The Mad Max Rules Of Marketing And Getting Stuff Done

Just. Walk. Away.

Today’s episode is a little bit shorter than usual because we just got back from watching Mad Max: Fury Road at the theater and we were pretty psyched. So naturally we needed to come home from eating popcorn and go straight to eating ice cream. Up next week: how to work off the popcorn and ice cream.

Even While Watching The Movie, We Were Still Thinking About Marketing

Apparently Ralph was watching this 2-hour car chase with half his brain and thinking about a client website with the other. What was he thinking?

Well, in the movie, even though there was a ton of action with a ton of people and chaos and sandstorms and arrows and all sorts of things happening, you always knew what was going on. You had a sense of time and space and everything made sense.

Our client’s website?

Not so much.

I Just Wanted To Find A Blog Post

Ralph sent me to our aforementioned client’s website with this directive: find a specific blog post.

And I couldn’t.

So he gave me another: copy our client’s bio.

And I couldn’t find that either.

The conclusion?

Our client did not follow the Mad Max Rules Of Marketing™.

Ok, So Maybe We Can’t Trademark It

We figure the studio might have something to say about that but it sounded cool. And basically it means that in the story of your business, you have to create context for your audience so they know where they are at all times. Whether it’s on your website, Facebook page, LinkedIn profile – make sure it makes sense to someone who may be finding it for the first time. You can do that by testing out your content on someone who isn’t your target audience who is seeing your content for the first time.

We try that out on my mom. If she understands it (and she’s not a marketer or business owner) then there’s a good chance someone else will.

Get Your Stuff Done

On another topic… we’ve been GTD-ing an awful lot around here lately.

GTD (otherwise known as Getting Things Done) is a methodology developed by David Allen and even though he isn’t paying us a billion dollars to promote his stuff (he totally should) and has no idea who we are (he really should!), we still think his stuff is amazing and that more people should check it out.

Dump Your Brain

One of the premises of GTD is that your brain is not a storage repository, hard drive or to do list. So if you’re carrying stuff around in your brain that you need to remember or do… you’re using your brain wrong.

Save your brain for the active, productive, creative stuff. As for the “remembering”, get all your stuff down on a piece of paper or into an app.

Just dump it.

You can even dump physical stuff, like paperwork, the bills you haven’t paid, the business cards you haven’t filed.

Once it’s dumped, you can then go back and organize and contextualize.

We didn’t get into that part of it (yet!), but if you get used to the brain dump, it’s a great start.

Break To-Dos Into Projects And Projects Into Smaller Projects

Lots of your to do items are really projects. And lots of your projects are really a series of mini projects.

Take “build website”. That might be on your to do list. But there are soooo many steps that just thinking about tackling it can seem horribly overwhelming.

Make it a project. “Build website.”

But even that can be a series of mini-projects. Start with “planning”, move into “content development” and so on. Celebrate all your victories along the way and enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes with getting things done.

Hey, Wait A Sec… What’s A Project, Anyway?

This might change your thinking. A project is something that has an outcome. Ralph shared an example of a project he added to his list called “Oh So Pinteresting”. But what did that mean? Turns out he didn’t complete the project on time because there was nothing to complete.

But once he changed the project to “Send screen shots to Cynthia Sanchez for Oh So Pinteresting Podcast” it started to mean something.

Now, you don’t even have to know what his project entailed to see a big difference between the noun version and the action-based version.

A project is something with an outcome that you can eventually set to “true”.

Did Ralph (eventually) send the screen shots? True!

Project completed.

Your Marketing Action Item

From Ralph: Visit David Allen’s site gettingthingsdone.com and buy the 2015 version of his book. Browse the website and get a feel for how GTD works. It may not be for you and that’s ok, but just about everyone we’ve ever shared this with has come away better for it. While you’re there, maybe tell David Allen that he is welcome to sponsor our show. Also, check out GTD Connect on the site. It’s not free but it’s a pretty neat community of people who can help keep you accountable for getting your stuff done.

From Carol Lynn: Create a website test for your site that you’ll give to people who aren’t your target audience. Come up with half a dozen questions, like, “Find my phone number” or “Find a specific blog post with a specific title.” Treat it like a treasure hunt and see how fast people can find the things you tell them to find. If they can, great! If not, it may be time to think about re-contextualizing and reorganizing the content on your website.

Links & Resources

• The “horn blast” sound used in our intro was created by hykenfreak and can be found here
• The rumble sound used in our intro was created by PatrickLeiberkind and can be found here
• Get your GTD on at gettingthingsdone.com

Where To Listen

iTunes

Stitcher

Libsyn

Podcast RSS

Subscribe below to be notified whenever we publish new content and to stay in the loop on new podcasts and resources.

Mad Max: Fury Road