Episode 62
How to Prioritize What Matters (And Get More Done) Ft. Ryan Baum
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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.
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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.
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Transcript
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.
