It's Marketing's Fault

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Welcome to its marketing's fault where we discuss how to do marketing the right way.

I'm your host Eric Rutherford and I'm thrilled today because I'm with me Marcus Schaller.

He is a longtime marketer and copywriter.

He is a business coach and Marcus, I'm going to throw it over to you because you and I have had these conversations lately where you were in the midst of a pivot and I would just love for you to share with the audience kind of the direction that you are taking.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

And thanks for having me on.

Sometimes it can be a little confusing to keep up with what I'm up to at any point in time.

So basically for people listening, a little context.

I've been in marketing for over 20 years now, a lot of work in messaging and content strategy, things like that.

Most recently working with SaaS and tech companies.

And in that, I've always had a coaching component.

There's always been an aspect of what I do in the strategy side of things.

And more recently, I've decided to really dive in with both feet or head first or whatever the analogy is and really focus on the coaching side of what I do.

And so specifically, working with entrepreneurs, with marketers, with leaders on really boosting their own problem solving skills, their creative problem solving processes.

Because as you know, The world continues to change very quickly, right?

And I'm a very, very firm believer that with the advent of new AI technology and all these different tools, really what's gonna matter most moving forward is our ability to think deeply and think well and to solve really hard problems that up until this point, we can't solve with an AI bot.

I like that.

Now would you kind of maybe go into a little more depth on what creative problem solving is?

Because I think people probably will recognize it or at least get the gist of it, but I'd love for you to go into more detail.

Yeah, I think for me, creative, the word creative and problem solving together, are just very meaningful for me because, you know, creativity is one of those words that it's thrown around a lot, but it's always been one of those very key words for me in what I care about doing work wise, creative work.

And the problem solving component in business, particularly problem solving is.

is something that's, you know, a core skill, of course.

You know, everybody realizes how important it is to solve problems.

That's what you do as a company is solving problems.

But the processes, if there is a process, sometimes are actually counterproductive, right?

So think about a typical corporate kind of scenario where there's a goal setting session and it's the, you know, the top brass and they're gonna brainstorm on some ideas.

They're generally in these brainstorming sessions.

They might carve out 45 minutes on a Zoom call now or in a room with a whiteboard.

And they're going to find a solution to the problem.

And the problem with that approach sometimes is it's essentially the clock is ticking.

So they have this huge problem.

We're losing customers, something big.

And essentially, whoever gets to the most reasonably good sounding solution first wins the game.

Or whoever's the loudest in the room wins the game.

Whatever solution seems to make the most sense, that wins the game because we're used to those solutions.

The problem is that those solutions have already been done.

They might not be the right solution.

They might not be the correct solution at context.

Another aspect of it is best practices, which I kind of rant about often on LinkedIn.

Like, oh, the best practice for this is to do that.

And it's because they read something on LinkedIn or they saw a seminar or something.

It's like, yeah, that might work really well in that context, or that might have worked really well three years ago for that particular company.

But does that mean automatically it's going to work well in our situation?

Or is it even outdated at this point?

So the creative part of the problem solving is looking at it as a, it's not this static process that you go through this rigid one, two, three hierarchy, and then you come up with this great solution at the end of it.

It's much more like art.

It's much more like a creative art where there is such thing as understanding the problem on a more deep level.

There's certainly some tactics and techniques and tools that are very important, but ultimately what makes problem solving more effective is not what you're adding necessarily, it's what you're taking away.

It's when you're creating the space for good insights to actually happen.

And again, in our corporate culture and our work culture, Creating space is definitely not one of our strong suits.

No, it's not.

We do everything we can to stick more stuff in less space.

But I like how you talk about, really it's about not adding to but removing.

Would you elaborate a little on that as well as far, because I think people will probably understand, but what's it look like to remove and sort of give that room to breathe, so to speak?

Yeah, I kind of look at it as skill levels, right?

So there's, you know, there's kind of the basic level, which is like turn off your notifications.

Just simple stuff, stuff we've all heard, right?

For 20 years now we've been hearing like, don't constantly be responding to email if you want to get something done.

Like the basics, but like you look at it, it's like, well, if they're so basic, how come everybody isn't doing it?

And there's a lot of identity related things as far as people's identity being tied to.

I'm the hardest worker here, or I respond faster than anybody.

All these things that are kind of psychological impulses that are making it harder for people to create that environment or that space.

So looking at and saying, what's getting in the way, essentially, of you having those breakthrough ideas?

So if you think about what's the cliche with the aha moment?

You're in the shower.

You're driving to work.

Or you're in the woods taking a walk.

the idea, right?

It's like, it's cliche for a reason.

Now, obviously our jobs involve doing something that we can't spend all day in the woods walking around nor would we want to, right?

So there's kind of like, we've gone so opposite direction.

We've gone now where, you know, I'm sure you've seen this.

There's like, for people that work from home, they're knowledge workers.

Like they're not like even on a call center, they're knowledge, they're VPs and they have software connected to their computer that...

Measures how often they move their mouse or how much they're typing so that whoever's like tracking their productivity Can see like oh are they actually being productive and I just hear stories like that and I'm like horrified because like to me that's the exact opposite of what productivity is so removing those kinds of expectations both Culturally within a company but also for ourselves, you know, and then you can take it all the way up to Let's take the top of that ladder, really, which is like your own awareness, your own kind of like consciousness, which you could talk about meditation and all these different things of quieting that inner noise, that chatter, so that you're actually able to pick up on those insights and ideas that right now are probably just getting like drowned out by all the things, the conversations we're having in our own heads.

Well, and I appreciate that just that distinction and that sort of description of that kind of reminds me a little bit of the post you shared on LinkedIn today where you were talking about the difference between impact and Business and I think we get those confused a little bit sometimes would you would you want to just kind of Talk about the differences there and which is more important Yeah, yeah.

I mean, if you think about it, you know, like mid 20th century, a lot of people worked in offices, but you had a lot of people working in manufacturing, right?

And you think about what are the office hours, what is productivity based on?

It's based on models of, of factory work.

That's, that's how it became a, a management theory.

The thing, you know, these theories of productivity and efficiency and all these things, they're all from manufacturing, right?

And they carried over into office work and then later carried over into knowledge work where they might not really be like, it's not the same thing, right?

So you think about you as a creative person, right?

You're a marketer.

This is where it's happening up in here.

Not typing, not staring at a screen, right?

But if you're up here and you're thinking and you're solving real problems, nobody sees that.

Nobody could see what's going on.

You just look like the guy that's looking out the window.

Right?

So.

Productivity versus impact, we carried over this kind of thing, like we're these fleshy factories and our jobs are just to put out units of widgets.

And the analogy doesn't cross over, right?

So we have workplaces that are just back to back Zoom calls, constant checking Slack accounts, checking email, people thinking they can multitask, which is a whole nother thing we can argue about whether that's actually possible.

They're not doing things well.

They're doing a lot of things, but they're doing them kind of at subpar what they're able to.

So the whole difference between busyness and impact is like, look, there is a certain amount of action and activity in a day, right?

I mean, you are responding to emails, of course.

You are responding to Slack.

You are on some Zoom calls, of course.

That's all part of it.

But if it's measured in, oh my, look how many Zoom calls I have to, oh, I'm so busy, you know, or I'm the fat, you know, whatever these things of just this frantic activity.

that if you look at it, like the end of your day, if you have that kind of day, you look at the end of it and you go, what have I actually done today?

And I know that there's a lot of people, including myself, that could get into this where you're like, I didn't achieve a damn thing today, right?

Nothing important, you know?

And so measuring it by impact where the difference is, you're saying, look, in order for us to thrive as a company or individually as in our own career, whatever it is, We need to be able to innovate.

We need to be able to hit very difficult goals.

We need to be able to constantly mitigate these challenges and these changing situations in the world, in our market and everything.

And we're not gonna do that if we're constantly responding to emails all day, right?

We're gonna do that when we have established the discipline and the space again, and the willingness and the permission, both external and internal, to be able to slow down.

least part of the day and say, look, I've got to deal with this problem right now.

Or I have to create some ideas for this solution or this creative project, whatever it is.

But Cal Newports, it's deep work.

It's just basic things.

Just concentrate on one thing at a time.

And if you measure things in impact, that impact might not happen right away.

It might take two years before that brilliant idea really hits.

But you can tell if somebody's replying to emails right away.

And I think that's also another part of this is in our corporate world, the average tenure of typical jobs at this point is much, much shorter than it used to be.

So if you think about, if you're a CMO, what's the average is 18 months now?

Like something crazy, right?

If you're a CMO and you know that you're like, the clock's ticking on your job, basically.

What are you, are you going to worry about the objective that might be five years from now that's going to like totally transform the company?

Are you going to worry about making sure that next quarter you're hitting your SQL go?

Yeah.

You know, or your MQL goes.

So again, a lot of different moving parts for this, but ultimately it starts with that mindset.

It's like, look, I need to get some stuff done.

I need to respond to emails.

I need to be there in these meetings.

That's fine.

But I also need to have impact.

And however I measure that is up to me.

but I need to make room for it and instead of just being like, oh, I'm the busiest one in the office or on the Slack channel.

And I think that's incredibly powerful.

And it was this week, the episode that I just published on my podcast was with Kirk Duke, and he and I were it was for everybody listening.

If you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to it.

Because we were it was a deep dive into marketing.

And he was bringing up, you know, as you know, working with, especially when you're working with leadership team executives, you know, it's marketing is all about the data in some respects, but especially for them and how You want to measure everything you can, but just because you measured it doesn't mean you measured the right thing.

And it doesn't mean that you, um, and it doesn't mean what you need to know can be measured, right?

So it's, it can be murky and that attribution can be funky, but, but busyness is easy to measure.

It's easy to measure.

It's easy to say, okay, you've your butt's been in a seat for eight hours.

Therefore, you did X amount of work.

But it doesn't equate to that.

I really appreciate that example.

It's like the manufacturing versus more of that knowledge work.

They're very different models.

And think of it right now, as we're recording this, wrapping up the first full year of the chat GBT revolution, where everybody's just talking about AI at a level they never did before, at least not in general conversation.

There might've been up until now, or even for a little bit longer, there might've been a strategic, it's someone's career, there is an advantage maybe to being that person.

The first in the office, last to leave.

uh, whatever, the typical busyness markers, right?

This person's a good worker.

Look how they're grinding, right?

Um, that might've provided an advantage.

That's done.

If it hasn't already been done, it's done because whatever these dozens of tools, how many tools are coming out every week now, they're going to do it faster, cheaper, but you know, add it up.

They're yours.

You're not going to outrace it.

Right.

And.

But we're still hanging on to, it's very similar, again, to the manufacturing model, right?

It's like the human being's never going to be able to keep up with the productivity of a series of robots on the BMW line in Munich.

You know what I mean?

Like, never going to happen, right?

So if your game plan is, I'm going to just be the fastest person, hardest worker, it's not going to work, right?

It's humanly impossible.

And it's probably not the kind of life you want to have anyway.

So this does involve some difficult decisions and transitions.

boundaries that people have to create for themselves and for their with their teams and say look You know, I need to focus on this right now.

It's not easy for people to do I'm not trying to like, you know downplay it, but this is not really optional anymore Now it is a mindset shift because you begin thinking of things differently.

It was sort of, you know, I was looking at freelancing a few years ago.

And the thing that so if for everybody listening, if you are a freelancer, and you're not doing this, let me encourage you to do so is that idea of going from hourly to, to project based because the better you get at something, the faster you go and the more efficient you can do it, which means the quicker you get done and the less you get paid.

And so it's like one of those, it's this weird sort of system.

And so, but yeah, it's like, what's the final product worth?

What's the final impact worth?

And getting into those mindsets, but it is a serious.

serious paradigm shift.

Yeah, and like most of these types of paradigm shifts, the change really happens after it's a little too late for some people.

We all went through, if you're old enough to listen to a podcast like this, we all remember 2008, right?

And how many people were...

I just remember seeing news stories about people that were out of work.

And they're like, you know, I've been, I've been putting out resumes.

I've been on Indeed or I don't know if Indeed existed then, but you know, monster.com I think was bigger than, you know, I've been on monster.com and sent out resumes and, and not, not to.

I understand what can happen if you're working for the same place for 15 years, suddenly you're laid off through no fault of your own and you haven't necessarily been prepared, I get that, but that was even that change where, you know, it's like.

that what worked in the past won't necessarily work.

And if you don't have those tools in place, like you don't have to be an expert at problem solving in order to get much better at it, right?

What you have to do is to understand where your own blockages are.

And that's a lifetime thing, right?

I mean, that's like life, figuring out where your own baggage is, right?

But so it's not about like there's some kind of set of techniques or tools that you have to master.

It's another thing in front of your plate.

It's more about like shifting your perspective and going like what I was doing if you're one of these like busyness equals productivity people, what I was doing is not only making me miserable and burned out because a lot of people are feeling that, but it's no longer the right, it's no longer the effective thing so I can let that go.

And now if I let that go, what do I actually replace it with?

No, and that's so true.

And that kind of leads me to the next question, because as we're thinking about creative problem solving, and you've kind of shared some of your journey, you are in the midst of as you elaborated earlier, just this, this a little bit of a business pivot, and that's part of your own freelancing, business coaching work, as well as your create some of your creative endeavors you had been hosting.

the Attract Your Ideal Customers podcast.

And now, you and I had been talking, like you're getting ready to make a shift in even some of the content you're creating.

Would you want to just kind of, what's going through your mind in terms of what's getting ready to happen?

Yeah, we're in the middle of the beginning of that happening actually.

So this week as we're recording it, I launched this other podcast, which you and I have known each other for a little while.

We talk a lot outside of this format, right?

We like to talk about podcasting and what's possible within.

One of the reasons I brought this up to you last week was because we both know how often people who want to start a podcast or whatever it is, YouTube channel, whatever the format is.

they kind of get stuck sometimes because they're like, oh, I don't have the perfect idea or don't have the perfect name or whatever it is, or it's too technically hard.

So that's one of the things of sharing is just like, A, what's happening here on my side and what have I created, but also like walking people through like, what are the steps?

And it's maybe not as hard as you think it is.

It's effort, you have to love it, you have to care about doing it, but it's not like this big, huge thing.

So in a nutshell, for the past year or so, I've been...

putting out this podcast called The Track Your Ideal Customers, being a marketer, being somebody who wants to focus on solving marketing problems, right?

So I had a lot of guests on who were both founders of smaller companies.

Some of them were consultants and coaches, right?

But also like professional marketers, CMOs, director of marketing, product marketers like yourself, right?

So the whole gist of that was, okay, like, how are you solving the problem at your company or with your business or your career of attracting those ideal customers?

I'm a big believer in like, you know, not every customer is the same.

And if you're gonna create marketing around something, really like understand who it is you're trying to attract and really make something about them.

So that's what all that was about, right?

And as I mentioned earlier, you know, it touches on the problem solving aspect of it, right?

But one of the challenges with podcasts is, is at least in that format, it was a, it was a, started as like a 45 minute ish kind of a timeframe and it was all interviews, right?

And over time I kind of minimize that or I, or shortened it to 20 minutes, a little bit more palatable, a little easier for people to listen to.

But one of the challenges with podcasting is that, you know, you can have a conversation with somebody and if you're listening to somebody like Rick Rubin, who I love his new podcast and I'll listen to that, I don't care who's on, I'll listen to that for three hours, right?

Or if you're looking for you're searching for a particular person, right?

You want to look you're looking on Spotify to see oh this books coming out I wonder if that author has been on a podcast like I do that all the time, right?

Then that's different But if it's just me and I'm talking to whoever it happens to be no offense to my guests But like, you know, we're just regular folks, right?

So, you know, it's not necessarily gonna be like somebody's going zingo Marcus has another person on the show today You know, I hope they would but I don't know necessarily know if that's the case So with this, I really kind of re-thunk it, thank it, whatever.

How to rethink it, there we go, from the ground up.

And thanks to our mutual friend Kendall, who I think gave us both the same idea through separate conversations, talking about, she basically shared, I guess there's this company that does a podcast that you can listen to in a few minutes that you're brushing your teeth, right?

And the whole point of it is, I guess it's a daily show.

comes out.

And I think that actually in that conversation with her, like, put the seed of the idea, when I didn't even realize it was there until more recently, I thought, you know what I'm going to do?

The next podcast I want to do is I want to have a relationship in the sense with my listeners where every morning they wake up and at 6am Eastern time, there is a two to three minute episode in their feed, right?

And it's going to talk about these different aspects.

Like we just mentioned the whole...

business versus impact, little things, little perspectives that can help them really unlock a lot of their own creative problem solving abilities.

And then some takeaways, like what are you gonna do today?

What are you gonna do today to move a little bit away from the business and more toward the impact, and kind of challenging people a little bit.

And I just thought that's a really fun thing to do, like for me, I don't know if it will be for other people.

So I posted, I started on Monday.

this last Monday and now I've scheduled the fifth episode to come out tomorrow morning, which will be Friday at 6 a.m.

And I do a similar thing on YouTube, basically it's the same thing.

Yeah, and it's called Your Morning Spark.

So the whole point of it is, really have that kind of little daily way to start out your day, hopefully in a better way.

I love it.

I love it.

And yeah, so Kendall Brightman with Riverside, she, I was looking for my notes and it was the Zendium toothpaste was, was the, and it's fascinating doing some research on that because I would have never thought of just a couple minute something different, but yet comfortable, right?

So you have podcast listeners, so they're comfortable in that medium.

But now you're like, okay, instead of doing a 45 minute interview, what if we do just something short, simple, start each day and we'll try this and see what happens and you're doing very intentionally, which is definitely stepping out and doing something different.

Yeah, there's...

You know, sometimes you'll see like either daily emails or even like, you know, John Lee Dumas has like the, the entrepreneurs on fire podcast, which is like a daily podcast for entrepreneurs.

But again, all of its different formats within the medium, but you're trying something new to, to get that out and, and engage with, with people in the world.

How has it been so far in terms of the creation?

and an aspect of it.

We're going to get into more of the how in terms of how you launched it because you did it really quick.

But I'm curious just so far as you're going through this first week, how's the sort of the creation of it been going?

It's been a lot of fun.

I gave myself, I think it was maybe 10 days ago, roughly, I found myself really dragging my feet on the whole coaching thing for a long time, right?

And part of that is just this blowing it up way too big in my own head, right?

Of being like, oh no, I have to have a best-selling book or I have to have this and I have to.

And whatever it is that happened 10 or 14 days ago, I realized like, look, I can nibble around the edges of this forever and I will continue to do that unless I set myself a deadline, unless I really set myself like, look, just create it with what I have now.

And it was amazing how quickly it came together when I gave myself that deadline, because it was all there, right?

Again, being, quieting the mind a little bit so you can hear the good stuff, right?

It was all there, came together really quickly.

It might change a little bit of.

There can be iterations, but it wasn't like I had to start from scratch.

The other thing is also because I've done this before, it's relatively easy to do again.

When you have tools in place to produce a podcast, to edit it, to record, you have relationships with people, you've done it, you have some experience.

I've done now between this show that I've done that attract your ideal customers and ones I've done in the past, I've done probably 150 interviews over that.

You just get better at it.

In a nutshell, having now kind of pulled the trigger on this and stepped out, updated my LinkedIn, really kind of like say, okay, this is what it's about now.

And I still do copywriting.

I still have that, right?

I didn't burn the boats, but as far as what I'm moving forward with, the stuff I'm putting out on the podcast, the YouTube, the LinkedIn, it really is all about the coaching and the problem solving.

Now, as far as that original show, the Attract Your Ideal Customers, I still have interviews that I have recorded that I still need to publish.

So my plan with that is to finish that out through the rest of this year and then let it sit.

If I feel inclined to pull that show into what I'm doing now, maybe I work still with marketers and that would be a good show to do for marketers, then I'll continue to do that.

But that's still a big question mark.

I love it.

I love that first that you said, okay, this has been sort of stirring in the back of my mind.

I'm gonna give myself a deadline so that it gets done because deadlines spur action.

They they do and then you did it and you had obviously you had some experience to be able to pull it off in As quickly as you did but still you set the deadline you realized okay, it can't be perfect Hmm.

I don't, you know, but we need to start.

We've got to start somewhere in that process.

knowing that it launched quickly, knowing that all of this had been kind of, you know, stirring in the back of your head, what did you do to make it happen?

Because I know a lot of people be like, well, man, that's great.

How do you do it?

Yeah.

I have here on my screen, which obviously you can't see, but I'm going to kind of read off it because I keep all this stuff.

And it also helps, like I said, when you've done it before, you can go back and be like, how did I do it last time?

So, certainly the ideas of it needed to gel.

I needed to figure out what specifically I wanted to focus on as far as the type of coaching, who I wanted to work with.

with all those things.

So that's not really part of this list.

But as far as launching the podcast, just getting ideas down and putting them out, I could just run through this list with you if you'd like and then we can always go back to anything that pops for you.

Would you like to do that?

So, and some of them might be like, the first one's figure out a name and it's easy to gloss over that, right?

But it's like, just figure out a name.

Like just, you know.

It's not going to be, there's different opinions about what it should be named.

I don't think there's any one right or wrong way to do it.

And as you and I have talked about in the past, the name can change.

You actually, I think recently did this.

I did that with the Attract Your Ideal Customers.

It was a different name prior to that.

So, you come up with, even if it's a working title internally, if you think about people...

creating a movie, right?

A production of a movie.

Often they'll just have like working title, right?

So even if you're not a hundred percent sure and you're still figuring out a lot of your details about what your show is gonna specifically be about, just come up with a couple of concepts so you're not like letting that be the thing that holds you back, right?

It is, and even, and kind of with that is making sure your name's not taken.

Um, cause that was something as, as you, you know, you described, I, when I recently pivoted and changed, uh, this podcast to its marketing's fault.

There was another one I thought of and someone else had mentioned to me and I got to looking and I'm like, Ooh, that one's already taken.

I can't do that one, which obviously made it easier to select.

It's marketing's fault.

Cause it's like, all right.

I think that worked in your favor because I love the name of that.

I think that's so, I mean, I saw that you had posted that a couple of weeks ago and it was recent and I'm like, oh, I love that name, right?

And that's a great example too because you had a different name, obviously.

You were reaching, it's just, there's no perfect with this.

You're gonna learn.

I think that's one of the rules basically.

Get some experience, start doing it.

There's no right or wrong way to do it.

If your gut is telling you like, oh, this is just lousy.

Like if you come up with some names and you're like not feeling it, like keep looking, right?

But to your point too, about making sure it's not, you know, uh, taken, certainly do a Google search.

You can look on Apple, which pretty much has like Apple.

Podcasts, I think has every podcast that's available.

And then also do a URL search.

Right?

So I have, I think it's called hover where, you know, basically I own, you know, Marcus Schaller.com and I own some domain names and I looked at the name of the show.

your morning spark, I want to say, Oh, I wonder if that's available.

Your morning spark.com, which it was, and I bought it and I'm thinking, well, you know, if nobody else bought that as a.com, then it's pretty safe to say that there's not like a big competitor and right.

Doesn't guarantee it, but yes, there's that process.

So you want to explore a little bit, but I think the name figuring out the name also again goes with your whole iteration of your idea behind what you want to do, why you want to do the show, what's the show for, is it to build clients, is you know, so but that was like for me one of the first things that was actually holding me back ironically because I was like but I don't want to pick the wrong one, you know, but then basically you know little basic I'm just going to run through a couple of more technical things like You know, create an alias email.

Like I have my main email is marcus at marcuschaller.com.

And I didn't realize this until recently, but through Google, you can, if you have like a business domain name, you can actually create these aliases.

So I created your morning spark at marcuschaller.com.

Now you might ask who cares?

Why would that matter?

Well, you know, I use Spotify and Spotify only lets you have one podcast for email.

Right.

So I have my podcast with Spotify, which I really like.

And I would have to create, which I did, a new account with this other one.

Same thing goes if you want to create a new Instagram account for it, if you want to create what is.

So those little things actually do, they have some impact.

Create the cover.

What's your cover art gonna be?

That's if you're not a designer, maybe where you basically elicit the help of somebody who's good at that stuff, right?

And I happen to really, I'm not good at it, but I love doing it, so I'm like, all right, I love doing it enough where even if I'm not a professional designer, I'll take the hit because I just enjoy doing it.

And then from there, like, this is just my list, like write, show description, just make the decision.

What's it gonna say?

Keep it short, you know?

You can always add, you can always change it.

And then the biggest thing was record the first episode.

Now for me, the way I approached this is, I had already started, I had this very lengthy...

outline, working outline of this framework of what I teach, how I work, the principles, the tools, the why it matters, the things getting in the way.

So I had all this raw material to work with.

And what I started doing is I started posting on LinkedIn as longer, not longer, but just text posts.

And I was like, the week later when I was going to launch a podcast, I was like, I'm going to make this into the podcast.

There's no reason to do totally different things.

There are some people that are gonna wanna see it on LinkedIn.

There are some people that won't go on LinkedIn and they'll wanna listen to it while they're brushing their teeth or whatever, right?

Some people, I have it on Instagram now.

No audience on Instagram, none.

I don't interact with people on Instagram, but I'm like, I'll put it on Instagram, right?

Because I can start building it.

So that brings up a kind of a different point where you don't have to reinvent the wheel with every aspect.

If you're already posting on LinkedIn, you can turn that into a podcast episode.

You can record it long, you can write yourself a longer script.

use all the pieces that you have at your disposal to share value.

That's what all the matters are.

You sharing something that an audience is going to either enjoy or benefit from.

And I appreciate that point too, because it's that active.

It's that active repurposing and you know, you and I've talked a lot about repurposing podcast episodes, but really this is taking written content and repurposing it into the audio medium to where people can listen to it.

So yeah, like for writers, this is like a great way to segue it's like I don't know what to say we'll just Say what you're right.

And think of it in terms, this is more applicable to somebody that's a freelancer or a coach or a consultant or they're doing their own thing than it would be for a B2B SaaS company.

But I want to write a book again.

I wrote a book back in the mid 2000s on marketing and stuff, but I want to write another book at some point, but I don't want to have to do a year where I'm not doing anything else and I'm just writing.

So I'm writing this book in this process.

So at some point, I'm gonna look at the material that I've already put out and I'm gonna go, all right, now there's enough there, I can put it into a book that I feel like I can repurpose it for that.

So the point of that is that if you're thinking in terms of different types of content, if you're using LinkedIn, Instagram, you're writing a book, you're using YouTube, whatever your social platforms of choice are, podcasts, there's no wasted effort.

Because even if you...

put a little time and energy and it doesn't cost anything with podcasts, it's like nothing, right?

To put out a podcast and you really do your best and you just find out, you know, I don't like doing it.

I just don't enjoy it or whatever it is or nobody's listening or it's too much of a pain.

But my LinkedIn, wow, people are really responding to that.

That's fine.

You might bail on the, it doesn't matter because all you've done is basically said, I'm gonna take these ideas, they're going into these buckets and I'm gonna try this other bucket.

And the worst thing that happened is it's not for me or it doesn't take off fast enough for me.

Best thing, it's the thing that resonates better than anything else you're doing, right?

And you won't know that until you actually start putting it out and you need to put it out for a long time.

Right?

I mean, like I'm not even worried about numbers right now.

Like I'm putting up, I'm like, I have to put out dozens and dozens and dozens of these episodes before I even worry or think about promoting it too much or.

whether it's getting traction, because there's nothing there yet.

There's like four episodes.

that and that's the hard part to it and that's it's very much it sounds like very much part of that creative problem solving sort of work is we're going to try this we have to give it some time to see what sticks and see if it's if it's connecting well for me personally and then how do you adjust it going forward much like much like you talked about those best practices right it's like is this the best way of doing it is it better Should I try and create something different than what I'm putting on LinkedIn?

Or should I do it in reverse?

Or I don't know, like lots of options, but you, you have to start down the path before you can make any adjustments.

And it brings up what you just said brings up a really good point going back to best practices, because the world of podcasting is definitely rife with best practices.

And I'm using the air quotes.

Yes, I'm using the air quotes.

And I think that can be another thing that really keeps people stuck, right?

Because you go on and you look at influencers, you look at people who have their own podcasts and there's a lot of different ways to do it, which is the right one, which is the one for me.

You know, oh, if I do it this way, then I'm doing it wrong.

I don't want to do it wrong.

Nobody wants to screw up.

Nobody wants to put a lot of time and energy and just do it wrong.

This is where that concept of best practices specifically for if you're going to do a podcast or any kind of media, you want to content creation, is realize that what worked for me and what worked for you, specifically, is one situation in one context at one slice of time from one person.

What works for me might work for me because I really love doing it.

Or there's something about the way I do it that really translates well for that audience.

Whatever it is, there's a million variables, right?

So it's never, at least I hope I never come across as, this is the way to do it.

It's only, whether it's me or you or anybody else that somebody is listening to or reading about on LinkedIn, it's only here's a way I did it.

This...

might be a good starting point for you.

This might work exactly for you as it did for me.

It might not at all, or it might kick off a different idea, a different variation.

I'll give you an example of that.

I just saw a book recently called The Referable Speaker.

And I'm like, nah, I never really thought about doing speaking as a career, but I'm like, I might wanna learn a little bit more about it.

The whole premise of that book is, in order to build a speaking career, you need to have one or two maybe, but one awesome speech.

One, not every time you're doing a different one because it's that speech that promoters are gonna want.

And I thought, well, that's interesting, whatever.

And then I thought yesterday, I was like, wait a minute, what if I applied the same thing to getting on other podcasts?

Whether if instead of just going like, hey, I'm a real swell dude and I can come and talk to you about this thing, do you think, what if I put together...

presentation again, air quotes, right?

And been like, here's exactly why, here's what it is, here's why your audience will care, why it's...

And it's one thing that I go and I make the rounds and I reach out to people.

So again, I got that from one aspect, right?

From a totally different field.

And I said, oh, maybe I can apply that to getting on other podcasts, right?

So the point is, it's like, look at best practices from other people as being like raw material.

to squish in and get new dots that you can connect.

And you might be really surprised when you get enough of those dots kind of popping around in your head, if you just create a little space, right?

How those start to connect in ways that you were like, you were gonna be walking, you know, walking your dogs and all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'll do that, right?

And that's where it gets really fun.

That is the fun part when sort of genres and Different areas just sort of start overlapping and you see that interconnectivity where you can apply something from one area to another and And benefit from it.

That's that's almost where I mean, that's where the magic happens.

It really is right?

That's the thing you said, that's where the magic happens.

That's what it all comes down to, is that you can, when it comes to creative problem solving, we can have all the theories, we can have all the practices best or otherwise, right?

But ultimately there is a magic to it, right?

And the more we set the conditions for that magic to happen, the more often hopefully it happens.

And that's true.

And that's, that's sort of like, you know, and I've heard it before, but, and I kind of believe it too.

It's that idea of, you know, success happens to those who are just prepared.

Right.

So, you know, it's where it's, it, it doesn't just sort of boom, you know, it, it occurs sometimes it's because you know, a skillset and suddenly there's a need and suddenly you can, so you're able to fulfill that need.

Whereas that opportunity would have occurred.

Had you not had that skillset.

Or maybe you've got a business that can support something and it's like, oh, well, an opportunity comes along because you have that preparation or you're looking or you're so there's, it's not like you're just sitting back waiting for something to happen.

It's the whole act of doing things.

And as you're going along, you know, these opportunities pop up that, you know, where, where success can occur.

And that for me personally in my life, there was a long, long period of time during my earlier adult life where I was absolutely stuck in that kind of, I need to have the best idea, the right idea first before I do it because it was about my ego.

It was about be, you know, truthfully.

It was about like, I'm the smart dude who can come up with like a really brilliant idea.

It was about Proving the validity of my ideas and my plan and my strategy in my own business.

And the fear that comes from that then, when I speak of the fear of failing in podcasts, like, believe me, I'm speaking from experience, right?

Like decades where I basically would like start and start and start and get all excited.

And then I just blow it up last minute before it actually went into the world.

Because the idea of taking my best, I'm doing a lot of air quotes today, but my best air quote idea.

And having to go out in the world and fail was like way too scary for me.

So I just didn't do it, right?

And that held me back for a long time.

And it wasn't until maybe the last decade or so, a little under a decade of just starting from the ground up and how I approached life pretty much.

Things like being able to try something and have a good starting point and a good little bet and a little, like you're basically prototyping.

You can think of your podcast as being a prototype, right?

But it makes it so much easier because it takes all the pressure off.

Right?

Nobody's gonna die.

It doesn't work.

I am so guilty of that as well.

Oh, my word.

I was this horrible, prideful perfectionist who didn't do didn't do anything because I couldn't.

Right.

Because I couldn't because I wouldn't because I was afraid.

And like I something that I stumbled upon just.

Hanfully, I'm trying to do the math now, and it's been like four or five years, I guess, about four years ago, is this idea of the draft method where I say, OK, Everything's a draft like the very first thing I create is like the super duper rough draft, right?

Yeah Yeah, yup, starts with S, but yes, yup.

And it's like, and then so then the revisions happen.

And at some point in time, I have to ship it right.

You have to post it.

You have to publish it.

You have to give it to somebody in the company.

It's got to go.

Whatever that is.

But that's never even the final.

That's just the most recent.

For me, it's like the most recent draft.

And and that has been incredibly liberating because then it's like it's not finished.

it's just a draft, let's just get it out there.

And at some point in time, we've got to turn something in.

But that's been a mindset shift very much in that creative problem solving solution that I came up with to sort of fix my brain or at least try to.

And a big part of your story that I'm hearing for myself and my, you know, now in retrospect for what I was going through when I was stuck, is the trusting ourselves, trusting your inner voice, right?

We're gonna get real woo-woo about this.

Let's get woo-woo, okay?

You and I and everybody listening has an internal guiding system, right?

You have an internal voice and you know, we can think of it in the classic.

your artistic voice, whatever it is that your expression is.

And it's very easy to assume that voice doesn't know what it's talking about.

Now there is aspects to our personalities where we can have the ego, we can have those, we're not gonna get into all that right now, but the purest sense, the part of you that was born to put out the work that you were here to do or whatever that work looks like, you have that, I have that, everybody has that.

And to learn how to trust it, and that's where, again, going back to whether it's problem solving creating in a more traditional way like art, it comes down to quieting all that other stuff, external and internal, so you can actually hear it.

So that you, when you're writing drafts or whatever, when I, when I'm putting out my next podcast next month or whatever, right?

I'm trusting that there is a process I wanna go through and I wanna go through some iterations and flesh out some ideas.

But ultimately, when it's done-ish, when it's ready, I know it.

It's not perfect because there's never perfect because I can always change it in a week.

Of course I can go back in a week and think of something different to do.

Of course if I post something or put out a product or put out whatever it is, somebody else might go, that sucks.

That's not only imperfect, that's terrible, right?

But if nobody's willing, if you're never willing to put something out that somebody goes, ugh, I don't, that nothing, I don't even wanna read that or listen to that, then you'll never be in a position to the flip side of that coin where somebody goes, this is exactly what I was looking for.

This is, oh, where was this book, podcast, coach, company, software, whatever.

Five years ago, I could have used this, right?

You take both, but you trust yourself and you put in the reps and you put in the work to do the best you can with it.

But at the end of the day, you know, okay, this is ready.

And if I'm not putting it out, it's just because I'm afraid.

That is so, so true.

That fear gets us and really can sideswipe us.

Just as we are wrapping up here, one takeaway that you'd like to leave the audience with.

Hmm.

Embrace, quiet, slow down.

I'm gonna kind of do a run-on sentence here, you know, but all the same theme.

Slow down, create some space.

Allow yourself to quiet the external world for yourself, the internal world a little bit, and realize that your best work is always still ahead of you.

And for me, the most joyous way to live and create and work and produce and all that good stuff is to constantly surprise yourself with what you're coming up with.

So give yourself that, create those conditions, give yourself permission to do that and set those boundaries.

Because nobody else is gonna give you permission to do it.

Everybody else, your bosses, your client, is gonna be like, no, you need to be there and there.

Give yourself permission.

and set those boundaries.

And you might be really, really pleasantly surprised what starts coming out.

I love it.

That is so true.

So for everybody listening, if they want to know more about you, where to connect with you, if they want to find your morning spark on the podcast and you're writing, where would you like them to go?

So everything's on my website.

It's markashaller.com, M-A-R-C-U-S-S-C-H-A-L-L-E-R.com.

It's pretty much LinkedIn, Link is there, all the different podcasts that we talked about.

And for anybody listening, we were talking specifically also about the podcast and how to launch one of like, I kind of really kind of in a very basic way went over the steps I used to do that.

Uh, you know, anybody that, that is like, they're on the fence and they does like, Hey, which, what did you use to this?

Whatever.

They just have a question like, please feel free to, to email me like, or reach out on LinkedIn or whatever, you know?

And I know that you're the same way.

It's like, you know, there's people that are out there that are kind of like, they're this close to just pulling the trigger and they want to do it, but they're just like, I don't know where to, you know, where to host it or whatever.

Right?

So probably a very easy question for us to answer.

I'm happy to do that.

I love it.

So Marcus Schaller.com.

We're going to put that link in the show notes as well as the others.

Man Marcus, this has been a blast.

I was so glad we could we could get this on the on the books and I'm thrilled for your new podcast.

Looking forward to seeing how the coaching goes.

And yeah, this is this has been fun.

Meatball for me too.

I appreciate it as always