Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch.

Welcome to Meta Views, recorded live in front of an automated audience.

And today we're going to get into a subject which is kind of in our wheelhouse on Metabuse.

But I think our guest today, Jason Willis Lee, is going to address the future of work with some nuance and insights that are often not present when people talk about the future of work.

But Jason, we like to start every segment of our show with the news.

And this is partly because Metaviews has a daily newsletter.

And right off the start, Jason, let me say that you are clearly the best guest that we've had on our podcast.

Cuz you were so kind as to subscribe to our newsletter before joining us today.

And we were kind of talking about the political impact of the pardons that Donald Trump has just passed.

But in particular, Jason, the reason we have this segment is we like to throw to our guest and say, is there any news that you would like to share, whether personal, whether world news, whether local news, where it's really designed to be an intuitive response.

We kind of want to throw our guest onto the back of their feet.

But what are you thinking about?

What are you looking at that you think our audience should know more about?

Thank you, Jesse.

Thank you for having me.

I've got podcasting on the Mind.

Actually.

I've been in Orlando, I live in Madrid, so taking a plane over to Orlando was a big.

Excuse me, a big, A big step for me.

So I realize you very clearly have a background in broadcasting and I was with some broadcasters there.

I just got podcasting on the Mind.

I was there last week and here I am on your podcast.

Thank you for having.

And it's just very, very interesting, the use of audio and the use of audio as a radiophonic almost, I guess podcast is the successor to radio.

I did meet a couple of former radio presenters and they were in their early 60s, mid-60s, even a bit older, and someone who never really touched this, this area.

It's just very interesting for me to, to be on shows, Jesse, and talk about my work and the future of work and AI and all the things that are topical and we're talking about.

I did see the inauguration.

I got out of the US on the day Trump was inaugurated.

So I thought, wow, I just got out on the day.

Good timing.

So that was good timing.

Exactly.

I flew out of Philadelphia just a few hours before he was.

So I'm not exactly sure who he's pardoned and who he hasn't pardoned.

But I would say that I think the US Is very.

Or North America in general.

The US in particular is very polarized.

I mean, it's split down the middle, and maybe the world is polarized.

Is that a fair comment between the two camps, you know, the socialists, the lefties on the one side, and the.

The righties or the far righties sort of clawing their way into power.

I do think it's dangerous having someone like Elon Musk, such a wealthy person in power.

He's clearly financing bankrolling Trump's campaign.

And, you know, that looked very much like a fascist salute to me that he was giving.

So I think these are some dangerous people and we need checks and balances on power, Jesse, to keep these people in check.

Absolutely.

And I agree with you that podcasting is having this real moment and it is absolutely the successor to radio.

And once you said that, the historian in me kind of had this insight that of course, Hitler's rise was because of the medium of radio.

Right.

He was a very effective orator and radio broadcaster.

And I wonder if podcasting has a similar dark side because, you know, podcasting played a huge role in the American election and where the United States right wing politics often owed its origins to talk radio and AM radio in the United States, that seems to be evolving in podcasting.

Although hopefully podcasting allows for a greater diversity of voices.

Cause unlike radio, there's no barrier to entry.

Right.

Anyone can start podcasting.

And so in that sense, I see a light amidst these very scary times in terms of the polarization.

And while we have limited time today, I at some point do wanna ask you about Spanish politics because I find it fascinating and I think North Americans know very little about it.

But our second segment on every metaview show is wtf or what's the Future?

Because we are a future centric podcast and we'd like to invite our guests to kind of share what's on their event horizon.

Right.

Like, what are you looking at, Jason?

What do you see either near term or long term future that you think our guests should also be paying attention to?

Yeah, that's a great question, Jesse.

So I work in the online language service provision business.

I am first and foremost a medical translator.

I make my living translating medicine from French and Spanish to English.

I started out as a doctor, so that's how I got into that field.

Now I'm branching into entrepreneurship and things interesting and fun things like podcasting and, you know, I agree.

I think it's a very interesting field.

And look at these big podcasts.

Joe Rogan that Trump was on, I agree, was a big decisive influence in the election.

I follow an influencer, Jesse, called Daniel Priestley.

He's the head of Dent Global and he teaches.

He's been on a couple of podcasts.

Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett is a big, big show.

Ramit Sethi was on recently as well.

So he teaches us a strategy of just this sort of pyramid of getting onto the.

The bottom shows with the lower audience and then just working your way up, up onto those, you know, Steve Bartlett's and Joe Rogan shows, just increasing the audience.

In terms of the future of work, Jesse, I think I'm looking at an industry.

I'm.

I'm.

I like to think of myself as a thought leader.

I don't know if I.

That's not for me to say.

It's rather to.

I like, validate.

No, no, no, Jason, I'll validate.

Congratulations.

Metaviews has recognized you as a certified thought leader.

Please continue.

That's so kind of you.

Thank you.

I think the future of my industry is human supervised AI output.

So, Jesse, we work a lot on supervising machine output, whether that be chatgpt or integrated with CAT tools.

CAT meaning computer assisted translation.

So I teach what.

I'm still developing an authority framework to teach people, but it is loosely based around standalone personal branding.

So, you know, very fantastic visibility of your online assets.

How do you stand out?

I'll give you an example of how someone stood out.

In PodFest 25, there was a wonderful man called Larry Roberts, and he had a company called Red Hat Media, and sure enough, he had a red baseball cap on.

You wear a red hat.

So this guy stood out for me, and he was one of the most interesting people.

I think I saw that because that is standalone branding, by just putting on a red cap.

So I wrote to him and I said, look, I'm so happy to meet you.

And, you know, these connections you get from the corridors, Jesse, are just incredible.

They're just like gold dust.

You can't.

You know, whatever session I went to, it paled into insignificance in the conversations I had in the hallways and all these amazing American friends.

And of course, I invited everyone over to Spain.

I mean, if you come over to Madrid, I'll happily host you.

Spanish politics is as divisive as American politics.

It is as polarized.

It is the right and far right on one side and the left and far left on.

On the other side.

It is a left wing government, but it is a bit of a minority government.

He lost a popular vote.

So although we don't have an electoral college, we kind of feel as if we do because he got less votes than the other guy, but managed to swing the election just because of these decisive minority party votes that swing it.

So it's the sort of country where you think, is this serious.

I mean, you want strong things on foreign policy, education and health.

But every change of government, Jesse, you get them unwinding everything, just ratcheting back everything the previous guy did.

And I think what you need is solid pillars of common foreign security policy, education, health, regardless of what color government is in power.

Right.

You want these things that are, we want good schools for our kids, we want good hospitals if we get sick, and we want to feel safe.

I mean, the government's number one primary purpose is to keep us safe.

Right?

Yeah.

So I would say it's as divisive as over in your side of the Atlantic.

And I was very nervous about this trip, Jesse.

It's been 20 years since I went to America.

The last time was my honeymoon with my wife for coming up to 20 years marriage.

And I was nervous about traveling so far for work.

I mean, this is crazy because I normally would go to a local conference in Barcelona or London or, you know, that would be normal.

Which you could take the train, too.

Exactly.

I could almost get the train to.

Exactly.

I could just go to Brussels and get the Eurotunnel over to Waterloo.

So, you know, that was a big sort of mindset shift.

I was feeling nervous and the night before I didn't sleep and.

Oh, my gosh.

But it was such an interesting trip, Jesse.

And I know you live on a farm.

And I met an entrepreneur who's also a farmer when I was in another event.

I was at an event called the Long Haul Leader in November, and I met a wonderful entrepreneur called Ryan Levesque.

He is the father of quiz marketing.

He's the father of the Ask Method and many books, many very, very influential leader, fantastic masterminds.

And he lives on a farm in Vermont.

And he just told a very, very interesting story.

His Keenab was called Zig When They Zag.

So his idea of people are running to the left, you run to the right.

People are investing in this direction.

There's probably an ROI in this direction.

And that was, again, another meeting.

That was three months ago, a couple of months ago.

And that was another very influential meeting.

So if anyone's listening to this, wondering whether it's worth it, the time and the resources going to an event, absolutely.

Just don't think about it.

Just sign the check and get out there.

And your metric of when the conversations in the hallway are better than the sessions on the stage, that.

That's not a criticism of the sessions of the stage.

It's more an affirmation of how great that event is.

And it is tragic that we are having this conversation now and not a few weeks ago, because I just booked a flight via Madrid, which I could have had a stopover.

So, unfortunately, the way I'm going to Tenerife for an event, I'm not able to do the stopover.

But I will be taking you up on your offer.

And further, I think I have to have you back on this episode in the future just so we can do a deep dive into Spanish politics, because, as you mentioned, it is complicated, and I focused a lot on Catalonia and Barcelona, and that independence movement has kind of died down, but it still, to your point, has an influence on federal politics.

So, again, let's bookmark that for later, because today's conversation, and as I mentioned at the outset, the future of work is something that we have talked about here at Metaviews quite a bit, partly because I have found a lot of the predictions around the future of work to be nonsense, to really not be rooted in either empiricism or in critical thinking.

But you said something that I thought made me go, yes, this is exactly why I want Jason to talk about the future of work, the human supervised, and the extent to which a lot of the prophecies around AI that displace the human are.

Aren't going to work, because you fundamentally need to have that human in the loop.

And before we talk about that, I kind of want to set the grounds by talking about language, because I think that's another area where most people don't really understand what language is and how it operates.

And it was interesting.

You talk about how you were or still are, to a certain extent, a doctor.

That's how you are able to do medical translation.

Let's just start with the act of translating medicine from jargon to the layperson, from the professional language to the more accessible language, because it strikes me that is a form of translation.

And I say this in the sense of setting you up for a really broad and philosophical question.

How is language changing in our current contemporary moment?

Because it strikes me it is on a real fundamental level.

And I'm curious whether you agree and how you view our current relationship with language.

Yeah, that's an amazing question for an applied linguist, Jesse.

I think language is always evolving.

What I'm going to say is that colloquial language probably evolves faster than technical language.

So the kind of documents that I see are unlikely to change that too much.

I'm diving into medical reports, clinical trial documents, protocols, summary of product characteristics, these types of things.

For drugs, those things are pretty much black and white.

It's either this or it isn't.

And you've got to get it right otherwise, that sort of thing.

It's difficult to train the robots and large language models to do those sorts of translations.

So I guess I'm fortunate in that way.

So the message for anyone considering a career as a linguist, I mean, don't fret.

AI is not taking your job.

There is as much work supervising AI as there was before, if not more so.

So it's an opportunity for productivity.

You can go faster and you will always be in need.

If you have a niche, Jesse, you have to niche down.

You've got a niche down into medicine, as I did law, finance, art, history.

Although let me push back a bit because I agree that the language of niches within marketing is logical.

But I'm going to disagree and say I'm not sure medicine is a niche.

I think you have a specialization, but medicine itself is still very general.

There are all sorts of schools and practices and disciplines within medicine.

So while you are distinguishing yourself and specializing, there is still a kind of generalist approach, is there not?

I think there is a generalist approach.

There would be what I would call sub niches within the generalism.

So like oncology or oncology, cardiology, those would be the sort of super specialisms within the specialism.

I mean, I spend my time on clinical trials, medical reports, journal articles, where I help author clients, you know, do a bit of consultancy, almost bridge between the author clients and the journal.

Free journals are always saying they can't, they can't publish because they're free.

The paid journals are, you know, expensive and the quicker publication cycles, that.

That's my kind of conversation with my clients.

But yeah, the future, the future is to lean into AI, I think, I think too many people are afraid of AI, Jesse.

They've been leaving the industry, they've been going back to employment.

And that, I think is the wrong thing to do.

I've been self employed 20 years.

I just could not imagine today going back to work for someone and not having the freedom of doing my own schedule and picking my clients.

I'll be 50 in a few months time.

So I'm about to enter a different phase of my life, the last 10 or 15 years of my career.

So that's an interesting no.

Let me push back there.

As someone who just turned 50, I hate to tell you this.

We may have multiple decades of our career ahead of us, given the nature of the society we face, combined with revolutions in medicine that could allow us to lead healthier last quarters of our lives.

Absolutely.

And I kind of at the start was joking, but not joking about translating professional language into layperson's terms because again, politically, we have seen an assault on science.

Right.

An assault on medicine even.

And the Trump administration withdrawing from the World Health Organization is not isolated.

Right.

It's part of a larger kind of push against established scientific authorities.

So to what extent when you deal with your clients, are you not just having to help them translate between languages, but be more accessible?

Right.

And anticipate the kind of conspiracy and disinformation that targets medical knowledge and targets medical information and that a lot of the researchers who look at conspiracy say we need to make medical information more accessible, we need to make it more available to the layperson.

Has that been reaching your clients?

Are they starting to get a sense that they also need a communicator like yourself, not just to translate between languages, but to help them make their research, their findings, their ideas and arguments more accessible?

I think that's a great question.

It comes down to using English as the sort of common language.

So the language of most researchers is English.

So I will help people with poor English who write in Spanish.

Of course, many clients write in English and are good enough to do that.

And it becomes an editing job.

Of course, AI has made editing, has given a premium on editing because we're now editing more than translating.

I think Trump's decision to leave the W H O that is purely a MAGA movement decision.

It is a Trump first, an America first thing that has bad news for global trade.

Let's hope, you know, God forbid it doesn't, you know, flare up in another pandemic, God forbid in another 100 years.

That's a once in a century event.

So I think, although I got to.

Push back there too, because I think it was a once in a century event.

My friends in epidemiology are suggesting, thanks to climate change, thanks to globalized trade.

The way in which such things spread could mean that it's more than once a century.

But please continue.

No, I sincerely hope it is because that means that in our lifetimes we're not going to see another pandemic.

Hopefully.

It sounds like we're very similar ages.

So, yeah, I think communication is.

I mean, I could say instead of medical translator, I'm a professional communication specialist.

I mean, that is what we do.

We help.

We help clients communicate.

It may not be medicine.

It may be a press release for a private equity firm.

It may be a.

I don't know, a clinical trial protocol.

It may be a deed of property, you know, for the legal translators out there, a property deed or a last will and testament.

So I think communicating is.

Will always be the case.

And multi.

Multilingual communication, if you have a couple of languages, and mine are pretty standard.

I mean, French and Spanish is as pretty standard as you go, Jesse.

But I've been lucky in that I have this strong niche, the medicine or the niche within the niche, as you said, that I've been able to string together a fairly interesting career.

Well, and now that we have successfully infected you with the title of thought leader and you've recognized that your ideas, quite frankly, are worth sharing as wide and far as possible.

I affirm your point about AI.

I feel that there is a deliberate attempt to induce fear around AI because it's such an accessible tool.

Right.

Because it is such a powerful and accessible tool.

And again, to use political language.

I remember as a child when the means of production were not even within my reach.

I couldn't imagine making radio, couldn't imagine doing a podcast like we're doing now.

But AI allows me to both be a farmer and a podcaster because it makes a lot of the production.

It allows me, for example, to take this video that we're producing, the audio that we're producing, put it into clips and upload it to TikTok, and then TikTok's AI will promote it to other people who want to learn about these subjects.

So tell me a bit more about the way in which to use our language, the way in which you're excited about AI as a translator, as a professional communicator.

What are the things that you would tell to other people that are exciting and are sort of the opposite of the fear, but should be engendering curiosity and experimentation?

I am convinced that AI can be used to enhance productivity.

I think if we lean into AI, we can use.

So I'm talking about chatgpt Copilot Claude Whatever these, these engines are, they're all pretty much the same.

They can produce images that they're great for content creators, but they're also good for service provision as well.

So I think service, the service provision industry, and this goes as much for translation as real estate as law, needs to just feel more comfortable with AI.

And I think we are.

I'm seeing thought is in MySpace teaching us how, you know, we're seeing things like AI and translation and how to use it.

And we've got somebody who's built a cat tool, a computer assisted translation tool that integrates ChatGPT.

And that's genius because that's exactly what the market is asking for, a hybrid human AI solution.

So that's genius.

So I think if people just get to grips with this work smarter, not harder philosophy, Jesse, to use it for enhanced productivity, then that's certainly the way ahead for the next five years.

That's, that's my plan.

I don't want to stop translating.

I mean, even if consultancy goes really well for me and a thousand people buy the book behind me and they come onto my courses and, you know, it's all fantastic, I still want to feel useful as a translator.

That's my bread and butter, you know, job.

And I don't think I'll ever stop translating for my clients unless, you know, so many points are going to my head and tells me not to.

Even then, one might be tempted to find a way to get that gun removed.

What I really like about your kind of message, and this gets back to why I think the future of work is often an elusive prediction that people make.

You've placed the human at the center of it.

You are very clear to your fellow translators, your colleagues in the industry, that they don't have to fear losing their job, that what it is, is their job is changing and to your point, potentially becoming more productive, therefore more prosperous.

Why don't you unpack that further in terms of what you see as the future of work and your own kind of role in it.

Given that you said we all kind of want to feel useful, we want to have a kind of purpose to life and maybe that's changing, as you mentioned, from translation to more editing to more consulting.

So to get specific, Jesse, let's say we have a 7,000 word article.

I mean, normally this would take several hours, five or six hours work.

I believe with AI this could be done in less than two hours to get a fairly rough draft.

I mean, obviously this needs to be read through and revised and edited.

But I think that's a marvelous.

So that's effectively doubling your productivity so you can actually double your output, double your revenue by just leveraging the tool.

And I'm not, I'm certainly not saying you should just, you know, press the button and leave it to translate and hand that in.

That's, that, that would be irresponsible.

But I am saying it's just there as a, as a little helper to.

And you know, I'm seeing, I'm seeing AI apps as well, Jesse, to help us with our sales.

So let's say we're a translation business wanting to sell more to pharma companies in the US well we can program an app to sort of filter our leads and just ask a series of questions that will make life easier for our sales representative to get the warmer lead and hopefully easier to close a deal on those calls.

So I'm seeing marvelous applications of AI.

It is affecting every industry.

This was coming, I mean I remember machine translation five or ten years ago.

I wouldn't touch it with a barge bolt.

I just thought it was so inferior to the humans.

And here we are 10 years later and I'm using it daily, I use it daily for content creation work because I build an audience and micro community around my, around my message, around my authority framework what I hope will be authoritative soon enough.

And I think AI is a good thing.

Of course it causes some destruction but it also creates a lot of opportunity.

I don't think there's ever destruction without.

It's a sort of balanced hybrid arrangements between some things go and some opportunities come.

I believe there are unicorn opportunities Jesse, that just come, come along once in a, once in a career lifetime or once in a blue moon and you have to jump on these opportunities whilst they can and, and that can be life changing.

That can change your life.

I mean somebody spoke a podfest to who did jump on.

I believe it was Red Hat Media, Larry Roberts, the, the gentleman I told you about and he that was meeting the, the event organizer of Pub Festival and that changed his life.

So I think you can have these life changing events and we need to jump on these opportunities whenever they arise.

Well and the kind of implicit vision that I'm hearing there is one of learning.

Because on the one hand you're describing how AI is evolving, right?

How five years ago the translation capabilities were really not ready for prime time versus now they've advanced quite substantially.

But it sounds like you over that period also kind of advanced and evolved.

Allow me to Kind of make this more.

As a personal question, which you're welcome to elaborate into a larger framework, but what is your learning strategy?

How do you, as a professional, a seasoned professional as I am, how do you integrate learning into your professional activities and ensure that you're kind of always growing and evolving as the culture and marketplace around you does as well?

Well, yeah, that's a great question, Jesse.

I think CPD continuous professional development for me is a big, big.

It's a big one.

I do events, I do events where, where either, you know, I'm usually learning.

I'm going to the podfest event was a huge learning exercise for me as a, as a first time podcaster.

I've had a show on the air for two years.

But yeah, it needs, it needs building out, it needs monetizing, it needs a bit of strategy behind it.

So I was just in my element at this event.

But I, I'm very intellectually curious, I would say describe myself as if I want to know everything about a topic, I'll just read everything I can find about whatever that topic is, whether that's for my personal life or for work.

And I think you just have to have this intellectual curiosity to do that.

The other aspect of course, is networking.

You need to build a VIP network of people.

Of course not.

I spent to a handful of people and I had deeper connections and deeper conversations that I would never get online.

Jesse.

I would never get these conversations.

I mean, we're having a pretty good conversation now because we're curating a video, we're producing some content which will hopefully be of use to someone.

Maybe someone's thinking of going into the language industry, who knows?

But I think it's about the networking and that's something you cannot get online.

So I would encourage all of you listening to this to get out to those events, find out where the influences are, which water coolers do they hang out with, get to those events and invest the time and money.

I promise you, you will see a return on your investment.

So let me push on that a little and more extending that argument even further.

As someone who is both an entrepreneur but is also encouraging entrepreneurs and who's working with different businesses, certainly on a language or linguistic level.

To what extent do you think events should be part of their strategy?

And I don't mean attending events, I mean organizing their own.

Because we're having, we started our conversation by saying we're participating in the evolution of radio, right?

And the new version of radio.

But it strikes me the parallel is with events, because I agree with you entirely.

Going to events in person and connecting with people in person is second to none.

I mean, I am fundamentally an event professional.

I go and speak to those events.

But I also think second to that there is potential in virtual events.

There is potential, especially given the cost of say going from Madrid to Florida or doing that kind of traveling.

I'm curious what your thoughts are again on events as a commercial strategy, both in person and virtual, because you're kind of making that argument indirectly on an individual level.

I'm curious if you want to elevate that to an organizational or commercial level because it sounds like it works not just for the individual attending events, but there's kind of power in the convener of hosting and facilitating these events when no one else is.

I think live events is a very, very good strategy to build influence.

I also think it is very good to co host events with another influencer if you could find someone in the industry with you.

And I've attempted to do this with one, with one person who manufactured some software, has a software as a service company and he's struggling with some of the things I'm struggling about messaging and getting across to people.

Just investing in themselves I think is a big, is a big problem we all have, Jesse, is this personal development and just willingness to invest in ourselves and move ourselves forwards faster.

Find that mentor, find that strategy, whatever it is to invest in.

So I think events, live events, as you said, second to none.

And if you can be the host of that live event and you know, some, some people, their full time job is organizing a live, a live event.

I mean the, the founder of PodFest, Chris Grimistos, I think he, this is his full time job, this is what he does from, from day in, day out.

So if you can, in your, within your industry position yourself as the thought leader who has an event.

I mean mine would be called the entrepreneurial translator or something along those lines.

Just teaching freelance translators or online language service providers to think as small business owners.

Just this mindset shift, I think that's a wonderful strategy to maintain competitiveness and relevance in the years ahead.

So one of the things I feel that is a subtext of what we've been describing today in the context of the future of work is how we allocate our time and resources.

And you know, this is something I often struggle with because I wear so many hats.

And one thing I like actually about being a farmer, for example, this morning, it's exceptionally cold.

It's like minus 20 Celsius here.

And I had to go and dig a bale out of ice and bring it to the horses because they're eating way more food because it's really cold.

And that was an example where my time was easily allocated.

But the rest of the day I often struggle.

Like there'll be times where I prefer to create.

There are other times where I know I got to promote.

There are other times where I should be learning, There are other times I should be doing business development.

Where do you see within the future of work, within the role of AI, within the entrepreneurial mindset, the distribution of resources, of our time, of our attention?

Because it strikes me, you and I as intellectuals, we're sort of assuming, oh yeah, you got to do all these different things.

But I think a lot of people get overwhelmed.

This goes back to the folks who just want to go back to being an employee because they would rather someone else tell them what to do.

Because there are, it seems, so many different things that we have to so many different plates and balls we have to keep spinning.

So where do you see that within this discussion around the future of work, given the so many ways in which our attention can be stretched, captured, distracted, and yet there are also so many tasks that we need to divide our attention and resources amongst.

That's such a great question, Jesse.

The event where I met Ryan Levesque, where I was happy to meet him and he told the anecdote about a cow sort of squirting mucus in his face and him bursting out laughing.

That was at the Long Haul Leader Summit in Cambridge hosted by Chris Ducker.

He's a popular, you know, online mentor, business mentor.

And that event was all about anti burnout.

And I think one of the things as entrepreneurs or solopreneurs we have is this risk of burnout.

And there are so many tasks.

So what I, what I try and do and I'm successful to this, to a certain degree, is time blocking.

So I try and group activities together.

I'll do my service provision work in the morning because I'm freshest and that's the work, the billable hours.

And I'm very sort of a keen eye on the billable hours.

What activity is bringing in money, what isn't?

There's so many non billable hours.

Of course, there are coaching hours, there is marketing time and visit, business development time.

So I think time blocking is a useful strategy.

But more than the actual time blocking or time management, Jesse, it's this Anti burnout strategy.

If I could just get a lifestyle business off the ground, which I more or less have, I'm pretty much there working five or six hours a day, doing the morning shift eight to two, and then after lunch, which is now sort of time for me, it's just gone 4:30.

That's a more sort of relaxed time when I would schedule podcast interviews and, you know, conversations where I, I need my, my, my, my wits about me, of course, but I, I'm unlikely to make a mistake.

It's not the same as making a mistake in the document that might have serious consequences.

Now if I, if I'm, if I'm tired after lunch and, you know, had a half a glass of wine or something.

So I think, I think it's, it's a question of just being.

Keeping an eye on your emotional health and your boundaries.

I'm frequently asked by people outside of my time zone, the Canary Islands, just this week, you're going to Tenerife.

I had a client in Grand Canary say, are you available at 6:00 to sort of, you know, if I have a question?

And I said, well, no, I have an appointment.

And I was very firm on the boundary because she was clearly trying to organize something around her schedule and going to this meeting and then looking at it and then, you know, at 6:00, but that's, you know, or earlier.

I'm out of there.

I don't want to be talking about work.

I want to be with my family.

I've got two daughters, 17 and 15.

Just spend time with my wife, just chilling out, hanging out, watching some tennis.

I'm a big tennis fan.

So there are things I do outside of my work life that I enjoy and that I value, that recharge me, that recharge my emotions, my muscles.

Weekends, I'm unlikely to think about work until Sunday evening.

Then I'll plan my week out and I'll have a deep sort of think about my diary, look at it, all the calls that I have, and I think it's just getting organized.

Jesse I won't say I'm the most organized solopreneur out there, but it is fun for you to do that.

Yeah.

Although it kind of evokes a larger cultural context, which I'll articulate as a more big picture question.

The Spanish work culture has always been, I think, a greater balance between the, the human and the cog in the machine.

But there has been, I think, a lot of criticism from the rest of Europe, especially around the nature of the siesta and the timing of the Spanish workday, has that impacted.

Has Spanish work culture been compromised by the integration into the larger European market, or has it resisted that?

And is Spanish work culture still a precious balance between the home life and the work life?

Well, that's a very interesting point.

I think the siesta is a bit of a stereotype for me.

It refers more to the commercial shops not being open from 2 to 5, so you're unlikely to get service from 2 to 5, so you need to go after 5 and then possibly until 8.

There is also a productivity component.

You have this expression, calenta la silla.

Calenta la silla means just keeping the seat warm.

So this, this idea of being the first one in, the last one out.

And there, of course is a productivity.

People are just, just doing things de cara a la galleria, just for show, just to see, you know, for the boss to see.

You're there doing your hours.

That, to me suggests a very low productivity.

I feel you can be as productive in five or six hours a day than any employer can from 8 to 10.

And you surely agree with me on this.

And you have a very interesting hybrid lifestyle as well.

You've got your online corporate business activities, you've got your farm, and that's a wonderful lifestyle, hybrid lifestyle.

I think I'd like to just tip my hat to you on that and hugely admire.

I mean, this is one of the benefits North American culture that we have so much land, right, that, you know, compared to Europe, where every single piece of land has been spoken for for perhaps centuries, you know, here in North America, land is a little more accessible with respect to our indigenous and first nations brothers and sisters.

I do want to come to your.

But the other question that's kind of been brewing in my head throughout our conversation, which I will warn you is kind of coming out of completely left field.

But I want to throw you this curveball nonetheless to both indulge my own personal curiosity and see if I can provoke you as a thought leader into a comment or thought on the evolution of society.

I would love to hear you, for the benefit of our audience, break down the difference between translation and transliteration and whether the difference between translation and transliteration speaks to our social media society and the way in which things don't always translate, but instead are more an essence of transliteration.

If I might provoke you to kind of address that.

Well, translation is just simply a textual shift from say, Spanish to English.

That would just be so for a non Spanish speaking audience to understand something In English, I mean, more than transliteration.

I'm also thinking of transcreation, which is adapting something for a specific target audience.

So for example, an advertising text or localizing a piece of software, you might need different size boxes for the text.

So that's more transcreation.

Would that come under the same category as transliteration?

That's certainly a sub niche within my industry.

But translation, of course, is.

There is much more confusion, Jesse, between translation and interpreting.

Some interpreters are wrongly called translators.

They are interpreters.

The person in the cabin with the headphones, as I have on now, interpreting with the source text coming in through one ear.

You have to process it, listen to it and then get the target text.

Excuse me, the target language out in the.

In the same.

All in the same process.

So that is very challenging work.

Very.

Yeah.

Normally you wouldn't work more than half an hour at a time and have be doing relay with someone else in the booth.

But.

And is it the subjectivity that fundamentally is part of that rapid cognitive experience?

Is that part of the difference between.

Or are you just talking about the cognitive effort?

I'm talking about the cognitive effort.

I mean, bias is an issue, of course, in translation.

You can't go off making your own if you're translating.

If you're interpreting for Trump, you can't just go off and agree with him or disagree with him.

Your job is just to say what he's saying, but no one knows what he's saying.

That's such a great example.

Right.

He is so deliberately vague at times.

Right.

And speaks in abstract meaning dog whistle, that the news media has basically just become a conversation between the two.

Right.

So again, we're running out of time, but this, this is something that I.

Think just very quickly, I have heard of colleagues who have had trouble interpreting Trump because there's as probably with Biden as well.

I mean, these are elderly men who.

Whose expressive communication is perhaps not.

I mean, well, that's another.

A debate for another day.

Jesse.

Why?

What are octogenarians doing standing for the highest office in the land?

I mean, surely we have people our age or younger that can stand for office and be thought leaders and leaders in their own right.

Why are we concentrating on the age group of late 70s, early 80s?

To me, that's crazy.

As a European, as a Brit, I.

Understand that in the gerontocracy and the accumulation of power.

But as someone who aspires to be an octogenarian, I don't want to rule anything out just yet, but I do understand your logic.

Now, the final segment that we have on any show, which being the generous thought leader that you are, you've kind of already been doing it, is shout outs.

Is there anyone that you would like our audience to know more about that you would like them to look up?

Someone that you are following online that you think our audience should also be paying attention to?

Well, I'd like to shout out my current mentor.

I study business with a very nice lady called Susannah Ray.

R E A Y.

She has an online community called the Sparkspace.

And I'm learning, I'm learning lots from her.

How to, how to, you know, how to run coaching calls, how to build my authority very easily, whether it's through a book or my, my online course.

My just getting the messaging right so that I can blast it out on all the channels.

I, I don't have separate content for each channel.

I, I do what you do, I repurpose it.

You said you repurpose videos for TikTok.

I do the same for YouTube shorts.

YouTube.

I work LinkedIn and Instagram.

That's where I play mainly.

And I have the micro community there.

And another person I follow quite frequently is Daniel Priestley.

I mentioned him earlier.

He's on the podcast guesting strategy, which is what I'm doing right now is to get on, get on podcast.

And he's the founder of Dent Global.

He's also the founder of some very nifty quiz software called ScoreApp.

And this is a company whose valuation is in the tens of millions.

And most of us use scoreApp quizzes to filter our leads and get our leads organized.

And those are two people I would just give a shout out to.

And finally, you are clearly a connoisseur of great events.

Do you share those events on your social feeds?

If we want to know where Jason's going or where Jason thinks we should be going.

How do we tap into that?

Yeah, so my next event, it's a local industry event in Barcelona.

It's called Elia Together, that's run by the European European Language Industry Association.

That's just a networking event, local for me, just two, two hours away, door to door.

And I live in very near the train station, so that's very local.

I will then be at a medical translation event in Cordoba at the end of April and that'll be specifically on medical translation.

So there are events within the specialism.

So anyone you know, interested in my industry can just pull up, pull up quite a few industry related events.

My next entrepreneurs event, I'm not quite sure when that will be.

That'll probably be.

I know there's another podcasting event in London.

I think it's Pod.

Pod.

It's not called podfest, it's called something else.

But it is in May, so possibly some of the people from from Pub Fest will be there.

But yeah, I have a mixture of events, some industry related and some more entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial related.

Right on.

Well, thank you very much, Jason.

As anticipated, this has been a fantastic conversation.

Not just about the future of work, but about the cultural aspects that underpin the future of work.

Whether AI, whether entrepreneurial, whether being a thought leader, working up the podcasting minor leagues to make it to the big time.

Hopefully the big time.

It's not Joe Rogan.

Hopefully there's someone better soon so that your star moment can happen, perhaps with a better class and better character.

This has been another episode of Meta Views.

We love to platform people like Jason and help them reach a greater audience.

You can find us on all the socials and we'll be back soon.

Thanks again.