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In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson debunks the myth of the 10,000-hour rule and shares actionable tactics for achieving success without the need for extensive expertise. He provides examples of how taking action, testing strategies, and launching early can lead to meaningful results.

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Best Moments:

(00:49) The misconception of needing 10,000 hours to achieve expertise

(01:22) Origin of the 10,000-hour rule from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers

(02:54) The importance of taking action without extensive knowledge

(03:08) Jay’s personal example of tackling YouTube without prior experience

(04:36) Tactic: Using “What if we did this” polls to gauge audience interest

(06:54) The $50 ad spend death match strategy for testing ad creatives

(08:04) The “launch before you’re ready” campaign approach

(09:55) TV show and movie reviews in the “Since You Didn’t Ask” segment

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Transcript
Jay Schwedelson:

Foreign welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold and I want to talk about one of the biggest lies in a person's career or business. And it's this belief that it takes 10,000 hours of practice or 10,000 hours of doing something to really reach a high level of expertise.

And you need these 10,000 hours to get on that path to success. This is beyond garbage. This is actually harmful.

And I'm going to go through some quick win tactics on doing stuff without even having 10 hours of expertise and how it could lead to even greater success. But before we get to that, how did we arrive at this nonsense that 10,000 hours is really important? How did this come to be?

in his book Outliers back in:

And he based this idea on research from this psychologist, Anders Ericsson, who studied this, like violinists all around the world. And he found that these violinists that spend 10,000 hours were able to become the greatest violinist on the planet. Well, that's great. Okay.

But it made it sound like that you needed to put in 10,000 hours, okay, before you could do the thing to really be an expert, to really get ready to launch your career and your business. And that's what we all ran with, okay? It became the career advice we all got.

It became the thing of if you're growing a business, you need to put in these 10,000 hours. And in my opinion, it's kind of like the birthplace of imposter syndrome.

ecause that thing came out in:

But the best way to know stuff is to just do the thing. Okay, I'm going to share some tactics on what you can do in trying stuff that can radically change your business, your marketing tactics, everything.

And let me share with you for myself what I mean by this. Just putting stuff in action. YouTube, okay? I have almost no experience as it relates to YouTube, like none am I going to.

I, and I very much want to have a huge YouTube presence. This is what I think is important for my business overall. All. But I don't know anything about it. Okay?

Am I going to spend the next five years and 40 hours a week?

Because that equals 10,000 hours studying YouTube, looking at the YouTube videos, trying to come up with a plan, and then after that I'm going to get. Get into motion. No, I'm not going to do that at all. Because here's the deal. I have a mountain of content.

I have hundreds of videos, and I want to do something with them. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start testing a zillion different things. I'm going to start failing at the videos that I'm posting.

They're going to be terrible. I'm going to get haters telling me that whatever I'm posting is absolute garbage. Okay?

And then over time, over like a few weeks, maybe a few months, it might take me six months, I'm going to figure it out. And that's because I'm going to be doing it. I'm not going to be waiting to do the thing and it's okay, right?

And a year from today, I'm saying it out loud. So that way it has to happen. I'm going to have thousands and thousands of YouTube subscribers because I won't stop until I do.

And I have no expertise, I have no right to even say that. But that is how you get to that next point. Okay, so what are some tactics that you could do right now that you're not an expert in?

You have no business doing it, but if you keep at it, you can transform your career. You could transform your business. One of them that I love is doing a very specific poll. You could do this poll on LinkedIn.

You could do it on Instagram, you could do with an email send. And the poll is this. It is. What if we did this poll? Right? Let's say that you are a SaaS company, you sell some sort of software, okay?

And you put out this poll. This. What if we did this poll?

Instead of launching a full fledged product or campaign, you just ask your followers and your audience this what if Question. All right? So, for example, you could write something like this. What if we replaced our user manual with a TikTok style video series? Okay?

And here's the situation. You have never made short form videos.

You don't know anything about TikTok, and you're putting it out there and you're going to get this reaction and people say, oh, my God, that'd be so cool if you had that. That would be amazing. You should totally do that. Or you'll get crickets. Everyone be like, who cares? That's stupid, that's dumb, whatever.

But you're putting it out there in this. What if we did this poll, right? And then all of a sudden, ooh, I'm going to figure out how to make that TikTok style video series. Or what if your.

What if we did this poll was what if we turned our onboarding process into a game, right? And you say, oh, wow. And then the reaction's wild. That. That would be so cool. Gamification is where it's at. This is the best idea.

You should totally do that. But, oh, I don't know anything about games. I stink at video games. I don't even have an Xbox or PlayStation. But you know what?

You're going to figure it out. Because that gamification is what people want. They got excited about it. You put it out there in this. What if we did this poll?

Or what if you ask this question? What if we gave you an AI coach that answered your questions instantly? And then the poll was like 90% of people like, this is the best idea.

I love this idea, blah, blah, blah, blah. But guess what? You don't know anything really about AI.

You're super embarrassed about how little you know about how to get AI integrated into your product, your business, your thing. But now you're gonna figure it out, right? So I love this idea of what if we did this poll now, Other random tactics.

We just did this a few months back and it changed our marketing dramatically, which was. And this is so ridiculous, it is. The $50 ad spend. Death Match. What? Here's what we did. Okay? You, here's what you do. And I'll tell you what we did.

You launched two completely different ad creatives with just $50 each. Okay, this is ridiculous. So two different ad creatives with just $5 each for each ad creative. And you could do this on Facebook.

On LinkedIn, on Google Ads, okay? And then the winning ad, you put more budget to, and then the losing ad, you let it die. And then you repeat the same thing every 48 hours, right?

And so we did this. We did this for 14 days where we did this $50 ad spend death match, right? Where we had all these different creatives.

One had to beat the other and beat the other and beat the other. And then at the end of 14 days, we had only spent $700 and we had an ad creative that we are now using. That is crushing it.

It is radically lowered our cost per acquisition. And you know what? We don't have to be an expert on Facebook ads or on Google Ads or on any ads. We just went in there, said, you know what?

We're going to blow a little bit of money. We're going to do it in this creative way. And I'm not spending 10,000 hours trying to figure out how to do this. You can do little things like that.

Or how about a launch before you're ready campaign. This is secret sauce stuff, okay?

Go out there on any platform, maybe it's in your email newsletter, and publicly announce a new product, offer, or idea before it's even finished, before you have any clue what you are doing. Why? Because depending on the reaction you get, that'll tell you, yes, you should go forward. You should do that. That is how this podcast started. Okay?

I didn't know anything about podcasting. Literally.02 years ago, I didn't even. I never even listened to a podcast before. But I went on LinkedIn and I was like, you know what?

Maybe I should have a podcast. And I put up a poll and I said, hey, I'm thinking about a podcast, because you know what? The world needs another podcast.

And I said, if this poll gets over 50% of people saying that I should make a podcast, I'm gonna do it. And I knew nothing about podcasting. Okay? And I did it. We ended up getting 95% of people said, yeah, you should have a podcast. I made a podcast.

My first few episodes were terrible, but I figured it out, and here we are. Okay, so this idea that you need 10,000 hours is total and complete garbage. All right, before we get to.

Since you didn't ask, I want to let you know that's the ridiculous portion of this podcast. As if this whole thing's not ridiculous. But this podcast is presented by Marigold. I love Marigold. I send my email out through marigold. Okay?

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All right, let's get into. Since you didn't ask, I want to break down what's going on with TV right now.

What I'm watching, what you should not be watching, and what's going on out there. First off, I cannot believe that the number two show in the world and in the United States on Netflix right now is XO Kitty Season 2.

Now, for those of you don't know, okay, there was a movie where which was called to all the Boys. I've loved before. This was an excellent movie. And then they made a TV show called Xo Kitty. Season one was horrible. Season two is even worse.

I cannot tell you to avoid the show more strongly. I don't understand why it's so popular. It's unwatchable.

Speaking about other things that are unwatchable, I just tried to watch your Cordially Invited, which is on Prime. That is the new romantic comedy with Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell. I love Reese Witherspoon. I really love Will Ferrell.

That dude's like the funniest guy on the planet. I'm like, this is going to be great. This thing stinks. I don't understand.

They're too good of actors and comedians or whatever to not have made something great. I am sorry. It's a, it's a must miss if you ask me. Severance. I'm all caught up on Severance.

I love the show Severance on Apple, but they need to, they need to speed it up. Okay? This is the show with Adam Scott and Ben Stiller's like the director, producer, whatever. And I watched all season one, which was incredible.

But this season is moving so slowly. I cannot take it. I am losing my mind. They need to move it along with what's going on. I know you don't care.

I know you're like, what is he talking about? I don't know what I'm talking about. I also just watched the Substance with Demi Moore. She's amazing. I mean, this movie went off the rails.

I recommend watching the substance, but it is bizarro kind of gross. And it gets really, really, really weird. But Demi Moore, Demi Moore, whatever. She should win the Academy Award. I have no idea who she's up against.

She was incredible. This movie is two thumbs up for me, but very weird. Oh, then the Real Housewives in New York. I just finished the the First Reunion. Wow.

That season was terrible. But the reunion was bonkers. So you got to check out Real Housewives of New York, the Reunion, and then the thing that's coming up, Love is blind.

Season eight starts February 14th. I'm going to be locked in on that. So lots of important things going on. I appreciate you being here.

Listen, check out jschwetelson.com you can go there. We could partner together, we could work together. You can come on the podcast, I'll go on your podcast, we'll talk about TV.

I don't know what's happening. Just go check out jschwettletson.com and thanks for being here later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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