Judson Rollins - What To Do When Work Is Like Drinking From a Fire Hose
Is working in management consulting as glamorous as it seems? What's the best thing you can do to improve your public speaking skills? How can you use different pricing strategies to scale up your business? Welcome back to How They Get Stuff Done. Today, I'm speaking with Judson Rollins.
Peter Akkies:Judson is an aviation strategy consultant and a monetization architect for expert service providers who wanna decouple their revenue from their hours. Judson and I discussed finding the middle ground between perfection and acceptability, the pros and cons of time blocking, Judson's favorite ways to capture ideas on the go and even in the shower, and more. Enjoy the conversation. Hey, Judson. Welcome to the show.
Judson Rollins:Thanks for having me, Peter.
Peter Akkies:So Judson, you and I met at Toastmasters, a big international public speaking organization, and we met at one of the clubs in Amsterdam. So I guess we both better be really, really eloquent during this conversation. I would certainly hope so. Otherwise, something went wrong.
Judson Rollins:Someone from the club will reach out and whack us both every day.
Peter Akkies:Exactly. Exactly. Actually, I don't know. How did you come to know about Toastmasters?
Judson Rollins:So Toastmasters, because it's an international organization, has been on my radar for a long time. And when I lived in the US and New Zealand for various reasons, I never joined. And when I moved to Amsterdam, one of the ways that I thought about making friends was, hey, you know what? I think it's time for me to polish up my public speaking abilities. And because I worked in the airline industry prior to the COVID or coronavirus pandemic, I was used to, appearing at conferences, being on panels, being a moderator.
Judson Rollins:And so before the pandemic, I had plenty of opportunities to speak. But when you moderate over Zoom, it's not the same experience.
Peter Akkies:Not the same.
Judson Rollins:You can't tell if you're bombing or if you're actually connecting to the audience. And so my skills really atrophied, and I realized I need to get back in the arena, so to speak, and start polishing up those speaking abilities again.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. You know, this is it gets me thinking of I ran an online course recently where I took a group of about 30 something people through a program to get organized and be more productive, and we'd meet on Zoom a couple times a week. And what you said resonated so much, sometimes you know I'd be teaching and then people just their faces are like, I'm not enjoying this at all. Or people appear not to be paying attention. If they even have their camera on.
Peter Akkies:Yeah, if they even have their camera on, which I always encourage people to do. And then afterwards, I was like, how did you like it? And everybody was like, it was great. I learned so much. Amazing.
Peter Akkies:And I was like, wait a second. Could you smile then?
Judson Rollins:Where was this during those
Peter Akkies:sessions? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So would you recommend Toastmasters then for people who want to get into public speaking and perhaps make friends?
Judson Rollins:100%. Especially if you live in a larger city, there's bound to be multiple clubs. And find a group of people find a Toastmasters club that has a group of people you like and you feel like you resonate with, and you feel like their speeches resonate with you, find your find your tribe, find your your group. But, yeah, Toastmasters is a fantastic way to work on your public speaking skills even if you have 0 public speaking experience.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. That's for me that was a big thing because when I joined Toastmasters, I noticed quite early on that you've get a big range of abilities in the people that are members, right? Some people come there and you know, they have trouble getting their first words out. They're like sweating, getting on stage. And other people are like, I am a TED speaker.
Peter Akkies:I'm just here to practice more. Right? So yeah. Which which one of those
Judson Rollins:were you? Neither nor actually. I'm I'm certainly not a a TED speaker, but I've always been comfortable in front of people. I it's not faith that I'm so good so much as I just don't care. I have this hold my beer attitude and it it really
Peter Akkies:works. Yeah. It's the, do it while scared attitude. Exactly. Yeah.
Peter Akkies:There's there's this meme online. I'll see how I can find it and put it in the show notes which is a little diagram. It's like I want to do this, but I'm scared. And then the advice is, okay, fine. Do it scared.
Peter Akkies:And just so, yeah, I love that.
Judson Rollins:Just do it. Just get started.
Peter Akkies:This is our first recommendation today then for for the listeners and and viewers on YouTube is to go check out your nearest Toastmasters club.
Judson Rollins:That's right. And with the Toastmasters public service announcement out of the way, on with the There we
Peter Akkies:go. We'll do that. So you you mentioned that you used to be in the aviation industry until COVID. And so I wanna talk about both of those things. And let let let's Yeah.
Peter Akkies:Before we talk about the impact of COVID, how did you get into the aviation industry?
Judson Rollins:Was quite literally born into it. My parents were a pilot and flight attendant. The old 19 seventies luxury. They, they met working, trips together, flying for an American, an airline based in the US, based on, in Atlanta actually. Well, Delta Airlines to be specific.
Judson Rollins:And, yeah, I grew up in the Atlanta area. They flew for Delta for 30 years each. And the running joke in my family that I'm not entirely sure was a joke was that my first word as a child was pain.
Peter Akkies:It may or may not be true.
Judson Rollins:May or may not be true, but I've always been in love with everything that has wings. I'm actually a private pilot myself. I had grandparents who were private pilots. It really is a family business. And, yeah, I just loved it.
Judson Rollins:And so, it wasn't my first job, actually. My first job was as a consultant right out of my MBA. But at the first available opportunity when I got tired of consulting, I dove into the airline industry and didn't look back until COVID.
Peter Akkies:Man, I wanna ask you about getting out of consulting because that's something that I did myself. But because you mentioned that you're a private pilot, you like to fly planes. I like to jump out of planes. I feel feel like we gotta combine this at some point.
Judson Rollins:Well, there's a saying among pilots that no pilot ever jumps out of a plane with a perfectly functional engine.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so for me, of course, I love to jump out of planes with perfectly functional engines.
Peter Akkies:It's it's my latest hobby, skydiving.
Judson Rollins:So Looks like a lot of fun.
Peter Akkies:It is a lot of fun. I highly recommend it to everybody. You know, at least if you've never done it, go do one of those tandem jumps where you're hooked up to an instructor and they sort of like it's one of those things where you just gotta do it while scared, you know. Exactly right. I was terrified the first time I did it.
Peter Akkies:I mean, I barely remember my first
Judson Rollins:jump. That's a fear I have yet to get over.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. Well, you know, ask someone to give it to you for like a meaningful birthday or something like that. Noted. There you go. Excellent.
Peter Akkies:So you said you were in management consulting. Was that sort of straight out of college?
Judson Rollins:So, actually, I did a bit of wandering around out of, out of my undergrad, and worked for the state government Florida, spent a little bit of time just kinda traveling around Europe, taking language lessons in Germany, and did my MBA kind of early. Did my MBA at, 20 I started at 24, finished at 26, which was great from a cost and get it out of the way perspective. I think it would have been more beneficial if I had more work experience, but I think as most people who have MBAs will tell you, the MBA is not really an education. It's a credential in a network. Yeah.
Judson Rollins:So, yeah, I actually got into management consulting on the back of the MBA. It was an international program, and I had a exchange semester in Germany. And what I really wanted to do was get on at Lufthansa or Air Berlin, which was then still an airline. And, unfortunately, I wasn't able to get an internship at either of those, but one of my professors was an alumnus of a German consulting firm based out of Stuttgart. And he said, look.
Judson Rollins:My old firm is looking for an American to help us with our one man Boston office. How do you feel about an internship based in Stuttgart but helping our Boston based partner? I said, let's do it. So the 3 month internship turned into a 6 month internship, turned into, about a year and a half of management consulting. It was I had fantastic colleagues.
Judson Rollins:Probably the best mentor I ever had was at that consulting firm. I still occasionally am in touch with him today, but it was 95% travel, mostly across the Atlantic. I was doing 2 weeks in the US, 2 weeks in Germany, and I was exhausted. And my then fiancee, now ex wife, and I were starting to get serious about getting together, and I didn't wanna make her a work widow. So I said, look.
Judson Rollins:I'm gonna drop the consulting thing and move back to the States. And I moved back to the States and found a job, at, Lufthansa's, ironically, America's office in New York, and I was off to the races in my airline career.
Peter Akkies:Wow. Okay. So there there's a lot to unpack then. Like to get into some of those things in a bit more detail because first of all, what was it like to fly all the time for work just to because you said you were away for 2 weeks at a time?
Judson Rollins:It would be 2 weeks at a time. Yeah. It was it was well, it would be 2 weeks at a time, but it would be usually 2 weeks on, 1 week off was kinda the the rhythm to it. And at some there were some stages where it was 2 weeks on, 2 days off. I mean, there's just ping ponging back and forth.
Judson Rollins:And the thing that made it really hard was the firm that I worked for only paid for business class travel if you were a principal or a partner, and I was just an analyst. And so I was going across the Atlantic every 2 weeks in economy, which is utterly I mean, okay. When you're on vacation, fine. But when you're doing it every 2 weeks for business and they expect you to work on the day of arrival, it's just exhausting.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. Oh, working on the day of arrival. That sounds awful.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. Even eastbound. Yeah. It's like, gosh, you gotta be kidding me. I've had maybe 2 hours of sleep on this plane.
Judson Rollins:Right.
Peter Akkies:You're probably not very affected.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. Total zombie.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. How did you end up actually getting stuff done around that time? Did you just power through or did you sort of like those days when you showed up early in the morning, so you just kinda do the bare minimum, wait for a good night sleep, try and catch up the next day?
Judson Rollins:A lot of coffee, a lot of trying to answer emails, trying not to make mistakes, looking at the same PowerPoint 5 times in a row to make sure I hadn't screwed it up again, or make sure I found all the mistakes. Because when you write PowerPoints and you're half asleep they're bound to be full of errors. And, yeah. So it was just a lot of iteration. A lot of, trying to to double check myself.
Judson Rollins:And I was so busy that I didn't even really have time. I'm embarrassed to say this, especially on this program, but I'm I'm embarrassed to say I didn't really have the time to implement a proper productivity system. And I think it would have made it a lot easier if I had been able to to borrow a, a Franklin Covey term, sharpen my saw Yeah. Before continuing.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. Well, I wanna I wanna talk about that in in a few minutes, you know, whether you're using any tools right now, but I'm interested in this background story because, you know, personally I also spent some time working in consulting. And thinking back to it now, I'm also like, well, yeah, I worked a lot of hours and I could have done a lot better. But hey, I was young. You know, you were young at the time and so you learned from it.
Peter Akkies:And you spent some time in consulting and then you got into the airline industry. So how did that jump happen?
Judson Rollins:Well, the jump happened just by sheer force of will. I there was no way I was not going to work an airline when I finally decided to get out of consulting. I'd been dreaming about it, since childhood. And when I was starting to get tired of consulting, there were days that I or nights I would sit in the hotel or in the airport surfing airliners dot net, which is a famous aviation bulletin board, and going, what am I doing here? Why am I not working for an airline?
Peter Akkies:Yeah.
Judson Rollins:And so when the opportunity presented itself, I to to change careers, I said, you know what? This is the way I've always wanted to go. Let's do it. And I just kept knocking on doors until I found somebody to hire
Peter Akkies:me. And you ended up being a consultant in the airline industry, but you probably didn't start there, I would think.
Judson Rollins:No. Definitely not. So I worked for 3 airlines in the US. I worked for Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer out of Seattle. And then I was actually working for an airline down in New Zealand.
Judson Rollins:And I between Boeing and, Air New Zealand, I had taken a previous, role as a consultant or as a solo consultant. Although, at that time, it
Peter Akkies:was working more with investors and
Judson Rollins:suppliers to aircraft manufacturers. But that was really kind of a it was a very difficult year. And when Ernie Cieland reached out about the role, it was a no brainer for me to take it. They had seen some of my writing and somebody reached out and said, hey. We have this role.
Judson Rollins:We think you're a good fit. If you're interested, throw in an application. I did and off I went. But when I was hired for the roll down in New Zealand, they brought me in for a new so my background is in what's called revenue management, which is pricing and demand forecasting, and which I'm sure we'll get to a little bit later on. But the airline brought me in to be the strategist behind a new revenue management system that they were using.
Judson Rollins:And when I start up at the airline, they said, okay. This is a 3 month implementation and after that we're gonna be up and running. Well, I left in month 34 of the implementation.
Peter Akkies:Month 34 of the 3 months
Judson Rollins:Month 34. Implementation. Yeah. And they didn't even really finish it until, about 2 months into COVID when the airline was flying, like, 5 flights a week across the entire network. Yeah.
Judson Rollins:And so I just I I had lovely colleagues. I had great bosses, but I had had enough of watching my career go nowhere. And I knew that my career progression was largely held up by the rollout of the system. And I said, lovely lovely to meet you. It's been fun, but enough's in us.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. Yeah. And so I I, was being I've been contacted about doing some consulting, ironically for another aircraft manufacturer and for, another airline. And I said, it's now or never. So I took the leap, and off I went into solo consulting the 2nd time working with airlines and aircraft manufacturers.
Judson Rollins:My, the reason aircraft manufacturers came into the picture is because my background isn't just revenue management. It's also, aircraft fleet planning, which airplanes we're gonna fly, and network planning, where are we gonna fly and with how much capacity. And manufacturers need someone with an airline perspective to come in and help them make sure that their products are connecting with
Peter Akkies:the customers
Judson Rollins:with the airline customers. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And so I had a phenomenal, 20 I left the airline in, early 19.
Judson Rollins:2019 was a blowout year. I ended up going to Ukraine for about 6 months. I ended up, actually back in New Zealand as a consultant. And when COVID hit, I was in Singapore and getting ready to start commuting between Japan and the Philippines for about another 6 months, and it all collapsed Yeah. Within the same 2 or 3 weeks in February 2020.
Judson Rollins:Right.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. I wanna get there in a second, but but first, something I've been really curious about is you worked for management you worked in a management consulting job in the US, then you worked for Boeing. Was that in Seattle? Yeah. That's right.
Peter Akkies:And then you moved to New Zealand. Yep. Did you encounter very different work cultures between the US and New Zealand or perhaps between Boeing and New Zealand? Absolutely.
Judson Rollins:Boeing is a very special animal for a number of reasons, but I would say the US versus New Zealand is really the the contrast that I would wanna draw. And I remember one time early in my, my time at Air New Zealand that I had a presentation and a call with our London office that I was responsible for for organizing, and both of them were due on the same day. And so I stayed in the office until 8, 9, 10 o'clock, 3 nights in a row to get it done. And on the night before, we had a a team, pub quiz night. And so I went out with the team to do the the pub quiz thing and came back and worked until probably about 10:30.
Judson Rollins:Woke up Friday, did the call, did the presentation, all went well. But around, I don't know, 3, 4 o'clock that afternoon, my manager pulled me into a privacy room and said, nice work, no complaints, but how did you get all that done? And I said, well, I was here until 8, 9, 10 o'clock.
Peter Akkies:And he goes, woah. Woah. Woah. Mate, we don't do
Judson Rollins:that here. You should have asked for more time. And I said, should have asked for I thought you spoke English in New Zealand. Hang on.
Peter Akkies:I think they they sort of speak English in New Zealand. Right?
Judson Rollins:Right. These words sound like English, but I'm really not sure I I understand the concept that's coming out of your mouth here. You should have asked for more time. Yeah. That was mind blowing.
Judson Rollins:But it was it it ended up working out because, you know, the work life balance was really nice, and it was quite a contrast from, my corporate roles previously and especially for management consulting. Now when you're doing solo consulting, it's a bit of a different animal because it's punishment that you choose for yourself.
Peter Akkies:Yeah.
Judson Rollins:As I tell people, I'm the CEO, the chief everything officer. Right. Marketing, finance, accounting, tax, it's all
Peter Akkies:me. Customer support.
Judson Rollins:You can out service. That's right. Yeah. You can outsource some things but only to a point. And so there's always work to be done.
Judson Rollins:So if I wake up even on a Saturday or a Sunday, works on my mind. And I'm asking myself, should I go do leisure activity x, or should I maybe do a little bit of work today? And that tension never goes away. Right. Right.
Judson Rollins:And
Peter Akkies:let's go there then because that's an interesting topic for me also because I've been working for myself for quite a while and, you know, I've had my business for maybe 5, 6 years now and very slowly I'm adding someone. I have a video editor now and perhaps I'm gonna have someone edit the podcast, but still mostly me. And I also come from a consulting background and it's very different, right? If you have a job like, well, consulting I think is a special sort of thing because often you don't turn off, especially like you and me, we both worked in consulting in the US, different different culture perhaps than in New Zealand or, you know, Europe where we live now. But yeah, that that thing where you're working for yourself and it's like every day is Monday or every day is Wednesday or every day is Sunday.
Peter Akkies:It's all the same to me.
Judson Rollins:They all blur together. Absolutely.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. So did you find it difficult to go from, okay, work is done, you can shut off, now this is personal time, to this situation where you have to make this decision sort of, you know, moment by moment. Are you gonna do any work now or not?
Judson Rollins:Oh, absolutely. I still struggle with it. I mean, I I have I now have fairly good tools for setting priorities, but the just because the priorities are done doesn't mean that all of the non priority admin doesn't need to get done. Yeah. And so the question is, you know, if I get to a 3 PM on a Friday or if I wake up on Saturday morning, do I what do I do?
Judson Rollins:You know, do I have time to read The Economist or do I need to go do that admin, you know, those expenses that I haven't submitted yet or those emails from my account that I haven't paid attention to or, you know, the the admin things that are they're not customer critical. They're not burning platforms. But if you don't put out those fires, they will come to haunt you eventually.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. How do you decide what to work on on any given day? So I have a
Judson Rollins:whiteboard, and the whiteboard has my, I'm sure you've you're aware of the book, The One Thing. And I start with my one thing that's on the whiteboard, and then I've got below that, what I call, cake toppers. So what are the the the what's the icing on the cake? What are the cake toppers? Those are the bonus things that, you know, know, once the one thing is done, what are the other things that I'd like to get to?
Judson Rollins:And every day is like drinking from a fire hose. It's like which which things am I going to let drop today? It's not even a question of which things there is the what do I most need to get done, but what I most need to get done naturally entails, I can procrastate that another day. Yeah. I don't like that because I'm I'm used to tying off things, leaving with an empty inbox.
Judson Rollins:I'm not used to just letting everything hang out.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. So one of the things that I've been reflecting on a lot lately is that you can never finish every single task on your to do list, right? And you can make, of course, a shorter to do list, but the true to do list of all of the things that are worth doing in your life is functionally infinite, right? And so
Judson Rollins:That's right.
Peter Akkies:That's right. You get into this situation where if you measure your success by the length of your remaining to dos on the to do list, you're gonna lose. You're gonna lose every single day for the rest of your life, right? So Absolutely. I prefer to do it the other way around.
Peter Akkies:Right? And and be like, oh, this is something I accomplished. And for me, I find it helpful to do a weekly review where I take a quick look at what did I accomplish last week. I've also, for at least a year now, I've been doing daily journaling and that helps a lot too. Just maybe 10 minutes in the morning, I sort of do it before I talk to anybody, you know, before I even get, you know, leave the bedroom.
Peter Akkies:And I'm just writing down, you know, what's on my mind. And often that's things that I accomplished, and just taking a quick look back. I'm actually accomplishing more than than you think. So for you, do you have any sort of reflective practice like that?
Judson Rollins:I do a weekend wrap or excuse me, an end of week wrap up. And I don't do what you're doing. I actually really like that idea of writing an accomplishment journal, I think you almost could call it. I really like that, but that's not what I'm doing. For me, it's writing down, what are the the top priorities, just kind of brain dumping, everything that didn't get finished from this week so that I can launch into the the following week with a sense of clarity and knowing what's top of my agenda.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. And so you mentioned that you have a lot of responsibilities. Right? We'll talk a little bit about what your what your current is about like, your current business is about in a minute, but, you're you're running your own business right now. It's sort of a consulting sort of thing.
Peter Akkies:Right? And, you're the chief everything officer. So how do you decide sort of which business things to work on today? You said you're gonna pick one thing. Right?
Peter Akkies:That's like your most important thing. And it sounds like you do it early in the day. You're eating that frog, you know, for people who know that reference. That's right. But you still gotta decide what the frog is for today.
Peter Akkies:What is the one thing? So some people will do like day theming. Right? They're like, oh, Mondays are for, you know, content creation. Tuesdays are for admin and Wednesdays are for this.
Peter Akkies:Do you have any habits there? Or is it just whatever feels most urgent to you?
Judson Rollins:I try to start with a weekly theme and then within the weekly theme, I'll break that down into daily top priorities.
Peter Akkies:So what's your weekly theme for like this week?
Judson Rollins:For this week, it's actually, finishing a website overhaul that needs doing and getting a podcast of my own. Oh, exciting. That's gonna be yeah. It'll be, it's, both are so, we'll talk about where to find me at the end. But, the podcast has the same name as my business, The Scale Whisperer.
Judson Rollins:And by the time this episode airs, it'll be available everywhere that you can find how I get stuff done.
Peter Akkies:Exciting. That's exciting. And so you we're definitely gonna talk about that. So so you say this week, I'm gonna get my website up, you know, I'm gonna get my my podcast launched. How does that translate to what you're working on day to day?
Peter Akkies:Does that go on do you have, like, a weekly thing in your whiteboard? Was it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? Yep.
Judson Rollins:So there's a a weekly thing, just a full week. What is this week's theme? Like, for instance, if I'm looking right now, it says this week's sprint website plus podcast. And today, it the focus is really website because I just got back, the latest edits from my web developer. They're ready to go and so I'm actually just writing content for the website today looking for graphics, to fill in some holes that need to be filled.
Judson Rollins:And then that'll probably continue through tomorrow. And depending on how the week goes, ideally, I would like to switch over to the podcast by Wednesday afternoon. But if that doesn't happen, then it'll be Thursday. And Thursday, Friday, I work on the podcast. Yeah.
Peter Akkies:So a lot of people like to do things this way. I should say a lot of people that I speak to or people who take some of my courses, you know, they especially the people that have their own businesses or that are self employed, because we have a lot of flexibility with our time, right? If you have a job, often your boss is saying, I need you to do this this week. So you have much less of a choice. So personally, I don't do anything like this.
Peter Akkies:I I don't really do any, like, theming of what my week is gonna be about or my day is gonna be about because what I find is that I'm actually really bad at predicting how long things are gonna take. So Yeah. If I say, you know what? This week, I'm gonna work on my podcast, and next week I wanna work on that, Maybe it takes me only 2 days to work on the podcast or maybe it takes me a week and a half, and then I have to adjust. And so I try to do a little bit of planning conversation today.
Peter Akkies:Obviously, I prepared for this conversation, made sure to, you know, do that on time. And similarly, you know, I just launched a new course. Okay. I kind of had an idea. I wanted to launch it in February of 2024.
Peter Akkies:But I find that I I don't like to go too far beyond that. So for you, if you say, well, I I wanna get my website launched this week. What if it doesn't happen by the end of the week? You know, how how do you feel about that, and what do you do with the other things you scheduled
Judson Rollins:for the week? So that's the reason I have the the one thing and then the the icing on the cake and the cake toppers is so I've got things that can be deferred. I have to get the one thing done. That's the number
Peter Akkies:one thing done. What happens if you don't
Judson Rollins:get it? Then it rolls into tomorrow, and it becomes or it stays the number one thing for tomorrow. And whatever I had hoped tomorrow's thing was gonna be becomes the first icing on the cake. I see. Yeah.
Judson Rollins:And that's so the ice on the cake and, cake toppers, metaphor is something that I borrow from the 6 Minute Success Journal, if you've heard that. No. I haven't. That's a book by a German author. It's really good.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. And so I basically end up just having to make today's top to do tomorrow's top to do, and then everything else gets subordinated below that.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. So you're sort of always, if you don't finish it tomorrow, I'm gonna keep working on it. It's it's always
Judson Rollins:Unless unless something more urgent comes up. I mean, obviously, I check my inboxes a couple of times a day. And if something comes through that is a true burning platform issue or especially if it's a client question. If it's a client question that gets top billing no matter what. So, yeah, I'm responding to clients and then the internal priorities get bumped below that.
Judson Rollins:But as long as there are no client priorities, then I'll just continue down the same path.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So do you know Cal Newport? Of course.
Peter Akkies:Cal Newport, who wrote the book Deep Work, he's a big fan of time blocking. Some people call this time boxing, where what you do is you're literally taking your calendar, it could be a paper calendar or a digital calendar, and you say, from 2 PM to 4 PM tomorrow, I'm gonna work on this particular task or project. You know, from 4 to 5:30, I'm gonna work on this other thing and so on. Do you do anything like that?
Judson Rollins:Funny you should ask. I actually have the time block planned
Peter Akkies:Oh, there we go. For those of you who are listening to the audio version, Justin was holding up a, a notebook. So
Judson Rollins:Yep. And this is actually by Cal Newport. It's a a tool that he created in in line with his teachings, and I'm gonna flip to some blank pages. And you can actually see for week 9, day
Peter Akkies:4, I
Judson Rollins:think that says. It what are the what are the time blocks? And what am I gonna do in each of of these timelines? You
Peter Akkies:bought it, but you also
Judson Rollins:use it. Okay. I do. And I I love it. This was actually I got started on it because of a productivity coach I was working with last year who really introduced me to some great tools.
Judson Rollins:And I would say Time Block Planner is top of the stack, in terms of helpful tools.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. When did you start?
Judson Rollins:So I've been really grateful.
Peter Akkies:Sometime last year?
Judson Rollins:I started with that about, about 6 months ago. Yeah.
Peter Akkies:And and what did you find changed for you?
Judson Rollins:I found that I was more focused. I found that I was able to actually say, okay. This is, having said that that things roll from day to day. If I've got 2 things that are burning platform issues in a day or if I've got client work on top of my one thing, then I'll say, okay. From 9 until 11 this morning I'm gonna work on the client issue.
Judson Rollins:And then, from 11 till 12 I'll work on, in this case, the website. I'm gonna go to the lunch. I'm gonna go for lunch at 12. I'm gonna go to the gym at 1. And then, from 2 until 5 or 6, I'm gonna keep working on the website.
Judson Rollins:But it gives me finite blocks of time in in keeping with the the time block system that I'm going to dedicate to this task and this task alone. And it I find it improves my focus. I find it improves my clarity, and it improves my ability to put it down. Yeah. And and to really take kind of an 80 20 approach to things and say, look.
Judson Rollins:I don't have all day. I can't boil the ocean on this. What's the 80 20 that I get done in 2 hours? Right.
Peter Akkies:I find it fascinating that you mentioned this because I personally have really mixed feelings about this method. So on the one hand, decision fatigue is real and especially for people who are working by themselves or you know, have their own business, there's a 1,000 responsibilities that you have, you know, a 1,000 things you could do, it can help a lot, you know, ahead of time to say this is what I wanna work on today. This is of course why I'm such a big fan of to do lists and using proper task management apps. There's a difference between making a to do list for today and putting all that stuff on your calendar and giving in a specific time. Right?
Peter Akkies:So if I say I'm gonna record a video today, it's a sponsored video for YouTube, I'm recording that today. You know, I'm doing some other things. Okay. But if I say I'm gonna do it from 1 to 3, sometimes I find that I'm super tired. You know, I just had like a terrible night's sleep and it doesn't feel right to do it.
Peter Akkies:Or sometimes I find that it takes me much longer than I thought. And so if I schedule I've tried this before. I've tried, you know, let's let's work on the the script for this video or outline of this video, do the research from 1 to 3. Now it's 3 PM. I'm still very happily working on that.
Peter Akkies:I'm really in the zone. You know? I I mean, that state of flow, I'm really productive. I don't wanna stop. I I wanna take advantage of it because I I I don't always feel in the zone, you know, in the in that state of flow.
Peter Akkies:So do you always listen to your plan if you're if you're, like, working very happily or just like, okay, time's up?
Judson Rollins:I try to make it my default. I'm not gonna tell you that I do it a 100%. I there are I have like you, I have days that I'm just not with it. Yeah. I'm not focused.
Judson Rollins:Now, again, if it's a client issue, then and this really is a lesson I learned from my consulting days, or my my, big firm consulting days. If it's a client issue, I have to to muddle through and get it done no matter what. Because I've made a promise to a client and I can't break that. But if it's something internal, yeah. If I'm having a day when I'm just off, I will, get out and go for a longer walk than usual.
Judson Rollins:I might go to the gym. I might read a book. I might find some other diversion just and and let my brain relax because brain your brain is a muscle, and you can fatigue it just like you need. Sure. Yeah.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. And so I have to let the muscle relax and have a little bit of rest. And there have been days, honestly, Peter, that I've just had to say around 11 or 12 o'clock, this isn't my day. I'm I'm done.
Peter Akkies:Exactly. Yeah. No. I mean, I've had those days as well. And I'm actually a big fan of this type of self care, and of trusting also that if you take a day off what I think happens for a lot of people is they have the sense that I'm not feeling it today.
Peter Akkies:If I allow myself to just not do it and continue work tomorrow, now I'm gonna be lazy. That means I'm lazy, right? And so it's gonna happen all the time. Half my days are gonna be like this. And and I think for most people, this is not the case.
Peter Akkies:But I think it do it does require some trust in yourself that if you put this down for today, you know, does that say anything about you in the future?
Judson Rollins:I don't believe it says anything about me. What I worry about is does it say anything about my ability to finish this particular task? Yeah. Am I I find myself asking, am I just bored with this? Right.
Judson Rollins:Am I just tired of it? Am I really gonna come back and give this the effort it deserves?
Peter Akkies:Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's where I like the 80 20 approach that you mentioned. You know, what I usually call this is just like good enough. So it's actually one of the exercises that I have people do in one of my courses.
Peter Akkies:This is my favorite way to break through procrastination. Right? We all deal with procrastination sometimes and, this is exactly the problem you're describing. It's like there's something is off about this task. And I start asking myself, okay, like, what is the, like, crappy version of this?
Peter Akkies:You know, if this particular project I'm having trouble with or task or whatever, what is clearly a not good enough product at the end? And then what is like the perfect situation? Right? I'm like, okay. Well, I don't wanna deliver something crappy.
Peter Akkies:I don't have the energy to make something, quote unquote, perfect. It's never gonna be perfect, but, you know, very regular is perfect. And then I sort of asked myself,
Judson Rollins:I try to start with a a skeleton of of what the minimum viable product is, so to speak, and work through the MVP. And then depending on how much time and or energy I've got left, add on to the MVP. But I really start try to start with a clear notion of what is the MVP for this particular output and get to that level and reevaluate.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. I love that. People should do that. I wanna talk about one particular productivity habit that I think you have because I I did a little research on you before we chatted today and I found something online where you wrote about using voice memos, especially when you're attending conferences or something like that. Do you wanna tell people what you do?
Peter Akkies:What what is the problem you encounter, and and what is your technique here?
Judson Rollins:So I'm I'm not a good multitasker, and I can listen to you or I can take notes. I can't really do both. So if I'm especially if I'm at a trade show and I wanna have a conversation. And trade shows and conferences are great for gathering intel, for meeting prospects, for hearing about actual problems that potential clients have. And I wanna be fully present in those conversations.
Judson Rollins:But I also don't wanna look like a journalist with a microphone in your face. And probably that's just socially awkward. And so what I'll do as a compromise is I will be fully present in the conversation. And as soon as the conversation's over, I walk away. I at somewhere well clear of the person I was just having a conversation with and I do not have another conversation until I've pulled out my phone or previously a voice recorder and brain dump as much as I can remember about who I spoke with, what we talked about, what the key takeaways are, any follow ups that are required.
Judson Rollins:And then I will actually throw that recording, onto my or into my favorite transcription tool, TurboScribe. And TurboScribe comes back with a transcript, and I drop that into my task management app.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. So
Judson Rollins:Yeah. And I've never heard of I've
Peter Akkies:never heard of TurboScribe. I've heard of this thing called Otter, Otter dot ai. Have you used that?
Judson Rollins:Yeah. I have used Otter. Otter is a good way to Otter used to be better in my opinion, but Otter's quality has been eclipsed by other tools over time. And so for recording voice or excuse me. For recording video calls, I use a tool called Fathom which is actually free for individual users.
Judson Rollins:And for everything else, I use TurboScribe. And I find that the transcription quality is light years, better than Otter unfortunately. Okay.
Peter Akkies:That's cool. Turbo Scrab. I'll have to check that out. I I love this
Judson Rollins:It's well worth it.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. I just love this technique. I wanna share something about how I use this, but there's something that you mentioned that I wanna ask you about first is you said it gets transcribed and you take that transcript and you put it in your task manager. Tell me a bit more about that. What what mechanically, how does that work and what do you do with the transcript?
Judson Rollins:I mean, I simplify the process. I'm going through the the transcript, and I'm copying and pasting lines of text and dropping those as individual tasks in the the task manager. So that's it's a slightly more manual process
Peter Akkies:than I usually do that on.
Judson Rollins:Usually, end of day. In the worst case, end of the second day. Just while things were still fresh on my mind, I don't wanna forget the details of conversations. Right. And so my task manager or choice is TickTick.
Judson Rollins:And I'll go into TickTick, and I'll create items. I'll create reminders. And a lot of times, the things that need to be done are not even for the same week. I don't need to do them while I'm at the conference or at the event. I just need to do it maybe the the following week or in a couple of weeks if it's something research related.
Judson Rollins:If it's following up with a new connection, then, yeah, it's something I'm gonna do probably end of that week. Yeah. But I'm setting time specific reminders for everything that I know that I need to do on the back
Peter Akkies:of this particular conversation. Right. And fairly soon after you have this conversation, you do this process. Yeah. I'm often talking to people about this in the context of meeting notes.
Peter Akkies:You know, so people are taking meetings whether it's, you know, at work or but I personally, this is what I was gonna say, I do this when I'm, like, having coffee with someone for the first time just to get to know someone afterwards. I usually don't do this in a voice memo, but I'm gonna check out this app because I I really like if if anybody who's actually my friend sort of knows this, you know, I love sending voice messages. So you're you're gonna get those for me a lot. I know that some apps will now actually transcribe voice messages, which I hope will soon arrive in WhatsApp and Apple messages and stuff because that'll be very helpful for people.
Judson Rollins:It'd be very helpful. Absolutely. But for now, I'm trying to use the the best tool that I'm aware of to
Peter Akkies:use. Yeah. Yeah.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. Because I don't I don't wanna have to go back and listen to the recording and go, oh, did it transcribe it correctly? And unfortunately with older generation tools like Otter, there's a a lot more manual relistening and editing Yeah.
Peter Akkies:No. And you just wanna be, of course, reading the transcript is is much easier. And so, yeah, I like to do this after I have coffee with someone. You know, just write down some of the key things about that they mentioned about their lives so the next time I meet them and it'd be like, hey, by the way, last time you were struggling with this. How are you doing about that?
Peter Akkies:And it's one of my favorite things to do because the next time I meet someone, they're like, oh, wow. It's amazing that you remember that. And I'm like, yes, yes, my memory is amazing.
Judson Rollins:Could we describe this as a friendship CRM?
Peter Akkies:Friendship CRM. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I try to keep it very lightweight, Jetson, because I don't wanna go too too far on this because that's that's just difficult.
Peter Akkies:Yeah, of course. You know, the system maintenance becomes too much. But I love this, and so it's the same thing in the context of a work meeting, you know, whether it's a Zoom meeting, in person meeting, whatever. Take a few minutes, you know, ideally right after the meeting to just jot down some stuff and it can be a voice memo, just then periodically process that stuff, turn it into tasks, you know. I love that habit, so thanks thanks for sharing that.
Judson Rollins:My pleasure.
Peter Akkies:Let's switch gears here a little bit because we mentioned that you were in management consulting first, then you worked in the airline industry, until COVID. So COVID obviously had a big impact on the airline industry.
Judson Rollins:Oh, yeah.
Peter Akkies:And so you then transitioned into your current business called the Scale Whisperer. Right?
Judson Rollins:Yes. There was a little bit of a longer path to
Peter Akkies:get there.
Judson Rollins:I've gone through a couple of other iterations, but but what I'm doing now is the scale whisper.
Peter Akkies:And so how did you decide to make this pivot?
Judson Rollins:Yeah. So I I've done b to b consulting. Well, first, obviously, with airlines and aircraft manufacturers, but also with cargo carriers for a bit, during the pandemic.
Peter Akkies:Carriers like bulk ships or,
Judson Rollins:like Yeah. Companies like Maersk, like DHL, companies that move actually physically move goods by air, sea, road, and rail, trying to help them with their with actually the kind of same challenges that passenger airlines have, pricing, passenger or customer segmentation, offer optimization, etcetera. And I decided that this time out I didn't wanna do b to b anymore. It's certainly there is a lot of money to be made in b to b, but it's also it can be very difficult to break into new industries. And unfortunately, airline consulting is just now, 5 years later, 4 years later, starting to come back.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. But it's still a fraction of what it was. But it's hard to be a credible consultant to companies if you haven't worked directly in their industry.
Peter Akkies:Yeah.
Judson Rollins:And so I said between that and the the fact that I didn't wanna have to charge by the day. I didn't wanna have to spend weeks in a client office. I wanted to to really run my business on my terms. I decided to pivot to more of a b to c or what I'm calling now a b to e niche which is business to entrepreneur. And my thesis is this, the same kind of pricing and customer segmentation and offer optimization savvy that airlines have and other travel industry companies have can exist for people who run solo and small expertise based businesses.
Judson Rollins:And that's actually a lot of what powers what we call the creator economy. Yeah. It's people taking their existing expertises and turn them into a business. But instead of charging by the hour, instead of trying to just simply replace their old salary, I wanna teach more intelligent ways of pricing. I wanna teach people how to segment their customers, how to deliver more value to their customers, but also extract a larger share of that value for themselves.
Judson Rollins:Yeah.
Peter Akkies:And this pricing value experience that you have is from your work in the airline industry, essentially.
Judson Rollins:That's right. That's right. Because airlines are constantly trying to price for the customer and for the nature of the flight. Is this a Monday morning or a Saturday midday flight? Those have 2 very different prices.
Judson Rollins:Is this a flight to Orlando where Disney World is? Monday morning? Monday morning because it's the business traveler. Yeah. Because the person who's traveling for business, well, not solo people like you and me, but people who are travel who work for a larger enterprise, they're traveling on somebody else's dollar.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. And so they have a much greater willingness to pay than the person who's spending their own dollars.
Peter Akkies:I always love spending other people's money,
Judson Rollins:you know? We all do. Of course. Yeah. And so you're when you're traveling on somebody else's dollar, you have a willingness to take a flight at a peak time.
Judson Rollins:You're not gonna connect through 2 cities to get there. You're not gonna put up with the same hassles and discomforts and inconveniences that you would when you're traveling by yourself for yourself. Yeah. And so airlines have really have gotten it down to a science. Who is the customer?
Judson Rollins:What is the flight? When is this flight? Where are they going? What is how can we create a package of services? How can we create an experience that taps this person's willingness to pay?
Judson Rollins:It's why you now have not only 4 different cabins on a a long haul flight, first business, premium economy, and economy, but you've got multiple fare products within each cabin. So a person traveling on a long haul flight in theory could have up to 12 different choices. And that's just for that one flight. I don't wanna create that level of complication for the the solar provider because that's more than anyone can manage. But the same techniques, knowing who the customer is, identifying their willingness to pay, packaging your services, changing up your pricing can be done at the individual level, at the small business level.
Judson Rollins:And this is what I wanna inculcate. There are on the bookcase behind me, there are multiple books that have been written on the topic of what's called value based pricing, which is when you work directly with the client to determine how much impact this is going to make. And pricing your service in a way that taps some of the value you're creating. Yeah. So if I come to you, Peter, and I say, I'm gonna help you with pricing for your courses.
Judson Rollins:I think you've got some opportunity. I think you're maybe leaving a little bit of money on the table. I can help you with this. And for all of for your 1st year after we work together, if I can improve your revenue per transaction by 5%, then I want 1% of that. If I can improve it by 15%, I want 3%.
Judson Rollins:Right. So that it does two things actually. It it allows me to capture more revenue than if I were just billing you by the hour, But it also ties my incentives directly to yours.
Peter Akkies:Right.
Judson Rollins:Because if you're paying me by the hour to help you, I can sandbag this project out ad infinitum. This could turn into a 5000 hour project before you go, wait a second. I didn't sign up for 5,000 hours. But if we price this based on value, if we price this based on what I'm going to do for you in dollars, then you're getting a price that you know is fair, and you're getting a much higher certainty on your return on investment.
Peter Akkies:Right. And so what would be an example of the sort of service provider that you're working with in this new business?
Judson Rollins:Yeah. So, one of my, initial clients is a health coach based in the UK. He had kind of a one size fits all approach, and he had moved to eventually to 3 different tiers of service. But the price spreads between each tier of service were a lot smaller than they should have been. And when we talked, he said, well, I've got all these he focuses on entrepreneurs.
Judson Rollins:And he said, Judson, I've got all these entrepreneurs out of Dubai and Abu Dhabi who are clamoring for my service. And I and when they tell me what they're working in, I mean, these are millionaires that I'm talking to, and I'm charging them $300 a month. Right. I went, let me help you. Yeah.
Judson Rollins:This is this is not a guarantee. You're you're leaving money on the table. Exactly. And so we looked at what his packages were and we said, what are the features of his offerings that offered the most value to customers? How did he automate their fitness processes?
Judson Rollins:How did he help them to become healthier, leaner, fitter, stronger in less time? And we broke those out into multiple tiers and we said, okay this is a mostly automated tier that you can offer to students and single parents. And this is a tier that you can offer to a mid career professional. And this is a tier that you can offer to the high rollers from Dubai. Right.
Judson Rollins:And his revenue has gone up nearly 50% since I started working with him. And he, of course, is thrilled.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. And I I love value based pricing, you know, like, you know, helping people to do this, it makes so much sense. It's sometimes difficult to do it. I think culturally it's sometimes difficult. A very good friend of mine is in the sort of litigation, like forensic litigation industry, and that's tough.
Peter Akkies:You know, like lawyers and clients, they expect to be billed by the hour. And it's just that's just the way that is. And if you're like, you know what? I think we can do better than this. They're like, that's weird.
Peter Akkies:I'll I'll go with someone else. Do you ever hear people complain about that? That it's just difficult to do this?
Judson Rollins:I have. I have. And I what I've said is 1, if that's the pushback you're getting then you're not messaging the client value well enough. You're not explaining why it's valuable to the client and why it's a better approach for the client. And point number 2, if after explaining to the client why it's better for them, they still want to stick with hourly pricing, you need to find a new client.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. Because yeah. I think one of your previous guests was Jonathan Stark, the the dish hourly guy. And Jonathan does some amazing work. He's really kinda focused more on the IT space, but he does some he's done some amazing work in terms of explaining why telling telling clients that this project is gonna take 500 hours and then it turns into a 2 1000 hour project because of some unseen glitch is actually a work a dramatically works customer experience, and it's less likely to make the customer, even if they're thrilled with your work, refer other clients to you in the future.
Judson Rollins:Whereas, if you come in and you say upfront, look, whether it takes me 500 hours or 5000 hours is my problem, not yours. The risk resides with me. The client may balk at the price initially, but they will never complain at knowing that they can pick up the phone and call you and ask questions or say, hey, Judson. This bug cropped up that I wasn't expecting in some corner of the envelope case. And I know that you will be there to answer the phone and not bill me another hour to fix this issue that should have been fixed in the initial implementation.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. I always think of my accountants. You know, I have accountants, bookkeepers, and they always charge me by the hour, but the services that they're doing for me are pretty standard. You know, they'll file my income tax return every year, they're filing my VAT, my value added tax returns every quarter and so on. And I'm always wondering, like, why don't you guys just have me pay like a fixed price every year?
Peter Akkies:And then they'll send me the specification of hours worked and like I really don't care. Like I really do not care which of your employees worked how many hours. I just want my taxes to get done, you know. And so, but yeah, I think it's just a cultural thing a lot at the time.
Judson Rollins:Well, it's funny you mentioned this because actually, I'm working with an accountancy here in Amsterdam that actually does do a a monthly service. Oh, really?
Peter Akkies:Oh, wow. That's great.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I think the owner of the firm is a disciple of one of the the architects of accountancy of value based pricing, a guy named Ron Baker. And they actually they they're they're the only one I'm I'm aware of in the Dutch market anyway that does this monthly concept.
Judson Rollins:And so everything that's within their normal scope of work, the things you mentioned, the income tax return, the VAT return, all of that's covered, as normal work. And I pay a monthly fee. And if I have any questions, if something unusual arises, if there's a bug in their expense software or whatever, I can get them on the phone, and it's no additional charge to me. It's included.
Peter Akkies:You just have to have It's not cheap. A really good agreement ahead of time about what's included. Exactly. I think that's super important anyway. You know, like I feel like we either way, if we're gonna be working together, we should have that conversation of what exactly is within the scope and what is not in the scope.
Judson Rollins:That's right. That's right. Because otherwise, scope creep takes over. And if you're building by the hour, scope creep penalizes the customer. And if you're on a value base or a fixed fee arrangement, scope creep penalizes you.
Judson Rollins:Right. So somebody loses. And, yeah, to really have a a well defined scope of work, I think, is essential.
Peter Akkies:So one of the things you said just a few minutes ago is if you get a call from a client and you've agreed to do the work for x price, right? A fixed price, a value based price. You're not charging them to respond to the client or whatever. Never. That's all included.
Peter Akkies:How does that impact your productivity and focus, though? So do you let clients sort of call you anytime, you know, WhatsApp you anytime?
Judson Rollins:So I do it depends on the nature of the client. If it's because I'm working mostly with other, solopreneurs, they work flexible hours like me, and so they understand that I'm not gonna pick up the phone. They have similar situations.
Peter Akkies:Right. But when you're if you're working with, like, the CEO of a slightly bigger company and then maybe they're paying you a bit more, maybe they're kind of expecting you to pick up the
Judson Rollins:phone a bit faster. I don't ever pick up the
Peter Akkies:phone in real time ever. Yep. Meaning, unless it's a
Judson Rollins:a yeah. If it's a prearranged call,
Peter Akkies:if if
Judson Rollins:you call me or if you email me and say, hey, listen, I need to to run something by you. Can I call you at 9 o'clock? I'll be I'm gonna be on the phone at 9 o'clock.
Peter Akkies:You can
Judson Rollins:count on it. But other than that, I don't take calls spontaneously. And I actually depend on WhatsApp with some of the clients that I work with. It's actually something that I learned from a fitness coach that I've worked with who said, hey. Listen.
Judson Rollins:I will be available to you during daylight hours 7 days a week. Now I don't do 7 days a week. I do 5 days a week. But there my clients know that they can message me anytime with any kind of question. And I'm not super strict about the hours.
Judson Rollins:If I'm sitting on a train or in the the doctor's waiting room and I've got 5 minutes to spare and there's a a WhatsApp message waiting from one of my clients, I'm gonna answer it.
Peter Akkies:You're gonna send them a
Judson Rollins:voice message. Yeah.
Peter Akkies:Or or even better, a voice memo.
Judson Rollins:If if it's a complicated concept, I will. Now depending on the environment that you're in, that may not be possible. But I I I also love voice messages because it's easier to explain things with context. Yeah. But I'm gonna my standard that I tell people is, I'm gonna respond to emails within 2 business days.
Judson Rollins:I'm gonna respond to emails within 2 business days. I'm gonna respond to WhatsApp, messages within 1 business day. Yeah. But I'm almost always faster than that, and I pride myself on it.
Peter Akkies:Yeah. And you don't find that this sort of interrupts your focus because you're working on those schedule blocks, and you finish one of the blocks, and then you check your communication. Right? You put on do not disturb in the meantime, I think.
Judson Rollins:That's that's absolutely right. Like, when you and I scheduled this interview, you reached out to me and said, hey. I'd like to do an the, I'd like to have you on my podcast. I said, great. I do weekday afternoons.
Judson Rollins:Right. And you came back and said, yeah. No problem. That's because it it works for you as well. After afternoons are a little bit less focused time for me.
Judson Rollins:I do anything to avoid morning meetings to the extent possible because that's really my core deport term, to borrow another Cal Newport term. But afternoons, I'm a little bit more flexible and a little bit looser. And so I'm willing to do calls and podcasts and interviews and customer conversations in the afternoon and in the case of US clients even the early evening hours. Yeah. Because that's that's less focused time.
Judson Rollins:But if I'm gonna work with a a client into the evening hours, I'm probably gonna take a little bit longer midday break so that my brain's a little bit more rested.
Peter Akkies:I like that. I like this is a very intentional way to plan your day and I like this because I think so many people have just not thought about this and meetings are whenever, right? And it becomes Yep. I find it so hard to switch contexts. If I've just been in a meeting talking about this, I cannot immediately go back to another project.
Peter Akkies:Like it takes me a little bit of time, you know? That's why earlier when you said you do this sort of time blocking, time boxing kind of thing, I was like, well, what about if you're in the zone? Because I always really try to ride the energy wave, you know? Yeah.
Judson Rollins:And messages completely destroy that.
Peter Akkies:For sure, for sure. Yeah. So I wanna start wrapping up here. You've mentioned a couple of tools, the one not that's not otter dotai, for example, the the better one.
Judson Rollins:TurboScribe.
Peter Akkies:Yep. Cal Newport's planner and stuff. Is there any other tools in the field of productivity, getting organized that you really enjoy that you'd like
Judson Rollins:to share with people? Yeah. I'm actually a big fan of TickTick. I know that's not one of your courses that you've done.
Peter Akkies:It's not, but but people sometimes ask me. They're like, what about TicTic, Peter? What about TicTic? So
Judson Rollins:Absolutely. Yeah. There is another, productivity guru who, does he does YouTube videos and he's spoken at length about tick tick and he got me turned on to it. And I said, let me give it a try. And I found it was the most flexible, most comprehensive tool I'd ever worked with.
Judson Rollins:So I love tick tick. And yeah. That's it. I try not to get overwhelmed with tools. Good.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The other tool that I will mention, if I dare call it that, is a pack of Post it notes that sit on my bedside table. And the only reason that they're there is because I do not sleep with a phone in the bedroom.
Judson Rollins:And I want to have the ability to write down those last minute late night thoughts before I go to bed and just get it purged out of my brain and not have to think about it during the night. Yeah. So that's one. And I'll actually tell you about one more, very manual tool is washable crayons for the shower. Washable crayons for the shower.
Judson Rollins:Okay. Many of us many of us have discovered that while we're in the shower, we have thoughts.
Peter Akkies:Thoughts. Yeah.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. Because your brain is freed up from other things, and the most random ideas will come to you while you're in the shower. And I discovered that a couple of manufacturers actually make washable crayons for the shower. And it's you basically just take your hand or a mild brush and you can scrub it right off. But what I'll do is if a thought comes to me in the shower I'll write it down.
Judson Rollins:I'll take a picture of it with my phone after I've dried off. I'll scrub it off the wall, but I have the thought captured, and I don't lose it. So that's my other information or idea capturing tool.
Peter Akkies:I love this. It's just big. You know what? I also love this. I think it's recognizable to so many of us, the shower thoughts concept.
Peter Akkies:And I find that there's so many inputs in our world these days. You know, we don't all have it, but most of us lead lives where there's screens all around. There's you know, we have conversations with so many different people every day, and to me, I don't think it's anything special about the shower. I have the same thing when I go on a You know? I think it's just Yeah.
Peter Akkies:Sometimes we get so wrapped up in doing stuff all the time that, like, as soon as we don't actually have something to engage with, the brain is like, oh, I have these 15 other ideas. Let me let me just like throw those out there. You know? It happens to me as well during meditating. I'll be meditating and I'll see all these thoughts popping by and I'm like, oh.
Peter Akkies:I've learned right now that during meditating, I try not to interrupt it, to write it down, you know. And I sort of developed this trust, this belief that if it's important enough, it will stick around until after the meditation session. Fair enough. But I like your your your analog way of doing that in the shower. I've heard of people who will put, like, waterproof, you know, speakers or or, you know, like, so you can talk to Amazon what is it called?
Peter Akkies:Alexa or Alexa or something like that. Yeah.
Judson Rollins:So let me let me play the Uno reverse card here and and put you on the spot. When you're out walking, how do you capture your ideas while you're walking without getting engaged with people?
Peter Akkies:Yeah, I do it with my phone. I don't I don't have a good way of doing it without my phone, but I I will have my phone on do not disturb. I also, I've got my sort of Apple Watch, and I don't like that to be tapping me on my wrist all the time while I'm on a walk. So I've got it on do not disturb, and I've got on my lock screen of my phone, I have a plus button for my favorite to do app, which by the way, which to do app I use changes all the time because I'm sort of in this interesting situation where I teach people how to use them. And people are always like, Peter, which is your favorite?
Peter Akkies:Like, which app are you using right now? It changes all the time, you know, because which I don't recommend for anybody else. But whichever app you're using, you for example, if I'm using Things or if I'm using OmniFocus, you can put a plus button on the lock screen of your phone. So I pull my phone out of my pocket. I immediately press the plus button and it goes to open a new task.
Peter Akkies:And then I just write down whatever it is, the thought that I had, then I save that, and then I turn my phone off. So I don't see any other apps. I don't see any messages that I've gotten because if I open my phone, unlock it, look at my home screen, I'm already seeing 8 notifications from 3 different messaging apps and whatever. I don't want to do that cause I wanna enjoy my walk. But if you've got a better idea that doesn't involve the phone, let me know.
Peter Akkies:So
Judson Rollins:No, actually not. Actually not. I'm I, I've taken all of the social media apps off my phone except LinkedIn, but I've turned off notifications on that. But what I've done is I have I'm like you. I'll set the phone on do not disturb if I'm especially if I'm gonna listen to a podcast or if I just walk quiet.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. And sometimes when I walk, I just walk quiet. For sure. And I love exactly like you said. The ideas just come bubbling up and you don't wanna let them go.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. But I do appreciate what you say about meditation because I I've had the same phenomenon and I've I have never quite gotten to the same level of peace you have about, well, the idea will stay with me. So maybe I need to to learn to relax a bit more.
Peter Akkies:Alright. That's what meditation is for. Right? In the in the end, meditation is like people try to describe meditation in many ways, but definitely one great way of explaining it is just relax. You know, just don't try to control everything all the time.
Peter Akkies:Defocus the brain. Exactly. Exactly. This has been a really fun conversation, Judson. Is there if people were listening, especially, you know, if they were listening to you describe how you help people with your current business, I'd like to know where they can find you.
Peter Akkies:I also will tell everybody right now that you have very fun posts on your LinkedIn, so maybe you wanna point
Judson Rollins:people there as well.
Peter Akkies:But I'll leave that up to you. Absolutely.
Judson Rollins:Yeah. So let me start with LinkedIn. That's a a great plug. Thank you. It's Judson Rollins, j uds0nrollins on LinkedIn.
Judson Rollins:There's only one. I'm pretty easy to find. And you can also, go to scalewisperer.com, or you can find the, soon to come Scale Whisperer podcast. It will be live by the time this episode is, and you can find that everywhere that you find how they get stuff done.
Peter Akkies:Love it. Thank you very much Judson for coming on.
Judson Rollins:Thank you, Peter. It's been a pleasure.
