SPECIAL SERIES: Ridiculous Things People Say | Bathroom Break #44 🚽

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Marketing Millennials – SPECIAL SERIES: Ridiculous Things People Say | Bathroom Break #44 🚽

Episode Details:

• Title: SPECIAL SERIES: Ridiculous Things People Say | Bathroom Break #44 🚽
• Hosts: Daniel Murray (The Marketing Millennials) and Jay Schwedelson (Do This Not That Podcast)
• Release Date: February 24, 2025

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Introduction: Setting the Stage

In this special episode of The Marketing Millennials, host Daniel Murray collaborates with Jay Schwedelson from the Do This Not That podcast. Titled "Bathroom Break #44," the episode delves into the often-quoted yet questionable sayings prevalent in careers, business, and life. The hosts aim to debunk these clichés, providing marketers with actionable insights and honest perspectives.

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1. Debunking Career Clichés: "Love What You Do and You'll Never Work a Day in Your Life"

Timestamp: [01:20]

Discussion Highlights:

• Jay Schwedelson's Perspective: Jay challenges the notion by emphasizing that it's unrealistic to expect to 100% love one's job. He advocates for focusing on honing skills where one excels rather than solely chasing passion. "You'll do way better in your career doubling down on a skill you can be the best at than doing things something that you love to do," Jay asserts.

• Daniel Murray's Take: Daniel strongly opposes the saying, labeling it as detrimental, especially for young professionals. He argues that expecting to love every aspect of one's job sets an unattainable standard, leading to unnecessary stress. "I think it's garbage, and it makes people stress out that they're on the wrong path," Daniel states.

Notable Quote:

• Daniel Murray: "I don't love what I do. And that's fine. Fine. I think it's garbage, and it makes people stress out that they're on the wrong path." [01:53]

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2. The Pitfalls of Overthinking: "Don't Overthink Things"

Timestamp: [02:44]

Discussion Highlights:

• Jay Schwedelson's Insights: Jay acknowledges that while overthinking can sometimes be beneficial, in the realm of marketing, it often leads to paralysis by analysis. He emphasizes the importance of execution over prolonged deliberation. "I think that marketers in general overthink everything, and that leads to not executing," Jay explains.

• Daniel Murray's Agreement: Initially skeptical, Daniel concedes Jay's point, recognizing that excessive deliberation can hinder timely execution—a critical aspect in marketing where trends and audience responses can be unpredictable. "You can't overthink to the point where you're not executing. So I subscribe to what you just said." [03:21]

Notable Quote:

• Jay Schwedelson: "Everything in marketing to me is a test. Everything. You don't know what's going to flop. You don't know what's going to work." [02:44]

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3. Embracing Uncertainty: "Never Admit You Don't Know the Answer"

Timestamp: [04:39]

Discussion Highlights:

• Jay Schwedelson's Stance: Jay vehemently disagrees with the notion, advocating for honesty and continuous learning. He posits that admitting ignorance fosters trust and opens avenues for collaborative problem-solving. "There's never a dumb question. And the best marketers are always asking why to everything," Jay emphasizes.

• Daniel Murray's Endorsement: Daniel echoes Jay's sentiments, highlighting that acknowledging when one doesn't know something enhances credibility. He believes that this honesty is a cornerstone for building strong professional relationships. "I trust that person so much more than somebody who gives me an answer and they're just like spewing out nonsense." [05:24]

Notable Quote:

• Daniel Murray: "Getting confident enough to say I don't know is like a secret sauce way to build a strong connection with somebody else, ironically." [05:57]

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4. Rethinking Scalability: "If It Doesn't Scale, Don't Do It"

Timestamp: [06:19]

Discussion Highlights:

• Jay Schwedelson's Argument: Jay challenges the scalability mantra by asserting that many foundational marketing activities start as unscalable. He argues that these initial, grassroots efforts are essential for long-term scalability and brand building. "I love organic social. And organic social at the beginning is one of the most unscalable things." [06:19]

• Daniel Murray's Agreement: Daniel concurs, illustrating that engaging in unscalable actions often leads to discovering scalable processes. He uses their podcast collaboration as an example of how persistent, seemingly unscalable efforts can culminate in successful, scalable outcomes. "Doing unscalable things leads to scalable things." [06:19]

Notable Quote:

• Jay Schwedelson: "If you're trying to keep your brand only a year or two, then do only things that maybe will scale, like paid ads, but you need to do the other things to scale." [07:00]

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5. Lighthearted Interlude: Discussing Current Movies

Timestamp: [07:49]

While primarily focused on marketing clichés, the hosts briefly veer into a casual discussion about contemporary movies, expressing their opinions on the latest Captain America installment and Oscar-nominated films. This segment serves as a lighthearted break from the more serious topics, showcasing the hosts' personal tastes and providing relatable content for listeners.

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Conclusion: Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts

Throughout "Bathroom Break #44," Daniel Murray and Jay Schwedelson dismantle several overused and misleading sayings that permeate the marketing and business landscape. Their candid conversation underscores the importance of:

• Realistic Career Expectations: Recognizing that not every aspect of a job will be fulfilling, but leveraging strengths can lead to success.

• Prioritizing Execution: Avoiding the trap of overthinking to ensure timely and effective marketing actions.

• Valuing Honesty: Embracing the admission of not knowing something as a pathway to trust and growth.

• Appreciating the Unscalable: Understanding that foundational, unscalable efforts are often the bedrock of scalable success.

The episode concludes with a nod to their ongoing collaboration and a reminder to listeners to engage with The Marketing Millennials and Do This Not That podcasts for more insightful discussions.

Final Notable Quote:

• Daniel Murray: "We talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out." [10:54]

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Connect with the Hosts:

• The Marketing Millennials Community:

  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • Newsletter

• Daniel Murray:

  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

• Jay Schwedelson:

  • Do This Not That Podcast (Assumed link as not provided)

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This episode serves as a valuable resource for marketers seeking to navigate the often contradictory advice in the industry. By challenging common sayings and advocating for practical, honest approaches, Daniel and Jay provide listeners with actionable insights to enhance their marketing strategies and career trajectories.

Transcript

[Daniel Murray]

Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marking tips or use the bathroom.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Or both.

[Daniel Murray]

But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.

This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwedelson from the do this not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back for Bathroom Break. This is Jay Schwedelson from the do this, not that podcast. I'm here with Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials podcast. And today we're going to be talking about stupid things that people say, which ironically is the majority of things that we talk about on this podcast. What an opening. That is terrible. All right, I want to get right into it. I'm not going to ask you what you ate for dinner last night or something ridiculous like that. I want to get right into it. So I'm going to start out with the first one. I want to get your reaction and I really don't know what your vibe is on this. All right. Stupid things that people say about careers and business and life. And here's the first one. Love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life. What is the Daniel Murray take on that?

[Jay Schwedelson]

My take on that statement is that you're never going to 100% love what anyone think you do. And I think you should double down on things that you're good at instead of stuff that you love that you do. Because you'll do way better in your career doubling down on a skill you can be the best at than doing things something that you love. If that skill is something that you're you love too, maybe, but you still feel like it's on point at work once you've done that. But what's your take on that?

[Daniel Murray]

I think this is one of the worst things that people say because it takes young people down a horrible path where they think that if they don't love what they're doing that they're not in the right job for themselves. Listen, you can't hate what you do. You can't be torture. But if you're passionate about what you do, it doesn't mean you have to love it. I don't love what I do. I mean, work's a four letter word. It is. I love meeting cool people. I love being passionate about it. I love the life that it gives me. But I don't love what I do. And that's fine. Fine. I think it's garbage, and it makes people stress out that they're on the wrong path. And you're not. 1% of people love what they do. Good for you. You're a ballet dancer. You're a florist. You love it. Have a great time. All right, that's my hot take. All right, next one. I got another one for you. Ready? Don't overthink things. Is overthinking bad or good?

[Jay Schwedelson]

It could go both ways, I think, but I think everybody overthinks, so I think that's ridiculous. And in general. But I do think that marketers in general overthink everything, and that leads to not executing. I rather just someone execute than overthink because everything in marketing to me is a test. Everything. You don't know what's going to flop. You don't know what's going to work. Most marketers I know, me and Jay are always trying things, and we don't know what to be doing half the time. So.

[Daniel Murray]

Like, right now.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Exactly. So, I mean, overthinking is going to happen, but in marketing, it leads to dangerous behavior when you are spending too much time.

[Daniel Murray]

You know, it's funny, when you said it, when you started talking, I started to agree with what you were thinking. That's not originally what I thought. So you changed my mind. Because you're right. We overthink and then we don't execute. And execution is everything in marketing. I guess when I was thinking about overthinking, I was like, you know, sometimes I'll be in the middle of the night and I'll pop up and suddenly pop my brain about whatever's going on at work, and I'll be like, oh, my God, that's perfect. And I'll put a note in my phone. That's because I'm overthinking. I won't stop thinking about it. And sometimes my best ideas come at the worst possible times. And I'm against this idea of you shouldn't overthink. But to your point, you can't overthink to the point where you're not executing. So I subscribe to what you just said. I think that makes a lot of sense.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Yeah, I just. I've just seen so many marketing campaigns take months and months because people overthink every detail. I think what your, like, I think your brain's Never going to stop thinking of ideas. And the best ideas don't happen in front of a laptop. They happen at the weirdest times. But I do think that overthinking leads to campaigns not being in the world and the market is the best test for marketing.

[Daniel Murray]

All right, another hot take, weird thing that people say is never admit you don't know the answer. So, like, saying I don't know is bad.

[Jay Schwedelson]

That's the dumbest take ever. Because I think you. There's never, there's never a dumb question. And the best markers are always asking why to everything. And especially in our profession where it depends is the number one answer. Because every situation, every industry, every, every Persona, every audience is different. Asking questions will help you get to the answer faster. And you also have so many tools now that you can ask questions too. So just ask those questions, please.

[Daniel Murray]

Yeah. And you know, I think when you, when somebody asks me something or I ask somebody something and they say, you know, I don't know, but let me find out. I trust that person so much more than somebody asks a question to. And then they give me an answer and I know that they're full of it and they're just like spewing out nonsense. So. So it's almost like I don't know as a confidence builder to me that the person's confident enough to be able to like, you know what? I don't know, I'll find out. It's totally fine. Getting confident enough to say I don't know is like a secret sauce way to build a strong connection with somebody else, ironically.

[Jay Schwedelson]

So I think if you're early in your career or you want to, managers are looking for that. They don't care if you actually know the answer to everything. They just care that you are taking the time to find out the right thing to do. So they don't really care.

[Daniel Murray]

So. All right, one more. If it doesn't scale, don't do it.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Well, you know me, I love organic social. And organic social at the beginning is one of the most unscalable things. I think most marketing at the beginning is unscalable until it scales. So I think that's ridiculous because you will spend time on actions that will get answers now and you won't do things that are long term, like building brands, brand SEO, organic social, which will actually keep your brand existing for a long, long time. If you're trying to keep your brand only a year or two, then do do only things that maybe will scale, like paid ads, but you need to do the other things to scale.

[Daniel Murray]

Yeah. And I think doing unscalable things leads to scalable things. Right. You start doing stuff. All right, cool. This is working. Let me figure out actually how to build this into something. Some way I can keep doing this. Even. Even this episode, this podcast, the Bathroom Break. You know, when Daniel and I said, hey, why don't we do a couple episodes, release it on our. Each other's podcast. Neither one of us, frankly, like, how do we carve out time to do this every single week? I don't know. And here we are, we're like 40 episodes deep, and we, you know, you just do it. You keep on going. You figure it out. At least that's my vibe. That's what I think. All right, let me ask you a ridiculous question. The top movie right now there is Captain America. I think this looks like garbage. I have no interest in seeing it. Are you going to see Captain America? Do you care about this?

[Jay Schwedelson]

I'll watch it because. To give it a shot, because I do like Marvel, but I do think for some reason, the last, like, six Marvel movies have just been abysmal. And having not having the. The OG Captain America in the movie is actually harsh to me, so it's kind of hurts my soul. But Marvel movies have just gone downhill in the last four to five to six movies, and it's just. They're losing the plot. So I'm sad about it.

[Daniel Murray]

Are you. So speaking of that, with the Oscars coming up, are you, like, one of these people, like, oh, my God, I gotta watch all the Oscar movies. Are you gonna sit back and watch, like, the Substance with Demi Moore and all these other movies? Are you like, I don't even care, actually.

[Jay Schwedelson]

I want to know your take on it, because some of the best movies of the year aren't even getting nominations and stuff like that, which is kind of crazy. I mean, no hate on, like, Amelia Perez, but I didn't know that was even a movie until, like, the Oscar came out. Like, I didn't know that was a movie. No hate on that movie. I think I. I'll watch it to give it its flowers. But how did it get 13 nominations over some of the best movies that were out this year? Which is crazy.

[Daniel Murray]

There was a movie called Anna, which is nominated. Whatever. It's about, like, this, like, Russian mobster dude, whatever. And so I was like, we should. Let's watch it. It's nominated. So we watched it. It has to be one of the biggest pieces of garbage of all time. I was like, I was like, can I have these two hours back in my life? This is horrendous. So, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I just like. So when they get nominated, I'm like, oh, my God, it's that movie I saw. But I actually don't care.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Do you have the app Letterbox?

[Daniel Murray]

No, it's Letterbox.

[Jay Schwedelson]

It's basically an app where you can pick movies that are and have a watch list of movies. And there's ridiculous comments of people what they. It's kind of funny, the comments of every movie and it's like live ranking a movie, but you have your letterbox and say top Grammy nominated movies or something. And you can star which ones you want to see. And they have lists of different types of genres you want to. So it's a cool app to try out if you're a movie buff.

[Daniel Murray]

I will check that out, although there's too much going on right now. There's the Bachelor, Love is Blind, and White Lotus. So I'm very busy, so I want to see.

[Jay Schwedelson]

I'm waiting to watch that with Ari. White Lotus.

[Daniel Murray]

Yeah, just came out. All right, well, once again, we've covered a lot of ground on this show. Everybody go and listen full time. Subscribe. Follow the Marketing Millennials podcast. It is the absolute best thing on earth and appreciate you being here for Bathroom Break. And listen, we're going to see you at the next one, right?

[Jay Schwedelson]

Yeah, later.

[Daniel Murray]

Daniel. Come on, man. I got to get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay. Check out my podcast, do this, not that, for Marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing, and I hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Market Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the Bathroom Break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

Later.