Garbage Miles

“No shit there I was.”

6AM.

Battery Park NYC.

Shoeless, wearing a wetsuit.

About to jump into the Hudson.

A few months earlier I’d signed up for my first Triathlon - appropriately nicknamed the “Liberty to Liberty”.

We started our swim at the Statue of Liberty in NYC, biked like 100 miles or something through New Jersey, then ended with a run at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

Training for that race, and the ones that followed, taught me a lot about preparation, including our topic today “Garbage Miles”.

Quick Aside - The Hudson swim was supposed to be a gentle 25 minutes with the current. The current shifted and I ended up having to swim hard for almost 90 minutes. I ended up winning my age group not because I was fast, but because everyone behind me got picked up by the safety boat.

In preparing for the race and the too many that followed, the concept of “garbage miles” always stuck with me.

When preparing you always want to train to your “goal pace” ie, how fast you are going to try to move on the race day.

Your whole training is oriented around that.

For my run leg - my goal time was like 7:00 minutes per mile for 10 miles.

Now, the amateur temptation when training for this goal pace is to run a bunch of miles at like 7 or 8 minutes to prepare.

Those are nicknamed “garbage miles”.

Why?

They don’t really do much - you aren’t pushing your pacing, but you also aren’t pushing your distance.

You are much better off running one mile repeats at 6:00 minute mile pace, and also doing long slow distance at 10 minute mile pace.

Go high, or go low… barbell strategy.

In my work with various companies - I’m seeing a similar dynamic in how they (incorrectly) structure their white collar, remote possible, work force.

They have a problem like “Managing Marketing”.

This type of role is often remote (whether American, or international) - and is an important part of a growing company.

What do most companies do for this?

Hire a $71,000/yr “Marketing Manager” with 4 years experience or whatever.

They are fine.

More than competent.

Maybe they even drive some results!

But I think this is the equivalent of “garbage miles”.

A real top performing company would either go HIGH or go LOW.

Meaning:

“Wow, we really need someone to is a freaking ALL STAR. Great resume, experience at another company, knows our channels, in office, and it’ll take $185,000/year to get her onboard”.

OR

“We need a competent marketing technician, who can push the ball forward on our existing initiatives, manage some small campaigns (that are already in place), and generate a weekly report, remote OK. Let’s go global - we can get someone KILLER from Argentina for $29,000/ year full time”.

The garbage middle is the worst of both worlds!

Expensive, but not a center of gravity and able to push the ball forward.

I encourage you to think through the way your services are delivered and think… should I go HIGH or LOW.

You might find some wonderful ways to add value, and build a great company.

Three specific examples:

1. Do you really need another comptroller type hire, or do you just need someone who wakes up and hammers A/P all day?

2. Is that person off Upwork really going to be able to generate results in a new customer acquisition channel, or do you need to pay up and get a pro?

3. Are the people on the phone taking orders, and just need to be competent - or are they driving real revenue, and you should pay up to get a pro?

Fun thought exercise!

Let me know what you figure out.

Also, a bunch of people have asked me “What a good process looks like”?

Here is a simple one I built for my parents (via their gardener) on how to setup their sprinkler system. Could be a good template as you think about working with your team, and refining your systems.

Yallah Habibi,

Jon

P.S. We’ve been smashing it as govivaldi.com (writing on Twitter consistently has been more of a career accelerant than anything I’ve done in the last 3 years. This is how I do it, while still running real businesses).

Biggest issue was our customers quickly reviewing all the content we generated, after the interviews. Using some nocode tools, Zac and I built a “Tinder for Content Review”.

It is cool, check it out below.

Passage of the Week:

GOD, give us men!
A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office can not buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.

Josiah Gilbert Holland