Productivity Secrets To Success

John Livesay interviews Mark Asquith

Hi, and welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. Today we’re honored to have Mark Asquith, who is an entrepreneur and speaker, and has the number one podcast in the U.K. called ‘Excellence Expected’. He is a self-described geek; obviously, I want to know him. Mark, welcome to the show.

Thank you, sir, pleasure to be here.

Mark, you have such an amazing story of how in 2005, you decided you weren’t going to work for anybody anymore, you were slightly burnt out, and you said, “There’s got to be a better way”. You started your own design and digital agency, with a bunch of great initials, DMSQD, 2010, which is still operating, and then you really have become an expert on productivity, starting in 2012. Would you mind taking us a little bit on that journey? It’s so interesting.

Yeah, of course, I got to about 2005 and realized that I just got really bored working for other people. It was quite a dull time really, and I was working in the corporate world, as many people do. It’s a story that’s familiar to many entrepreneurs and business people, and I realized I was spending a lot of time with people that, being completely honest, I didn’t really have too much in common with. I decided not to do it any more, so I stopped doing it, just stopped doing it.

I was lucky, because I was still young. I didn’t really have too many commitments, especially financial commitments, so I was able to do that relatively easily. I started freelancing, doing contract work, and moving through into training and digital training and digital enablement for big public bodies and private sector clients in the U.K.

As you said, in about 2008, I think it was, I started the web agency, which has gone through various different versions, and when I say that, I mean, it started out just being me, then we morphed into being me with a couple of co-founders, and then we morphed into what we have today, which as you say, is actually DMSQD. Believe it or not, as we record this, we have just actually re-branded. Yeah, we’re changing from DMSQD to Hacksaw, which is quite an interesting one. I always feel that there’s always different progression points in the life of a business. Being in the creative sector, we find that so much. Every few years, we redefine how we serve and help people.

This particular time, when we did that, we realized that actually DMSQD didn’t fit anymore. We’re going through a bit of a fun re-brand, which is kind of nice. Throughout the process of developing that business, like you said, John, I’d got to about 2012 and got the balance wrong. Even if there is such a thing, I actually don’t think there is, balance to be had between work and life. I got that wrong, I was working on the wrong things at the wrong time, spending too much time on these wrong things. I had to do something about it.

That’s when I started really taking productivity seriously, which sounds odd, I mean, had a business for such a long time before that. I realized the power of focused and conscious productivity as opposed to just getting through the day. That was a big, big turning point, and that led to the podcast, ‘Excellence Expected’, which then led to what we’re doing at the studio, re-branding to Hacksaw, and the success that we’ve had there. Yeah, it’s an interesting journey. It’s certainly been a fun one, and it continues on, which is always the main thing, really.

Well, I’m always fascinated, because my background is in branding and advertising, and I think all the founders reading, when you’re pitching for investors, you really have to have a good story behind your brand, and even the name of your brand. Oftentimes there’s a great story on how you came up with the name. I’m sure you considered a lot of different names before you landed on ‘Excellence Expected’ for your podcast. How did you come to that?

You know, I didn’t consider many, as odd as that might sound. Normally, I completely agree. I’ve renamed several businesses, I completely agree, you go through such a process with it. But I knew what I wanted to say with it. I knew that it was for business people, they always want more from themselves, they always expect themselves to be excellent. I knew what the sentiment was for the show, I knew that it was helping small business people, I knew that it was trying to enable people to pick out certain issues that were stopping them excelling, and really try and solve some of those problems, using the show.

I stumbled upon - well, I was consciously reading Steve Jobs’s autobiography by Walt Isaacson, and found the famous quote that Steve Jobs states that people aren’t used to working in an environment where excellence is expected. I thought that summed everything up.

People like you and I expect ourselves to be excellent, and if we’re not, we don’t let it out the door, or we beat ourselves up. That was the real light bulb moment. Of course, we expect ourselves to be this good. That’s where it came from, really.

I like it.

The sentiment was there for a long, long time, and then Mr. Jobs managed to articulate it for me in the pages of his autobiography.

Well, Steve Jobs was also known for being a perfectionist, but for me, excellence is not the same as perfectionism. Do you agree that there is a difference?

Oh, absolutely, you can be a perfectionist and completely fail at everything, because you focus on the things that don’t matter.

Right, got it. Well, let’s take a deep dive, so the readers are going to get some great takeaways. Because you’re such an expert in productivity, you actually are kind enough on your website to allow people to download a free book on this topic, which I’ve spent some time reading, and I have to tell all my readers, you’ve got to download this book on productivity, it’s fantastic. One of the things that really resonated with me was the element of personal scheduling. One of my favorite quotes is, “If it’s not scheduled, it doesn’t happen”. How do you personally, and what kind of advice do you give people who are saying, “I have my schedule and then the day gets out of control, and all I’m doing is putting out fires, and I don’t get any of my things accomplished.”?

I think it’s a challenge that faces all, and I think so many of the most successful people would just completely live by the sentiment that you’ve just stated, “If it doesn’t get scheduled, it doesn’t get done”. That was something that recently I’ve tried to even tighten upon myself. I think we all dip in and out with habit, and we sometimes catch ourselves falling back on things we’re comfortable doing. I think we constantly have to be assessing that and the idea that “if it’s not scheduled, it doesn’t get done” is really important.

The way that I determine what gets done is by using a couple of different methods. I’m a big advocate of the Gary Keller book, ‘The1Thing’, which I think is a fantastic book. I wholeheartedly believe in setting some time aside and focusing on something that’s the one thing that you need to get done. The issue is, defining that one thing that needs to get done can be really, really difficult. The way that I do it, and it’s in the book actually, is I use something called the ‘triple one principle’. Someone told me the ‘double one principle’ when I was younger, and I added the third one myself.

I love it.

The first two things are, you’ve got to sort out what’s important and what’s interesting. So the tasks that you undertake: which of these are important, which of these are interesting? The trouble is, that doesn’t really take into account the things that you can’t get away from, so that’s the third one: what’s integral? Measure your time out, figure out what you do on a daily basis. I mentioned in the book, measure it for two solid days, and then all the tasks that you do, split them into one of three categories: important, interesting, and integral.

Fantastic. We’re going to tweet that out. That’s great. “Is what you’re doing important, interesting, and integral?” That’s great.

It’s huge, and it will change the way you think about things. I talk through in the book as well, various ways of deciding what to do. So many productivity books will just cut out what’s interesting. But you can’t do that, that’s impossible, because it’s interesting to you for a reason. I think it’s about finding a harmony between all those tasks, and making sure, as so many other productivity books state, making sure you get the important stuff done when it should be done, and making sure that your mind is completely active when you’re doing those things.

You can’t ignore the integral. You can’t, it’s not as easy as turning off your e-mail, it’s not as easy as not taking any phone calls all day. It’s just sadly not that easy. Yeah, I think that’s the big thing people need to understand. I think we all need to keep reassessing that, break everything that we do down into this ‘triple one principle’.

Right, and especially the interesting aspect of that. Because you talk about one of the key ways to prevent burn-out is to stay happy. It seem so basic, but if you’re interested in what you’re doing, then you’re engaged and then that prevents burn-out, if I understood your book correctly. Would that be accurate?

Well, I think so, and I would add to that piece. I feel the happiness comes from the fulfillment and the satisfaction that you don’t have anything hanging over you, and when we think about the burn-out stage or we think about the path that takes us to that stage, it’s because we’re constantly, as you said earlier, John, fighting fires, and constantly shifting gears and shifting directions, just to try and get these little things done. I think when you start to focus on what’s important, and you achieve that, you actually concede to yourself that it’s all right to do something interesting for twenty minutes or half an hour.

Nice.

Because you’ve achieved what you wanted to achieve for the day.

Yes.

I think we can’t be too hard on ourselves in that respect. We’ve got to understand that we set out in business to enjoy it. No one ever says to their parents, “I’m going to start a business and two years in, I’m going to absolutely hate it. I’m going to be doing work that I don’t enjoy.” No one says that. So you’ve got to keep it interesting. No question.

Fantastic. One of the guests that you had on ‘Excellence Expected’ was none other than Guy Kawasaki, and one of the things that he said in that interview that I wanted to ask you about, that I thought was so great, is “Most CEOs suck at social media”. Since one of the other things that you offer on your website is something again that you can download for free, everybody, ‘Five Twitter Sins’. I’d love to have you talk about Guy’s quote and the whole concept of social media and all that good stuff.

Yeah, it was a fun one with Guy, such a fantastic character and such a nice, gracious chap. The sentiment and context of that was really that he’s very much, and this is massively advocated by so many entrepreneurs, about people-to-people, human-to-human, and that’s why most CEOs generally suck at social media, because they don’t understand that it’s not the traditional one-way, linear, shout-out-loud marketing that they perhaps are used to.

That puts that into some context, and I think especially in small business, I find that most people still don’t get how social media works, because they feel like they should go on there. It’s like an e-mail newsletter, they think their e-mail newsletter is still the way to go about marketing, using e-mail marketing. The minute that you realize no one really cares what’s in your newsletter, the minute you start to get creative and actually start to give value. I think that’s where so many people in small business really, really struggle. They’ll jump on, they’ll pop a tweet out once every three days because “it’s the right thing to do,” and feel somehow vindicated by doing so.

All they’ll do is, they’ll say, “we’ve got a new product”, “we’ve got a new service”, or “we’ve won an award”, or “we’ve got new premises”, or “new team member”. No one cares. When you start to dig underneath that and really dig into it, most people in small businesses only worry about that, because they assume it will take all of their time to create this massive overarching social strategy, when actually they can start very easily by just being themselves and having a bit of personality, and having something to say that will connect with people. You know, the whole “know-like-trust” linear path through. That starts with personality, and I think that’s what Guy was getting at, that most CEOs don’t get that. I do believe a lot of small business people still don’t understand that it’s all right to just be yourself and actually be you.

Yes, because especially when I’m coaching people on how to pitch themselves to investors, I explain to them time and again that you’re pitching yourself. They’re investing in you and then your idea, not the other way around. Social media is a great way to develop relationships as you mention in your ‘five Twitter sins to avoid’. Judy Robinett who wrote that great book, ‘How to be a Power Connector’ and how we actually met, which is a great example of connecting, is all about connecting through people. It’s who you can then acknowledge on Twitter that’s said something nice about you and having that personal relationship and your personality come through in social media, which then translates to your brand, which then translates to what you’re doing, really is such great insights that you’re offering people.

Well, I think it really is about that; about just connecting and being there and adding the value.

One of the things that I really enjoyed recently is your new Periscope videos that you’re doing, and you had such great tips on start-ups. There’s three of them: focus, pivot, and profit. I wanted to have you, if you wouldn’t mind, go into each one a little bit. In particular, I love the analogy you used of the captain and the ship and one degree.

It’s a massive one that is, and really understanding that, that’s in the pivot, and it overlaps into focus as well, but definitely the ability to pivot and decide that you’ve gone ever so slightly in the wrong direction, and when you start looking back over your shoulder, you’re miles away from where you wanted to be. I think, as you said, the captain of the ship analogy is a really useful one, because if you set out in small business, any business really, that one year later is exactly the same as it was the year before, when they first started. People change.

The businesses that go under, in my opinion, a lot of the problems that they have is they don’t realize soon enough that they have got it wrong. They’re focused so much on being busy, getting through the day today, going in and doing what they need to do just to get through that day. They’ve not stepped away from it, looking to the big picture and course correcting where they need to. If you do set off one degree out for six months, you’re still only within touching distance of where you thought you might probably want to be. But a year down the line, eighteen months down the line, you’ve got such a massive chasm to cross to get back on course, that people really do then start to lose a bit of faith.

I think having the mindset of being able to pivot and allowing yourself to actually understand that that’s all right, isn’t failure, you’re just changing. If you go to a restaurant, you order a steak, and then the minute the guy walks off, you say, “Excuse me, actually, sir, I changed my mind, I didn’t want a steak, I wanted a lasagna.” He doesn’t care, it’s just that steak wasn’t going to work for you at that time. I think allowing yourself to have that confidence that it’s not failure, you don’t have to impress anyone, you don’t have to pretend to anyone that you’ve got everything sussed, it’s all right to have that pivot.

But wait, there’s more?!

This post has been adapted from The Successful Pitch podcast. Listen to this past episode for more on the inspiring story of MARK ASQUITH!

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_About_As a funding strategist, John Livesay helps CEOs craft a compelling pitch which engages investors in a way that inspires them to join a startup’s team.

After a successful 20-year career in media sales with Conde Nast where he worked across all 22 brands in their corporate division [GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, W and Vogue] and created integrated programs for clients such as Lexus, Hyundai and Guess, John won salesperson of the year in 2012 across the entire company.

Follow John on Twitter at @john_livesay. We welcome your comments.