The Friday Habit

When Joel started the creation process for Norman in 2012, he didn’t have many resources besides an idea and a dream. He thought at the time that he was working on a short film, but after the first few weeks of shooting it became apparent to him and the actor who played Norman that the film had the potential to be feature-length, so they shifted their mindset to fleshing out the story more. Most Saturday mornings for about 3 years, they could be found at another friend’s house, which was the main filming location, working on various scenes until Joel’s vision had been brought to fruition.Along the way, Joel was met with a lot of push back from people who wanted to know why he wasn’t doing things a certain way, but he was committed to his process and he is very pleased with the end result. He attributes the film’s success to the collaboration and buy-in from everyone involved in the film, from the actors to the musician who wrote the score to the other members of the crew (like Ben, who did some design work) that each contributed their own parts. Joel ran the film with an open-door policy, constantly showing the actors and crew the footage from various cuts for feedback. Joel worked very closely with his brother Jonah who is an audio engineer during post-production to make sure that every sound heard during the film was exactly right. Joel’s wife Joy, who works for Ben at Knapsack Creative, has always been extremely supportive of Joel’s ideas, which Joel says is such a blessing.Looking back, Joel affirms his decisions to make everything as high-quality as possible along the way – not cutting any corners – because the cumulative effect of all of those decisions increased the overall quality of Norman by 15% at least. Now that the film has been released, Joel anticipates several more months (if not longer) of promoting the film and he hopes to use any proceeds to help fund a future film. For listeners who are working towards their own goals, Joel encourages you to announce what you are doing and surround yourself with accountability, to learn what you are bad at and ask for help with those things, and to carefully consider the details because they really do matter.Connect with Joel:https://www.normanthefilm.com/https://www.projectvolare.com/ jmguelzo@gmail.comhttps://www.facebook.com/Normanthefilm/https://www.instagram.com/normanthefilm/ https://vimeo.com/channels/647286https://www.youtube.com/user/NormanTheFilm Connect with us:To submit questions/comments, including voice memos: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/

On this episode of The Friday Habit, Ben and Mark talk with Joel Guelzo about how he bootstrapped a sci-fi film of such high quality that people are shocked to hear that it only cost $40,000 plus countless volunteer hours from Joel’s family and friends. Joel came up with the idea for a story about a time-traveling scientist who used his invention for his own selfish purposes, to escape his life circumstances, and goes through a journey of self-realization before he is faced with the need to return back to the present time before the world as he knows it ceases to exist.Joel had such a specific vision for the movie that he wanted to be responsible for every single aspect, from the videography to the music to the visual effects to the audio engineering to the set design and costumes. But since he has a full-time job, Joel had to prioritize the film on nights and weekends. All told, Norman took 9 years of those night and weekends to complete, but as of February 2021, the film has been released to the world through streaming services and on DVD/Blu-ray and Joel feels such a sense of relief that there is no more tinkering to be done.Joel’s journey to becoming a filmmaker was quite organic, starting as a child borrowing the family camcorder to shoot scenes that he wrote for his action figures and then being asked as a young adult to film family events and occasions before he embraced his role as a videographer and began shooting weddings. As a kid, his motivations for shooting those short films was to gain the attention of his family members and gain credibility. That desire to be believable still motivates him today, and since Norman was his first feature-film, he felt like he was continually having to prove himself for people to take him seriously.Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of our conversation with Joel!Connect with Joel:https://www.normanthefilm.com/jmguelzo@gmail.comhttps://www.facebook.com/Normanthefilm/https://www.instagram.com/normanthefilm/ https://vimeo.com/channels/647286https://www.youtube.com/user/NormanTheFilm Connect with us:To submit questions/comments, including voice memos: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/

Now that listeners have a pretty good understanding of where Jeremy has come from and what motivates him to keep innovating, the rest of the interview drills down more into business operations. Considering their rapid growth, Swag.com has had to be very adaptable and creative while ensuring that new employees are trained to catch the vision of the business and stay in touch with what consumers want. Over the years, this quest to the most beneficial user experience has taken many iterations and requires an understanding that it is always being tweaked and improved. Swag.com had to adapt during 2020 as every business did, branching out into sourcing and selling face masks to clients in lieu of their traditional promotional items orders. Another quick pivot they implemented was offering to hold inventory for clients to be shipped at a future date to one address or multiple addresses. This added yet another layer of complexity to the business, but one that they feel is worth it to keep providing solutions to clients’ problems. Jeremy spends most of his time working with the user experience and technology aspects of the business, but he is very involved with operations as whole since clients’ needs and wants are always changing. Jeremy has been intentional about seeking out mentors to support and push him throughout his entrepreneurial journey, from his dad to the CEO of Envy Sport to Jesse Itzler. He says that each of these men helped him learn various aspects of business and entrepreneurship that have benefitted him in various ways, always being receptive to his questions and suggestions and giving credence to his ideas. In order to keep sharp, Jeremy typically spends an hour and a half per day working out and walking, which he feels like gives him the mental space he needs to sort his day out and set priorities. The action item after listening to this interview is to put a deadline on the things you keep saying you’re going to do. You will never be “ready” to jump in with both feet, but if you set a deadline, you won’t have any option but to give it a shot.Connect with Jeremy:jeremy@swag.comhttps://swag.com Connect with us:To submit questions/comments, including voice memos: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/

Jeremy Parker is the son of an entrepreneur, so that creative and daring spirit was engrained in him from an early age. So when he found himself winning a film festival with his documentary in college and still feeling unfulfilled, his logical next step was to finish his degree and then start his own business. He jumped into the high-end t-shirt industry with very few concrete plans, but through a very innovative marketing strategy, he caught the eye of Mark Cuban and got an immediate sales bump that allowed him to remain in the business long enough to get a good handle on the various aspects of the business: production, distribution, marketing, and customer service. Also early in his career, Jeremy was given the opportunity to spearhead a new division of Envy Sport that ended up facilitating design contests for over 100 colleges and universities that created new licensed designs that were sold in the schools’ bookstores. After this, he went into business with his brother essentially serving as agents for the first YouTube influencers. They would secure sponsorships from big name companies and sign YouTube stars to product placement deals. This eventually expanded to the same type of advertising deals with celebrities on Twitter before anyone else had thought of leveraging their platforms in this way. Jeremy’s current business endeavor, along with his partner Josh, is Swag.com. Jeremy and Josh noticed a gap in the market for promotional apparel and items and decided to do something about it. They acquired the domain name and set out to be traveling salesmen in order to determine what types of products customers wanted and how they should structure the business to accommodate customer needs. They went after Facebook to be their first customer because they figured that if they had Facebook on board, they could get basically anyone else: big or small. Their pitch was successful, and the rest is history. In 5 years, their revenue went from $350,000 in 2016 to $15.5 million in 2020. For the rest of the conversation, come back next week!Connect with Jeremy:jeremy@swag.comhttps://swag.com Connect with us:To submit questions/comments, including voice memos: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/

Welcome back to The Friday Habit podcast for the conclusion of the interview with David Burkus, author of Leading from Anywhere. He explains that the source of a lot of confusion and contention regarding managing a remote workforce is misaligned expectations. Specifically, expecting that presence and responsiveness equal productivity, as is the common belief for managers of in-person teams. However, productivity both inside and outside of the office should be defined by outcomes and the progress being made to reach those outcomes. It is important that leaders set up systems to support this outcomes-focus as well as hold team members accountable for their assigned objectives rather than monitoring their daily work. Whether your team has been working remotely for several months or several days, it is a good idea to establish a team working agreement which spells out norms, platforms for different types of requests or questions, and how your team feedback loop is going to work. Instituting a daily standup meeting for the team to share their answers to scrum-type questions is a great way to keep folks on track and engaged with their work and other team members who are collaborating on the same projects. This makes one of David’s other recommendations more attainable: work sprints. Work sprints are dedicated segments of time that are intended to take one task or project from start to finish in a very efficient manner. Once your team starts working in sprints, you have set up a natural evaluation timeframe that could be an avenue to provide a real-time feedback loop to all team members should you choose to integrate this into your framework. It has long been known that annual performance evaluations are not ideal for spurring on continuous improvement and addressing any concerns or issues.While video conferencing has become the new normal for internal and client meetings alike, there are some times when it is better to revert back to audio-only meetings. “Zoom fatigue” is very real and it can be tiring and distracting to be on yet another video call where you feel like you have to be “on”, able to read and react to the nonverbals of your team members. Even if your team decides to stay remote or move to a hybrid schedule, do not neglect in-person meetings when it is appropriate to be together. One idea that David provided on this episode was to spend the money that you’ve saved by not having to rent office space on sending everyone to a conference or a team retreat to build rapport and interconnectedness. David’s action item after this episode is for you to brainstorm and work up a team working agreement with and for your team.Connect with David:https://davidburkus.com/https://twitter.com/davidburkus?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkushttps://www.ted.com/speakers/david_burkushttps://www.amazon.com/David-Burkus/e/B0091L00NG%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share Connect with us:To submit questions/comments, including voice memos: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/

David Burkus started out his career as a business school professor who was inspired and intrigued by the narrative nonfiction books being written by people like Malcolm Gladwell. On this episode of The Friday Habit, David tells Mark and Ben about how that inspiration became action when he realized that he wanted to help people work and lead more effectively by using storytelling techniques combined with science. He decided to advance his education by earning a Master’s in Organizational Psychology and a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership, providing him with the foundation to embark on his writing journey.Now, David has written 4 or 5 books (depending on how you classify his Audible project) on the intersection of psychology and business to help teams do their best work. He has written on the misconceptions of the creative process, setting up an effective work climate and culture, networking and its integration with science, declaring your company’s purpose and motivating people to join your cause, and leading from anywhere. David also provides some insight into the nonfiction writing industry, which he says starts with having a platform of your own. David started his podcast in 2010, back before there was adequate technology to support podcasting, and he was later approached by an agent based on the content and following he had built up there. Once he had an agent, they worked together to create a proposal which was sent to various publishers and the bidding/offer process began. If you do not get any publisher offers the first time around, you can tweak your proposal and try, try again. Once he had signed with a publisher, the bulk of the writing began, with lots of input and feedback from his editor. We will pick back up in the conversation next week!Connect with David:https://davidburkus.com/https://twitter.com/davidburkus?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkushttps://www.ted.com/speakers/david_burkushttps://www.amazon.com/David-Burkus/e/B0091L00NG%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share Connect with us:To submit questions/comments, including voice memos: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/

Whether you have created 2021 business goals yet or not, Ben and Mark have some great pointers on this episode of The Friday Habit for you to keep in mind as you try to crush your goals. Here are 5 common mistakes that may undermine your business goals and how you can shift the equation to point you in the right direction.Setting the wrong goals – If your goals are unclear or vague, you will lack direction. Instead, make sure that your goals are specific, measurable, and achievable.Forgetting your goals – If your goals are not top of mind, you will forget why they are important to you and what your desired end results are. Document your goals and make them impossible to ignore.Under-planning for your goals – If you don’t have a plan in place, you will likely never start on your goals or you will never get where you want to go. Consider using time blocking (as discussed on Episode 47 of the podcast) and setting recurring events on your calendar to allow the adequate time for you to work towards your goal. Choose your tools and location ahead of time and have a back-up plan for if something makes you deviate from your plan.Doing it alone – If you do not have anyone in your corner to keep you accountable, you will likely stop working towards your goals. In fact, studies have shown that having accountability increases the likelihood of success by 95%. Schedule check-ins with a like-minded peer, coach, or mentor ahead of time and stick to the plan. One great resource is Motivated Mornings (link below).Giving up with it’s not working – If you give up at the first obstacle or challenge along your path to reach your goal, you will never get there. Instead, expect to face challenges and experience failures along the way. Use those speedbumps to reevaluate your methods and then get back on the path.Your action item after this episode is to create new 2021 goals and set up back up plans and accountability check-ins to keep you on track.Links mentioned:https://www.motivatedmornings.work/ Connect with us:To submit questions/comments, including voice memos: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/

We dive a bit deeper into the four pillars of building an authority brand with Curt Mercadante during this episode of The Friday Habit. When it comes to the right ways to gain attention for your business or brand, Curt says that it is important to have a LinkedIn presence and consistently publish content there. But this will not be effective unless you have a concrete understanding of who your ideal client is. The accuracy pillar addresses this, nudging you towards creating those personas that you will keep in mind as you go about every brainstorming and strategy conversation. Be confident enough to cast a small net into that small pond, making the message relevant to your niche and talking directly to them. Curt calls every person who engages with his LinkedIn posts to make that connection.This flows right into the next pillar, which is alignment. The right message conveyed to the right audience should draw people to you rather than you feeling like you have to lure them in with pitches or sales techniques. Your impact story will resonate with them and you will be able to speak to their wants without forcing or manipulating them because you are genuinely trying to provide them with something of value that will improve their lives. Finally, authenticity means providing a quality product or service consistently. When people see and hear you through avenues like video content, they will feel like they know you long before they reach out to you about your services and these types of clients are more likely to be loyal and tell others about you. Don’t try to be someone you are not and play to your strengths in every scenario. Your action item after this episode is to call at least one potential client tomorrow. Curt says that talking with people is the best way to hone your message. Connect with Curt:https://www.curtmercadante.com/https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/freedom-mindset-radio/id1352804152 https://www.amazon.com/Five-Pillars-Freedom-Lifestyle-Comfort-ebook/dp/B07WLLBGRD https://twitter.com/curtmercadantehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/curtmercadantehttps://www.facebook.com/curtmercadante/ Connect with us:To submit questions/comments: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/

Our guest on this episode of The Friday Habit podcast is Curt Mercadante, Founder of Merc Enterprises, author, certified Gallup Strengths trainer, certified human behavior specialist, and host of The Freedom Mindset Podcast Radio show. Curt shares his insights about creating an authority brand rather than just a commodity brand, providing value, attracting customers, and cultivating loyalty. Every business, he points out, started as a thought which led to an idea which manifested in a business which comes with inherent authority, but many people are not tapping into this authority to improve the lives of other people. The four pillars of building an authority brand are: Attention – Gaining followers, likes, views, and shares is just the beginning.Accuracy – Creating a client persona based on demographics, behaviors, and attitudes is essential to understanding and relating to your audience.Alignment – Your audience wants to know what is in it for them, so don’t bombard them with your accomplishments and accolades. Create your impact story in the form of one simple sentence.Authenticity – Consistently communicating to your audience will establish the know, like, and trust factor.Many businesses focus their strategies on social media because this his how they think they can reach the most people, but social media is just a tool and it is not reliable for gaining leads or loyal customers. It is crucial to consistently communicate your message, being aware of your niche and the best ways to reach the personas you have established. Rather than focusing on results, dial into the process and reverse engineer your long-term goals to determine your outcomes. Come back next week for the conclusion of Mark and Ben’s conversation with Curt! Connect with Curt:https://www.curtmercadante.com/https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/freedom-mindset-radio/id1352804152 https://www.amazon.com/Five-Pillars-Freedom-Lifestyle-Comfort-ebook/dp/B07WLLBGRD https://twitter.com/curtmercadantehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/curtmercadantehttps://www.facebook.com/curtmercadante/ Connect with us:To submit questions/comments: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/

Merry Christmas, everyone! Ben and Mark take a break from their previously scheduled programming to bring you reminiscences from Christmases past and some great ideas for bonding as a family or as a work team. Mark paints a picturesque scene from Christmas mornings spent at his grandmother’s house as a big, happy, Italian family and the laser tag set that brought him such joy. Ben remembers the surprising happiness that came from receiving his first pocket-sized “video game” as well as the electric train set and race cars that every young boy looks for under the tree. As a native Ohioan, Ben talks of strange delicacies called buckeyes and scotcheroos – if you know, you know. While Mark’s favorite treats of molasses cookies and no bake cookies are more universally known. In the days leading up to Christmas, the Labriola family can be seen walking around Target in their Christmas jammies so the kids can shop for each other, while the Manley family opts for quiet nights by the fire sipping egg nog. Ben’s family has donned the moniker of “The Christmas Ninjas” this year, hoping to deliver surprise gifts to families in need. Both Mark and Ben have been known to pull a prank or two in their day, and if you’re looking for some unique ideas, you’ll have to listen in for all the details. Since there is no action item this week, you might just have the time to prank someone in your life. Connect with us:To submit questions/comments: hello@thefridayhabit.com https://www.thefridayhabit.com/thefridayhabit@knapsackcreative.com https://www.instagram.com/benjaminmanleyhttp://www.benjaminmanley.com/https://www.brandvivamedia.com/https://www.facebook.com/Marklab2https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklab2/