Nicole Laino
Hello, and welcome to the limitless entrepreneur podcast. I’m your host, Nicole Laino. And I am here with Mr. Productivity. A very, very special guest. I’m excited to talk about because we have been chatting for the last two days a little bit, and I’m excited for you all to hear from him. Mr. Mark, St. Cesky. Very good. working very hard to not screw that up. Mr. Mark St. St. Chesky. There it is, I screwed it up. I told her I was going to Mr. Productivity, he helps entrepreneurs deal with the overwhelm that disrupts their focus. And Mark, I’m gonna let you give the rest of your interests you can tell them a little bit more about you.

Mark Struczewski
Now it’s overwhelming issue. I mean, surely no one’s experiencing overwhelm, right. So I became Mr. Productivity. I was I should say, I was a ordained minister productivity about three years ago from Jeff Jung on LinkedIn. He goes, You should use the hashtag Mr. Productivity. And like, I like that. So I stole it. And I also have Mr. productivity.com, because no one could find marks digikey.com Unless you don’t me, and my mission, my passion, my obsession in life is to help people deal with the overwhelm. There’s so much going on between COVID and people losing their jobs and losing their clients and, and they come to me and that first thing I tell them, believe it or not, is to breathe. It’s like you’re still alive. Let’s put things into perspective. But I love doing it. I mean, every day for me is like a little child that Christmas. It’s like every day is a gift. I love helping people on social media, my podcasts and clients. And, you know, if we ever go back out and see people in person, again, I just love helping people. Because overwhelm is a very big deal.

Nicole Laino
It really is. And I think particularly when you’re when you’re getting things started out when you’re just starting out in entrepreneurship, which is mainly our, our, our audience, that there’s so much to do. And we get in our minds, I think we get overwhelmed. And then you know, and then we kind of project that out into the world. And we just see everything is really, really chaotic. And I’m just curious, you brought up COVID. And you brought brought up kind of the current events of right now. And I’m curious what you’re just seeing right now, like with the people that you’re working with? Are you seeing? Are you seeing that you have like a where there’s this commonality of every, every the way that everybody’s thinking? Or are you seeing that some people are handling it differently than others?

Mark Struczewski
Well, some people are definitely handling of the more better than others. But two things I see with people number one, they are obsessed with watching the news. And I’m like, Okay, step one. I have the sane stay informed, not obsessed. So someone goes, have you heard of COVID? You go what you should know, a COVID is okay, you should know that we have a new president united states, okay, you should know this stuff. But you shouldn’t be watching the news all day, or surfing Twitter or Facebook and getting all this information. Okay, you shouldn’t because all that’s doing is causing you overwhelmed, okay? There’s a reason why they say if it if it bleeds, it leads, because news is all about fear mongering. That’s how they get eyeballs. Okay? If it was just, hey, everything’s great. I’m not gonna watch the news anymore. Okay, so stop watching the news, know what’s going on, but don’t obsess. There are some people go you know what, this is a tremendous opportunity for me. Because we are eventually going to get out of this. I don’t know when next week, next month, next year, sometime, we’re gonna get out of this. And if you’re not doing stuff now, whether that’s launching a podcast, creating a course, getting a degree in school, whatever, you’re going to be so far behind. And so I have some clients say, Okay, listen, I know that I shouldn’t watch the news. I’ve got some things in order, what can I do to maximize how I spend my time. And the first thing I tell them is look at don’t make it all about work. Don’t make it all about the money, you have to have time to have fun. It’s okay to watch TV or watch silly YouTube videos and stuff like that. You can’t take life so seriously. I think there’s got to be balanced. You got to enjoy life, the most productive people I know, including myself have a balance. They enjoy life and they work hard. You gotta have the balance. You can’t always work and not have no fun. And you certainly can’t have fun all the time and not work. So there’s got to be a healthy balance there.

Nicole Laino
Yeah, definitely. And having that perspective, I think that that’s when people get scared. They tend to lean toward the more rigid you either fully checkout, or you white knuckle it. Yep. And I think that that’s, that’s kind of a sign that if you are if you’re feeling like I can’t watch TV, I can’t do all of these things and you’re feeling like it needs to be be work, work, work, work, work. That’s a red flag to you that your heads just not in the right place. That that’s not the energy that carries you forward. That’s the energy that locks you up.

Mark Struczewski
I’ll give you an example. COVID Okay. COVID is a real contagious disease. But what you don’t hear much of is 99% of people recover it. Everyone’s focusing on the numbers. How many people got it, how many people died? How many people invented it. haters, but 99% of people would get over it. So let’s focus on most people are not dying. Let’s focus on it’s not going to wipe out the human race on planet Earth. But we don’t the news and the social media want you to get scared over this. And I’m like, I’m a positive guy. Okay? I always assume the best and everyone, okay? Even if you treat me horribly, I assume you have a bad day. i If you cut me off in traffic, I don’t assume you’re out to get me. So I tend to be an optimist. Okay, the world’s not out to get you. So many people get sucked in the vortex of all the negativity, and there’s so much negativity in our world. Well, that makes him feel overwhelmed, which affects your productivity, because how can you be productive? When you’re stressed over the news, or the traffic or the COVID, or whatever, you’re so stressed, you can’t be productive. So I’m like, Okay, look at let it go. Maybe go go watch the movie Frozen with your kids and seeing let it go on top of your lungs, let it go, let go, the things you can’t control and your life is going to be so much better because you’ll have less overwhelm. And you’ll have more energy, because now your body’s not spending the energy on freaking out. Now it can spend energy working on productive things.

Nicole Laino
Definitely one of the things that I always say to my people, and I’ve said it on this show is that productivity Time management is really you management, it’s managing your energy. It’s managing yourself, like we think I hear from people all the time, I need better time management skills, and any better new management skills like you kind of need to tune into where are you leaking out energy in places that are not serving you? And how can you reclaim some of that and your life changes, not by you learning something new, but by you kind of turning tuning into where you are spending that energy. But one of the things that you brought up and I kind of want to shift over to this is you know, you were talking about like don’t put energy into the things that you can’t control. Let’s talk about some of the things that they can control. I know one of the things that you teach and and I know that my listeners really spin on this thing gets stuck in this space is is social media. There’s a new platform constantly like we have clubhouse out. Now clubhouse is I even learned about a new one on one of your shows this morning that I was listening to which I don’t even remember the name of it. But it sounded very cool. You can like put your funnels in it. I’ll go back and grab that name later. But there’s everything coming out now and we don’t know where to put our focus. So how can people what’s a good step that somebody can take right now that would help them to, you know, at least in their mind or out in their world be able to manage social media and not have it feel like such a lift?

Mark Struczewski
Number one, understand who’s the human and who’s the technology? We are humans. And if you don’t believe me, turn off your iPhone, turn off your tablet and see how much control it has over you. That’s number one, right? put things in perspective. Technology is great, but you got to make sure you understand you are the human being. Number two, I just I wake up every morning at 5am. And by 515 in the morning, I’m out running three miles. That’s how I start my day. This morning, I was listening to a Gary Vaynerchuk podcast, and someone asked me the exact same question so I’m gonna give you his answer. He says you have to be where the attention is right now. Tik Tok and LinkedIn and clubhouse are where the attention is. But more so the net where’s your audience? So, like I what I do is I go on this walk with my dog every morning. I called Walk o’clock, okay, and I record a video for Snapchat. And then I put the video on Tiktok and then I cut it into 22nd pieces and put it on LinkedIn stories. And I get about 100 150 views all of a sudden the video yesterday I did on the 5am Club cut like 2400 views. I’m like, why did that resonate with people, but I don’t consume Tik Tok. I don’t consume Snapchat, I don’t consume any other platform. It’s separate LinkedIn. And because I know where my audience is, my audience is primarily on LinkedIn. That’s where I spend the vast majority of my time that and writing articles for medium. And so for your audience to get back to your question. Look at you don’t have to be on see if I can remember them all Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tiktok. Snapchat, YouTube and clubhouse. I think those are the eight big ones right now. You don’t have to be everywhere. I would certainly get your username. For one you become super, super famous. And then someone else grabs your username on Snapchat or tick tock or something like that. But get your username, but figure out where you are. Number one where your audiences number two, what do you like to be? If you’re not a video person, then well don’t get on Snapchat or Tiktok because that’s all about video. If you like to write, maybe you go like I do and go right on medium. So if your skill is writing or your skill is video or your skills, audio, that’s going to narrow where you go. There is no law that I’m aware of Nicole that you have to be on if you’re planning form, I don’t think there’s a law, I don’t think Congress has passed that law. So just take a step back and go, Okay, where do I want to be? Because for example, I could not get Twitter, Instagram or Facebook to move. So I finally said, You know what, forget it, I’m giving up on him, you know, why am I gonna waste my time? We’re gonna have a platform, when I have other platforms that are working for me, it doesn’t make any sense. I hope that makes sense to you and your listener?

Nicole Laino
I mean, I know it makes sense to me. And it’s because I agree with it completely. And particularly the part that I think people discount, which is that spend time where you’re having fun, spend time on the medium that feels right for you? Do what? Because it’s going to be easier for you to create content for that, if you hate it. And it’s something that you’re resisting, because you don’t enjoy it, then is there something you do do enjoy? Put your effort into that and see how that goes? I’m curious, you brought up LinkedIn, and you said that you put your energy and your time really into consuming and engaging on LinkedIn. And I’m curious, how do you spend your time on LinkedIn?

Mark Struczewski
Well, every morning when I wake up at five o’clock, I will put well, about seven o’clock in the morning, I post the we create a 62nd video of a snippet from my previous day’s episode, because my podcasts come up the next day, I put that on there, two or three hours later, I will take the article, I wrote that day for medium. And I will put that on LinkedIn as well. But it’s not just so much the posting, it’s also engaging on LinkedIn. And I got a call, I gotta make sure I explained what I mean by engagement. I don’t mean by liking a post or giving a thumbs up emoji or saying nice post, I mean, giving one to four sentences of added value. Because when you give added value, most people are going to have like, Thank you, great post. I agree. And now here’s your block attacks. Well, people don’t like wow, wonder what they wrote. Because the other stuff, they know, 234 words, that doesn’t mean anything. But I’ve gotten more followers by leaving quality comments on LinkedIn on someone else’s post than I have on my own posts, because people go, Wow, this guy give a lot of value. It’s not about it’s not toot my own horn, it’s adding to the conversation, then people go on, they click my Follow button and follow me on LinkedIn. So but I think because LinkedIn is lot of b2b and b2c, that that’s where it’s at now, I think LinkedIn is lagging behind all the social media sites like their last stories, and you know, LinkedIn live, not rolled out on everybody. And it’s still only on the desktop, you can’t go live on the mobile like nobody else can. I think they’re trying to figure out their way. But I think that they’re coming into her own right now. And that’s why I prioritize LinkedIn, I think that’s the place you need to be if you’re an entrepreneur.

Nicole Laino
I, I agree, you know, it’s funny, I don’t put I haven’t put all of my eggs in well, I don’t put all my eggs in any one basket. But that’s one place where whenever I do hit the gas, the car goes fast on LinkedIn, that is one thing that I but but we get kind of seduced by the Facebook’s and the Instagrams and all of these other things that seemingly have more of an influencer base. And what a red herring to chase. And, you know, cuz they’re always serving a good dinner at LinkedIn. And for some reason, were like chasing these random cents off in other directions. And so that is that is a focus for me right now, personally, is putting in a lot of time and a lot of effort onto LinkedIn right now. And I love what you said about adding to the conversation. And one of the things that I’ve noticed too, is just how much opportunity there is because it isn’t so noisy. On LinkedIn, a lot more consumers than creators. There is my experience and tell me if you agree with that.

Mark Struczewski
I agree with that. And one day, I want to tell, I want to ask you a question. I want to ask you a pop quiz. You may not know the answer this, there’s two platforms that are if you post something, it may not do anything for first couple days, and it will take off weeks later. One of them’s LinkedIn. You know what the other platform is? YouTube, tick tock, tick, you can release a video today and get like five years, 10 views, 20 views. All of a sudden, three weeks down the road, it just takes off. Doesn’t happen with Facebook doesn’t happen YouTube or Instagram or but or Twitter, but tick tock and LinkedIn, their algorithm, they serve up your posts for no reason out of the blue, and you’re like what just happened? And I don’t understand it. So I think what you said a good point, if you get what you pay, you get what you put into it. You’re gonna spend time on LinkedIn, you’re gonna get a lot of results. If you don’t, you’re not and people make mistakes. They’ll start spending a lot of time and usually On LinkedIn daily, by the way, whether it’s on the app or the desktop doesn’t matter, every single day, you should be on the platform. But here’s the thing people go and they’ll go and Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and they’ll take the weekend off, and all of a sudden, their activity drops, all their followers drop. Because LinkedIn picks up really quickly, oh, they’re not paying attention. If you’re gone for a week, it’s even worse. I knew someone who had like who’s getting tons of engagement, he took a week off, you want a vacation came back, it took them almost six weeks to get back to that same level because LinkedIn goes up and he doesn’t he’s not here anymore. So the the algorithm on LinkedIn is very, very active. The the algorithm on tick tock is very active, it rewards you. But it may not reward you today, it may reward you in a week. I used to post documents once a week on LinkedIn, and I posted get like three 400 views in a couple of days. And, and I looked a couple weeks ago, one of the one of the things I posted about six weeks ago had like 50,000 views, I’m like what happened, it just all of a sudden, it just took off. And that’s the way the algorithm works. So it’s all about consistency, you show up. And you say, Okay, I’m going to post and I have two ways I post on LinkedIn, I have my profile, which most people have. But then I also have the Mr. Productivity page, which I post on there every day. So I’m getting two posts out a day. Plus, I’m engaging on people’s platform, I don’t spend as I don’t spend that much time on LinkedIn, don’t think I’m spending eight hours a day, maybe 30 to 45 minutes, because I have other things I have to do. I’ve got my podcast, I got coaching clients, I got to things got to do. But if you determine LinkedIn is where it’s at, I would encourage you, you can reach out to me if you want to know some people to follow on LinkedIn, and just watch what they’re doing. They’re very successful people. I don’t collect followers or connections or likes or views or comments, I collect relationships.

Nicole Laino
And I do think that’s when my experience is that you can build a relationship very quickly on LinkedIn that seems to move very quickly, you move from that like stranger base, like there’s less stranger danger on LinkedIn for some reason, because I think that there’s, there’s, there’s less noise. So people aren’t getting spammed the same way. Because I think that that gets ferreted out pretty quickly on LinkedIn where that doesn’t work for very long.

Mark Struczewski
Well, the problem LinkedIn is having now and they’re from I understand, and I don’t know any of that works for LinkedIn, they’re aggressively going after it is called automation. So what happens is, people are sending automation to make that first contact with you. Now you can spot automation, there’s ways you can really easy ways you can start automation. So if you go to my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see marks to Cesky is all capital letters. Okay? So when I get a DM from someone, it says, Hey, Mark, C Chesky, all capital letters. Automation ran and verified. I had a guy just this morning. And so one of my LinkedIn buddies said, when you get something and thing is automation, you respond, test, T S T. And so I sent the guy says, What do you mean? Like you’re using automation? He goes, Look, I can’t reach out to people one at a time to build a relationship. So I just fire all the DMS, and I’m trying to give him value. You don’t appreciate that. I’m like, Dude, I will never buy from you. Because you didn’t say, Hi, how are you? You know, and go to my profile and say, Oh, I see you live in Houston. How’s the what nothing, just sent automation. And what LinkedIn is doing now? Because so many people complain about it. They’re cracking down on automation, because I want to build a relationship with Nicole, not Nicole’s bot. Okay. automations, right. And they go, Oh, it’s just the first time. But what happens is you in you invade my my DM my messages with a pitch right off the bat. Hey, hope you’re doing fine. Mark Chesky Hey, I got a resource free for you. I’m like, why can’t you just say, Hey, how’s it going? What are you working on this year? Make it about the other person first? Does it take longer? Of course it does. But let me tell you the relationships I built, they are more solid because I don’t try to sell people I made that mistake in the early days of LinkedIn. Now. It’s like people call me out three, four or five weeks later and go, Oh, you gotta you gotta connect with Mark Schultz. He’s a great guy. I’m like, I’m gonna talk to you in a month. But because I had that relationship building mentality, instead of go buy my course. And if my email newsletter, or watch and listen, my podcast, it was like, Hey, how can I help you? What do you got going on, and genuinely showing interest in other people? Lights out difference?

Nicole Laino
I love that you brought that up? Because talking about like, slowing it down to really get somewhere because would you rather have things I a big complaint that I get from people or something that I hear from people all the time, is, you know, I feel like I spend either forever in the DMS or when’s the right time to sell and, and that’s such a it’s such a funny question. I understand where it comes from, because they’re trying to get it right. But the answer is that you have to kind of feel that out and and So I’m curious what your take is on that because you talk about building relationships, you talk about adding value. What’s your approach? When you start the DM pm connection, whatever the platform is called, that we’re working on, when you start that conversation with people, you know, what is your take on it? What do you try to what do you try to ferret out and, and without seeming, quote unquote salesy as, as everybody tries to avoid? Well, here’s

Mark Struczewski
the reality most 90 99.99% of people go in at the free level, they get my on my free email list. They show up for my Saturday training, to listen to podcasts free, because they want to know who is this guy, then they go up to the next level and the next level next level. So when someone connects with me, I will literally reply to him and say, Hey, Nicole, great connecting with you. I seen your profile. You live in Austin, or you live in Texas, too. What do you got going on this year? Okay. No sales, no links? No, let’s get a hot let’s hop on a call none of that stuff. No, follow me follow my Mister productivity page. It’s all I’m genuinely interested in you as a person. And one thing I do I learned from things. Bryn Tillman on LinkedIn. Every morning, I send a birthday wish to everyone. It’s simple. Now I don’t use the LinkedIn Happy birthday. I have a one that I copy and paste it says Happy Birthday name. And I double click the name and I actually type their name in there, not their last name. You know, I put their like Nicole, you know, like it’s a regular greeting. And a lot of people are surprised because 90% of people probably higher than that. We’ll just use Happy birthday, happy birthday. And there’s no, no 110s. Now the look at you have five minutes and birthday greeting. So I’m about building relationship. As far as your original question. When do I start selling? I really don’t until I, you said it earlier perfectly when I feel it. So I don’t push people to my website. They go, Oh, you know, you got a lot going on, you know, how can you help me? I said, Well, I got this and this. And this if they ask now that may not be the best approach. But I can tell you that people I do that. They don’t feel like I’m a used car salesman. They feel oh, man, this guy’s not trying to push me. Because so many people on LinkedIn are doing the DMS and the sales wrong. They’re just pushing, pushing, pushing. What are the things I do is I’m most of my posts, you read my posts, I’ll have a line read about the hashtag say, hey, get top five productivity tips at this link. Okay, it’s free. It’s 100%. Free. And I think if you lead with value, you’re gonna be better off than if you just Okay, is it the fourth DM or the third pose? Or when they reply sixth time? Don’t overthink it, you’ll know in your heart. Okay, I think they’re ready to maybe jump on a call and they jump on a call. It’s a free call. And you say hey, listen, how can I help you? Because you want to sell them you want to say listen, you want them to think rather than oh my gosh, if I get all this stuff for free, can I imagine if I bought his product or her product. A lot of people are in a hurry. And I love odds Gary Vaynerchuk puts this we don’t have enough patience in this world. It takes patience to grow a business, you plant something in the garden, you can’t go out an hour going. Spend 10 minutes, it takes time. And I think so many people are trying to like use automation, because they want to hurry up the process. What you’re really doing is you’re irritating people and then you’re getting a bad reputation.

Nicole Laino
Yeah, cuz I think like what I’m hearing there and something that that and I don’t want this to come out wrong either is that you know, you really your your job is to get them to let their guard down because people have their guard up because they’re being sold to all the time and it’s not letting their guard down so you can pounce. It’s letting their guard down so that you can now build a real connection with them.

Mark Struczewski
I had I had a DM once and I a new connection. I said, Hey, Charlie, how’s it going? He goes, What do you want? Like? Dude, I’m just like saying how are you doing? How’s your year going? And but I think though now I reflect back on it based on what you just said he probably got sold so many times. Here I am asking a genuine question what’s going on? What do you have planned for the new year and he’s probably maybe a con and a bad time. Maybe he’s got six DMS that are spamming him. And and then we had no one we build the relationship off that he goes, Wow, this is really you. Yeah, it’s me. And we had a great relationship building because I was genuinely interested in him. He goes, Man, I’d gotten you know, I always see everywhere is sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, but I’m a human being. We’re all human beings. And so I think people are overthinking this. A lot of people will tell you social selling and all sorts of stuff. But listen, build the relationship first. Because I’m not going to buy your product if I don’t know who you are.

Nicole Laino
Absolutely. And I think the other the other big takeaway from this, just everything that you’ve said is, is have a free resource, whether it’s a free Facebook group, a podcast, a free gift, something that just sort of says hey here, I’m not here to just get from you. Let me give First.

Mark Struczewski
And that’s so important because when you join my email list, the first thing you get is my top five productivity tips. Okay, that’s number one. But then I just don’t dump you into my email funnel, what I do is I have seven emails that go out over 14 days every other day. It’s value value, value, ask value, value, value, ask value. So because if Mike my emails go out at 530, central time on Sundays, if you sign up at 528, you will get the welcome email and that week’s email, then you won’t hear from me a week, you’re like, Who’s this guy. But if I drip out email content for two weeks before dumping into my regular list, now you’re like, oh, man, this guy’s give me tons of value. Now I built that relationship. Now you can hear from me once a week, twice a week. And I it’s funny, because have you ever heard of named Russell Brunson, he he owns Clickfunnels, he founded Clickfunnels, you join his email list, you get it every day. And I’m like, that’s crazy. But here’s the thing. It is so noisy on social media and email in the world. If you’re not reminding people on a regular basis that you’re there. They’re not they’re gonna forget you. So I typically send out two or four emails a week. And I believe if people if people just want to take, and they get annoyed when I ask, and they want to unsubscribe, I’m like, I throw a party. Because all you’re doing is taking, I want people are gonna say, Listen, I appreciate all the free stuff. Let me let me spend some money with you, because I built that relationship, but you can’t build it in one email or in a week, it takes time.

Nicole Laino
Well, and I think like that, the message in that too is, is that you know, you give and you give and you give. And it’s not about them buying right now. But it’s buying that when they are ready to buy, they buy from you. Because you’re the person who’s already served them, you’re the person who has already delivered. And I think so much of what people get afraid of is that they’re so afraid that they’ll never buy that they feel like they need to push hard. And I think one of that like, just from the mindset perspective, that’s, that’s letting fear guide you. And if you can step away from the fear, and you can live in the space of just like I’m here to serve. Just it takes away all of that pressure. And counterintuitive to people thinking about sales, that if you just keep giving more people will start to be more attracted to you and feel like you are a safe space out and like the wild west of the internet.

Mark Struczewski
Let me let me hit your listeners upside the head with a two way for most people are not going to buy you good luck or buy your stuff. Okay? There’s 440 million American English speaking people in the world. I can’t handle four and 40 million people. Most people are not going to buy your stuff. And it took me so long to accept that, because I’m like, But I me. Yeah, but I’m not the only productivity guy in the world, okay, most people are not going to buy your stuff. And you have to understand that you have to say that out loud, you have to maybe tattooed on your or tattoo on your arm or put a post it someplace, most people are not going to buy from you. And if you accept that, and then okay, one person buys and these people don’t buy and this one person buys. That’s okay. And I used to get stressed out every time someone says no, you’re not for me and I, I worry about the pricing. I’m like, Oh, wait, we didn’t talk about pricing. Some people, you know, some people don’t want to hire me. Come on, man. That’s okay. Some people want to go for a female productivity coach, that’s fine. Just understand most people are not going to hire you. And I think if you understand that, and you accept that, that takes a tremendous burden off your shoulders.

Nicole Laino
I couldn’t agree more. And I just wrapped up a launch. And I say this during every launch, I say the stirring, like just all the time. The right people will end up in my program. Yeah, the people who are meant to be there, the people who are meant to be in my world to learn from me to work with me, they will end up here. As long as I keep doing my thing and putting myself out there, then the right people will end up inside as long as I don’t fall down. But trying to get everybody is just you’re just setting yourself up for a world of disappointment.

Mark Struczewski
Let me tell you this little story about cereal. Now we all remember when cereal had maybe four boxes on the shelf. Now it’s like 4 million, okay? If you give too many you give people too many choices they get. I’m not gonna make a choice because I don’t pick. So what I recently done on my website, I really went really minimalist. I said what is the number one thing I want people to do when they go to my website, sign up for my email list. So what I did now is I moved my email opt in to the very top, okay, above the fold. That’s what I want. I want to get your email list. Okay. Now if you want to find out more information, you can scroll down. But here’s the thing I used to have, I think about 30 places to click on my homepage. Now I’ve got like seven and I got I got the home the about In the newsletter link at the top, I’ve got the email, the email thing, and I’m thinking I’ll make it even even more minimalist, because I don’t want people to go, oh, look, oh, look, oh, look, I want people to go, okay, he wants me sign up for his email list. One of the things I took Marie Forleo is B School and 2020. And one of the things I learned from that is don’t have social media icons on your homepage. Because you work so hard to get people there, do you really want them to click on Facebook and then go start reading your feed and never come back to your website? Am I I never thought about that. But everyone’s got their social media icons. Now you get my social media icon on my social media platforms, after you’re on my email list, but I want to get your email list. But that that’s see people are looking for the big hacks. Sometimes it’s the little ones that get you the most power. For me. If you want to go to my website, all you can really do is engage with me, you can’t go on YouTube or Facebook or something like that. I’m watching on my website, I worked so hard to get you there. I don’t want you going over and certain Instagram Stories.

Nicole Laino
Right? Right, we’ve because because the message is with social media is always like, well, you want to get them off of social media, you want to get them onto your email list, because you own it, and you control it. And if they shut down your account tomorrow, you still have all of those emails. And and that’s the truth. I mean, and I think a lot of people are seeing that right now I have multiple friends that have had, and people that I know in the industry who have had their accounts just disappear. And if you don’t have an email list, if you don’t, if you haven’t been collecting that stuff, and you had to start from scratch, and that’s unfortunate.

Mark Struczewski
Yeah, I’ll tell you the painful lesson I learned when I became an entrepreneur in 2005. I was told build your list number two, build your list. Number three, build your list. And I did I was doing a good job like, oh, Instagram, I take my focus off of building list, like Oh, go back to the list. And then oh, Snapchat, and I lose again. And I come back to the list and Oh, tick tock or whatever. Had I never lost focus of making the number one goal of building my list. No telling how many people I have on email lists. But I kept looking at all the bright shiny objects, we need to focus on things, we own our email list, you and I own the podcast, they’re not going to boot entrepreneurs in Mr. Productivity off the platforms, okay. But we own the interview. So it’s that say they wiped your, your, your podcasts off the internet, you could take those audio files, you can make blog posts or whatever, you got the content. If it’s list living on someone else’s playpen or property, you don’t own it. And if they kick you off the platform, they don’t say, okay, Nicole, we’ll give you 24 hours to get the stuff out. No, it’s gone. People realize that it’s gone. So keep the stuff where you have control of it on your website, or your podcasts or your email list. Cuz you own that stuff.

Nicole Laino
Yeah, and it gives you a different sense of like, when you have ownership over something, you actually are building something followers, they aren’t yours and they click that unfollow button. You know, and I mean, sure people can unsubscribe from your email list, but it’s a far less fickle audience. And you can deliver value in just such a so much of a different way, particularly with everybody bouncing to different platforms and spending a varying amount of time on it taking a social detox, which I think is very healthy. But if they’re not on that people do check their email, typically, at least once a day. They’re they’re like digesting cleaning it out and figuring out like, do I want to read this or don’t die. But this, I could talk to you forever because I like productivity is my jam and thinking about like efficiencies is just something that I do naturally. So I love this conversation, but but we’re coming to the end of the interview. So tell everybody where they can keep in touch with you. Where can they get all of those productivity tips hear more about what you teach and all the value that you deliver?

Mark Struczewski
Well, if you can spell it, you can go to marks to chesky.com. But for 99% of the world, go to Mr. productivity.com mi s t e r Mr. productivity.com. You will magically be transported to marks chesky.com. You’re welcome. There. Guess what the first thing I want you to do Nicole pop quiz here.

Nicole Laino
join your email list. Yeah,

Mark Struczewski
it’s right there at the top. You can’t miss it. But you can also find out about my podcast by the way, little spoiler Nicole’s gonna be a guest on my show in the in the coming months. So check that out. And you can find out you get the top when you sign up for the email list, you get my top five productivity tips. It says for entrepreneurs, but that’s because I niche down but it’s good for anybody. You can also find out about my digital productivity coaching program, which I’m excited you can get coached by me every day. And I just I’m just so excited about helping people. So everything you want to know about me and more. Is that Mr. productivity.com?

Nicole Laino
Yeah, and you have just just a side note there that Marc’s podcast is a daily podcast so crazy. Oh, I don’t know how you do it. So much value just consistently, literally consistently being done. I’ve heard there which is just an amazing feat in itself but so much value over there. If you just look at look, look his podcast up on on Apple podcasts and join his email list, you’ll stay up to date on all of that stuff. It’s definitely worth very a whole lot of listens. And thank you

Mark Struczewski
for that. And one of the ways I do it is because I have great guests like you come on the show, so I four interviews a week, so I don’t want to come up with three solo episodes, so it makes it a little easier. Unless my guests don’t show up, then it’s a little stressful. But I came up with the idea on January 1 2021. And I’m after like five days like you’re not carrying a truck. What are you doing? But so far, I’ve not missed a day. So

Nicole Laino
congratulations, while you’re building a habit there? Yes. It’ll be I’m sure it’s getting easier and easier as time goes on, except when people do rotten things like not showing up to appointments that they have. But, but Mark, thank you so much for being here. I really do appreciate it and other listeners do as well. You dropped so many great tips and just philosophies for how they can approach their business productivity in general. Thank you so much for being here. And thank you listeners for being here till the end. Thank you so much. Remember, you are only limited by the limitations that you are you accept and when you stop accepting those limitations that is when you become limitless. Thank you, Mark, thank you for being here. My pleasure. See you in the next episode.