Solo Marketers This is the NEW Way to Think! An interview with Dan Mall

Managing up is, is essentially conflict resolution. Yeah. So that's why, like read... Even if you're not a parent and don't ever care to be one, or if you are and your, but your kids are grown, whatever, reading parenting books are, they are a, a great training on conflict resolution. Conflict resolution with some of the most stern stakeholders you'll ever have.

Right? A three-year-old, oh my gosh. Begin negotiating.

Welcome to the Marketing Team of One podcast, where we have conversations about the issues one-person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Welcome back to the Marketing Team of One podcast. We are so blessed today to have with us an honored guest, Mr.

Dan Mall, all the way from Philadelphia. Thank you for joining us, Dan. It's my pleasure, Eric. Thank you for inviting me to be on the show. Well, we're looking forward to hearing some of your insights, uh, on helping solo marketers deal with the chaos and, uh, confusion sometimes that they live with every day.

But let's get into it a little bit. You've got a very interesting past. Uh, we've, uh, learned a lot in our pre-interview call. I would say, uh, I'd love to learn more about, take me back to before you started your agency and just kind of your origins. Give me a quick, uh, understanding of where you're at, and give our audience some context of, uh, where you're coming from.

Yeah, you bet. I grew up drawing a lot, reading comic books. That made me wanna go to design school to learn about design and make movies, so I went to design school. Um, I wanted to work for Nike, uh, because I loved a bunch of Nike stuff, and I learned that Nike doesn't do their own work. They, they get their work done by these magical things called agencies, and I was like, "What's an agency?"

So I started l- learning about agencies. I got my first job at an agency, a small agency. Then I worked at a bigger agency and then a bigger agency. I spent 10 years working at agencies, um, to really learn how to do that kind of work, and then eventually started my own called Superfriendly. I ran that for 10 years.

Um, I shut that down, and then I sold it, and now what I do is I help other agency owners. I coach them on building an agency that supports the life that they wanna live, 'cause I was able to do that with mine, and I think it's cheat code for life. And so anybody else who wants to learn that, I love sharing that kind of stuff with them.

Yeah, and just to give you a plug right out of the box here, danmall.com, D-A-N M-A-L-L. I'm jealous you only have two syllables in your full name. Thank you, yeah. Uh, congratulations on that. Let's go back to Superfriendly. What was the origin for that brand? It's a wonderful brand. Like, like I said before, I'm con- probably gonna use the word super a lot in this conversation, just because of that.

Uh, the name is floating around in my head now. But what was the origin for that name? Yeah. A great... I'm not mad at it if you, uh, if you use the super, the word super a lot. Um, the origin of that, as I mentioned, I grew up reading comic books. The first thing I ever read, I, I learned to read by reading a comic book.

It was an issue of Superman. I have it framed over there in my office. Um, and that's how I learned to read. Um, I grew up watching the Super Friends, uh, the, you know, the cartoon. Okay. And so when I was gonna start my own agency, I had, I picked a name, I picked a, uh, d- designed all the identity and all that kind of stuff for it, and I showed it to my wife.

And she was like, "I don't like it." And I was like, "What do you mean?" Like, "What's... I, I think it's cool. It's, like, dark. It's moody. It's, you know." She's like, "I don't know. You just need something that's, like, super friendly." And, uh, that was the origin. And I was like- Ding, ding, ding. Yeah. Yeah. Nailed it. Wow. That's beautiful.

That's a really great story, and it's cool that you've, uh, included your wife in that development process as well. That's really neat. That's something- She's the best creative director I've ever worked with. She doesn't have a background in design or anything like that, but I always show all of my work to her.

She's got such good instincts, and she also knows when my work's not up to par, when it could be pushed, you know, when it's at the right place. So she's, um... W- we, we met when we were in fifth grade, um, so we've been, we've been- Wow ... friends for a long time. So she's been with me throughout my whole journey of learning how to be a designer and a creative director and all that.

So I've always shown my work to her, um, and she just has a really good way of being able to pinpoint when something's not quite good enough. Well, that's a wonderful thing, and I think I have a share in that. My wife too, the same thing. She's just got a great eye for things. Not formally trained or anything, but she just knows when things are off, and- Yeah

we have very constructive conversations around that as well. It's one of the, the most common pieces of advice and, and coaching that I give to a lot of my, my students and- Mm-hmm ... the people in my program. It... which is listen to your partner a lot, right? 'Cause it's like a lot of times we just don't have our, our own perspective on our own work 'cause we're e- we're too close to it.

Yeah. And the people who are too far away, they're, they don't have enough perspective on it or enough context. So a lot of times a partner, especially e- if they're not directly involved in the work but sort of on the fringes, they have the right amount of perspective to know just enough to give you good advice without being too deep in the weeds.

So I think having partners, significant others, friends, colleagues, peers who are right at that level is such an unlock for, for a lot of people. That's a really important thing to I think mention, and that's something that I talk about a lot. Sometimes that's a really fresh way to get that feedback is from somebody who doesn't have that.

Maybe they're, you know, didn't hear all the backstories or didn't hear the client talking about that one thing that maybe have turned you into going down that one road, and I think- Yeah ... that that's what's really, uh, powerful behind that. Yeah, totally agree Um, so let's talk a little bit. So Super Friendly, and now you're really just taking that knowledge and wisdom, and you're t- you're teaching others on how to, you know, kind of stand on your shoulders and, and, and just really bring up the whole industry as it is.

Is that- Yeah ... a good way to think about it? Yeah, that's right. I mean, I'm trying to build the program and the support that I didn't have when I was running an agency. Mm-hmm. Uh, which is not to say that I didn't have mentors or, um, uh, groups that I was part of. Um, but there's w- was some stuff missing from that.

So for me now, I'm like, if it... The things it took me seven years to figure out, if I can help somebody figure it out in three or two or one, um, I feel like that's valuable to some people. I would've liked that. So it's a little bit of hindsight, uh, that I'm trying to use to, for other people's advantages.

Dan Mall Teaches is the YouTube channel. Please go there and watch all 80 million of his videos, whatever. Appreciate that. He's got 90 or some videos on there, which are really, um... I don't know. I'm a big YouTube fan, so. Let's talk a little bit about marketing teams of one. Now, you worked in agencies internally, and so you, uh, probably have a lot of experience working on projects, uh, with big groups, small groups.

Uh, uh, talk a little bit about your history of working on things kind of by yourself. I mean- Yeah ... did you spend a lot of time doing that? Uh, I did. Um, so part of it aligns with the way that I grew up as a designer. Mm-hmm. Um, when I was first learning, I worked with some small clients. As I got more mature in my career, I got to work with bigger and larger clients.

So I think that tracks, I, I think for a lot of people as well. But the other thing that I've found, too, is that a lot of times there are big clients, you know, and I'm gonna use air quotes here, big, quote, unquote, big clients who- Yeah ... don't have marketing figured out. And you would think that that's not the case- Mm

um, but you see that all, all the time, is there are clients who have lots of budget and lots of team members and lots of things like that, and they just are at the basics of, of marketing. And then there's also teams that are very small but very mighty, very powerful, you know, marketing teams of one or two or a handful of people, that they really punch above their weight.

So I've seen a lot of it. I've, I've been working in this field for 28 years now. Um, and so I've seen a, a, a, the gamut, you know, the entire spectrum of- How effective can you be with the team size that you have, right? And I think that's kind of the, the question I know you, you talk about a lot, uh, uh, that in your show, uh, is just how effective can you be with the resources that you have, the, the things at your disposal, and how can you really punch above your weight no matter where you are on that spectrum?

So keep hope alive. It can be done. You can punch above your weight. It can be done. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm from Philadelphia. We're, we're the home of Rocky Balboa. So, you know, that's, the fighting spirit is, is, is in here too. Yeah, I should be here playing that theme song maybe in the background the whole time.

I like it. Like Rocky. I enjoy it. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I think that that's, uh, that's really what we're trying to do is empower those solo marketers or those people who are just given all the things marketing, right? That's their whole jam is, uh, you know, dealing with the chaos of that. Let's talk about one of the instances that I always like to bring up with some of our guests and have them walk through a, a scenario.

Solo marketer gets a green light, runs hard for two months on a project or an initiative, a campaign, then the boss wanders in with the new ideas And pulls the plug on that one because the goals were never actually nailed down. What does it look like when you're in, you're the one called in to fix that as far as, like, here's a project.

Oh, I just saw this YouTube video. Now we need to do email marketing. Yeah. Like, how would you manage up? I think that's an issue that we talk a lot about. One of the things that I found as a consultant, so from a consultant point of view, and I think we're, we'll probably talk about from the internal point of view a little bit later.

Yeah. From a consultant point of view, a lot of times what my role and my team's role tend to, tended to be was just repeating the stuff that the person who's been inside for so many months, years, you know, whatever it's been- Mm ... they've been saying things and just not been listened to. Nine times out of 10, that person is super smart, very sharp, has the right amount of perspective, like we talked about before, and just for whatever reason, isn't being listened to.

Mm. It could be because they don't have a loud enough voice. It could be because they're not considered. It could be because they are left out intentionally or unintentionally. Lots of reasons for that, um, but that person usually isn't heard. So a lot of times when we come in, we'll usually say, "Hey, what have you been saying for a long time that, that you just need somebody else to say?"

Um, that was one of the big- the biggest piece of advice that I received from my first creative director when I was an intern. I remember him saying to me, "Look, I know there's some ideas that you have that aren't getting heard here. If it's really about the idea, if you are, if you're open to it, tell me your idea.

I will present it on your behalf as someone here who has more power than you," right? Wow. That's honest. Yeah. "I'll say it on your behalf. You might not get the credit for it. So if the credit is important to you, this might not be the way to get it. But if the idea is important to you, I'll say it, and I'll make sure that it gets done."

And I was like, "Yeah, uh, to me, it's about the idea." So I want this idea to happen. Yeah, I would like some credit for it, but if I have to sacrifice that part, no problem. So that's usually what I go in and say to, to some teams too is if you... Part of the value of hiring a third-party consultant is that some third party said this, right?

Yeah. And, oh, we'll do it because some third party said it. It's not, it's usually not the wisdom of the idea that third-party consultant has. It's that somebody else outside from our group said it. And again, it goes back to that perspective thing is for some reason, we value outside perspective more than we value inside perspective.

Mm. And we could probably spend, you know, a couple hours on that. Yeah. Um, and so a lot of times it's creating allies with the people who are the internal team that are like, "We've been trying to do this for a long time. Can you help us get this through?" And a lot of times it's just us saying it. Maybe we'll say it slightly differently.

Maybe there's something else that we can bring to the table with our, our experience and perspective, but it's usually building upon the ideas that have just been there for a long time, but nobody's actually built on them. And I think another way to maybe think of that too is if you're not working with an outsider, look at politically what makes up the framework of your company.

Who's in there? And if you do have one of those initiatives or those ideas where, hey, we've... Maybe you gotta make an ally with somebody who g- will get all the credit potentially when they present your idea or your concept or, or maybe a different way of doing something, and then- At least the idea, at least that initiative is moving forward and it's making progress, which is, should be the ultimate goal of what your initiative is when you're having this conversation Yeah.

I, I can't speak for other consultants, but I will say one of the things that me and my team used to, to hold as an important thing is crediting the person who actually had this idea Yeah Right? So if we have the power to draw the attention to this idea and make it happen, instead of us taking the credit for that, how can we deflect that credit and share that power and, and, and share that credit with that person to say, "Listen, this actually came from this person who's been here all along.

You should actually be listening to that person more and more." Right So using the attention that we've, we've garnered to actually elevate somebody else too. Not every consultant will do that. That's something that was important to me and my team, you know, and the values that we had. So we like going in and doing that, identifying that, that person or those people and saying, "This is really where that idea came from.

You should listen to them more because look at the success that, that we've had with that idea now." Yeah. And you hope that everybody works that way, but I would, you know, you might be on the, a fringe sometimes. I know that depending on the size and the structure politically of the organization that you're working within, it, it can- Yeah And just understand that if you don't get credit, eventually, you know what?

The world rewards you anyway. Yeah. I believe in that karmic- You'll get credit somewhere, right? ... uh, you know, whatever you wanna call it. Exactly. I believe it comes back to you. It might not come back to you in the timeframe that you want, but you know, my worldview is that, like, you, you put good stuff into the universe and you, and you'll get it back too.

Totally agree with that. Let's talk about scrappy teams, small projects that have the greatest impact, so small in the sense of, like, budget and resources. Let's talk a little bit about doing more with less 'cause I think that should be a lot of what we talk about on this show. But, um- Give me some real, real-life stories.

I know that when we talked in the pre-interview, you had a couple that were really compelling, and I, I wanted you to touch on those again. Yeah, totally. So there's a few that I can share because they're public stories. There are a couple that I can't share because they're not public stories, but I can talk about them in general.

So- No problem ... you know, I'll share a few here. Um, when I was work- And so I think, I think the word small is a relative word, right? So when we say small, we mean as compared to what, right? Is, is what, what to fill in. Right. So I'll talk about a couple of different scales, and they could be small com- depending on what you compare it to.

Uh, one of the clients that we had at my agency, SuperFriendly, was, um, About.com, uh, which is, uh, an agency... excuse me, a, a company that lots of people have interacted with over many years. I think they've been around since the 19- mid-'90s, I think, '96 or '98. Yeah. Something like that. Been a while, yeah. And a lot of people who have been to About.com don't realize that they've been to About.com because it kind of just looks like internet, right?

Wow. It's like one of those sites that you, you Google, like, you know, how to marinate a chicken or how to change a tire, you know, whatever. Yeah. And you come across some site, and you're like, "I don't even know where I am, but, I mean, the content's good, and I learned how to marinate a chicken." Yeah. And then you leave, and you're like, "What site was that?"

And you cannot place it, right? So it was like one of those. Um, they had declining revenue for a long time, and, um, and we were brought in as part of a turnaround for that company. They hired a new CEO. Um, and it was basically, "If we keep going this way, at some point we'll have to shut down this business because we're losing money."

Wow. Um, so it was kind of like, well, anything that we can do hopefully is better than this. Um, my, my team and I were c- were brought in- And it is probably the most successful client story that I have, you know, that I've personally worked on. So they were... I think they were at 200 million a year, declining every year, something like that every ti- you know, what, when we started working with them.

And today, so this is, I think we started working with them in 2015 or 2016. So about 10 years later, they are the largest publisher in the world right now. Jeez. And I think as, as far as I can remember recently, the... I think last year, their digital division only I think did a billion dollars. I, I don't remember if that's revenue or profit, but a billion dollars.

Right. Jeez. So, um, big turnaround and, and the reason I bring up that story is the team on it was relatively small compared to a billion dollar turnaround, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, team was about, I think we worked with about 40 to 60 people there. Okay. Right? So, um, 40, 60 people for a lot of teams, you know, marketing teams of one, they're probably like, "Oh, that'd be a dream to have a, a team of 60 people," you know?

I'd love that. Um, but compared to the scale of, of work- Yeah ... you know, compared to the scale of value and, and what the, what the turnaround actually looked like, that's a relatively small team. Yeah. You would think that in order to have a billion dollars of revenue or profit or whatever it was, you might need a team of hundreds of people or thousands of people, and yet they did it with a team of 60 or so.

It might, might have been 100, you know, let's say. Um, but I think that was one of the... And it was because we were able to act really nimbly because of the size of the team compared to the work n- that needed to be done. And then on, on the other side of a spectrum from that, I've worked with teams that are like, it's one person who owns a divis- you know, a, a, a division of a division somewhere at a big company that's like, "I have to make some change here.

What do I do? I don't even have a budget. I barely had a budget to bring you in. You know, that's, that's, that's what I've got for the year. What do I do with this stuff?" And I think that the, the scale of change that you can actually deliver I think is proportional to the amount of resources you have to leverage, right?

So, so even if it's not a billion dollar turnaround, but you take a $10,000 budget or a $5,000 budget and you're able to turn 5,000 into 10,000, that's 100% return on investment. Yeah. So, so to me, I'm like, that story is just as impressive to me as a billion dollar turnaround for a $200 million company. Mm. So, so I think that the...

when we talk about small teams and we look at small results, well, of course a person, probably one person somewhere in a division of a division is probably not gonna do a, a billion dollar turnaround on their own. Um- Yeah ... but if they turn $5,000 into $10,000 or $5,000 into $15,000 or $20,000, that is a major return on investment on that.

And I try to encourage people that that is, that is something that h- hopefully they will be proud of, you know, that they've been able to do something like that. Yeah. And that gets into measuring your results and, and performance. You know, I think that that's something that you need to always keep in mind as to what, what is your impact and, and what is that return on the investment, and keep an eye on that stuff.

Uh, it's a, it's an important- Number that, if anything, leadership is always paying attention to, so you should also be paying attention to that as well, correct? It's always surprising to me, and, and maybe not so surprising at this point, how many teams, organizations, people engage in projects and start projects that they don't track anything about.

Yeah. It... So it's like, how, how do you know if it worked? You know? Well- "Oh, we did this thing," and then we just want success from it, but they don't define what success means, and then it turns into like, "Oh, that didn't work." Well, what, what were we measuring? What were we looking at to say whether or not it worked or it didn't work?

So I think that's one of the foundational pieces. If that's not there, whenever I work with a team, it's like, okay, we gotta start there. We gotta start with, like, what are we trying to do? Uh, you know, one of my, my favorite phrases to say is that, uh, design begins with desire. Right? You can't design anything if you don't even know what you want.

Like, what do you want out of this? Do we want more revenue? Do we want less turnover? Do we want more retention? Do- like, what is it that we want? And then once we identify what we want, we can create a plan to actually get that, and then track along the way whether or not we're getting closer to that, that goal or getting farther away from it.

Uh, and I'm just surprised as to how many people don't do that. I, I understand why, and I, I have no judgment around it. It, it's hard. It's tough. Yeah. And a lot of people don't do it. Yeah, and I think that it comes down to the, the, like you said, the goals of what the campaign should be about. And sometimes, you know, and, and I've talked to a lot of people around the idea of an awareness campaign.

Well, even if it's an awareness campaign, what do you feel like should be some of the measurable things that people should be paying attention to? Because a lot of people are... It's hard to, to do the other type of ca- Like, it's easier to do an awareness campaign, just like, okay, splash and dash and hope for the best and, you know, spend a lot of money.

And, hey, I saw my billboard when I drove to work, and, hey, I s- got that postcard in the mail that, from my own company. Like, oh, cool, like, we're doing things. Um, but how would you... Uh, when it comes to s- to a company that says, "Let's just do an awareness campaign and get our brand out there in the community," how would you handle that conversation if, if you were the person in charge of doing that marketing campaign?

So I'm a framework guy. I love frameworks, because they help me remember things. So I'll share a couple of frameworks that have been useful to me and helpful to me. A lot of them come from other people that I'm like, "This is useful. I'll take this." Mm-hmm. Um, and to the point about credit, I always like crediting those sources too.

So I'll tell you the stuff that I've come up with, and I'll tell you the stuff that I've borrowed from, from other people. Um, one framework that I love, and it... There's lots of different ones like this for tracking, uh, how you're doing, right? KPIs are the, are the, probably the most prevalent one, key performance indicators.

But there's not really a methodology to KPIs as far as I know or as, as far as I've seen. So my, my preferred methodology for key performance indicators is OKRs, objectives and key results. Um, I don't know who invented those. It's been popularized by John Doerr, um, who was an investor at Google. I know Jeff Gothelf writes a lot about that.

Christina Wodtke writes a lot about... So lots of people- Mm ... have written books and, and, um, articles about OKRs. It's my favorite framework because it has, um, specificity to it, right? It, it has, like, here's how you do it. So OKRs, for those who haven't heard, stands for objectives and key results, and so for any initiative that you're doing, you set an objective, which is usually something that is vague and ambitious.

So, uh, an, an objective could be improve usability. It's like, okay, really vague- ... uh, you know, very ambitious. Or- Okay ... you know, awareness campaign. Okay, cool. Yeah. We're gonna make people more aware of our brand. Very vague, very ambitious. Okay, cool. But then you pair that with the, the KR part, which is key results, which allows you to measure how well we're doing.

How do we define whether or not we've cr- we've set, we've accomplished this objective? And usually, every key result has to have a number with it. So as an example, we're gonna do an awareness campaign to make people more aware of our brand. Okay, cool. That's a good objective. Our key result might be we'll see 10% more foot traffic in stores, right, in stores, uh, three months from now.

Okay. Now we can measure that. Yeah. We'll s- we have to, and we have to identify, well, how many, how much foot traffic do we get today, right? And then what's 10% more of that, you know? And so we- we're gonna look for that number every, you know, th- three months from now, and we're gonna check it every Friday.

We're gonna check our, our statistic. So I love that framework of, of OKRs. Um, I love that tool, uh, as a way to say, like, we have to define what we're doing and how we're going to identify it. It can't just be vague and ambitious and that, that be it. So I love that framework. Uh, that's one that I use and, and I recommend to people all the time, is you can set some simple OKRs for yourself, um, and then it's a thing that you can measure, and then you're able to say, "Did we accomplish this thing, or did we not accomplish this thing?"

And again, no judgment on whether we did or we didn't. It's like, okay, now we know what to improve. You know, after three months if we didn't do it, if we thought we would get 10% more foot traffic and we got 1% more foot traffic, great, it just means we set too ambitious of a goal. So maybe next quarter we can set a two, 2% more foot traffic, right?

To, to know that we're moving in the right direction because 10% was just a wild guess, you know, when we started. So, you know, I like to lean on those kinds of things to help keep everyone accountable for the results that we're actually doing when we do something as vague as an awareness campaign. Do you have, uh, just to cut in here, uh, i- is there a timeframe that you...

Is it like I just default to quar- Like let's say you're just coming up on the fly. Yep. I'm just gonna say quarter. Uh, or is there a, is, i- depending on what the goal is, is it... Because I'm t- I'm starting from this idea of awareness campaign, so it's a super generic, there's nothing tied to it already. Yep.

And then when you start to dive down with leadership, there's the, you know, massive goal, which is earn more money- Yep ... which maybe as far as the leadership may be able to communicate is, "I just need more money in my bank." Okay. Well, how do you break down that question, and then how do you tie that to the particular timeframes?

Yeah, totally. So, um, I've seen two recommendations around this specifically with OKRs, um, and I, I've followed both of them. I think it depends on the pace of how your company ships things- Yeah ... and how your organization ships. So maybe not even your company, but even your, just your team. So I've seen two recommendations work really well.

One is quarterly- Okay ... um, and the other is every, uh, quarterly being, you know, every three months or every 12 weeks, and then the other is every six weeks, right? I know there's a lot of companies and teams- Hm ... that have a six-week shipping cycle. So what the, the overall framework of that is basically you want it to be enough time that you can see the impact of a change, but not too much time that there's gonna be other factors that start to creep into that and play into it.

Yeah. So usually a quarter is, is a good timeframe. Six weeks is also another good timeframe if you ship a little bit more frequently than that. The point of an OKR is not to hit it. Right? It's not that, oh, we're trying to, to set a 10% more foot traffic, and then we hit 10%. Uh, uh, so a good score, you can score OKRs, that's part of the framework, and you can score them on either a scale of 1 to 100.

You know, you could say how close did we get percentage-wise, or you can do 1 to 10, you know, however you wanna grade them. Um If, a- and a good score is generally 60 to 80%, not 100%. Yeah. The b- and the reason for that is because if you s- if you're aiming to score 100% and you score 100%, maybe that means you sandbagged a little bit and your goal wasn't ambitious enough.

Right? Because the, the, the point of OKRs is not to hit a target. It's to make sure that we are growing in the right direction if, if growth is the thing that we're trying to do. So, uh, but if you get less than a 60%, it's like, okay, maybe the, the goal was too ambitious, right? And, and we, and so we're not able to get close to it.

The point of a, an OKR is to set next quarter's OKRs. Mm-hmm. And for next quarter's OKRs to be better than these quarter, to be more calibrated, to be more dialed in, to show more impact, um, you know, for you to know, to get closer to we're doing a thing that's actually more meaningful. So it's not to hit it.

It's not a target to hit. It is a how can we calibrate? The first quarter that you set OKRs, you will probably be wildly off. You're gonna say, "We expect 10% more foot traffic in the stores as a, as a, uh, a result of this campaign." And then what you'll learn is, oh, we got 0.75%- ... foot, more foot traffic. And it's 'cause you didn't know.

You didn't, you didn't even, you didn't have any benchmarks. Yeah. So now that you have the 0.75 benchmark, now you go, okay, next quarter, maybe let's set a 2%, uh, uh, goal for that because it's within an acceptable range of growth for us that we, we think is reasonable, a little bit ambitious, but we think we can hit it.

We think we can get to that 60 to 80% range on that, right? And then you might learn something else that quarter that makes you reset that goal a quarter later. Maybe what you learn is this was a terrible goal, so next year or next quarter, we're just gonna wipe this one out and actually have a different one.

So the point of all of these frameworks, I think, is to learn and to dial in and calibrate the things that you are doing that have an impact on your team or your company or, or your con- your customers. I love that, and it, it goes to the point that we always talk about is, like, you're not gonna get six weeks and then you're done and then success.

I love the idea of just kind of recalibrating and keep changing that or refining it, not changing it- Yeah ... but refining it to where it's actually become, start to become relevant. And for those organizations and small groups that are trying to move the needle a little bit, I think it's important for them to understand that you have to figure out what that level set is right out of the box, correct?

And if they don't even have that- Yes ... that's really what those first sessions or timeframes are really for, is to set the reality. And then after that, you can work towards improving whatever that is or, like you said, maybe shifting. Yeah. I think working from reality is such an important part of this, of this kind of work.

And a lot of teams just don't work from reality. They work from aspiration- Yeah ... or they work from fiction, or they work from, you know, "I think this is the case, but I don't have anything to back it up or to refute it." And I think that that's, that's dangerous. Um- Yeah ... you know, because you, you could be working on something that either doesn't matter or you're basing your data on something fictitious, you know?

And so I, I think a lot of those things- Yeah ... working from reality, if you don't have a benchmark or telemetry or anything, anything like that, totally agree with you. The first, the first piece of effort, the first project is let's just get some benchmarks so we know what world, you know, what sandbox we're actually playing in here, and then you can kind of move from there.

Start to commit to something maybe a little bit more. So I, I, in a sense, it's kind of good maybe when you talk about budgets to maybe pull back a little bit on the initial just to kind of get that level, you know, get those benchmarks in, in place. Then reserve that dry powder for later when you actually can dial that in Very specifically and strategically and really have better impact maybe for that, uh, spend.

Does that make sense? It does, and I'd also like to add a, uh, an alternative perspective to that too. Mm-hmm. So yes, I think it's like before we do a big spend, let's do a little bit of, of, of house cleaning, right? It's like, uh, like- Mm ... I, I have house cleaners come over every two weeks. Before the house cleaners come over, we have to clean up so that they can do their job, right?

So it's like we gotta clean before the cleaners come so that they can actually do a good job deep cleaning 'cause that's not... We're not gonna do that. Yeah. Okay. Um, so there's a little bit of that. There's some housekeeping that you've gotta do before the cleaners come over, right? Right. So before the big spend, you know, there's some things around, make sure you're, you know, you, you can create some, a couple of neat piles, whatever, you know, however this metaphor goes.

Right. I think that's, that's important work. The, the counterpoint or an alternative point of view on that, uh, too, is I just spent a big chunk of money on a, on some contractors, um, to build some tools for me in my business because I actually didn't have good benchmarks around audience segmentation. Mm. I didn't really know who my audience was as well as I wanted to know it.

So to me, it was worth the investment to say, "You know what? I'm actually gonna spend a good chunk of money on this so that I get good benchmarks to actually operate from there too." So I think that's an, that's an equally good strategy. You know, depending on the factors, one might be better for you than others at a, at a different time.

But I think an equally good strategy is to go, "Actually, we're gonna spend our investment on getting good benchmarks so that working from reality becomes easier for us later." So I think the, the deciding factors w- are something like, do you want the work to be easy now, or do you want the work to be easy later?

And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to that. It's just your preference, you know, and what hypothesis you have. Um, and so if you want the work to be easier later, maybe it's worth investing a little bit of a bigger chunk now so that it becomes easier later. If you would rather have the work be easier now and you're like, "I'll do the hard work later," which I generally don't recommend, but you can do it, then you can reserve some of that investment spend for later.

You just gotta do a lot of the deep cleaning yourself for a while. What we talk to our clients about too is, like, this is, this is, like, years-long cycle. This isn't, like, one and done or six weeks and we're done or we're gonna just stop doing this after six months. Like, you gotta look at this as a long-term investment, and if you can make things easier long term, then that to me seems like a good way to spend- I a-

aligning with what you just illustrated, yeah. I agree with this. What I know, I agree with that. What I know as a consultant is- People know the right thing to do, but they don't always do it. So, so even though that's a smart- Right? It's like the way that we treat our health. Should I go to the gym every day this week?

Yes. The answer is yes. No one would argue with that. Right. Is that good for me? Yeah, totally. Am I gonna do that? Honestly, probably not. So working from reality, nah, I might go once this week. Uh, you know, I might, I might... And I might go once for 15 minutes if, if, if that. Right? That's the reality of it. And so yes, I should invest in my health.

I do lots of things that don't invest in my health even though I know that's the right thing to do. So, you know, working from reality, I see organizationally there's a lot of that, that, uh, dynamic at play. A l- a lot of that too. How would you handle, like getting back to now the, the, uh, the goal setting.

You've got, uh, you know, boss comes in c- munching on his big cigar. "Hey, I, I need to make more revenue." Okay, that's every business. That's nothing unique. That we know. That's the most general, like, ask of any leader out there. How would you... What's the science behind taking that conversation Breaking it down into something that's like, "Uh, okay, here.

Here's more revenue." Like, what would you- w- how would you approach that conversation? Cool. So the first thing I would do is I would try to assess the reality of who my boss was. Mm-hmm. Um, will my boss hear me out and, and work with me? Um, understanding that they're the boss, I still have to do what they say.

Or is my boss the kind of boss who swoops and poops? You know, my... Comes in, says a thing- ... drops it off and gone, you know? Yeah. And I'm like, "Okay, now I gotta clean this up?" I don't know. Um, if you have a boss who won't listen to you, the strategy's totally different. If you have a boss that, like, they're not open to anything, they just have their own directives, they give them to you, you can't argue, you can't ask questions, you can't...

Then I would say recognize you're in a dys- dysfunctional scenario. That's a really tough- Mm ... scenario to be in. Mm-hmm. And then do the best that you can, knowing that you're not gonna be able to make the amount of impact that you, that you have. At least be eyes wide open, at least work from reality. At least set your own expectations before you can set somebody else's too.

Nice. Nice. So I think a lot of this is about setting someone's expectations. If you have a boss who will not accept your expectations, well, you have to figure out how to work with that. If you have a boss that will work with your expectations but needs you to set them, then I think that's a different dynamic.

So let- let's start with that one. Let's say you're in a reasonable scenario, your boss is open to what you have to say, the, the, what they need, more revenue, is, is the thing. You can't change that. But you can work with them to help set expectations, and they will allow that, and they will listen to you. So here's what I would do.

Um, here's another framework that I'll mention. I love this one. Uh, this came fr- I saw a talk by, um, Senator Cory Booker. Uh, I think he was the mayor, uh, at the time. Interesting. Senator now. And, um, and he, he talked about how he sets accountability with his team. And so he, the formula that he gave for accountability is there's three things.

There's three things you need for accountability. Number one, you need standards. And a standard is basically an agreement about where a thing lives. So more revenue. "Okay, boss. Got it. Yes, boss. What do you mean by more revenue? How much revenue are we making right now, and where would you like to see that be?"

Right? That's, "Okay, we're making a million dollars of revenue now. We would like that to be a 1.5 by the end of the year." Great. Now we know. Now, like, the standard is 1.5, it's not 1. Now I know that. The second thing is we need a way to measure the standard. With money, it's really easy. You check the bank account, and if it says 1.5, you're good.

And if it says 1, you're not good. Right? Right. So we have an easy way to measure that that is objective. It's not up to interpretation. No, we can both look at a bank account. As long as we agree that the number 1 means the number 1, you know, which generally we do- ... in, in our society, cool. We can look at it, it's objective, and we can agree that, that we either have met up to the standard or we have not.

And then the third thing, and this is where most people mess up accountability, is there has to be consequences, or effects depending on what word you like, de- depending on whether we meet that standard or we don't So as an example, if we don't meet 1.5, what happens? If nothing, then why would we work on it?

It seems like. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But 1.5- not meeting 1.5 might mean you and your colleagues might get laid off Right? Real consequence. Yeah. It's not a punishment, right? The, it, that's the consequence. If we don't make enough money, we're gonna have to make some changes to reduce our expenses. Um, a consequence could be we're not able to expand our, into a second location, right?

I... So we have to define what those consequences are, and most people don't define the consequences, and they definitely don't enforce the consequences, even when they're defined. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So those three things. Okay. Uh, standards, a way to measure the standards, and then consequences for whether or not we do or we do or don't meet, meet those standards.

Uh, I should also say that consequences can be positive, too. Mm-hmm. If we do meet 1.5, we're gonna have a pizza party, right? Like, we had this in second grade, right? All the time. You all read one book a week, we're doing a pizza party. Like, sweet. Love that. I'm gonna read one book a week. You know? So what's the, what's the corporate equivalent of a pizza party?

We all get raises. Uh, we're gonna pay for a better off-site this year. You know, like, you can bring your family. Uh, you know, whatever it is. So consequences can cut both ways. I don't mean consequences have to be negative, and that's why I sometimes I use the word effects. Yeah. Um, the effect can be positive.

If we hit this goal, then these good things will happen. Um, and so I think that the first thing to do when you're working with a boss is you have to hold them accountable. And most people say, "Yeah, I'm gonna hold them accountable," but they don't know what that means. So this is the framework. There's a formula for how to do it.

To hold them accountable, to go, "Okay, boss, we're gonna have 1.5. I'm gonna work on 1.5 from now to the end of the year. How much time do I have? Do I have a whole year, or a couple of quarters? Um, how many people do I have on my team, you know, that I, that could work on this?" And then you as an expert ideally can set the expectations of your boss to say, "Hey, listen, if it's just me and you're giving me a $1,000 budget, I don't think I can raise the, the, the revenue of this company $500,000 this year.

I don't think I can do that. I think that's outsized for me." And then you might be able to negotiate with your boss to say, "I can hit the..." One of my, my favorite frameworks that, that I use that I've come up with is called yes, under these conditions. Hmm. So, yeah, I can, I can hit 500,000. Do I, can I have a budget to hire a consultant or to hire some contractors to work with me on this thing?

Um, can we increase head count for the next quarter so that we can hire, I can get an intern, or I can get a, an assistant, or I can get a, a, an associate to work with me on this thing? Um, can we buy some tools that I might be able to use to be able to do this? So you can ne- go negotiate on those things if your boss is open to that as a way to create that accountability.

Because what they want you to do is they want you to be able to promise them something. Yeah. So if you say, "I can promise it as long as, you know, as long as these things, these conditions exist," I think that's a reasonable conversation to have with a boss who is open to that kind of stuff and does want those things to happen.

I think that it's interesting. So you're... I mean, it, from my instincts, I, I'm always like, okay, well, I need to go into, like, a five why type of a situation. Okay, well, why? Or, or, or more so, like, okay, well, what equals more revenue? What, you know, what drive? Is it more views on my... Like- Understanding, too, the sales cycle is probably a big part of this as well.

Like, "Okay, great. I can get you more... I'm only really empowered to bring you more people to the website, and then there's a sales force that steps in, and I have no control over that." Can they close the deal? I mean, how would you handle that kind of a situation? 'Cause a lot of these marketers, they're the one marketer, but then there's maybe 20 sales people, and it's up to the sales people to put the revenue actually in those buckets.

How do you have that conversation? Yeah, so a lot of this comes from my own sales training, you know, with my agency to go. One of the things I've learned in the sales process is I don't disagree with my client. Mm-hmm. I, I, like, they... A lot of times, more times than not, it creates an adversarial relationship with them, and it's just harder to negotiate.

Mm-hmm. So if your boss comes in and you say, and says, "Hey, we wanna increase revenue by the end of the year," and you go, "Wait, we're gonna do a five whys exercise," a lot of times that could be perceived as combative. Yeah. Okay. And, and so for me, whenever I have a boss, and to me, clients are my boss sometimes.

Sometimes my customers are my boss. You know, sometimes I have a literal boss in my organization. My answer is usually, "Yes, boss." I mean, I'm, I am under no illusions about what I'm here for. They hired me to help them accomplish their goals, not my goals. Otherwise, it'd be my company. So I'm here to help them.

So if they say, "I need you to do this thing," I go, "Great. I'll do that. I work, I work here to help you. I might be blocked, though, so can you help me unblock some of this stuff?" Right? And so that, that's the, that's the convers- And same thing with clients. "We wanna do this thing." "Great. I'd like to understand why so that I know what we're working on together."

Right? A- and I think there's a version of a five whys exercise or Socratic method or anything like that that allow you to understand and connect with the client as opposed to disconnect from the client. A lot of people use it- Yeah ... as a way to go, "Wait, wait, wait, justify to me that this is something that we should do."

And it's like, no, that's not really what that exercise is for. Right. Even though you could use it for that. That exercise is for you to be able to connect on the goal, to go, "Oh, I see where my part is in this and the part that I can play." So, so ye- however you, that helps you understand that, I think that's, those are useful exercises.

Um, but when people use it to go like, "Pump the brakes, you know, bro," like It's like, "Well, wait a minute." Uh, it, it just, it creates that, like, defensiveness a lot of times and the other person- Right ... goes, "Listen, I'm the boss. I just told you to do this thing. Go do this thing." Um, but instead if you go, "Yes." If yes is your f- your default, "I could use some help.

I'm blocked in some places, and can we agree on some of these things?" Those are good bond-building and connecting activities- Right ... that allow you to feel and allow your boss to feel like you're on the same team. So to, to your question, one of the things that I do is, okay, the, the sales team is responsible for this thing, but I'm part of the input.

"Hey, boss, could you do me a favor? I can't just go to the sales team and say, 'All right, sales team, listen to me,' 'cause I don't have the power to do that." Right. "Can you send an email to the sales team to say, 'Hey, everybody, for the week, Dan's in charge. He's gonna facilitate a session about X and Y and Z, and so please work with him in this way so that we could all do this thing together.'"

Now, somebody who has the power to tell them to listen to me has done that thing. That's, that might be all I need from the boss, 'cause I can't do that part on my own. I can facilitate the session. I've got ideas. I can tell the sales team what to do, but I don't have the power to do it. I need that to be lent to me for a while.

So those are the kind of things that I would say, "If you can help unblock some of these things that I truly am blocked on in the, in the power dynamic of this organization, I can't do that. They won't respect it." Right? I'm aware of that. I'm over here in the org chart, but you're up here in the org chart, so if you say it, they'll listen to you.

And th- and all the boss has to do is send an email, "Hey, everybody listen to Dan." That's easy for them, and then I'll do all the work from there. That seems like a good trade-off and a good, a good way to work together. I love that. That's a really wonderful illustration of how to handle some of those dynamics that can get really dicey and I think challenge a lot of our audience.

Uh, and I love the f- the point you made about why. Uh, it is the one question that just makes the back of people's necks bristle sometimes. And it d- we always think, "Oh, no, I'm just, I'm trying to figure out Dan. Dan, why, you know, why..." Well, Dan's all of a sudden back on his heels, like, "What do you mean? You're questioning why I'm doing my thing," whatever that is.

Or, "I'm doing Dan?" You know? I don't, I don't know, I don't know what the psychology of this is, but especially for people who are parents, maybe there's something that triggers us about... Like, like, you know, there's a, there's a time when your kids are young where the only thing that they ask you is why. Yeah.

The only thing they say to you is why, and you're like, "I'm gonna pl- I'm gonna punt this kid." You know? Like, like it's just... And I think that a lot of times maybe there's something visceral that ties back to that. I don't know. I don't know, I don't know if there's something evolutionarily in us or anything.

But I think it's that. It's like a lot of times we're like, what we want to say is, "'Cause I said so," especially when we have power. Mm-hmm. So when we have power and someone who has less power than us challenges that power, a lot of times just asking why feels like a challenge to our power. Mm-hmm. And we go, "No, I'm digging my heels in.

I'm the one with the power. I, I don't need to justify myself to you." Right? And again, not everybody is like that, not everybody is like that in every situation, but sometimes that happens, right? Depending on the dynamic, depending on the day, depending on, on and who, everybody's mood. You know, like, there's a lot of things that can trigger some of that stuff.

So I like to approach that situation delicately so that I'm not making the person who is in charge of my livelihood feel like I'm questioning them or I'm, I'm disagreeing with them or not on the same page as them. I think the b- a better way to get what you want is to make allies with people, not to make an- enemies with people.

Yeah. So as much as I can do that, as long as it doesn't compromise my own values, you know, I'm gonna do that to the best of my ability. And you start off with, "Yes, boss." Yeah. And then go into, "With, with these questions, with these caveats, if, if you could help me with, here's where I'm blocked." Kind of cl- just clarifying what those landmines might be for you.

Yep, exactly. Yeah. I start... A- and, and again, this is back to, I, I tie a lot of, um, business and leadership and all that stuff back to parenting. Yeah. I think there's a big, a big connection between those two. Yeah. When my kids were young, and I, I know there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna hate this and disagree with this, when my kids were young, the thing that my wife and I taught them to say, the fir- when mom and dad say something, the first thing we want you to say is, "Okay, mom.

Okay, dad." You can ask questions after that. You can, you can... L- like anything that comes after that, but the first thing that we need from you is obedience. Because if you're walking into the street, and we yell at you to stop and, 'cause you don't see a car coming, we don't want you to question why at that point.

Mm. "Okay, mom. Okay, dad" is first. And then, why... You know, and you do the thing. And then when you do it, then you say, "Oh, why did you...?" Well, because there was a car. I can explain it to you after that, but sometimes the first thing I need to do as the person with power to stop you, to protect you, who I'm in charge of, is that.

And for a lot of bosses, that's the case, whether they articulate it or not. Their job is to protect you and to take care of you if, if you work for them. Um, whether or not they express that, whether or not they believe that, you know, might be a different story. Um, but I think for a lot of people, if the first response is n- a lot of leaders, a lot of people in power, if the first response is not, "Okay," you know, "Okay, boss.

Yes, boss. Got it." I'm not saying you should do everything they say. Um, but if the first response isn't that, then out of the gate it's adversarial or it feels like that, and I think it's just harder to get what both of you want in that scenario. Really valuable tips on managing up. That's, that's, it, that's a hard dynamic for people to figure out, and it plays into so many deep-rooted personality things that- Yeah

uh, you know, it takes a while for people to work out and have their own self-awareness, you know? Yeah. That's how we do that. I mean, managing up is, is essentially conflict resolution. Yeah. So that's why, like read... Even if you're not a parent and don't ever care to be one, or if you are and your, but your kids are grown, whatever, reading parenting books are, they are a, a great training on conflict resolution.

Conflict resolution with some of the most stern stakeholders you'll ever have. Right? A three-year-old, oh my gosh. You can't negotiate. It's so hard to negotiate. Um, but if you can figure out conflict resolution with that person, you can also figure out conflict resolution with other people too. So parenting books are great conflict resolutions.

There are also really great conflict resolution books and resources out there too. Yeah. And I think managing up, a lot of it is, um, resolving a conflict that has not yet even manifested, right? It's like in advance knowing that, oh, if I go this way, we actually just avoid that conflict altogether. We don't even have to go through it.

Um, so I think a lot of managing up is just, like, as you said, figuring out where the line, landmines are, and going like, "Well, they're all on the left, so we should go right, so we don't even- Yeah ... we don't even step on them. We don't even get close to them." I think a lot of, of, of conflict resolution is some foresight, you know, and being able to identify that some paths are more treacherous than others.

Yeah. Know the, know the playing field. Know the court. We talked about the beginning of a project. Now let's talk about the, the resolve where you're getting to, um, reaching that goal. And I think when we had talked earlier, you had talked about the idea of defining done. What is done? D- there's a framework around that, I think.

There's a framework. Totally, yes. Yeah. Uh, I have a customized version of, of it that I've made my own. Um, the one that I use comes from, uh, Dan Martell. Um, he's got a great book called- Hmm ... Buy Back Your Time, and he shared this framework in there. So I've modified it a little bit from his, but a, a lot of it is kind of based on that.

So, um, the definition of done that he suggests, it has three components to it. Uh, and they all start with, with the letter F. So in a definition of done, you write down facts, feelings, and future. Hmm. So I'll break that down a little bit. Um, the facts are usually the ones that we all tend to say, and we know th- those are the easiest ones.

The facts are, you know, for this to be done, we need to have this deliverable in hand by July 4th at, you know, midnight. You know? I don't know why I picked July 4th at midnight. No one has deliverables July 4th at midnight. Come on. Heck, even July 7th- Are you... Yeah, that's evil, man. July 7th at the, at 5:00 PM Eastern, you know, or whatever it is.

Okay, cool. Now we have a timeframe. We know we can, again, accountability, we can measure it. If I- it's at 5:01, I don't have these things in hand, I know we didn't meet our standards. Okay. So the facts are, are usually easy. We need this, these deliverables. Here's the checklist. Um, but then what I really like about the rest of the framework is it fills in a lot of the gaps.

Um, the feelings are basically when this is done, what will we all be feeling? What do we think we would feel? And, and we could be anything. It could be the stakeholders. It could be the people doing the work. It could be the stakeholders and the people doing the work. It could be our customers also. So for me, I like to have those three, is like the stakeholders involved, the people doing the work, and our customers.

Mm-hmm. When we do this, when we ship this, our customers will feel more relieved that we made this thing, or that we sent them this thing, or they now have this new messaging or this new tool or, you know, whatever it is that we made. Um, and then the last one is future, which is, um, what does this thing unlock for us?

Hmm. Right? What is, what is now possible in our future now that we've finished this thing, that if we don't finish this thing, we don't unlock it? So an example of that would be if we get from $1 million in revenue to $1.5 million in revenue, we unlock having an offsite that is in a different country. As opposed to we'll do an offsite in this country.

Mm. Okay, cool. Like, that is now a new future that we just made possible by doing this one thing. Uh, if we don't do this one thing or if we don't accomplish this thing, then that future is no longer possible or we can't do it, you know, for a lot of reasons. So I like the filling in of all that stuff. Part of what I've customized about the framework is just the order.

Um, so Dan suggests, Dan Martell suggests it as facts, feelings, future. I like doing it the op- the other way around, future, feelings, facts. Um, because to me it's like if we're not identifying a new future that we need, why are we doing this? Mm. Right? And it's... And a lot of times by doing it in that order, I realize, oh, we actually don't even need to be doing this project right now.

Much less th- to define what done means, we actually don't need to do it. Uh, and that brings- I'll, I'll add one more piece of this framework that I add. I have a, a, a tool that I use, it's called the One Project Framework. Um, and it's inspired by, there's a great book called The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, um, and they talk about the focusing question in that book.

And the focusing question is, hopefully I'll get it right off the top of my head, it's what is the one thing I could do right now such that anything else I could do would be made easier or I wouldn't need to do it? Wow. I think it's a really powerful question. A lot of clarification in there, you know?

Yeah. A lot of just like all of a sudden you're just crystal on so many things if you can answer that. Yes. And so the thing that I've added to it in my one, my One Project Framework is, um, I have a, a template that I fill in once every couple of weeks. Sometimes I revisit it. Mm. Um, sometimes I'll just print it out and have it on my desk.

It's- The, this is the one project I'm doing right now because I believe that it has the greatest chance of success of blank. You know, whatever. Increasing revenue, uh, getting more constituents, um, more people being aware of our brand. Whatever it is. Of I could do infinite things right now. Mm. I could do a brand awareness campaign.

We could do ads. We could buy ads. We could, uh, post more on social media. We could... You know, any of those things are possible. I could do any of those things. But what bet am I making right now? What do I think is the highest leverage bet that I could make right now? Is it social media or is it running ads?

Which one? Both of them could get me more, more customers or more clients. So which one do I believe is the better bet? So I define that first because... A- and I'll, I've used that focusing question. If we run ads, then actually maybe our organic content gets easier. Or, or other way around. If we do organic content, maybe running ads gets easier because people have seen us more.

So if I... So the sequence is important, and then I pair that with definition of done. Okay. All right. So let, we're gonna run ads 'cause we believe that's the biggest bet that we can make right now. You know, highest leverage bet that will give us the, the best results or get us closest to our goal. Um, and now, now that we've decided that we're running ads, that's the highest leverage bet that we have, how do we define done for that?

Well, how many ads are, is it less... And let's start with the future. We do an ad, ad campaign, and what we hope unlocks in the future is we have 10% more top of funnel, which then means we have more qualified leads, which then means we close in half the time that we were before. Hmm. Right? That's the future that, and, and sorry.

That, I haven't even gotten to the future. And because of all of that, now what we're able to do is launch that podcast that we've always wanted to launch. You know, what... I'm making stuff up here. But like- Right ... that now, that future becomes possible, but we needed to run ads in order to get the revenue in order to do that thing Right?

So it's all connected So you're very, you're... That's a lot of description for future. You, you're putting in a lot of elements into that. Is there almost like a mini framework for what elements need to make up that future? Yes, because, because that's, it's essentially a vision exercise. Yeah. Right? So, um, those frameworks that I use are not like, "Duh, take 60 seconds and fill these in."

Those frameworks that I use are like, all right, I'm gonna take a day, and I'm gonna get away from my desk, and I'm gonna go sit in another room or another state, you know? Or, or a cabin- Right ... in the woods or whatever. And I'm going to decide these things that will then determine my next three or six or 12 weeks of work.

Nice. And I'm not gonna revisit it. You know, un- unless something drastic changes, I'm gonna try not to revisit that because I've made these hard decisions, and I only have to make them once. Hmm. So, so the, the mini framework from it, one of my, my favorite ones there, uh, comes from a, my, I think maybe my favorite business book, uh, it's called The Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt.

Hmm. Yeah. Um, and the, the framework for vision is essentially the, the first one is that you have to get away and clear your head, right? So, and any, and the, the quote I love from him is, uh, "The future doesn't happen in the present." Hmm. Nice. So, so where the desk that you do your day-to-day work, you can't plan the future from that desk, 'cause that's where the present happens.

That's where your day-to-day happens. Hmm. You gotta get away from that. You gotta go somewhere else for the future to happen. And the second part of it is, um, is to believe the best is yet to come, right? It's like a, a mindset step. Yeah. And then the third one is you imagine tomorrow, and you describe what you see.

So you close your eyes, and you go, tomorrow, and tomorrow could be next week. Tomorrow could be, you know, next year. You close your eyes, and you go- What does it look like here? Who am I working with? What's my team? What products are we offering? You know, what- whatever it is that you're trying to envision, and that's where future comes from.

You have to picture it. You have to imagine it. It's, it's, it's a hypothesis. Brian Tracy writes about when you write out those goals, you don't write them as if they are gonna happen, you write them as they are happening or they've happened. Or past tense, right. I am driving the Ferrari- Yep ... to my beautiful office in New York City.

You know, whatever. You just write it as it's happening and just kind of breathe it into existence in a way, right? Totally. You, you have to write it as if it's present or past. Yeah. Otherwise, it's just a wish. We've defined what done is. I think that that's great, but sometimes you need to pull on some other help outside, and you may be limited in your resources and you may only be able to work with a freelancer or a single contractor or something like that.

You know, when we're trying to do more with less, sometimes we do actually need to use people from outside the organization to help, and I know that I've gotten some notes from people, uh, about the show that struggle big time with that. They really, really are worried about it. They don't know a process around it.

They're scared about it 'cause they don't wanna make the wrong decision. What kind of ideas have you e- explored and had success with around that idea? Let's start with some mindset stuff, and then I, I'll tell you the operational stuff, you know, from it. Yeah. The thing that caught my attention of what you just said was, you know, what if I make the wrong decision or they're scared about it too, and it's like I think that's what makes it important is that there's stakes.

Mm-hmm. If, if you weren't scared by it and if there wasn't a chance that you could make the wrong decision, then just, then you would just do it 'cause it'd be a sure thing. Yeah. So I, I think that, like, that feeling is worth honoring that like, oh, if I'm scared about this, that must mean it's important. If there's a chance that this wouldn't work, that means it, it's a strategy.

Mm-hmm. Right? 'Cause s- a strategy has to be able to be disagreed with, otherwise it's a fact. So again, should we run ads or should we, should we boost our, our organic content? Well, you could argue both. So choosing one is a strategy. Hmm. Right? Otherwise, it'd just be like, "No, everybody runs ads, so we should run ads."

So that's just a fact then. If that, if everybody knew that that worked, then everybody would just do that. So, so I think the, the mindset part of that is I am willingly entering into a situation where I don't know a thing that's gonna work. I'm making a bet, and I'll tell you after if it works, right? I'll tell you after we measure it, but right now I don't know if it worked.

I just believe that it worked. Okay. So I think that that's an important signal, and I think that if people are looking for, "Well, I wanna do a thing that I'm not scared about," I'm like, I think that's actually, uh, the, the wrong direction. Hmm. I think that's a, a not useful signal. Hmm. Um, that if you're, if you're confident about it, well, then just do it, you know?

Like, what's- Yeah ... what's, what's the, what's the headache? But if you're not sure about it, then that must mean that there's something important about this, that, that you dig- you, you get to decide if you deliberate. Yeah. So then, then the operational side of that, um, and for those that don't know, the model that I had at my agency was I was the only full-time employee, and we had a bench of contractors.

Um, that's a very common model now, not a common model when I started it. And, you know, I, I didn't invent it or anything like that. But in 2012, when I started my agency, not a lot of people were doing that, um- Hmm ... at least on, on agency side. Yeah. Um, so by the end of... A- and when I say a bench of contractors, we had a bench of 700 contractors, and we would- 700 contractors.

700. So of the 10 years I ran my agency, I was a full-time employee for the first nine years. I h- finally hired a second full-time employee in year 10. Um, but then we had all contractors. My team was all contractors. Um, I vetted every single one up to a point, up to I think year five or six, and then I hired a casting director whose full-time job was to interview people to, um, enroll in our network.

Whether or not we had a project for them, they were enrolled in our network. And then once they were in our network, then once we had a project- Hmm ... then we would place them on projects. Wow. So that was the model- That's beautiful ... of that. So I've got a lot of thoughts and, and, and experience and hindsight about- Yeah

how to hire contractors well, what you can do with them, what is, what is tough with contractors versus full-time employee, all that kind of stuff. And that'll be hour two of this episode. Thank you, Sam. That's all right. That's all right. So, so, uh, to be quick, the, the operational part of that in terms of how do you hire a contractor, what I've found is there's usually, uh, there's, there's a, a way that people generally hire contractors, and then there's a way that I think is much better that almost no one does.

Hmm. The way that people usually hire contractors is I have a big problem that I don't know what to do with, so I'm gonna outsource that problem to someone else. So that they can figure it out, and what I'm doing is I'm saving my time and I'm sacrificing my money to do that. I'm gonna hire them, they're gonna figure it out.

Um, and that makes sense. It's like, you know, if you need help, if you don't know how to do something, you hire somebody to help you who does know how to do it. Yeah. But a lot of times the contractor doesn't know exactly how to do it either. You just feel like I've gotten it off my plate so I've done the right thing- Mm

and now someone else can figure that thing out, and I've paid money so I don't feel guilty about that thing, about not doing that thing, 'cause I've paid someone to, for that to be their problem. And so what you're doing, for a lot of people what they do is they outsource the problem to someone that is not necessarily suited to solve that problem.

You hope that they are, you think that they are, um, but you're not sure, but you're just like, "I outsourced it, so I'm good." Mm. Mm-hmm. Um, what the, what I would recommend instead is that you do the hard work to figure out the problem right now, and then you write a playbook, and then you hire a contractor and you give them a playbook.

And you say, "What I need you to do is improve this playbook. I need you to run it, and I want you to test it to see if it's any good, to see if it applies to all of these scenarios, 'cause I did it once and now we need to do it five more times. So I'm giving that to you to run five more times, and then you'll probably find some of the edge cases and all that kind of stuff in it.

But I want you to use this playbook and then improve it over time." It allows you to hire contractors more cheaply, it allows you to be very actionable about how you're measuring that contractor's results. Mm. That's the thing is we hire contractors and we go, "Hey, I need you to figure this thing out." And then they go, "Cool, I'm done."

You go, "Thanks," and then you pay him, and then you're s- at some point you're like Did they do what I wanted them to do? And it was 'cause you weren't clear on what you wanted them to do. Interesting. Yeah. Right? The same thing that your boss is doing to you, you're doing to your contractor. Yeah. You're just passing it down the lane.

You know, you're just kicking the can down the road, you know, to them. So hiring some- I think hiring someone, whether contractor or anybody, hiring someone, it's your job as the employer now, which is I think a lot of, you know, marketing team members, they don't see themselves as an employer, right? They're, they're a team member.

Yeah. But when you hire somebody, you're an employer. Your job as an employer is to equip your team, that's your team now, to equip your team with all the things that they need in order to do their work successfully. Just like you're asking your boss to do. "Hey, Boss, I'm happy to do that, but I need some things from you in order to do that."

And if your boss said, "No, no, no, I paid you. You figure it out." Even though some bosses do that, and you're like, "Ugh, I'm lost now. What if I don't figure it out?" Right? Yeah. And you feel all the stress, but they feel fine 'cause they've outsourced it. So you're just passing that along unless you change something there, which is you figure some of the stuff out, you write a playbook, and you hire people to run your playbook.

That's what all the big companies in the world do. McDonald's does not hire chefs to make the burgers. They did at one point, and then they wrote a playbook and now 14-year-old kids can make amazing McDonald's burgers. Exactly the same way as the chefs did on the, the first time, but now every time you go to McDonald's, you're like, "Yeah, this is the same burger.

Same quality burger." Yeah. Mm-hmm. Because the playbook is written. So when you have a playbook, you can actually get away with cheaper people, you can get away with lower skilled people because the, what they, the skill is following the playbook- Mm-hmm ... not figuring the thing out. If you're hiring somebody to figure a thing out, they're probably gonna be expensive, and it's probably gonna take a long time, and it's probably gonna take a lot of back and forth to figure that out And when you're talking playbook, I mean, it could be as easy as maybe doing one thing.

If it's just you're hiring them to do a simple task, you maybe record a Loom video and then just send them that. Or is it, you know, "I'm ... You're gonna be working with our brand." Obviously you need to send brand guidelines, brand standards to them, and then maybe do a project with them or shadow or record yourself doing the same project.

Yes. Get a little bit more into how in-depth does that need to be, and I guess maybe it applies to how complicated that task is that you're assigning that. Yeah, totally. Exactly what you said. Um, most of my playbooks are Loom videos or one-page Google Docs. Okay. Right? Here's the seven steps to doing this thing.

Seven steps to uploading a post into our CMS and publishing it, right? Mm-hmm. And it's like most of those steps are steps that they could probably intuit on their own, but it's easier if you write them down for them. But then probably one or two of those steps is a steps, a step that they would have missed if you hadn't written it down.

Yeah. "Oh, when you uploaded this thing into here, you actually have to check this box, which then opens this thing where you have to write a description here." Right. "Ah." They wouldn't have figured that out. Right? So for you to write it down or for you to record you doing it, right, and then you give them the recording, they have to watch it once, and then they're good.

So when I say playbooks, it doesn't have to be a formal, you know, three-hole punch, spiral-bound, you know, whatever. It doesn't have to be a- ... an official Kinko's playbook or whatever. Like- Yeah ... you could do that if you want to, but I think the level of formality doesn't matter. In fact, the more formal, probably the, the tougher it's gonna be.

So informal is totally fine. Mo- Again, most of my playbooks when I hire are, um, are Google Docs, you know? There's seven steps to doing this thing. As you said, the more complicated the thing is, okay, maybe one page turns into three pages. Maybe a one-minute video turns into a 12-minute video. Um, but, but if you all have to write a whole dissertation for someone to do this thing, it probably means that thing isn't figured out.

Let's talk about, y- again, this challenge that, uh, you know, boss cruncher, "I need more revenue. I, but I got no budget, Dan. I, I've got no money to spend. Change my life." "But I'm giving you nothing to do that with." Totally. It's a tough, it's a tough request, you know. And e- everybody who's been in that situation, they, they know it.

Um, th- the first working from reality is if you think about physics and thermodynamics and all that kind of stuff, of which I know very little- ... um, you can't create matter from no matter, right? Like, it, it's l- physically impossible. Yeah. So you can't create something from nothing. Um, you're always creating from something, right?

And that something could be little, and that something could be the shorthand that somebody considers nothing. Um, so if somebody says, "I have no budget," um, that's not always true. What they might, what they're really saying is, "I can't give you a dollar amount right now because everything else is allocated for it."

They have a budget. Mm. It's not allocated for this. So, okay, recognize that. So the question I think for the person becomes what do you have that already exists that you can leverage? There's always something to leverage, right? And, and leverage is basically how do I use this small thing with a, you know, with a, with a lever and a fulcrum to then propel a bigger thing, right?

Mm-hmm. And again, this ties back to the definition of done stuff with, with, with future. So what can you leverage? Um, what do you have at your disposal? AI Like, can, can you do a thing with AI to make something that took 10 minutes take five minutes? Well, you've just bought five minutes. Okay? How do you turn that five minutes into 10 now?

So, so there's always something that you can leverage, and sometimes it starts as small as, can I save an hour of time on something? Okay, and then what can I do with that hour? And then that hour turns into two hours, and that hou- that two hours turn into five hours, and that five hours turns into 100 bucks, and then 100 bucks turns into 1,000 bu- So what is it that I can do?

Um, now, I'm not suggesting this. I'm just sh- I'm just sharing an example. I'm not say- I'm not telling anyone to do this. Um- Nope ... I've done it before. I don't recommend it to people. Sometimes what you can leverage is your own money. Sometimes I've worked for clients and I've worked for bosses who give me no budget, and I'm like, "I'll spend $25 of my own money to place an ad."

Wow. Because that's the investment. Short-term loss for long-term gain. Again, I'm not telling anyone to reach into their pocket and spend on behalf of their company or their boss. In most cases, that's a bad idea. I'm just- Yeah ... sharing an example of that's a thing you can leverage. How can you leverage it?

You can bring it up in your performance review. Mm. You can say, "In o- in order for me to do this, I wrote a personal check." All right? Sometimes that means something to your boss at your organization. Um, most times it won't. Again, I'm, I'm n- I'm re- really edging around this thing. I'm not suggesting that as a thing, but I'm just giving an example of if you believe in a thing, what lengths are you willing to go to do that, and to, and to make it happen?

You can always leverage something. Can you turn a fr- Here's a, a more practical example. Can you turn a free ChatGPT account into a paid one? Can you say, "Hey, I did this thing with ChatGPT," or, "I did this thing with Claude," or, you know, whatever AI tool of choice. "Boss, you see how effective this is i- in the one week that I was using it.

Can you spring for a $20 a month subscription for me?" Nice. And maybe, maybe that, that your boss can find $20 a month for you to have that. All of a sudden, you just got twice the power that you had last week. Yeah. Okay, now you c- you, you can do better than prompting. Now you can maybe start to build some agents or build some apps, you know, that can do some things for you.

So, like, there's always something to leverage. You have to be creative to find it, right? It's a creativity exercise. It's not a budget constraint, it's a creativity exercise. So how creative you can be in that allows you to open up a lot more possibilities. I'm not saying constraints aren't real, they totally are, but if you can be creative around that, you can turn one into two, and then you can turn two into four, and then you can turn four into e- Like, make that l- Ma- That, that's what leverage is, is it compounds.

So if you can find a little window somewhere, then you can open that up and make that something more actionable and more active for you. That's beautiful. Yeah. I, I love that example because I think y- we live in a world now resource rich. I mean, uh, you know, back in the day, think about how hard it was to just even do video content.

Now we've got tools in our phone that can do so many things for free, whatever that means. Yes. But I mean, there's just so many things that you can leverage that so many people don't. It's surprising sometimes. But I love that idea. It's not, it's a creativity problem. That's what people really need to understand is there's a way around that, whatever it is, that barrier, that thing that's in the road, you can go around it.

There's a way to do that, you know? Yep. It's kind of a punch in the face though, you know? I, I love the idea of getting around these barriers creatively, thinking creatively, but it is kind of a punch in the face to like, I don't... I'm the only marketing person. They don't even really value, maybe they don't value marketing that much.

I don't get paid a lot. I, maybe I don't, you know, and just we, as we've illustrated, there's no budget for anything. So obviously it's really tough for me to find Leadership that respects maybe even what I do. That's a struggle that I think, you know, a lot of these marketing teams have won, is they're just kind of an off, "Oh, you're an expense."

You know? Just like, "Just make me more money. I, I can't pay you anymore, and I can't give you any more resources." Do you have any help for people like that? 'Cause that is a tough way to get up and go to work every day, I think, for a lot of people. Super tough, absolutely. I have some stuff to say. It isn't always easy to hear.

Mm. So I will probably offend some people who are hearing this, and I apologize. I don't mean to offend. I am mostly trying to call you up from, from a place. Not everyone, uh, hears that, or not everybody agrees that that's what I'm trying to do when I, when I say it to you. Mm. Um, one of the things that's really hard to confront is the fact that maybe your work isn't valuable.

Mm. That's really hard to come to terms with. Oh, true. It, it's true for people who run their own business, right? "Oh, no one's buying. Oh, it's 'cause of the economy." It could be. It could be the economy. Mm-hmm. Probably some portion of it's the economy. Mm. But it also could be that the thing that you're offering is not that useful, and I think that's a hard thing for somebody to come to terms with, especially if, uh, I know for, for designers, I don't know if the same is true for marketers.

For designers, a lot of designers take on designer not just as a job, but as an identity. Mm. It's who they are. So if you don't think design is valuable, then you don't think that I, as a designer, are valuable either. I am not valuable. And it's like, whoa, wait, that's not true. Your salary, what you get paid, ha- is not a reflection on whether you as a person are valuable.

Are you as a person valuable? 100%. You are infinitely valuable. You are worth millions and billions and trillions, and you know, you can't even describe in dollar amount as a person, as a human on the Earth. There is no dollar amount or number that can describe that. As a person delivering a service, your service might not be that valuable.

Mm. Those two things can be separate and can be true at the same time. So one of the things that I'm always try to focusing on when I'm working with someone, if I'm, if I have a boss or if I have a client, is like, how can I be the most valuable to them? I'm not the one who defines value. The person receiving it defines value.

So I, I can say as much as I want. Well, I'm, I'm a designer, I'm doing this design. This design is valuable maybe to me, but I'm not the one receiving it. That, the person receiving it has to say, "This was valuable," in order for it to be considered valuable. Hmm. So, so I think that I'm always trying to focusing on, on, on that.

If you are doing marketing and no one seems to value it, try doing other stuff just as an experiment, and I'll give you some really simple, simple examples here. I'm not... I play basketball every week. You- Sometimes like once or twice a week, and I've played since I was a kid. I am not nearly as good as I should be for having played as much as I have.

I'm not a good basketball player. I also, my genetics fight me. I am a 5'8, uh, Asian man, right? You usually don't see those in the NBA or anything like that. Um, so I'm not the kind of person who passes the basketball eye test. I step on the court, I'm usually picked last. No one's like, "Ooh, that dude's probably good."

It's like, there's no way. It just, it, that doesn't happen. Um, so what I do to be valuable is I usually sweep the- Hmm. 'Cause I know nobody likes playing on a dusty court. So I usually, especially when I'm joining a new league, I go grab the broom and I sweep up before the game. Wow. And at the very least, I'm the guy that they invite every week 'cause at least the floor will be clean.

It gets me invited. I thought sweep was some sort of basketball play. I literally would have never known. I wish. I mean, it, it is. Not in this, not in this example. But, like, at the very least, I get invited every week. I know. That's, that's a way that I get invited. I, because you know what? I'm not getting invited every week for my three-point shot.

I'm not. Right. It's like I- I could work on it for many years may- and then maybe, but I know that I can get invited now if I sweep. Hmm. So I sweep. Interesting. And then sometimes I get picked, and then sometimes I play, and now I... And now that I, I play, now they realize I'm actually a pretty good passer.

That's my game. Assists for me, highest stat. I'm a good passer. Hmm. I'm an okay shooter. But now if I'm on your team, you're getting the ball right where you need it so you can score. I can promise you that. But no one's gonna give me the time of day before I prove that, so I just need the chance to prove that.

So I sweep, and sweeping gets me on the team so that I can show you how well I pass. Um- Right ... how does that apply to the workplace? Um, sometimes in your workplace there are these unstated rules that, like, you know how they define how well we're doing here is if people are happy in the morning. No one will tell you that.

So you know what you can do? You can be the person that brings in coffee or donuts every morning. And what I would do is at your performance review or sometimes every week, I would remind people that I'm the person who brought in donuts. "Hey, everybody, enjoy the donuts courtesy of Dan." I would call it out so that at the very least they know I'm the donut guy.

Nice. Because that's a way that I know is valuable to people, and I know it because they've said it. They've said that they appreciate them, right? I'm not guessing. I'm not intuiting. It's like people are like, "Oh, thanks for bringing in donuts." And sometimes thanks for bringing in donuts is more thanks than you get for thanks for running that marketing campaign.

Oh. Yeah. So when you're tuned to what people are grateful for, what they want, what they expect, what they get disappointed if you don't, if you stop doing that thing, you know, that's a sign of value. Um, and so those are the kinds of things that are around the work that I think a lot of people aren't thinking about.

They're not thinking about how they can be valuable. And it's hard to confront the idea that sometimes the work that you are hired and paid to do honestly isn't that good. Um, and it, and I don't mean from a technical standpoint. From a technical standpoint, it could be very good, but it's just not what the person who hired you wanted.

And so if, if you're not tuned to that, then you start to get caught up in, "Well, I am not worth much," or, "I am not valuable." And it's not about you, it's, it's about your work. So if you can't separate yourself from your work, that's gonna be a very tough thing to, to come to terms with. Yeah. And, and teams are...

The team dynamic and the human dynamics are so complex. You know, if you're tying yourself into just doing that one talent or that one task, that can be putting all your eggs in one basket, and that's a risky thing to try to, you know, put all of your identity into that. That's a challenge. I love your illustration of that because we're all complex human beings, and the silly stuff that makes me happy, I, like you said, sometimes I put that on a higher plane than maybe somebody who, you know, just does this one thing really great, but maybe can't show up in a meeting with the right personality, or doesn't make me laugh with a funny thing, or show me a meme that cracks me up.

Sometimes there's so much more value that comes from those kind of dynamics and makes people want you around no matter what and give you value, um, that should be something that I think, uh, you, you've done a really great job at illustrating. And I think, you know, Darren, you, you've spoken so much about marketing, but you've brought in so many human elements to this conversation that I think will really help a lot of the people listening to this.

Because that, there is this- scenario now that I think's going on in marketing, that it's far hard to find organizations that value it. And there's so many people studying it and learning it, and then going out in the workforce and maybe can't get a job. I mean, because it's m- people, you know, and when you look at the cyclical economy around things, marketing is always one of the first things that gets cut, or they're not gonna hire for.

Uh, they're just gonna go with their team, whatever they've got. Or they're just gonna, you know, maybe somebody in a different department is just gonna do marketing now because they can't afford to do it. So, um, you brought some really valuable insights, and thank you so much for the conversation. Yeah, you're welcome.

Thank you for inviting me. I hope this helps the people that are listening to it. Before you go, you know, danmall.com, but, uh, tell us where else would people can find you and connect with you and, uh, learn more from you. Yeah, cool. I, I'm on all the socials. Uh, LinkedIn, you can find me. I'm Dan Mall. Uh, my name...

As you, as you said earlier, my name's pretty easy, two syllables, Dan Mall, like the shopping mall, M-A-L-L. Uh, but people mess it up all the time. I don't know how I don't know how that happens. Yeah. Um, Dan Mall on LinkedIn, danmallteaches on Instagram, um, Dan Mall on Twitter or X, whichever you prefer to call it.

So any of those places, um, send me a message. You can find me there. Danmall.com is my website. Um, if you wanna hear from me every week, sign up for my newsletter. I send out a free newsletter every week about business and design and marketing and, and things like that. So I try to share little tips with people that can help them in their day-to-day.

Um, I get a lot of feedback that that has been helpful to people, so I try to keep doing that. Um, and, uh, and YouTube, um, Dan Mall Teaches on YouTube. Uh, if you like some long form stuff, I'm gonna be posting a lot more there lately, uh, o- over the next couple of months, weeks, years. Um, so lots of good stuff coming there too.

It's been awesome having you on the show, and, um, appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks, Eric. Thanks everybody.

Thanks for tuning in. For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the Marketing Team of One podcast on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify podcast networks. You can also chat with us on the r/marketingteamofone subreddit or visit marketingteamofone.com to learn more.