How To Stay Focused

Paul marsh, how do youstay laser focused?He's talking about hisstruggles and spiraling outof the knowing hissuperpower thing.Paul, are you here?All right.Hey, all right, Paul.OK, so I'll read yourquestion as you'vewritten it, OK, becauseI know a lot of peoplehave changed focusto something theylove Frankie springs to mind.And when that alignswith something that pays,it's great.This is the challenge, right?So I'm struggling tofind that alignmentbecause I lack a focus.Or rather, I likea lot of things,but I'm not that passionateabout any one of them.To put another way, I'm happyenough doing one of them,but once I master it, Iget an itch and the grassis greener somewhere else.OK, everybody in this group waslike just nodding, saying, heyman, right now.Plus, tool skills are transient.I want somethingmore fulfilling.How do you know that thepath that you're followingis the one?Sounds like a line from thematrix 20th anniversary.How do you know thatyou're the one neo right?Or this is theone the true path?All right, so what'sholding me backis finding a mentor as I end up.OK, you got 20 mentors?Fantastic OK, Paul,I get the question.I think, is there anythingelse you want to add to that?No, I think it sort of followson quite a bit from whatyou've been saying already.Actually, yeah, go ahead.I just want to take a moment.Did you upgrade yourcamera or lighting gamebecause you look much better?It's looking betterevery single time.It's my birthday yesterday,so that's probably why.Happy birthday, man.Happy name day.All right.Excellent OK.Hopefully, some of youguys got that reference.All right.So Paul is like everybody here.It's like doing the same thingover and over again is boring.It kills your soul.I'm guilty of that.It's hard for me to focus, too.And if you find thethings that you doand that you'repassionate about.And if that also pays,that's kind of a nice thing.So you guys have seen thefinding your superpowerworksheet.I think I gave itto you guys, right?Yeah Demi's nodding,so some of you haven't.Maybe I need to spendon the it's beenon the group's description.OK, well, what I'lldo is after this,I have a slightly newer versionof it, I think worksheet,so I'll make a PDFfor you and then Iwill link it inthe pen document.The getting started thing.So you guys need to do it.You need to do thefinding your superpower.And this is where.Who was on our show recently?Oh, Fabian halter inAustria, at least theyhave a psychologist,career counselor thatassesses you and figures outwhat you should be doing,and they point you inthe right direction.Wouldn't it be niceif we all have this?So without knowing exactlyall the parts and pieces,I'm wondering how bestcan I answer this?You like a lot of things.And if you master certainthings, that's a good thing.I like that.What happens is if you moveinto a line of work thatonly allows you to useone of those skill sets.Paul, I feel like you're likeme, you're going to die inside.So your thing might not be tomake something your thing mightbe at a higherlevel to do the morestrategic parts becauseyou have broad knowledgeof a lot of things.And depth in certain areas.And are you in that kind ofposition right now, paul?Yeah, Yeah.It's partly the problem becausepeople will ask me to do rolesand when they specific tasks.One of these skills,and that's fine.It pays the bills, but I'drather not be doing it.I'd rather, I say, be a bitmore of the umbrella side of it.Right?are you a team of one or do youhave people working for you?Any team of two?But we do separatetasks and typically workon the same things.OK and so are youable to with the moneythat you're paid todo the projects hire,hire out people to help you?Yeah, that's certainlyone of the thingsI've been looking at.Yeah, definitely.OK so I think that willbe part of the solution.So here's what happens usuallyin smaller sized companies,solopreneurs orpartnerships or whatever,you lean on each otherto do all the work.And no matter what the task is,you do the work and some tasksare valued at different.There's different values, right,so if you're doing rotoscopingand that's like the artof cutting things out,it's very tedious, very manual,there's a right way to do itin this wrong way to do it.That's not worth a lot per hour.You can hire some kid in aforeign country to do it.Not going to be alot of money and saywhen you're doing brand strategyor user experience, designor some kind ofconsultation service,well, that rate perhour is very high.So the same person who puts thathat on to say, like, OK, well,what, I'm doing this,I do very little work.It's mostly thinking work.I use most of theskills that I have.And there's a reason whyit cost more to do that.But then that sameperson turns around itand then does the rotoscoping.And this is just the clearestexample I can think of.The person isrotoscoping isn't paid.A lot isn't using a lotof their broad knowledge.They're using a lot ofone kind of skill set.And that person isgetting paid a lot,so you're costing yourself alot of money, the differencebetween this and this.So ideally what would happenis when you're brought into do a project, you needto elevate the conversationso that it's thebigger problem thatallows you to get paid more.So that you can thenhire individual peopleto do the work for you.And that's the key.So if you're stuck doingall the hands on work.You're going to start to findyourself pretty miserableand you're going toget that itch again.Right now, if I werestill in client servicesmyself, which I'm not.I would just do onlythe thinking work.I will do the facilitation Iwould do the client meetings.But in terms ofdoing the layouts,doing the design workand everything else,even writing the copy, Iwant somebody else to do it.First of all, they'rebetter than me.But just for my own sanity.This is not what Iwant to be doing.And if you are trulywhat it is that you'resaying that you have.Mastery, once you dive into asubject and then you get boredand you move on to the nextthing and the next thing,I think then we arevery similar and isthat currently the role thatyou're playing now, paul?Yeah, so the problemI've got is Itend to get quite goodat very niche things.There's not a lotof other peopledoing that niche and that'swhy people employ me.So that's why it becomesa bit tricky to employsomeone else to do it.But, you know, I justhave to move away from it.So what about this nichething that and then?Yes, I, for example,right now, I'mworking on conversationalbots as a thing.And there's not a lotof people doing that.So that's why they're payingme quite well to do that.So it's.And then once it becomes a pointwhere it's more commoditizedand I could getsomeone else to do it,the chances are there may notbe that interested in talkingto me anyway.Oh so it's a bit of a sortof tricky thing and rotatesaround.Now I'm hearing theproblem, OK, now it'sbecoming very clear to me.This is excellent.So what you'retalking about doing ischat bots are relatively new,somewhat difficult to set up,and only a small groupof people can do it.So the supply and demandare in your favor right now.Yeah so you do it and youstill have to learn itbecause this is new to me too.And you're learning.You're figuring it out.That's fantastic.But my feeling isthe first coupleof times you have to do it.Every time after that,it's your choice.Now Because you figure out howit works, how it doesn't workand you set up systems.And you should design systemslike the assembly lineversion of what you do.And then you can parse thatout to a team of peopleso no one personcan do what you do.But a team of threepeople could a teamof 10 people couldand you set them upand you train them to doone very specific thing.Somebody writes the scripts,somebody does the coding.Somebody is quality assurance,something like that.I don't know how itworks, but and youwould set that up and then theywould do it for you so that youcan take on as much of thatwork as you want to take on.I believe it's going to besome time before this becomescommoditized, so I wouldn'tworry about that for now,because all these things thatare on the fringe in termsof digital marketing andhow people are doing things,I think it's going to be a whileuntil the mainstream catchesup.And then if you likedoing this kind of work,you'll be the establishedplayer if you do it really well.So I think the idea ofbringing it on other peoplefrom what I heard on, I'mreading into your statementhere, you're concerned ifyou teach somebody else,they'll run awaywith those skillsand that's a very likelything that's going to happen.But we've got to get over that.We just do, you know,and if you you'rethe thing that people can'treplace, the people can't stealis you.It's you and so yourability to solve a problem,to build rapport witha particular client,to understand their needs anddesign the chat bot for them.That's you.The other parts are mechanical,those things can be replaced.And there will be a biddingwar for that eventually,and it'll just startto get driven down.I think in ourfear of competitionthat hasn't arrived yet.We might hold on to morethan we're supposed to.And I think that will be toyour long term detriment.Mm-hmm Because something that Ilearned early on in my career,when it's hot, take asmuch of it as you can.Scale, because itwon't last forever.Right, so when the industryand the motion design spacewas really hot, I could notfind enough qualified peoplebecause I had this impossiblyhigh standard, what I shouldhave been doing wasbringing in more peopleand training them to do thework as long as the clients werehappy.I should be happy not todo it like me per say,but to do it in a way thatis acceptable to our clientand meets my standards as well.Mm-hmm and I missed that ona bit of a gold rush there.Yeah, Thanks.OK hey, can I seesome real fast?Chris Paul chat bots haven'tbeen around for forever.And it was yourbirthday yesterday,so you have you've maybebeen around the block.What did you do before that?So maybe this iswhat your niche is,is finding thesenew technologiesand then being able to learn itand then project that, hey, youcan do this for somebody.So maybe that'swhat your key is.You know what I mean?Yeah, I mean, it has beensomething I've done before,and every time it's a kind ofsort of scorched Earth policy,so you do it andthen the thing eithervanishes because noone uses it anymoreor it becomes commoditized andtherefore everyone's doing it.So, yeah, I haven't reallylearned a lesson yet from it.It just keep on being onthat crest of that waveand never reallygetting off that wave.But how do you know, likeone of the things I thinkif you've riddenthese waves before,they're a little different.But how do you know that thisis going to be a way because Iwouldn't have known that might.You know what I mean?There's some insightthat it's just that youneed to analyzelike, hey, yeah, howam I able to hit these wavesover and over and over?And what is it that's doing it?And then I haveanother side thingI would just guys need toreach out to other professorsor whatever.Like, I connect people,some of my awesome gradswith people that workin the UK and theywork for a really cheap,like Chris saying,but it's anopportunity and they'reso excited to work with you.Or even hopefully, maybepeople are OK with remote.But like Chris issaying, oh, youcan find somebody reallycheap in another country.That's like, ifit's trust you need,because that scaresme a little bit.So then you needto find somebodythat you trust that couldconnect you with somebody else.Like there, there arepeople who just don't reallywant to leave theirsafety or whatever.You know, they're safewherever they went to schoolor whoever they learn from.But I know the best students,but sometimes the best studentsdon't move.But they're like, amazing.So you guys just need to reachsome people that you trust.Do you know what Imean, like then it'san opportunity forthe graduate, and thenit's also an opportunity foryou because you're bringing themon, but you're trainingthem for their next job.So they are going to leave youtwo different, totally sorry,random things.But they're sort ofconnected all to you, Paul.Yeah, yeah, it's good, I mean,the training thing, I mean,I do that on myYouTube channel nowis training people to do thisprecise thing at the moment,which is bot thing.So I don't have aproblem with giving awaymy secrets as it were.That doesn't bother me.I quite like to bring people on.But yeah, it's a goodidea to reach outto different establishments.Yeah well, Dan was talking.I was thinking aboutsomething, and this is perfect.So you're out there.This is actually you're I thinkyou're doing everything right,to be honest, exceptfor the part whereyou need to give more ofthe work away to people.So that's the onlypart of the puzzlethat I see kind of missing,and that's a small part.But as you do something asyou become well known for it.And as you grow yourenterprise or your businessto accommodate all the workas the market starts to becomesaturated.If you still lovedoing this thing,you switch over tobeing the expert trainerand you become the personwho teaches on a bigger scaleand that becomes yoursecond arc and you'rethe person who writes the book.Because you're the wizard whodid it in their early daysand you've done1,000 case studiesor tests to prove like whatworks and what doesn't work.And that's what yousee a lot of people do.First, you're theperson doing it.You're teaching people on akind of smaller scale, a oneto a few and then you'reon stage at marketing fest2000 whatever con andthen you're teaching that.And then you've got the bookand then you're training peopleand then you're onto the next thing.The other thingthat you can do isif you're that kind of personwho's always on the edge,looking at the horizonat emerging technologiesor ways to communicatemore efficiently,you can also start a blog.Or a newsletter to talk aboutwhat's happening in the world.And then you couldtransform your hobby passioninto another career.So I know this guy'sname is Andrew roseand he's going to be comingon our show pretty soon.That's all he does.He does a weekly newsletterto some very high level,influential executivetypes to reporton technology,politics, culture,and it's very, very short.He's not writing anythingper say, what he's doingis he's finding the mostinteresting stories thatmight be impacting your industryor your life really soon.He writes a couple ofsentences about each post,and then he links backto what those things are.Interestingly, as soon as Imet him, he dropped me on.He added me to hisemail blast, and now I'mreading these thingsand their stories.I don't normally get in my feed.So he's a canary in the digitalmedia communications coal mine.And that's really cool.So that could be two, soyou can fulfill your desireto learn newthings, but you wantto translate that, you wantto transform it into somethingthat other people can consume.I could totally see you doingthis on your YouTube channel.And then takingyour YouTube channeland making littlebits of micro contentand putting it out thereand having a lot of successdoing that.All right, so thinkabout yeah, Yeah.So to parallel my ownlife and my own career,there was a timewhen motion was hot.I was doing it andwe did it for as longas I felt like we could do it.And now it's not so hot anymore.It's become commoditizedand the market for ithas almost evaporated.So then I have to translatethat into something else.And that's OK.And this is thebeauty of life isone door opens a newopportunity to open.And here I am talkingto you fine folksand making content for YouTube.I'm going to dokeynote tomorrow.So it's just it's justthat arc and it's OK.