The Friday Habit

Icebreaker QuestionWould You Rather Live One Life That Lasts 1,000 Years Or Live 10 Lives That Last 100 Years Each?Would You Rather Be Without Elbows Or Be Without Knees?Main Topic NotesWhat are some of your first memories?Where did you grow up?What were you like as a kidWhat was your education like?What was your first job?What has your career looked like?How has your background informed who you are now?Where do you hope to go from here?Go to TheFridayHabit.com to find show notes for this episode. There you can also find links to our websites and ways to get in touch. At the bottom of the page you can download our guide to the Friday Habit system that will show you how to set aside one full day each week dedicated to working on your business instead of in your business.Subscribe & ReviewIf you enjoyed this episode please subscribe and leave us a review in the Apple podcasts app.Voice MemoIf you have a question or a topic you’d like us to cover don’t forget to record us a quick voice memo and send it to hello@thefridayhabit.comThanks for listening to The Friday Habit.Until next time. Live every day like it’s Friday.

Main Topic NotesProfessional Whitewater Kayaking Athlete?You work with a family member, how is that going? What is business process mapping and how do you incorporate marketing?Please tell us more about your tagline “Be Human otherwise Automate!” Why is this your tagline?What made you realize that “the Human” aspect was so important in automation? How do you apply this to your business?What do you think is coming up in the field of automation for sales and marketing?Recap / TakeawaysWhatever you're doing in life, pay attention and you'll find parallels to running a businessSaying "we've always done it that way" kills businessesIt may be worth it to bring in a consultant (a fresh pair of eyes) to identify wasteImplement something in your business for continuous improvement (Kai zen)Goal with creating processes is to make it hard for people to fail at their job (not just to save time or money)Keep asking how you can eliminate yourselfLead generationConversionDelivery of promiseDelighting afterwardAsk for referralsIf you have a company that requires your time do this:Ask people what you're doing for peopleCharge more for your timeCreate some type of digital knowledge product that will scale without youWhen you're trying to accomplish something, don't ask how to do it, ask who can do it for meAction ItemRecord what you do every 15 minutes for 3 daysConnect with Sam:https://mobilepocketoffice.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/samovett/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/

Main Topic NotesProfessional Whitewater Kayaking Athlete?You work with a family member, how is that going? What is business process mapping and how do you incorporate marketing?Please tell us more about your tagline “Be Human otherwise Automate!” Why is this your tagline?What made you realize that “the Human” aspect was so important in automation? How do you apply this to your business?What do you think is coming up in the field of automation for sales and marketing?Recap / TakeawaysWhatever you're doing in life, pay attention and you'll find parallels to running a businessSaying "we've always done it that way" kills businessesIt may be worth it to bring in a consultant (a fresh pair of eyes) to identify wasteImplement something in your business for continuous improvement (Kai zen)Goal with creating processes is to make it hard for people to fail at their job (not just to save time or money)Keep asking how you can eliminate yourselfLead generationConversionDelivery of promiseDelighting afterwardAsk for referralsIf you have a company that requires your time do this:Ask people what you're doing for peopleCharge more for your timeCreate some type of digital knowledge product that will scale without youWhen you're trying to accomplish something, don't ask how to do it, ask who can do it for meAction ItemRecord what you do every 15 minutes for 3 daysConnect with Sam:https://mobilepocketoffice.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/samovett/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/

This is the second part of Mark and Ben’s interview with Go Nimbly cofounder, Jason Reichl, so if you haven’t listened to the first part, go back to Episode 58 and get caught up! Jason says that there are two key questions you should ask yourself when it comes to setting goals:How do I enact change that sticks?How do I communicate about that change implementation? And why?He says that if you do not communicate goals and the changes that will be a part of reaching those goals in a way that is recognizable to your team, your aims will not be effective. People need to understand specifically what you are proposing in order to jump on board. Part of this process is making your organization’s mission very visible and apparent and then having your team cast visions for themselves in a way that aligns with your mission framework. Once you are all on the same page regarding organizational mission and goals, Jason recommends encouraging your team to pursue innovation and have the freedom to collaborate and brainstorm in unconventional ways like Patrick Condon taught him. This incubator model is a great one for avoiding the silo syndrome of departments being afraid of change and becoming territorial. Jason talks about tracking momentum KPIs instead of some of the more traditional KPIs that put too much emphasis on the wrong targets and metrics which could contribute to silos circling their wagons. Another practice that Jason has implemented at Go Nimbly is culture squads, groups that come together and meet on certain issues in order to create best practices. Systems and processes like this are one of Jason’s passions in the organization because they set up the guardrails for projects and allow the team space to be proactive and innovative. The action item after this episode is to think about and write out a vision for yourself one year out. Be very specific – what you want to see, hear, taste, smell, do, etc.Connect with Jason:https://gonimbly.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/betterjasonhttps://twitter.com/betterjason?lang=enConnect 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/

Come on in and take a seat for part one of Mark and Ben’s conversation with Jason Reichl, cofounder of Go Nimbly, lover of design thinking, master of optimizing revenue operations, and a guy who has a love/hate relationship with the Eisenhower Matrix. If you have marketing, sales, or customer service staff in your business, Jason’s insights could be gamechangers. Jason came from a creative background but he always had a firm grasp of the business aspects of every endeavor, so even his mediocre projects became successful. Through his early work experiences, Jason realized that he had a knack for creating the framework and disciplines needed to fill in the gaps that the customer might experience through the marketing, sales, and customer services processes and with Go Nimbly he wants to provide a product that makes all of those aspects of the customer experience more effective and efficient. During this episode, Jason also talks about how he prioritizes the important over the urgent, perhaps reclassifying important things as urgent as well to ensure that they take precedence. He goes a level deeper than the Eisenhower Matrix does by asking himself if the urgent thing in front of him is a reverberation of a previous decision that could have been mitigated by taking a different course of action earlier. Every strategy decision, Jason says, has a dark underside and it is important to recognize and comprehend the effects early on and to remain committed to the strategy so that your people will follow suit and continue to trust in your strategic capabilities. “Even over” statements also help Jason provide clarity as a leader because they establish the core principles and values at Go Nimbly that will never be relinquished. Tune in next week for the conclusion of the interview with Jason Reichl!Connect with Jason:https://gonimbly.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/betterjasonhttps://twitter.com/betterjason?lang=enConnect 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/

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/