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Thrashing

I joined Seth Godin’s The Podcast Fellowship and learned about the idea of “thrashing around”. There are other phrases for just getting started (bias to action, Just Do It), but thrashing really captures the idea that you’re going to be bad when you start—and that’s okay.

Yesterday I was trying to make a list of the books I read this year. One that I enjoyed near the start of the year is The Achievement Habit by Bernard Roth. In it, he says that doing is everything:

The idea is not to be paralyzed in the face of uncertainty. If you do something and it works, great! If you do something and it fails, maybe even better. You do, you fail, and you learn. You do again, you fail again, and you learn some more. If you are mindful about what you have done, failure is a teacher. With a little luck, after enough failures you will succeed. In many cases this is a much better approach than a long, drawn-out investigation into the right way to proceed.

I over analyze things. I’ve done these drawn-out investigations. I still do them. Maybe a little bit of IF-THEN will help here.

  • IF I notice I’m over analyzing how to create content, THEN I’ll open a up a new WordPress post

Start thrashing.

Turn the microphone on and start thrashing around.

Hit record on your camera and start thrashing around.

Start a new text file and start thrashing around.

Or in my case, it’s opening the WordPress app and thrashing around.

Book Notes: “This is Marketing” by Seth Godin

Check out the full notes for “This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See” by Seth Godin

Hulk Hogan told millions of kids to eat their vitamins. Stone Cold didn’t. They were both wildly popular wrestlers. I learned everything I know about marketing by watching 90s wrestling.

I should probably learn more, so I picked up Seth Godin’s This is Marketing this week.

Here are some takeaways.

Find a focus and ignore the rest

I took my first physics class in college. Going over the syllabus, I learned about the bell curve for grading and standard deviation. It didn’t really matter because I bombed the exams and barely passed.

Anyway, good to see a standard deviation curve that isn’t showing me how terrible I’m doing. Seth explains that a part of the curve (left of where most people clump together) represents neophiliacs. Focus on them. And what about the rest of the curve?

From This is Marketing:

Good marketers have the humility to understand that you shouldn’t waste a minute (not of your time or of their time) on anyone who isn’t on the left part of the curve.

You can’t change their mind. What you make is not for them.

That’s okay. Spare your energy.

Most people don’t know most people

“I don’t think about you at all.”

It’s one of my favorite lines from Mad Men. I try to remember it whenever I worry that I said something dumb in front of a group. Or when I think someone might be upset with me.

Ok so that’s not exactly the point of this section, I just wanted to share that. Mad Men itself is the point. Or the popularity of Mad Men. Or, one more try, the lack of popularity of Mad Men, depending on how you looked at it.

At its peak, it seemed like every pop culture critic wrote about or referenced Mad Men. Which is great but it didn’t mean that everyone beyond that was actually watching Mad Men.

From This is Marketing:

Today, though, popular culture isn’t as popular as it used to be. Mad Men, which was hyped by the New York Times in dozens of articles in just one season, was only regularly seen by 1 percent of the U.S. population.

On Tim Ferris’s podcast, Seth points out that most people don’t know Tim Ferriss. Of everyone you walked past today, 99 out of 100 people don’t know who Tim is. Still, he’s wildly successful. (Same goes for Seth.)

NBA players are really popular on social media. Until you start comparing them to global soccer stars.

Here’s the good thing. You don’t have to be nearly that popular to have an audience to build a career around.

Mad Men didn’t need to be seen by as many people as Johnny Carson. You don’t need to be known by as many people as Tim Ferriss.

You can start by aiming for something much smaller.

SEO is one thing, but it’s better for people to be searching for you

I used to be the first image search result for “machete costume”. It was a fun icebreaker when joining a new team.

SEO is useful, but It’ll be a long, hard battle if you’re trying to make it to the first match of any generic search term.

Why try showing up for “blog” when you can have people just search for your name?

From This is Marketing:

The path isn’t to be found when someone types in a generic term.

The path is to have someone care enough about you and what you create that they’ll type in your name. That they’ll be looking for you, not a generic alternative.

Yes, you can find my blog by searching for “blog” in Google.

But I’d rather have you search for “Seth” instead.

How do you get there? It’s simple, not easy: be good enough. You get good enough by showing up frequently and building trust.

(I also just want to explicitly acknowledge that “first image search result for ‘machete costume’” isn’t exactly the same in value as being the first search result for “blog”.)

What brands are around you? Why? (You probably like them.)

A brand isn’t just a logo. But a logo can be an important element.

From This is Marketing:

Here’s a simple exercise: Make a list of five logos you admire. As a consumer of design, draw or cut and clip five well-done logos.

Got ’em?

Okay, here’s my prediction: each one represents a brand you admire.

I looked around at the different things around me while writing the first draft of this. I wrote it at a gym. It wasn’t Equinox but if I said I wrote this at Equinox you might have a picture in your head of what my environment looks like. Their brand is clearly more than just their logo.

Oh yeah, the things around me.

I had multiple Nike things on. Easy to draw that logo from memory.

I was drawing on an iPad. I know the logo is an apple with a bite in it but I had to look at it to draw it. I had AirPods with me. Which are clearly apple and again go to show that brands go beyond logos.

Then there were a few other things with logos I couldn’t have drawn from memory at all.

I had a Uniqlo jacket and pants. Couldn’t describe the logo to you except that it’s geometric.

GORUCK has a logo but it’s not anywhere on the outside of my backpack. That said, I notice when other people have the same bag. And I always assume they must like their bag as much as I do.

I also had a logo on that I couldn’t draw from memory but can recognize on someone across the street: the Carhartt wave (?) on a beanie.

Give stuff away. If it’s good enough people will pay for your paid stuff.

This post is free.

I don’t sell anything.

If enough people read enough of my free things then some day I can sell something. (And hope that I’d be mentally strong enough to deal with some backlash.)

Anyway, many things you pay for are likely to be connected to something else that was free.

Ever watched a chef on TV?

From This is Marketing:

When a chef gives away her recipes, or appears on a podcast, or leads an online seminar, she’s giving her ideas away for free. It’s easy to find them, engage with them with frequency, and share them. But, if you want to eat that pasta served on china on a white tablecloth at her restaurant, it’s going to cost you twenty-four dollars.

The last artist you saw at a concert probably has a song for free on the radio. (Or there’s somewhere online where you can listen after skipping through a commercial.)

Did you ever have a Windows computer with one level of Doom on it? Free. If you beat it then you could pay for more levels. And it was completely worth it.

Podcast hosts have free interviews with people, but those people are often showing up to spread an idea. And you can get the premium version of that idea by buying their book.

Write 7000 posts

Why did I pick up “This is Marketing”? I trust Seth’s advice. I don’t know him but I’ve read and listened to a lot of his work. I’ve written a few times about how important his idea of “write in the editor” has been for me for finishing work. (He writes his daily blog post directly into TypePad. Because when he’s in there, his mind knows what to do.)

That trust was built up over time by reading his work regularly. He shares new things regularly. You don’t get to 7000 posts by posting 1000 posts a day for 7 days. You get to that by posting consistently year after year.

Show up. Finish. And show up again.

All I know about marketing I learned from pro wrestling

“Oh. Give me. A hell yeah!”

If you recognize Stone Cold Steve Austin you might have read that in his voice. He built that recognition by showing up.

Wrestlers show up. It’s fake fighting, yes.

People will say “it’s fake fighting” in a disparaging way. But imagine how hard that is.

There’s a stadium with 10s of thousands of people. Now go make that entire place pop.

With a fake fight.

And they do it. Night after night.

They’re serious athletes going through grueling work. They show up and travel town to town to put on a show. Night in and night out. They build trust with the fans. With that frequency.

Beyond the importance of frequency, here are some other ways wrestling applies concepts from “This is Marketing”:

  • Brands and logos: It’s not a logo, but whenever I hear a glass break in the kitchen when I’m sitting in a restaurant, I picture Stone Cold walking into the room.
  • Not for everyone: Stone Cold was for the kids who grew up and decided they’d start washing down their vitamins with a Steveweiser. If you were still saying your prayers and believed only in 100% good and 100% evil, he probably wasn’t for you. And that was fine by him.
  • Some free, some paid: You could see him on TV week in and week out. Want to see him fight for a championship? Fork some cash over for a pay-per-view. (And nowadays, The Network.)
  • Status: Pro wrestling is not an elite thing. The people that care about wrestling don’t care about what outsiders think. Outsiders don’t get it. But they do care about status relative to other fans. People that soak in New Japan Pro Wrestling shows and cruiserweight tournaments are different from the fans that are completely absorbed in mainstream storylines. If one of your favorite guys from the indie scene makes it big, then your status is raised for being an early adopter.

I’ve scratched the surface but check out “This is Marketing” for more.

While you do that, I’ll pat myself on the back for showing up today. Then I’ll start thinking about how to show up tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.

And I’ll say my prayers and express gratitude that the next days don’t involve taking chair shots to the head.

Use nature’s eyes (or the Hubble telescope) to remember your insignificance

We’re tiny.

The first time I saw Powers of Ten (1977) was in either middle school or high school.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it can be useful to remember how small you are. In the big scheme of things, whatever it is that’s stressing you out just might not be all that important. Remember stressing out about a test in a class in the past? Did those results stick with you? Probably not.

I had a teammate once who had a personal mantra for work: “we aren’t saving babies here.” Always a good reminder it’s rarely worth burning out and sacrificing mental health. There’s always tomorrow to work on endless todo lists.

Here are some quotes that might help you feel uplifted by the insignificance of everything.

Nature’s eyes

From “Principles” by Ray Dalio:

However, when we look down on ourselves through the eyes of nature we are of absolutely no significance. It is a reality that each one of us is only one of about seven billion of our species alive today and that our species is only one of about ten million species on our planet. Earth is just one of about 100 billion planets in our galaxy, which is just one of about two trillion galaxies in the universe. And our lifetimes are only about 1/ 3,000 of humanity’s existence, which itself is only 1/ 20,000 of the Earth’s existence.

If you don’t change the world today, that’s fine. If you don’t change the world this year, that’s okay. And in your career, no worries.

Focus on being a good person in the day in front of you. Help another person today. That adds up a lot better than feeling like you missed on a home run swing day after day.

Seinfeld’s other techniques

In self-development books, people often refer to Seinfeld’s technique of writing jokes every single day and keeping the chain going in a calendar. The Principles quote above reminded me of something I read in Judd Apatow’s Sick in the Head (amazing book, by the way).

Seinfeld shares his technique for staying grounded:

Judd: How do you get over that hump?

Jerry: You look at some pictures from the Hubble Telescope and you snap out of it. I used to keep pictures of the Hubble on the wall of the writing room at Seinfeld. It would calm me when I would start to think that what I was doing was important.

It might be time to put a picture of the stars next to that wall calendar with all the Xs on it.

You aren’t that special

Ginsberg: “I feel bad for you.”
Don Draper: “I don’t think about you at all.”

That’s one of my favorite lines from Mad Men. We grew up thinking we were special and each and every one of us would go on to do amazing things. It can’t pan out that way. If everyone were amazing, nobody would be.

Remember that people don’t think about you all that often. Remember that what you do isn’t that significant in nature’s eyes.

And remember that this can be a great thing.

Atomic Habits: Initial Impressions

Check out the full notes for “Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones” by James Clear

I finished Atomic Habits yesterday and wanted to write some quick impressions. It definitely deserves a longer post. But I wanted to write something shorter because I’ve wanted to write long book notes posts for other books I really enjoyed and then never got around to it.

First, here’s a tweet from yesterday about one of the core analogies from the book.

The small things you do get stored and they add up over time. You won’t see the change for most things immediately but it doesn’t mean the effort is wasted.

Atomic Habits is great because it has (1) long-term strategy for building good habits and breaking down bad habits and (2) effective tactics that you can apply immediately.

  1. Long-term strategy: Re-framing your views around habits will not be an overnight thing. Just like overnight successes really have years of work backing them, it will take some time to change your views of habits. One big shift is looking at your systems instead of goals. (The NBA season just started. In every game, every team has the same goal—to win—and every game still has a loser.) Another big strategy change is to focus on identities. Knowing the magical “X” for changing a habit takes X amount of days won’t be as effective as focusing on your identity. You’re not a smoker who’s quitting temporarily. You’re not a smoker, period.
  2. Effective tactics: You can make changes today that will help you with your habits. What do you want to do tomorrow? Say it out loud. “I want to work out tomorrow.” Now add a time. “I want to work out tomorrow, first thing in the morning.” Now say what you’ll do. “I want to do a kettlebell workout tomorrow, first thing in the morning.” Now focus on the first two minutes, and make it easy. “Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, I’ll do some bodyweight get-ups for two minutes. Then I can stop if I want to.”

I’ll write more about the book in (hopefully) the next few days. I really enjoyed it.

P.S. I got through a good chunk of the book using a technique mentioned in the book called temptation bundling:

Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do. In Byrne’s case, he bundled watching Netflix (the thing he wanted to do) with riding his stationary bike (the thing he needed to do).

Listening to Atomic Habits (the thing I wanted to do) while folding laundry (the thing I needed to do).

Podcast Notes: Chase Jarvis and Tim Ferriss

One of my favorite audio duos got together again. Chase Jarvis interviewed Tim Ferriss for Creative Live’s podcast week. As always, lots of great insight into creating a successful podcast.

If you’ve listened to some of their earlier episodes together on each other’s podcasts, you’ll hear similar themes. It’s interesting to take this broader look at Tim Ferriss’s podcast and how it’s grown. It also helps highlight the things that Tim really credits with making it work.

  • First things first, aim to make it sustainable and consistent: There are tens of thousands of new podcasts launched each week. How many will get to episode 50? How many will even get to episode 10? When Tim started, he knew the power of consistency through the success of his blog.
  • Get there by making it easy: Tim edited the early episodes by himself in GarageBand. It’s not the best tool for editing conversations but it’s more than enough to do the trick. He knew he didn’t want to do it forever and now a few years later he’s able to just record, add a few notes, then share it with his team (of two) for taking care of everything else. He made systems for everything so he could focus on what was important.
  • Quality content is still the best SEO: It probably always will be. He’s been able to focus on being a good interviewer because he doesn’t have to focus energy on all the recording logistics anymore. And he knew that being a good interviewer was the most important part of creating quality podcast content. A good interviewer can get good stories from anyone. A bad interviewer can make the most interesting person tune out after the first few words are spoken.
  • Broad title, specific audience: Your title will act as a bit of an affirmation. You’ll grow into the full subject matter that your title might cover, with an audience to match. But when you start, start specific. His example topic is FinTech startups in Omaha. Then you expand to covering regional FinTech startups then national then just startups in general.
  • If you aren’t passionate about something, you have an uphill battle if your tactic is to be better than the best in that field: They have a head start. They will probably work as hard as you. And they’re motivated to continue working that hard for longer because they enjoy the topic. There’s too many other opportunities in the world to just keep grinding through something you hate.

Here are a couple other posts I’ve written about them: