Drive and Convert

Announcer: [00:00:00] You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better ecommerce growth engine with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

Ryan Garrow: All right, Jon, it is an interesting time. In the ecommerce world right now, yesterday was Cyber Monday. We're in it. This is the thick of it. If you're taking time to listen to this on the date of its release, good job. You're taking a break from something to not focus on the data in front of you. We had to record these before that, but I'm guessing some of you did not hit the expectations you had for Cyber Monday.

Some of you probably knocked it out of the park. I don't know which ones they are, but I think either scenario, you're at a point in the holiday season and the chaos of finishing 24, that the actions you're going to take in the next day or two are probably not going to make or break you. It's going to be what's the plans and the strategy have been set.

Making one additional change may not be enough to push it one way or another. So it is what it is. And I think if you [00:01:00] can accept that, it can allow you to do some pretty cool things in 25. And that's so rather than talk about traffic today, necessarily, I want to talk about how do we as business owners, marketers, Occasional podcasters, how do we allow ourselves to take a break?

Because I personally am, I'm terrible at it. I think I'm really hard on myself, honestly, if I take a break from business and I think it comes down to like the FOMO, the fear of missing out that if I'm not in front of my phone or computer, I mean, I might miss a call from a client. I might feel help them. I might miss a call from a company that wants to work with us or a partner that needs help.

And so I, I don't give myself the opportunity to do that. Hardly at all. But if I'm using logic and I think about, okay, if I reach out to a company, I'm considering working with or partnering with or doing something and I get an out of office response. I don't immediately pick up the phone and call a competitor in anger or email somebody else, but I got this person's out of office and I can't work with me.

It's like, I provide grace to that business owner, that team member saying, Hey, they're out of office. That's I get it. That [00:02:00] happens. It's necessary. But I don't give that grace to myself. And I'm guessing I'm not alone in that. And on the flip side of that, I can look back and say, when I've taken the time to think, I find that I can think further outside the box or come up with ideas that in my role, a good or bad idea comes down to does my wife shoot it down immediately?

Or let me take it a few steps to see if it has legs. And many times I'll get less shot down before getting off the ground. If I do take some actual time to dedicated to thinking and preparing. And so today, right after Cyber Monday, we're not talking about predictions for next year or tactics to prepare.

We're going to talk about stepping away to think.

Jon MacDonald: first plot that comes up for me on this is I wonder. So for those who are listening to that, don't know, Ryan ran a successful agency for years before a Logical Position acquired them. And that's how he got folded into Logical Position. Question I have out of that is [00:03:00] I'm wondering, because what you're talking about sounds very familiar to me as a business owner, I am wondering, do you think those traits are one related.

You still have that traits because that is what has gotten you to be successful throughout your career, including business ownership. And two, do we feel like that is what has led to your success or are there other alternative paths to success there? Right. I think we probably do a lot of thinking, but those dedicated days off to do the thinking and, and.

In mass, right? As opposed to, Oh, I'm having a cup of coffee and I'm thinking about this challenge and writing through scenarios, et cetera, right? You're saying, Oh, no, I'm going to set a full day aside.

Ryan Garrow: Yes.

Jon MacDonald: Or multiple days.

Ryan Garrow: Well, it's probably both.

Jon MacDonald: Take time off.

Ryan Garrow: And I think you have to layer in different levels of breaks for thinking.

I think there needs to be those, you know, at a coffee shop thinking and not having [00:04:00] distractions from work. Right. You know, you can be distracted watching people, letting your brain wander. You can do like a couple of years ago, my wife and I went away for our 10 year reunion to Hawaii. No kids, no phone, nothing, just beaches.

And it was great. And that didn't have a lot of business thinking there. And then there's also days off. There's nothing but focus on business, prepare, plan, insulate, whatever it happens to be. But there's also a guilt that comes through. And if something gets has to be pushed off, it tends to be the thinking things like, Oh, I'm under pressure for, you know, we missed numbers.

I can't possibly take time off because that would, it would show maybe that I'm not working hard enough, or if it fails, I would look back and say, Oh, if I would've just, I'm just taking that two hours where I went and took a walk and thought I could have been doing something productive. And so I don't think that success has come because I didn't take breaks or I pushed hard.

Like, I think that's just, that's a personality that you're just going to push and you are who you are in that regard. I think it does require [00:05:00] somebody in your life that can recognize maybe when you're redlining to be like, Hey, you might need to take a break and don't know what that looks like, but just.

Maybe take a break. And there's, there's honestly not a lot of people in my life that can do that successfully. My wife can thankfully, and then one or two other people that can, you know, that I'll, that are probably bold enough to say what's wrong. Like you have, you're not yourself or you need to take something there,

Jon MacDonald: but I mean, paying somebody to tell you that.

Yeah. I mean, that's. That's, that's essentially what therapy is for a lot of us, is to go pay a counselor to, to essentially tell you the things that you need to hear. Yeah, but you

Ryan Garrow: can't maybe, maybe you know them, but you're not going to tell yourself to do it or give yourself permission. Whereas if a therapist gives me that permission, I'm like, Oh, I can do that.

You know, for you, cause you've had lots of success in business and all kinds of things. Where is it that you take your breaks? Is it something that you naturally do and you find time in your day? And you've gotten the habits or is it awkward and [00:06:00] frustrating to get to that point?

Jon MacDonald: It is awkward and frustrating.

I have found that the reason even though my body is old and broken down in terms of basketball years, it is why I continue to play basketball and go through that pain because it is literally the one time of day that I don't have a device in my hands, that I don't have a screen in front of me. That I don't have any space in my head to be outside of the moment.

Meaning I have to focus on what's in front of me while I'm playing basketball. And the minute I don't do that is when it starts to go downhill very quickly and downhill very quickly could be getting hit in the face of the ball. Could be whatever, right? But, you know, they talk a lot about in sports, like being in the zone.

I call, I've just had a great game. I just felt like, I don't know what happened. I was in this zone. Well, that's a state of consciousness that is really hard to get into, but you have to be Really [00:07:00] have all of your thoughts in that moment to get there. And that's really where it's gives me the time to step away and take a break.

Now I'm not doing a lot of thinking, right? I'm not doing a lot of thinking in terms of the business or what I should be doing next. I actually build those into my calendar and how I do that is, is I block out one day, a quarter and. My leadership team all does two days per quarter, and I do one day per quarter blocked out because I have a lot less on my calendar than they do.

So I'm able to find times here and there to work on, you know, larger items, but the team, I require them to book every quarter at our quarterly leadership session. They go through and they have to book two days, and we do that for, An interesting reason we do that because it gives them a time where they're not going to be bugged by their team, gives them a time to go off and work on whatever they need.

It gives them a time to. You ever seen in [00:08:00] Parks and Rec on TV, they called them treat yourself days, treat yourself day. I love that show. Yeah. I don't care if they go spend it as a treat yourself day, like have fun, go make it happen. Right. But my one ask is that they disconnect and they do, you know, if you're going to do thinking you do it with a pen and paper or maybe writing on iPad.

What? The, not have everything turned on, you know, and

Ryan Garrow: it seems to work. Folks seem to really, really like it. How do you measure the success of that for the team? Since it's not necessarily a quantifiable, like we did this two days for everybody and we got this. What happens is,

Jon MacDonald: and it's not two days in a row, it should be two days spread out, ideally.

So at the end of that one day, the way we judge success is, are you coming back? We call them clarity breaks. Are you coming back with more clarity on something? So it could be that you have a client challenge that you've just been banging your head against. You don't know what's going on, why it's happening.

You've [00:09:00] tried it. You think you've tried everything, right? And you take the clarity break and you get a little bit of distance and you're just sitting on it. You know, sometimes people say I get my best ideas in the shower, et cetera, right? You're taking a bit of a mental break. You're focusing on something else for a minute, and then it's like, oh, I haven't thought about that.

I haven't tried that yet. That's what a clarity break can really do for the team, and all I ask is when they come back, That they share what, what clarity they had, what was that? And without fail, every time we've come back with some problem being solved.

Ryan Garrow: Super valuable there. So for you personally, you do it once a quarter for the business.

And are there different topics that you want to think from a quarterly standpoint? Like for me, it's, it's all about the business cycle. Usually at different times of year, I can take better breaks, but how does it work in your world?

Jon MacDonald: Well, I think, you know, for In short, we do quarterly sprints with quarterly rocks, so that we can do a business cycle, [00:10:00] right?

But I also think that it doesn't need to be tied to any particular time period. Necessarily. One of the most reflective time periods for me is the break forced break between Christmas and New Year's. So every year we shut down the good between Christmas and New Year's, because like you talked about, we just had, you know, all the holiday sales going on with our clients.

They are burned out. They're also to the point where, Hey, we hit Christmas. Return season is going to start, you know, we're gonna have to process all I get through that season, but there's this lull in between where everyone has who can purchase a gift has done it. And now you hit the 24th, 25th and you're like, sigh of relief.

I'm here. Right. And so we've been able to take advantage of that. And that's been probably the closest thing to a business cycle, but it's, it's. Paid time off that it's just forced for everyone on the team. And it's, that has been a great way to recharge. Yeah. I like that. How about you? [00:11:00] What, what, what are the periods you find more valuable to step back and think?

Well,

Ryan Garrow: I have similar things like in e comm like that last week of the year is it's, it's very easy in the ecommerce world just to be like. unplugged because almost everybody else is. Google shuts down for that, that period. Like there's, there's still advertising that happens. There's still people making transactions, but at the end of the day, like it's a pretty lights out, like take the time.

And so my wife has pretty much locked that down and said, you're unplugged, whether you want to be or not. And we're having family time. And so she has very strong guardrails around that. So that time is actually not great from a business standpoint to come up with ideas. That's more about being present with kids and making sure I'm, you know, around for those important things happening.

This period of time right now, like in the thick of all the intensity, it's actually a downtime for me in the business cycle because all the strategy is done. Like, there's no companies thinking about moving or very few thinking about moving agencies. They may be angry right now. And if you're angry, give me a call right after [00:12:00] this, but it's the, it's the execution time right now.

So our team that we've spent the months before planning all of this and getting into it, they're now like in the thick of it. They're not happy that I'm not working probably as hard. As they are right now, but looking back at September, October, that's when a lot of our, our e com execution team, they are taking vacations and they should, because there's a lot less time to do that between Thanksgiving and New Year's for us as a team.

So now is a great time for me because Q1 is usually a really big hit the ground running. Yeah, you know this. There's just tons of content that gets put out on what happened at 24. What's happening at 25? How did holiday do great? How did it suck? We'll find out soon But and it's like q1 econ travel events.

I think last year there was like six weeks where It was just a gauntlet where every single person we work with in ecomm was like, Oh yeah, I got to be in LA this week and the next week I have Vegas and then I go back to San Diego and I go back to Vegas and it's just, Q1 is not the time to be trying to set plan because it's just draining the speaking and the [00:13:00] meetings, all that.

But so putting it, I think breaks in your schedule around that and intentional is important and understanding and giving yourself grace to do that. I think it's even more difficult when the business is not doing well. To do that and say, Oh my gosh, like if you own the business and it's down year over year, and the team is struggling to keep up or think of options, I think it's probably the more important time that you as a business owner or head of marketing steps back and says, man, I got to get some, something's not working and we can't keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Therefore I've got to. You know, take a break, step away, figure out how we're going to think through this and how we're going to brainstorm new ideas and do that. So that's, and then when it's going well, it's like things are going great. Just keep redlining pedal to the metal and let's keep doing it because it's working.

Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert a podcast focused on ecommerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate [00:14:00] optimization agency that works with ecommerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers, and Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization, and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you.

Jon MacDonald: Where are some of the places you do this thinking, right, because.

When you find the right time, where do you go? What do you, what do you do? I

Ryan Garrow: have to find it. I can't do it in the office or I'm normally doing all the work things because it's too easy for me to like, think of like, Ooh, I could just flip the computer on or it's a phone ding. I'm like, Oh, I got to get that.

Um, so I've got to separate myself. So thankfully I've got. I've got nine acres and multiple buildings. So I can do some of that on the property itself. But even then, because it's, I work from home most of the time, it's, you know, just going to the barn and doing a [00:15:00] workout, not quite going to cover it for me.

So some of it happens here, but I don't know if you've ever been to Mount Angel Abbey, but I love It takes me about 45 minutes to drive there and they started, they started brewing beer. So I haven't been there since, tried their beer yet, but in the next couple of weeks I get to go there and I'm going to go try their beer after I'm done thinking, hopefully.

But they've got a library there. And most people don't go to libraries. And they've got a periodicals room right off the side. And these monks never come in there. I've been there so many times. And they have great comfortable chairs. I just plop down and I'm usually there for usually about eight hours.

And totally unplugged. I'll have, you know, my notebook, some of my past notes of times there, what I've done, and I'll usually come with some data preprinted out on what I may be trying to solve. And so I plan to go there in the next couple of weeks and it would be what worked, what didn't work in 24. Um, what are the goals that I've hit and what did I not hit?

And then what are we trying to do in 25? And those would be the things that I'm [00:16:00] really trying to think through and Process during that day and try to come out with some clarity, kind of my version of a clarity day.

Jon MacDonald: I think I just put two and two together that that is also when maybe the grow with Garo email comes out after one of those days, because it kind of sounds like the team that you've done it and sent out the email.

You

Ryan Garrow: know, and my, my emails have gotten wordy lately. So I've had to like, okay, do I need to start splitting these up into multiple emails or the one right now that's good? While we're recording this, there's one that was supposed to come out yesterday and ended up being way too long. So I'm trying to, is it a two part?

Is it, that's a giant blog post and I changed it. Who knows? But yes, lots of thinking comes out and lots of emails and words.

Jon MacDonald: Better to have more than this. Yeah. Well, bring the, the kind of floor topics that we're here. We'll talk about it. Maybe they're a little too meaty for an email, but we could have a conversation.

I love that. I, I love that. As you were saying that I googled Mount Angel Abbey because I need to, I need to go check that out. It's a really cool place

Ryan Garrow: and you can actually, there's a great, a good German sausage place. It's where they do, it's right there around Mount Angel. They [00:17:00] have the big giant Oktoberfest in the Portland area, I guess in Silverton. Yeah. Love it.

Jon MacDonald: Okay. Count me in next time I'm, I'm there. What kind of things do you, processes thinking about in that time, right? So we have a great location. We kind of, well, first of all, we set the time, you found a great location. Now, what are the types of things that you're thinking about processing during that time?

Ryan Garrow: Well, I want to come out of these times with new ideas and things to try and to scale and build on what we've already gotten to. And so, you know, from a, from a brand standpoint or growing a brand, it's going to be great. We saw these things that worked and where was the most valuable business? Like where was the, the, I spent, you know, minuscule amounts of effort for massive return.

I want more of that if I can, rather than even medium return for medium effort or little return for lots of effort. I mean, if I have a choice and I can, I'm brainstorming anything as possible. That is another thing I think about in brainstorming, like I, I have to approach it [00:18:00] from anything as possible.

Like you just have to, if you have a brainstorm like that, like you need to mentally get to a place that you can do that. I think that really get the most impact out of thinking clarity breaks. But it's okay. How can I duplicate that? You know, what does that look like in 25? Like if I had this one great success that, and I've worked backwards on how I got to that.

Cause it's usually not just a magically some deal came about and produced a ton of revenue and profit. I love those, but I still haven't experienced one yet. So I want one. If you've got one, send me, send me a few hundred grand. I will take it. And, uh, I will agree that it can happen. But I want to see, you know, for somebody in ecommerce, it's which products just converted really well.

Were there, can I duplicate those or expand on that product line? It was there an email campaign that stands out. There's like, man, when we sent this one email to this audience, it was like an explosion of revenue and goodness that came out of that top influencers. There's always going to be winners and losers in your [00:19:00] influencer realm.

So. Which ones just engaged and leaned into the brand a lot and provided you a lot of value? How do you find more of them? How do you maybe just deepen that relationship, too? How do you provide more value from them? And i'll start to filter those down as i'm thinking through which one was more than likely a random one off And then which one maybe could be duplicated and that's really where I start Thinking through and I like a mood board almost like okay.

I thought that I see this thing here I'm I don't take mood boards to the periodicals room, but mentally I'm thinking through that. And

Jon MacDonald: I thought the Abbey's surely would.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Like, Oh, this guy brings like, Oh, it's like dumb empties is giant SUV into our periodicals room and sits for 10 hours. But thankfully iPads have lots of storage and they can get lots of things in there.

So, so yeah, it's about, uh, more with less effort so that I can test more things. So if I can duplicate this one big thing that lets me maybe spend more effort in nurturing something that may not pay off in 25 or may not work right, but it's going to possibly be my [00:20:00] 26 or 27 payoff. Or maybe I need to invest in developing a product, but that's two years out.

So I really have to manipulate product A right now to get me through 25. And how do I make that happen in a way that's going to make my clientele excited.

Jon MacDonald: That's a lot of thinking about data sets. A lot of times people are going and they're looking to brainstorm something new. What, what, do you have a process for how you kind of think about overall growth, more of a brainstorming, less of a beyond, you know, or beyond data, really?

Ryan Garrow: Yeah, there's a couple things that I think it's usually comes down to I'm solving a problem. So I've got a problem that I just haven't been able to solve and so it's like when your team goes out for those clarity breaks, like I can't solve this problem. I need to step away and think about it from a different angle.

And so I think if you're solid, like if I'm coming up with a new product, It's man, my product doesn't do this specific thing. And I don't know how to make that. I don't know how to make it happen. Maybe it needs to do X, Y, Z. Okay. Well, they may need to take a break [00:21:00] and start thinking about this from a different perspective.

Or, you know, one of the things you tell is like, okay, go to, go to Starbucks and buy somebody coffee and ask them some random questions. That may not be Starbucks, but there's Slack channels. There's. Reddit forum. I mean, there's so many ways to find relatively intelligent people to ask questions to, and, and they'll, they'll engage, they'll give you answers that they think some of them may be worthless and some of them might be really good.

But I like, so I like trying to solve a problem. If I'm coming up with a new product or new idea, like I really want to solve this and I think there's potential because I see the total addressable market for this particular thing. Let's think through that. If I'm expanding a current business, I almost always and you've seen this for, I don't know, close to 13, 14 years.

I think about it from a partnership standpoint, because I think coming alongside another company that's got similar clientele or similar access to the people or groups that I want to target is so much easier than trying to You know, go out and fish for them individually. So how can I [00:22:00] make 1 plus 1 equals 4 rather than 1 plus 1 equals 2?

And I try to do that a lot of times with partners, both in a product based business and in a service based business, like Logical Position and The Good. And so I'll think through, and when I'm brainstorming, it gets really weird and all over the place, but you know, it might be If I'm trying to target 5 million e com brands, I have to think really far outside the box because there are so many agencies trying to target a 5 million e com brand.

I would hate to have my phone on the internet as a 5 million e com brand. That would just be terrible. I mean, everybody's every day, there's probably 10 emails coming into, I want to buy a list of this or this or this. I'm like, ah. Don't know why they can't figure out another way to try to sell me a list.

Maybe that's what I need to solve. Selling data lists to people that can buy them. I think that they're selling it by putting you on the list. That's what it sounds to me. They just make sure I open emails evidently, even though I take read receipts off. But let's think through like if you're thinking through five million dollar online e com brands, that owner, [00:23:00] yeah, may have kids, they vacation somewhere, they, they, eat food, I'm guessing.

They probably work out, they go to events, they go to concerts, they have their favorite football team. I mean, it's not like they're not humans and have different things they're paying for. So it's figuring out, okay, what's an, a company that has them as a client that doesn't compete with me and has maybe never thought about digital marketing ever as a partner.

And so I've done some, Just, I've got some really out of the box partnerships that we're nurturing, but like some of them are like plugins for QuickBooks. Like okay, they'd probably hate marketing numbers. I'm like, Hey, you see them though. You see the credit card transactions. Let's think about this. Or the bookkeepers that are working with all, like the bookkeepers see all these transactions.

There's one. One company that I was talking to that has a, uh, they process most of the accounts payable, and they work with a company that you may know called Brex and process all of their rewards on the back end, like tons of data. Like I want to see [00:24:00] everybody that spends at least 10, 000 a month on Google.

You've got the data. And you've never thought about, what could I do with that? I've got an idea.

Jon MacDonald: I think a lot of folks don't know that part of your role at LP is, is partnerships and you've always brought creative ideas to partnerships between Logic Position and The Good. So that's, that's always been awesome to see as well.

We know based on the conversation today, you got to really dedicate the time to take the break. Right. And you can do it preplanned like I do it, or you can, you know, like, Hey, you got to have two per quarter or whatever, or you could do it more of like, Hey, I, you know, I'm redlining and you're bright and let's go make that happen.

A break could be two types could be taking that personal side or focusing on the business side, right. And trying to solve a problem or brainstorm. Got to have a great setting for either. Beach, no kids, just your wife, you know, awesome. Or that periodical room at an Abbey and Olympic Valley. You gotta have the right, right spot.

Right. And, and then there's a lot to think about once [00:25:00] you're there that I don't think a lot of people. Realize until they're in that moment. So really interesting.

Ryan Garrow: And I think if everybody, you know, whether you can take the break now, depending on where you are in the marketing chain, if you're the one actually pushing buttons, it may be more difficult to step away from your Google account for the next couple of weeks.

In the next month, you should take one because I think you're 25 will benefit. The more people like Jon that you require to take a clarity day, say, Hey, at this point, I don't know who the president's going to be. We may, we may know later it, the economy is going to go up. It's going to go down and the, your market will go up and go down.

And the key is going to be, how do you continue to scale and grow regardless of what that looks like? And if you take some clarity days, I think it's possible. Even if you don't have time

Jon MacDonald: right now, the one thing you could do is open your calendar and block out that day so that nothing gets booked on that day in the future.

Ticks 30 seconds, just roll the die and pick that number of days away and see if it happens, whether it's a couple of weeks or maybe it's, it's a month from now. But just picking that day, putting it aside, [00:26:00] and you don't even have to plan it right now, but put it on your calendar is, is what you can do. So nothing else.

Ryan Garrow: Everybody can go put a calendar appointment on it. It's all you do every day anyway, probably.

Jon MacDonald: Well, thank you for sharing this, Ryan. I appreciated this, this topic that's not necessarily about driving traffic or converting sites. I, I thought that was great, so thank you.

Ryan Garrow: Thank you. Best of luck the rest of this year, Jon. Let's make it happen.

Jon MacDonald: Let's do it.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe@driveandconvert.com.