In this episode you will hear me talk about how I get more things done when my back is up against the wall, how cutting out half of your content can make your content even better, and the power of asking the right questions. Plus, you’ll hear about a new idea that I had for this podcast... Can you guess what it is?
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Hey, what's going on? This is Justin Glover, and welcome to episode number 8 of this podcast. [music plays 00:00:07] Fun fact about number 8, or this particular episode, I kind of went Gary V there for a second. Sorry, I'm getting off topic. Gary Vaynerchuk has this show, it's called Ask Gary V. At the beginning of every episode, he says, "Fun fact about the number whatever." He did for a while. I don't know if he still does it, about that particular number. I didn't even plan that or have that in my head when I just started spouting off the fun facts earlier in this series whenever I started this podcast. I was giving fun facts about each particular episode, just because I thought it was sort of funny that I was recording multiple episodes during the day, or in the same day. People were going to be receiving them over the course of multiple days.
Just trying to paint the picture of what's going on behind the scenes so you can really see how a business is being built and really, you can also see what I'm doing. What my days are looking at, like a sneak peek at ... I guess maybe an inside look is a better word. Anyway, I said fun fact about number 8. That's how I got here. Fun fact about this particular episode, which is episode number 8. I'm actually recording it about an hour or so after I recorded episode number 7. Let's see. The reason that I'm recording is because I just, after I got done with episode 7, I was pulling up to my accountant. I went straight from there to the office. Got here to the office, came in, and I had an interview lined up.
Actually, I had an Ignition Master Mind call. We do these small group Master Mind calls for members of Ignition. We do these hang outs every single week, where it's like 3 or 4 of us. Basically, we just have an hour where we just do a brainstorm and critique businesses and just everything. Anyway, I did that as soon as I walked in. That lasted about an hour. As soon as that was over, Brenda and I had an interview with John Lee Dumas for our podcast, which is called Results Radio. As I record this, that podcast has not actually launched. We're recording those interviews right now. We're putting them in the bank, trying to get a bank of interviews recorded so that we're not on the spot of publishing.
That one has a little bit more structure to it than this. We publish every ... It's on a frequent basis. They come out every, I think it's 2 or 3 times a week. I honestly can't remember at this point. I think it's 2 times a week starting out. Then we'll add a third day down the road. 2 times a week, on the same day at the same time, we publish these calls. The first call during the week, the first podcast is an interview with an expert. Somebody who's gotten amazing results in their business. Then, the second call that comes out 2 days later is what we call an insights call. It's basically where Brenda and I, we talk about that particular interview and give our insights and pull out all the nuggets out of it. It's just a really cool format that I think is going to be really, really amazing.
Anyway, these interviews that we do, we're shooting to have them around 35 minutes is the sweet spot that we're shooting for. We've been recording them for a few weeks now. What we've noticed is that a lot of them are going closer to 40 minutes, some of them 45. We've been, just every single interview, in between interviews, after it's over, we'll look at the questions and say, "Well, how could we modify these questions and make them a little bit better, so that maybe we get through them a little bit quicker?" The reality is, a lot of people, it really depends on the people's answers.
Some people end up giving a really long answer on a question, so we have to make adjustments on the fly. We've been just looking at each individual question and really cutting it down. Today, we had this interview with John Lee Dumas. If you know John, he's got a military background, and he's very, very efficient. He's one of the most consistent and efficient people and entrepreneurs that I know. He gets a lot of stuff done. He only has 25 minutes. 25 minutes on the dot, from the time that we hit record on the call. We get on the call, we hit record, and from that moment, 25 minutes later, we have to hang up the call.
There's no overlap. There's not a lot of time for chit chat or anything like that. I knew that, if we didn't change up our questions, there's no way that we would be able to get done, We would have to go before we could even wrap up the actual interview. It just wouldn't be a good thing, because he wouldn't get to ... We wouldn't get around to the point where we're talking with him and all of that. Anyway, all of this is going through my head. 5, 10 minutes before the interview, I go up to the computer and I open up our questions that we typically ask. I basically just started cutting questions out. Because I had, because I had no choice and I had to get to the end, I made some tough decisions and just cut questions out that I haven't cut in the past.
By doing so, we just got off this interview, and I immediately, as soon as we hung up, I called Brenda on Skype right back. I said, "What did you think about the interview?" She was like, "I thought it went awesome. One of our best ones yet." I agree. I totally agree. It was one of the best episodes that we've done in terms of delivery and flow and just the way that it come out and happened. It was one of the better ones. I'm thinking, "Okay, well this is one of the best episodes, and literally, I just cut half of the questions that we ask out." We didn't cut half the value. There was more value that was there because of the way that the questions were structured. It's just interesting.
I want you to, there's a couple of different things to take from this, in terms of how you can apply it and what does this mean for you? Why am I telling you this? There's a couple of different things. Number one, start to notice that, most of the time, when stuff needs to happen, that's when it will get done. I think there may be a principle or a law or something like that. Something like the Pareto Principle. I know it's not the Pareto Principle, that's the 80/20 rule, but there's something like that. Maybe it's Parkinson's Law. I'm not sure.
One of those things basically states that, however much time you give yourself to do something, that's how much time it will take to actually get it done. That's true, because I've been trying for weeks, for doing these interviews. Both of us have been trying to make this more efficient, and it just hasn't gotten done. We were trying, we were just too close to it, too attached to some of the questions. Didn't want to cut them or anything like that. It wasn't until our back was up against the wall, and we got into a position where we knew, "We have to make this change, otherwise we're not going to get through the interview and it's not going to be good. We have to." We did.
It happened in 5 minutes, before the interview. It was cool. It didn't take me ... It's something that was taking up energy and, in my head, worrying about it. I wasn't really worrying about it, but it was still, to some degree, taking up some of my energy that could have been used elsewhere. It was just really interesting to see that. I want you to, when you think, how can we use this in our world? If there's something that you've been procrastinating on, set a deadline. Schedule something that you cannot back out of. Not a webinar. I used to do webinars, and depending on how many people you had on there, for a long time, that was motivation.
Then I had a couple of webinars where not many people would register. When my back's up against the wall and I'm facing this decision of, I have to choose between the pain of doing this thing that I've promised in the webinar, or I have to decide between that and the pain of cancelling the webinar. The pain of cancelling the webinar wasn't all that great, because there wasn't a lot of people registered. On top of that, I had a good reason. I came up with a way that I could have made it seem okay.
That's the first thing. Schedule something that, it literally puts your back up against the wall, that you cannot cancel. I don't know what that is for you, but when you ask that question, then you will figure out what it is. You'll get the answer. Just ask the question. What is it? What could I create? What circumstance could I create for myself that I cannot back out of? If I don't have this particular goal or thing or project done by this time, you just create a deadline for it. It will typically get done. You might procrastinate until the very last minute. At the last minute, you're going crazy. You're about to pull your hair out.
Guess what? You get it done at the last minute, and it just happens. It may not be perfect and happen the way that you perfectly imagine it, but it will get done. Then you can go back and you can tweak it, you can make it better. If you have a tendency to procrastinate, use this to your favor. That's something that I've studied for a while. This is a tool that I've used. That's the first thing.
The second thing that you can really pull from that, if I can even remember it down. I didn't write this down. These podcasts aren't scripted. What was the second thing? There was 2 lessons that I wanted to give you from that. Number one, when your back is up against the wall. The second thing is making things, like cutting stuff. We cut half of our questions out, and it was way better. I heard the interview was just better. I really think that we're going to probably stick with these questions, and leave the majority of the ones that we cut out today, I think we're going to leave them cut out. It was just a better question. It produced a show that provided more value. I think we're going to roll with it. That was something that we never would have seen had we not been forced into cutting the questions out from the interview.
Just another angle of that, I heard, I believe Daegan Smith, when he came out with what he was calling the Invisible Funnel. Basically removing all of the sales copy from his sales page, and just having a page with a headline and a couple of bullet points, and an order form. That's it, that it was converting. He was like, "Who would have thought that removing every bit of selling would actually result in me getting more sales?" I just found that interesting. Think how you can apply that note. Look at your marketing, look at your content, look at your business, and think, "What could I cut?"
If you're trying to make something. If there's a control that you're trying to beat in one of your pages that you're testing. If you're just trying to make something convert better, ask the question, "What could I eliminate from this? If I was forced, and I had to eliminate half of this, what part would I eliminate?" It's like the question that I heard. I believe it was in 4-Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss. He said, "If you only, if it was literally a life or death situation and you only had to work one hour every day, and that's it. If you worked an hour and one minute, then you would explode." It probably wasn't delivered in the same way. This is the jist of what I got out of that. If you could only work 60 minutes every day, how would that affect, how would that change what you've been focusing your time on? What would you do differently?
The answer is, that you would narrow down and focus on the most important stuff, and you would become much more productive as a result. You might be freaking out at first, until you realize that you're actually being more productive, because it's scary. You would definitely, in turn, be more productive. That is my rambling for today. I just had an idea for a name or theme or whatever for this podcast. I want you guys' feedback on it. I want you to send me an email, [email protected], or leave comments on the iTunes store, whatever. I don't even know how to do that yet, because I just had this idea for the podcast literally 2 days ago.
I want you to just let me know what you think about this idea. My idea is, I'm starting to notice that I'm asking a lot of questions. That's personally what I've been doing. I've been reunited, I guess you could say, with the idea and the thought of the power of questions. When you ask the right questions, you get the right results. I personally have been asking a lot of new questions and paying super close attention to the questions that I am asking. Since I've personally been doing it, I've noticed a tremendous boost in my energy levels, everything. I just am more, what I guess you could consider to be fired up about life and business and everything.
Really, the only thing that I've done is started asking new questions. I've even noticed that, as I'm giving these ramblings, that in each episode, I like to make it actionable. Give you some actual value that you can take and apply. I don't want to just give you a lot of random stuff that is entertaining, maybe, but has no practical application to you in your life. When in truth, every experience probably does have some practical application, but if I don't help you connect those dots, then sometimes you won't know what's going on in my brain, and won't ever even think to make the connection. I'd like to give you some take-aways or practical steps or something, in every episode, if possible.
I've noticed that, over these last few episodes, I've been asking questions. Saying, "Well, ask yourself this question. Ask yourself this question." Helping you ask better questions. Hopefully, that's what's happening. Hope that's what's going on and what you're getting from it. With that said, this is just an idea that I had, that could be a good idea or branch-off for this particular show. Have something to do with asking the right marketing questions or, I will help you listen to this show. I'll help you start asking better questions. Some sort of hook or angle or just theme that I could potentially use down the road when I do decide to start actually marketing this thing, if that day comes.
Right now, we're just playing with it and seeing what happens from now. I'm curious. What are your thoughts? Is that something that you would be interested in? Does that matter to you? Do you want me to just keep doing what I'm doing? Do you like the idea of asking questions? Does this trigger any new ideas? They can be about questions, or totally different. Just, I'm looking for feedback on this show. I'm looking to know, do you enjoy it? What do you like about it? What do you dislike about it? What would you like to see? What do you consider the most valuable part of this show? What's the most annoying thing about this show?
As you listen, I would definitely, definitely appreciate it. If you want direct control in influencing how this show goes, then just tell me what you want. I will actually listen. Send me an email at [email protected]. Again, if you're getting value, definitely would appreciate it if you would subscribe, write, review and share on Facebook. Go post it on your Facebook wall. Say, "Hey, this is a very unique question, the powers in questions. I got a lot out of this episode. Go listen, I think you will too." I'd orally appreciate it if you would do that for me. That being said, we're going to call this episode a wrap. We'll see you again at the next one. Buh-bye. [music plays 00:19:37]
