Matt Ragland Interview: How to boost productivity without burning the midnight oil

A lot of people get wrong about productivity and goal setting. In my opinion, it is that even just mental over commitment to goals or projects that leads to a lot of overwhelm that can lead to a lot of context and task switching. Instead of focusing on what is the one thing that I have to make sure that I get done this week, what is the one most important thing like that lead domino that I can topple over. And so the most productive week ever comes down to this acronym that I have called the gap. So it's the GAP method and GAP stands for goals, Actions and Protection.

I met Matt Ragland while I was speaking at a ConvertKit conference and I was just struck by how present he was in the conversation. And as you'll discover during the interview, he's quite accomplished. You're gonna learn a lot from him. But as we were chatting, he was focused on being interested as opposed to being interesting. So just an incredibly thoughtful and curious guy. And when he finally did share what he's up to, I was impressed with how he combined a disciplined but creative approach to his work. For some reason, I don't know, those two seem at odds to me. But he was able to find an integration that leads him to being ultra productive, but also being a world class content creator. This is the Launch youh Business podcast because we know starting a business is challenging, but it doesn't have to be confusing. Each week we'll give you the tactical advice and the necessary tools to scale your business without feeling burnt out. I'm Terry Rice, business development consultant and staff writer here at Entrepreneur Magazine. Let's dive in. Matt is the Managing Director of Good People Digital, an agency that works with companies to create human focused brands and web experiences that help them connect with their customers. Outside of that, his work is focused on the intersection of productivity and the creator economy. So if you're struggling with either of those productivity or creativity, Matt is here to help you out. On today's show, we'll discuss how to get started with content that connects with your audience from day one, how to have the most productive week ever, and some of the most common productivity roadblocks faced by entrepreneurs and how to overcome them. Let's hop into it right now. Matt, how are you today?

I'm great. Terry, how are you?

I'm good. So let's get right into it because I met you at the craft and commerce event for ConvertKit, so I want to jump right into it. My first question for you is this. I'm going to drill you. Ready?

Okay, let's go.

How did your day start out? What did you do this first thing.

In the morning today? Today is such a bad day for you to ask me that question because I slept in. I slept in is what I did. I was not a good routine person. Now sleeping in for me is like 6:45. I have three kids. If I want time to myself, it's often in the morning, though not always often. My middlest child will also get up with me around like 5:45, 6:00 clock and we do stuff. I had like a big thing on Twitter about that, this. But normally what I do a normal day because my kids are down in Florida with my, with my parents. So it's been a really like weird week for me. I've been very productive except for this morning because I was up late working. But normally what I'll do is I'll get up and I'll exercise, I'll journal and I will like meditate and set my mindset. Set my mindset for the day. Those three things I've noticed are the most impactful for me. And even if I'm doing them in small, like increments or small commitments, it may not be that I go to a full CrossFit workout. It may just be that I go for a walk or I do some push ups and like air squats or kettlebell swings. Journal, write down the things that are most important for me to do today and then focus my attention and intention on those things. Those are usually the three relative non negotiables of a morning for me, along with making delicious coffee that I have found have the biggest impact on my morning, on my mood, and on the energy that I have throughout the day.

Somehow we always end up talking about CrossFit on this podcast. I don't know if it's, if I steer it that way or the guest.

You did not prep me for this. So it's either CrossFit or Jiu Jitsu. So I either try and lift something that's heavy or I fight a person first thing in the morning. And everything after that feels a little easier after you've already been in a fight.

I would assume so. So we kind of hopped into it. So right now people know that you fight people. You do CrossFit, and you're a good dad. But how would you introduce yourself if someone just like sat down next to you on a plane? Like, how would you introduce yourself?

I think I should probably start with the way that you just described me, because I think that would be much a much More interesting introduction and I'm flying back to see my kids on Saturday, so maybe I'll try that one out. But the, the work that I do with good people digital is like we build, create and manage newsletters for some of the top creators that you might be reading. So these are people that we work with either from a content strategy and direction standpoint. It could be that we're doing some ghost writing or heavily influencing the content of a newsletter. We also build and launch online courses along with many of our clients and creators. And we've worked with best selling authors, youtubers, podcasters, all kind. Some of the most popular bloggers. Bloggers, a little bit of an older term now it feels, feels like. But we, yeah, we help the world's best creators like leverage and monetize their content.

Yeah, we talked about this at the ConvertKit conference and I found out I won't say the person's name, but you're essentially ghost writing one of my favorite authors newsletters. And now when I receive it I'm like, thanks Matt. I mean it's still good, but it's funny when you can kind of like, you know, see behind the curtain. But let's, let's answer like a question that I know there are people out there listening saying, hey, I get it, email is powerful. But how do they get started? Like, how do they get started with their first newsletter or first sequence? Like, what's, what's the best route for that?

Yeah, if you're starting completely from scratch and you haven't done, let's just say that you've done some work on social media, you've been putting some content out there. What I would recommend for like getting started relatively from scratch is to look at it and say, what are the posts that I've made in the past that get the most engagement or that I believe are the most important. Asking yourself those two questions is a great place to get started. And also knowing that what you might write, we've all had the experience of writing, writing the tweet, the LinkedIn post, filming the video and being like, this is important. This is what matters. This should, this should do really well. And then it doesn't. And that's in some ways, like, that's frustrating. But if you know it's important, then you should keep saying it. Maybe you just need to say it in a different way or maybe something that you, you thought was going to do well as a YouTube video will do better as a newsletter and vice versa. So asking yourself what has, what has been the most popular, what's the most important? The other two things that you can ask are, number one, what is the thing that people often ask me about in regards to my work or specific area of interest and when you can start just like literally spend each newsletter answering just one question and then the follow up to that is whether it's on social or through replies on your newsletter. If you're new at this, ask for a reply at the end of each newsletter. Answer those questions then as future newsletters. So those four pieces, that's how I started my YouTube channel is I was just talking about things in productivity. I was talking about things in like working at a startup at ConvertKit at the time. And one of the videos that I did that year, I made 60 videos that year. And the one that did the best was like, here's how I plan my week in a bullet journal. And I did that in like August. So towards the end of the year I was like, what videos? What were the most popular videos? And at this time I had like 600 subscribers. So to say something was popular is like it has 500 views instead of 78. And I saw that, that bullet journal, I was like, oh, I'm going to do an end of the year beginning of like new year planning. Here is how I'm planning my year in the bullet journal. And I thought maybe this will be my first thousand view video. Like lifetime. Lifetime views of the video will be around a thousand. It had a thousand views in the first 48 hours. And one of the primary questions that people were asking was like, hey, you talked about this time management system. I call it the 10 block system in the video. Can you explain that more? The next video is like, hey, can you explain? Here's a deep dive on the 10 block system. And then people were like, hey, you talked about like your, your like monthly or your weekly planning like ritual in cis. I was like, okay, the next video is about that. So for about six months I was basically just making the weekly video. And then the next week's video would be answering some question that was asked in the comments about one of the previous week's videos. So being able to out like one little caveat to that that people often ask about. If you're new and you don't have a lot of engagement, you're like, matt, no one's commenting. I don't have like, like, are we talking about I should do the seven view post instead of the two view post? I was like, okay, that's fair. So the other thing to look at Reddit is fantastic for this. Like go to Reddit. I don't often say that, but like Reddit as research is great and see like what, what things are people asking that they're not getting like good answers to. And you can just answer that literally in your own content. You can also on social media find people that you follow that are in kind of the same relative niche as you and see what topics are they talking about that you have a different opinion on. So talk about what they do, not what that specific person is who, but give that in your own opinion. And another way of doing that is if someone like Justin Welsh, who's great on Twitter and LinkedIn, he'll talk about solopreneurs and like building, building a one person business. And sometimes like I'll look at his stuff and Justin and I have done some work together. He's awesome, he's, he's a buddy. But I would look at and say like, okay, what especially like for these big creators that get hundreds of replies, go look through their replies and what are common questions that are being asked in the replies that like Justin or Sahil Bloom or Amanda Natividad just don't have like the capacity to answer. And they're like, okay, I can, this is something that I can answer. And I would write about it and then I would like say, you know, here's something else that I would quote, tweet and say like here's something that Justin talked about and here's a little bit, here's, here's a way that I think about it because a lot of people were asking, here's are my thoughts. So there's like five or six like ideas there in terms of generating content. Whether you're right at the beginning or if you are like, I still do, I still do that. Now.

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Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. So what A lot of people get wrong about productivity and goal setting. In my opinion, it is that even just mental over commitment to goals or projects that leads to a lot of overwhelm that can lead to a lot of context and task switching instead of focusing on what is to call to call to One of one of my favorite books from about 10ish years ago. I'm not quite sure when it came out, but the one thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan and I have kept that kind of lesson in mind. Now I don't only focus on one thing for a quarter. I just have too much going on for that. It's not that season of life.

But.

But what I will do, and this is where it comes down to the most productive week ever is I pick like what is the one thing that I have to make sure that I get done this week? What is the one most important thing like that lead domino that I can topple over. And so the most productive week ever comes down to this acronym that I have called the gap. So it's the GAP method. And GAP stands for Goals, Actions and Protection. And what that means is it creates a bit of a flywheel so that when you define the goal, the one goal that you have, ideally it's stacking like weekly wins to your summit of success of like the monthly or quarterly or like annual goal that you have. But I want to shrink that down to a single week and a single goal. If I know what that goal is, then I'm going to analyze it and I'm going to look at and say like okay, what are the actions that I need to take that if I was, if I were to check off all these to do items, all these action items, it will naturally lead to the completion or achievement of the goal. So it's goals, actions and then protection is protecting the time. And I'm going to look at this and say, like, okay, I have these four to five action items. How much time do I need to protect? Let's just say two hours. Okay, I'm going to protect time to do this for one hour on Monday morning and then one hour on Thursday morning. And I'll come back to that in a second. But now this is where the flywheel, we talked about flywheels a lot at the conference is. I can start to work backwards and say, like, okay, now that I know my goal and I know what actions item action items that I have and I know and I've protected time. Now the key point is when I get to this time that I've protected, I need to focus on these action items. And as long as I do that, then I will naturally achieve the goal that I set at the beginning of the week, and I can continue doing that for additional goals once I have the first, most important one completed. But there are two challenges that people often hit. One is the inability to stick to the time that they've protected because they've tricked themselves into thinking that something else in the moment is more important. And sometimes that's true. Often it's not as true as we make it up in our minds. Michael Hyatt has this great term called uphill versus downhill work that he talked about in his book Free to Focus. And uphill work are the things like those, like, action items for that core goal that are going to push you upward. Like, they're a little hard. They, like, are challenging to do. It's not as simple. Now, downhill work, those are the things where, like, oh, you know, I gotta. I gotta follow up these emails. I gotta, like, you know, fill in these contracts. You know, it's super important to make sure that people are paying us. And that is true. But if you're not, if you're continually doing that at the expense, literally, of the other things that you have said that I have said are most important for me, then that's downhill work. And so that's how I look at having the most productive week ever, is setting up this series of, like, gap plans. What are the. What's the goal? What are the actions? When do I protect the time?

And.

And it might be that I do two or three of these each week. But the other thing that people often have trouble with when it comes to, especially, like, weekly or monthly productivity, is they underestimate the amount of time that they have committed to recurring tasks in their life and work. And this is most often found in, like, meetings and paperwork and email and Again, like those, those things all keep often will all keep a business running, especially one that is more than just a solopreneur. But Terry, I already told you that like I didn't have my kids with me this week. I was like, I'm gonna have so much done. I'm gonna go to CrossFit and Jiu Jitsu every day and work 10 hours and be able to sleep a full night. This is gonna be great. And Instead I had 30 meetings this week and which is exceptional even for me. But I just like, I feel like I've been on a lot of meetings. I was like, and I'm going to write a bunch of newsletters. I'm going to like, you know, get started on my novel. Not really, but it's like I had that kind of energy at the beginning of the week, but if I had looked at it, if I had taken my own advice, I was just too excited. But if I had taken my own advice and I have added some meetings, but I looked and said, wow, you've got like 20 meetings on the calendar and then you're going to have to follow up on those and you're going to have to write some contracts for those and yeah, that's going to take up a lot of time. Yeah, I probably can't train for 10 hours and take 30 meetings and do all these things, but I didn't do the work to notice and then like pay attention to. I'm already pre committed to a lot. And so that means I can't also like intend to do a bunch of additional creative non, like non recurring work in this week. It's going to be like, I'm going to cram this in and that's fine. But I had to change my mindset on that literally earlier today I was like, man, I haven't written as much as I thought. It's like, well, you also are going to have 30 meetings. So I was like, oh yeah, that's right. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, that's probably why that's okay. And I chose to do that. But having that level of awareness about what you're already committed to each day and each week will really help you shrink down like these. Because often when we think about goals, these are things that we want to do in addition to like, often goals in this sense are extra. So we think about. It's hard often to like plan those effectively, knowing that what if you only have one or two hours per week literally to get this done and this might be a 30 hour project do you realize this thing that you may only take you 15 hours, 10 to 15 hours, but if those are only one hour a week, this is going to take the whole quarter, not just a couple of weeks. Ah, okay. That's just having that realization. Level of awareness is important.

Yeah, it's awareness and I think sometimes it's the difference between focusing and filtering. And I'll explain it from my definition.

Yeah, please.

Filtering. There's certain things you just don't do. Like I don't work with certain industries, I don't do certain work. So if that comes your way, you're like, yeah, no thanks. Like that's not something I do ever. Focusing is harder because there are often distractions that are disguised as opportunities. Someone saying, hey, come speak at this event in Florida, you know, we're going to pay you a thousand bucks, but it's going to be great for your branding. So it's revenue generating where you're like, wait a second, I had goals for this week and that wasn't on the list. And if that goal, to your point, ladders up to bigger goals, you know, down the road right now you're getting thrown off. So I think, you know, filtering is easy. Like I don't even do that stuff. Focusing is like, oh man, do I want to do that or not? No, I got to stay focused and got to stay committed. But that's where I run into challenges sometimes. So I'm saying it out loud to hold myself accountable. Evolving Education for a changing world Expand your career opportunities and earn an MBA from University of Cincinnati Online Lindner College of Business Designed for busy professionals, the UC Online MBA is flexible, personalized and supports students from application all the way through graduation. UC Online provides student success coordinators who understand the demands of a busy life. Get the world class degree you deserve without sacrificing work and family commitments. Fortune ranks the University of Cincinnati Online Lindner College of Business MBA as the 11 best online MBA program in 2023. Learn from the same top rated award winning faculty who teach the on campus courses and complete your studies in as little as one year. Applying has never been easier. Lindner College of Business has removed the GMAT and GRE requirement for applying to the program. Plus the application fee is waived for students applying to the upcoming Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 semesters. Propel your career forward in Apply now at Online UC Edu Backslash mba. That's Online UC Edu mba. Why do you think people get stuck on projects instead of seeing it to completion?

I think a lot of it does come down to what we've talked about, like that focus versus filter problem. There's also a big perfectionism like element at play here and we probably all experience some level of that. You see, I've experienced this and like, Tiago's a friend, but Tiago Forte, who has like the amazing building a second brain course I have taken. Building a second brain. I've been like a part of that community. But when I put together my productivity courses in the past, I would really like fall into the comparison trap and like perfectionism being like, ah, it's not very good or it doesn't look like this and I wish it would be better and I need to like tweak it a little bit more so we get, we get caught in this trap. Often the, the thing that I so, and this also goes into the like actual time that you have is for something like a course. Shrink that down from I'm going to do like a cohort course or I'm going to do something that's like building a second brain, but looking at it and saying, what is a short version of this that I could do? And my favorite version of validating a course concept is through a live workshop, a paid live workshop. So if I did that, I know you're familiar with this as well. Like, if I have a course idea, then instead, then I'm going to like set a date, I'm going to ask people to pay me for it. And if people will pay, money is a much better motivator and be like, oh, I'm just going to see how this goes. Because if I bet everyone listening, if you, if you say I'm going to do a, I'm going to do a live workshop. It's $47, 971 97. It's two hours, it's going to be the second week of September and you get, you know, people to pay for it. You're going to do it, you're going to do it. And so that is a much bigger motivator. That's often what I'll do, like, will help people do. It's how I've launched almost every product that, that I've ever done is first through a live workshop or some kind of pre sell. So that's, that's a little bit of a pivot from I think what you, what you asked. But having that way to like test and validate the concept in a smaller way because that will also like help keep you from this feeling or experience of like building it up too big in your mind.

Let's, let's stay with that though. Because what I often recommend is if you have a new course or a new speaking topic, workshop, whatever it is, I suggest giving it away for free. And my argument is if someone does not want it for free, they damn sure aren't going to pay for it. But am I incorrect in that because it's free, making the information seem less valuable? Or if because I'm thinking of someone right now who's listening, they're like, dude, I have no brand, I have no following, how am I going to get someone to give me like 49 bucks to hear me speak? I'm thinking of doing it free. So what would you say to that person?

You're right. For a person like that, Like, I would give as much away for free as I possibly could. Unless you have the only caveat to that is like, if you have a really clear, established expertise in your given field, like you're, you're already a certified trainer, or you have like certain, like certifications or a wealth of experience in something corporate related, then those are monetizable, demonstrable skills that people will pay for. There are those elements. But if you're just like starting your brand, you're starting your content relatively from scratch, then I would talk about your thing and like smaller ways every day for like six months. And then, then do what we're talking about with a pay, with a paid workshop.

Awesome. So let me ask you this, this last question, then I'll let you go. You know, mentioned earlier the comparison trap and how that was a mistake you made. One of my favorite questions to ask is this. What is one lesson about entrepreneurship that you wish you learned sooner?

The comparison trap is a big one that is really hard to avoid. But I wish that I had been able to internalize that lesson sooner to realize that I have something unique and specific that I'm going to help people with, that I can compete in my own blue ocean based on the things that I have done and the way that I can help people. But it is, it is still hard. The other piece of that is like something the author, I heard the author John Acuff say once that you can't compare your beginning to someone else's middle or your middle to someone else's like, relative end because we just don't know like the back and forth of like, how people got to where they were. And the reason that I like John saying that is he always shares. He's like, when I first started My speaking career. He has this picture of him sitting like he had a speaking engagement and no one came except for, like, one friend came and took a picture of him, like, with no one there. And now he speaks to, like, you know, these huge, like, you know, huge auditoriums of people.

Matt, it's been great having you on. I do appreciate it. But where can people learn more about you and your programs? What's the best way to keep in touch with you?

Yeah, go to. You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn @Ragland. And then you can also go to my website@mattraglan.com and if you want to know more about our newsletter services, go to yourweekly email and that will tell you everything you need to know about how we can run a newsletter on your behalf.

And that's our show for today. Again, you can learn more about Matt by visiting mattraglan.com and follow him on social media attraglin. And by the way, if you're not already subscribed to my email list, you can do so at TerryRice Co money. And when you do, you also get my free guide that helps you identify and remove revenue roadblocks. Thanks again for listening, and I'll catch up with you next time. Apply what you've learned on today's show. You'll find the show notes and more resources at TerryRice Co podcast. Again, that's Terry Rice. And the best way to support this podcast is by subscribing, telling a friend, and leaving a review. Also, you can get more tips by following me on Instagram @TerryRice or follow me on LinkedIn. This episode was produced by Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio and edited by Dan Lardy. Special thanks to my wife, Dominique, for keeping our kids relatively quiet as I recorded. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.