Bringing the heart and soul back to sales and marketing with Scott Barker

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Thanks for having me, man. Excited to be here. And my goal for this podcast, man, I think is just to emulate some of our chats down in Costa Rica on the beach. Let's try and get to those and.

I think, and then we'll get there because I think I'll do a semi second intro here of, you know, you're around the right people and the good people when you can have conversations about life and work and they seem to just flow seamlessly between. Right. So there was an evening Scott and I are chilling out on the beach, probably a couple imperials deep, right, The Costa Rican beer. And we're talking about marketing funnels, customer referrals, and then life goals and relationships all within like a two to three hour stretch. Right. And so I actually think it's a good kickoff to. What I wanted to talk about here is like, why do you think like sales and marketing seem to have lost their soul a little bit? Like it all looks the same, sounds the same, feels the same, and it's missing that connection. Like why do you think we've gotten to this point?

Yeah, it's a super interesting question. And when you say soul, I think to me that means like life, you know, fresh life and creativity really. And when I see less creativity than I'd like to see in our world, I think it really comes down to like two things and they're pretty simple. So number one is time. You know, it takes time to be creative. And in the world of hyper growth tech sales, where every month is the most important month ever and we have to double every year and you have to hit your call and your email metrics, it can be really, really hard to take a step back and analyze what you're doing and actually be creative. It's easier just to copy someone else or sit there and Google best practices. And I often say I've repeated this a ton of times, by the time it becomes a best practice, it no longer works. And so I think as leaders, we need to make creativity a priority with our reps and give them the time they need and the room they need to experiment. Truly, when I look back at all the ways I was successful as a seller, as a bdr, as a manager, it was not because I was the best in any way other than I looked at things through a different lens and I didn't take them at face value. And I thought there was always we could do something better, easier, faster and more creative. So that's one is just Simply finding the time, like you know this KD, like when you're going to write a LinkedIn post or you're going to do some prep on these podcasts, like you got to carve out some time to actually get those gears turning.

And what I think at least, and you just touched on this is a good little, I think next point here, one of the things that I valued about our relationship and in the conversations that we've had is I feel like you're willing to ask yourself the tough questions, right? Like to not shy away from them, but ask yourself the tough questions. What are some of the questions people should be asking themselves about how they're going to market? Right. And then we're take this the personal route here as well in a second of like, what should they also just be asking about themselves as a person? But like, what are the hard questions that people are maybe avoiding when they're looking at their sales and marketing functions that they should be asking themselves?

Yeah, it's a really good question and it kind of ties in to the last one, which is, you know, why are we missing this soul? Why are we missing this creativity? That is a question in of itself you should be asking. And I think the second thing there, other than time, is also this, this massive move to specialization. Right there is, his name's escaping me, he's a famous sci fi author and he, he famously said specialization is for insects, not humans. And you know, when you think about that, we are insanely creative beings floating on a tiny rock in the middle of an eternal, ever expanding vacuum of space that are literally made of stardust from the universe. And you're saying that I should specialize and dedicate my entire life to just one thing because that's how I make more money. Excuse my French, but fuck that. You should learn everything you can about everything, history, how your mind works, all about different religions, you know, quantum computing, the mating rituals of, you know, two toed sloths. I don't care what it is, man, but you know, you need to take inspiration from everything. And if you're stuck just consuming, you know, in this instance, sales books, it's going to be tough to have that soul. Because to me, creativity and soul is sparked from two seemingly different ideas bouncing off each other and creating something entirely new. So if you're going to specialize, specialize in an industry, not in a skill set. And that's a tough question.

I love that. I think what that leads to, the question I ask myself all the time is, is it actually working Is it actually working? Right, if you break down, we'll talk specialization for a second. The reason why people say to specialize is for supposedly faster skill development and results, but to take that step back and go, okay, is it actually working? Like, do we actually think SDRs are better now than they were six years ago? Like, are they actually better prospectors because they specialized first? The full cycle reps that we had, Are closers better now? Are closers better closers now? Because all they do is close? I don't think so. Like, when you really take the step back and go, is it actually working? I don't think that it is. Are you seeing like similar trends there? Like, when you specialization, is it working?

Yeah, I think one of the questions you have to ask when this comes up is who is it working for? Is it working for the organizations that we work for and we're lucky to work for, or is it working for the individual? Because for me, specialization is really just a better way to organize and it's better for efficiency. So. So we say, but is there potentially another way of doing it that allows people to be more creative, that could potentially drive better results? And I mean, one of the things I'm seeing, and I would love to hear if you're seeing the same, is marketing is getting pushed down the funnel and sales is getting pushed up the funnel. And what I mean by that is I'm finding we need marketing more and more than ever in like later stages, particularly in large deals, to keep people engaged. You know, there's a lot of noise out there and sales is getting pushed up the funnel. You know, having to create content on LinkedIn technology is democratizing a lot of these skills. Meaning it's making it easier for a sales rep to like, create your own videos, create a piece of collateral, and the lines are really blurring. And they have been blurring for a few years and I don't know how much sense it will make in five years to have a separate sales and marketing department that have their own meetings and like, really, is that the best way to do it? I think we'll see more of a blended pod, more like a tribal approach where you have a smaller unit and someone is an expert at one thing, but can understand the whole of what everyone does in that little pod or tribe.

I love that. I think that is definitely something, one that I am seeing. Right. Actually, I think we even talked about this in Costa Rica a little bit about sales turning into outbound marketing, because I do think in the next three to five years Cold calling as it is today does not exist in the same way.

Cold email, it'll be impossible, man. Right there's that button now where it's like, screen anything. I don't know, like, nah, I don't want it.

The holy grail for so long was direct lines. If you get a prospect's cell phone number, I've had six people reach out over the past two months about the latest iPhone 12 going, yo, so our calls don't go through anymore. Like, we're just automatically screened to voicemail. Yeah, been trying to tell y' all this is coming, right? And so it is. It's taking this educational base approach. And like, that's what marketing, I feel was, was and still is better at than sales, which is educating the market, providing insights to the market where sales generally has a little bit better, like, call it action based language of like, then doing something with it. I think that has to blend as we move forward. Because sales, you have to educate your prospect, but then marketing, you also have to do. Okay, you educated them, so what, what are they supposed to do with that information? Now you said a little something that I want to touch on here. We have all this technology, but I feel like we're lacking in skill, right. All these tools were supposed to make us better, right? But there, you know, there's the classic phrase, a fool with a tool is still a fool. And I feel like we've lost sight of skill development, like actually getting good at our craft. Like, what are you seeing from some of you, like, the best companies of the people you're talking to and how they're like, making the skill of their reps better to better utilize the tool.

Yeah, that's a really interesting point and one I think a lot about. And I think over the next two, three years, we're going to see serious, serious consolidation within the sales technology kind of ecosystem. And hopefully your reps will just have to live within one or maybe two tools. It's getting a little crazy, right? You've got like eight parts of your sales technology stack. You gotta train people on all of them. Each one of those tools wants to be the one where your reps live. They're buying for that, you know, that attention, the new attention economy we're in. And so that's unsustainable. And the interesting thing is, so for me, and you can think about this in your own life, whenever I have bought a piece of technology or signed up for a free technology or whatever, it's because I have built a process, I get Tired of a part of that process which is very repetitive, and I think there's got to be a better way. So then I Google set problem, I find a tool, and I slip it into that process and bam. That's amazing. I just solved that problem that I had. But what we're doing as leaders is not getting our reps to experience that pain, that problem before giving it to them, right? So they don't know. They're just like, oh, this is how it's done. So they don't, A, they don't even, like, really appreciate it. B, they haven't identified the problem. You're just kind of forcing it on them. And so they don't know all the benefits. So I don't know. This might sound like a drastic measure, but I would love to see a team not give them their team sales tools for the first two months or something and see and then be like, oh, by the way, we just got outreach or we just got a sales engagement platform, and look at their eyes just pop out of their head and be like, what, are you kidding me?

It's so funny you mentioned this. So another question I like to ask myself on a regular basis is, have I gotten away from something that worked before?

Right?

Like, have I stopped doing something that worked before?

Humans, I do that all the time. I learned stuff and then we forget. We just stopped.

So when I was at Snack Nation, I did the new sdr, New AE had to earn sales lofter outreach their first month. They did not have it. Now, what was funny about this? The original reason why I did this was budget allocation. It was one further month before adding on a seat, right? Like, we were bootstrapped as a mofo, right? So like, it's like, okay, that's one extra month. But then what it did to your point is like, they. I wrote down they had to learn it in a bad way before getting the tool right? And I was just talking about this with my enablement director last week. I said, I feel like we're spending so much time teaching them the tools. Tools that we're not getting done what we need to get done. At the end of the day, I need them to hit X amount of calls, teach them how to do that, and then Salesloft or Outreach or Apollo or Groove or whoever else makes it easier to do what they were already doing. That's what you said. You were like, I was already doing it and then got a tool that made it better. Right now we're just giving people tools hoping that they'll Be good with it. So, like, I'm going back to it. Like, I think it actually does make sense of, like, let them earn it. Let them get a taste of how it is inefficient. Right. And then go from there. But the theme of this, something you said earlier, something I've been thinking about, a theme of that is this addiction to speed. Companies are so addicted to speed that they want to go to market faster. They want their reps making calls faster. They want more leads faster. And it's killing intention. It's like we're doing all this stuff very quickly, but without intention. Coming back to this soul idea, like, how can marketers or salespeople do a better job of being intentional with what they're doing?

Yeah. And this answer might sound trite, and I'll try and think of a. A quote to better highlight it because it's similar to what I said at the beginning. There's a naval. So anyone who knows me knows I quote naval way too much. But he's got a quote that is something around. A busy calendar and a busy mind will destroy your ability to create anything. Great. So when you're going fast and you're moving quick in that world, it's good to have a busy calendar. It's good to be, like, rocking and rolling and busy mind and a million things going all the time and getting hit up on WhatsApp, and you've got your slack messages open and all this. But in reality, that's not the stuff that's going to move the needle. That's just a cog in the system. And I think anyone who's actually creating these processes and these systems need to step back and find ways to give themselves more time. And we should give everyone that ability to do it.

So let's get tactical here a little bit. How do you live that? Right. Because from the outside looking in, you're on the webinars, you're on every podcast that exists. You're running sales hacker, you're working with outreach. You've got all these things that you work. How do you. How do you do that? Like, how do you make space? Or how do you block time to give yourself kind of that freedom to create?

Yeah. So it's a great question. And I've been working extremely hard over the last, I would say, six months to really live by this, because I've identified this is truth. Like, this is some capital T truth. And I know it is. You know, from. From my personal experience and talking to a ton of other folks who have been wildly successful is a yes, time blocking on your calendar, like block of a very bare minimum of an hour a day that is just for you to think. Just literally think about whatever. And it's not your, like, meditation time or anything. You're focused on work, but you're just thinking, how can we do things better? What could I. Could I automate anything? Could I outsource anything? What do I have on my plate that shouldn't be on my plate? You know, and just. Just brainstorm. So that. That is one. Number two, I'm a big fan. And just like you said, you learn things and then you forget them. You learn things, you forget them. But I was in a really, really good cycle, which I'm going to get back to not looking at my phone for an hour when I wake up. That helped immensely with creativity and free thought because you're not immediately bombarded with things and even getting up just a little bit earlier. There's nothing better in my eyes than getting up earlier and feeling like you're working when the rest of the world is sleeping. There's something about that time that just builds creativity. There's no pressure on you. I like to do a little bit of work on Saturdays, sometimes Sundays. My life is extremely integrated. Work often does feel like play to me. I will do a little bit of work on the weekends because I know I'll be a little bit more. More creative. I know my brain works better when I work out every day. So finding time to do that as well, those are some of the things and something I'll be experimenting with in the new year. And I stole this from Tom Alamo, which I really like. He gets up early and he does the classic just pick two or three things that you want to get done that will, you know, feel like you had an accomplished day. And then everything else is kind of gravy. I'm gonna try and get that. Those three done before 9 o'. Clock. So get up earlier, get those done by 9 o'. Clock. So anything after 9 o' clock and all those meetings and everything, that's just all, all gravy. So find your to do list. Circle those three. You've talked about this. I think it's attributed to Bill Gates or something, but that really helps with focus as well.

No, I'm with you there. It's actually a shift I've made in the last two months is I've shifted some of like my gratitude, my exercise, my meditation stuff. Like I am the morning. Like you said, that's my that's my productive time. That's my, you know, I feel like I'm most creative. And I was noticing, like, you know, I talk about this a lot in terms of meditation that, like, it was hard for me to meditate because I wanted to get going. I wanted to get going and not because, like, you know, you mentioned it, like, as challenging as this job can be, there's also a part of me that, like, I enjoy what I do. And so there was always this feeling like, I want to get going, not I need to get going, I want to get going. And I just went through, like, a small, like, micro course. I think his name is, like, Craig Ballantine, and this is what he talked about. He's like, everyone's trying to force things, like, to start the day, like, get those three things done. Like, you could be done with those three core things before 10 o' clock and then do those things, right? So I do, you know, just some, like, coffee, and I'm just kind of thinking about, like, my day. I do my gratitudes. But then I get into it for, like, the first two hours, then I'm doing a little bit of journaling, then I'm doing a little bit of reading, then I go for a walk. That's when I meditate. And just starting the day with action, I think builds momentum in such a great way. And so let's talk about that real quick because we were talking a little bit before this started. In terms of what do you do when you start to feel you have gotten out of control? Maybe sound is the wrong phrase, but, like, that you've pushed it too far, right? Like, you haven't been taking care. Like, how do you start to work backwards? Because also, too, I know this. If I'm me, three years ago, I listened to this podcast and go, you know what? You're right. Okay. Exercise, meditation, sleep. Block my calendar. Don't block my calendar. Kind of block my calendar. Like, you start to do all these things, like, when you felt yourself go too far, how have you been able to bring yourself back to a place where you feel like yourself again or you feel productive again? Because this year everyone's dealing with burnout. This year everyone's dealing with a different type of weight. How do you start to bring yourself back?

Yeah, I found myself in this position not too long ago, as many did, I think this year. And actually, it's funny, I think I got to that position because I thought about it a lot, and I think I got to that position from saying yes to too Many things. So it was almost like, you know, you get these waves of momentum and things are going and people are wanting to collaborate and do this and do that, and you start saying yes and yes and yes and yes. And then all of a sudden you find yourself in these, these waters where your old routine of holding it all together no longer works. Even when you're doing the, the right things and you start to feel really overwhelmed. And for me, which I'm still learning, this lesson is saying no to projects and things, saying no to good opportunities so you can make room for great ones. And going back to some people on things that you decided to go in and be like, listen, I don't think this is for me right now, you know, I apologize. Just don't have the bandwidth. And someone said it that great way the other day. If it's not a hell yeah, it's a no, right? And there was too many things that I was doing that was just, yeah, I'll do this. This guy's awesome. This girl's awesome. Like, let's. Sure, why not? It's fun. I love what I do. But then you, you just get in over your head. So going to try to live more by that. If it's not a hell yeah, it's a. It's a no. So just saying no. No is a very powerful world. A word. Sorry. And you can, you can take control of your life back when you start saying no again. Going back to the calendar, look at internal meetings. Those, like those like weekly ones or bi weekly ones. You gotta be in all of those. Ask your manager, ask your boss if you are a manager or boss. Do you need your whole team to be in these? A lot of those are a bit of a waste. Even plant that seed with whoever organized the meeting and like, hey, like been the last couple of these. Maybe there's a better way we could do this. Can we do this like asynchronously get rid of some of those. Do look at your calendar for the week, see if you can delete some meetings, you know, cancel some meetings. Yeah, saying no is a, is a powerful way to get control.

I have on my little like vision board and like reminder board over there, could versus should, right?

I like it.

I could do this right? When people hit me up, could I do it? Could. Should I. And I try to catch myself, anytime I'm using the word could. I could do that. I could handle that. I could, yeah, I could talk to them. If you change that to should, should I do this? It changes the whole Perspective, you know, because there's some things that aren't always gonna be a hell yes that you should do. The problem is we let a lot of the coulds, right? People like you, people like me are.

Like, yeah, I could do that.

I could fit that in. Yeah, what would that just be? A couple of showers on the weekend? I could do that. And it's always the could catching that. Should I do this, though? Like, is this actually going to bring me to where I'm trying to go? Probably not. And so I like that.

It's a good framework.

It helps me. Man, I hope people listening, like, you understand, like, one that you're listening, that Scott is a human. I am a human. We struggle with all of this, too. We are not robots. We are not these perfect walking monks that are just always in a state of calm. And we've got all of our lives figured out. Like, we're still dabbling. We're still learning and tweaking and trying to do things the right way. I want to bring this back to sales and marketing real quick. Then we're going to go back into some of the life stuff. But one of the reasons I was pumped to get you on here is you get to interview a lot of people. You get to be on a lot of webinars. I think I've been on a couple in the past year with you. I think we got another one coming up in. In January. But what that means is you get to talk to a lot of people. So, like, what are some of the best things you've heard this year around sales and marketing from some of your guests? Like, what are some of the things that, like, really just, like, stand out in your head? Like, oh, that was sharp. I haven't heard that before. That's a different way of approaching something.

Yeah, I mean, I've probably done 500 or more webinars in the last, you know, two years with some of. Yeah, the top VPs of sales CROs, VPs of marketing in the world. So my head's just swimming with everything under the sun. And what's really helpful for me is I started a newsletter. So I actually take the time now and write it all down each week, which has been incredibly helpful. It's like, stays with me more. I get to actually analyze it and be like, oh, was that just a shiny object? That sounds good. Does that. I think that actually would work. And in reality. So that's been really helpful. Okay. One thing last week that I really liked. I'm not sure if, you know, if you've ever had the chance to meet Tom Cassley, he's our VP of sales over in the UK for outreach. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant guy. And I think you'll really like his, his theory. He has, and it's more for like leadership and managing people, but he's got this 1 4, 9 theory. I'm not sure if he coined it or border from someone else, but basically, if you walk up to a whiteboard in front of a class of people or on a zoom and you write, you know, 1 times 1 equals 1, 2 times 2 equals 4, 3 times 3 equals 9, and then 4 times 4 equals 18, well, everyone, as soon as they see that, are going to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's wrong. You know, the four times four should say sixteen. That's, that's wrong. And that's how many of us manage our teams. We're really, really quick to point out where they went wrong, when in actuality they got 75% right. And we need to focus on that positive, specific reinforcement of what they've done right. And I'm certainly guilty of this. I'm guilty of this in my professional life, I'm guilty of this in my personal life. I always think I'm helping by pointing out the flaw in the system and that's not all that helpful. That's actually how we're innately wired. So you're not some genius for being to point out the flaws. That's how we're wired. Because something wrong could equal danger, yada, yada. So I thought that was a really interesting framework that I thought you would like and relate to.

I like it a lot. Something we rolled out actually this year because of some of the turbulence that we've gone through is it was Q2, end of Q2. Going into Q3, I assigned my managers a scaling greatness assignment. I said, I want you to go find the good that's happening right now. Who has the best close rate, why? Who's booking the most meetings, why? Who has the highest contract value, why? Who has the largest seats per deal, why? I want you to study greatness for a quarter. We know there's all sorts of things going wrong, but there are some bright spots and we're not paying attention to them. So this is now a routine that every quarter I want them studying greatness too. A phrase that has always stuck with me from the book, the happiness Advantage is the cult of the average. And this has always stuck with me because he says all we do in life is we study the average. How fast can the average child learn? How fast can the average human run? How fast can the average company grow? How fast can the average employee get promoted? It's all about the average. And then we cater to the average. But there's always positive outliers that we just kind of throw away. Like, oh, that's Scott. So we're just not going to talk about him. Like he's out there. And so doing more of what is good, I think is huge. So like that's actually a good thing, I think to jump off into is what are some of the good things out there that people should be doing more of? We talked a little bit about like what's broken or like what we can do better. But let's flip this here. What are the things that like, you see to be working that people should do more of? Right, that idea of kind of studying and scaling. Greatness.

Mm, yeah, I'll answer that. I'll give one tip, I think that kind of managers and teams should be doing and then I'll give one tip for the, for the actual reps themselves. So I'll start with the reps. So not to beat a dead. Beat a dead horse. What a weird saying.

I know. There's so real quick tangent.

That's a really weird.

I always try to look up these phrases because sometimes I'm like, wait, why is this a phrase? Like, where did this come from? So now we're all gonna have to Google like where did that originate and why did that become a thing? So anyway, back to it.

That's weird. Let's change it to like beat a dead drum or something. I don't know, that just seems weird. All right, so one is just creating media. It's so simple. You hear it all the time in whatever form that is for you. If it's podcasts, if it's video, if it's blogs, if it's newsletter, if it's writing, whatever. As a rep, take the time off hours or during hours if you have a forward thinking manager and start creating media content that is going to give you leverage in your role. It's going to give you leverage to meet people that wouldn't normally talk to you. And it's also going to give you leverage for your career because you're going to build this compounding effect of a network and that network is inherently valuable. So start creating media. The other thing is, I don't know enough reps do this, but I would block even 20 minutes on your calendar a day and Call it team wins or something. And all you're doing is not thinking about, okay, how can I move this deal forward? Enlist your entire company and be like, how can we do this? Your vp, like KD is totally okay if you slack him and be like, katie, I need your help right now. We got it. Let's brainstorm. I gotta think of how we're getting in. Talk to your CEO, talk to your cfo, talk to them all. They all have incredible connections. And we have a funny quote that is losing alone is a fireable offense. So everyone loses. But losing alone is a fireable offense. So you got to use the tools that are out there. There's this. Think of your company as this massive web with tentacles everywhere. Imagine if you're even a 50 person organization. Each one of those people have a thousand relationships. Think of how far reaching that is. And then those 1,000 have like, you know, all these. You have VC firms that have put money into you. You have your board of directors, you have your, your partners in your, your ecosystem, your channel partners. You, you need to start thinking on a bigger level and giving yourself time and space to activate those. Don't make it harder for yourself. There is easy mode and that's leveraging your executives. VC board of directors, I love that.

And what pops into my head there, right, is like they always do hackathons with engineering, right? A hardcore sprint to solve a problem or to build something new, like a deal. A thon is a great idea. Like, okay, everyone comes together like, all right, here are the deals that we're struggling to bring home. Go. What do you do? That's, that's so smart. I love that. I hope y' all took notes on that. And I love that. I love that line, right? Losing alone is a fireable offense. And in sales, I think so often people try to win a loan or lose a loan. They don't leverage the tools, the people, the community around them to help. So I hope people took that as a big takeaway. And so that's the, I mean, that's one of big takeaway for me for sure. We've been going for about 40 minutes now, right? And so I like to ask this question, I call it the big three, right? So we've been going for about 40 minutes. We've talked sales, life, marketing, intention, creativity, time management. What are the three things you'd really want people to take away from this if they were to forget everything else but three things that you brought up today? What would you want those three things to be?

I Love the question. I ask a similar one on the sales engagement podcast. I know we're all busy, so if I was going to leave you with three things, number one would be creativity is the last frontier. It's the thing that can't be automated to think that can't be outsourced. And I think there's this misnomer out there that there are creatives and there are non creatives. If you don't think you're creative, you're lying to yourself. And you told yourself a false story way back in the day. Maybe because you weren't good at playing the saxophone or you didn't get an A in art class and you made a story. And creativity is a muscle that can be strengthened just like anything else. So start now. And one of the easiest ways to do that is I have a bias for action. So go do some stuff. Go consume some stuff. Sign up to learn an instrument. I've tried to learn guitar six times. I'm still trying. I'm awful, I'm terrible. It makes me feel like I have a memory of a goldfish. But I keep trying because sometimes when I do it, just the act of doing it like makes a weird connection in my brain for something else. So start now. So that's number one. Creativity is the last frontier. Number two, I'm going to double down on specialization is for insects. But the caveat is I'm a firm believer in specializing by industry. All good things in life come from compound interest. That's your network, that's wealth creation, that's everything. So specialized by industry. Cause over time your network's gonna just compound and become inherently more valuable. But don't specialize by skillset. Learn from as many sources as you can and then lean on technology to fill your skill gaps. Everything is easier now. Everything is easier. Like think about back in the day trying to edit an image. I remember trying to learn Photoshop and like just to add like one tiny like thing in the corner. You basically had to take like 18 hour course to figure this stuff out. Now you've got like Canva that is so easy to use. You know, soon we're going to be able to build apps, man, like really smart apps ourselves with no code. Everything is easier. So don't be scared of anything. Just go and figure it out. Watch a YouTube video. So that's number two. Specialized by industry, not by skill set. Use technology to fill the gaps. And then last but not least, you know, media gives you leverage and you need leverage to buy yourself the time. That we've been talking about. That's been kind of the theme through this episode. You need leverage to buy yourself time to think and plan and understand what's coming next. Because our world in the next 10 years are going to see changes that we can't even imagine. And if you are just completely focused on your linear career and you're just doing what's asked of you, you know, you're going to lift your head up one day and be in a murky world that is going to be pretty scary. So media, although it takes a little bit more time, will actually inevitably give you more time back in the form of leverage.

I love that. That last point there I hope people don't gloss over is like, media has a tail. It's out there, it stays there, it has impact much longer than people realize. So people are out there creating content and they're thinking about it today. That's not what it's about for today. It's about three months down the road, someone sees it and goes, oh, that was interesting. And then they find you through that piece and then that leads them to the other piece. So stop thinking about it as a today thing. It's that long tail of media that I think is so important there. So, love, love working for you.

It's. Yeah, sorry to cut you out. It's working for you when you're not there. Right. It's just like writing good lines of code that will live on for the next five, five years. You know, it's a way of scaling yourself. And I talk about this lot, like, the worst trade you can make in life is trading your time for money. And that's what we spend the majority of our life doing. And you need to find ways to get out of that cycle. The, AKA the rat race, as it's known, right. That's trading time for money. And people think that you can get away from that. I'm just going to trade time for money for a while, then I'm going to save enough and then I'm going to get out and I'm going to do this and do that now. The way to get out of that cycle is to create media assets, to write code, to build e comm business, whatever it is that lives on and works while you're not working.

I literally heard a quote this morning, actually texted it over to Justin Welsh, a good friend of mine, said, the problem with the rat race is even if you win, you're still a rat. And I love that.

Trade.

Even if you win, you're A rat. Because most people win the rat race in their 50s and 60s. Like, that's when they're done. And it's like, nah, you ran this race and still a rat. You're in no better position because you missed those early years. And I think it's actually a good note to kind of end with. Here is the name of this podcast. Is Live Better, Sell Better. I've got this weird idea that if people took better care of themselves, if companies took better care of people, if we lived better, the results follow as well. So what would be your parting Live better advice? We've kind of been weaving it through throughout the episode, but, like, what would be that last piece of advice of, like, people to get more out of life? What would they do?

Yeah, and I'll. Because there's people that are so much smarter than me. So I'll borrow a quote from Charlie Munger. It's one of my favorite quotes that changed my life about six years ago. I was always a very ambitious person. I wanted a lot out of life. I knew I wanted to get there. I didn't know how I was going to get there. I had really lofty goals. And when I heard this quote, it kind of just clicked. And it's pretty simple. To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward the undeserving. And everything kind of clicked. And I know it sounds simple, but spend some time thinking about that quote. So then I shifted from, okay, how do I get this goal? To how do I become the person that is capable of reaching that goal? And it was a mindset shift that really, really helped me. And I mean, anytime I've asked for a promotion, anytime I've gone for interviews. Not to sound arrogant, but it felt like the. The decision was already there because I had become the person that deserved that role, that next step, that next chapter. I was that person, and I deserved it. So to get what you want, you have to deserve what you want, and you have to become the person who's capable of getting it.

Ooh, that's deep. That's deep. I love that I wrote that. I hadn't heard that quote, and I absolutely love it. My dude, how can people get more of you? Like, again, the way that you write, the way that you put the things together. I just. I took a note that you have a newsletter now. Like, where can they get more of you and your insights and your thoughts? Where can they find you?

Yeah, thanks for the shout out, man. So LinkedIn Scott Barker, send me a thoughtful note and I connect with just about anyone. I love sharing my views. I did start writing a newsletter. It's been blowing up. It's been really rewarding. It's called the Forecast. You can find it if you just type in the Forecast newsletter in Google. I think it's. I don't know how, but it's the first thing that comes up, which is cool. You can find it on my LinkedIn as well. And basically the premise is three of the best practices of tomorrow I write about. So getting in front of those best practices to predict some that might be coming in the future. And then there's always a section that's just. I call it what's rattling around my brain. And I just riff on, you know, stuff like this that we're talking about some more deep existential questions about life.

Hey, well, we need to start having more of those conversations again because I enjoy them every single time. My man, Scott Barker, thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for your insight, your knowledge, your energy and your wisdom, man. And we will be in touch.

Thank you, Katie.

I appreciate you.