Artwork for podcast Distribution First
How to Prioritize What Matters (And Get More Done) Ft. Ryan Baum
Episode 6226th March 2024 • Distribution First • Justin Simon
00:00:00 00:41:34

Share Episode

Shownotes

Turn 1 blog post into 10+ pieces of content. Download my FREE Blog Remix Guide → https://justinsimon.co/remix

In this episode, Justin sits down with Ryan Baum to unpack the crucial practice of prioritization and how it affects your productivity. They deep-dive into the pitfalls of prioritizing the wrong tasks and share advice on how content marketers can focus on activities that truly move the needle. They'll challenge you to adopt a mindset that's centered on results, efficiency, and clever repurposing — without losing sight of what's important.

Subscribe to Distribution First and join us in fine-tuning your content's lifecycle for maximum impact.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • How to prioritize tasks for better productivity.
  • Why focusing on "big rocks" boosts content impact.
  • When to push back as a team player.
  • Ways to battle perfectionism and anxiety.
  • Strategies for embracing authentic perspectives.

***

CONNECT

🔔 LinkedIn: @justincsimon

🐦 Twitter @justincsimon

✉️ Email: hello@justinsimon.co

***

SPONSOR

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of my podcast production.

They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your podcast.

Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Visit hatch.fm to learn more.

Transcripts

Speaker:

Everybody, before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for producing

Speaker:

this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and strategy for

Speaker:

one flat rate by visiting Hatch FM.

Speaker:

All right, let's get in the show.

Speaker:

Welcome to Distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head

Speaker:

and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week I

Speaker:

share playbooks, motivations, stories, and strategies to help you repurpose and

Speaker:

distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you

Speaker:

created.

Speaker:

Everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Distribution first.

Speaker:

So excited to have Ryan with me today. And we're going to be

Speaker:

chatting a little bit of a divergent path, but it's all going to tie

Speaker:

back in to what we all love and talk about here, which is

Speaker:

distribution, repurposing content, actually really doing content marketing

Speaker:

the smart way, a more efficient way. And so

Speaker:

really today what we're going to talk about is how do we, as content

Speaker:

marketers or marketers in general, how can we focus on what we need

Speaker:

to work on versus what we think we should be

Speaker:

working on versus what we're told we should be working

Speaker:

on versus. There's no time to work on the things that I need to

Speaker:

work on because I'm in 18 meetings a day. So we're going to talk about

Speaker:

all of those things today. Super excited to have Ryan on the show. Ryan, welcome

Speaker:

in. Hey, Justin, how are you doing? Glad to finally be here.

Speaker:

Absolutely. So it was funny, it was kind of serendipitous. As

Speaker:

we were talking about this topic and what we were going to talk about, I

Speaker:

came across this quote from Tim Ferriss that I think is a great starting point

Speaker:

for this whole conversation, which is doing something

Speaker:

unimportant, well, does not make it

Speaker:

important. Doing something

Speaker:

unimportant, well, does not make it

Speaker:

important. And I think that's a huge sort of launching point for how

Speaker:

we do things. I think sometimes, man, as marketers especially,

Speaker:

it's easy to get sucked into the tactics, it's easy to get

Speaker:

sucked into the work and make everything important.

Speaker:

And really, at the end of the day, the unimportant things that we think we're

Speaker:

doing, well, it doesn't actually make them important at all.

Speaker:

Exactly. So I guess talk me through a little bit

Speaker:

in your roles as you come from gorgeous, you've

Speaker:

worked at other companies. Now you're working for yourself as well. So talk to me

Speaker:

about either your struggles or maybe some of those experiences that you've had

Speaker:

in terms of prioritizing the correct things or even just

Speaker:

coming up with what the heck is the most important thing that I should be

Speaker:

working on. Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, it is, to this day,

Speaker:

a constant struggle. When I texted you before this, and I

Speaker:

dropped this topic because it's been on my mind from therapy this morning,

Speaker:

and I am not coming at this. I may be on a podcast right now,

Speaker:

but I am not coming at this from any place of expertise. I'm coming at

Speaker:

this from a place of being very interested in it because of how bad I

Speaker:

am at it. Right. And how I want to get better. I think when you

Speaker:

start consulting, everything is a trade off. You're in house. It's all a trade off.

Speaker:

You spend time doing one thing versus another or working extra hours,

Speaker:

that's a trade off on things. You could be spending time with a partner or

Speaker:

family or friends. But when you get to set your own 40

Speaker:

hours a week, and in our cases, like, is it even 40 hours a week?

Speaker:

The trade offs become so apparent and so

Speaker:

present in your day to day thinking. And so I've

Speaker:

always known I need to prioritize better and ship faster and all

Speaker:

these things we all say we want to do, but when I don't have to

Speaker:

be on until six, and I could be at the park right now, and I'm

Speaker:

not, because I'm doing a thing that I don't need to do. You really feel

Speaker:

it in a new way because there's, like, parkinson's law, like, the work

Speaker:

expands to fill the time, and so when you

Speaker:

have 8 hours a day at work, you're like, well, I got to be here

Speaker:

till six. You're not really incentivized to

Speaker:

speed it up, especially since a lot of people who are really efficient get

Speaker:

rewarded by taking on someone else's work that they didn't.

Speaker:

You know, it is kind of like an interesting shift. And

Speaker:

even Erica Schneider posted yesterday about this

Speaker:

idea of overstrategizing and taking too long. It's never

Speaker:

done. Just ship it. And I posted a little

Speaker:

bit about what I've been working on, which is understanding that

Speaker:

perfectionism, I think, for everyone in all cases, is like,

Speaker:

at its core, an anxiety response. Right? Because wanting

Speaker:

to do good work, wanting to get better results, those are absolutely things

Speaker:

that can drive that anxiety response. But they're not

Speaker:

what's driving the perfectionism, because if you wanted to do good work and get

Speaker:

results, you would ship the thing and you would let it be good

Speaker:

work that gets results. And so I think, for

Speaker:

me, the first unlock happened when

Speaker:

I was at gorgeous, realizing that if I

Speaker:

actually want to make something not perfect, because that's

Speaker:

impossible, but close as possible, you have to ship it as part of that

Speaker:

before it's done, actually, which is the hard part, because if you want to make

Speaker:

the best thing possible, necessarily, you have to start getting those

Speaker:

ideas out, start battle, testing them, getting feedback from the

Speaker:

market, right? We all, as content people, have a story

Speaker:

of the blog post or the LinkedIn post that

Speaker:

we overthought and

Speaker:

overdid, but then we were like, it's worth it because it's going to be a

Speaker:

banger. And then it is not a banger because at the end of

Speaker:

the day, you just don't know until it goes

Speaker:

out. And so I'm really trying to take more of this

Speaker:

iterative approach. Oh yeah. And so that feedback

Speaker:

loop was the first unlock. I'm not doing this efficiently.

Speaker:

I think I'm being efficient by only doing it once, but that's actually not even

Speaker:

possible. Second unlock, the more important unlock that actually has started to do

Speaker:

it for me is recognizing this stress response isn't

Speaker:

coming from this project will be bad and there will be consequences,

Speaker:

because no one bad project, for the most part, sinks any of

Speaker:

us. Right? It's the self

Speaker:

worth and sense of self that we have tied up in our work and our

Speaker:

ability to be productive. That's what takes the hit, or what we

Speaker:

imagine will take the hit from shipping

Speaker:

bad work, right? Erica's post was most

Speaker:

human response, gets a cookie. And the end of my comment was

Speaker:

like, never ever received a cookie for the

Speaker:

ideas that are idealized in my head that no one knows about.

Speaker:

Gotten a lot of cookies though, for shit that I shipped that I wasn't happy

Speaker:

with and thought it wasn't ready, and then it worked really well.

Speaker:

So I think there's a lesson in that. Mostly for me, I'm speaking to myself

Speaker:

and trying to like this news flash is, for me, almost

Speaker:

entirely 1000%. This is the

Speaker:

thing, too. It's like if you're listening to this show, you're probably on the higher

Speaker:

end of achiever than somebody who's not, right? So I think if you're washing

Speaker:

the dishes or walking your dog and you're listening to distribution first, you're probably

Speaker:

a little bit on the high achieving end. So I'm sure lots of people relate

Speaker:

to that. I'm on the high achieving end, and I think anybody who

Speaker:

bends that way holds themselves to a much higher standard

Speaker:

than anybody else would. And sometimes it's to

Speaker:

the detriment. And you touched on it with the ideal standard. And so when you

Speaker:

measure yourself against an ideal, you're never going to get

Speaker:

there. I've heard it described as the horizon line. Right.

Speaker:

If your ideal is, I'm going to hit that line,

Speaker:

and yet every bit of progress you make, that

Speaker:

line never gets closer. And that's your measuring point.

Speaker:

You're going to be miserable. And so you feel like you're doing so

Speaker:

many things, and yet there's no way that you can even get

Speaker:

there because you've set your measurement point at a place that is

Speaker:

completely and utterly unrealistic. Absolutely. So what I've sort of found and

Speaker:

what I've started to do that has completely changed how I measure myself, how I'm

Speaker:

viewing success. It's allowed me to ship things faster. And this has really only

Speaker:

started, really, this quarter is

Speaker:

measuring backward. So measuring backward on

Speaker:

how much further am I at the end of Q one

Speaker:

compared to the beginning of Q one? How much further am I

Speaker:

in March compared to February? What learnings have like,

Speaker:

having learning be a goal. Learning by

Speaker:

shipping, by sending that email series that I did not want

Speaker:

to send because it was salesy. Oh, I learned I could sell a workshop and

Speaker:

I could write it. I learned that I could do that. That's how you build

Speaker:

confidence and you're able to do more things. But, yeah, when you have

Speaker:

that ideal set of. This is what a good blog, even on a

Speaker:

tactical, like something you want to create. This is what a blog post is. This

Speaker:

is what this is. And we've all been through rounds of edits

Speaker:

and 100 things, and it's never the perfect thing. One of my buddies who does

Speaker:

video, he's like, a video is never done. It's never done because you can always

Speaker:

edit it. You can change this, you can fix it. And so you just got

Speaker:

to ship. You just got to ship. Yeah. And, you know, something that's been

Speaker:

really helping me with all of this mindset outside of just

Speaker:

therapy is I've been reading Rick Rubin's book. I've been listening to a lot of

Speaker:

his podcasts on this circuit he's doing.

Speaker:

And I've had folks that I really admire where

Speaker:

I'll listen to them on a couple different shows, and even some of the ones

Speaker:

that like a big fan, they've got their talk track that they've

Speaker:

worked on with. They're selling their thing. And Rick Rubin's

Speaker:

book comes from such an authentic place in him that the host can kind of

Speaker:

take it in whatever direction that they want. And because what he's

Speaker:

selling is his philosophy. He doesn't have to bring it

Speaker:

back. It applies. So I listened to him do like an on

Speaker:

being episode with Krista Tippett, and that shows very much about a holistic

Speaker:

and well lived life. And what does that mean? And how does creativity fit

Speaker:

into that? And how can we release some of these expectations on

Speaker:

ourselves to be happier and more at peace? And then I

Speaker:

went and listened to him on the Happiness project. I think it's called dude took

Speaker:

a completely different avenue. And another thing

Speaker:

I don't love about podcasts is sometimes it feels like the guest, especially with someone

Speaker:

like Rick Rubin, who's like a legend, is unwilling to challenge

Speaker:

them because what am I going to say to Rick Rubin? You

Speaker:

know what I mean? But he really embraced that

Speaker:

and was also very quick to be like, I

Speaker:

disagree with the way you just took that thing that I said, but

Speaker:

it wasn't. You're wrong. It's. We have different

Speaker:

perspectives. And I think that's been something that

Speaker:

in a lot of areas of my life, but especially in marketing,

Speaker:

where it's business and you really want to get it right, kind of letting go

Speaker:

of the fact that there is no absolute truth anywhere,

Speaker:

right. In marketing especially, but in life, you know what I

Speaker:

mean? At least not objective, right? Because for everything you think is

Speaker:

an objective truth, there's someone else who is not

Speaker:

accepting of that. And so in my

Speaker:

content efforts, I'm leaning more into wanting personal

Speaker:

pOVs to drive the work that I do. Even

Speaker:

if you do a study to have five people with different perspectives

Speaker:

on it give full commentary, to give the context from their

Speaker:

perspective, and not just getting quotes from ten people and

Speaker:

finding the mean, really showcasing that there are

Speaker:

different approaches to this. I think best practices

Speaker:

are not useless, but I do think

Speaker:

we rely far too much on them. I'll speak for myself. In the past,

Speaker:

I have relied way too much on best practices

Speaker:

because like everyone, I want to achieve and

Speaker:

accomplish the results that I'm set in my OKRs. And the best

Speaker:

practice is like a proven way, proven framework playbook to

Speaker:

get there. What I'm realizing, looking back and also just looking around, talking

Speaker:

to a lot of consultants, working at a lot of different companies, talking to a

Speaker:

lot of in house folks, it's not even that. Best practices

Speaker:

are not the full picture, and there's nuance beyond it. I'm kind of

Speaker:

not huge on them at all right now because to

Speaker:

me, best practices are designed to

Speaker:

reduce to that mean, to reduce the surface area

Speaker:

for failure. And in business and

Speaker:

in life, to a degree, we are really incentivized to

Speaker:

not fail. Right. You can have an absolute banger

Speaker:

quarter and take that risk, and people will be like, yeah, pat you on the

Speaker:

back, but then you're only as good as your next quarter's numbers. If you have

Speaker:

a dismal quarter, you're not going to see your next quarter's numbers. You won't be

Speaker:

there to tell that story. A lot of times. I'm not blaming anyone.

Speaker:

I totally understand why we're incentivized to not take risks. It's

Speaker:

like the idea of no one ever got fired for hiring Deloitte

Speaker:

because people would rather hire the firm that can be the

Speaker:

scapegoat that is respected and lose than take the

Speaker:

risk to win big, but then have to eat it with the risky

Speaker:

option if it doesn't go well. Right. And I think I just said

Speaker:

a lot, so I'll let you respond to that. But that's kind of where I'm

Speaker:

at, is not only are we not incentivizing great work, I think we're, like, actively

Speaker:

making it impossible when everything has to follow this best

Speaker:

practice. And I've just seen too many founders point

Speaker:

at these companies that are unicorns who took big risks,

Speaker:

that paid off and did things that no one else was doing and say, be

Speaker:

like them, but they think they're going to get there by trying a new outbound

Speaker:

sequence. Right? It's no risk, no reward.

Speaker:

Right. Well, and it's never the tactics that get them

Speaker:

there. Right? Microsoft could do the exact same

Speaker:

tactics as apple and fail

Speaker:

miserably because Apple, at least

Speaker:

at the time, with Steve Jobs, when everything was really

Speaker:

exploding, was willing to take risks. And

Speaker:

I think to Steve Jobs credit, if you pulled the

Speaker:

board when he was going after

Speaker:

the sort of outcast as the target market, I bet there's

Speaker:

a whole slew of folks who said, that was the dumbest idea. It's too small.

Speaker:

What they missed that Steve Jobs understood was that everybody has

Speaker:

a little bit of that in them because he wasn't. Going on a

Speaker:

dashboard. He was tapping into something that he felt deeply as a

Speaker:

human being and saw in others and in himself. And I think when

Speaker:

you look at why Steve Jobs was successful, a

Speaker:

big part of it was he had a very strong POV that

Speaker:

he was unafraid. He would rather go down doing it his way

Speaker:

than doing it the safe way. And obviously, he

Speaker:

had great instincts over time. And we see that in the

Speaker:

products that launched under his tenure. But I don't know.

Speaker:

I think there are things that Steve Jobs launched that if another

Speaker:

company did the exact same launch, exact same way, it wouldn't have

Speaker:

worked. I think people like the audacity of it to a degree.

Speaker:

It feels authentic and it feels bold. And the fact that they

Speaker:

know Steve Jobs doesn't care is, I think, kind of the point.

Speaker:

And he had a lot of good checks in the right areas. So I think

Speaker:

that's the other side of this, because then you have the founders who think that

Speaker:

they walk on water and don't ever want to listen to their team. And that's

Speaker:

also wrong, because, a, you're not Steve Jobs. And even Steve Jobs was wrong. Plenty

Speaker:

of times. You look at stuff that he wrote or that was written about him,

Speaker:

and there's a quote from, I think Andy Grove

Speaker:

said it, who was the CEO of Intel, wrote high output management, one of my

Speaker:

favorite management books. But I think it's in radical candor,

Speaker:

actually, Kim Scott's book. And she's talking about

Speaker:

basically having lunch with Andy Grove. And she

Speaker:

was, yeah, like, it's crazy. Apple's on such a tear. And

Speaker:

he. Well, you know, Steve and the guys at Apple, they always get it right.

Speaker:

And he was like, no one always is right. And he said, I didn't say

Speaker:

he was always right. Said, he always gets it right. And if you actually look

Speaker:

at her examination of the

Speaker:

culture at Apple during the time when these big innovations were happening,

Speaker:

first of all, she was pretty toxic. So there was definitely a better way to

Speaker:

do it. I was going to say it's not. All roses, but it's definitely not.

Speaker:

And I'm not saying that you need to be an ass like Steve Jobs was

Speaker:

to get this done. But what I do think he did really well is

Speaker:

if you didn't challenge him and he realized that you had the answer

Speaker:

and you were too scared to say it, he held you accountable for,

Speaker:

like, it was as bad to be quiet. It was actually worse, probably to him,

Speaker:

than to be wrong. And so that's kind of the point Andy, I

Speaker:

think, was making in that passage, which I probably badly paraphrase. But the idea

Speaker:

is you have to both be bold, but you also have to

Speaker:

empower the people around you to be bold to tell you when you're off track.

Speaker:

Because the downside of a singular POV is that

Speaker:

there's no feedback loop in your head.

Speaker:

I can tell you from twelve years of working in house

Speaker:

now working with several companies and talking with several

Speaker:

companies, having a POV is a

Speaker:

very rare place to be for a company.

Speaker:

And having a founder who owns the

Speaker:

POV and understands the market and understands

Speaker:

the why behind the product, it's rare. It is rare to

Speaker:

have and then have that spread through the entire company. Totally. I

Speaker:

think there's a reason why at the heart, if you're looking at the heart and

Speaker:

the core reasons why those things struggle is like, okay,

Speaker:

marketing department, go create some messaging. This is who we are as a company.

Speaker:

Marketing department struggles to come up with anything that resonates with the

Speaker:

founder or the CEO or they come up with something, but it

Speaker:

doesn't truly feel authentic

Speaker:

because it's not. And so I think I can say, even for

Speaker:

my small level of success that I've been able to have with distribution

Speaker:

first. It all comes back to having that core point of view

Speaker:

over time that I actually believe and care about.

Speaker:

And it's not to say distribution first is the only way you can do content

Speaker:

marketing. I've never said distribution first is the only way you can do content

Speaker:

marketing. I've said it's a differentiated,

Speaker:

potentially better way if you want to get the same

Speaker:

output with less inputs and get more bang out of your buck, all that

Speaker:

type of stuff. But you can run a successful content marketing

Speaker:

program with volume and manage a volume. That's not

Speaker:

how I would do it anymore, but you can do that. And so I think

Speaker:

that's the core of it too, is being able to have a

Speaker:

really strong point of view that you care about and you believe

Speaker:

in and a story that you believe in. Way easier as a solo

Speaker:

person to figure those things out than if you're working at a company. But

Speaker:

if you're looking to move jobs, if you're looking to how do I advance in

Speaker:

my career? What am I looking for? Those would be some of the main things

Speaker:

I would be looking for moving forward because that's

Speaker:

how companies are going to win.

Speaker:

I saw somebody the other day kind of just chatting and it's like they're waiting

Speaker:

for the Costco version of

Speaker:

Salesforce to come out. Like Kirkland Salesforce, where

Speaker:

it's like a 10th the cost with all the like,

Speaker:

it's kind of a funny joke, but that could happen. There's no reason

Speaker:

why that couldn't happen. And so unless you

Speaker:

are sort of building your business in that way, that's going to be hard

Speaker:

to compete on. But yeah, just to keep things moving. Talking really about

Speaker:

the productivity side and to move that back. I'm curious, on your end,

Speaker:

one of the things I think people struggle with when it comes to

Speaker:

prioritization is even going back to the

Speaker:

important versus unimportant urgent, know, like the classic

Speaker:

quadrant, if anybody's familiar with the Eisenhower Quadrant. And

Speaker:

if not, make sure to look that up because it's a helpful exercise.

Speaker:

But for me, I always love the analogy of the big

Speaker:

rocks, pebbles and sand. Are you familiar with that, Ryan?

Speaker:

Okay, so I am. And it was a huge thing at

Speaker:

gorgeous, to the point where all hands meetings were literally big rocks

Speaker:

on our calendar was the name. But I made it

Speaker:

through two years at gorgeous, and no one explained to me what the hell big

Speaker:

rocks are. So, Justin, I think you should just share really quick what the concept

Speaker:

is because once I actually learned what it meant, now it's all clicking. Why

Speaker:

didn't someone just tell me that? I thought it was their big boulder. So you

Speaker:

have to push them forward slowly, but they're important. Got

Speaker:

you. Yeah. Big rocks are like life's a jar. Your work is a

Speaker:

jar. You've got this jar of stuff and then big rocks being your most

Speaker:

important things. These are the things we have to get done. Pebbles being

Speaker:

like this stuff is okay, it's not

Speaker:

necessary. Sand being like the worthless

Speaker:

junk that we kind of need to do to keep the lights on, but is

Speaker:

really unimportant in the macro. And so if you think about this from like, a

Speaker:

content perspective, because you can break this down in a business, you can break this

Speaker:

down for a content. So let's look at it from a content perspective. A lot

Speaker:

of people that I coach and consult with, they have big rocks.

Speaker:

And part of the problem is they have so many big rocks, you could never

Speaker:

fit them all in the jar to begin with. So that's one problem. You might

Speaker:

have so many big, small, little rocks and your jar container

Speaker:

is only so big, the volume does not. Or they have the right number of

Speaker:

big rocks. But in their notion, doc, they have a lot of

Speaker:

pebbles sized bigger than they actually are in real life. Right.

Speaker:

Well, because if you don't deprioritize, then there are no big rocks.

Speaker:

I'll let you continue. But I think that's like an important distinction. Yeah. And so

Speaker:

the idea being like, you've got these unimportant tasks, kind of important

Speaker:

tasks and really important tasks, and what ends up happening for most people,

Speaker:

myself included, unless I'm being focused on this, is that your jar

Speaker:

fills up with sand and sand being meetings,

Speaker:

emails, scrolling, LinkedIn,

Speaker:

mindlessly flipping through the 18 tabs that are on your

Speaker:

browser because they're there and they must be important. And now I got to check

Speaker:

this, and I got to check that. I bet if you audited your time,

Speaker:

because I did this at the beginning of the year, if you audited your time,

Speaker:

most of your time would be spent on sand. So

Speaker:

your jar is like three quarters of the full of sand. And then after that

Speaker:

it might be some pebbles, which are maybe sending emails,

Speaker:

not replying, but you've got some important stuff you got to reply to send those

Speaker:

things, writing LinkedIn posts, creating maybe some

Speaker:

smaller email campaigns that type of stuff, small things, but not

Speaker:

movers. And then your jar fills up with that. And then at the end of

Speaker:

the day, you have no time for the big rock moving things,

Speaker:

the content initiatives you want to move forward, the strategic

Speaker:

thinking you need to have done, the planning you need to do, all

Speaker:

the things you actually have to get done. And so for me, it's been

Speaker:

shifting priorities and actually starting. What I've been doing is

Speaker:

laying understanding what my big rocks even are for

Speaker:

a quarter. And this

Speaker:

really ties into my whole methodology around cornerstone content, core content

Speaker:

and cut content, which is like, if you don't get your big rock

Speaker:

right, the stuff coming off of it at the bottom will not matter

Speaker:

or you're not going to have time for it or any of those things. So

Speaker:

if you don't have time to record the podcast, to write the blog

Speaker:

post, to write the newsletter, all the rest of the stuff starts

Speaker:

to fall apart and then you lose consistency. You don't

Speaker:

have room for that. So what I've done is I've actually said like, these are

Speaker:

my big rocks every single week from a content perspective. Just as

Speaker:

example, let's say it's podcast, it's

Speaker:

newsletter. Like, if I ever talk about those are the big rocks and then those

Speaker:

get scheduled out on the calendar. So podcast is going

Speaker:

out here, newsletter is going out here, and then I can work back the schedule

Speaker:

on when I want to create those pieces of content. Pebbles also

Speaker:

get scheduled. I've got to write the promo email that goes out. I've got

Speaker:

to send the promo email that goes out. I've got to be able to write

Speaker:

those things. I got to be able to write the social content, make sure the

Speaker:

clips are organized, those things get scheduled out and then sand,

Speaker:

that's just kind of like time blocking that to a different part of the

Speaker:

day where I'm not feeling like I have to come into the day,

Speaker:

check all my email, get email done. Because that's the problem is when you start

Speaker:

your day with sand, you never get to your big rocks. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

Speaker:

I agree with everything you said. I think you really explained the

Speaker:

concept well. I have a few kind of builds

Speaker:

on the concept that I'm realizing for me. I don't know if I'm comfortable saying

Speaker:

that these are like universal, but I will speak on what I

Speaker:

have noticed personally, which is the big rocks. So

Speaker:

part of the thing that I had to understand was the big rocks alone

Speaker:

are enough, or maybe not everything you want it to

Speaker:

be. But a jar filled to the top with pebbles and sand

Speaker:

is not nearly as powerful as just the four big

Speaker:

rocks in the jar with all that empty space. Because you did the things that

Speaker:

mattered. Right. Big things, important things that

Speaker:

you've already said. These are big things and important things.

Speaker:

Yeah. And I think when SaaS companies do this really badly

Speaker:

in a lot of cases, but I can also say I do this not great

Speaker:

is like you have the big rocks, right? Let's say you have the perfect big

Speaker:

rocks, you're prioritizing them, but if you come at it from the

Speaker:

perspective of like the big rock is first and the pebbles are second,

Speaker:

but it all needs to get done, then you're not actually really the

Speaker:

way it should be is how long does the big rock need? And then fill

Speaker:

the remaining time with pebbles. Because if the whole to do list has to get

Speaker:

done. Yeah, you're putting the order in the right order, but you're not

Speaker:

prioritizing. It's prioritizing in a way, but it's like only on a

Speaker:

daily level. You know what I mean? Like what gets done first in the day.

Speaker:

And so I'm really trying to internalize this concept. I

Speaker:

heard of we're all juggling these balls, right? You're going

Speaker:

to drop them. It's not if, it's when, it just

Speaker:

is. Right. So instead of trying to keep all these balls up in

Speaker:

the air, which is only going to lead to you losing controls over

Speaker:

which ones drop and when, because they are going to drop again. This is an

Speaker:

inevitability. Unless you are just like Tim Ferriss and you have 8 hours of work

Speaker:

on your schedule for the week. Or on the flip side of this,

Speaker:

you could basically take control, drop the ones that are rubber. So it's

Speaker:

this idea of like rubber versus glass balls, right? And

Speaker:

so the rubber balls, they don't feel good to drop. And that's why I like

Speaker:

this analogy, because you're still dropping them. It still feels bad,

Speaker:

but you can pick them up and dust them off and

Speaker:

get them back in the air and it's fine. But you drop a glass ball

Speaker:

once and it's done. Right. That

Speaker:

intro that you offered proactively to

Speaker:

make for a friend that they've already forgotten about the second they logged off your

Speaker:

call, that's looming over your head, that's a rubber ball. Oh, yeah. That's

Speaker:

sand. That's sand. Yeah. I would say it's a rubber ball because I would say

Speaker:

it's a pebble. Because I think it's really important to keep your word and to

Speaker:

be connecting people. Maybe it's a small pebble, but my point is,

Speaker:

you can make that intro in three weeks. Well, they'd be stoked, right? Because

Speaker:

they forgot. And now you're coming out of nowhere and making this introduction. They're

Speaker:

stoked. They don't care about the timing. But if you start missing

Speaker:

distribution first meetings with guests,

Speaker:

and start to develop a reputation that you don't show up, that's a

Speaker:

glass ball. And the way this is showing up for me personally as a consultant

Speaker:

right now is everything that's internal to me is

Speaker:

all rubber balls. Because only I will be upset. And

Speaker:

I'm trying to recognize the glass nature of the balls

Speaker:

that involve work and relationships with other people, because you only

Speaker:

have so many shots at the way someone perceives you. And trust is really easily

Speaker:

broken. Right. And so why am I spending 3 hours

Speaker:

reorganizing my notion and ten minutes prepping for a call with someone I

Speaker:

care about? That doesn't balance for me. So

Speaker:

I think understanding that to get all the big rocks in the jar, all

Speaker:

the pebbles won't fit, was really important for me. Because

Speaker:

you just have to be okay with the fact that it's all not going to

Speaker:

happen. And every company, every company I've talked

Speaker:

to, I won't even names, because I don't want to get their content marketers in

Speaker:

trouble. But talking to people that are at these big unicorn

Speaker:

companies, that all of our CEOs want to be like, it's a mess there

Speaker:

too. They are just as burned out, if not more. And what those companies do

Speaker:

well is that they are prioritizing the right fires so that they continue to grow

Speaker:

in spite of the chaos versus fighting the wrong fires and

Speaker:

putting all the energy and not growing. But it's still

Speaker:

chaos. The to do list never ends. There's always more that you could do.

Speaker:

And so I think that's like one of my big ads of the

Speaker:

three, another is like the sand. And even, honestly, some of the

Speaker:

pebbles maybe are like a performance for the other people at

Speaker:

your job. I read an incredible newsletter article

Speaker:

a couple weeks ago that I will give to you to put in the show

Speaker:

notes. And basically, the title of the newsletter is called LaRping your

Speaker:

job. Justin, do you know what LaRping is? I've heard of it, but yeah.

Speaker:

Explain. It's an acronym that stands for live action role

Speaker:

playing. So, like, if you were ever in college, you're, like, on the quad and

Speaker:

people are fighting with foam swords and stuff like that. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker:

And so she basically made the case that the digital nature of work

Speaker:

now and the slack, every conversation you have at work

Speaker:

now has, like, a record in slack, which makes you want

Speaker:

to show up and be there more. And you're not in the office to show

Speaker:

face and have a personality, so you feel even more driven to

Speaker:

be around. Like, I can speak for myself. I absolutely. At gorgeous,

Speaker:

we had a pretty active slack culture, and

Speaker:

we were really good compared to most companies about response times, it was

Speaker:

actually like you could wait 24 hours and you would not get in trouble to

Speaker:

get back to someone. Now, they might not be happy, but that was a rule

Speaker:

that was written in notion, right? That being said, there were

Speaker:

constantly conversations happening, and I wanted to be there and be a part of them

Speaker:

and be seen being a part of them. I don't even think I was doing

Speaker:

it on purpose at the time, but looking back, it's definitely something that was intentional.

Speaker:

Right. And so her argument is, how much energy and time are we

Speaker:

wasting doing the performance that's even, like, one level

Speaker:

deeper than doing the wrong work. That's not doing any work. You're like, tap dancing

Speaker:

on stage for people you don't even know. And so I

Speaker:

think that that's something to keep in mind. But the flip side of that one,

Speaker:

though, is that a lot of times in the past, I at least, and I

Speaker:

know many others who have done this, too, want to

Speaker:

designate the work around the work, the getting buy in, the

Speaker:

managing up, all the meetings as just sand.

Speaker:

Why are you wasting my time? I could be doing it. And in some cases,

Speaker:

you may be right. But unfortunately, the work around the work is the work. Getting

Speaker:

things sold in is the work. You can have the best campaign in the world.

Speaker:

And if it never goes out, you didn't have the best campaign in the world.

Speaker:

You had a really cool idea that you couldn't get done. You know what I

Speaker:

mean? Benjamin Elias has a newsletter called Diamond Pencils

Speaker:

that genuinely I reach for before Harvard Business Review on

Speaker:

things like this. And again, because it's a very personal

Speaker:

POV from Benjamin, who I trust not some random

Speaker:

byline who happens to have an MBA. Like, cool. Not to

Speaker:

talk down about HBR, great publication, but in terms of trust

Speaker:

for me, they may have more credibility, but I trust Benjamin more. Oh, sure.

Speaker:

That's something I'm trying to really hone in on and even maybe

Speaker:

make a consulting offer around, is like content marketers are like

Speaker:

everyone else. No one wants to spend time getting the work done. Everyone wants to

Speaker:

do the work that they feel like is actually going to drive the results. But

Speaker:

I think a lot of content marketers are creative at

Speaker:

heart, and that's why they got into it. And they still have this kind of,

Speaker:

like, creatives versus suits dichotomy

Speaker:

and selling in the work and the corporate jockeying and the

Speaker:

politics. That's just actually work. Culture is

Speaker:

the work, unfortunately. And so I think we all, and I can speak for

Speaker:

myself 100%, that was something I could have done better at gorgeous, and

Speaker:

I could have probably gotten more done if I had been better at explaining the

Speaker:

why. And then the last thing I will say is, we did retros every quarter

Speaker:

at gorgeous. I can't speak for every team at gorgeous, but I know that the

Speaker:

marketing teams, a lot of times it ends up just being a time capsule, showing

Speaker:

you that you didn't fix things over time and that they just keep happening again

Speaker:

and again. The reflection is great, but if you don't do anything about it, then

Speaker:

what's the point of doing it? And so something, again, it comes back to the

Speaker:

shipping and the experiments and the volume, and that's where volume is a good play,

Speaker:

even if you're not trying to go for content. Know Alex

Speaker:

Burkett, who runs on mission digital with his partners. And he's really

Speaker:

brilliant. He comes from a background in marketing experimentation at CXL, and I've

Speaker:

been asking him a lot of questions about it recently, and he'll basically

Speaker:

tell you with nuance, there's obviously ways to do better experiments, but generally,

Speaker:

the way to do better experiments is to do more of them so you can

Speaker:

see what works and what doesn't, because you don't know what you don't know until

Speaker:

you discover it, right? And so

Speaker:

I do think that we're all trying to find this, like, 80 20

Speaker:

Pareto perfect balance, but that's the

Speaker:

whole thing. You don't know it going in, assuming it because of a best

Speaker:

practice, is also not knowing it, going in,

Speaker:

doing it for a quarter, getting the feedback that your customers love it,

Speaker:

and that it presides outsized pipeline, and then

Speaker:

doing it and doubling down the next quarter. That's the Pareto principle,

Speaker:

putting all your eggs in one basket because it seems like the best or safest

Speaker:

option. Like, categorically not the Pareto principle,

Speaker:

actually, just really not diversifying your

Speaker:

portfolio of strategies. Yeah. The

Speaker:

hard thing with that prioritization, because it's hilarious. I've been

Speaker:

in so many planning meetings where I think this joke might

Speaker:

even been made at some point in the last decade in a meeting I've been

Speaker:

in because we used to talk about the big rocks, too, and it's like, there's

Speaker:

too many big rocks. We have not enough jar and too many rocks. And so

Speaker:

I think the hardest thing to do is to

Speaker:

ruthlessly eliminate the things that aren't

Speaker:

going to move the needle. I can speak from experience at building

Speaker:

up this business. There are a million things

Speaker:

that I can do. A million of them. I could go all in on

Speaker:

YouTube, just in content. I could go all in on YouTube. I could stick with

Speaker:

the podcast. I could expand out to a different channel. I could try shorts. I

Speaker:

could try this. I could do that. I could offer a million different types of

Speaker:

services. I could test this out. And I'm just testing. I'm just testing this

Speaker:

out over here, right? But everything I do is taking away from something

Speaker:

else that I'm not going to do over here. And so for me,

Speaker:

I really start again. It's funny you brought this up because it's so top of

Speaker:

mind for me because I started the year this way, is like, what are the

Speaker:

three goals? What are the three things in Q one that I'm going to

Speaker:

get done? And I have looked at those goals almost

Speaker:

every single day for the entire quarter. And the funny

Speaker:

thing about that is I was looking at it yesterday. I've almost completed all of

Speaker:

them. There's little steps in a couple of them that I haven't finished, but I

Speaker:

would say 80% of the goals that I set out to do in

Speaker:

Q one have already been hit. Hell, yeah. So now I'm trying to look and

Speaker:

I'm trying to figure out, okay, and I will say this, too, they weren't

Speaker:

necessarily revenue goals or things like that. They were like tangible, actionable

Speaker:

things that I could measure against. And it was way more helpful for me to

Speaker:

do that versus just like a random number of something that I was trying to

Speaker:

hit. And so for me, it's been really cool to do that. And so I'm

Speaker:

planning on doing the exact same thing in Q two, and I'm going to start

Speaker:

planning those things out. What are those goals I want to hit. And then the

Speaker:

key that we didn't talk about is with those big rocks, is

Speaker:

chunking up the things into smaller milestones

Speaker:

so you can keep winning and feel like you're making

Speaker:

progress against that bigger goal. So, for

Speaker:

example, one of the things I wanted to do in Q, one that I did

Speaker:

in January, was do a paid training. And so

Speaker:

with that paid training, I had a whole slew and it was like, I've never

Speaker:

done this before. It's kind of overwhelming, like, all the things I might need to

Speaker:

do. So chunk it out. I need to create email series. I need to create

Speaker:

the deck. I need to create the topic. I need to send it out. I

Speaker:

need to do the post show, send to the group and give

Speaker:

them the replay. I need to house it up on here so that somebody can

Speaker:

get it after the fact. And by having those things chunked out, it made it

Speaker:

so much more approachable and so much more easy to be like, oh, okay, this

Speaker:

week I'm going to work on this chunk of this big rock,

Speaker:

and from there, it allows you to build and make progress.

Speaker:

Yeah. And, I mean, retrospective feels like such a

Speaker:

scary word. And it's called the retrospective

Speaker:

prime directive. I think I found it in someone's blog. I'll try to find it

Speaker:

so we can source it. But I put it at the top of every one

Speaker:

of my retros with my team because it's basically like,

Speaker:

we are all going to agree going into this, that we're going to look back

Speaker:

critically, but that everyone was doing their best with what they had at

Speaker:

the time. You have to be honest, and if you feel like you're going to

Speaker:

hurt someone's feelings, you can't be honest. And so I think that's important. But

Speaker:

in terms of milestones, I think you're totally right. And something I'm trying to do

Speaker:

for myself is start up and shut down. It's like five minutes at beginning, end

Speaker:

of the day, every day, and then like a weekly review, maybe a monthly review,

Speaker:

but definitely a quarterly review. And again, retrospective puts all

Speaker:

this weight on it. It's a check in with yourself. You're looking back and you're

Speaker:

saying, I want to be intentional and aware of what happened

Speaker:

because it's so easy to just barrel into the next quarter and let all

Speaker:

of that kind of straight over your head.

Speaker:

And I think that you need to do both because

Speaker:

what I found at gorgeous is like, you're at the end of the quarter, you're

Speaker:

grabbing all of these things that you can't even remember doing because it was two

Speaker:

months ago and you feel like it's been a year and you're trying to find

Speaker:

the slack conversation to describe what happened. Yes, there's value in doing

Speaker:

the long term look back over three months with distance, but a if you're

Speaker:

not doing the smaller check ins over time,

Speaker:

you're coming at that perspective like almost too blind. Looking

Speaker:

back, you've actually let it fully leave your field of

Speaker:

vision and brain. But also you are not

Speaker:

getting that real time view from when it happened to

Speaker:

look at. Also because you can look back in three

Speaker:

months and get a worse perspective on something that happened. Like distance

Speaker:

is not always a good thing. You know what I mean? It's good when you

Speaker:

have all of the checkpoints to then compare against,

Speaker:

and then you can kind of go back and forth, but generally you don't want

Speaker:

to just look back every three months. And so I think at the end of

Speaker:

the day, this is something everyone struggles with. I do think that there is

Speaker:

like a certain performance in new content, new

Speaker:

bylines, all of these things that make it harder to refresh,

Speaker:

repurpose, distribute, do all the things with the content that is already

Speaker:

ranking, that is already converting, that you know is the proto principle because it's one

Speaker:

of your content power law whales.

Speaker:

And at the end of the day, it's like the two breakdowns I think,

Speaker:

is if you are having trouble prioritizing

Speaker:

and you're doing too much, to me, the two places where it breaks down is

Speaker:

either you don't understand the program or the data, or the feedback

Speaker:

loops well enough to know what should be prioritized, or you do

Speaker:

and your boss doesn't, and your shortcoming is more on the side of

Speaker:

you can't sell it in, you can't convince them that what you know to be

Speaker:

true is true. Right? And that's not to put everything on the direct report

Speaker:

or the content person, but you can only control that side.

Speaker:

So that's something I'm trying to be more conscious of even in

Speaker:

consulting. In what way could I have done this better? And

Speaker:

it's usually one of those two ways. It's like either I didn't know the

Speaker:

story well enough or I didn't sell it well enough.

Speaker:

Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what it comes down to. And at the end of

Speaker:

the day, you have to have that story, whether you're going to be or that

Speaker:

system or whatever you're going to be executing on. To know those

Speaker:

priorities, you have to know what you're going after. And then you have to know,

Speaker:

how the heck do I pitch this up and make sure that that's something that

Speaker:

we can actually execute on and tell that story and all that stuff. So yeah,

Speaker:

Ryan, we will have to have you back at some point to chat about maybe

Speaker:

some more content specific things, but this was a super fun conversation on

Speaker:

mentality, on mindset shift, on trying to weigh out what the heck to

Speaker:

do. And it was a blast, man. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.

Speaker:

All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Distribution

Speaker:

first, and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you

Speaker:

so, so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in

Speaker:

this episode one way or another, into your content strategy as

Speaker:

well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that

Speaker:

are going to help you build your brand ten x your content and transform

Speaker:

the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe to the show and sign

Speaker:

up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co. So you don't miss

Speaker:

a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next episode as well. And

Speaker:

until then, take care and I'll see you next time.

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube