In this episode of The Bathroom Break, hosts Daniel Murray and Jay Schwedelson tackle popular business and marketing sayings, challenging their validity and sharing perspectives from their experiences in the field. They also sprinkle in a bit of pop culture talk, discussing current movies and apps for film fans.
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Best Moments:
(01:12) “Love what you do, and you’ll never work a day in your life” – Is this true?
(02:35) The pros and cons of overthinking in marketing
(04:40) The importance of admitting when you don’t know something
(06:15) “If it doesn’t scale, don’t do it” – Debunking this myth
(07:37) Brief discussion on current movies and the Oscars
(09:32) Introduction to the Letterboxd app for movie enthusiasts
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Transcript
Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marking tips or use the bathroom.
Daniel Murray:Or both.
Daniel Murray:But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.
Jay Schwedelson:This collab is going to be super fun.
We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwedelson from the do this not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back for Bathroom Break.
This is Jay Schwedelson from the do this, not that podcast. I'm here with Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials podcast.
And today we're going to be talking about stupid things that people say, which ironically is the majority of things that we talk about on this podcast. What an opening. That is terrible. All right, I want to get right into it.
I'm not going to ask you what you ate for dinner last night or something ridiculous like that. I want to get right into it. So I'm going to start out with the first one.
I want to get your reaction and I really don't know what your vibe is on this. All right. Stupid things that people say about careers and business and life. And here's the first one.
Love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life. What is the Daniel Murray take on that?
Daniel Murray:My take on that statement is that you're never going to 100% love what anything think you do. And I think you should double down on things that you're good at instead of stuff that you love that you do.
Because you'll do way better in your career doubling down on a skill you can be the best at than doing things something that you love, if that skill is something that you're you love too, maybe, but you still feel like it's on point at work once you've done that. But what's your take on that?
Jay Schwedelson:I think this is one of the worst things that people say because it takes young people down a horrible path where they think that if they don't love what they're doing that they're not in the right job for themselves. Listen, you can't hate what you do. You can't be torture. But if you're passionate about what you do, it doesn't mean you have to love it.
I don't love what I do. I mean, work's a four letter word. It is. I love meeting cool people. I love being passionate about it. I love the life that it gives me.
But I don't love what I do. And that's fine. Fine. I think it's garbage, and it makes people stress out that they're on the wrong path. And you're not.
1% of people love what they do. Good for you. You're a ballet dancer. You're a florist. You love it. Have a great time. All right, that's my hot take. All right, next one.
I got another one for you. Ready? Don't overthink things. Is overthinking bad or good?
Daniel Murray:It could go both ways, I think, but I think everybody overthinks, so I think that's ridiculous. And in general. But I do think that marketers in general overthink everything, and that leads to not executing.
I rather just someone execute than overthink because everything in marketing to me is a test. Everything. You don't know what's going to flop. You don't know what's going to work.
Most marketers I know, me and Jay are always trying things, and we don't know what to be doing half the time. So.
Jay Schwedelson:Like, right now.
Daniel Murray:Exactly. So, I mean, overthinking is going to happen, but in marketing, it leads to dangerous behavior when you are spending too much time.
Jay Schwedelson:You know, it's funny, when you said it, when you started talking, I started to agree with what you were thinking. That's not originally what I thought. So you changed my mind. Because you're right. We overthink and then we don't execute.
And execution is everything in marketing.
I guess when I was thinking about overthinking, I was like, you know, sometimes I'll be in the middle of the night and I'll pop up and somebody pop my brain about whatever's going on at work, and I'll be like, oh, my God, that's perfect. And I'll put a note in my phone. That's because I'm overthinking. I won't stop thinking about it.
And sometimes my best ideas come at the worst possible times. And I'm against this idea of you shouldn't overthink. But to your point, you can't overthink to the point where you're not executing.
So I subscribe to what you just said. I think that makes a lot of sense.
Daniel Murray:Yeah, I just. I've just seen so many marketing campaigns take months and months because people overthink every detail. I think what yours.
Like, I think your brain's Never going to stop thinking of ideas. And the best ideas don't happen in front of a laptop. They happen at the weirdest times.
But I do think that overthinking leads to campaigns not being in the world and the market is the best test for marketing.
Jay Schwedelson:All right, another hot take, weird thing that people say is never admit you don't know the answer. So, like, saying I don't know is bad.
Daniel Murray:That's the dumbest take ever. Because I think you. There's never, there's never a dumb question. And the best markers are always asking why to everything.
And especially in our profession where it depends is the number one answer. Because every situation, every industry, every, Every Persona, every audience is different. Asking questions will help you get to the answer faster.
And you also have so many tools now that you can ask questions too. So just ask those questions, please.
Jay Schwedelson:Yeah. And, you know, I think when you.
When somebody asks me something or I ask somebody something and they say, you know, I don't know, but let me find out.
I trust that person so much more than somebody asks a question to, and then they give me an answer and I know that they're full of it and they're just like spewing out nonsense. So. So it's almost like I don't know as a confidence builder to me that the person's confident enough to be able to, like, you know what? I don't know.
I'll find out. It's totally fine.
Getting confident enough to say I don't know is like a secret sauce way to build a strong connection with somebody else, ironically.
Daniel Murray:So I think if you're early in your career or you want to, managers are looking for that. They don't care if you actually know the answer to everything. They just care that you are taking the time to find out the right thing to do.
So they don't really care.
Jay Schwedelson:So. All right, one more. If it doesn't scale, don't do it.
Daniel Murray:Well, you know me, I love organic social. And organic social at the beginning is one of the most unscalable things. I think most marketing at the beginning is unscalable until it scales.
So I think that's ridiculous because you will spend time on actions that will get answers now and you won't do things that are long term, like building brand SEO, organic social, which will actually keep your brand existing for long, long time.
If you're trying to keep your brand only a year or two, then do do only things that maybe will scale, like paid ads, but you need to do the other Things to scale.
Jay Schwedelson:Yeah. And I think doing unscalable things leads to scalable things. Right. You start doing stuff. All right, cool. This is working.
Let me figure out actually how to build this into something. Some way I can keep doing this. Even, Even this episode, this podcast, the Bathroom Break.
You know, when Daniel and I said, hey, why don't we do a couple episodes release on our, each other's podcast? Neither one of us, frankly, like, how do we carve out time to do this every single week? I don't know.
And here we are, we're like 40 episodes deep, and we, you know, you just do it. You keep on going. You figure it out. At least that's my vibe. That's what I think. All right, let me ask you a ridiculous question.
The top movie right now there is Captain America. I think this looks like garbage. I have no interest in seeing it. Are you going to see Captain America? Do you care about this?
Daniel Murray:I watch it because, to give it a shot, because I do like Marvel, but I do think for some reason, the last, like, six Marvel movies have just been abysmal. And having not having the, the OG Captain America in the movie is actually harsh to me, so it's kind of hurts my soul.
But Marvel movies have just gone downhill in the last four to five to six movies, and it's just they're losing the plot. So I'm sad about it.
Jay Schwedelson:Are you. So speaking of that, with the Oscars coming up, are you, like, one of these people, like, oh, my God, I gotta watch all the Oscar movies.
Are you gonna sit back and watch, like, the substance with Demi Moore and all these other movies? Are you like, I don't even care, actually.
Daniel Murray:I want to know your take on it because some of the best movies of the year aren't even getting nominations and stuff like that, which is kind of crazy. I mean, no hate on, like, Amelia Perez, but I didn't know that was even a movie until, like, the Oscars came out.
Like, I didn't know that was a movie. No hate on that movie. I think I, I, I'll watch it to give it its flowers.
But how did it get 13 nominations over some of the best movies that were out this year? Which is. Oh, yeah, crazy.
Jay Schwedelson:There was a movie called Anna, which is nominated. Whatever. It's about, like, this, like, Russian mobster dude, whatever. And so I was like, we should, let's watch it. It's nominated. So we watched it.
It has to be one of the biggest pieces of garbage of all time. I was like, can I have this two hours back in my life. This is horrendous. So yeah, I don't know. I just like.
So when they get nominated, I'm like, oh my God, it's that movie I saw. But I actually don't care.
Daniel Murray:Do you have the app Letterbox?
Jay Schwedelson:No, what's Letterbox?
Daniel Murray:It's basically an app where you can pick movies that are and have a watch list of movies and there's ridiculous comments of people what they.
It's kind of funny the comments of every movie and it's like live ranking of movie but you have your letterbox and say top Grammy nominated movies or something and you can star which ones you want to see and they have lists of different types of genres you want to. So it's a cool app to try out if you're a movie buff.
Jay Schwedelson:I will check that out. Although there's too much going on right now. There's the Bachelor, Love is Blind and White Lotus. So I'm very busy. So I want to see.
Daniel Murray:I'm waiting to watch that with ar White Lotus.
Jay Schwedelson:So yeah, yeah, it just came out. All right, well, we've once again we've covered a lot of ground on this show. Everybody go and listen full time. Subscribe.
Follow the Marking Millennials podcast. It is the absolute best thing on earth and appreciate you being here for bathroom break. And listen, we're going to see you at the next one, right?
Daniel Murray:Yeah, later.
Jay Schwedelson:Daniel. Come on, man, I got to get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay.
Check out my podcast, do this, not that for Marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.
Daniel Murray:Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Market Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the Bathroom Break.
We talk about marking tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips that in the world. We'll talk about it.
Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.
Jay Schwedelson:Later.