My Blog

On Digital Self-Reliance

Posted on March 22, 2019

a digital campfire

I was listening to The Ground Up Show podcast the other day and one part of the conversation jumped out at me. I completely forget who Matt D’Avella was talking to (sorry!) but they got on the topic of being able to do a bunch of digital work yourself. Things like record audio, produce video, set up a website, or send an email. Both agreed that starting side projects were immensely helpful because it forced them to learn new skills. I’ve found the exact same thing happen to me.

Related: My wife routinely asks me how I learned how to do something. Building emails, designing websites, fixing things around the house, etc. I almost always respond, “By doing it and looking something up when I need to.”

Also related: When one of my kids has a question about how to do something, I try to encourage them to figure it out on their own before asking me for a simple solution. When I do give them a solution, I try to walk them through how it works so that they can do it on their own next time around.

Finally: The world is increasingly connected through any number of digital paths. Workers are increasingly called on to do digital jobs for which they haven’t been trained. Even outside of work, people are increasingly relying on digital platforms to manage every aspect of their lives.

All of this points to the need for people to become digitally self-reliant.

What is digital self-reliance?

Digital self-reliance is the ability to accomplish important tasks online (or locally), on your own.

For me, that means being able to figure out how to create websites, create and send emails, record audio, use social media, produce videos, write and publish online, and talk to people with empathy and understanding without being face-to-face. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I immediately know how to do those things, but that I can learn and acquire those skills for future use.

It’s been a struggle to learn a lot of those skills, but it’s always been worth it. Without learning those skills and becoming largely digitally self-reliant, I never would have been able to write and release a few books on email, a video course on the same, or most of the things I do during my day at Litmus.

I’m still thinking about what this means and what skills are necessary for most people to be considered digitally self-reliant, but I do think it’s a very important topic.

What do you think? What skills do you think are necessary for digital self-reliance? How have you used your skills to accomplish something important to you? Email me and let me know. I’d love to hear about it.

OKRs: Q4 2018 Review

Posted on January 5, 2019

Measuring a mountain

2018 has come to an end and, with it, my first attempt at using objectives and key results to define my goals and track progress towards them. Here’s a quick retrospective on my first round of personal OKRs.

Objective:

Create healthier habits ahead of 2019 fitness push.

Key results:

  • Lose 10 pounds by December 31st.
  • Get 10k steps at least four days a week.
  • Go sugar/caffeine free for at least 45 days.

Out of all three, I’d say that this was my main goal. Having a desk job for the past ten years has taken its toll, and I’m on a mission to lose some weight, gain some mobility, and just feel better on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I’m giving myself a big ol’ zero for this objective.

The past two months have been spent selling our house, buying a new one, doing some major renovations in a very short period of time, and moving in over the holidays. It was complete chaos and, as a result, all of this quarter’s OKRs suffered.

As anyone who has moved can tell you, it’s largely a scramble to get way too many tasks done in less time than you could ever expect. As such, you’re left trying to fit the regular bits of life into very, very small windows of time. Common, every day activities like eating a decent meal are hard to prioritize, especially when your kitchen is packed into twenty different boxes.

My weight stayed the same (hurray for not gaining, at least!), I drank way more soda than usual, and, apart from the two weeks right around Christmas and New Year’s when we moved, the 10k day was rare.

Objective:

Increase my profile as a public speaking expert.

Key results:

  • Get 1 article published on speaking in external publication.
  • Finish first draft of Speak Easier.
  • Submit 5 CFPs to conferences for next year.

I’d call this one more successful, but only slightly. On the one hand, I did get an article on speaking published over on the LogRocket blog. I did not get a full first draft of my new book, Speak Easier, completed, nor did I submit to any CFPs, although I did gather a list of conferences to submit to and get them organized in Trello.

For reasoning and excuses, see the section above.

Objective:

Increase the reach and influence of my newsletter.

Key results:

  • Grow email subscribers to 2,000.
  • Publish The Intermittent Newsletter at least once a week.
  • Average 40% open rate.

Again, largely a failure on these OKRs, too. I’ll let this screenshot from MailChimp do most of the talking:

MailChimp screenshot showing email newsletter stats

Although my email list grew, it did so slightly. I’m a few hundred off my goal and didn’t have much time to invest in implementing any serious growth strategies. And you can see that I only sent my newsletter 5 out of the 13 weeks in the quarter.

The good news is that I did manage to average a 40% open rate, which isn’t too bad.

Overall Review

My first quarter of using OKRs wasn’t the best by a long shot. I maintain that moving house and contending with the holidays are reasonable excuses as to why, but excuses are excuses…

I do think that there are a few things I need to do moving forward to make my OKRs successful. They include:

  • Making them more visible e.g. printing them out and hanging them somewhere I will see them on a daily basis.
  • Scheduling weekly check-ins to review progress and remind myself of my goals.
  • Scheduling discrete blocks of time to work on specific OKRs.
  • Settle into our new home to make everything in life a bit easier.

See this quarter’s OKRs here.

What's next?

Posted on December 14, 2018

Illustration of Jed Bartlet from The West Wing television show

My all-time favorite TV show is The West Wing.

There are many, many reasons that I love it (and why I’m re-watching it for something like the 6th time), but I think one of the main reasons is everyone’s work ethic. Despite some major obstacles and early-administration lethargy (see s1e19, “Let Bartlet be Bartlet), the Bartlet White House is always hard at work on problems affecting the country, large and small. The major representation of this ethic is President Jed Bartlet’s signature phrase, “What’s next?”

“What’s next?” encapsulates so much. It’s not just about getting through a massive to-do list, it’s about putting to bed whatever you just completed. It’s about clearing the mental space needed to focus on the next thing. And it’s about making sure you’re focusing on the right thing.

There’s a telling scene in the first season where Bartlet’s Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, is arguing with Secretary of HUD Debbie O’Leary about her (rightfully) calling the Republican Party racist. Everyone wants O’Leary, a black woman, to publicly apologize despite her unwillingness to do so. Although it’s an important argument to have, Leo says something to the effect of, “The President won’t hesitate to fire you and say, ‘What’s next?’.” He knows that O’Leary is doing amazing work and that work needs to continue. He also knows that, as much as she hates it, it’s more important to pick your battles. O’Leary can make a bigger impact by apologizing and moving onto the work that directly affects millions of lives. It’s a horrible pill to swallow, but she ultimately agrees that it’s necessary to apologize and move on instead of losing her job.

“What’s next?” is repeated throughout the series. It’s said casually and made into a key plot point. It’s sometimes an off-hand comment. Other times it’s a massive emotional trigger for characters and the viewers alike. It’s something that starts with President Bartlet but that is embedded into the core of every person around him.

It’s one saying that I’ve been trying to keep in mind throughout my day, too.

It’s often easy to finish some task and think you’ve accomplished a lot. But, far too often, those tasks aren’t what’s important. There’s more vital work to be done. Instead of resting on my laurels or taking a break after a block of work is done, I’m trying to ask myself, “What’s next?” Both as a reminder to stop wasting the day and, more importantly, as a reminder to make sure I’m focusing on the work that will make the biggest impact.

If you haven’t seen The West Wing already, I strongly encourage you to binge it over the next couple of weeks. You won’t be dissappointed and you end up feeling inspired on top of just entertained. Likewise, I encourage you to ask yourself, “What’s next?” on a regular basis. It’s a good way to remind yourself of what’s important, regardless of whether you’re governing a country or working on a new marketing campaign.

Just a Fellow Traveler

Posted on December 1, 2018

wandering through the desert

I was listening to a podcast the other day and the guest said something that stuck with me:

I’m not an expert, I’m just a fellow traveler.

That’s exactly how I think of myself.

I’m at a point in my career where a lot of people consider me an industry expert. I’ve published and spoken enough that people tend to trust my opinion on a wide variety of subjects. That’s fantastic, but I don’t necessarily think of myself as an expert. There is plenty that I don’t know. More importantly, there is plenty that I’m still learning about myself.

There’s danger in thinking of yourself as an expert. If you consider yourself one for too long, you run the risk of becoming complacent. You’ll stop learning, start repeating yourself, and quickly become irrelevant. Or worse, you’ll keep on convincing people that your outdated theories are worth investing in, harming their work in the process.

I wholeheartedly believe that it’s better to recognize that you’re just a fellow traveler. You’re on a similar journey as everyone else in the industry—hell, as everyone else in life. We’re all seeking new things, reaching for new goals, and learning in the process.

Like a good fellow traveler, we share what we learn with others on the road. We work together to make the trip as pleasant and valuable as possible. We give away our tips and tricks to help others navigate unfamiliar territory.

But, most importantly, we keep traveling and learning ourselves. We trudge along, explore strange new worlds, and document our progress along the way.

Speak Easier

Posted on November 21, 2018

measuing a mountain

If you paid any attention to my last post on personal OKRs, you will have noticed that one of my key results for the quarter is to have a first draft of something called Speak Easier done. And if you noticed that, you were probably wondering what the hell Speak Easier actually is.

Well… Speak Easier is my next book all about public speaking. A bit of background:

For the last 5+ years, I’ve been speaking at industry conferences, running workshops, and, perhaps most importantly, helping organize Litmus Live. During that time, I’ve learned a lot about communicating effectively onstage, both through my own mistakes and successes and those of my peers.

This past year, in particular, was spent prepping speakers for our three Litmus Live events. Although I wrote a little bit about what that means, there is a ton that I’ve learned since then through online, video, and in-person chats with speakers. So much that I don’t think it would fit comfortably in a blog post (let alone two or three). Regardless of whether speakers were brand new to public speaking or had been around the block a few times, I noticed some common themes cropping up.

What’s more, there weren’t too many resources that collected those themes and made them accessible. Sure, there is a ton of advice out there on public speaking, but I feel like a lot of it isn’t ideal for most people. Especially people that are giving talks at industry conferences, meetups, or presenting to co-workers or stakeholders.

Far too much of that advice encourages folks to follow the TED Talk template, with a focus on storytelling and mind-blowing insights. While that’s great for certain topics, that format doesn’t usually work well for conveying practical information or educating audiences about non-motivational topics.

There also isn’t a lot of reliable information on the logistics of public speaking. Things like what you need to do to get a speaking gig, how to prep for the event, build slides, practice, and get feedback, let alone what to do while you’re speaking and how to follow up with people after your talk is done.

I figured I’d better write that resource. So, that’s what I’m doing.

Speak Easier is a practical guide to public speaking for everyone, whether you’re talking in the conference room, at a local meetup, or on a massive stage.

My goal is to get the first draft done by the end of the year, with the digital and print versions available early in 2019. Along the way, I’ll be documenting the adventure of producing it here on my blog, as well as sharing resources I come across throughout the research and writing process.

Follow along here or by signing up for my email newsletter. And, if you have any tips or resources on public speaking you’d like to share, just email me.

My Personal OKRs

Posted on November 6, 2018

measuring a mountain

I just finished reading John Doerr’s Measure What Matters. It’s an inside look at the culture around objectives and key results, or OKRs, as they’re commonly called. For those that aren’t familiar, OKRs are a framework for setting goals and measuring progress towards those goals used by the likes of Intel, Google, and The Gates Foundation, as well as countless startups.

Although John Doerr’s book was geared towards using OKRs at the organizational level (and packed with lots of unnecessary fluff), I found the concept of OKRs both fascinating and appealing. Fascinating in that there’s a genuine cult that’s grown around the concept and anyone that uses OKRs seems to swear by them. Appealing in that they seem to provide a solution to two of the problems I’ve always had when setting goals:

  1. Goals tend to be too broad.
  2. Progress is hard to measure and grade.

OKRs effectively tackle both problems.

Objectives are less of a New Year’s resolution and more of a business goal (or personal goal in my case). They are tied to some sort of measurable outcome, and help narrow otherwise broadly defined goals. They can still be wildly ambitious, but should always be at least a little bit achievable. Instead of a goal of “get fit,” an objective would be “lose 20 pounds.” They should also have a deadline associated with them.

Key results are the tactical part of OKRs. They are the things you’re measuring and—when achieved—will spell certain success for your objective. If we’re running with the “lose 20 pounds” example above, some key results could be “eliminate sugar and fast food from diet” or “run for 20 minutes four times a week.” Key results are easy to track—even if they’re hard to do—and give you a clear, objective (pun intended) way to measure your progress.

This combination of defining better goals (objectives) and being able to reliably track progress (key results) have me convinced that OKRs are worth trying out. So I’m going to implement quarterly OKRs for myself for the next year to see how things go.

Part of the OKR strategy, though, is radical transparency. In an OKR-driven organization, everyone in the company is supposed to have access to their colleagues, bosses, and overall company’s OKRs so that everyone is held accountable.

Personal OKRs are a little trickier to be transparent about, though. Sure, I can tell my wife about them and put check-ins on my calendar to review them, but I want to be more transparent to a wider audience. Since I have a few thousand monthly readers of my blog and newsletter, I figured y’all would be the perfect people to share my OKRs with.

So, I’ve set up a section on my website to dump my OKRs. Each quarter, I’ll grade and review the previous quarter’s OKRs as well as define the next set. I plan on posting a retrospective at the end of the quarter here on my blog, and welcome any feedback, criticism, or encouragement from any of you along the way.

Although I’ve been exposed to OKRs before, using them at a personal level is new to me. I feel like my first set of objectives are poorly defined, but I’m hoping that they will get better as I get deeper into the process of using OKRs.

If you want to follow along, bookmark my OKR page or subscribe to my email newsletter. And, as always, you can email me with feedback whenever you want.

Supporting Speakers

Posted on August 19, 2018

a ladder leading up to a stage

I’ve given a lot of talks at conferences over the past 5 or so years. While I’ve had the pleasure of speaking at some well-run events, I’ve also run into poorly organized, unprofessional ones, too. While attendees rarely sense the problems of a disorganized event, there is one group of people that are massively impacted by that disorganization: speakers.

Speaking at an event is a huge undertaking—one that’s often thankless. A lot of event organizers think they’re doing speakers a favor by inviting them. In those cases, the first thing to go out the window is support for the speakers. Speakers are left to their own devices to figure out what’s required of them, where they need to be when, who their actually speaking to, and why they’re even there. It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances that feels far too common.

That’s why I’ve been trying to focus on speaker support leading up to (and during and after) our annual series of events at Litmus Live. While we’ve always prided ourselves on helping speakers prep for the big day, we’ve been trying out some new things this year to see what else we can do to help folks out. After all, they’re the ones doing us a favor by agreeing to speak. They’re the ones that are taking hours, days, and weeks out of their lives to share their knowledge and experience with our attendees. The least we can do is make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

Here’s what we’ve been doing to support speakers this year.

Communication

The most important thing we do is try to communicate with speakers. This includes before, during, and after the events. Once invited to speak, people gain access to a few things:

  • A series of emails with important information
  • A private speaker Slack channel
  • A speaker wiki
  • Speaker video calls
  • Litmus staff to answer any questions

Our goal is to provide all of the information speakers need so that they have to worry about as few logistics as possible. This includes providing clear dates and deadlines for key deliverables, help with travel, booking hotel accommodations on their behalf, and a direct line to conference staff to help answer any questions they may have.

illustration of two friendly people talking

We’ve traditionally provided all of that information via email and a PDF speaker packet, but this year we thought we’d make things a bit more interactive by setting up a Slack group for all of the speakers. Our thinking is that it’d be a great way to provide real-time updates as we figure out logistics and it would give speakers a chance to get to know one another before they actually meet in person. Along with the general channel, we have event-specific channels for each city so that we can keep speakers updated without swamping everyone with info that might not apply to them.

Instead of the PDF speaker packet, we opted to go with a speaker wiki site that we can update on a rolling basis. We wanted to avoid the tedious process of updating, generating, and resending a PDF to everyone, so we built a simple Google Site to house all of the information for speakers. Although Google Sites is woefully outdated, it had the added benefit of letting us bypass our design or engineering teams for updates. I could definitely see us creating a better branded, better designed speaker site in the coming years.

We also run a series of speaker chats via Zoom which go through all of the information they need around the conference. It gives them an opportunity to ask questions and hear directly from us, and in the case that a speaker can’t make a call, we record each one and post it to the speaker wiki (along with the slides presented during the call).

Perhaps most importantly, we’ve made it clear to speakers that they can ask us any questions they need answered. They have a direct line to a few of us via email or Slack, and they even have Calendly links to schedule 1-on-1 calls for questions, advice, feedback, and even full practice runs of their talks.

Being on the receiving end of shitty conferences, we understand the importance of timely, clear communications and do everything we can to provide those to our speakers. We don’t always get it right, but goddamn do we try.

Resources

The heart of all of those communications is providing the resources speakers need to create successful presentations. This ranges from travel and hotel logistics, to tips on speaking and building slides, audience demographics, reference videos from years past, and even a list of equipment they’ll have access to while on stage.

Most of that information is available via the speaker wiki and during the speaker video calls. On the wiki, we have pages for each city’s deadlines, travel, and hotel logistics, as well as information about the conference itself. We also provide a bunch of curated links around building and delivering successful talks.

This last one has been invaluable, especially since we routinely have a lot of first-time speakers at our events. We go out of our way to invite newer practitioners to speak—people we know from the wider email marketing community but might not be big names. A lot of them have questions or need additional inspiration or education around talking, and these resources help provide that education.

Feedback

It’s hard to build a talk and know whether or not it’s actually any good. Without rehearsing in front of others or asking for direct feedback, you’re out in the wilderness without a map. We make it clear that we can provide that map.

A few of us involved in the conferences have given a lot of talks and learned a ton of lessons in the process. We try to harness that knowledge and pass it on to speakers.

At any time, speakers can shoot us a PowerPoint or Keynote for review, an outline or doc on their talk, or schedule 1-on-1 calls to go over things and get feedback. We try our hardest to provide realistic, constructive feedback for sessions. Whether that’s recommendations on tone, visuals, structure, or delivery, we give practical advice on improving talks to provide as much value as possible for attendees.

After the event, we collect feedback from attendees for each session, which we then provide to speakers. While attendee feedback is always a mixed bag, it’s usually helpful for more inexperienced speakers to improve their skills.

Easing Nerves

Even the most experienced speakers can suffer from stage fright. During the whole process leading up to the conferences, we do what we can to ease any nerves. Our resources, speaker calls, and feedback all have a focus on encouraging speakers and putting them at ease.

illustration of a person meditating peacefully

On the day of the event, we talk to speakers and get them prepped ahead of their session to make sure they’re comfortable. We’ve filled up water bottles, run for snacks, and even given full-fledged pep talks ahead of speakers walking up on stage. We figure it’s the least conference organizers can do.

During the Sessions

When it comes to the actual sessions, we make sure that there are at least two staff members in attendance to help speakers out. We help them get mic’d up, make sure their slides are ready to go on-stage, show them how the clicker works, introduce them, and applaud them, thank them, and help them off when they’re done.

We stay close by in case anything goes wrong during a session, too, with one of us in the front row throughout. We’re ready to hop up on stage and help troubleshoot mic problems, clicker issues, and any slide screwups (I’m looking at you, Google Slides).

I’ve spoken at events where someone tells me which room to go to, then leaves it up to me to figure out how to get my slides running or get mic’d up. I’ve been left alone throughout workshops, without even a hello from conference organizers. I know how terrible it feels when you’re trying to get pumped up to stand in front of strangers and teach them, and make sure our speakers don’t experience anything close to it.

What else can we do?

The jury’s still out on whether or not all of this actually works. The Slack group hasn’t been as active as I would have expected and the speaker wiki is a bit janky since we opted to use Google Sites. And I’ve sent a few too many emails with typos or incorrect information (and just as many apology and correction emails), but the feedback from speakers has been extremely positive.

Not everyone has the resources of Apple or TED, who have entire teams to help coach speakers and design slides, but I firmly believe that every conference can put in more effort to help support speakers. After all, an event’s nothing without speakers talking to attendees. They’re the ones doing the hard work (although I’ll be the first to agree that planning a conference is exhausting). We should all go out of our way to make it as easy as possible to do the one thing most people dread: speak in public.


Do you speak at conferences or help organize them? What have you learned from the process? What do you think conference organizers can do better? Email me and let me know.

David Allen Unexpectedly Explains Why Representation Matters

Posted on July 16, 2018

I’m digging into Getting Things Done by David Allen again, and I came across a passage that perfectly explains why representation for marginalized groups is so important. I didn’t expect anything like that in GTD, but there it is:

It’s easy to envision something happening if it has happened before or you have had experience with similar successes. It can be quite a challenge, however, to identify with images of success if they represent new and foreign territory—that is, if you have few reference points about what an event might actually look like and little experience of your own ability to make it happen.

Pretty good explanation if you ask me. For people to understand and believe in success, they need to be exposed to it and see examples of it. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to just dream up realistic paths to success from scratch. We all need examples, people to look to, and paths highlighted so that we can start traversing them, breaking off from them, and forging our own.