SNM226: Building a Team that can Take your Business to the Next Level with Tom Antion

Jonathan Green: Building a team that can take your business to the next level of Tom Antion on today's episode of the ServeNoMaster podcast. Announcer: Today's episode is brought to you by name Cheap. There is no better option when it comes to buying your domain names. I've been a customer for more than a decade, and it's been a dream experience. Secure your new business name today at ServeNoMaster.com name sheet. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated?

If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now. Then you've come to the right place. Welcome to ServeNoMaster podcast where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep presented live from a tropical island in the south Pacific by bestselling author, Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. Jonathan Green: Hello, welcome to ServeNoMaster podcast. I'm so excited to have Tom here today. Bring, talk about systems scaling processes for growing your business.

And this was a really important step that we often don't think about when we're starting our business. We don't record our processes. We don't write down our steps. You go, it's all in here. The problem is when we go to hire someone, it's very hard to pass that information on because we've kind of collected it like a master expert, the kind of way we built cars a hundred years ago. And we wanna start to learn the process where we can pass on to other people.

So I'm really excited to have you here today, Tom, how are you doing? Tom Antion: I'm thrilled, man, to, especially to talk to somebody what owns their own island like Johnny Depp or something but. Jonathan Green: I, I wish I owned the whole island. I just live here, but it was always my dream. You know, when I started. Building an online business. A lot of my friends then went back to offices, started hiring employees and they all work out of offices.

Now I said, I thought the whole point of this was to not have an office so that's really, what's always driven me, but I'm really excited to talk to you about some of the things you're passionate about one of the things you mentioned that's interesting to me is about, you're passionate about helping people with disabilities, help people build scholarships and showing people that things are possible. So I'd really love to start talking about that because. That gets me really excited. Tom Antion: Yeah.

Well, you know, basically I've never had a job and you talk about, uh, working from home. I'm I've never, never not worked from home. In fact, uh, 44 years, working from home and, and I actually owned a nightclub. I was the second biggest nightclub in the state. I'm in the United States. And, uh, I actually lived above the nightclub, so technically I had a nightclub in my basement. so, Jonathan Green: wow.

Tom Antion: So yeah, I'm all all about this, but you know, as I've, uh, you know, progressed, I mean, I could have really retired 22 years ago. I hit the time millionaire status about the year 2000, but I'm just. Totally crazy about doing this and what would I do? So all along, I've always thought that, uh, the internet has made great possibilities for persons with disabilities because not only can they work, they learn from home.

They can work from home and, uh, and they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Right? So, so I just, I start this program. I have the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the United States and probably the world imagine, uh, So I opened this program for scholarships, for persons with disabilities. Well, the first two people that applied were blind. I wasn't thinking this. I was thinking physical, you know, they don't have an arm or they can't walk or .

So that changed the whole thing, but I've got two of the people in the program that are doing better videos than I do, and they're blind and so very inspiring, but I had to really grow and learn about accessibility and things, and there's getting be a lot of lawsuits in the United States for sure on, um, websites that aren't accessible.

So we're really having an upper game with the accessibility stuff, but, but it's so thrilling to see these people because you know, when the, you know, I've reaching, working at home for 28 years since the internet started, I mean, I was on there right at the beginning. And now the COVID hit. People are like, oh, you can work from home. I didn't know that so, so it's, uh, becoming more mainstream, but, uh, I'm just thrilled to be able to help these people. Jonathan Green: Yeah.

When I grew up, a lot of my friends were deaf. I went to college near DC where Galu dad is the big deaf college. Most people are taught if you're born deaf or blind or with a large, most disabilities. So I like, Hey, you get on government assistance and that's it for life. And. It's really exciting to see that the Internet's the great equalizer now there's opportunities where you can do amazing things.

If you all hear the stories of people that went from home was successful online or from out of jail to successful online. And it's because you don't need a huge amount of money to start. I remember my sister was like, oh, I wanna open a store. And I was like, how much does that cost? And the numbers are astronomical. And the goal. For like a physical store in fashion or grocery store is 3 to 5% profit for a year. And I was like, what?

I would, if I only made it 3%, if I put it a hundred dollars, made 103, I'd be so upset on a project. Tom Antion: I know. I mean, Jonathan Green: I'd be devastated at the loss, like, and it's this entirely different world where. I'm not as quite, and maybe you're a little older to me. I'm not sure. But when I grow in the eighties, nineties, , you know, I'm 41 now.

So, but I remember if you wanted start a business, you go to the bank, you had to have a huge business plan and you ask for a $25,000 loan. And that's how you started a business. Now you don't have to spend a huge amount of money. You don't have to get someone's permission and you don't have to start it with so much debt, but. The old traditional model. And then he is like, you're hoping to make 3% of that back every year.

And I guess in 30 years you that's even, but Tom Antion: That's, that's crazy. Now I'm happy that those people exist when I want to go buy something in the store, but none of my students are gonna go that way. And thank you for the compliment. I, I just turned 67 this past, uh, July so I think I got you beat a little bit there. Uh, but yeah, Jonathan Green: yeah. Tom Antion: But 97% profit when you're in the digital world.

So, I started selling eBooks back around 2000 or maybe nine, uh, 99 and, uh, it's 97% profit, just a little credit card or PayPal fees or all the new places they got in L Z and, and Stripe and all that. But, but you can mess up really bad and still make money at 97% profit. Jonathan Green: Yeah.

The thing about the physical world, like one of my neighbors here, he owns a restaurant and when he told me that my heart started racing, that's my, that's my least, that's my coolest type of business to own scariest type. Because you have to guess every day, how many people are gonna order chicken, how people are gonna order pizza, people, order burgers. If you, you don't have enough, people are mad. If you order too much, you lose the money on that. And. Terrifies me.

So that's such a world that's so different. Tom Antion: I've lived that for six years Jonathan Green: and that's , Tom Antion: and, and not only that, uh, I'd go out at the dumpster late at night, and there'd be a case of cheese sitting out there that some employee put out there, that's gonna pick it up and take it home after work, you know so, and then not only that, I was in two gun fights and knife fights. Uh, this was in West Virginia.

I know you, uh, Or from the United States. So , you know, the reputation of West Virginia and, uh, uh, there was one sheriff in one state police for 300 square miles. And the two gun fights we had John , the sheriff comes out the next day.

I laugh about it now, but I mean, I lived in, in, uh, very much high danger for six straight years, but the, the sheriff came out the next day and he said, Hey, Tom, I heard you had some excitement out here. I said, yeah, he says, does anybody get hurt? I said, well, they didn't hit me. I don't know. I haven't seen those guys. He thought about for a second. He said, all right, be safe, you know? Take it easy. that was the whole investigation.

That was two gun fights. Jonathan Green: Yeah. It's just another reason why working online is so powerful. And like you said, so many people, like when I started online in 2010 and when I started traveling the world in 2013, they were like, no, you need an office. You need the security of a job. How many people have found now. Job security is a myth. Like as soon as the chips are down, your boss is like, ah, sorry, we gotta let you go.

And even like companies, I remember I listened to an interview with a company that's like, oh, at the start of the pandemic, we had to let a bunch of our employees go and then it was our most successful year ever. And I was like, well, that's not cool. That's awful. Like you're celebr. I was like, you, why did you, you didn't need to fire one if was your best year ever.

But that's the thing is that we have this sense and I think it comes for education, right? We're taught to think limit our creativity believe going into a job. And for me, when I graduated college, I said, I'm so excited. Cause I remember the recruiter said soon as you graduate, we'll help you get a good job. So I go into the office to help you get jobs.

I look around, I'm like Tom Antion: Starbucks, Jonathan Green: Everyone here about the school, everyone well it's I wish they go, oh, here's a link to a new website called monster.com. They got a ton of cool jobs, good luck. And they didn't help me with my resume. And I looked around and I was like, oh my gosh, everyone here. Went to college here. There are people that never left campus. It's the same as the tour guides.

And I was like, oh, you've never been in the real world. You guys, you're the ones who couldn't get a job. And that was when I realized that we are told all these stories, right. That like other people are gonna help us or they'll help you find a job, but they don't. And they exactly, you get a job at Starbucks. They go, okay.

That's another person who got a job after college and what a college student, Tom Antion: that's a, that's a total disingenuous thing that the colleges are putting out. Even law schools got sued here in the United States for lying about the, uh, their graduation and, uh, placement rate.

Because a lot of the people that graduated law, several hundred thousand dollars in debt got Jobs, but had nothing to do with the law degree, but they still, the law schools still put that on their, uh, thing as, oh yeah, they got a job. oh, great. You know, uh, they're competing it's for jobs at Starbucks. Jonathan Green: yeah, they take credit. When they didn't even help you. And that's really the thing I find education it's so expensive now. Like education has grown.

I think the price of education since 1980 has gone up 2000% while inflation's only gone up. Like, I think 10% of that. So it's just, education's massively expensive. Harvard's the rich has the most cash in the bank of any company in America they have like 10 times more money than apple, who I thought was the richest company. And 10 times more money than Tesla. They have 54 billion just in cash. Tom Antion: Right exactly. Jonathan Green: Not including their investments, just sitting a saving account.

I'm like, wait a minute. Maybe I should start a university. And what's interesting is that, you know, we, I sell education. We sell education courses. It's a thousand, $2,000 and people go, oh, I don't know if I'm making my money back. I. Did you make your money back when you put $200,000 into college? And now I think college is 40 million, four kids.

Tom Antion: I have a college rip off quiz on my site and, uh, the things that they're doing, I'm, I'm also a consumer advocate. I have a TV show in development, Hollywood called Scam Brigade. Cause I go after bad, you know, there's so many scammers online. It's pretty easy to find one, but, uh, the the, the, uh, the, the. The college people would be in jail. If they weren't colleges, they playing games with the textbooks. So you have to buy retail and you can't resell them.

Inflating grade point averages to make it look like they're doing a better job. However, the testing is showing that the people are dumber, but they have a higher grade point average. So all that's just two of the seven things I have on the, the quiz. But yeah, so I'm against that. I mean, in my school, 19,000 bucks retail, and then if you're a military first responder nurse and, uh, there's one other category. We have a 50% scholarship.

And then you actually have a skill in, in six, seven months to go out and get started and actually make money. So yeah, I'm totally against the, the world has been brainwashed for higher education for a long time. Jonathan Green: Yeah. And I meet people like I meet people with degrees, like a social media degree and they're always the worst at social media.

And I say, Tom Antion: yeah, Jonathan Green: It's kind of like when I meet someone who did social media for a big company, That doesn't track results. I said, oh, we don't do that. If you do social media for me, we have to see follower gains. We have to see sales. It has to work. You can't just post Tom Antion: exactly Jonathan Green: ironic stuff for Wendy's for my company, because we're actually a profit driven company. And it's interesting Tom Antion: exactly.

Jonathan Green: Legacy companies don't understand social media at all. They spend huge amounts of money on advertising. You know, there's the whole thing now about what percentage of people on Twitter or bots, I've never met a person who uses Twitter. I don't know anyone who like , I don't know why people on the news think it's news. I find that fascinating. And I'm like, yo, it's probably all bots. I certainly don't use Twitter. Tom Antion: That's how they communicate, you know?

And, uh, but yeah, it doesn't mean any money in my bank account. That's that's the bottom line. So, uh, yeah. And you can swing a dead cat, we say and run into a social media expert, you know, but, and, and I don't look that great on social media. I gotta tell you, but here's the, the reason everybody at my level, the money is in email.

So everything I do is to get people the heck off of social media, onto my email list that I control because mark Zuckerberg can turn one dial and, you know, you disappear off the face of the earth. So, uh, people, I call it a necessary evil, all the social media, because it's, uh, Uh, they own everything. Well, I don't operate, I didn't work, you know, seven days a week for all these years to, to have, uh, them get richer, you know?

So, uh, email is still king and in my book. Jonathan Green: You're preaching to the choir. I have the exact same conversations. I was in a deal, a book deal with a major publisher and they go, how many Twitter followers do you have? And I go, uh, oh, I don't like where this conversation is going. It's like, Tom Antion: right. Jonathan Green: You you're in a conversation with someone and you suddenly realize you're trying to do a seven figure, deal with a more on.

Because Tom Antion: exactly Jonathan Green: there's no worse way to access the value of a company than their Twitter followers. I can't I was like, that's literally the worst metric I've ever heard of. I was like, do you care how many customers they have in my database or subscribers? He goes, no, we don't care about that. And I said, wait, what I said, do you care about revenue or gross sales or any of those things? He goes, no, no. Twitter followers.

And I said, oh boy, Tom Antion: That's why they're, that's why they're failing. Like crazy. They're dropping like flies. Uh, the major publishers, I had one major publishing book out of 25 books I've written. And, uh, it was the worst .

Jonathan Green: Yeah, Tom Antion: It was a, and it was an internet book and it was 18 months from the time I dropped the manuscript to the time it showed up, which it was obsolete before it went on you know, so I could have made hundreds of thousands just blowing them off, even though I got a great big advance is just, was just a nightmare. Cause they're just too slow where people like you and I can, you know, uh, make decisions on a dime.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. That's one of the places people get lost. I think it's a form of prestige. They wanna say they're with a publisher. They wanna say who wrote the forward it's it's the same thing.

Sometimes there's things that we do in business because we wanna tell our parents, we did it or tell our, we think it makes us sound better. like, oh, if I have a doctor in front of my name, even though it's like a doctorate and something completely irrelevant to what I do, you see all these people that do that all the time, everyone calls them doctor and you think they're a medical doctor, like a doctor of education and it's not the same.

Tom Antion: Mm-hmm Jonathan Green: Unfortunately, but we get, and it's like, well, you paid half a million dollars to have people call you doctor. And then I've bet people who go, oh, doctors, just my nickname. I was like, you could do that. like what a savings Tom Antion: I got the telephone doctor just wears a lab coat. Yeah. And then has a big business on teaching people, phone skills. Jonathan Green: and everyone calls me. Yeah. Dr. Telephone and that's, it's so fascinating. We get caught up.

Yeah. Like, oh, I wanna be, cuz I've done a lot in self-publishing. That's where I build a lot in my career and a lot of people go, oh, I'd wanna be with traditional publisher. So how long have you been sending out manuscripts? 10 years. Uh, I got some bad news. And my favorite story is that 17 publishers read Harry Potter and said, this is trash and said, no, Tom Antion: mm-hmm . Jonathan Green: And all 17 of those people still have their jobs.

And I have a rule in my company. If you lose me a billion dollars, you're instantly fired. Tom Antion: Yeah. Yeah. Jonathan Green: Like Tom Antion: That's a good rule to have. Jonathan Green: How could you just? Tom Antion: Yeah, they did the same thing a long time ago with gone with the win. They submitted it and it got rejected everywhere, you know, so, so, uh, yeah. Uh, it's, it's better to keep things in house where you're in control of things. That's what we're all about.

You know, people like you and I are, are just, we wanna be in control because we make decisions based on logic, common sense. And, uh, And that's the, these, these big companies. I mean, I, I can't, they don't really like me because I, like, I got best of the web in ink magazine for a website that cost at the time, 650 bucks and it beat three other million dollar websites. And the, uh, panel of CEOs that were doing the evaluations said, well, why'd this guy win?

Well, the site was easy to navigate and we could find what we wanted quickly. That's all they cared about, you know? And so big companies really don't like me. They, they. They'd have to take a two week committee meeting to like take a leak or something, you know? So , so that's not my thing. Jonathan Green: Yeah. That's in my experience, the biggest problem as a company gets bigger, the decision making gets slower.

Like when I talk to people that are in business Tom Antion: and there's more idiots involved all along the way. Jonathan Green: yeah. They talk about like a three year buying cycle and, you know, education and medical. It's like, oh, I've been dealing with the hospital. We've been working on a deal for two and a half years. What, what if, like, imagine, right. There's a new lifesaving device. The hospital is like, we're gonna think about this for three years. What, why does it take so long?

And that's exactly, that's the advantage of being a smaller company is our agility, our ability to adapt, to make big decisions. And it's a lot of times people think the answer to problems is money, but you often don't know. I remember I was at meeting where all these guys were members of a really expensive bass, right? You all, you had to be a millionaire to join. And I talked to a guy, I said, well, how much do you pay for an optum page?

He goes, oh, it starts at $25,000. I go, I wanna be your Optum page guy. cause, cause I know you're paying 50 times markup. Tom Antion: Yeah, exactly. Jonathan Green: I was like, did you used to work in the space shuttle program?

Were you the guy that was buying Tom Antion: the hammers that were Jonathan Green: yeah, gravity hammers and the, the, the pen that works in space instead of the pencil the Russians use, like, and that's the problem is that money and that's the equalizer, I guess, is that money's not always the solution cause sometimes people put a lot of money. I remember one of my first clients, 12, 13 years ago, cool music store. Their website was amazing. Really looked cool.

All these features, unfortunately it was built entirely in JavaScript between Google couldn't see it. They wouldn't appear at any search results. And they spent a lot of money and I go, guys, I got good news and bad news. The good news is your website's the coolest website I've ever seen. The bad news is no one else will ever see it. And it's so devastating cuz they didn't know. Right. You don't know you've done something wrong cause it looks amazing.

The JavaScript's whole deal is that they remember they like password where they like scramble the coat so no one can read us doesn't catch. Yeah, it's cool. No one can steal my website, but also no one can find it. And that's really what's devastating is that we think we have to spend a huge amount of money or we lack agility, but I do wanna talk, we've gone down a rabbit hole cause you're so interesting. I love chatting with you.

I'm having a really good time, but I would love to talk a little bit about the process of scaling or the process of how to recruit people. Cuz this is something that I run into a lot. Um, I'll give you an example right now I'm working on a massive TikTok campaign. It's going really well for me. I have a very small number of TikTok followers. I found three people in the early twenties that are geniuses at it.

Tom Antion: Mm-hmm, , Jonathan Green: They're really good at one thing. They're amazing at it. And we're partnering together because they have a lot of skills, but they don't know how to build products. They don't how to do the launch part. Tom Antion: Right. Jonathan Green: I and build email list. I'm like, oh, I know how to do that and their excitement is so infectious, but there's this idea.

Oh, being an expert at TikTok or being an expert, social media is really hard, but it's actually, in my opinion, it's a commodity cause there's tons of people under 18 or under 25 that are really, really good at that stuff and findable. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your thoughts, about how do you find these people? What's the right approach? Cause I've heard a lot of different approaches.

Sometimes you go to a college and look for interns cause everyone at college needs those credits. What are some places to find someone? And how can you tell. If someone actually is any good at what they're talking about. So tell me a little bit about your process. I'd love to hear it. Tom Antion: My process is pretty much in your face and chances are you couldn't use it anywhere else than what I'm gonna tell you about. So there's two places that, that we recruit.

One, um, I don't know if you have Craigslist on your island out there, but doesn't really matter. Um, Because Craigslist is the only place I could do what I'm gonna tell you right now, because it would never get accepted anywhere else. However, when you hear the results of it, you're, , you'll say, huh? That's worked out pretty good. So I write these really rotten mean nasty ads, but it does have a very specific subject line or title to the ad or headline. And here it is.

Paid internship. Paid internship. And the reason that works so great is because prior to me doing that, I would get these 55 year old MBAs that are out of work that can't even turn a computer on wanting to work for me. And I don't need that. I mean, I, I need young, tech savvy kids unknown. One of my nicknames is the king of KCHE, cuz my email goes KCHE when an order comes in and it we've got turn it off.

It gets so annoying after a while. And so I wanted that to be my ring tone on my cell phone. And so I thought, you know, it's gonna take me all day to figure this out. And one of the girls in the office came in and took my cell phone, went away for 10 minutes, came back and it goes, KCHE. Find out how she did it. No. Do I care? No. Does it go KCHE? Yes. all right.

So these young people have all these skills, so I don't get the 55 year old MBA applying. No MBA is gonna apply for an internship, so that wipes them out of my trouble. I don't have to, you know, sit there and listen to them knowing I don't want them or any of that. So I only get young people. All right. Then the first part of the ad is building up. Okay.

Work for an internationally known big shot multi-millionaire internet guy, and you're gonna learn all this stuff and I'd list out all this stuff.

They're gonna learn email marketing and all this stuff, but then after I suck them in the bottom part says, Guess what if you're a worthless slug, you know, you're gonna have great opportunity here, but if you're a worthless slug that doesn't care about your work, if the owner, if Tom doesn't throw you out of here on your head, the other good employees that work here will. So, and so you couldn't get away with that anywhere except Craigslist, but guess what?

Everybody that applied for the ad were the type of attitude. I'll show this guy. I care about my work. I'm good at my work. And I'll show him. I've had people here 13 years, 14 years from, uh, all came from that ad. So that's the first place. Second place is we, uh, recruit from high schools, not colleges, colleges, there's too much stuff going on. The kids have too much autonomy. They're all drunk all the time. No, I don't need that.

Um, so high schools, but here's the one lesson, uh, Jonathan, you can't just go down to the high school and say, I want some kids at least, at least that's what the, the officer told me at the police station. so, so what you do is first of all, um, you use, you, you go to a blue collar high school, not a ritzie neighborhood high school, because they have those kids have more money than you do, and they don't need you.

You go to a blue collar high school and you call them up and you look for the guidance counselor or some subs. They have a computer club, uh, and they all know who the little geeks are. Okay. That just are crazy about the computer and the, um, uh, these kids are thrilled to death to have a chance to work with computers rather than cutting grass or flipping burgers, you know, uh, all summer.

So you gotta tell 'em, uh, you have jobs for evening, weekend, and summer, cause you can't compete with the school year. And like I said, these guys guys' counselors know who all the little geeks are. You, you want the kid, Jonathan, that's never gonna get a date in his entire life. That's the kid. That's the kid that you want. And I'll tell you what I recruited these kids. In fact, the first kid that I recruited in 1997, just sold a company called pluto.tv.

I don't know if you've ever heard of, it's kind of like a Hulu or Netflix. I started this kid. Jonathan Green: Yeah, I've heard of it. Tom Antion: I started him. He just sold it for 340 million dollars to Viacom. It's all in Forbes. You can see, he wrote an article on Forbes giving me credit for starting him in as a thing.

So you're doing these kids a favor showing them entrepreneurship right off the bat and there so tech savvy in two seconds, like I said, this girl did something for me. It would've taken me all day to figure out as an old. So that's, uh, and, and here's the thing I heard one of your other guests talking about, like, you know, longevity with people. Yeah. My Craigslist people are older, uh, but the younger people, my psyche is the time we spend together.

I'm gonna do enormous things for you. All right, I'm gonna do enormous things. Get you breaks that you would've never had in a million years and teach you stuff, but you're gonna do great things for my company while you're here and then I'll replicate it into the future after you leave. See? So I don't expect them to get a gold watch. People don't stay 30 years anywhere. They're lucky if 30 minutes, some company doesn't buy you out and kick you out, you know?

So that's my two things Craigslist with really mean rotten ads and then recruiting. Young kids out of high school that are super tech savvy. And then I test them out. I everybody's on a 90 day trial and, uh, I don't give them keys to the, the shopping cart right off the bats. And I wanna make sure that they do it on time and was the work good? Doesn't mean it has to be perfect cause I'm trying to learn, teach them.

Uh, and then, um, the, uh, the thing is, is I don't pay the remote workers by the hour. I pay them by the job because you and I both know they'll be on TikTok 99% of that hour and give me 1% and still charge me. See? So I, that drives me freaking crazy, cuz I grew up in a time where work ethic meant something. Well, it it's not so much nowadays.

So, so I only pay them by the job if they supposed to put, uh, five webpages up. Well, if they're, I can see that if they did it, is it on time and are they accept? Boom, then they get paid. So that's my, um, that's my hiring process. Jonathan Green: You just dropped Tom Antion: you had taken deep breath Jonathan Green: last, next . I'm like, which I'm like, which one do I wanna talk about? I don't wanna talk about all of it.

I, I will say I'm a huge fan of Craigslist is how I started getting all my first clients cause everyone on Craigslist is a buyer. Tom Antion: Right. Right. Jonathan Green: No one goes to Craigslist to research. So I love that. I love the stuff about college students, the high school students, instead of college students. I love all that. That's gold. And what I wanna dig into is this idea of process. And when you hire someone task based, cause what I found very interesting.

When I worked in traditional companies is that they only measured hours. And I said, well, I remember I last place I worked was a top 20 university, really, really, really well known if I said the Navy note instantly top 20 university of America. And I remember they gave me a job. They said, this will take about six months and I was done in 30 minutes. First thought was, oh no. Cause I, my, one of my weaknesses is I don't know how to slow roll.

Tom Antion: Right. Get the job done. Jonathan Green: I was like, there's someone cheer. There's someone here that spun a 30 minute task in into six months. That's, that's a gift to, to do that. They basically were doing one minute work per day. And I ran into a lot of problems, actually ran into a lot of conflict with my co-workers, my bosses, because it made them all look bad. Tom Antion: Mm-hmm Jonathan Green: Because they gave me these assignments. They would give me assignments.

They thought no one could do. They go. We wanna do a class trip that specifically has to do with this company. And your budget is zero. They go, you can't spend a penny. And I put it to, I call I found a factory that used. Something made by the company. They wanted me to use that was near us. And I go and they go, well, how are you gonna get there? You can't charge for transport.

And I go, it turns out we have a satellite doctor's office. That's part of our school, right next door to it. We can take the shuttle for free. And my boss was about to flip the table she was, and to meet two hours and I already, I'd already spoken to the manager of the factory. They go, we don't give tours and I, who we are. They go, we'll give you a tour. And it's, that's the problem with measuring time. Because you don't reward success.

Like my employees, I'm very clear. As long as our tasks are done for the week, the first thing people always ask me is, do I have to work the same hours as you? Like, I don't care. I care if you get the job done, if it's done well, here's how I'll measure you. These are the tasks I want done. If the tasks are done on time, you're head of schedule, then I'm happy.

Like I have, you know, after we record this episode, it goes to the video editor and it goes to Tanya. It's more organized than me, as long as the episodes go out in time. And I'm able to tell you a week in advance when your episode is coming out and send you clips that you can share or not share, but you have the option, then I'm happy. That's a metric, right. And as long, and I like to be weeks ahead of schedule.

I don't care if she, she doesn't work Friday through Monday night. She only works Tuesday to Thursday. Okay. I don't care. The job is done, but traditional companies are about, you know, the clock stamp in stamp out. it's very good that you're talking about this, cause this is a mindset that people miss is that what's more important.

The hour someone works for the job getting done and I wanted to dial into one other thing you said, which is very important, is that there's employees don't stay forever anymore. It's really something. I believe it's something I notice. I do have some employees have gonna be four or five years, but I don't expect them to be with me for 20 years.

But the important thing is that when you bring someone who's really good at something, they take their expertise and turn into a process or it's written down and then the next employee can then implement it. So you did mention that. So can you talk a little bit about that, about how you record a process or a system so that when someone leaves the knowledge isn't lost with them, that's like the big fear of the brain drain. Oh no.

The one person knows how to upload the podcast is gone . Tom Antion: So you don't write, so you said write it down. All right. But, uh, I wanna talk about one of the greatest types of software ever invented on earth, and that is screen capture, video.

I have been using that since the year 2, 22 years now, for all kinds of purposes made a fortune with it, but, or give somebody a written process, uh, you know, not, especially in today's atmosphere that, you know, people are more visual and they wanna see stuff. So we do a screen capture video of the process and we can do a transcript if, if need be, but it's, uh, it's so much faster for me to sit down. And uh, say, okay, here's the piece of software.

Here's how you open it. Here's where you click and here's what you got a watch for. And, uh, let me know if you have any questions , it's done instead of writing out a whole thing, that's got a be grammatically correct, because I don't wanna look like an idiot, you know, so I just do a screen capture video and save him and the new guy or girl, uh, sees it or whatever they happen to be nowadays and it comes in and, uh, watches it.

Oh, I see that. Yeah, no problem. And boom, it's done without me, you know, having to, to watch 'em like a Hawk, that's it? Jonathan Green: yeah. That's, that's great. Tom Antion: That's simple. Jonathan Green: I mean, I know I said write it down too. That's how I do everything now. Is that what I, if you try and write it down and you miss one step. The whole thing breaks down.

But if you shoot a video, if you missed the, you didn't realize was hard, was always in there. Tom Antion: It's not gonna work. And you say, oh geez, I forgot. You gotta do this. Don't forget this. And they see it right there. Okay. So that's, uh, that's pretty much it, nothing, nothing fancy about it. Although the software is, has been developed over many years and it's amazing, uh, uh, we use Camtasia there's screen flow and there's other ones, but, uh, Camtasia is we've.

Jonathan Green: Yeah, it's been, it's amazing. How easy it is to create a video record now Tom Antion: mm-hmm Jonathan Green: It used to be much harder. Like in the past, I'd have to record the video, edit the video, render the video, upload it. Now there's tools where I can record and automatically uploads and gives me a link, which I love cause that's how I give feedback as well. Like if someone says me something, oh, is this working?

I can shoot a two minute video or like write a 20 minute email. So I do love that. It's a really great piece of vice she. Tom Antion: Yeah. Loom is out there now. I think I've heard you talk about loom, you know? Jonathan Green: Yeah. I'm a huge loom user because for exactly that reason is that I don't have to go through those other processes of saving it, rendering it, uploading it. That always takes extra time. And especially now the Internet's gonna so fast.

My new house, the internet, we have gigabit internet here. I'm like what I didn't. I thought we wouldn't have that. My internet last year during the day was 0.01 megabytes. So I only had internet from midnight to 6:00 AM. So I'm used to like working with a really, and I call it the paradise tax. Everyone was like, why do you work at night?

I'm like, oh, there's no, during the day here, I don't know where it goes, but the, when the sun comes out like a vampire, it's gone. Tom Antion: That's crazy. Jonathan Green: Now they installed the internet and the guy says, yeah, the problem is all of your wifi devices. Can't handle internet this fast. So when I run a test on my computer, it's, I'm not able to get the full speed. I was like, this is insane. It's so fast. And it's.

That's why I love exactly the ability to shoot a video and send it to someone very quickly. Cause it's often hard to there's nuance to things where showing it like a picture of thousand. Tom Antion: Yeah. There's so many nuances would be back and forth with five emails rather than one, two minute video, you know? So, so that's what I do. Jonathan Green: I love it. This has been a lot of really good advice. I appreciate time. I know your time's very valuable.

Well, I don't wanna take all your time. We try to keep the episodes manageable for people. Short attention spans. I try to keep them under 30 minutes. I know sometimes I see a two hour episode go, oh no, I don't have two hours to focus. It's longer than star wars.

It's only 90 minutes, but so the where's the best place for people can learn more about, you learn more about what you do, how you help people, how you develop systems, how you high people, all this great stuff you shared. I know people learn more from me. Tom Antion: My podcast called screw the commute based on the fact I never had a job, actually I did apply for a job once Jonathan, it said it had a 4O1K.

And I thought, man, that's a great starting salary, 401,000, but get that job. So screw the commute.com is, uh, we're at 630 episodes now. And, uh, there's atleast 150 to 175 of them that are training, complete training, just me telling you how to do stuff. And then the rest are interviewed. So, so that's probably the best place to screw the commute.com. It'll lead you to all my, I have a mentor program I have at school and all that. Jonathan Green: That's great.

So guys that screw the.com, we'll make sure to put it in the show notes and to put it in the link below for wherever you're listening to. Tom Antion: I got a freebee, I got a freebee form too. If you wanna give them, give them something that's called, uh, Jonathan Green: yep. Tom Antion: How to automate your business. Jonathan Green: Yes. Tom Antion: And just one of the tips in your, in this book has saved me.

We've figured it out seven and a half million keystrokes, just one of the tips. So it's how I run the whole show on cheap and free software and stuff. So, uh, it's uh, screw the commute.com/. Free and you can, uh, pick up a copy of that for no charge. Jonathan Green: Perfect. I love free books. That's one of my favorite things. I'll make sure to put that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time.

This was a great episode. It was really cool. Hanging out with you and hearing about all your adventures and everyone after you've listened to every episode of my podcast, go and listen to Screw the Commute. It's got over 600 episodes right now for you to enjoy. And that's awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Tom Antion: My pleasure. Announcer: Thanks for listening to today's episode making that first dollar online. Doesn't have to be daunting. I've got you covered.

Get my free guy on how to make your first thousand dollars online right now @servemaster.com/1k Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the ServeNoMaster podcast. Make sure you subscribe. So you never miss another episode. We'll be back next week with more tips and tactics on how to escape the rat race. Please take a moment to leave a review @servenomaster.com slash iTunes. It helps the show grow and more listeners means more content for you. Thanks again. And we'll see you next week.