What it's like to scale and sell your business with Jarrod Morgan

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Angie Colee (00:03):
Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show
that gives you a virtual seatat the bar for the real
conversations that happenbetween entrepreneurs.
I'm interviewing all kinds ofbusiness owners, from those just
a few years into freelancing toCEOs helming nine figure
companies.
If you've ever worried thateveryone else just seems to get
it and you're missing somethingor messing things up, this show

(00:24):
is for you.
I'm your host, Angie Coley, andlet's get to it and welcome
back to Permission to Kick-Ass.
I'm so excited for this one.
Say hi, everybody, to my newfriend, Jared Morgan.

Jarrod Morgan (00:38):
Hey guys, nice to see you.
Good to see you, angie, one ofmy favorites.

Well, this is fun.
I've actually told this story acouple of times on the podcast,
but I didn't mention youspecifically by name.
Last year, I went to thisconference called the Badass
Business Summit, which is whereJared and I met in person, but
before that we met on hispodcast.
Do you want to tell us a littlebit more about your podcast,
because I think the concept isso cool.

My podcast is called Slow Smoke Business and
what we do is every episode hookor crook, good or bad.
You know, I'm out on the grillin my backyard live while I talk
to somebody about business.
So we're grilling something onthe grill and we're talking
about some kind of concept ofbusiness.
And I had Angie on the show onetime and I had a, and I had

(01:25):
just gotten invited to theBadass Business Summit and I was
like hey, I know this otherorganization that has the word
ass in their title and thesesound like your people, and put
the two of you guys together.
I think that's how it went down, right, yeah pretty much.

Yeah, that's right.

I was thinking, I was like saying that, I was
like wait a minute Did that?
Did I dream that or that?
Yeah, that's how it went down.

That's how it went down.
Yeah, cause I joked with peoplethat like sometimes you just
have to follow your instinct.
You said you should go to thisthing.
That sounds like it'd be rightup your alley out.
So I sprained my ankle a coupleof days before showing up at
this business conference.
So I'm there, like being allpitiable, with my ankle propped.

Yeah, it was rough looking.
Actually it was.
I was a little concerned aboutyou, as was everybody, but how
great was that conference, bythe way, I get no it was
fantastic, I get no you know,donnie, who runs that is not
giving me any payback for sayingthat, but that the Badass

(02:32):
Business Summit and that wholeorganization is just really,
really cool and I got, I got.
I was asked to speak at thatconference.
I ended up getting a lot out ofthat personally and I was glad
that Donnie really encouraged meto stick around and participate
, because I got a ton out of it.
Great, great crowd.

Oh yeah, it was super great and you know, they
made one of my dreams come true.
It's such a weird thing, but Igot to sing September by Earth,
wind, and Fire on the 21st ofSeptember because of that
karaoke night.

Yeah, they had it .
The karaoke night Got it.
It was so interesting.
As it is.
It is a crowd of strangers atthe beginning, but by the time
everybody left it was very muchkind of like a tribe of people
that were all trying to do thesame thing.

That's how the best businesses are.
Well, I know that you didn'tstart with slow smoked business,
so you want to tell us aboutyour entrepreneurial journey and
what you did.

Yeah.
So before all the slow smokestuff happened, I was the
founder of a business calledProctorU, which is, if you're
not familiar with that, if youever went to college or had
somebody that went to collegeand they told you they took a
test and someone watched themover a webcam, that was probably
us.
We created a company way backin 2008.
I apologize for those of youthat wanted to cheat on your

(03:39):
test and I made that hard.
It's nice that I don't have tointroduce myself that way
anymore, because I used to be soafraid that my food was getting
spit in and whatever, when Iwould assume to be the world's
biggest like school narc, youknow.
But we created that business,really made it for our own use.

(03:59):
I worked at a school at the time, had some interest in some
other schools carrying it, so wewe spun it out into its own
business and, you know, becamethe largest provider of that
kind of service in the world andthat sounds like a really quick
and tidy thing.
It was actually almost a 12 to15 year odyssey that took us
through heartbreak and failuresand all sorts of terrible things

(04:22):
and, you know, near deathexperiences and all this kind of
stuff.
But on the other side of itsold that business in 2020 to
Private Equity.
It's now rebranded as MeasureLearning Great organization.
I'm still involved.
I still sit on the board ofdirectors.
We're doing some great thingsthere and I love it.
But I retired from theday-to-day operation of that

(04:44):
business in 2022 and have beenkind of doing my own thing.
I got a couple other businessesgoing.
Now I'm a slave to the game.
I'm back in the entrepreneurialgame and a couple of days a
week I asked myself if I wascrazy for doing that.

Crazy for becoming an entrepreneur, for selling the
company.

A little bit of all of the above crazy for doing
it again, like I think so I.
It was an interesting timeafter.
So you know the goal, the dreamfor an old entrepreneur redneck
like me, you know, and likeeverybody, is like you know, you
build your business and eitheryou're trying to build it to
keep it and run it and have thisgreat thing, or you're building
it to eventually, you know,transact and send it.
You know, to build it to keepit and run it and have this

(05:25):
great thing, or you're buildingit to eventually, you know,
transact and send it.
You know, hand it off toanother group who's going to try
to grow it and take it intoanother level.
And you know, for me, when wetake on investors, like you're
definitely on option B, thereyou're going to be growing your
business and selling it, but weheld on to it for a long time,
and I mean just over, well, overa decade, I think.
You know it was 2008 and wedidn't sell till 2020.

(05:47):
And so it really becomes a partof who you are.
And for me, like you know,typically you don't see a
founder stay involved in abusiness as long as I did, and,
and so that was a.
That was an interesting thing,and when that finally stopped
and things changed almostimmediately after the sale, I

(06:08):
remained on the staff but itimmediately kind of went to a
place where I was around but Ijust wasn't.
I was consulted but it justkind of was like, yeah, they're
working on the next thing and nohard feelings, I get it.
And there's some amazing smartpeople that are running that
business now and I learned somuch from them in the board
meetings and things.
But it was really different,not sitting, you know, towards

(06:32):
the top of that organization andbeing in charge of things or
being certainly beinginfluential, right, even if, if
there wasn't a charge of things.
And so I spent, like it wasvery weird, after that business
sold.
I would say probably the first90 days were some of the most
elated I had ever been.
I mean, you know, this is asafe space, as you told me, I

(07:05):
got pretty depressed, like I wasprobably the most depressed I
had been in a long time, becauseso much of who I was was
wrapped up in waking up everyday and climbing towards that
mountain summit and when thatsummit was reached, you think
that that makes everything makessense and the rest of it is

(07:27):
just, you know, really, really,umbrella drinks on the beach,
and it's not right, I mean it's,it's really not.
And so I quickly found that Ineeded to have something to pour
my energy into, and that's thefirst thing I did was the
podcast, and I found a lot offun in that.
The first thing I did was thepodcast and I found a lot of fun
in that.
But the more I talked toentrepreneurs, the more I was

(07:47):
kind of like man, I really wantto do it again, you know.
And so, like, we startedstarted two other businesses If
you're watching this on thevideo, you see I'm actually
wearing the Morgan muscle hat.
That's our hot rod shop that wewe do classic car restorations
and we're trying to bring a lotof like tech industry type of
rigor and things to thatbusiness.
And then we have a coatingscompany.

(08:08):
So we picked two very bluecollar businesses and are taking
some like tech industry styleinto those types of things, and
so that's why I look like Ihaven't had as much sleep as I
probably should.
Right, I'm trying to run twobusinesses at once, but that's
kind of my story, right?
I mean I didn't start as thepodcast host.
I've kind of been through it.
I've been through startup thing, I've been through venture

(08:31):
capital back thing, I've beenthrough private equity thing and
I'm back in the startup gameand it's you know.

I don't know, it's kind of I don't know, it's a
crazy rollercoaster, but I thinkroller coaster nerds probably
get it, because everybody elseis scared by it and we just get
in the front car and go again.

Right, right, and I think, um, I learned a lot
about myself in that situation,which I didn't.
I, you know, I didn't know if Iwould ever want to do it again.
And then, if I did want to doit again, um, I didn't know if I
wanted to be in the techindustry again, or I was in ed
tech specifically, and so Ispent a lot of my career on
college campuses, which was,which was an interesting kind of

(09:11):
thing.
It's like a whole, it's like awhole different set of of needs
in that, in that organization orthose organizations, right, and
it's just very different.
And so, and that industry ischanging a lot, and so I didn't
really want to do that again.
That industry is changing a lotand so I didn't really want to
do that again.
But you find, just like, I think, a person who's wired like me
and like you and like probably alot of most anybody listens to

(09:33):
something called permission tokick ass probably wired like we
are.
But anybody that's wired likethat, if you don't have a
mountain to climb at some point,you know, I don't think there's
, I don't think it exists tostay still, I don't think there
is such a thing as stasis.
You're either growing or dying,right, you're either going up
or down, and um, there's only somany days you can watch TV or

(09:58):
surf or fish or whatever it is.
At some point your life ceasesto have meaning and you know,
there's, you know, the greatbook Man's Search for Meaning.
Like prove that.
Would that be on the shadow ofdoubt, right?
I mean, if a person doesn'thave purpose, then they don't.
Actually, it's not possible tolive a happy life.

Oh, yes, I love that book.
I've brought that up severaltimes.
If you haven't read it, it's asuper quick read and it'll hit
you right in the feels.
I'm telling you it's impossibleto read that book.
Man's Search for Meaning ViktorFrankl how do you sum up a book
like that?
So he is a survivor of theHolocaust and basically wrote a
book about his experience withmy camera's going kind of crazy

(10:37):
there, wrote about hisexperience with living in a
concentration camp and thepeople who survived and the
people who didn't survive andwhat that was like.
And I think the thing thatreally caught my attention was
finding joy and like laughterand little moments.
And it's so funny, right,because it's easy to get wrapped
up in like what you should bedoing and what people expect you

(10:59):
to do.
And I always just remind thepeople that I work with nobody
can make you do anything, noteven with a gun to your head.
It's still up to you at the endof the day, to decide who you
are, what you stand for, whatyou're going to do next, and all
anybody else can do is react toyour situation, but they can't
actually force you to doanything.
And I see that not as scary butas empowering, especially in

(11:21):
the business world.
Nobody can force me to doanything.
I'm just going to do what I can.

In terms of like too.
When you think about it as a,as a, you know in the context of
like, mental health and keepingpeople, keeping your, keeping
your sanity, and things likethat.
I mean if somebody can findlighthearted moments as a, as a,
in the process of being avictim of the Holocaust, and
they can find joy and they canfind purpose gosh like I
definitely can on a Tuesday whenI'm running late taking my kids

(11:50):
to school, you know what I mean.
Like whatever BS problem thatI'm trying to work through just
pales in comparison to whatthose people had to endure and
did it with class, right.
I just I don't know.
I love that book.
I'm glad you've read it too,because I think everybody can
benefit from it.

Honestly, I think I had just finished reading it
when you and I synced up foryour podcast and I'm pretty laid
back, as it goes right, if I'vegot enough sleep and I've had
enough to eat, then I can prettymuch roll with any kind of
punches.
But when we talked on yourpodcast, we had like tech
difficulties and linkdifficulties and one of the

(12:26):
cameras like melted down orsomething like that, and I
remember that we just went okay,cool.
Well, I mean that happened.
Cool, what's next?
Are we going to switch thiscamera?
Cool, we're going to startagain.
And you told me after the factthat that caught your attention,
that I was just like whatever,we're either going to reschedule

(12:47):
it or we're going to do thebest we can today.
Might as well have fun with itwhile we're here.

I've never been on a live barbecue podcast.
Let's have some fun with it,yeah, yeah.
Well, and that was one of thereasons I was like was this
she's, she's my people, right?
I mean, because it was just.
I mean that was like whose dumbidea was it to to run a, first
of all, a podcast that I have tocook, make a cooking show every
episode, and it's outdoors, uh,and I'm dealing with heat and
trying, I mean it's multiplecameras multiple cameras, like

(13:13):
and when it hey, listen, when itcomes off it's a fun show, uh,
but sometimes it's it's a littlecrazy and so, um, I don't want
to.
I don't, I was telling Angiebefore we started.
I'm probably going to betweaking the format of that show
just a little bit, becausethere are a lot of times where I
really want to get into, no punintended, a meaty conversation

(13:42):
and there's just so manydistractions of like oh hold on,
let me flip this chicken overwhile you're crying about
whatever your upbringing was.

Oh my gosh.
But that would just make mehappy, because you were talking
about reducing it to where youdidn't have to cook every single
episode.
Well, but I got on one of thecooking episodes, so I get to be
special.

Well, when I was actually at the Badass Business
Summit, we did a special episodewhere I had like a group of
people and an audience and thatwas probably my favorite episode
of all time because it was sointeractive and fun and it was
just.
It was so unstructured, whichis anybody that knows me, I'm
unstructured as my jam, and soit was.

(14:15):
It was great, and so I'd liketo kind of incorporate some more
things like that, right, theKill Tony of entrepreneurial
people.
Maybe you know, if you knowwhat the Kill Tony podcast is,
maybe.

I don't know actually.
Oh well, that's.

You got to get on Kill.

Tony, I'm going to look that up All right.

Kill Tony is sort of related to the Joe Rogan
world, but it's a comedy podcastand they do it in front of a
live audience every day andthere's a lot of audience
participation and it's reallygood.

My uber ner participation and it's really
good.
It's like my my Uber nerdyfantasy.
When I've gotten to whateverlevel of entrepreneurship and
authorship and speakerhood I getto.
Uh, I want to be a panelist onwait.
Wait, don't tell me, becauseI'm such an NPR nerd.

Yeah, I looked.
I think that's.
I think that's an attainablegoal for you for sure I can
totally see that, I don't thinkthat's, I don't think that's
crazy.

I.
I have that podcast on my phoneand I listen to that when I'm
driving places.

I love it.
Yeah, good old NPR.

It's a good one.
I wanted to circle back tosomething that you mentioned,
because anybody that watches thevideo will see how drastically
my face changed when you weretalking about building ProctorU
up and you were like I made itsound quick and easy and like,
ooh, we shot to the top, butLike I made it sound like quick
and easy and like, oh, we shotto the top.

But then there were moments and you said life
threatening moments.
And I went hmm, yeah, neardeath, oh, near death, yes,
that's what you said Near death.

Can you tell me, are you open to telling me more?

Yeah, sure, I mean.
So there's both hypotheticaland a couple of maybe sort of
real ones.
I mean, you know, thehypothetical was from a business
perspective.
I mean, you're always almosthaving a near-death experience
in business where you go out ofbusiness, and we had several
situations like that and weactually had some of those far
later in our journey than Ithink people that followed the

(15:54):
company knew In 2014,.
We really were struggling,struggling, and we had, you know
, a co-founder of mine thatneeded to exit the business and
wasn't going to go peacefully,and it was a very, very
difficult, very, very difficulttime.
But if we had not made thosemoves, I mean the company would

(16:16):
have gone out of business.
So it was a very bad placefinancially and we needed to
make some drastic changes andwithout making some critical
headcount moves, no one was evergoing to get on board with it.
And so that was, you know, onevery large near-death experience
from a business perspective, Imean.
And then you know, I don'tthink, I think before I started

(16:38):
ProctorU, I had probably flownon a plane maybe twice in my
life, maybe right, because I wasjust man, I'm just from the
country, you know what I mean.
I'm from Northwest Florida,where it was just beaches and
rednecks and you know.
And so just flying on a planewasn't something.
I did a lot and so, and then Istarted flying around and

(16:58):
finding myself in differentplaces and having to go.
You know, we had opportunitiesin Europe that I had to go
figure out.
What does that mean?
No-transcript, I was probablyslightly accosted, right.

(17:28):
But but since woman comes up tome and asked me if I have a
cigarette, and she's like,walking to me, if I do, you have
a cigarette, I'm like I don't,you know.
And then she's I don't rememberwhat she said, but she, she
said something about somethinglike do you want me or do you?
And I'm like whoa, this?
I mean like within threeseconds we go from walking up,

(17:51):
do you have a cigarette?
Propositioning me.
And then I'm like yo, I'm I,and she, she reaches out and
like grabs me inappropriately infront of my colleague and it's
like, oh, you're, you know,you're not a real man kind of
thing, and it was like thiswhole welcome to London, right.
So that was.
We had that.
So I had another situation wherewe had to make an emergency

(18:12):
landing in a plane and, like youknow, there were three
co-founders of ProctorU and theother one, matt Jay, who's been
on my podcast a bunch.
Great guy, he was flying withme.
We were flying on a USs airflight and out of charlotte and
um, we didn't.
We, the landing gear would not,would not work properly, and so

(18:33):
they said we think it's stuckin the out position.
That's what they said over theradio.
We think it's stuck in the outposition, but we're not sure.
And so we're gonna have to land, go back and land, and then
they circled the airport forlike forever, and what that
typically means when you circlethe airport is you're burning
fuel off so that if you have tomake a skid belly landing,
there's less to catch on fire.
And I'm there with Matt andMatt he, he falls asleep.

(19:00):
In this.
I'm like making.
I'm making texts to loved ones.
You know, I'm like I don't knowhow this is going to pan out.
I don't, you know, and he'sover there, legit asleep, and we
ended up.
We ended up, luckily, it wasstuck in the opposition and we
landed fine, and then,ironically, I read an article
the next day about a US airflight from the same airport,

(19:24):
having to make an emergencylanding and it appeared to be
the same plane, and so I guessthey didn't fix it and send it
back out the next morning.
But ours did make the paper,but somebody else's did.
But you know there's.
I mean, you get into situations.
I think that's the part ofentrepreneurship that people
don't appreciate.
That's so crazy is how manyfish out of water situations you

(19:45):
will find yourself in.
Um, when you have, when you'rejust going for it, right, just
just moments where you're likehow, what am I doing in this
room?
You know what I mean, like who,how, why am I in london getting
grabbed?
You know what I mean.
Why am I in I?
There's just crazy moments thatyou find yourself in and I

(20:06):
think you can either respond tothat with humility and be like
man, okay, this is you know, oryou can respond to it with, you
know, sort of arrogance, right,and I don't think that really
serves anybody.
Respond to it with you know,sort of arrogance, right, and I
don't think that really servesanybody.
Well, I felt like, you know,humility has always been the way
to kind of continue to connectwith people and stay grounded so

(20:27):
you don't lose track of who youare and what you're trying to
do.

Oh, absolutely.
I remember the first time I hadan opportunity to be in a big
like a high name, high poweredmastermind for marketers and
this is like the internetmarketing world is such a weird
world, aside from typicalbusiness and brick and mortar
and all of that stuff like that.
But so I'm in the room with allof these like internet

(20:51):
marketers and renowned peopleand I remember just having kind
of a mild panic attack in theback of the room by the coffee
and I think one of my mentors, awoman by the name of Marcella
Marcella Allison is very lovelyperson.
She comes up and she could tellthat like I'm not outwardly
displaying anything for peoplethat don't know me, but for
people that know me and knowthat I'm usually very animated

(21:13):
and I'm not always just like inthe corner being quiet by myself
.
Marcella could tell thatsomething was wrong and comes up
to me and goes um, quiet bymyself.
Marcella could tell thatsomething was wrong and comes up
to me and goes, just in case.
Right, remember you belong inthis room.
You are just as smart aseverybody here.
You've accomplished some prettyawesome things.

(21:33):
There's nothing to be afraid of.
Just be who you are.
And I was like.
Thank you for knowing that Ineeded to hear that right now.

Yeah, I think anybody that hasn't experienced
that probably has a healthy doseof, or an unhealthy dose of,
kind of hubris, right, ifsomebody that doesn't, I mean I
imposter syndrome is is a realthing, and it took me a long
time to get past that myselfbecause, you know, I never, I
never finished my bachelor'sdegree, right, and so which in

(21:58):
the entrepreneur world, like whocares, right?
But remember, I was selling tohigher education, right?
And so I found myself in theroom with college professors,
very, very intelligent,respectable people all the time,
and I never hid the fact that Inever graduated college, but it
was always sort of like in theback of my head and I and I, I

(22:18):
think I finally got to a pointwhere I think I was talking to
probably talking to my counselorone time and she was like what
do you think is going to happenone day?
Someone's just going to standup at the room and go phony, you
know what, what, what exactly?
How is that exactly going toplay out?
And, um, I sort of learned thatnumber one there's a way to

(22:43):
carry yourself that it doesn'tmatter if you don't know
something or you don't haveexperience in something.
If you carry yourself a certainway, then if somebody says,
have you not experienced thatbefore?
Are you not understanding whatwe're talking about?
You can very, in a very classyway, say like no, you know, this
is where I'm at on my journeyand I haven't you know, I
haven't experienced that before,or whatever, and that level of
authenticity can be endearing topeople and they and they

(23:05):
connect because everybody's beenthere at some point.
The one that turns people offis when you pretend that you oh
yeah, no, I've never been thereand you've never been there,
right, or you actually haven'tdone that.

Yeah, that's that negative interpretation of fake
it until you make it that Ican't stands.
I think that's the one that youknow.
If you, if, if having areputation in the industry is a
thing, which I it kind of is andit kind of isn't, it's not the
deal breaker.
There's no demerits followingyou over your head.
This isn't like black mirrorwith the star rating or anything
like that, but you know, ifanything could damage your

(23:36):
reputation, it's basically likelying and misrepresenting
yourself, which thatinterpretation of fake it until
you make it absolutely is LikeI've done the thing that I
haven't done.
I am outright lying.
I think the interpretation thatmade me feel more comfortable
and more in integrity andalignment with myself was
exactly like you said radicalauthenticity, where I would look

(23:58):
at somebody and be like okay,yeah, I haven't done that
specific thing.
I've done these kind of relatedthings over here.
I'm curious to learn more aboutthis, though.
What was your experience Usingcuriosity?
I guess that helped withbecoming a podcast host too, but
that's really helped me insituations where I felt like a
fish out of water.
Just get curious about somebody, get them talking about
themselves.

(24:19):
Then we don't even have tofocus on what I don't know yet
and I can just ask questions andlearn.
Yeah, you know what.
And two.

Some of the most, some of the most impressive,
smartest people I ever dealtwith in business were some of
the with the most inquisitive ofother people.
Like I, I I've got people that Ijust like, love dearly and I
have so much respect for andthey're so intelligent.
And I learned that especiallylike as the closer I got to

(24:45):
these guys in sort of venturecapital world and the private
equity world where you wouldtalk to people that routinely
are talking about $50 million, ahundred million dollar deals
and in private equity like halfa billion, you know billion
dollar things and you talk tothem and they have this very you
can tell that they thinkdifferently but they have this
very inquisitive way of askingquestions about everything and

(25:07):
you realize that, like the realbadasses in the world, the real
achievers understand that Idon't know everything, but my
ability to find somebody thatdoes and get them comfortable
with sharing information with me, that's the real hack.
Knowing everything isn't thehack, right, that's not because
it's not possible, but findingbeing able to relate to people

(25:30):
and go oh, I know somebody thatmight know that situation or
might know the answer here, andbeing able to tease that out and
get that information and makeit useful.
That's the way people's, theway people are really successful
, right.

Oh yeah, being resourceful, being creative and
seeing connections where otherpeople don't.
It's funny, you know you spokeabout your college education and
how that relates to yourbusiness.
I didn't start talking about ituntil recently because I had a
lot of shame around my collegeeducation too.
I actually have a master'sdegree.
I have three degrees and mymaster's degree is in.

(26:02):
It's a creative business hybriddegree, but I didn't advertise
it because I just thought Ididn't get it.
And it's so interesting to menow, given that I coach people
in business and I helpspecifically creative people
start to understand business,cause I went through the classes
and I took all the tests and Isome of them I passed by the
skin of my teeth, like financialaccounting, financial

(26:24):
accounting, economics.
There are certain abstracts thatI could not wrap my head around
, just the way that my brainprocesses information.
I suddenly became interested inthose things when it was my own
business and my own money.
But while I was going throughit in university I just didn't
understand it.
So I guess, like the point thatI'm trying to make in that was
that I had a lot of shame aroundthat too.

(26:46):
Like what kind of businesscoach or somebody that helps
with marketing, doesn'tunderstand business when she has
a business degree, and it waslike to have some compassion for
myself and the different waythat I learn and then to realize
that there were probably otherpeople out there like me that

(27:06):
learn in a similar way and justneed to kind of be walked
through this in a different wayversus like the genius guys that
think differently who know?
how to put together these $50million deals Like there's room
for all of us, no matter howyour brain processes, no matter
what education you've got.
If you like roller coasters,jump on.

And I think, I think you're you'd probably be
really unfair to yourself too,because I, you know, having
spent so, I, you know, I went tocollege, like I went to the
University of Florida.
I just was about a year shy ofgraduating and gave up and
needed to, wanted to join theworkforce, just burnout, and
next thing, you know, I'mstarting a company.
And next thing, you know, I'mstarting a company and next
thing, you know, it's kind oflike I don't know, I don't need
to go back and get that rightand like so.

(27:43):
And, having spent a lot of timein higher education, like I
really understand because I soldto it, I was in the room with a
lot of decision makers I reallyunderstand where that sits in
kind of the pantheon of needs in2024, 2025 and beyond.
And it's sort of like I'm abaseball guy, so I think of like
sports analogies a lot.
And it's sort of like when yougo to college, it's like you

(28:10):
learn a lot about swinging a batand the angles and the wrist
movements and weightdistribution and all this like
science stuff.
But it isn't until you actuallyget out of that and get out and
swing the bat for real andfigure out how to hit a curve
ball.
Do you really ever get the kindof experience that you can pass
on to somebody else?
And I think and so I think whatyou're, what you were saying

(28:31):
there is like, yeah, you, youdid all this stuff in the
college, but the discomfort thatyou were feeling was that you
were, you were finally swingingthe bat on your own and once you
, once you figure out how to hitthe ball for real.
That's why you see people thatdidn't go to college at all
sometimes become great businesspeople just because they figure
out how to be great problemsolvers Exactly.

Oh my gosh, I mean if there were a way to like,
super oversimplify business.
In a nutshell, it's just beinggood at solving problems A
hundred percent.
Oh my God, likeify business ina nutshell.

It's just being good at solving problems.
100%, oh my God, like put it ona picture.

Everyone you solve is gonna create another one, or
sometimes maybe two or three.
So like just getting good atthat without taking it
personally.

Yeah, and that goes back to what we were saying
about earlier, about like so,becoming a good problem solver
and, when you like, go to thenext level.
You understand that you don'thave to solve every problem you

(29:30):
personally don't.
You just need to figure out howto get it solved.
And the best moments in mycareer were the moments that I
felt like I realized that Ididn't have to have the right
answer.
I simply had to be on the rightteam.
And so it's kind of like if, aslong as you, as an entrepreneur
or whatever, I saw people thatthat co-founder that had to
leave the company one of hisdownfalls for years was he

(29:52):
needed to, he was moreinterested in being right than
he was actually winning Right,and so that meant like we
weren't just trying to find theright answer, like we had.
He had to be the one that saidthe right answer, like so, if
his top Lieutenant said, hey, Ithink it's this, you had to sell
it to him so that the top guysaid it, so that everybody would
actually do it was you know,and when you get, when you get

(30:16):
past that is when you can reallystart to grow and as a as if
you're an entrepreneur andyou're trying to start a
business, like you have to.
You have to wrap your headaround the fact that, like you
know you, if the business wins,you win.

And I.

I recognized early in my career that it
didn't matter.
Once I started that business,it didn't matter where it went
from there.
The first sentence of my biowas always going to be founder
of this business.
And so from that point on, like, all I really cared about was
how well that business did and Ididn't need to get the credit
because I was going to get itanyway, and you're if you start
a business, you're going to getit anyway.

(30:51):
Like you don't have to continueto be the Steve Jobs guy or try
to be that guy.
You know, does that make sense?

That makes absolute sense, because I learned
something similar when I startedrunning creative teams.
Right, because before that Ihad this when I was an
independent contractor, when Iwas freelancing a lot I had to
be the person that came up withthe ideas and pitched them,
right, that's a lot of pressurein certain situations when I
joined teams and I realized like, oh, I need to be the person
that comes up with the idea.

(31:23):
But when I bounce it aroundthis room of creative people, it
just gets so much like a rockbeing tumbled.
It gets polished to perfectionand this is great.
And then, as I grew further andI became a senior, I started
training people and then Istarted running teams.
I had an epiphany one day whereI was like I don't have to come
up with the ideas at all.
That's what all these peopleare.
They want to earn theirreputation, they want to get

(31:45):
portfolio pieces.
Like I'm actually taking itaway from them If I think that I
have to be the top down ideaperson dictating how to think
about this to everybody.
They're going to come up withstuff I didn't even think about
that.
I'm going to go oh wow, Iwonder how that one's going to
work.
And then the funniest partabout all of that is because I
didn't come up with any of theideas, but I knew how to help

(32:07):
develop the good ones that Ispotted.
I got credit for being the ideaperson anyway, and then and I
shined the spotlight back onthem and I would be like credit
goes to this person who pitchedthis idea.

I don't mean it to say like, oh, that's such a
powerful tool in team building,like if you, if you, I wish I
could remember exactly howsomebody said this.
But there was, like you know,if we win, you guys did it.
If we lose like I did it, youknow, it just builds good teams
that way.
And if, like the, the reality,you know.
Proctoru got to be a really,really big company.

(32:40):
But the reality, like ifanybody asked what my superpower
was at the end of the day, ifyou zoomed out, like, what was
the thing that made me the mostsuccessful?
It was the ability to toattract really good people to
want to work with me and thenmotivate them to do their best
work and want to stay there.
That was the thing that I was.
It was not like most of thegreat things that ProctorU ever
did.
That was the thing that I was.

(33:01):
It was not like most of thegreat things that ProctorU ever
did did not come from me or mybrain.
They came from the brains ofsome really cool, talented
people that I was blessed towork with and that was the thing
that I got really good at.
And I always joke like I didn'tgraduate college.
But I threw a lot of parties incollege too, if we're being
honest and my mom gets mad whenI say this but like I probably
learned more navigating thosesocial circles than most of the

(33:24):
things I did in college, or atleast as much, because I leaned
on a lot of those social skillsand team building and sales and
all of that to help me.
That helped me get a lotfurther in life than me just
trying to be the Steve Jobsarchetype, coming up with the
answers myself.

Well and honestly, I think this is like the people
skills being able to managepeople, being able to talk to
people, being able to have hardconversations if necessary, to
recognize when the team dynamicis off and something's got to
change.
All of this is difficult stuffand in the age of AI, when
everybody's just kind ofoutsourcing their thoughts or
going well, I don't really wantto deal with it.

(34:02):
So we'll just create anautomation or we'll do this.
This is going to be asuperpower knowing how to
actually talk to people withouttaking it super personally.

Yeah, can we talk about AI for a second?
You're somebody that I wouldlove to get some thoughts on.
So you play in a space where AIis a constant conversation
topic, right?
Yes, and I did come from aspace in tech that we talked
about AI a lot more thanmajority portion of the world

(34:42):
and of the working populationand of industries that have not
even have no idea what what itis, how it's going to affect
them.
They don't know what chat, gptis, they don't know any of that
stuff.
They just think that when yousay ai, they think terminator
and robots are coming to replaceus and then like five, like
stock jokes that they tell andthat's it.
And they don't understand thatthat if you, if you're in, if

(35:04):
your business exists in anindustry that is going to be a
laggard in that regard, you havesuch an advantage.
But I have two businesses rightnow a car shop and a coatings,
like a paint company, and I'mintentionally using artificial

(35:25):
intelligence in those very bluecollar spaces and I have
shortened my learning curve,shortened the number of staff I
need, or, if I didn't shortenthe staff, like in some
situations, like I'vestreamlined and made them
smarter and faster and moreefficient If you're sitting in a
space where AI is not beingused and you're the first mover.

(35:45):
This is one of those moments inhistory where there's going to
be some winners and losers inthis market and there's an
opportunity or, in this timeperiod, right, there's an
opportunity for you, if yourindustry or your business is not
using artificial intelligencefor you to pole vault to the
front of the line beforeeverybody else figures it out,
because in five years it's goingto be too late do you ever, uh

(36:08):
watch game of thrones?
I did.
I you know I missed a lot ofthat.
I don't I don't know why Ididn't get on that train, but
I'm I mean socially aware ofwhat happened, right I promise
it's related.

I know that that seems like it was an abrupt left
turn.
But, there was a very deviouscharacter in there named
Littlefinger, who was alwayskind of playing different groups
for his own mysterious reasonsthat nobody ever really
understood.
And one day, when he was kindof called on it I don't remember
the exact scene, but hebasically said chaos is a ladder
.
And that really stuck with meand was like yeah, that's true.

(36:40):
Every time there is somethingdisruptive that happens, just
like you said, there's going tobe big winners and then there's
going to be people that lose,and that's not a bad thing,
right?
Everything has changed in ourlifetimes.
We've got planes in ourgrandparents' lifetime.
We've got women in the UnitedStates who can have bank
accounts in my grandparents'lifetime and my parents'

(37:02):
lifetime.
We've got women in the UnitedStates who can have bank
accounts in my grandparents'lifetime and my parents'
lifetime.
We have the internet andsmartphones.
Things are constantly changing.
They can't stay the same, andif you can learn to look at this
big disruption like anopportunity of like okay, what's
next?
What can I learn from this?
What could I do?
Can I get creative with this?
Can I get curious about this,then, yeah, you spot your
opportunities and I'm a.

(37:25):
You know, my background is 14years as a copywriter, a sales
writer, I could easily panicbecause the chat GPTs of the
world are meant to write copyand help you write things right.
I'm not worried, first of allbecause I've seen what it turns
out and as we're adding more andmore people to the mix who
aren't computer scientists, it's, it's, the average is coming
down a little bit, but it's alsojust a tool, right?
I already know how to thinkabout all of these things

(37:46):
strategically.
So, like, if I don't have anhour to sit down and brainstorm
the name of a workshop and I canhave it spit out like 80
options.

Yes, like, like just the grind work right when I
had a.
So I did today.
Okay, I did this today.
I needed to completely revampthe sales process of one of our
businesses from top to bottomand I spent about two hours in a
chat GPT thread talking aboutour goals, things that I was

(38:19):
impressed with, books that I hadread, that I wanted to deploy
these technologies or whatever,and I probably accomplished at
least three weeks worth of workin about two hours by getting
the thing to parrot back to memy own thoughts but organize
them in a way that it would havetaken me a long time to

(38:40):
organize them in a way that Icould have given to somebody
else and say I think I want todo this Right.
Those are the things like,that's where it is right now.
It's going to get better andthe more you train those things
it gets better.
But, like, if you're, if you'renot learning how to use those
things to go faster man you are,you are falling behind.
But to go faster man, you arefalling behind, but you have an

(39:00):
opportunity to be.
If you're in a space wherethere's not a lot of that going
on, you have an opportunity to,like, jump to the front of the
line.

And I would say you know it depends on what you're
using it for right.
I'm not as familiar with AIoutside of the creative
industries, like marketingindustry, but like I know that
one thing that really helpsinside marketing if you want to
successfully use AI is to bereally good at doing creative

(39:27):
briefs, which a lot of peoplehave trouble wrapping their
heads around.
A good AI prompt is verysimilar to giving a creative
team a brief of what thisproject looks like.
All right, here's who we'reselling to, here's the timeline
we're working on, here's thegoals, here's the tone and the
voice.
Here's all these assets, here'sthe timeline we're working on,
here's the goals, here's thetone in the voice.
Here's all these assets, here'sall these.
Like we feed it material and wesay we want you to come up with
50 headlines, we want you tocome up with two commercial

(39:47):
scripts right, that's all partof a good creative brief and AI.
If you, if you get really goodat that process and
communicating that information,it can generate some.
Really I call it a really solidlike junior writer draft.
It's never something that Iwould publish live, but it'll
get.
It'll get your 80, 20.

And think how much time that saves you, right,
I mean you, you just savedyourself five rough drafts,
right, and now you're you'realready farther along.
So I have let me give you areal world story of like how AI
can be used for things that aremaybe not typical, but really so

(40:26):
.
This was like a life-changingthing for me.
This is a real story.
So last year my mother,madeline, who I love dearly, was
diagnosed with cancer.
She has a cancer called MDS andit's a blood cancer kind of
similar to leukemia not a goodoutlook, right.
And her particular case she wasgiven about 18 to 24 months and
it was a pretty tough diagnosis.

(40:47):
And so, and I made some callsand I talked to a guy that I
know that was in sort of thehealthcare industry.
He said, listen, like first ofall, he said the likelihood that
your mother was diagnosed bythe doctor that should treat her
is essentially zero.
Right, you need to find theright doctor that can treat her

(41:08):
and you need to find somebodythat's treated a lot of these
cases and you need to findsomebody who's, like you know,
worldview aligns with whatyou're trying to accomplish.
Are they just trying to manageit?
Are they trying to cure it?
Are they all this kind of stuff?
And he goes through this longthing and he's like you're gonna
have to do a lot of researchand read, read, read and you're
gonna take a lot of notes and itshould take you about a month
and you can probably narrow itdown, make a lot of phone calls
and all this her he said that'sthe preamble that I always give

(41:34):
people.
He said but now in 2023, at thetime he's like I would first
tell you to go to the internetand use Chad GPT and see what
Chad GPT can do for you.
And so, in the span of 60seconds, I was able to get Chad
GPT to spit out two doctors thatwould essentially be perfect to

(41:57):
treat my mother.
By asking it two questions.
I described the cancer that shehad and I said I need to find
the physicians that have treatedmore cases of this specific
type of cancer than anybody elsein the United States.
And it goes there's five names.
And it goes there's five names.
And then I said I need,additionally, a list of the most

(42:20):
cited academic researchers onthis type of cancer for papers
about this cancer.
Who's writing the most research?
And it goes five names.
And two of those names were onboth lists and so I said, bingo,
I got two doctors and within acouple of days after that had
contacted everybody, decided onone at MD Anderson, and my

(42:41):
mother is down there gettingtreated.
But we got word a couple ofweeks ago that she is
cancer-free right From thetreatment that she got.
That started with a chat GPTsearch.
So when we talk about how AI isgoing to revolutionize the world
, everyone thinks in the mostlike the first, like what could
I get it to do right now?
Right, I could write somethingfor me, I want to write a

(43:04):
birthday email, I want to likesome different things like that.
But that's an example of howshortening the distance between
problem and potential solutioncan literally save someone's
life.
Yes, right, and I think whenyou start to think about it that
way, it opens your minds up tothe possibility and kind of

(43:25):
obfuscates a little bit.
That's a big word but justhides a little bit the scary
part of it.
Oh my gosh, it's going toreplace a lot of, just going to
eliminate a lot of jobs.
It's probably going to create alot of them too.
Yes, right.
It's going to be a net jobcreator and it's going to create
a lot of opportunities for usto bolt forward as a human race.
But we just have to figure outhow to harness it To me.

I think it's going to be more important for people
to learn how to think and learnhow to research and learn how to
vet thoughts.
I'm already starting to seeconversations around this in
kind of the netosphere, right,Because how do you validate the
AI results that are coming backif you don't have subject matter
experts to kind of check thedata, right?
I don't know where I was goingwith that thought, but it seemed

(44:12):
pertinent.

No, but I think I mean that's what I did, like I
think if you, if you go backthrough that story, I just I
didn't tell it to send my motherto like what should we do?
I just said I need you tonarrow this down for me, right,
and by doing that, it's stillleft a human element and and
frankly, by the way that is,that is one of the most.

(44:35):
That is not most, it is the100%.
Sorry, I'm stammering around.
That is the biggest thing thatwe ever debated at ProctorU and
it was the biggest debate in theonline proctoring world was the
appropriateness of a computerdeciding a student's fate and
where we sort of and I'm tellingyou I had tours through

(44:59):
Congress, talking to Congress,people about this, dealt with
all sorts of people in the media, dealt with academics, dealt
with researchers.
We've had a ton of discussionabout this.
Where everyone sort of landedis you use the technology to
make people more efficient andbetter, but at the end of the

(45:20):
day, you really should make sureyou don't fully eliminate the
human until you're a thousandpercent sure that it can do the
same thing, and in most cases,we're so far away from that that
you don't need to think aboutartificial intelligence and
they're like we're trying toeliminate people.
We're trying to make one personbe able to do a lot more, and
critical decisions are stillmade by a human, but it's done

(45:42):
with the aid of technology,making them less error prone and
more efficient.

Yes, I think that's the point that I was trying to
get at, which was, you know,we're not eliminating human
aspect from this whatsoever, andthen it's just going to create
opportunity to get deeper onsubjects, to learn more, to like
in my industry, we talk aboutbeing a good strategist, which
is how you can recognize whetherthe AI is spitting out garbage

(46:08):
or not.
Did it actually understand theprompt?
Cool, I understand theunderlying thinking below what I
was asking it to do.
Did it actually meet that ornot?
No, so critical thinking isgoing to be even more important.
People skills are going to beeven more important, and I hope
that this.
You know, I saw a goofy memethe other day that was basically
like I'm not about AI, liketaking over my house and

(46:31):
sleeping with my wife, like Iwant it to give me more time to
create and to relate and to behuman, and that's the way that I
use it, and I was like yes, Ilove that.

Do you have any good like ai prompt tips like
real?

like let's get.

Let's get real tactical for a second.
Do you have any good likethings?
You've learned to spit out goodstuff I.

I switched over to claude from gpt a while ago and
I actually use that for thefirst draft of my podcast notes,
although sometimes it gets alittle campy and I talk to it
like it's a human.
It's so weird.
I'm polite with it, I give itfeedback as if it was a writer
on my team and I don't know ifthis is going to work for
anybody else, but the other day,when I asked it to spit out

(47:12):
workshop titles for this thingthat I was working on, so okay,
this is who you are.
You're Angie Coley, you're amarketing expert.
You've got this particularbrand.
You're a little bit contrarian,but humorous and kind.
So, like, describe myself,describe my voice, gave it some
resources to check me out andget to know me a little bit more
in depth.
All right, you're trying tocome up with the name for this
workshop where the attendees aregoing to achieve X, y and Z, so

(47:36):
we need a short, snappy name ofno more than five words,
because I know that AI loves togenerate titles that are like
this, long, with colons, and putit in this tone that Angie has,
and I think the first round Isaid something like her tone if
I had to describe it using otherpopular, well-known people.
It's probably like Jon Stewart,kelly Clarkson and Dolly Parton

(47:59):
all rolled into one.
A little bit snarky, a littlebit.
Hey, y'all Right.

OK, yeah.

So the first round of results that it turned out
was super campy.
It was like how do y'all put onyour cowboy boots and buckle up
?
And I was like, okay, so hey,you had.
And it spit out 40 options.
So it gave like a paragraphexplaining its logic.
Then it spit out 40 options andthen it gave me another
paragraph about why it thoughtthese were strong.

(48:26):
But it was all super campy.
And so I wrote back and said,okay, good, first attempt.
Out of the ones that yousubmitted, I think these three
are the strongest.
And here's why, out of the onesthat you submitted, I think
these three are the strongest.
And here's why, like so youknow, keeping in mind that I
would like more like these.
And also, how can we make menot sound like a superficial
caricature of myself?
What else can you come up with?
And so then it generated like40 more, but then they were

(48:49):
bland and boring and I said,okay, we probably swung the
pendulum a little bit too far.
I still want personality inthese titles, along the lines of
these three strong ones thatyou submitted.
But like yes, I can't rememberexactly what I said, but that
was how I taught.
Like every iteration, I wouldsay this is what you got right.
This is what I don't like aboutthis.
Can you please try again?
And eventually it got me tolike five strong options, and of

(49:12):
course, I don't have them herein front of me, but I was like,
oh yeah, that could really work.
That's a, that's a snappy name,that's a gettable name and that
feels like an Angie brand.
So yeah, and it would havetaken me weeks of that on my own
to come up with.

Yeah, you sort of like an analogy of what you
just did.
There is like you've had acareer of playing the violin and
now you're teaching yourself tobe like the conductor, right,
like you're you're, you're goinglike this and you're telling
you know, nope, a little softer,a little harder, a little like
that's kind of what.
And I I think if you think ofyourself like that, it's it

(49:48):
helps you understand like Itreat I treat my ai, uh, friends
, ai, friends like staff.
Almost.
I'm like hey, remember when Itold you this?
And they'll be like, yes, andI'll say I need you to
do-do-do-do-do and it'll spitsome stuff out and it's great.
One of the things that you didthat I think is worth calling
out is somebody taught me thisbefore and I think it works

(50:12):
really well you have to tell AIwho it is before it answers.
So instead of if you just askfor, like hey, man, I need you
to write me an email trying tosell this it'll just give you
the most ai ish, like you know,just garbage.
But if you say like so, forinstance, we were doing some
hiring recently and, like me,writing a job description or a

(50:35):
job ad is just would just be themost painful thing ever.
Like I love to create, but likedetail creation like that, like
I have so much respect forsomebody like you that's a
copywriter, like I, it's not inmy being to do it Right.
And so I went to the thing andI said you know I could have
just asked it hey, I'm trying tohire an accountant and I need
these things and it would havegone.

(50:56):
But what I did was I said youare.
I went and Googled and foundlike the number one corporate
recruiting company in thecountry and I said you are the
top executive at this companyand you're known for being able
to recruit the highestperforming employees.
Now write me.
And it was like it created thismasterpiece.
Right, love it.
And so it's like, if you tellit who it is before you, so you

(51:21):
know if you're going to ask aquestion about your car which
I've done that before with thecar shop like wait, we can't
figure this out.
On a 67 Mustang, you areso-and-so the most notable
da-da-da-da-da and you have readevery book there is to read
about mustangs.
How should I fix this?
And it was like here's ninesuggestions.
And you're like okay, that'spowerful.

Mm-hmm, ah, the age of technology.
It is here.
Embrace it.
I think it's so good we can useit for good.
Yep, don't get left behind.

Or get left behind, I guess.

Or get left behind.
Yeah, More for those of us thatare using it for the tool like
it is.
Yep, I want to keep talking forlike two more hours because
everything that you say isfascinating.
For now I will say please tellus about all of your businesses,
your podcast.
I'm going to make sure there'sclickable links in the show
notes.

We want to get all the details.
Hot dang, okay, so, uh.
So the first thing, I wouldlove for you guys to find me at
slow smoke business, right?
So you can find me on Tik TOK,you can, they don't ban Tik TOK.
You can find me on Tik TOK, uh.
At slow smoke business.
Um.
You can find me on YouTube,slow smoke business.
Just just look for the phraseslow smoke business.
We're everywhere Facebook,youtube, Tik TOK.
Um, I think we're on Friendster, napster, who knows, and so

(52:37):
that's fun, great.
By the time the show airs, weshould be in season three,
hopefully, of the podcast, whichwill be some new stuff.
Also have two businesses that,if you'd like to check them out,
morgan Muscle, which is aclassic car restoration shop
here in Alabama, where we do alot of fun stuff.
You can also find us on socialmedia there.
And, more importantly, toughDog Coatings, here in the

(53:01):
Southeast.
We do paint and concretecoatings and we're bringing
style and professionalism to anindustry that oftentimes doesn't
have it.
So you can find us there too,and you can also find me taking
blood pressure meds, becausethat's a whole lot of stuff to
be managing, right.

Yep, it's worth it.
The rollercoaster ride is worthit.

Thanks to friends like you Keep me sane, that's
for sure.

Well, thank you so much for being on the show.
This is so much fun.
I can't wait for this to air.
Yeah, me too.
That's all for now.
If you want to keep thatkick-ass energy high, please
take a minute to share thisepisode with someone that might
need a high-octane dose of youCan Do it.
Don't forget to rate, reviewand subscribe to the Permission
to Kick-Ass podcast on ApplePodcasts, spotify and wherever

(53:47):
you stream your podcasts.
I'm your host, angie Coley, andI'm here rooting for you.
Thanks for listening and let'sgo kick some ass.

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