MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: JAMIE GRANT

Studio IX:

Jamie, hey. Thanks for taking the time.

Jamie Grant:

Of course. Happy to do it.

Studio IX:

So tell us who you are and a bit about what you do.

JG:

I’m Jamie Grant. I work with a consulting company called Accenture. I work in the eCommerce space on SAP platforms, helping groups to sell their goods online. Our big project these last two years has been with Signet Jewelers, a big mall jewelry company with eight brands. They're in all the mall stores: Kay, Jared, Zales. We help them to sell jewelry online, which is not particularly exciting in itself, but there are exciting things about the project, like dealing with performance issues and other hurdles. Signet does so much revenue, it's unbelievable. I was telling Jon (owner at JBird Coffee Supply), I think December last year was something like $160 million in revenue.

So yeah, it can get exciting. Typically the year goes that we build up various projects all the way through September, October, and then we stop new development work and focus on the big holiday period, which is November, December, and then again in February for Valentine's Day and for Mother's Day. It can be fun. Yeah.

Studio IX:

What are you passionate about?

JG:

I remember getting this question in an interview before. I went in for some tech job in Australia and they said, "What about technology are you passionate about?" And I was like, "Nothing." They're like, "Right. Get out."

Studio IX:

Ok ok (laughter). So let’s talk big picture. How about “outside of the office”?

JG:

Well, outside of work, I get passionate about a lot of things. I love taking holidays, spending time with the kids, cooking, hiking, camping. Yeah. You name it. Anything's easy to get passionate about.

Studio IX:

Does any piece of that come back into the work that you're doing?

JG:

Yeah. I was thinking about Tom Tom. They do their annual thing, and a few years ago, one of their first sessions was on conscious capitalism. Rather than having the corporation fill this role where profits are its main motive, you’ve got to look at more of the overall picture of the way that the corporation sits in its ecosystem, taking into account not only stakeholders and profits, but how it interacts with their employees and the community and everything beyond.

And with work, it kind of feels like it's how it fits into your larger life, you know? How it fits into not just the work you're doing, but the right balance for making sure that you’re able to do all of those other things, to get out and travel and spend time with the kids and see other places as well as challenge you mentally? And it's more of how it fits into the big picture, the big ecosystem picture. Work does that for me. Not necessarily the things that I do with work, but all of the other kind of intangibles that come with the work. It gives me the independence I need. I don't feel like I've ever got a boss cracking the whip. I never have to be anywhere.

Studio IX:

And you've worked remotely the whole time?

JG:

Yeah. Pretty much, last eight years or so. They're pretty generous with the amount of time you get off. They give us almost six weeks a year of vacation, which is unheard of in the US. Six weeks is a lot of time to get the hell out of here and really disconnect and kind of find yourself and spend good quality time with the family. We always get away. We just say, "All right, no bloody internet, no devices, no nothing."

Studio IX:

That’s great. Such a gift.

Technology aside, what do you enjoy most about the work?

JG:

The problems I get hit with every day, the difficult to solve problems. The things that require more detective work, where you say, "What the hell is going on here?" You've got these super complex systems, millions of messages passing back and forth, then something trips up somewhere and everybody throws their hands up and says "We have no idea what's going on." And you’ve just got to put your head down and focus and say, "All right, I've got to find that missing piece of information that's caused this whole thing to screw up." I like doing that kind of thing. It's like a crossword puzzle, a word search, a complicated puzzle.

Studio IX:

What led you to the work you’re doing now?

JG:

Well, I graduated with a degree in zoology. And I worked as a wildlife biologist for a bit, tracking owls, wanting to get a job in biology when I got out of school, but there wasn't a whole lot out there. I kind of had this vision of working in the forest and doing population studies and things like that. Not a whole lot of paying jobs in that area.

After college I got involved with a band for awhile, a lot of drugs and alcohol, then found myself kind of out on my ear with nothing. And so moved in with the parents and said, "All right, I got to regroup here and try and find something to do." Picked up the newspaper and it was like a hundred pages of tech jobs and nothing in the biology space. So I said, "All right, I better get involved in this, figure something out." So I bought a whole stack of textbooks and a laptop and got down to work learning it. Created a website of this fictitious company that I said I worked for and went out to an interview and they gave me a test. Passed with flying colors, and I was off to the races.

Studio IX:

Amazing. (laughter)

Studio IX:

Any memorable moments along the way? Moments that stand out?

JG:

Well, there's the time we were in Beijing and we got into a bar fight with our client. That was a good one. (laughter). I used to be a little more cavalier and ended up doing some things that I probably shouldn't.

You've just got to adapt. And that's kind of how life is. Everybody ends up in shit at one stage or another. And it's like, how do you reinvent yourself to go with the flow? And that's the way it is with technology as well. You know, I'm an old has-been and if you're not continually reading new material and staying up on top of things, forget it. The young punks are waiting to displace you.

Studio IX:

Yup.

Studio IX:

How’s your world changed in light of Covid?

JG:

Work wise, we've gotten busier just because the business that we're with now, they've closed all their brick and mortar stores and the digital space is what I'm in.

Aside from work, it's been super interesting. For me I've had to reevaluate the way that I lived life before. How we kept filling things up and not necessarily by choice. Just busy, busy, busy. Consequently, my wife and I would never see each other and we would struggle to have a night. We'd have to plan a night where we had a family meal a week, which was shit. And now we have a family meal every night and it's great.

We're not doing anything now and just spending that additional time together without having entertainment put in our face or being told what to do. It's been wonderful and I don't think I can go back, back to that lifestyle of having to be a busy body.

I’m not traveling anymore for work. It makes me wonder why we like to travel in the first place. You know, it's stupid. You send all of these consultants halfway across the world. The amount of pollutants that we put in the atmosphere from air travel to show up at a client's spot for two days or three days. And for what purpose? You could have done all of the meetings remotely. Sure, it's important to put a name to a face and all the rest of it and establish some part of a rapport, but a lot of, especially a lot of the junior consultants at work, they get excited about the prospects of travel and just travel because. Everybody's trying to get their frequent flyer miles up or establish status at their hotel. And it's bullshit. You should feel guilty about that. You should feel guilty about the amount of damage, I think, that you're doing to the environment by living that lifestyle.

Studio IX:

Well said, J.

Thanks for taking the time. Greatly appreciate it.

JG:

Thank you.