:31:00.472
We now have that built-in extra staff member to lean on and glean those insights from.

00:31:00.472 --> 00:31:10.506
And, of course, there will be times where we have to reach out to the experts and maybe hire someone, but probably a lot of those instances and steps are removed because of the fact that we get to lean on AI.

00:31:10.506 --> 00:31:14.174
So, Jason, I really appreciate the way that you talk about and view AI.

00:31:14.174 --> 00:31:17.429
You said it and I could see the smile on your face as you said it.

00:31:17.429 --> 00:31:26.573
It sounds silly saying we need to treat it like a person, but truly we do, because when we view that member of our team that way, we'll know when to tap into it.

00:31:26.573 --> 00:31:37.651
The contract example that you gave is so powerful and a luxury, typically for bigger businesses than a lot of us solopreneurs, but now we have access to these resources, so I love those insights.

00:31:37.711 --> 00:31:40.586
Jason, I'm so excited to see where you take this last question.

00:31:40.586 --> 00:31:46.692
It's the one I ask at the end of every episode and that is what's your one best piece of advice Knowing that you are one of us.

00:31:46.692 --> 00:31:50.016
You not only are a subject matter expert, but you're a fellow entrepreneur.

00:31:50.016 --> 00:31:56.102
What's that one thing that you'd want to impart on all listeners, whether they're entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs?

00:32:03.065 --> 00:32:03.866
Yeah, absolutely Always add value.

00:32:03.866 --> 00:32:14.349
And it doesn't matter if you're a junior employee at an organization you know, getting $4,000 a month in salary, or if you're the CEO of a company with a contract for $40,000 a month.

00:32:14.349 --> 00:32:35.217
You want to always take that money and turn it into 2x, 3x, 4x or more All right, and you want to be able to articulate how you took that money and turned it into more All right, and this has been a philosophy that I've lived with since I started my career.

00:32:35.217 --> 00:32:38.333
It's withstood the test of time.

00:32:38.333 --> 00:32:42.454
It you know it predates the use of cell phones.

00:32:42.454 --> 00:32:46.130
It predates the use of responsive design on websites.

00:32:46.130 --> 00:32:50.979
It predates uh ai and it's still valuable to me today.

00:32:50.979 --> 00:33:07.295
Uh, anytime that someone gives me money, I want to make sure that I can prove I turned it into 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, because it's really hard to say goodbye to a person that's generating you revenue.

00:33:08.285 --> 00:33:10.192
Yes, amen to that.

00:33:10.192 --> 00:33:11.154
It's so important.

00:33:11.154 --> 00:33:18.991
It's a huge benchmark for success in our delivery and the value that we provide to others, and I love that you're holding us to that here in today's episode, jason.

00:33:18.991 --> 00:33:28.818
At this point I know that listeners are gonna be super keen because we could probably talk all day long about the role of a CEO and how we can reclaim our own role as CEO.

00:33:28.818 --> 00:33:34.814
So, jason, that's a perfect segue for you Tell us about your book and then, even beyond just the book, drop those links on us.

00:33:34.814 --> 00:33:36.269
Where should listeners go from here?

00:33:37.413 --> 00:33:38.546
Absolutely so.

00:33:38.546 --> 00:33:44.278
The book is Reclaim your Role as CEO, and you can get it on Amazon.

00:33:44.278 --> 00:33:54.068
You just go ahead and pop that into the search, my website, reclaimyourrolecom, so there's a bunch of blog posts on there.

00:33:54.068 --> 00:33:58.898
You can, you know, pick up the book from there and then you know.

00:33:58.898 --> 00:34:01.172
I talked a lot about marketing today.

00:34:01.172 --> 00:34:10.766
I also have my endgamemarketingcom website as well, where we specialize in SEO, analytics, consulting and so on.

00:34:11.387 --> 00:34:20.416
Yes, listeners, and you already know the drill we are making it as easy as possible for you to find Jason's book, as well as both of his business links, down below in the show notes.

00:34:20.416 --> 00:34:22.396
Wherever it is that you're tuning into today's episode, you'll find a link directly Jason's book, as well as both of his business links down below in the show notes.

00:34:22.396 --> 00:34:26.552
Wherever it is that you're tuning in to today's episode, you'll find a link directly to his book Reclaim your Role as CEO.

00:34:26.552 --> 00:34:35.311
We're linking directly to Amazon there, as well as his business website, reclaimyourrolecom, and his marketing agency and services, endgamemarketingcom.

00:34:35.311 --> 00:34:37.552
We're also linking to Jason's personal LinkedIn.

00:34:37.552 --> 00:34:41.315
So if you want to continue the conversation or just say thank you, he is one of us.

00:34:41.315 --> 00:34:42.396
He's a fellow entrepreneur.

00:34:42.396 --> 00:34:49.507
I know I say it frequently, but I think there's so much power in great entrepreneurs sharing their knowledge and being in each other's networks, so don't be shy.

00:34:49.507 --> 00:35:09.554
Otherwise, jason, on behalf of myself and all the listeners worldwide, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

00:35:09.554 --> 00:35:13.797
Thank you very much to you and all the listeners hey, it's Brian here and thanks for tuning in to.

00:35:13.876 --> 00:35:18.340
Thank you very much to you and all the listeners, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:35:18.340 --> 00:35:27.112
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00:35:27.112 --> 00:35:29.172
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00:35:29.172 --> 00:35:30.751
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00:35:30.751 --> 00:35:34.144
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00:35:34.144 --> 00:35:45.217
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00:35:45.217 --> 00:35:53.717
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00:35:53.717 --> 00:35:55.030
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00:35:55.030 --> 00:35:59.675
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00:35:59.675 --> 00:36:01.086
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00:36:01.086 --> 00:36:10.492
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