Jason Greenwood: Founder of Greenwood Consulting

^{Joe Fox (00:02.495)}
Hey, everyone, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the Grow Wave podcast, retain grow thrive. This is season two, which I'm very excited to announce. And I'm even more excited to announce that I've got one of my personal good friends, mentors and an absolute powerhouse in the ecommerce industry. Not to mention the B2B space, my good friend, Jason Greenwood. Jason, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you, mate?

_{Jason (00:29.334)}
Mate, I am so happy to be here. I don't know if I'm a mentor to you or you're a mentor to me, but anyways, I've so appreciated your friendship over the years, started out as more of a professional friendship and then evolved into much more than that. that's one of the things I absolutely love about this industry is people that start out, maybe you meet them through the industry, maybe you meet them at an event or something like that, and then they turn into lifelong friends. So I cherish our friendship and I'm just super thrilled to be here. Thank you so much.

^{Joe Fox (00:55.262)}
Absolutely, mate. And I feel like there's a ton of commonalities that we have, you know, not just in business, but obviously in our personal lives and our wives and friends. And we get to catch up all over the globe, which is pretty bloody cool in my book. yeah, definitely agree. This industry is amazing. Speaking of which, mate, I know that you've just been on a whirlwind, bloody to us. So I'm not sure if you're calling from back home or you still overseas or what's the plan?

_{Jason (01:24.35)}
Nope. This is my third week back now and yeah, it's been a wild ride. The last month and a half has been insane. Went to Chicago for B2B Online Chicago, flew straight to the UK for IRX Birmingham. And then we had an eight, eight country tour while we were there. I took my wife along with me. We traveled eight countries. We toured right around Europe. We went to also went to Morocco. We also went to Turkey while we were there. Went to Italy.

We went to France, we went to a few other countries while we were there. So was was a whirlwind trip, mix of business and pleasure. We did a four day Mediterranean cruise while we were there. Started off in Istanbul, Turkey, went down to Corfu, Greece, then Bari, Italy, then Trieste, Italy. Caught a high speed train from Trieste to Venice. Spent a night in Venice having dinner there, which was lovely. Yeah. So we, it was a whirlwind the last month and then get back.

very, very busy, lots going on, lots of cool client engagements, trying to put out still consistently, even while I was away on my trip, still put out three podcast episodes a week, to have enough in the pipe to be able to still put out my three podcasts a week during the four and a half weeks we were away. And then I've got five more conferences I'm gonna be speaking at this year all around the United States and then flying down to Melbourne as well for the B2B e-commerce association, B2B e-commerce world in Melbourne later this year.

^{Joe Fox (02:27.869)}
Nice.

_{Jason (02:48.462)}
2025 has actually been from, not only from my business, personally, professionally, it's been the busiest year in a really, really long time, but man, so fulfilling, lots of cool conversations happening, lots of people panicking about AI, but lots of people embracing the opportunity that AI presents for their businesses as well. Man, it's all going on. It's super exciting. It's super exciting to see platforms like GrowWave and other platforms in the market really embracing AI.

bringing practical AI into their platforms to make it easier for their merchant clients to leverage the power of AI in their businesses without having to figure out how to inject AI into their customer journeys or their backend processes or whatever it might be. Man, there's just a lot happening. I'm just excited. I've been doing this 25 years and you'd think after all this time, I'd be sick of this industry.

^{Joe Fox (03:35.644)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (03:44.475)}
You

_{Jason (03:44.703)}
I actually, I'm more excited about our industry today than ever before. It's, just so awesome to be in this industry.

^{Joe Fox (03:51.325)}
Yeah, I have to agree. And I mean, I think, you know, to that point of you being in this industry for 25 years, and I'm going to backpedal in a second, because I'd love for everyone to understand what that journey looks like now, because I know, you know, you are hands down the authority in B2B, ecom now it's like, you know, by a long shot, the e commerce edge podcast is massive, you know, you said you're putting out three episodes a week, which is just

Mind blowing. can't even imagine recording that much content. It's once again, you are the mentor to me in that space, but Jason, tell me a little bit more. You know, there was some really good points that I want to unpack here, but just for the audience to understand, like we understand where you are now, the leading authority and B2B. It's not even a question in e-comm. So talk me through what that journey has been like, because I know we've had some commonalities on the agency side.

the brand side, we've both been in, you know, the ANZ region heavily and now in the US region heavily and vice versa. So I'd love for the audience just to understand, you know, a little bit about what that journey's looked like for you. And, and in particular, the way I want to frame it, Jason, because, you know, I think whilst you are 100 % the leader in the, in the B2B space, that's without a question.

your insight and knowledge into B2C and D2C, in my opinion, is still a lot stronger than a lot of the leading voices in this space. So I'd love to understand, you know, what's the journey been like to get here and why the big focus on B2B from your side.

_{Jason (05:34.872)}
Totally. So you're right. You know, I would say for the first good half of my career was totally focused on retail e-commerce. It was totally focused on retail brands, retail Omni-Com, retail experiences, customer journeys, all about B2C and D2C brands and how they could digitalize their whole businesses. know, not just the customer facing sides of their businesses, but how could they

^{Joe Fox (05:56.968)}
Yes.

_{Jason (06:02.082)}
bring digital transformation to their whole business, making themselves more efficient, more productive, helping teams get more value and more fulfillment out of what they're doing inside the business and contributing value back to the world. That was like the first half of my career. That's what it was. And I had my own pure play e-commerce B2C business at the start of my career. For seven years, I ran my own B2C e-commerce pure play where we were importing

product from overseas, we're warehousing it locally in Auckland and then shipping it all around the ANZ region. So absolutely, you're right. You know, that first part of my career was so heavily focused on retail. But I would say for the latter half of my career, especially as I started to get into the agency world and the agency environment really, really heavily, as I look back on that now, every single project that was the most complex, the most interesting,

the most challenging, with the most complex tech stacks, with the most challenging sales cycles, with the most complex product sets, with the most complex customer relationships. Every single one of those were B2B projects. So projects with manufacturers and distributors, whether that be a D2C brand that had established a wholesale channel and we were helping them do that, or they were originally a B2B player that really either was a manufacturer or distributor and decided

^{Joe Fox (07:07.759)}
Yes, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (07:15.526)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Jason (07:23.97)}
to add a D to C channel, a direct to consumer channel, going either direction or whether they were just a pure play B2B business and they wanted to digitally transform. When I look back on my career, those were always the most fun for me because they were the hardest and they were the most complex. And so when I think about that and also when I think about my personality traits and when I think about my skills and my history in the industry, they were almost all not marketing focused. They were tech and ops focused.

^{Joe Fox (07:38.055)}
Yes. Yes.

_{Jason (07:52.142)}
So I started out and I was always focused on solution architecture, enterprise architecture. was always focused on process design, org design, data design. I was always really focused on that side of e-commerce, not so much the pixel perfect, pretty design stuff or the really heavy customer experience stuff. I never worked in the digital marketing space apart from project managing digital marketing projects or where digital marketing overlap.

^{Joe Fox (07:52.304)}
Mmm, yeah.

_{Jason (08:19.032)}
with the tech side of architecture and I needed to implement digital marketing technology as part of the tech stack like a CDP or marketing automation platform or whatever it might be, that's where it intersected with my world. But I'm not, although I'm a marketer of my personal brand, I guess you could say, that's not the background. I was never an SEO expert. was never a CRO expert. I was never into that side of the industry. And as a result of that,

^{Joe Fox (08:38.479)}
Yes.

_{Jason (08:44.856)}
The most B2C and D2C projects still even today are led by marketing teams. That's the, you know, most of e-commerce is in service of marketing. That's, that's, it's led by the creatives. It's led by the people that are driving sales and deciding which channels to be present in and how to set pricing and you know, the product set and all that stuff. That's kind of, that's kind of a marketing led action and emotion within the business.

^{Joe Fox (08:51.366)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (09:10.265)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

_{Jason (09:11.542)}
Whereas what we find in the B2B world is I'm almost never working with marketers. I'm almost always working with operators. I'm almost always working with sales teams. I'm almost always working with IT teams, head of operations, head of IT, head of business systems, head of sales, COOs, CIOs, CTOs. So in the B2B world, I'm a fan of distilling it down this way. In the B2B world, digital projects are almost always function over form.

Meaning they're not as concerned with the pixel perfect design and the colors and, make it look like Apple's website and all this sort of stuff that you'll never hear that in the B2B world. It's all about, can we do what we do physically? Can we transfer that into an analog suite? Sorry, a digital suite of services, that can, that can help us achieve our goals as a business and help us serve our customers better functionally speaking. Right.

^{Joe Fox (09:41.242)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (10:06.842)}
Yes, yep.

_{Jason (10:07.406)}
So there's an understanding that design has to be part of the process, but it's not, it's not the focus. Whereas it, whereas I have, I'm fond of saying in the B2C and D2C world, it's almost always form over function. Meaning that the first most important thing is what's the look and feel going to be? What's the design going to be? What's the branding going to be? What's the design guidelines that we're going to be following as part of this process? Right? In fact, you start with creative discovery.

^{Joe Fox (10:13.039)}
Yes.

_{Jason (10:33.834)}
In the, usually in most projects you start with creative discovery first and functional discovery second in the B2C world. In B2B it's exactly the opposite. We are worried about business process and data and all those other things first. And we're more worried about the physical sales process in the business today because most B2Bs are led by physical sales people and field sales. And as a result of that, you work back from that process first. And so those are two massive distinctions. So.

^{Joe Fox (10:40.024)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (10:55.023)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (10:59.343)}
Yes.

_{Jason (11:02.198)}
I know that's a long winded way of saying to you why, why the seeming pivot into the B2B world. wasn't so much of a pivot as it was a doubling and tripling down on the B2B work that I'd already done and already, and I'd already been doing. And when I started my independent consultancy, I was like, well, I could become a just another generic e-commerce consultant out there in a sea of red ocean opportunities, or I could double down on a skill set that I already possessed combined with a market opportunity that I saw.

absolutely exploding because of the lack of maturity, relatively speaking, in the B2B world versus the B2C world. was like, they say riches are in the niches. I was like, why wouldn't I niche down and niching down as a superpower? Why wouldn't I niche down on two things? One is a skillset that I think I uniquely possess combined with a market opportunity that I saw uniquely emerging at the time. Why wouldn't I combine those two things together and build a business out of it, which is what I did.

^{Joe Fox (11:36.578)}
Yes. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (11:43.459)}
Yes, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (12:01.251)}
Absolutely, absolutely. I think anyone who works in our space is predominantly, you know, or somewhat of a fan of someone like a Peter Thiel and you know, in zero to one, that's the whole premise almost of the book is like, niching down, no competition, you know, and being the expert, you know, in that or the best in that. I think you certainly tick all of those boxes. It's that level of mastery that you possess.

That's incredible. the other thing I kind of, I was going to say as a side note, and I was going to WhatsApp you this afterwards, but I'm happy to tell the audience, I was going to, you should have a tagline. That's like fax machines. Hey, Hey, Jason Greenwood. Cause I imagine you're like, you're the fax machine killer for B2B businesses. Cause that is what I think, you know, to add to your point, I, in my personal

_{Jason (12:46.808)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (12:58.338)}
you know, kind of network and particularly probably more in Australia, just because that's where my probably B2B network is a lot stronger. You know, I hear of, I did consulting for a business, I won't name who, but I came in as a consultant on a board and first thing I kind of really dove into was obviously everything digital, right? So as we spoke to the, the

The customer sort of facing stuff was a huge part of a web overhaul, digital transformation, but then understanding what was happening on the, on the B2B side. And, you know, it was insane to me that you could be putting in machinery orders for, you know, $250,000 plus items where you have an ongoing servicing relationship that was done by a fax machine. Like surely there's got to be a better way, but.

That was how it was done prior. So I imagine, you know, and what I still hear is that's quite the case a lot. But I think the way that you approach things with that level of mastery and with that digital transformation mindset, it would almost feel like a complete sense of, from the board and from the CEOs and everything, once you've done your thing, because it's just saving every single person in the business.

so much headache, you're able to actually get data and insights that were never available. It's just, it's such a, it's such a, like, as you said, it's complex, it's difficult. There's a lot of things that have to be done, but I imagined the volume of reward on the back end of that and the sense of gratitude that they have for your, you know, involvement would be insane. So that's really cool.

_{Jason (14:47.374)}
super fulfilling and I'll give you an anecdote and I've actually mentioned this on my podcast previously, but we're just about ready to go live with a massive, massive project. It's about a nine month project via one of my SI clients. And I led the solution architecture for one of their client projects. And we're just about ready to go live for a digital transformation implementation of a full new digital commerce stack, Salesforce automation and the whole nine yards for this company, their manufacturer. And

When I was initially in discovery with this manufacturer, one of the sales director, the director of sales for this company, he said, this is what we're dealing with here, mate. He said, he didn't say mate because it's American. He said, this is what we're dealing with here. He said, I'm going to show you an email that I received from one of my customers. And this is the level of digital immaturity we're dealing with from the buy side that we have to cater for. He said, one of my biggest customers.

He doesn't understand how to attach a CSV file, a spreadsheet file, an Excel file. He doesn't know how to attach that to an email he sends to me. So what he does, he pulls up his PO, he creates his purchase order in Excel on his screen, on his computer. He snaps a photo of it on his phone. It takes a picture of his screen and he either attaches that photo to an email to me, or he just sends it in a WhatsApp message to me.

^{Joe Fox (16:07.094)}
Wow.

_{Jason (16:13.87)}
And he says, Hey mate, can you put this, you know, can you put this order into, can you put this order, order into the system for me? So this is, this is the kind of, of, of kind of legacy challenges we're facing. And fax hasn't completely gone away in the B2B world yet either. It's hard, it's hard to believe, but it still hasn't gone away even to this day in 2025. And so we're, we're, we're just, just dealing with so much legacy. It's not just legacy technology. It's also legacy thinking, and it's also legacy people because

^{Joe Fox (16:16.619)}
Wow.

_{Joe Fox (16:27.999)}
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (16:43.288)}
Mmm.

_{Jason (16:43.544)}
The reality is that there is an aging population in the B2B world that was kind of almost like the good old boys club of yore that built up monopolies, exclusive distributorship, exclusive ranges in the B2B world. And the whole B2B industry was largely built on the back of monopolies. But with digital transformation comes opening of markets, opening of opportunities, et cetera.

^{Joe Fox (17:09.058)}
Yes.

_{Jason (17:09.494)}
And so businesses, B2B businesses can no longer rely on monopolies to drive their business. Now they have to rely on customer experience, automation, making things more efficient for their buyers, providing more and better product and application data, providing field services, providing lots of stuff other than just the SKUs that they sell, providing actual solutions to the industry instead of just SKUs. We also have a couple of additional channels in the B2B world that don't exist.

^{Joe Fox (17:28.725)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

_{Jason (17:38.25)}
digital sales channels that do not exist in the B2C and D2C world. That being EDI and Punchout. So EDI, whales talking to whales. My whale buyers that buy at scale, they send their orders down to my ERP by EDI, right? Then we have Punchout, which is more for the mid enterprise buyer market, which is we have these automated e-procurement systems with dedicated procurement buyers that create their entire order inside

Basically, they suck down your digital catalog into their procurement system. They create their order inside the procurement system. They attach a PO number to that and then they send it back up via what's called a punch out connection. And so we've still got self-service e-commerce portals at play, but we also have these other two major digital channels combined with of course marketplaces and everything else. So the sheer volume of digital channels that need to be supported in the B2B world is exponentially larger than in the B2C world.

^{Joe Fox (18:16.552)}
Mmm, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (18:35.074)}
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it's so many more considerations. But once again, I think, you know, having B2B businesses, having someone such as yourself in that corner, who understand everything from a B2B econ perspective, understand that digital transformation is so critical. Because I think, you know, and correct me if I'm wrong, I imagine a lot of these businesses either A have no idea where to even begin, and they're just drowning in

text messages from their biggest customer, sending them screenshots of their order, or they're in this position where they get started. They get further in the weeds than they even imagined was possible. And they're trying to pull themselves out before they drown. So it's, it's once again, I think it's amazing that you're yourself and others are out there to be able to, you know, actually help these businesses with these digital transformation projects on a B2B side.

I want to dive back a little bit. We spoke about this and you, you, said this with all the travel that's coming up. I mean, the tariffs, besides the fact that we're nearly at world war three, it's almost the third thing you hear about every single day is, you know, AI is coming for our jobs. AI is coming for this, you know, it's something that is so prevalent, whether you're B2B, B2C, anything.

Any industry I think it's really prevalent in. But I kind of want to frame it a little bit back to, you know, specifically in Econ, whether it's B2B or B2C. What do you predict? Because you're very good at doing this. There's been a couple of things we've spoken about prediction wise and they've actuated the way you said over the years. What do you predict? And I'm very curious to hear.

this myself as I'm sure the audience will enjoy this. What do you see as being the biggest change with AI in e-commerce full stop?

_{Jason (20:47.278)}
Yeah, look, I wrote an article back in 20, I think it was 2017 or 2018 on LinkedIn. was actually on the, used to be able to write articles. I don't think you can anymore on LinkedIn. I think you can only do post. But when back when you could write full blown articles, almost like a blog on LinkedIn, I wrote an article titled, know, stealth commerce.

^{Joe Fox (21:02.216)}
Yes, yeah. Yeah.

_{Jason (21:14.806)}
And I coined the term stealth commerce. And I, that was in reference to transactions that would take place that the customer wouldn't even recognize as a transaction. And what I meant at that time, and I, and I gave the example of we're going to get to a place where let's say your car needs a service, right? You're going to have already pre-nominated where you get your car parts from your local auto parts shop. You're going to have already nominated and defined your preferred

^{Joe Fox (21:26.325)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Jason (21:44.01)}
mechanic and then what's going to happen is through telemetry when your car is due for its next oil change it's going to automatically communicate with the auto parts store it's going to order the oil and filter that's required it's going to have it automatically sent and shipped to your mechanic of choice and then obviously once we have full autonomous cars the car is going to take itself up out of its driveway and it's going to drive it down to your mechanic it's going to have the oil change done and it's going to drive itself home again

and it's going to have access to the mechanics calendar, it's going to have access to your calendar and it's going to book everything in at a time when you don't need your car and the mechanic can see your vehicle. That was the kind of picture that I painted and it was going to be exactly the same with fridges and pantries and AI and cameras and everything else. You're to be able to set min maxes. Okay, I always want to have a loaf of bread in the pantry. I always want to have a bag of rice in the pantry. I always want to have fresh eggs. I always want to have whatever, right? And, and

you're going to nominate your favorite local supermarket. And when you get down to a certain level of something, it's just going to automatically fire an order off. And that thing is just going to turn up at your door at the right time. And so these transactions, they're kind of pre-authorized in advance. We saw Levi's even playing in the smart clothes space, where they had a little embedded RFID tag in the clothes that would show the wear level in clothes so that we could communicate wirelessly.

^{Joe Fox (22:48.264)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (22:58.014)}
Hmm.

_{Jason (23:03.162)}
to, basically re basically it would, it would tell you the status state of the clothing. And so that way you could, you basically, you would know, okay, cool. I always want to have a fresh, fresh three pairs of Levi's in the cupboard. And the moment that one of those pairs gets threadbare, cause it's been washed 50 times. I want just to auto reorder a pair of freaking Levi's and I just want them to turn up at my door. Right. and, so I think that, that that vision of the world wasn't truly possible without a gentic.

^{Joe Fox (23:08.146)}
Yes. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (23:24.199)}
Yes, yeah.

_{Jason (23:32.16)}
AI and agentic commerce. And I think we're rapidly going that direction, both from a retail commerce perspective, but also from a B2B commerce perspective, AI is going to make all of those types of transactions possible. And we're already starting to see it with the collaboration with Shopify and ChatGPT. They're helping, Shopify is helping OpenAI develop their commerce APIs, their agentic commerce APIs. They're already helping them build those commerce layers and build that architecture based on the MCP model.

^{Joe Fox (23:34.484)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (23:44.786)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Jason (24:00.726)}
And so we're already starting to see glimpses of the market heading in this direction, whether it's an AI that gets spun up and agentic concierge that gets spun up when you visit a website or whether it's a roll your own and bring your own concierge from the likes of chat GPT, or whether all of your research and all of your transactions actually stay within chat GPT. Either way, that's all agentically driven transactions, right? That is all agentically led experiences.

^{Joe Fox (24:25.523)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Jason (24:29.974)}
And so that is kind of the direction the whole industry is headed in and is really excited about. And I haven't seen excitement in our industry about a truly new and novel commerce technology since mobile. So this is the most change and this is the most excitement I've seen in our industry since everybody went mobile.

^{Joe Fox (24:43.973)}
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (24:51.431)}
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. think that scenario is so much closer than I think a lot of people are aware of, if I'm honest. think the mum and pop who's launched on Shopify, have built a cult following over the years offline, moved onto online, really doing good omni-channel business, that's the next leap for them when...

You can imagine if they were releasing flavors and they know that a customer is so loyal to that brand that they want it. And instead of jumping online 30 minutes after it's gone live, the new flavor release and to find out and be sorely disappointed that it's sold out, that your, you know, your agentic AI model can actually make sure that you've purchased that on release date and it's going to be in your cupboard by the Friday.

That's insane to me. And I think it will, it's almost, it's this level and layer of trust that we're having to have even more so in technology that I don't think we've ever seen before. It's obviously being led by, you know, things like autonomous vehicles and the like, but being trusting your personal shopper agents or multiple shopper agents is the next level of trust in technology that you're, that you're

talking about very much there. I mean, you've already done that. You did the prediction back then, but we're so not far away from it, right? Like it's just, it's amazing. And I think the other thing that I wanted to disperse with you, because I know you don't feel this way either, is everyone being worried about this technology and saying, it's going to take our jobs and it's going to take over the world and all these things. And it reminds me of things that have happened in the past, like

Y2K when everyone said that, you know, we were all the computers were going to go down and there was going to be absolute chaos. And I think there was, you know, one or two cases of something happening and they resolved it very quick. or, know, electric cars are not going to work and all of these things. Right. So help me help the audience disperse this level of fear around AI is coming for our jobs.

_{Jason (27:12.874)}
Look, do I think that some low level jobs are going to go away and maybe even there's going to be some challenges around sort of starter roles that people would typically enter an industry in a starter basic role, maybe as an assistant or something like that. And then maybe they would work their way up the ranks and get some experience along the way. Do I think that some of those, especially the more basic roles are going away? We're already seeing it. I mean, like, for example, I do all my own.

design, lack of better word, I'm not an artist's backside, but I create my own cover art for every single episode of the podcast in Canva, for example. I use AI, so I don't pay an audio editor or a video editor for my podcast, I use Descript, right? So there are certain things that absolutely are being replaced by technology.

You know, I use Opus Clip to create my shorts to upload to YouTube shorts, for example. You know, and it picks the clip and it creates the subtitles and the whole nine yards, right? So, are some of these roles, especially some of these creative roles going away? Yes, there's no question about that. Are they being impacted? Yes, I'm not trying to downplay that, but there are so much more opportunity on the backside of that, that I think...

It was interesting because as I traveled through Morocco, Marrakesh, Rabat, as I traveled through Turkey and as I looked around, I thought, you know...

Are these people any more at threat? Like am I more at risk of the advent of AI or are they? Right? And I thought well actually I'm not sure that it's one-sided or it's better or worse for either of us. There are certain things and you know what's interesting is even in what we would maybe call more primitive cultures, right? I went up to the Atlas Mountains. We took a

_{Jason (29:15.426)}
We did a day, day hike in the Atlas mountains on the outskirts, on the outskirts, outskirts of Marrakesh. So we were up in in a Berber community, right? 2000 meters in elevation, we climbed and we had, we had lunch, we had lunch at a traditional Berber household. And literally every single person we passed, even the, even the people that lived in these villages, every single one of them had a cell phone. Like.

^{Joe Fox (29:15.867)}
Yup.

Yes, yep.

^{Joe Fox (29:26.383)}
Yes, yes.

^{Joe Fox (29:38.492)}
Yes, yeah. Yes, yeah.

_{Jason (29:38.978)}
They were all, they were all on their phone. Right. And, and so I, you know, and they were there, what we would maybe consider more primitive. They, they, they live a more, they live closer to the land. They raise livestock, they have chickens, they have gardens, they, they're, they're very self-sufficient. Right. and yet, and yet they've got cell phones. Right. And so I kind of think, well,

^{Joe Fox (29:55.387)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

_{Jason (30:03.206)}
In the way that obviously cell phones have probably improved their lives with access to education and all sorts of other things. know, this, our guide, he's actually a Berber from that village that we, that we toured. And, and, you know, he learned almost everything that he learned and he speaks perfect English. He speaks perfect Arabic and he speaks Berber and he speaks French. And, and he learned some of that he learned in school, but the vast majority of it he learned online. Right.

^{Joe Fox (30:14.095)}
Okay. Yep. Yep.

^{Joe Fox (30:29.199)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Jason (30:29.78)}
And so, and by working with tourists. And so I think that AI, it's like any digital tool. It can be used for really horrible things and it can be used for really beautiful things. It can be used for really uplifting and edifying things. It's kind of how do we use it? How do we leverage it? And how do we contribute to it? Right? And I'd like to think that,

You know, in the longest time horizon, I don't know, maybe, maybe it's the biggest existential threat of humanity. You know, if we, if we listen to Elon Musk talk about the ant conundrum where he says, you know, when we go to build a highway, we might kill a trillion ants, but we don't kill a trillion ants because we hate ants. We kill a trillion ants because we're trying to build a damn highway. Right. It's not, it's not intentional. Right. Maybe AI tries to build something that ultimately wipes out humanity because not because it hates humanity, because it's trying to achieve something that we're not aware of.

^{Joe Fox (31:12.848)}
Mm-mm.

_{Jason (31:21.902)}
That's certainly a possibility. And certainly when I hear people talk about AI ethics, it makes me laugh. Because if we can't agree on a worldwide age of consent, how the hell are we going to agree on worldwide AI ethics? It's impossible. I mean, you've got some Middle Eastern countries where the age of consent is 12. You've got America, which most of America, the age of consent is 18. When I first moved to New Zealand, I found out the age of consent was 16 and it freaking blew my mind. I thought, my God, how could it be 16 years old?

^{Joe Fox (31:22.052)}
Mm.

^{Joe Fox (31:37.721)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (31:41.264)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Jason (31:51.47)}
These people are babies. How can babies be having sex with babies basically? You know, and yet it's not my place to say what, which is culturally right. And in some cultures it's like 20 is the age of consent. And so if we can't agree globally on something as fundamental as what constitutes statutory rape, how can we, how can we agree globally on AI ethics? It feels like, it feels like an impossible task, right? And it, but, but I think it's up to each of us.

^{Joe Fox (32:03.172)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (32:10.447)}
Mm-hmm.

Guess.

Yeah. Yeah.

_{Jason (32:20.266)}
with all forms of technology to try to figure out the, the, those of us that care and those of us that want to see technology used for good in the world, it's for those of us to try to influence and shape that direction as best we can.

^{Joe Fox (32:34.179)}
Yeah. And I mean, I think to add to that one, one kind of note is I think my personal take on it in a very simplistic way is that it allows everyone to almost have a team behind them or the most powerful tool behind them to help realize their individual pursuits and dreams. And I think

to your point, a lot of that will be good. Unfortunately, a lot of that will be bad, but that's the same as how life is without AI. So my thoughts are why wouldn't we use this incredible tool to be in the best job that we can be in or realize these things that we've dreamed about, about since being children. This is truly, you know, there's age old thing that I'm sure, you know, majority of listeners

Either parents or guardians or someone dispersed upon them at some point in their lives, a mentor, et cetera, that you can achieve anything you want to achieve. And you set your mind to an everything like that. Well, I think really this opens that up to so many more people than probably that story being true, because I think the power of AI allows you to leverage all of the

You know, knowledge from the past, everything that's ever been booked, marked and crawled through the internet, every, expert's opinion on something like having all of that to assist you to really pursue something worthy and meaningful and something that, you know, is going to contribute to the good of society. I personally feel that's incredible and amazing. I think that yes, whilst there is the threat.

that as to your point, AI could decide that we're the bad thing and it needs to destroy us in order to do that.

_{Jason (34:39.071)}
Or, or, or not even necessarily that, that we just get destroyed as a byproduct of something it's trying to achieve.

^{Joe Fox (34:43.502)}
That's, that's what I mean. Like it could, it could go either way, but I also think there is the third option where it may see that we're all, that the majority of us are trying to do the right thing and the things that better society. it continues to help us do that because we like, we don't lack soul and, things that I think AI still lacks the thing that makes you Jason, the thing that makes me Joe.

AI, I can't, I still can't get my head around it ever, ever having that. but yeah, yeah. So I think I, I like to think, or I guess I'm praying that it doesn't go the direction where it does. I think the job thing is, going to be interesting. I hope my personal hope is that for those jobs that are

_{Jason (35:17.644)}
Yes, I agree a soul. doesn't have it.

^{Joe Fox (35:39.107)}
kind of shifted away and, and, you know, eaten up by this technology that then becomes a whole bunch of other jobs that can be done better and more efficiently, you know, by the people that would have maybe been doing those jobs. That's my hope anyway.

_{Jason (35:56.472)}
Well, I'm team human and I always will be. So the reality is, is that, you know, when I was having that mindset shift, I was trying to think of my more threat of AI and because I'm white collar and you know, lots of white collar roles and jobs and law and everything else and CPAs and everything else, a lot of this stuff is starting to be done by AI. So therefore how long is it until my job as a consultant and as somebody who creates documentation and solution architecture, how long is it till somebody can do all that stuff?

^{Joe Fox (35:58.563)}
Yes.

_{Jason (36:23.538)}
you know, an AI agent or multiple AI agents, how long is it before they can do that stuff versus this more primitive culture for lack of a better term, who's more sustenance living off the land and yes, okay. They have access to the internet, but it's, but it's not a, it's not, you know, it's not without the internet, they would go on living just fine. You know, whereas, without the internet.

^{Joe Fox (36:42.349)}
Yes.

_{Jason (36:44.982)}
I wouldn't have a business, you know, so, so, so I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, who's, who's more vulnerable here? I don't know the, I don't know the answer to that question. And so, and so I just think I try to always, you know, cause there was a lot of people that were predicting lots of things. Like you said before, you know, there's lots of predictions during the GFC, lots of predictions during COVID, lots of predictions, you know, during the dot com bus. Cause I I'm old enough to remember that like it was yesterday.

^{Joe Fox (36:46.838)}
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

_{Jason (37:14.696)}
you know, there was lots of predictions about lots of horrible things happening to society. And when I look back on it, you know, I've lived through it all. My portfolios lived through it all, you know, my, my, my life, you know, my wife, my, relationships, the things that matter to me most in this world. you know, it's unlikely AI is going to take any of those truly meaningful things away from me at any time soon.

^{Joe Fox (37:14.721)}
Yes, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (37:37.355)}
Yes.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's it. That's an amazing and very artful way to put it. Awesome. I know that we could talk. I mean, we'll definitely be doing a part two, part three, part four of this over the years. But a couple of things. Lastly, I'd like to ask everyone two questions, you know, when we wrap these up. One is

I already know the answers to this, I'll let you say it and I'll make sure the links are in the show notes. But what is the best way for people to connect with you, to stay abreast of your updates and to really keep a finger on the pulse of what's happening B2B wise in Econ?

_{Jason (38:20.482)}
Three places, LinkedIn, number one place to connect with me on my website, greenwoodconsulting.net. If they want to sort of see kind of links to kind of everything I produce and podcasts I've been on and everything else and I'll link to yours once it's published there. And then of course my podcast, The Ecommerce Edge Podcast. You can see it behind me there on the wall. Released three episodes a week. Wednesdays, so we released three episodes a week. Monday mentorship, Wednesday B2B, Friday tech. So they've got three different focuses.

and so yeah, check it out, subscribe, share it with your friends. If it's helpful, if it's useful, and then reach out to me. I basically, if you Google or chat, GPT, my name, I'm everywhere. So you can find me, you can easily find me everywhere.

^{Joe Fox (39:02.636)}
I love that. love that. And yeah, as I said, audience, I'll make sure that everything's linked in the links below. And very final question, I do this with every guest. Prior, like earlier, very early in our conversation, we spoke about, you know, how much we travel, you know, in this industry, how grateful we are to be in this industry. You probably, I would say you probably travel or this year.

You will be the most traveled guests we've had on the podcast. think probably you and Rachel are probably tied to be honest, Rachel Jacobs. Rachel does. Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be between the both of you, but, um, you can't say a person, but what's something that you cannot travel without.

_{Jason (39:38.19)}
Rachel does travel a lot, gotta say.

^{Joe Fox (39:52.49)}
an item.

_{Jason (39:57.856)}
Yeah, I gotta say my phone. I really have to say my phone because man, the amount of stuff we do from Google Maps, Google Nav to paying with phone to tracking calendar invites to having digital transport passes downloaded to my phone. Wow, just the amount I used my phone on this last trip to Europe in particular was wild. It was wild.

and, and I tell you, I, I, I got to the point where I was using my phone so much. don't normally like when I'm in Mexico here, or even when I'm in the U S I don't normally travel with a USB battery backup pack. cause, cause, cause I could usually let it go through the day and then I can plug it in at night or whatever. I was traveling around with two USB battery packs, one in my wife's purse and one in my pocket just to make sure. Cause I couldn't be out in the middle of nowhere without, without, without connectivity to.

^{Joe Fox (40:38.143)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Jason (40:54.168)}
to make plans, to make communication with our tour guides in some instances, et cetera, et cetera. Like, it's just wild how this thing, as Gary Vee put it, this thing has become the remote control of our lives. So I could travel without my laptop, but I couldn't travel without my phone.

^{Joe Fox (41:10.717)}
absolutely. I find it funny. It's, you know, and you know, at least my wife audience, I was speaking about this, you know, to her the other day, because I just, got stuck in transit on this trip, coming back from one of Rachel's workshops in LA. And I was supposed to go to New York, but I got in 28 hours later, and I was only flying from LA to San Antonio. And so we got stuck in Houston.

stuck on the plane for hours. gigantic storm, completely out of anyone's hands. So it is what it is. But same thing again, I typically do travel with a battery pack. But when I'm traveling, you know, shop talk, I don't think I pulled it out. You know, most of the times in the US, I don't pull it out. I'm telling you right now, it's the biggest one that you could

take on flights because you know they have the the lithium thing. Burn that sucker out because I was still working but I was like I'm not going to open my I don't like opening my laptop on flights or in airports because I find it very distracting as to everything else that's going on. If I have my laptop on I typically have headphones in so I'm not listening for announcements in this case multiple delays. So

_{Jason (42:11.948)}
I have to the limits.

^{Joe Fox (42:38.493)}
Yeah, it's, it's, it's incredible. And I feel like our usage of mobile has tapered up so much to your point, translate maps, travel passes, boarding passes now on Apple Wallet, like just the works. And so it's interesting. And I think whoever can solve this battery issue, going back to a simplistic form of this conversation.

_{Jason (42:52.994)}
Yep. yeah.

^{Joe Fox (43:05.351)}
Apple, Android, whoever figure out this Samsung, figure out this Google, please, I beg you figure out this battery issue in phones. I will completely abandon every Apple product. If it means that I get a phone with double the current battery life. It's just, it needs to change.

_{Jason (43:26.414)}
It's wild. It's absolutely wild. And I 100 % agree with you. You know, I was in the airport recently, actually it was in Mexico and my battery was dying and I was panicking. I had, I didn't have my USB battery pack with me. I had a charge block with me, but I couldn't find any place to fricking plug it in, in the airport. couldn't find, I couldn't find a fricking PowerPoint. And I was like, this is freaking bad.

^{Joe Fox (43:46.538)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (43:50.59)}
Yes.

_{Jason (43:55.47)}
And, and, uh, we, we had had a gate change on a time change on our flight. And I needed to monitor that for updates in the app, in the airline app. Uh, and it was, it wasn't up on the board. And so I was like, Oh my Lord. You know, I it was, I watched it go from 6%, 5%, 4%. And I finally found, I found a, finally found a place to freaking charge my phone. But you know, they talk about range anxiety in cars. I have more range, range anxiety with my freaking phone.

^{Joe Fox (43:56.202)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

_{Jason (44:23.15)}
When you see it ticking down, if you don't have a battery pack with you and you got something important to go, it is terrifying.

^{Joe Fox (44:23.514)}
I agree. I agree.

yeah, yeah, I've made that mistake doing some pretty gnarly outdoor adventures and hikes and really been in some pretty precarious situations. I ended up getting one of those, it's not a Garmin inReach, it's another one where you can send SMS out and you can send an emergency thing with it. One was one time in Yosemite and the other was in Yellowstone, I think. But same thing, like.

have been taking photos throughout the day. And that's and and phone batteries tend to have this thing where they go from 40 % to 0 % twice as quick twice as quick as the first as the first 60. So you can end up in you know, so I hear you on that range anxiety. I like it phone range anxiety.

_{Jason (45:07.222)}
just totally.

_{Jason (45:18.498)}
Totally, absolutely. So yeah, that's my, my, that's my, I cannot travel without device. It's just,

^{Joe Fox (45:25.457)}
And now battery pack. Now it's the battery pack. Now it's the battery pack. Yeah.

_{Jason (45:29.774)}
100 % yeah, they go hand in hand as far as I'm concerned now, unfortunately

^{Joe Fox (45:34.217)}
I'm going to put an affiliate link to the battery links in this podcast.

_{Jason (45:36.174)}
I love it. I love it. Joe. You're a legend. Thank you so much

^{Joe Fox (45:42.483)}
Jason, right back at you, my friend. Thank you so much. I value this. I have absolutely zero doubt that the audience will get a lot of value out of this. thank you so much for coming on, my friend. I really appreciate it.

_{Jason (45:54.754)}
No worries, I'm going to give a piece of personal advice, not business advice. As my last parting shot, get out of debt, stay out of debt. Most of the freedom in my life today comes from the fact that I have almost an allergic reaction to debt and always have.

^{Joe Fox (45:59.26)}
Okay.

Okay.

Love it.

^{Joe Fox (46:12.283)}
Love it, love it. And it's quite the opposite of the consumer mentality that we often, you know, are receiving messages for. So I love it.

_{Jason (46:22.326)}
Awesome brother. Thank you so much. Can't wait to speak to you again soon.

^{Joe Fox (46:23.433)}
Appreciate it, brother. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. And we'll definitely do a part two of this. Cheers, brother. Audience, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Retain Grow Thrive. Thank you. If you've been a watcher from the beginning of season one, as I mentioned, we're now in season two. I really appreciate it. Please be sure 11to check out all of Jason's links in the show notes. And if you haven't already, please hit subscribe on whatever on whether you're listening on Apple music.

_{Jason (46:29.187)}
Love it.

^{Joe Fox (46:51.899)}
Spotify or YouTube, please hit the subscribe button, like us, leave a comment. It all helps. And we'll continue to bring you amazing guests like the one we just had on. Thank you so much.

_{Jason (47:04.15)}
Awesome, brother.

^{Joe Fox (47:05.682)}
Brother, thank you so much. That was epic.