Permission to Kick Ass

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

• Angie Colee • Episode 189

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From building a game-changing education tech company to finding purpose after selling it, Jarrod Morgan's entrepreneurial journey is the kind of rollercoaster that'll make your head spin... in the best way possible. Today we're talking about a little bit of everything - including the highs, lows, and 'oh crap' moments that come with being a serial entrepreneur (and how to use that chaos to your advantage). 

Can't-Miss Moments:

  • Kicking things off strong with a heartfelt apology from Jarrod, the self-proclaimed "World's Biggest School Narc" 

  • Why selling his business for a lot of money (after a lot of work!) was only great for about the first 90 days...

  • The mind-blowing way Jarrod used ChatGPT to save his mom's life (this one's probably gonna annoy all the "AI is the devil" haters)...

  • How (and more importantly, WHEN) to "fake it until you make it" without outright lying, even if you're brand new...

  • The interesting commonality Jarrod and I see among the world's most successful entrepreneurs (just reading this bullet and clicking to listen might show you have the same trait!)...

Jarrod's bio:

Jarrod Morgan has been a successful entrepreneur for over 18 years, most notably as the founder of ProctorU, the largest online proctoring company in the world valued at over half a billion dollars.

Jarrod is an inspiring leader, award-winning entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and podcast host. Jarrod founded ProctorU in 2008, and in 2020 led the company through its merger and evolution into Meazure Learning. He has appeared on PBS and the Today Show, and has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, and Fast Company Magazine. He studied computer science at the University of Florida, is a four-time Gator 100 winner, and was named one of 20 people to lead Birmingham for the next 20 years by BHM Biz Magazine.

Jarrod now owns a hot rod shop with his family in Alabama, a home improvement startup, and hosts the Slow Smoked Business Podcast from his backyard bbq. He is married to Amanda Morgan and loves being a dad to his three daughters.

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Angie Colee:

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, Angie Coley, and let's get to it and welcome back to Permission to Kick-Ass. I'm so excited for this one. Say hi, everybody, to my new friend, Jared Morgan.

Jarrod Morgan:

Hey guys, nice to see you. Good to see you, angie, one of my favorites.

Angie Colee:

Well, this is fun. I've actually told this story a couple of times on the podcast, but I didn't mention you specifically by name. Last year, I went to this conference called the Badass Business Summit, which is where Jared and I met in person, but before that we met on his podcast. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about your podcast, because I think the concept is so cool.

Jarrod Morgan:

My podcast is called Slow Smoke Business and what we do is every episode hook or crook, good or bad. You know, I'm out on the grill in my backyard live while I talk to somebody about business. So we're grilling something on the grill and we're talking about some kind of concept of business. And I had Angie on the show one time and I had a, and I had just gotten invited to the Badass Business Summit and I was like hey, I know this other organization that has the word ass in their title and these sound like your people, and put the two of you guys together. I think that's how it went down, right, yeah pretty much.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, that's right.

Jarrod Morgan:

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.

Angie Colee:

That's how it went down. Yeah, cause I joked with people that like sometimes you just have to follow your instinct. You said you should go to this thing. That sounds like it'd be right up your alley out. So I sprained my ankle a couple of days before showing up at this business conference. So I'm there, like being all pitiable, with my ankle propped.

Jarrod Morgan:

Yeah, it was rough looking. Actually it was.

Jarrod Morgan:

I was a little concerned about you, as was everybody, but how great was that conference, by the way, I get no it was fantastic, I get no you know, donnie, who runs that is not giving me any payback for saying that, but that the Badass Business Summit and that whole organization is just really, really cool and I got, I got. I was asked to speak at that conference. I ended up getting a lot out of that personally and I was glad that Donnie really encouraged me to stick around and participate, because I got a ton out of it. Great, great crowd.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

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

Angie Colee:

That's how the best businesses are. Well, I know that you didn't start with slow smoked business, so you want to tell us about your entrepreneurial journey and what you did.

Jarrod Morgan:

Yeah. So before all the slow smoke stuff happened, I was the founder of a business called ProctorU, which is, if you're not familiar with that, if you ever went to college or had somebody that went to college and they told you they took a test and someone watched them over a webcam, that was probably us. We created a company way back in 2008. I apologize for those of you that wanted to cheat on your test and I made that hard. It's nice that I don't have to introduce myself that way anymore, because I used to be so afraid that my food was getting spit in and whatever, when I would assume to be the world's biggest like school narc, you know. But we created that business, really made it for our own use.

Jarrod Morgan:

I worked at a school at the time, had some interest in some other schools carrying it, so we we spun it out into its own business and, you know, became the largest provider of that kind of service in the world and that sounds like a really quick and tidy thing. It was actually almost a 12 to 15 year odyssey that took us through heartbreak and failures and all sorts of terrible things and, you know, near death experiences and all this kind of stuff. But on the other side of it sold that business in 2020 to Private Equity. It's now rebranded as Measure Learning Great organization. I'm still involved. I still sit on the board of directors. We're doing some great things there and I love it. But I retired from the day-to-day operation of that business in 2022 and have been kind of doing my own thing. I got a couple other businesses going. Now I'm a slave to the game. I'm back in the entrepreneurial game and a couple of days a week I asked myself if I was crazy for doing that.

Angie Colee:

Crazy for becoming an entrepreneur, for selling the company.

Jarrod Morgan:

A little bit of all of the above crazy for doing it again, like I think so I. It was an interesting time after. So you know the goal, the dream for an old entrepreneur redneck like me, you know, and like everybody, is like you know, you build your business and either you're trying to build it to keep it and run it and have this great thing, or you're building it to eventually, you know, transact and send it. You know, to build it to keep it and run it and have this great thing, or you're building it to eventually, you know, transact and send it. You know, hand it off to another group who's going to try to grow it and take it into another level. And you know, for me, when we take on investors, like you're definitely on option B, there you're going to be growing your business and selling it, but we held on to it for a long time, and I mean just over, well, over a decade, I think. You know it was 2008 and we didn't sell till 2020. And so it really becomes a part of who you are. And for me, like you know, typically you don't see a founder stay involved in a business as long as I did, and, and so that was a.

Jarrod Morgan:

That was an interesting thing, and when that finally stopped and things changed almost immediately after the sale, I remained on the staff but it immediately kind of went to a place where I was around but I just wasn't. I was consulted but it just kind of was like, yeah, they're working on the next thing and no hard feelings, I get it. And there's some amazing smart people that are running that business now and I learned so much from them in the board meetings and things. But it was really different, not sitting, you know, towards the top of that organization and being in charge of things or being certainly being influential, right, even if, if there wasn't a charge of things. And so I spent, like it was very weird, after that business sold.

Jarrod Morgan:

I would say probably the first 90 days were some of the most elated I had ever been. I mean, you know, this is a safe space, as you told me, I got pretty depressed, like I was probably the most depressed I had been in a long time, because so much of who I was was wrapped up in waking up every day and climbing towards that mountain summit and when that summit was reached, you think that that makes everything makes sense and the rest of it is 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 I needed to have something to pour my energy into, and that's the first thing I did was the podcast, and I found a lot of fun in that. The first thing I did was the podcast and I found a lot of fun in that. But the more I talked to entrepreneurs, the more I was kind of like man, I really want to do it again, you know. And so, like, we started started two other businesses If you're watching this on the video, you see I'm actually wearing the Morgan muscle hat.

Jarrod Morgan:

That's our hot rod shop that we we do classic car restorations and we're trying to bring a lot of like tech industry type of rigor and things to that business. And then we have a coatings company. So we picked two very blue collar businesses and are taking some like tech industry style into those types of things, and so that's why I look like I haven't had as much sleep as I probably should. Right, I'm trying to run two businesses at once, but that's kind of my story, right? I mean I didn't start as the podcast host. I've kind of been through it. I've been through startup thing, I've been through venture capital back thing, I've been through private equity thing and I'm back in the startup game and it's you know.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

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 I would ever want to do it again. And then, if I did want to do it again, um, I didn't know if I wanted to be in the tech industry again, or I was in ed tech specifically, and so I spent a lot of my career on college campuses, which was, which was an interesting kind of thing. It's like a whole, it's like a whole different set of of needs in that, in that organization or those organizations, right, and it's just very different. And so, and that industry is changing a lot, and so I didn't really want to do that again. That industry is changing a lot and so I didn't really want to do that again.

Jarrod Morgan:

But you find, just like, I think, a person who's wired like me and like you and like probably a lot of most anybody listens to something called permission to kick ass probably wired like we are. But anybody that's wired like that, 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 to stay 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 so many days you can watch TV or surf or fish or whatever it is. At some point your life ceases to have meaning and you know, there's, you know, the great book Man's Search for Meaning. Like prove that. Would that be on the shadow of doubt, right? I mean, if a person doesn't have purpose, then they don't. Actually, it's not possible to live a happy life.

Angie Colee:

Oh, yes, I love that book. I've brought that up several times. If you haven't read it, it's a super quick read and it'll hit you right in the feels. I'm telling you it's impossible to read that book. Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl how do you sum up a book like that? So he is a survivor of the Holocaust and basically wrote a book about his experience with my camera's going kind of crazy there, wrote about his experience with living in a concentration camp and the people who survived and the people who didn't survive and what that was like.

Angie Colee:

And I think the thing that really caught my attention was finding joy and like laughter and little moments. And it's so funny, right, because it's easy to get wrapped up in like what you should be doing and what people expect you to do. And I always just remind the people that I work with nobody can make you do anything, not even with a gun to your head. It's still up to you at the end of the day, to decide who you are, what you stand for, what you're going to do next, and all anybody else can do is react to your situation, but they can't actually force you to do anything. And I see that not as scary but as empowering, especially in the business world. Nobody can force me to do anything. I'm just going to do what I can.

Jarrod Morgan:

In terms of like too. When you think about it as a, as a, you know in the context of like, mental health and keeping people, keeping your, keeping your sanity, and things like that. I mean if somebody can find lighthearted moments as a, as a, in the process of being a victim of the Holocaust, and they can find joy and they can find purpose gosh like I definitely can on a Tuesday when I'm running late taking my kids to school, you know what I mean. Like whatever BS problem that I'm trying to work through just pales in comparison to what those 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.

Angie Colee:

Honestly, I think I had just finished reading it when you and I synced up for your podcast and I'm pretty laid back, as it goes right, if I've got enough sleep and I've had enough to eat, then I can pretty much roll with any kind of punches. But when we talked on your podcast, we had like tech difficulties and link difficulties and one of the cameras like melted down or something 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 this camera? Cool, we're going to start again. And you told me after the fact that that caught your attention, that I was just like whatever, we're either going to reschedule it or we're going to do the best we can today. Might as well have fun with it while we're here.

Jarrod Morgan:

I've never been on a live barbecue podcast. Let's have some fun with it, yeah, yeah. Well, and that was one of the reasons I was like was this she's, she's my people, right? I mean, because it was just. I mean that was like whose dumb idea was it to to run a, first of all, a podcast that I have to cook, make a cooking show every episode, and it's outdoors, uh, and I'm dealing with heat and trying, I mean it's multiple cameras multiple cameras, like and when it hey, listen, when it comes off it's a fun show, uh, but sometimes it's it's a little crazy and so, um, I don't want to.

Jarrod Morgan:

I don't, I was telling Angie before we started. I'm probably going to be tweaking the format of that show just a little bit, because there are a lot of times where I really want to get into, no pun intended, a meaty conversation and there's just so many distractions of like oh hold on, let me flip this chicken over while you're crying about whatever your upbringing was.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

Well, when I was actually at the Badass Business Summit, we did a special episode where I had like a group of people and an audience and that was probably my favorite episode of all time because it was so interactive and fun and it was just. It was so unstructured, which is anybody that knows me, I'm unstructured as my jam, and so it was. It was great, and so I'd like to kind of incorporate some more things like that, right, the Kill Tony of entrepreneurial people. Maybe you know, if you know what the Kill Tony podcast is, maybe.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

You got to get on Kill.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

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

Angie Colee:

My uber ner participation and it's really good. It's like my my Uber nerdy fantasy. When I've gotten to whatever level of entrepreneurship and authorship and speakerhood I get to. Uh, I want to be a panelist on wait. Wait, don't tell me, because I'm such an NPR nerd.

Jarrod Morgan:

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

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

I love it. Yeah, good old NPR.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

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

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

Yeah, sure, I mean. So there's both hypothetical and a couple of maybe sort of real ones. I mean, you know, the hypothetical was from a business perspective. I mean, you're always almost having a near-death experience in business where you go out of business, and we had several situations like that and we actually had some of those far later in our journey than I think people that followed the company knew In 2014,.

Jarrod Morgan:

We really were struggling, struggling, and we had, you know, a co-founder of mine that needed to exit the business and wasn't going to go peacefully, and it was a very, very difficult, very, very difficult time. But if we had not made those moves, I mean the company would have gone out of business. So it was a very bad place financially and we needed to make some drastic changes and without making some critical headcount moves, no one was ever going to get on board with it. And so that was, you know, one very large near-death experience from a business perspective, I mean. And then you know, I don't think, I think before I started ProctorU, I had probably flown on a plane maybe twice in my life, maybe right, because I was just man, I'm just from the country, you know what I mean.

Jarrod Morgan:

I'm from Northwest Florida, where it was just beaches and rednecks and you know. And so just flying on a plane wasn't something. I did a lot and so, and then I started flying around and finding myself in different places and having to go. You know, we had opportunities in Europe that I had to go figure out. What does that mean? No-transcript, I was probably slightly accosted, right. But but since woman comes up to me 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 remember what she said, but she, she said something about something like do you want me or do you? And I'm like whoa, this? I mean like within three seconds we go from walking up, 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 in front 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 this whole welcome to London, right. So that was. We had that.

Jarrod Morgan:

So I had another situation where we had to make an emergency landing in a plane and, like you know, there were three co-founders of ProctorU and the other one, matt Jay, who's been on my podcast a bunch. Great guy, he was flying with me. We were flying on a USs air flight and out of charlotte and um, we didn't. We, the landing gear would not, would not work properly, and so they said we think it's stuck in the out position. That's what they said over the radio. We think it's stuck in the out position, but we're not sure. And so we're gonna have to land, go back and land, and then they circled the airport for like forever, and what that typically means when you circle the airport is you're burning fuel off so that if you have to make a skid belly landing, there's less to catch on fire. And I'm there with Matt and Matt he, he falls asleep. In this. I'm like making. I'm making texts to loved ones. You know, I'm like I don't know how this is going to pan out. I don't, you know, and he's over there, legit asleep, and we ended up. We ended up, luckily, it was stuck in the opposition and we landed fine, and then, ironically, I read an article the next day about a US air flight from the same airport, having to make an emergency landing and it appeared to be the same plane, and so I guess they didn't fix it and send it back out the next morning. But ours did make the paper, but somebody else's did.

Jarrod Morgan:

But you know there's. I mean, you get into situations. I think that's the part of entrepreneurship that people don't appreciate. That's so crazy is how many fish out of water situations you will find yourself in. Um, when you have, when you're just going for it, right, just just moments where you're like how, 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 that you find yourself in and I think you can either respond to that with humility and be like man, okay, this is you know, or you 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 serves anybody. Well, I felt like, you know, humility has always been the way to kind of continue to connect with people and stay grounded so you don't lose track of who you are and what you're trying to do.

Angie Colee:

Oh, absolutely. I remember the first time I had an opportunity to be in a big like a high name, high powered mastermind for marketers and this is like the internet marketing world is such a weird world, aside from typical business and brick and mortar and all of that stuff like that. But so I'm in the room with all of these like internet marketers and renowned people and I remember just having kind of a mild panic attack in the back of the room by the coffee and I think one of my mentors, a woman by the name of Marcella Marcella Allison is very lovely person. She comes up and she could tell that like I'm not outwardly displaying anything for people that don't know me, but for people that know me and know that I'm usually very animated and I'm not always just like in the corner being quiet by myself.

Angie Colee:

Marcella could tell that something was wrong and comes up to me and goes um, quiet by myself. Marcella could tell that something was wrong and comes up to me and goes, just in case. Right, remember you belong in this room. You are just as smart as everybody here. You've accomplished some pretty awesome things. There's nothing to be afraid of. Just be who you are. And I was like. Thank you for knowing that I needed to hear that right now.

Jarrod Morgan:

Yeah, I think anybody that hasn't experienced that probably has a healthy dose of, or an unhealthy dose of, kind of hubris, right, if somebody that doesn't, I mean I imposter syndrome is is a real thing, and it took me a long time to get past that myself because, you know, I never, I never finished my bachelor's degree, right, and so which in the entrepreneur world, like who cares, right? But remember, I was selling to higher education, right? And so I found myself in the room with college professors, very, very intelligent, respectable people all the time, and I never hid the fact that I never graduated college, but it was always sort of like in the back of my head and I and I, I think I finally got to a point where I think I was talking to probably talking to my counselor one time and she was like what do you think is going to happen one day? Someone's just going to stand up at the room and go phony, you know what, what, what exactly? How is that exactly going to play out?

Jarrod Morgan:

And, um, I sort of learned that number one there's a way to carry yourself that it doesn't matter if you don't know something or you don't have experience in something. If you carry yourself a certain way, then if somebody says, have you not experienced that before? Are you not understanding what we're talking about? You can very, in a very classy way, say like no, you know, this is where I'm at on my journey and I haven't you know, I haven't experienced that before, or whatever, and that level of authenticity can be endearing to people and they and they connect because everybody's been there at some point. The one that turns people off is when you pretend that you oh yeah, no, I've never been there and you've never been there, right, or you actually haven't done that.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, that's that negative interpretation of fake it until you make it that I can't stands. I think that's the one that you know. If you, if, if having a reputation in the industry is a thing, which I it kind of is and it kind of isn't, it's not the deal breaker. There's no demerits following you over your head. This isn't like black mirror with the star rating or anything like that, but you know, if anything could damage your reputation, it's basically like lying and misrepresenting yourself, which that interpretation of fake it until you make it absolutely is Like I've done the thing that I haven't done. I am outright lying.

Angie Colee:

I think the interpretation that made me feel more comfortable and more in integrity and alignment with myself was exactly like you said radical authenticity, where I would look at somebody and be like okay, yeah, I haven't done that specific thing. I've done these kind of related things over here. I'm curious to learn more about this, though. What was your experience Using curiosity? I guess that helped with becoming a podcast host too, but that's really helped me in situations where I felt like a fish out of water. Just get curious about somebody, get them talking about themselves. Then we don't even have to focus on what I don't know yet and I can just ask questions and learn. Yeah, you know what. And two.

Jarrod Morgan:

Some of the most, some of the most impressive, smartest people I ever dealt with in business were some of the with the most inquisitive of other people.

Jarrod Morgan:

Like I, I I've got people that I just like, love dearly and I have so much respect for and they're so intelligent.

Jarrod Morgan:

And I learned that especially like as the closer I got to these guys in sort of venture capital world and the private equity world where you would talk to people that routinely are talking about $50 million, a hundred million dollar deals and in private equity like half a billion, you know billion dollar things and you talk to them and they have this very you can tell that they think differently but they have this very inquisitive way of asking questions about everything and you realize that, like the real badasses in the world, the real achievers understand that I don't know everything, but my ability to find somebody that does and get them comfortable with sharing information with me, that's the real hack. Knowing everything isn't the hack, right, that's not because it's not possible, but finding being able to relate to people and go oh, I know somebody that might know that situation or might know the answer here, and being able to tease that out and get that information and make it useful. That's the way people's, the way people are really successful, right.

Angie Colee:

Oh yeah, being resourceful, being creative and seeing connections where other people don't. It's funny, you know you spoke about your college education and how that relates to your business. I didn't start talking about it until recently because I had a lot of shame around my college education too. I actually have a master's degree. I have three degrees and my master's degree is in. It's a creative business hybrid degree, but I didn't advertise it because I just thought I didn't get it.

Angie Colee:

And it's so interesting to me now, given that I coach people in business and I help specifically creative people start to understand business, cause I went through the classes and I took all the tests and I some of them I passed by the skin of my teeth, like financial accounting, financial accounting, economics.

Angie Colee:

There are certain abstracts that I could not wrap my head around, just the way that my brain processes information. I suddenly became interested in those things when it was my own business and my own money. But while I was going through it in university I just didn't understand it. So I guess, like the point that I'm trying to make in that was that I had a lot of shame around that too. Like what kind of business coach or somebody that helps with marketing, doesn't understand business when she has a business degree, and it was like to have some compassion for myself and the different way that I learn and then to realize that there were probably other people out there like me that learn in a similar way and just need to kind of be walked through this in a different way versus like the genius guys that think differently who know?

Angie Colee:

how to put together these $50 million deals Like there's room for all of us, no matter how your brain processes, no matter what education you've got. If you like roller coasters, jump on.

Jarrod Morgan:

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 to college, like I went to the University of Florida. I just was about a year shy of graduating and gave up and needed to, wanted to join the workforce, just burnout, and next thing, you know, I'm starting a company. And next thing, you know, I'm starting a company and next thing, you know, it's kind of like I don't know, I don't need to go back and get that right and like so. And, having spent a lot of time in higher education, like I really understand because I sold to it, I was in the room with a lot of decision makers I really understand where that sits in kind of the pantheon of needs in 2024, 2025 and beyond.

Jarrod Morgan:

And it's sort of like I'm a baseball guy, so I think of like sports analogies a lot. And it's sort of like when you go to college, it's like you learn a lot about swinging a bat and the angles and the wrist movements and weight distribution and all this like science stuff. But it isn't until you actually get out of that and get out and swing the bat for real and figure out how to hit a curve ball. Do you really ever get the kind of experience that you can pass on to somebody else? And I think and so I think what you're, what you were saying there is like, yeah, you, you did all this stuff in the college, but the discomfort that you were feeling was that you were, you were finally swinging the bat on your own and once you, once you figure out how to hit the ball for real. That's why you see people that didn't go to college at all sometimes become great business people just because they figure out how to be great problem solvers Exactly.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

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

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

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 the next level. You understand that you don't have to solve every problem you personally don't. You just need to figure out how to get it solved. And the best moments in my career were the moments that I felt like I realized that I didn't have to have the right answer. I simply had to be on the right team.

Jarrod Morgan:

And so it's kind of like if, as long as you, as an entrepreneur or whatever, I saw people that that co-founder that had to leave the company one of his downfalls for years was he needed to, he was more interested in being right than he was actually winning Right, and so that meant like we weren't just trying to find the right answer, like we had. He had to be the one that said the right answer, like so, if his top Lieutenant said, hey, I think it's this, you had to sell it to him so that the top guy said it, so that everybody would actually do it was you know, and when you get, when you get past that is when you can really start to grow and as a as if you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to start a business, like you have to. You have to wrap your head around the fact that, like you know you, if the business wins, you win.

Angie Colee:

And I.

Jarrod Morgan:

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 bio was 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 I didn't need to get the credit because I was going to get it anyway, and you're if you start a business, you're going to get it anyway. Like you don't have to continue to be the Steve Jobs guy or try to be that guy. You know, does that make sense?

Angie Colee:

That makes absolute sense, because I learned something similar when I started running creative teams. Right, because before that I had this when I was an independent contractor, when I was freelancing a lot I had to be the person that came up with the ideas and pitched them, right, that's a lot of pressure in certain situations when I joined teams and I realized like, oh, I need to be the person that comes up with the idea. But when I bounce it around this room of creative people, it just gets so much like a rock being tumbled. It gets polished to perfection and this is great. And then, as I grew further and I became a senior, I started training people and then I started running teams.

Angie Colee:

I had an epiphany one day where I was like I don't have to come up with the ideas at all. That's what all these people are. They want to earn their reputation, they want to get portfolio pieces. Like I'm actually taking it away from them If I think that I have to be the top down idea person dictating how to think about this to everybody. They're going to come up with stuff I didn't even think about that. I'm going to go oh wow, I wonder how that one's going to work. And then the funniest part about all of that is because I didn't come up with any of the ideas, but I knew how to help develop the good ones that I spotted. I got credit for being the idea person anyway, and then and I shined the spotlight back on them and I would be like credit goes to this person who pitched this idea.

Jarrod Morgan:

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 how somebody said this. But there was, like you know, if we win, you guys did it. If we lose like I did it, you know, it just builds good teams that way. And if, like the, the reality, you know. Proctoru got to be a really, really big company. But the reality, like if anybody asked what my superpower was at the end of the day, if you zoomed out, like, what was the thing that made me the most successful? It was the ability to to attract really good people to want to work with me and then motivate them to do their best work and want to stay there. That was the thing that I was.

Jarrod Morgan:

It was not like most of the great things that ProctorU ever did. That was the thing that I was. It was not like most of the great things that ProctorU ever did did not come from me or my brain. They came from the brains of some really cool, talented people that I was blessed to work with and that was the thing that I got really good at. And I always joke like I didn't graduate college. But I threw a lot of parties in college too, if we're being honest and my mom gets mad when I say this but like I probably learned more navigating those social circles than most of the things I did in college, or at least as much, because I leaned on a lot of those social skills and team building and sales and all of that to help me. That helped me get a lot further in life than me just trying to be the Steve Jobs archetype, coming up with the answers myself.

Angie Colee:

Well and honestly, I think this is like the people skills being able to manage people, being able to talk to people, being able to have hard conversations if necessary, to recognize when the team dynamic is off and something's got to change. All of this is difficult stuff and in the age of AI, when everybody's just kind of outsourcing their thoughts or going well, I don't really want to deal with it. So we'll just create an automation or we'll do this. This is going to be a superpower knowing how to actually talk to people without taking it super personally.

Jarrod Morgan:

Yeah, can we talk about AI for a second? You're somebody that I would love to get some thoughts on. So you play in a space where AI is a constant conversation topic, right? Yes, and I did come from a space in tech that we talked about AI a lot more than majority portion of the world and of the working population and of industries that have not even have no idea what what it is, how it's going to affect them. They don't know what chat, gpt is, they don't know any of that stuff. They just think that when you say ai, they think terminator and robots are coming to replace us and then like five, like stock jokes that they tell and that's it. And they don't understand that that if you, if you're in, if your business exists in an industry that is going to be a laggard in that regard, you have such an advantage.

Jarrod Morgan:

But I have two businesses right now a car shop and a coatings, like a paint company, and I'm intentionally using artificial intelligence in those very blue collar spaces and I have shortened my learning curve, shortened the number of staff I need, or, if I didn't shorten the staff, like in some situations, like I've streamlined and made them smarter and faster and more efficient If you're sitting in a space where AI is not being used and you're the first mover. This is one of those moments in history where there's going to be some winners and losers in this market and there's an opportunity or, in this time period, right, there's an opportunity for you, if your industry or your business is not using artificial intelligence for you to pole vault to the front of the line before everybody else figures it out, because in five years it's going to be too late do you ever, uh watch game of thrones?

Jarrod Morgan:

I did. I you know I missed a lot of that. I don't I don't know why I didn't get on that train, but I'm I mean socially aware of what happened, right I promise it's related.

Angie Colee:

I know that that seems like it was an abrupt left turn.

Angie Colee:

But, there was a very devious character in there named Littlefinger, who was always kind of playing different groups for his own mysterious reasons that nobody ever really understood. And one day, when he was kind of called on it I don't remember the exact scene, but he basically said chaos is a ladder. And that really stuck with me and was like yeah, that's true. Every time there is something disruptive that happens, just like you said, there's going to be big winners and then there's going to be people that lose, and that's not a bad thing, right? Everything has changed in our lifetimes. We've got planes in our grandparents' lifetime. We've got women in the United States who can have bank accounts in my grandparents' lifetime and my parents' lifetime. We've got women in the United States who can have bank accounts in my grandparents' lifetime and my parents' lifetime. We have the internet and smartphones. Things are constantly changing. They can't stay the same, and if you can learn to look at this big disruption like an opportunity of like okay, what's next?

Angie Colee:

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. You know, my background is 14 years as a copywriter, a sales writer, I could easily panic because the chat GPTs of the world are meant to write copy and help you write things right. I'm not worried, first of all because I've seen what it turns out and as we're adding more and more people to the mix who aren't computer scientists, it's, it's, the average is coming down a little bit, but it's also just a tool, right? I already know how to think about all of these things strategically. So, like, if I don't have an hour to sit down and brainstorm the name of a workshop and I can have it spit out like 80 options.

Jarrod Morgan:

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 revamp the sales process of one of our businesses from top to bottom and I spent about two hours in a chat GPT thread talking about our goals, things that I was impressed with, books that I had read, that I wanted to deploy these technologies or whatever, and I probably accomplished at least three weeks worth of work in about two hours by getting the thing to parrot back to me my own thoughts but organize them in a way that it would have taken me a long time to organize them in a way that I could have given to somebody else and say I think I want to do this Right.

Jarrod Morgan:

Those are the things like, that's where it is right now. It's going to get better and the more you train those things it gets better. But, like, if you're, if you're not learning how to use those things to go faster man you are, you are falling behind. But to go faster man, you are falling behind, but you have an opportunity to be. If you're in a space where there's not a lot of that going on, you have an opportunity to, like, jump to the front of the line.

Angie Colee:

And I would say you know it depends on what you're using it for right. I'm not as familiar with AI outside of the creative industries, like marketing industry, but like I know that one thing that really helps inside marketing if you want to successfully use AI is to be really good at doing creative briefs, which a lot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around. A good AI prompt is very similar to giving a creative team a brief of what this project looks like. All right, here's who we're selling to, here's the timeline we're working on, here's the goals, here's the tone and the voice. Here's all these assets, here's the timeline we're working on, here's the goals, here's the tone in the voice. Here's all these assets, here's all these.

Angie Colee:

Like we feed it material and we say we want you to come up with 50 headlines, we want you to come up with two commercial scripts right, that's all part of a good creative brief and AI. If you, if you get really good at that process and communicating that information, it can generate some. Really I call it a really solid like junior writer draft. It's never something that I would publish live, but it'll get. It'll get your 80, 20.

Jarrod Morgan:

And think how much time that saves you, right, I mean you, you just saved yourself five rough drafts, right, and now you're you're already farther along. So I have let me give you a real world story of like how AI can be used for things that are maybe not typical, but really so. This was like a life-changing thing 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 and it's a blood cancer kind of similar to leukemia not a good outlook, right. And her particular case she was given about 18 to 24 months and it was a pretty tough diagnosis. And so, and I made some calls and I talked to a guy that I know that was in sort of the healthcare industry. He said, listen, like first of all, he said the likelihood that your mother was diagnosed by the doctor that should treat her is essentially zero. Right, you need to find the right doctor that can treat her and you need to find somebody that's treated a lot of these cases and you need to find somebody who's, like you know, worldview aligns with what you're trying to accomplish. Are they just trying to manage it? Are they trying to cure it? Are they all this kind of stuff? And he goes through this long thing and he's like you're gonna have to do a lot of research and read, read, read and you're gonna take a lot of notes and it should take you about a month and you can probably narrow it down, make a lot of phone calls and all this her he said that's the preamble that I always give people. He said but now in 2023, at the time he's like I would first tell you to go to the internet and use Chad GPT and see what Chad GPT can do for you. And so, in the span of 60 seconds, I was able to get Chad GPT to spit out two doctors that would essentially be perfect to treat my mother. By asking it two questions. I described the cancer that she had and I said I need to find the physicians that have treated more cases of this specific type of cancer than anybody else in 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 cited academic researchers on this 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 on both lists and so I said, bingo, I got two doctors and within a couple of days after that had contacted everybody, decided on one at MD Anderson, and my mother is down there getting treated. But we got word a couple of weeks ago that she is cancer-free right From the treatment that she got. That started with a chat GPT search.

Jarrod Morgan:

So when we talk about how AI is going to revolutionize the world, everyone thinks in the most like the first, like what could I get it to do right now? Right, I could write something for me, I want to write a birthday email, I want to like some different things like that. But that's an example of how shortening the distance between problem and potential solution can literally save someone's life. Yes, right, and I think when you start to think about it that way, it opens your minds up to the possibility and kind of obfuscates a little bit. That's a big word but just hides a little bit the scary part of it. Oh my gosh, it's going to replace a lot of, just going to eliminate a lot of jobs. It's probably going to create a lot of them too. Yes, right.

Jarrod Morgan:

It's going to be a net job creator and it's going to create a lot of opportunities for us to bolt forward as a human race. But we just have to figure out how to harness it To me.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

No, but I think I mean that's what I did, like I think if you, if you go back through that story, I just I didn't tell it to send my mother to like what should we do? I just said I need you to narrow this down for me, right, and by doing that, it's still left a human element and and frankly, by the way that is, that is one of the most. That is not most, it is the 100%. Sorry, I'm stammering around.

Jarrod Morgan:

That is the biggest thing that we ever debated at ProctorU and it was the biggest debate in the online proctoring world was the appropriateness of a computer deciding a student's fate and where we sort of and I'm telling you I had tours through 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 discussion about this. Where everyone sort of landed is you use the technology to make people more efficient and better, but at the end of the day, you really should make sure you don't fully eliminate the human until you're a thousand percent 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 about artificial intelligence and they're like we're trying to eliminate people. We're trying to make one person be able to do a lot more, and critical decisions are still made by a human, but it's done with the aid of technology, making them less error prone and more efficient.

Angie Colee:

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, and then it's just going to create opportunity to get deeper on subjects, to learn more, to like in my industry, we talk about being a good strategist, which is how you can recognize whether the AI is spitting out garbage or not. Did it actually understand the prompt? Cool, I understand the underlying thinking below what I was asking it to do. Did it actually meet that or not? No, so critical thinking is going to be even more important. People skills are going to be even more important, and I hope that this. You know, I saw a goofy meme the other day that was basically like I'm not about AI, like taking over my house and sleeping with my wife, like I want it to give me more time to create and to relate and to be human, and that's the way that I use it, and I was like yes, I love that.

Jarrod Morgan:

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

Angie Colee:

like let's get.

Jarrod Morgan:

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

Angie Colee:

I switched over to claude from gpt a while ago and I actually use that for the first draft of my podcast notes, although sometimes it gets a little campy and I talk to it like it's a human. It's so weird. I'm polite with it, I give it feedback as if it was a writer on my team and I don't know if this is going to work for anybody else, but the other day, when I asked it to spit out workshop titles for this thing that I was working on, so okay, this is who you are. You're Angie Coley, you're a marketing expert. You've got this particular brand. You're a little bit contrarian, but humorous and kind.

Angie Colee:

So, like, describe myself, describe my voice, gave it some resources to check me out and get to know me a little bit more in depth. All right, you're trying to come up with the name for this workshop where the attendees are going to achieve X, y and Z, so we need a short, snappy name of no more than five words, because I know that AI loves to generate titles that are like this, long, with colons, and put it in this tone that Angie has, and I think the first round I said something like her tone if I had to describe it using other popular, well-known people. It's probably like Jon Stewart, kelly Clarkson and Dolly Parton all rolled into one. A little bit snarky, a little bit. Hey, y'all Right.

Jarrod Morgan:

OK, yeah.

Angie Colee:

So the first round of results that it turned out was super campy. It was like how do y'all put on your 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 paragraph explaining its logic. Then it spit out 40 options and then it gave me another paragraph about why it thought these were strong. But it was all super campy. And so I wrote back and said, okay, good, first attempt.

Angie Colee:

Out of the ones that you submitted, I think these three are the strongest. And here's why, out of the ones that you submitted, I think these three are the strongest. And here's why, like so you know, keeping in mind that I would like more like these. And also, how can we make me not sound like a superficial caricature of myself? What else can you come up with? And so then it generated like 40 more, but then they were bland and boring and I said, okay, we probably swung the pendulum a little bit too far.

Angie Colee:

I still want personality in these titles, along the lines of these three strong ones that you submitted. But like yes, I can't remember exactly what I said, but that was how I taught. Like every iteration, I would say this is what you got right. This is what I don't like about this. Can you please try again? And eventually it got me to like five strong options, and of course, I don't have them here in 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 have taken me weeks of that on my own to come up with.

Jarrod Morgan:

Yeah, you sort of like an analogy of what you just did. There is like you've had a career of playing the violin and now you're teaching yourself to be like the conductor, right, like you're you're, you're going like 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 of yourself like that, it's it helps you understand like I treat I treat my ai, uh, friends, ai, friends like staff. Almost. I'm like hey, remember when I told you this?

Jarrod Morgan:

And they'll be like, yes, and I'll say I need you to do-do-do-do-do and it'll spit some stuff out and it's great. One of the things that you did that I think is worth calling out is somebody taught me this before and I think it works really well you have to tell AI who it is before it answers. So instead of if you just ask for, like hey, man, I need you to write me an email trying to sell this it'll just give you the most ai ish, like you know, just garbage. But if you say like so, for instance, we were doing some hiring recently and, like me, writing a job description or a job ad is just would just be the most painful thing ever. Like I love to create, but like detail creation like that, like I have so much respect for somebody like you that's a copywriter, like I, it's not in my being to do it Right. And so I went to the thing and I said you know I could have just asked it hey, I'm trying to hire an accountant and I need these things and it would have gone. But what I did was I said you are.

Jarrod Morgan:

I went and Googled and found like the number one corporate recruiting company in the country and I said you are the top executive at this company and you're known for being able to recruit the highest performing employees. Now write me. And it was like it created this masterpiece. Right, love it. And so it's like, if you tell it who it is before you, so you know if you're going to ask a question about your car which I've done that before with the car shop like wait, we can't figure this out. On a 67 Mustang, you are so-and-so the most notable da-da-da-da-da and you have read every book there is to read about mustangs. How should I fix this? And it was like here's nine suggestions. And you're like okay, that's powerful.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

Or get left behind, I guess.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

We want to get all the details. Hot dang, okay, so, uh. So the first thing, I would love 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 phrase slow smoke business. We're everywhere Facebook, youtube, Tik TOK. Um, I think we're on Friendster, napster, who knows, and so that's fun, great.

Jarrod Morgan:

By the time the show airs, we should be in season three, hopefully, of the podcast, which will be some new stuff. Also have two businesses that, if you'd like to check them out, morgan Muscle, which is a classic car restoration shop here in Alabama, where we do a lot of fun stuff. You can also find us on social media there. And, more importantly, tough Dog Coatings, here in the Southeast. We do paint and concrete coatings and we're bringing style and professionalism to an industry that oftentimes doesn't have it. So you can find us there too, and you can also find me taking blood pressure meds, because that's a whole lot of stuff to be managing, right.

Angie Colee:

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

Jarrod Morgan:

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

Angie Colee:

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 that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high-octane dose of you Can Do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick-Ass podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.