How They Get Stuff Done

Is working in management consulting as glamorous as it seems? What’s the best thing you can do to improve your public speaking skills? How can you use different pricing strategies to scale up your business?

Welcome back to How They Get Stuff Done. Today I’m speaking with Judson Rollins. Judson is an aviation strategy consultant and a monetization architect for expert service providers who want to decouple their revenue from their hours.

Judson and I discuss finding the middle ground between perfection and acceptability, the pros and cons of time blocking, Judson’s favorite ways to capture ideas on the go and even in the shower, and more. Enjoy the conversation.

Find Judson:

• Website: ScaleWhisperer.com
• Judson on LinkedIn

Why does Game of Thrones cost $70,000 to watch? What happens when you choose to believe that everything is your responsibility? And why do smart people not think that others are stupid?

Welcome back to How They Get Stuff Done. Today I’m speaking with Derek Sivers.

Derek Sivers has been a musician, a circus performer, an entrepreneur, and a TED speaker. He’s the founder of CD Baby, an online distributor of independent music. He’s written several books, including How to Live and Hell Yeah or No. Most recently, he’s been working on his latest book, Useful Not True.

Derek and I discuss choosing your beliefs, taking radical responsibility for whatever happens to you, the benefits of not having a to-do list, walking away from what doesn’t work for you, and more. Enjoy the conversation.

Find Derek over atsive.rs.

Jack Ellis is the co-founder of Fathom Analytics, a privacy-first Google Analytics alternative. Jack also teaches an online course on Laravel, a popular PHP framework, and hosts his own podcast, Above Board, where he discusses running an indie and bootstrapped software company.

Jack and I discuss:

• How he runs his company people-first
• What happens when you judge your employees on their work, rather than on other measures
• Lightweight ways of collaborating with a small team
• The importance of online privacy and how his company enables that
• Why running a lifestyle business is just the best
• Overcoming analysis paralysis
• The big downside of working remotely—or is it even a downside?
• Why I don’t give specific advice for people with ADHD (or other conditions)

And much more. Enjoy the show!

Find Jack:

• JackEllis.me
• Fathom Analytics, privacy-focused website analytics
• Serverless Laravel, Jack’s course for Laravel developers
• Above Board, the Fathom Analytics podcast, which Jack co-hosts

Also mentioned:

• Things 3, my favorite task manager
• Linear, a collaborative software development app
• Tuple, a remote pair programming app

Floris van der Pol is a Dutch philosopher, writer, and self-described “reading addict”. He publishes book reviews on YouTube as well as videos on reading more generally and on living without a smartphone, which he has done for years now. Floris also writes a newsletter with essays on philosophy and literature.

I met Floris in a course I was taking on YouTube—the Part-Time YouTuber Academy by Ali Abdaal, if you’re curious—in which Floris gave me fantastic feedback on some of my own YouTube videos. We got to chatting and some of his YouTube videos impressed me so much that I wanted to get him on the show.

Floris and I discuss:

• How he reads 100 books a year
• What it’s like to live without a smartphone
• How he designed his life to improve his attention span
• Getting stuff done with a baby around
• Whether video gaming qualifies as an addiction

And much more. Enjoy the show!

Find Floris:

• FlorisLeest.nl (in Dutch)
• Floris Leest on YouTube (in Dutch)

Derrick Reimer is the founder of SavvyCal, a tool for scheduling meetings that both you and the people you are scheduling with will love. He's also the co-founder of Drip, a marketing automation tool, and he is the host of the Art of Product podcast. 

I have long enjoyed using an app to schedule my meetings. For example, I scheduled meetings with my coaching clients. Rather than going back and forth with endless emails, trying to find a mutually convenient time. I just send people a link so they can book a slot on my calendar. I had been using a different tool, but recently I discovered SavvyCal and it's so much more enjoyable to use. So I looked into who created it and I ended up on Derrick's Twitter account. I learned that Derrick had co-founded Drip, which was one of the first apps I used years ago when I was first building my online business. And I have very fond memories of Drip, even though I no longer use it because Drip went into a different direction. 

Anyway, I was interested to hear Derrick’s story—and it turns out there were quite a few ups and downs. 

Derrick and I discuss:

• Regaining your confidence after launching a failed product
• Transitioning from wearing all the hats in a business to delegating certain tasks
• Saving your most productive time for your most valuable work

Find Derrick and Savvycal:

• SavvyCal.com
• Derrick on Twitter
• Derrick’s podcast, The Art of Product

Note: the link to SavvyCal is an affiliate link. It’s an awesome product and by signing up through this link, you get a free month and you support the podcast. Thank you.

Also mentioned:

• Derrick’s popular blog post, “I’m Walking Away From the Product I Spent a Year Building”
• Drip, the marketing automation business Derrick co-founded
• The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
• Tiny Seed, an accelerator for SaaS bootstrappers
• xFusion, which offers support staff for SaaS

Dianna Allen is the founder of two businesses: TERRA, a lifestyle shop that focuses on scented candles and Inventora, an app that helps businesses who handmade products track their inventory.

I first heard about Dianna earlier this year—or perhaps it was last year—when my girlfriend mentioned some girl who said she was starting a candle shop and was tweeting about her journey publicly. A bunch of time passed and then recently, my girlfriend said hey, remember this girl I mentioned who started her own candle shop? I think it has really taken off. She even has a spin-off business now. So I was intrigued! I quickly found out that Dianna’s story is so inspiring and that’s why I wanted to get her on the podcast.

Dianna and I discuss:

• How she went from writing about garage doors to starting and growing two successful businesses
• How a combination of hard work and good time propelled her businesses forward
• How she and her boyfriend work together and split their time between the businesses

And much more. Enjoy the show!

Find Dianna and her businesses:

• Lifestyle and candle business TERRA: TerraSimply.com
• Inventory tracking business Inventora: Inventora.co
• Dianna on Twitter: @diannamallen

Steph Smith is a growth marketer, writer, and indie maker. She works for The Hustle, helping to run one of the world’s largest newsletters. But she has lots of her own projects. She has written a book about content marketing, she runs an online course about time management, and she has a podcast about, quote, “shit you don’t learn in school”, unquote.

When I first encountered Steph on Twitter, I sensed that she and I have very similar views on productivity, so I was keen to get her on the podcast. Steph and I discuss:

• Why in the past there was no such things as “priorities”—just the singular “priority”
• Steph’s method for choosing which goal to work on next
• Why asynchronous communication is often more efficient (and how Steph does it)
• Whether you should set arbitrary deadlines for yourself (Steph likes them, Peter doesn’t) 

And much more. Enjoy the show!

Find Steph:

• stephsmith.io
• Steph’s open page, including her current goals
• Steph’s book, Doing Content Right
• Steph’s course, Doing Time Right
• Steph’s podcast, Shit You Don’t Learn in School

Also mentioned:

• Loom, for recording & sharing videos easily
• Calendly, for scheduling meetings without the back-and-forth
• Get TikTok Famous Fast, a fun little book about… well, that’s obvious
• Zapier, an “if this then that” service
• BannerBear, an app that automatically generates social media visuals etc.

Andrew Barry helps people teach better online. He owns and runs a training business in which he helps rapidly growing companies educate their people and their customers. Separately, he works with online course creators, helping them to create engaging cohort-based courses. Andrew also hosts his own podcast, titled “How Did You Learn That?” 

Over the past few months, Andrew kept popping up on my Twitter feed. Since I sell online courses—meaning, I teach people online—many of his insights resonated with me. I’ve been interested in how to teach and how to learn better for many years. 

I remember my “theory of knowledge” class in high school. In college, I was a teaching assistant for a variety of economics classes. I also worked in our college’s writing center, helping students to improve their papers. Today, of course, I am a productivity teacher. But aside from that, learning is how we grow and enjoy life more, so we should all be interested in how to learn better.

Andrew and I discuss:

• Why you want to learn from experts as well as from people who are just a little ahead of you
• How to capture and keep people’s attention in online trainings
• How he found the courage to quit his job and start his own training business

And much more. Enjoy the show!

Find Andrew:

• Curious Lion, Andrew’s online learning business
• Andrew on Twitter: @bazzaruto
• Andrew’s podcast, How Did You Learn That?

If you’re interested in Andrew’s “transformational online courses” program, just email him at [email protected] and include “TOC” in the email subject line.

Also mentioned:

• Peter’s course Big-Picture Productivity
• David Perell’s Write of Passage course

Matt Ragland is a productivity teacher, like myself. He has worked for ConvertKit, an email service provider I use and love and for Podia, an online course platform, which I used to launch my business. 

These days, he helps people—and particularly makers and creators—be more productive. He does that with courses, videos on YouTube, and on his own podcast, Connect the Dots. 

Matt is really big on bullet journaling, which is quite a different experience from using digital task managers, so I was keen to chat with him about that topic.

Matt and I discuss:

• How he combines bullet journaling with digital task management
• How to protect your time to do high-leverage work
• Measuring productivity by how present you are

And much more. Enjoy the show!

Find Matt:

• Matt’s Three Keys to Productivity
• Matt on YouTube
• MattRagland.com

Also mentioned:

• Paul Graham’s article Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
• Gary Keller’s book The One Thing
• The fancy Leuchtturm Bullet Journal
• Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner

“If you are not interested in helping your clients, then you should just stick to employment.”

Jonathan Stark is a former software developer who is on a mission to rid the world of hourly billing. He is the author of Hourly Billing Is Nuts, the host of the Ditching Hourly podcast, and writes a daily newsletter on pricing for independent professionals. Jonathan has also written a number of books, offers a coaching program, and runs live group courses.

I ran into Jonathan’s writings a few years ago, when I was first learning about the world of online business. I was pursuing a business idea that didn’t end up going anywhere—more on that in the episode—but while doing research, I discovered Jonathan’s ideas about how to run a service-based business and those ideas blew my mind.

Jonathan and I discuss:

• Why marketing isn’t bullshit
• The role that aligned incentives play in building trust with clients
• What Jonathan’s daily workflow is like

And much more. Oh, and Karl Marx makes an appearance. Enjoy the show!

Find Jonathan:

• JonathanStark.com
• An introduction to Jonathan’s ideas: JonathanStark.com/free
• Jonathan’s book, Hourly Billing Is Nuts
• Jonathan’s podcast Ditching Hourly
• Jonathan’s other podcast, The Business of Authority
• Jonathan’s daily mailing list