How to Rebuild Your Business With AI & Automation | Justin Watt

Speaker A: So the big question is, how do entrepreneurs, millionaires and billionaires scale not just their business but their impact? How do we practice biblical billionaire principles and set God sized goals that are destined to fail without divine intervention? What if you, as an entrepreneur who have poured blood, sweat and tears into growing your business, and who refuses to settle for mere financial freedom, and who didn't hire expensive billionaires or elite entrepreneurs to map out a growth strategy, knew their secrets instead of recreating the wheel? Why can't you just model the way they scaled from millions to billions, achieved a life of significance and success, and most importantly, multiplied freedom for the most vulnerable people in this world? What if their secrets weren't complicated at all and all you needed was a guide who's a few steps ahead of you? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Brett Swartz and welcome to the Build it to Billions podcast. Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become better steward, scale to billions and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want you to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support, it's incredible to see your comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Welcome to the Build it to Billions podcast where we guide successful entrepreneurs and investors on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth and life starts every single day with the mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goals have you scale and compound your wealth and life so you give more all the way to help MVPs. My name is Brett Swartz. Each and every episode we're joined by the world's top entrepreneurs, millionaires or billionaires where they share their secrets, insights and wisdom with us so we can all level up and make a bigger impact. We're also streaming on Capital Gains Tax solutions, podcasts and YouTube channels as well, so appreciate all of our listeners out there and any founders that are listening and wanting to exit their business. Make sure you go to capital gains tax solutions.com I'm excited about our next guest. He's the co founder of Switchboard, an AI and technology company helping mid market businesses transform the way they operate through AI, automation and custom software. His work focuses on helping organizations move beyond simply adopting new AI tools to redesigning workflows, eliminating Operational bottlenecks and building smarter systems that can scale through Switchboard. He works at the intersection of AI business operations and organizational transformation. Helping companies turn fragmented processes and institutional knowledge into streamlined technology enabled systems and so much more. Please welcome the show with me Mr. Justin Watt. Justin, how we doing?

Speaker B: Good. Adding Mr. At the beginning I'm feeling, feeling good already. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Excellent. For our listeners getting to know you for the first time, would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. The uh, the quick version of, of the life story is I started the career and kind of uh, classic business analyst roles, uh seeing how business works through spreadsheets and then moving into project and product management first at IBM where you know as you can probably imagine the red tape has red tape. So lasted a few years there but couldn't handle that big corporate environment for too long and then moved to a uh, small product design and development firm called Med Lab where we, we got to design a lot of cool stuff. They're, they're known for designing Slack but we got to work on Uber and Amazon and Facebook and all sorts of stuff stuff too. So worked there for nearly eight years and then co uh founded Switchboard with, with my co founder where we, we focus on these mid market businesses. You just highlighted

Speaker A: excellent and uh, I mean you growing up, who's Justin? And you know what kind of, what kind of problems were you solving growing up that leaned you into this type of business?

Speaker B: The, the video game kid in me was very much age uh of Empires, SimCity, all that fun stuff. It's, I've always found it fascinating to pick uh, the component parts of something uh apart deeply and then put it back together in an interesting way. So lego leading to SimCity leading to age of Empires, all that fun stuff and it was combined with university uh going there for psychology uh, which paired with all of the kind of systems thinking was fascinating to see how the humans side of it all works. I love it.

Speaker A: I think Age of Empires is one of the most underrated games ever in the history of games. It was, it's such a fun game. I feel like I should pick it up again. It's been too long. M. They

Speaker B: keep re releasing it every few years because it still has millions of people buying it every few like I think they're releasing the same game that was released and call it 1999. Just updating the graphics every five years.

Speaker A: Yeah. You know and it's not broke. Don't fix it. Right. Just yeah update the graphics There. And, you know, I remember collecting my stone and, you know, collecting my wood and, you know, uh, building the, and then going for the attack or getting attacked. And, you know, it's just

Speaker B: when you work, I, I often think about the businesses that we get to work with, uh, through the Age of Empires lens of, like, you work through the ages. So you start in the Stone Age, and then you got the Industrial Age, and then, you know, you're, you're advancing and it's kind of like we had typewriters at one time and then the personal computer and then Internet. And now we've got AI coming into business. So everyone's advancing through the ages.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And that's what we're talking about today, everybody. So you put your business back together with AI. Justin, when I say that, you know what comes to mind and walk us through a little bit about what the best companies are doing right now, um, as they actually put their business back together with AI.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think a lot of the, call it hyperbole and snake oil that I'm sure people are used to when they, every time they open up LinkedIn or Twitter or general news nowadays, it's reaching the front pages of Wall Street Journal every day. Now with news about AI and funding, there's just so much, um, focus on the technology itself, which of course is the big unlock. But we're already at a point where there's a great engine that has been built and people are now figuring out, okay, what do the wheels look like? What does the chassis look like? Where do I put the windshield? Where do I put the seats? And so taking business apart and putting it back together with AI is really, call it 20% technology. These are not scientific numbers. But being in the trenches day to day, the technology is maybe 20% of it. But redesigning how your business works so that, call it, that process redesign is another 30ish percent. And the biggest part, call it 50% or half of it, is the change management. It is getting people who are used to working in a, uh, smattering of spreadsheets and emails and teams, IMs all day. And that's the way they've been working for 5, 10, 15, 20 years rethinking how they do that.

Speaker A: So if you like this little short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview. And please don't forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody. M. Congratulations. You just enjoyed another insightful episode of the Build of the Billions podcast with Brett Swartz. We hope you found today's show valuable and inspiring. To access the show notes and discover more resources, visit buildatobillions.com don't forget to leave a review and join us again next time. More transformative insights.