Author: Brittany Crockett

Well, welcome to the Content Machine Podcast. This week, we are joined by Ricky Santos. Ricky was the first hire we made at Adelsberg Marketing, and we’ve been thankful to have him on the team ever since. It’s going on, what, five?

Five, no, almost six years.

Almost six years. And it’s amazing that he’s been able to put up with me for so long. But Ricky is one of our designers and our lead motion graphic artist. And so this week on the podcast, we’re just going to interview Ricky and talk about some design trends. So, Ricky, tell us about a design trend that you’re seeing.

Yeah. So I guess one of the thing we can think about first is when it comes to trends, it’s not something that everyone might be doing. Although we’re not selling all of me switching to using these things. It’s just something that I’ve seen around areas in graphic design, motion design, website design, that more people are starting picking it up. The one of the first things I’ve seen is a little bit more pulling in some vintage elements, but not necessarily copying designs from 1960s, 1970s. But maybe we’re just pulling in colors or fonts or some of the language that they were using at the time.

And we’re not just talking like putting distressed things on.

Stuff, right? Yeah, it’s not making it.

Look old. When you mean colors and fonts, what’s an example of that?

So for one of the things, you look at a home goods company called Pine Apple Collaborative. And one of the things they use a lot of is just pulling in mid century modern colors. A lot of mid century modern design was very busy in some areas. We have a lot of patterns and shapes, and I think a lot of that people don’t really like right now. But the colors and so they feel more homey. They look good on an olive oil bottle. They look good on… Your laundry detergent doesn’t just look like a tied laundry detergent. It looks more esthetically pleasing. Yeah, exactly. Then something else, another company that is doing some of that is CNET, the online electronic and lifestyle review website. They had this went through the recent redesign and from their old logo, which is a very… Not lifeless, it’s not good way to put it, but didn’t have much personality. But their new logo pulling in the older font, some of their illustrations that they use throughout the site have some of that retro cyber punk look to it as well. More 80s looks.

Looking at the logo here, it has extremely aggressive seriffs. Too much, in my opinion. The T almost looks like a Times New Roman T, but everything else is.

Out there. I think that’s one of the things that looks like something we see from the Art Deco style that happened around the ’70s and ’60s. All of the fonts were elongated, and each little element of the font was a design feature in itself. It wasn’t just a little addition to the font.

Yeah, that is a whole identity just in that font style for sure.

But compared to other text sites that is not. It’s very different. Yeah, that we see everywhere else.

So vintage, but then you also say that retro.

Is being seen. Yeah. So when I think of retro, I think of bolder lines, bolder colors, bolder fonts, really. And I think I’m thinking more of the hippie, trippy styles that we see some places, but also pulling in some of the maximumism style, which is having a lot of bright colors, a lot of patterns and taking up the visual space using all those elements. We can see one here. This is a designer’s heat. This is his profile. Gleb.

I’m going to get, sorry. Sabrin is enough.

That’s as close as anyone can get. But he’s using these old looking… I think of my Game Boy Advanced.

Yeah, very Game Boy original boxes and fonts and shading.

To create a very easy to read website that is more fun. That’s a lot of his styles is that he is… This is the thing he’s known for is doing this work.

His domain name is gleb. Sexy.

You got to have a very bold personality to have that as your domain name. Absolutely.

But very retro.

But also, it’s something we can look at is what Target is doing and the new styles that they’re putting up for their clothing and their interior design. One of the things right now is skinny jeans are gone. And same way I feel like in design, a lot of very structured grid systems, very structured print layouts where your header is always the largest thing. And then you have other little events that follow a very hierarchical… Hierarchical? Yeah. Words are hard today. Yeah. The big words. So you know the structure of everything is little bit, but I think the more retro design, it’s a little bit looser in terms of the rules that you can follow. So another example is, it’s a fan favorite and some of our team members is Olly Pop.

Alex on our team can’t help but drink Olly Pop. Olly Pop, if you’re listening, we got a brand deal for you.

But you can see there, it’s not just like a the Coca Cola logo or some bubbles on it. They’re using some of the little bit more retro illustration style to make that the center of attention. And then also on their website, the fonts they used are fonts that we see in old magazines instead of websites.

And there’s an interesting juxtaposition here with a new soda written in a very old font style. And then you mentioned here that black is taking over.

Our screens. Yeah. So once Apple finally started to implement dark modes on their phone, a lot of websites, a lot of apps started to have black as the main color instead of white. I think a lot of that has to do with our phones are better at showing black. Most people have iPhones. in America. I love that a lot of the screens can show the text on black is right now because of how good Apple has designed the screens. I think that has driven a lot of people to start designing in black. Instead of having white space, your main element is darker.

Well, because you’ve got the technology that shows the screen better, shows true black. That way you can have the contrast to read it. And then I think just big point about you bringing up about dark mode is dark mode makes it where everybody gets used to seeing that. So it’s not as weird to just see it all. It’s like not a goth website because it’s all black. It’s just like this is normal now.

And I think we also, from the pandemic, everybody started to watch content on their screens a lot more. Watching in a dark room, if you go out from your show and it’s a really bright screen, that’s going to be a bad experience. And so having a darker screen that helps your eyes not have that such stark change all of a sudden, I feel like that’s another big reason I live. When you go on Apple TV or Netflix, it’s mostly all black.

And then you had an example here with a Fay app?

Yeah. So they are a… I don’t know too much about the app itself, what they do. I think it’s more of an investing dashboard, but they have a very dark dashboard look. I mean, the whole website is basically black. It’s like probably 90 % black. It’s beautiful. Yeah. And then I think because of the darkness of it, it looks more premium as well. It’s got to have the black Lexus feel. You have to think of that. But also Apple, when you look at Apple, some of their products, like the AirP ods Pro, that’s all in black as well. They have some of the products in white. They have some of the products in black. I think they’re more premium products. They show in the black screen to make it look a bit more, make it feel more premium.

Absolutely. Now, the last thing that you had here was AI Art, which is a controversial subject and one that we should be thinking about. What are your thoughts on the AI Art?

I think there’s two branches of views on the AI Art. Right now, there’s a lot of people who are worried that people are just going to stop making art and just use AI to make everything. But then there’s another group of people who are looking into AI Art as another tool in their toolbox to help them quickly find… Maybe they have an idea in the end of their head and they’re having a hard time getting it out of their head into paper. And so it’s a quick way to push it onto the paper and just have different variations that they can jump off from. This is using Midjour AI, which is a really advanced AI system that does pretty realistic stuff.

Yeah, because that’s an AI image right there. Yeah, this is AI. So we’re looking at a Prata bag AI image that has a wine bottle holder in it and it looks real.

I do a lot of the work on the side. One of the things I’ve thought about doing is, if I was to make a new type of backpack, what might that look like? I know how to make all the hardware points for it, but having weird shapes or different ideas, that might be a little bit harder too.

And you might be able to test market it, too.

Another example is in architecture. It’s a lot easier to quickly change up shapes of a building than to actually build up a building and just see if.

It works on that. So we’re seeing an example of a Nike concept store and it looks like potentially Japan. I think so. That looks brilliant. Looks like a cross between Nike and Apple Store.

Then on the other end of it, there’s a couple of products, AI products that are built into Photoshop and illustrator where you can… Let’s say I’m designing something for a website and I need an icon of a tree. Instead of going out and spending some time designing that icon of a simple little tree or going out to another website to pull an icon off of that. You can quickly type in there and it’ll make a one out of one icon for you real quick. So you can pull that out real quick and start using that and then you maybe can change some elements of that to make it your own still or.

In Photoshop. Or if you’re making just a sample or a concept that saves a lot of time. I think that’s going to be something that we continually have to confront over the next couple of years. And it’ll be interesting to see where the legal ramifications fall out at, and ownership, because AI is just regurgitating other things that it finds. And there’s already been lawsuits filed. And then also the legal ramifications of… Some people are putting stuff into AI generators that the public doesn’t need to know. And so it’s going to be interesting to see how people, if their data is as safe as they think it is and all that things. But those are things that we don’t know the answer to for a few years, probably. Well, Ricky, thank you so much for sharing some design trends that we should be aware of. And where can we find you online?

Instagram? Instagram, yeah. I don’t have much on there, just @RickySantos955.

But you can find your leather working stuff.

Yeah, it’s on there.

Everyone’s got one. What’s it called?

It’s the same name. Ricky Santos.

So I’ve got some Ricky Santos leather stuff at my house. I approve and encourage people to go buy that. But thank you guys for checking out the Content Machine podcast. Thank you to Ricky for joining us this week. And be sure to subscribe. And if you found something in this episode helpful, share it with a friend, text it to him, send them an email, check it out. We’ll be putting these out weekly, and we look forward to being back in your feed soon. Thank you.

 

We think about direction changing books for our business, The checklist Manifesto is one of those. As a creative marketing agency, we do a lot of different projects, and each project is different within itself, and we never want to feel too corporate. So for a long time, we didn’t lean into standard operating procedures. But this book changed that. A checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is a look at Atul’s work in the public health world and shows how fallible the human condition is. The story centers on doctors and nurses in surgery rooms. Doctors and nurses are some of our smartest citizens. But a tool notes that for many years, simple mistakes were leading to many, many unnecessary complications and deaths of patients. Why? Because humans are bad at remembering all the things that they are supposed to remember. In enters the simple checklist, and the numbers of complications decline nearly miraculously because of a simple, humble checklist. Some things like confirming the name of a patient with the team and the paperwork can make sure that the right person has their kidney removed. But without a checklist, a lot of assumptions and mistakes are made. So how does this apply to a marketing business?

Well, I think it applies to all businesses and organizations because anyone who does anything can benefit from a checklist. To air is human, right? Humans are prone to make mistakes and forget things. Checklists can help mitigate that. Do you have something that happens every day? every week? Or once a quarter? Do you remember all the steps it takes to make it happen? We launch websites approximately once a month around here, but as they have grown in complexity and our business has gotten busier, it can be easier to forget a simple thing like submitting to Google search console. Checklist for hiring can make sure that we give employees and interns a smooth start to their work here and not forget, for example, their payroll paperwork to make sure that that gets taken care of. We think checklists are ever evolving. We encourage our team to update SOPs regularly if something changes or we need to add something new. Our team has the authority to speak up if they see someone else missing a step. These are living documents that allow us to be better so that everyone is encouraged to be involved. We started building checklists for lots of things, most anything that is repeatable.

I have a template I use to guide brainstorming sessions. We have new lead and closed project checklists. We have a video export standard operating procedure. We have a logo design package delivery SOP. We want to make sure that the routine things that we do that we do not forget something simple like sending an invoice or something less common like asking ourselves, are we going to add this project to our website? The second most powerful thing, besides not forgetting things, is that it allows us to decentralize authority. One of the things that we are trying to grow through right now is me being less involved with every single thing that happens in the business. We are working to decentralize my authority to empower more people throughout the team. Sops are one way we do that. A checklist for a process that I used to do, or another tenured member used to do, allows us to keep quality up and minimize mistakes as more people touch projects. In fact, during the pilot phase of making this podcast, we built an SOP for both production and distribution, and then we handed that off to our interns who are doing the production and distribution of this podcast, which allowed them to get up to speed much more quickly.

A good shout out to Eric, who’s sitting right there, Cameron, who’s editing this, and Addie, who’s distributing it. If you’re in a business that is not typically a checklist type of company, you should think about this book. If you are in an industry that does use checklists, but you have some people like me who might think that they’re ridiculous, you should also read this book. I give the checklist Manifesto by Atul Grande, a five out of five. Be sure to add it to your reading list. And thank you for checking out the content machine podcast. If you found this episode helpful or insightful or know someone that would, please send it to them. We will be releasing these episodes weekly, so be sure to subscribe to get more helpful content on marketing and leadership. Thank you for listening.

Now, the reason I want to have you on here is because I know that you get marketing, and I think you can see that in your company. So what role has marketing played in Jackson Fence company?

Wow. So marketing. So I’m curious how you’re going to respond to this. Okay, all right, so I actually went to college. That’s crazy. I know. But now Kevin, I have a PhD. I call that a postal digger. Right? So anyways, I went to college and kind of similar to building fence. They want you to pick a major. What do you study? I’m like biology, looking, all this stuff. I’m like marketing. That sounds awesome, you know what I mean? So I chose marketing. That sounds fancy. On it my collegiate path. And I’ll never forget, man, I might even have the book somewhere. I opened this textbook up, my marketing textbook, and it was like it’s not verbatim. I’m always bad at remembering exactly what people said, but I do remember how I felt, you know what I mean? That’s just always my thing. I’m not good at details, but I remember the gist of it. But it’s something to the tune of, like, first of all, kiddos, marketing is not advertising. All right? So let’s just start.

There two different things.

Yeah. It’s like marketing is the overall delivery of a good or a service. And that goes everything from the very beginning of, hey, we have an idea through the financial department, through the manufacturing department, whatever, to, hey, the end user, the end consumer now has this piece of good and they give you money for it and it goes back to the very beginning and starts over. That’s marketing. It’s more the whole entire business operation rather than just always in marketing. And it’s always in regards to advertising. And that’s fair.

Yeah, there’s a lot of people who will define it differently depending on who you’re talking.

I see marketing, and advertising is related, but marketing is the overall operation. And how do you go from conception to delivery and repeat, repeat, repeat where advertising is, hey, I want you to buy this drink and I’m going to make the logo really cool and bright and big, and we’re going to face it just a certain way. So when you walk in, you’ll see it, you know what I mean?

We kind of delineate the two between. Marketing is like, maybe marketing is the design of the can, but advertising is like the payment of placement to make sure that people know that the can exists.

I like that too.

So marketing in the Fence company has been very intentional about your branding. So you see it as an entire business process. So how does that work out throughout the whole business?

So in our company, everything goes back to like, this is going to sound really dumb or simple, overly simple, maybe awesome. So it all goes back to two things. If it makes sense, do it. If it doesn’t make sense, don’t do it. And that comes from a corporate red tape structure, which I grew to like, absolutely. I learned a lot, but like, oh, wow, that’s not the way that I want to do things. And just because it makes sense, that doesn’t mean you can do it. Canon you have to still ask 17 other people who we don’t know, and then they’ll let you know if you can. So we just have a business model of like, hey, if it makes sense, do it. If it doesn’t make sense, don’t do it. And as it relates to advertising, I’m like, look, I want to be familiar. So everything has to have blue on it, right? Everything has to have blue. And that’s even a dress code item is like, hey, look, you’re welcome to wear whatever you want to to work. You got to have boots on. That’s one thing. We have different colored items, and we’ll give those out.

Swag, we call it. But just because I give you a black shirt with a white logo, don’t take it for granted. You still got to have some blue on. So you can wear your black shirt, but you got to have a blue cap on. You got to have a blue beanie on. You got to have a blue t shirt on. So my dress code is pretty simple. Just boots get to have the logo showing somewhere and get to have blue on. And I’m not talking about just the outline here.

I’m talking about, like, a blue primary blue.

That is blue up there in it. What do you have? I’m not breaking the rule. I got blue here. But that becomes to be synonymous with the brand. And I want when people see people building fence, period, in blue shirts, I don’t want there to be a discussion or conversation. I wonder who they got to build their fence. I want it to be that must be Jackson Fence Company, aka. Team Blue, building that fence, you know, and so everything’s blue, even the the roof of the trucks, you know, hey, everybody’s got blue hats on. Well, guess what? Let’s take out all these trucks. We got to the rap shop and, hey, rap. Yeah, I need all these roofs blue because that looks like us. So when we pull up, you see a blue roof, and the guy just had with a blue hat. You don’t have to warn to what the size of the trucks is, but it says Jackson Fence in blue. Yeah, absolutely.

Except for yours, which is black. Right?

Well, I got rid of that one.

Oh, did you?

Yeah, because it didn’t fit.

It didn’t it didn’t?

They brought the dress code.

Yeah.

Awesome. But no, I didn’t have a black one, but I thought that was kind of cool, too.

So when you when you’re getting started and you’re starting to sell more fences because really fencing is like a one time a life purchase, probably for a lot of people.

You’d be surprised.

People break their fences or whip. No, but so or once every ten or 20 years.

So, yeah, what we know is people typically the average stay in in a household now is seven years. Okay, all right. So people are generally moving houses every seven years. That’s not me. It’s also not my parents. But on average, we take everybody, the people that move every year, because we know those people, too, and we know the people that stay in the same house for 40 years that’s my parents take all those people together and add them up and divide them by whatever, seven years people are moving. So you might buy a fence from us now, 2023, but 2030, you’re at a new property. And the other thing, too, Kevin, is if you’ve looked around, there’s a whole lot of new houses going in, and.

It’S going to be keeping being like that, right?

Yeah. And so for us, people always think, hey, man, did I get all those new houses? I’m like, well, we got some. But to me, as long as new houses mean more than just new houses, that means that people are moving from the older houses into the new houses. So now that house has become available, too. So now that’s two opportunities to build a fence. And then not only are those two opportunities, but where are these people coming from? Well, they got to be coming from somewhere. We’re not just moving people from left to right. They’re trickling in from somewhere. And so what does that mean? Now we got to build another school. We got to build Pope elementary. They’re going to have a playground with a fence around it. And then because we have another school and all these other houses, now, we can have another fire department. And then it just keeps on expanding and expanding. And right now, I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s three high rise apartments going up right now in Jackson, Tennessee. I say high rise. They all have fences. Every one of them has a fence around it.

But to answer your question about the repeat business thing, so when we keep up with people through our accounting software, QuickBooks, I was actually doing that this morning, going through and doing job costs, and it’s amazing how many of the same people are on that report. You know, you got 50 names, and one person’s name might be on the other three times. It’s like, well, why? You know? Well, you know, we had a lady, she bought a fence for herself. She liked it so much, she bought one for her daughter. Now we had the same lady’s name in there twice. And so we’re having it’s such a common thing that in QuickBooks and our CRM system, you have contacts, and then you have jobs. And so we’re having to figure out how to not just say Kevin outersberger, but now we got Kevin outersberger as a contact, and then we’ve got Adisburger marketing, we got Kevin’s private residence, we got Kevin’s church, we got these different jobs that are separate from Kevin, but they fall under Kevin’s thing. So we’re having to figure out how to we’re figuring it out because it’s so common that I don’t know, I think people just love us, bro.

Well, and that’s repeat business, which is the best kind, we love them.

So what are you doing to I mean, what’s the thought process on trying to get new business in what’s been working for you?

Yeah, so I never really know. So fencing is a hustle. It’s very fast, and it goes back to our team, eric and Corey and Mike and Brandon Swain. All these guys, man, they’re freaking rock stars. And they build fence really, really fast and good, you know? But so when I say that, I mean, we’re probably build this week six or seven fences, maybe eight. It just depends on the size of them, you know, we built like 500 fences last year, and so it’s a lot of fences, you know, so so we’re always on the hunt for the next one. And leads, you know, you gotta we call them leads. I hate to refer to people or people’s homes as leads, but in sales, you got to lead something. So it’s an opportunity or whatever you want to call it. And where are these people coming from? SEO? Google Ads? That’s not attractive to say, but yeah, we paid Google to put our name at the top. Sure. We actually just bought six billboards, man. We never done that either. Okay. Lexington, Mackenzie, Alamo, Jackson, Medina, Humboat, those are the six towns that they’ve got. Now I got a Jackson Fence billboard.

I don’t know how well it’s going to work either, but our plan is to grow the fence company, and the only way to grow the fence company is to have really good people and really good quality leads. And I don’t know how to do it exactly, other than be everywhere, put your name on everything you could possibly put it on, and be the only when people think about a fence, I want to think about Jackson fence.

Absolutely.

Did I answer your question?

I think so. Maybe if you were to start over again, what would be the first thing that you do to be successful?

The first thing? Man, that’s hard. Not much different. I always said before, we worry about making money, let’s worry about doing a good job. And I think that’s one thing I advise new fence companies now to do, too, is a lot of them, lot of new companies get all this advice about how to make more money, and I’m kind of the different guy. I’m like, hey, no, figure out how to be really good at what you do first. And be affordable and just name out there. And then once you start getting really good at it, then just worry about how to make money. I don’t know that I would change a whole lot out of the three or 1004 customers that we’ve had. A couple of them don’t like me, and that still bothers me, really happens. And I wish that I could handle some of these things differently than I did. And not that I handled it wrong, but at the end of the day, when people do business with me, I take that sincerely, and I really want people to like this. I had a guy that we didn’t see eye to eye with a year ago, and about three weeks ago, I called him up, and I said, hey, man, I’ve been thinking about this, and let’s get together.

Let’s figure out what we can do. It’s bothering me to know that I got some guy, like, 45 minutes away that doesn’t like Cannon, doesn’t like Jackson Smith. I’m not okay with that. And we’ve had a really good year, and, look, I want to meet with you. I want to figure out what we can do to bring this back to zero, and then maybe we can be friends. So, I don’t know. I might take it too personal sometimes, but that’s the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night, man. This is a dude that doesn’t like me. I don’t like that at all.

That’s okay. That’s good. Now, it’s a really competitive labor market. Yeah. And you are specifically in the all I hear we hear from lots of people, I can’t hire enough people, can’t hire enough people, can’t get enough people, can’t keep people. You’re in a very labor intensive industry. It’s not an easy job to do. You’re out in the elements. People are sweating and working hard. How are you continuing to grow? Because you have to have people to build defenses. So what’s important to getting people and keeping people, and how are you being successful in that?

Wow. So in six years, I told a guy that this morning. I was like, hey, I may be wrong, and I don’t want this to air and be wrong, but I think in six years and we got 2020 people working for us now, I’ve had three people give me their resignation in six years. And I like to think that goes on record or whatever that speaks to the team that we’ve found and that we’ve worked with and that we have right now. People say these kind of cliche things like, hey, higher, slow, fire fast. To a degree, there’s truth to that. Like, if somebody who gets fired from jack’s fence, those are the people that don’t fit the culture more than anything. But, hey, these other guys, they don’t like you, man. And I don’t know, and that’s real. Hey, bro, I cannot put you out here with these guys in this truck. They’ve got a brotherhood going, and they’re kicking butt and taking names, man. If for some reason you’re not fitting in with them, and that’s not a me versus you thing, and it’s also not a veteran versus you thing, just, hey, I don’t think that we are the right fit for you and vice versa.

And we’ve had to have those conversations. But I think Jackson fence company, it’s not just me anymore. It’s like the people around me are genuinely smarter. I’m not just saying that they build better fence. They sell better fence, they have less anxiety, they’re cooler, they have better jokes, all that stuff, man, they bring better lunch to work every day, seriously. And I’m eating out of a peanut butter jar. So I’m not the guy that people are coming to work for. They’re coming to work with other people. But I’ll tell you this, Kevin. There’s a mechanic shop in our town that burnt down a couple of weeks ago, and there’s a guy that works there, and I know he’s very talented, and I interviewed him this morning, and when I say I interviewed him, it’s kind of like this just a casual he had a coffee. We’re just talking, and we don’t need I was very honest. I said, look, man, I don’t even need nobody right now. But I have this, like, what is it called?

A Vision.

A vision that when somebody good becomes available, you bring them into the equation some way, somehow draft the best player.

Available instead of maybe by need.

And so, hey, look, man, I want you to work here. I know that. I don’t know what I want you to do, but we want you on our team, and we’ll figure that out in time. But if you’ll take that leap with me, I’ll never let you down. That’s kind of the way I look at it. Take the best people you can possibly find and put them on your team.

And then so that’s a part of the culture. It’s like, we want good people, but, like, what else is about culture? How would you define the culture at Jackson’s, man?

So the culture at Jackson’s fence or anything that I want to be a part of is look, this is a story that I like to paint. Look, in the bible, Jesus had disciples. These are people that followed him, all right? These people are dirty. These people are not like him. And then what did Jesus do? He took their sandals off and he washed their feet. That’s called servant leadership. Now, I’m not saying that you’ve come to Jackson fence and I’m watching all these guys feet or walking on water, and that’s right, but I want to take care of these people, you know what I mean? And if Jesus can get on his hands and knees and wash somebody’s feet so that they’ll follow him and work with him, what can I do? Just a little example in the wintertime, this past winter, everybody got new pair of boots. And the thing is, like, hey, if you’re at work, you’re wearing the Jackson fence name, you’re doing a great job. It’s important to me that you’re in a good mood, that you’re happy, and if you’re walking around all day in these uneven terrains on your feet, that’s the foundation of your body.

And if your feet don’t feel good and if your feet aren’t safe or if your feet are getting wet because the dew on the grass is seeping through your shoes or your boots where you’re not going to have a great day and your body’s not going to feel good. And you’ll never be able to get away from the sore. 80 wet feet. And so one thing that we like to do is we like to buy everybody boots because I want you to come to work and I want you to be comfortable. I want you to be safe. I want you to take your boots off the end of day and your socks are dry. I guess that’s my example. Like washing feet, that’s literally the bottom of your body and you’re on it all day long. Get Jackson fence. And so it’s important to me that we take care of your feet, so.

You take care of people. Servant leadership. You clearly have a good rat track record of keeping people.

What else about culture, man? Just treat people the way that you want them to treat you. We’ve all had jobs before you worked at Burrito Truck.

I did help with marketing for Burrito Meal back in the day.

I remember that story. But do unto to others as you want them to do under you. And we’ve all heard stories of people becoming targeted or becoming, hey, I think they’re trying to fire me or whatever. There is none of that at Jacksonville. It’s like, hey, if we don’t want you here, we’re going to probably let you know. You know what I mean? Just that cut and dry, really. But we owe it to the team. We owe it to the people. We owe it to all the families. I’m begging you, hey, come to work. Be a team player. No drama. Do a good job. If you mess something up, say, hey, I mess it up. We’ll go fix it. Just do that. That’s all. That’s all we need at the end of the day. And I think what we’re doing is helping people be better husbands and wives and me, I want to believe that anyways.

And not everybody thinks about that when they think about places to work.

That’s right.

Well, Cannon, I appreciate you coming in. I appreciate the friendship we’ve been able to have. And you’ve helped my fences out.

I know that.

So if someone wants to get their fences mended or a new fence installed, how do they get a hold of you?

Yeah, look here. So we talk about technology and bringing stuff back to the table. So, Jacksonfencecompany.com, you can literally draw your own fence via satellite imagery like Google would do, and get a free instant online quote in minutes. I’m not talking about you just fill out a form and we’re going to call you. No, you’ll fill out a form. Yes. And then next thing you know, you’re drawing and then you’ll get a price right there. There’s no emails, there’s no back and forth, nothing.

Just instant quick price conversion rate on that.

It’s 50 50. So there’s a lot of people, too, that don’t understand what defense costs, you know, and so we won’t yeah, it’s probably the same in marketing. You know, we don’t know what the cost to do a do a short commercial, you know?

Yeah.

And so rather than them wasting their time and, you know, us going out and spending our time with it, you know, we just cut to the chase. Hey, look, you’re going to be somewhere between $5,000 you want to do it, and if that’s way more than they can possibly do. Well, let me tell you about the financing options that we have. There you go. We want to build you a fence. We want your backyard to have the best fence. So make it easy for you.

All right? So Jackson Fence website. What’s the website?

Jacksonfencecompany.com good enough.

All right. Thanks, Cannon.

 

I’ve been a business owner for eight years, and during that time I’ve realized that the more work I was able to get done during the day, the more time I would have at the end of the day to to not work or to spend time with family, friends or going to church events. And time at the end of the day allows me to recharge for the next day. I have been on a steady practice of trying to improve my work habits since then. If I can get more work done done in the time allotted and get better work done in the time allotted, it’s going to lead to wins. If I am able to get one more productive hour out of the week, that adds up considerably over the course of the year.

So here are some thoughts, some framework that I’ve discovered that works really well for me and might work really well for you. So one use micro scheduling. Block out the entire day and 30 minutes time entries to budget your time. Instead of being constantly reactive or not having a plan, budget your time out based on your priorities. Each day my day is scheduled out to at least 30 minutes windows to work on different items.

It allows me to tell my time what I’m going to work on instead of trying to deal with whatever seems the most urgent. Urgent is not always important. The second component of that is planning your day the day before. Since I use micro scheduling, some people call it time blocking. I have to know what I’m going to do in those time blocks.

Every day before I shut down for the day, I go over my to do list and my appointment calendar and use that to plan how my time should be allotted for the next day. For me, this covers from when I wake up in the morning to when I go to bed at night, but also build time breaks into your week unless something weird happens. When I am done at work in the evening, usually between 430 and 530, I am done at work until the next morning. I stop looking at emails and I pay attention to where I’m at and who I am with, which is usually my family. If you do not take breaks, you’re going to minimize your effectiveness when you’re on the clock.

The human mind can only work for so long before it gets diminishing returns. If you have a chance to build a break into your day, that can help as well. Lunch is a great way to work this in. I can mentally tell when I’ve been running hard all day without a break versus when I get a chance to take a break in the middle of the day. You can tell it at night how your brain feels and how you are able to interact with others.

At the end of the day, when I’m planning my schedule, I also set out three big targets. What are the three things I need to do to count this day as a success today? One of those was recording this podcast. This also helps me to shape the day. Does my entire plan work out the way I plan it?

Not always. Fires happen, distractions happen. But with three big targets, it allows me to have a focal point for the work of the day. Consequently, I usually book time for those earlier in the morning so that I can have a better chance of accomplishing them on that schedule. It is also important to leave margin in that time blocked schedule.

If you overbook that time, you will find yourself with not enough time to deal with any distractions or fires that show up throughout the day. I actually book time for email, checking on my calendar so that I can keep that activity focused, and I even book time to plan my next day and manage my to do list. Now, speaking of email email has a tendency to take over our lives. Instead of being a tool vigilant, email checks cause us to be overreactive. My advice?

Turn off email notifications on your phone and on your desktop, and I would even take it a step further hide your inboxes. Make it more difficult to see what email is coming in so that you can stay mentally focused on what you’re currently working on. Focus is a hugely valuable commodity that our modern world seeks actively to weaken. Hiding inboxes allows you to still search for an old email, to find notes on a meeting that you’re working on, or compose an email as part of a current project without going down the rabbit hole of the latest issues deposited into your inbox. While we’re talking about distractions, let’s also turn off all non critical notifications on our phones.

What’s critical? It’s different for everybody, but for me, things like security systems, website downtime monitors, bank notifications, and calendar events. I take this a step further and silence all incoming calls and texts unless that person is on a very, very short list of people like my team or my wife. When I’m really getting into deep work blocks of time, my phone will go to the other side of the room to prevent me from picking it up and checking it all the time. Additionally, with Focus modes on Apple Now, I have even more focused mode that’s Do Not Disturb, that blocks out everything and everyone except for security alarms and my wife.

But I also have a personal mode time that blocks out my work team so they won’t unintentionally bother me during my time off. Our team uses Slack to communicate internally. This is a great tool, but with nine team members and four interns and lots of open projects, it can be a very noisy place when I’m working on projects. I am now closing Slack for about an hour at a time. This minimizes notifications and distractions, but I also check it once an hour on my breaks for my project to make sure that the team has what they need to be successful.

Music can be helpful, but I find typical music to be really exhausting or distracting over time. I would recommend Focused music or something like Lo Fi Beats to listen to while you work. It can help block out background noises and help your brain focus on the thing that you’re working on. I sometimes also pair this with rainymood.com to help drown out the background noise from my work from home life. I also use a Pomodoro timer to work for 48 minutes on, ten minutes off.

This tool is built into my browser. Since most of our work is done through browsers, it is called Strict Workflow. This serves two ends. One, it helps me work on something for 48 minutes. Sometimes I’m not in the mood to work, but if I can force myself to start the timer, it really does help me start the ball rolling and start working.

And then two, it gives me little breaks that allow me to have a better run through the course of my day. Those little breaks help rejuvenate me for the next 48 minutes. Block finally, an overarching comment. Think critically about how you work. Do you work better in the mornings?

Do you work better in the afternoons? If so, how can you maximize that time? Maybe work on shifting more meetings to one half of the day so that you can have more of your productive time to get things done. Maybe you get to work an hour early and get more time in before everybody else is there. Think critically about where your distractions are coming from on any given day and see if there are ways to mitigate those.

Think critically about what it means to have a successful workday. What do you really need to accomplish or make progress on? And keep that in mind. Framing what success looks like can help you have a better start to tomorrow. If you found anything helpful in this episode, text it to a friend.

=If you have any additional questions, shoot me an email. Thanks for listening to the Content Machine podcast from Adelsburger Marketing.