You Should Decide What's Important, Regardless of Platform
~ 2 min.
On this episode of Finding Focus, Gated’s CMO Melissa Moody sat down with the VP of Revenue at OnCue - Adam Jay. The sales leader was happy to share his personal and business take on finding focus in a busy, noisy world, including on topics such as:
You can read the full transcript of the episode below, and catch the entire episode on Spotify, Apple, or Youtube.
Melissa
Hi everybody and welcome to Finding Focus. This is a series of short and actionable conversations with people trying to find focus in this increasingly distracted world. You know, sometimes we talk with focus experts who've written books and other times we talk with real people who are living it and trying to find the strategies that work for them. And I'm very excited to introduce today. Our guest is Adam Jay. He is VP of Revenue at On Cue. He's also been in the sales side of things as VP of sales at Reprise. He's a busy guy on GTM fund and Pavilion and he's also a gated advisor.
So with someone who's got a lot on his plate, we're very excited you found the time to be here and talk about focus with us, Adam.
Adam
Of course. Thanks for having me. I think part of focus is finding time to do the things you want to do and allocating your time appropriately. So glad, glad to have the time to spend with you today.
Melissa
Yeah, let's jump into the bigger picture because finding time to do the things you want to do is actually a perfect way to start the conversation. Before we jump into, you know, anything more specific about your actual role at work, let's talk about you and your bigger focus. What do you kind of, Adam, on the human level, how are you thinking about focus for yourself these days?
Adam
You know, it's an interesting question that's evolved over time. If you would've asked me even as recently as five years ago, I would've said my, my only focus, my number one focus is growing revenue at abc, wherever I happen to be being the best boss possible, et cetera, etcetera. And I think what Covid has taught me, what life has taught me and what really surrounding myself with great teams that I've been fortunate enough to build, has taught me is focus isn't just work and shouldn't just be work. So my focus is multi-faceted. Of course I want to drive revenue and grow a business. I think that's important, but my focus is how can I do that in the best way possible that allows me to spend as much time with my family as possible?
How could I ensure that I have set the right systems in place and have the right team in place so I can pick up my son from school every day so I can take him to basketball twice a week so I can make sure that I don't miss dinner with my wife. That to me is the greater focus while still maintaining the standard and high productivity standards at work of, you know, ultimately growing, growing revenue machine.
Melissa
Yeah. And the struggle of that finding kind of, you know, a focus for life, but also matching it with that focus in work that's not easy. Any, anything that you've discovered over those last few years? I know as you mentioned, Covid has really reset our thinking on a lot of those friends and I'm, I'm a parent as well. So any, anything you found on how to balance between those two? I mean, because I agree the focus in life is, is probably number one of course for most of us.
Adam
Yeah, I think, you know, do what you say and say what you do comes to mind first. I am religious about calendar blocking. If I were to share my screen with you right now, you would see five different colors and I could tell you what every color means. And what it allows me to do is at a very quick glance, I know for example, that red is a, it's a senior leadership view of some kind, can't schedule over it, can't move it if it's red, it, it, it, it's there forever. It stays. And conversely, blue is personal. Anything blue on my calendar is personal. And I know that that takes a priority.
And I think by really blocking out the proper times and and color coding and knowing what you can move and what you can't, allows that kind of deep focus when you're in a particular situation, when you're in a particular meeting. And it also allows me to group like-minded events together, right? I will go very heavy on a meeting day and go through the whole day and literally back to back meetings, that's where my focus is. We could talk about all the tools that I allow into the world to minimize my distractions, but on other days I'll do no meeting days so that I can really focus on that deep work. But when that blue event comes up, you know, when it's time to pick Zachary up from school, like I'm out the door and I set that expectation, not just, you know, managing up with my team, but I want the team that rolls to me to be comfortable with that as well.
It's super important to me that people prioritize time so that they could do their best work deeply, but also feel comfortable saying, Hey, I I'm taking, instead of taking lunch from 12 to one, I take an hour from four to five to pick my son up from school. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Melissa
Yeah, I like, I've heard a lot of time blocking as a, as a just a strategy in general. However, I think it's really interesting too how you've brought it all together, right? So you are, you know, a lot of people have two different calendars. They've got the work calendar and then they've got the home calendar and maybe your colors effectively do that. But I like, like your thinking of how it actually all is together. They're just different chunks of time dedicated to different components of your focus.
Adam
Yeah. So there, there is a work calendar and a personal calendar. They overlap and all live in, you know, kind of Google. And then I actually share that calendar with my wife and she shares her calendar with me only in the sense of, you know, they're hidden if you will most of the time. But there's nothing worse in, in my mind, no bigger time suck than like, I wanna make these plans on Friday at four o'clock. You know, having a, we both work from home like having to get up, go across the house, like ask if she has the time, like why not just pull up the calendar and see if the time's there. But I, yeah, the, the dual calendar works, but you have to get into a system that allows you to, you know, get deep so to speak and know how to best prioritize otherwise. And I was certainly guilty of this, like you're juggling to the next thing. Yeah. Like right now, like I, I have 15 is my slack number and anyone who knows me who's listening will, will tell you that I inside that drives me crazy, right?
know if I don't minimize my slack screen, I'll be talking to you, but I'll be doing this and you or whoever I'm talking, everyone will know it, right? And it's incredibly disrespectful.
So I've learned how to put these systems in place to not get distracted so that I can focus on the task at hand. Because I, I am probably more guilty than anyone I know of like being the quintessential multitasker.
Melissa
Yeah, no, I, you know, I think you can claim all the guilt for yourself, but it is a, it is endemic into our society these days. We are, you know, I, the other day I was sitting at a stoplight and literally reached over to look at something on my phone and slapped my own hand. I said, Good god you can't sit for three seconds and maybe think about the world, observe around. So for those of you listening, Adam is pointing at himself to make me feel better. But I think all of us we are in, I mean that's part of why we wanna have these episodes. Not here's the perfect framework for focus, but let's talk about the struggles, let's talk about how do we get those distractions out. And even to your point, how are we even aware enough to understand that if Slack were open you would be distracted. So I mean we've had, we've had a lot of conversations with other guests about awareness.
I wanna talk about how you get rid of the distractions because I think there's something to be said for, we all know that distractions are out there. We have to actually take actions to remove them. And it's not easy, but like what are some of the things that you've pinpointed and you've gotten rid of? I love the point about just honestly minimizing things or even closing out windows if you're on a meeting or if you're on a podcast. What else? Any other fun quick wins? I know I'm getting a bit tactical.
Adam
No, there's a few and it's, you know, you say you pick up the phone, like that's probably the number one thing, excuse me, my wife yells at me for is I am the guy that's at a red light. The first thing I do, my instinct is to pick up my phone and go through it.
And we actually have phone detox time where my wife will take my phone like that. How like being super vulnerable with you here, like, and put it in a consult and like, you gotta put that away. But at work, like I was that person who would respond instantly and I thought that's what my team needed, right? Like Adam, so responsibly like, if I need him, he's there, he'll, he'll respond right away. And I think it's creating this balance of responding in a timely manner doesn't have to be responding immediately. So now I, I do a few things. Number one, my slack is always on pause. Notifications always lives there.
could see the little red number, but I don't hear that. I don't even know how to describe it. The token slacks out when you get a slack notification because it is distracting. So that's first and foremost email. I only look at my email three times a day. It, it's my way of not getting distracted and dedicating that time to really dive deep with whatever those questions are, whatever, you know, the communication needs to be. I try to be predominantly Slack heavy email light. I despise email if I'm being totally transparent with you. I hate it. Totally gated has given me control, shameless plug of my email back that I don't dread opening my email box every single day. And I think that's also part of why I have blocked that time.
I know if someone emails me, it's something I need to respond to cuz it's not spam and junk.
And then the last thing, and I just started doing this like two weeks ago when I'm not at my desk, my phone is on do not disturb and there there, there's an exception to that, right? So there's like six people in Apple settings, so do not disturb. You could let people push through my son, my wife, my boss, my sales manager who reports to me and my son's mom. Other than that you are not breaking through. You're, you're, you're going to voicemail. And it has given me so much time back of in, in it's little time. It's things you don't think of. It's when you get that spam call that you're gonna send to voicemail anyway, but it still takes you away from what you're doing to look down and be like, Oh, do double tap. Don't need to answer that. Don't even see it anymore.
And then the emails on the slacks certainly don't come through after hours. And I, I say this part in just, but part serious, like at the end of the day, I'm a software sales leader, right? We're only selling software, we're not curing cancer. Yeah, I started my career in healthcare where I had a device that literally would help eradicate cancer. I know what it's like to have to answer that phone immediately. There is nothing generally speaking, unless you work in, you know, certain areas of software, maybe cybersecurity. There's nothing that's coming to my desk that has to be addressed right now this instant. And I think by setting that expectation, you know, people really understand and respect that you're not gonna respond immediately. And the last thing, Melissa, I don't know if you saw it, but on my email I have what I call my truly human notice.
And it's kind of this caveat that, and I'm just gonna read it verbatim, but I think that we need to recognize that everyone works at different times and everyone puts in, you know, kind of their focus times. But it says, you know, getting this email out of normal working hours. We work at a digitally enabled relentless place which could disrupt our ability to sleep enough, eat right exercise, and spend time with the people that matter most. I'm sending this email to you at a time that works for me. I only expect you to respond when it's convenient for you. Letting people know upfront that just cuz I'm emailing you at whatever, eight o'clock on a Saturday morning when my kid's sleeping and it's like a couple hours of deep work, I don't expect you to get back to me right away.
Melissa
Such a powerful statement. And it actually makes me, it's leading me right into the next question which I had for you, which is you have found kind of the confidence to say like, these are the things that matter. This is how you engage me, this is how I engage as a leader of teams, How do you kind of trickle that down to your teams? How do you help them grow in? And honestly, I think by just putting it on your email right away, that's one step, right? They, they see it blatantly that this is how you approach things. How else have you found to bring that to the team and help them grow?
Adam
Yeah, there, there's a few things. I mean the, the truly human notice works. I think I try to make it a point when I send something out, you know, an email or Slack that if it doesn't require a response, the first thing it says is no response needed. Like fyi, like, just look at this like, because as a VP of sales or VP of revenue, it's people's instinct like, oh shit, Adam's sending this. Like I have to respond to him. Like the boss is messaging me you don't like, it's just an fyi at the end of the day, like my team knows I work for them, Melissa, they don't work for me. And I, I mean that sincerely like true servant leader mentality, when I build an org chart, I put myself at the bottom. But I think it, it's, you know, really focusing with them on how to do the same.
Encouraging them in training them on how do you block out your calendar, How do you focus on the important hats? How do you prioritize, how do you build the matrix of what you need to look at now versus what you need to look at later. You know, important versus critical versus not important. And I think by having those trainings of, you know, not just how do you get more sales or how do you reduce churn, but how do you manage your day? How do you ensure that you are, you know, reacting to your customers in a timely manner or being proactive. I think by addressing those head on and encouraging my team to have the same behaviors that I have is one of the thing that's helped in my first one-on-ones with everyone, the first thing I did was said, pull up your calendar.
Like I wanna look at your calendar and see how you're blocking out your day. That I would give them tips and tricks on how to time block and how to color code and how to, you know, group like events together. And also encourage them like, hey, like I said to someone the other day, like if you look at my calendar, you'll see that every day between 30, 30 and four 30 it's blocked out. I pick up my son from school, the world could be on fire, it could be the apocalypse, I don't care. Yeah. And and saying that to them and then saying, Melissa, I want you to do the same like with whatever is important to you.
And you start having this open dialogue where people let you know and are comfortable saying, Hey, I'm overwhelmed, or hey, you know, I, I don't know, I have too much on my plate. Has been something that I think's been really beneficial in talking to the team and getting them to open up and really understand how to best focus their time to allow them to be more proactive instead of reactive.
Melissa
It's a marvelous thing and honestly it's gonna be something I sit down and do with my team after our call today. I think that's a, I love it. A straightaway to do action. One of the things I was thinking about and what you're talking there is this idea of training and teaching. I know you with your own experience can kind of pass on some of what you know and what you've done. I've also asked you in the past, kind of others that have influenced you to focus, You mentioned Kevin KD Dorsey. Do you wanna talk a little bit about what you've learned from him and if that is woven into the trainings?
Adam
Who's that guy? No, so I, I think one thing KD does really well is encourage people to, number one, be their authentic selves. But number two, like I think he takes calendar blocking to a whole new level than I do. And I've always done it lightly. I've followed KD from afar for a long time. We've spoken several times and I think that seeing how managing really large SDR teams, KD was able to talk about the importance of, you know, time blocking and conducting the same activities at the same time every day. You know, having your like activities grouped together. It really did create kind of that framework for me for how I operate for, you know, my, my sales, my bdr, my onboarding and my success team.
And it's, let me look at kind of driving like sales activities, CS activities, et cetera, et cetera, but using his methodology for my individual contributors on a daily basis.
Melissa
Yeah. When it comes to fitting in the, let's say the less structured elements of a day, so you've got the meetings, you know you're gonna hit, you've got the, the responsibilities that you've got concrete, there's always that room for either creative thinking or for certain roles, networking, right? Like getting outside of the box. How do you plug that into what you've got is a pretty beautiful system. Like how does that plug in in your system?
Adam
It it, it is plugged in. So that's the funny thing is almost everything is plugged in. Yeah. So I have focus time on my calendar and what I realized is people would book over my focus time. So it now says focus time dash seriously, please do not book over this time. I use it for deep thinking.
My calendar's always public. I don't believe no matter where you are in leadership and private events, if it's that private, just put block. I think when you create that mentality of my calendar, super secret, like you're just not being transparent, right? And for networking and outreach, like I'm recruiting for, you know, a director role right now. Like my calendar's blocked out for LinkedIn recruiting, my calendar's blocked out for networking and then I purposely, I do leave white space, there's a good amount of white space on my calendar and my philosophy there is that is open time and I tell everyone on my team if, if you need me, obviously if it's urgent, you know, Slack, me and I I will get to it. But if, if you need me and you need a meeting, you don't ever have to ask.
If there's white space on my calendar, steal it, take it, grab it, put a meeting down, please make sure to put an agenda in the meeting. We'll tie that back to focus in a second. But any white space take it. But that open space is kind of where I can do whatever it is I want to do or whatever it is i I need to do without being so rigid. But what that calendar blocking has allowed me to do is to have more white space and to not have my calendar and be like, Oh my God, like I can't get a meeting with you for three weeks. Right. Arguably no one ever has to wait more than 24 hours to grab time on my calendar.
I try to have some space every day.
Melissa
I'm impressed. I think you have somebody who got a magic wand in there that's giving you some extra hours in the day that I don't have.
Adam
I, I don't, but someone showed me motion the other day that I wanna look at, I don't know if you've seen motion or if you've used it, but it like literally will auto move your calendar events and your tasks. It looks very cool. I don't know if my type a OCD personality, but like that I, I had an admin once and I like it was very short-lived. I was like, I, I can't have someone else booking my flights and doing my calendar.
Melissa
Yeah. Well we've been having some interesting conversations recently with very cool company clockwise and they do something similar. They kind of like move your calendar around so it fits nicely and gives you the right spaces you need. It's, it's an interesting one to that point with the magic wand. Like if you could wave a magic wand and you could magically make something happen that, you know, I think when we first chatted, you said, I said one to 10, how would you rate yourself as a, you know, ability to focus? And you said seven, what's the, what would you get without magic wand to take you to a 10? Or maybe you don't wanna be a 10.
Adam
So it it's, it's funny when we ask about a 10, i I, I was doing skip levels with our individual contributors the other day and I asked everyone like, so how satisfied are you with your job one to 10? And I preface it by, I don't ever expect you to say 10, 10 to me, is this the best job in the world? I have everything I need, nothing will ever change and I'm never leaving. I don't think that exists. Could I get to a 10 focus wise? Maybe I'd be happy if I could get to a solid nine. Honestly for me, if I could have something that could look at my emails, look at my slacks, look at my tasks, tie that to my OKRs and use some form of artificial intelligence to prioritize the meeting similar to what we're saying with clockwise in motion, but on a deeper level, right? Yeah.
With like deep learning that can automatically move stuff around and make sure that like as much as, and I'm contradicting myself with my control, but like we know you need that this meeting is tied to this OKR, so we're gonna push it here. I think that would be super cool and something that could get me up there. But it's gotta also minimize the distractions and know that yes this is, you know, blocked, but if someone sends a message with this keyword that ties to this OKR, it pushes it through. And maybe Slack could already do that now.
Melissa
You know, I was laughing to myself because I felt like if I could have that similar idea, but at the full focus level, so at the family, honestly for me it's the balance of like the family health and the other day my iPhone was getting a little bit bossy with me, right? And it was like, you, you should be sleeping now you should. And I thought, don't tell me what to do. I don't want to. And then I realized it was kind of trying to do what I've asked it to do, which is, hey, can you also look out for my health? Can you also make sure I'm, you know, focused when I need to be? So I, I was laughing that I kind of scolded Apple for trying to do what I've wanted it to do for a while. Now.
Adam
It’s funny, I I religiously look at my son's screen time on the phone.
It's the area I feel I fail most as a parent transparently in letting him have as much screen time as he does. And my justification is like, well all the other kids do it, but to get to his screen time, I have to see my screen time right? The way apple's set up is if I go, cause I don't do it from his phone, so I have to go through settings and I, I've been consciously looking at mine.
Melissa
It can be, it's shocking. It can be.
Melissa
Shocking. It is. And you don't, you don't think about it like, oh my God, like I spend this much time on my phone and for comparisons sake, like it is a lot of time. Cause like I'm at my desk all day so like if I pick up my phone, like I'm not on my computer, like I'm actually on my phone.
It, it is shocking. And I think to your point of like it's doing what you asked it to do. I've toyed with the idea of putting the same controls on my phone that I put on his of like after X amount of time. Obviously I know the password and I know how to override it, but it gives you that pop-up that says, Hey, your time on Apple News, I'm probably on Apple News seven times a day. Like it's the my only news source. But hey, like you've spent 22 minutes, like you're done for the day, dude. Yeah. Go do something else it might be worth doing.
Melissa
Yeah, I think I've, I mean I've seen seen those for, you know, I think it's nice that Apple has some of the solutions baked in. I've seen those certainly for individual social media apps, right? Like you can download a version of the app that has those locks on them. One, one thing I was thinking of it just tied into this idea of using the phone recently, I've actually really enjoyed going back to phone conversations versus Zoom. So I can literally leave my desk, walk outside and not even just stand and walk at my desk, but walk outside. Because to your earlier point of removing the other distractions, if you're just talking on the phone, that's all you're doing and maybe you're breathing and stretching your legs at the same time. But that has been, you just made me think of it with a screen time comment. But I think that.
Adam
That is actually, it forces, it forces you to not multitask. I I was telling you before this podcast, so Andy and I had a chance to catch up yesterday and he messaged me before, he is like, Are you okay if we switch this to phone? And it's the first person who's asked me that in a really long time and I, I actually, I joked with him, I said, No, it has to be Zoom. And then like, yes, of course. But I did take that time and I walked outside. It was like 82 degrees in Sunny here and like I don't go outside during the workday. I dunno ever.
So it was great to do kind of this walk and talk and it made me think that for my next one-on-ones with my team, I'm probably gonna schedule them as walk and talk under the premise of, hey, like we could take our notes later, but let's just like shoot the shit and like take time to walk away from our computer and really make sure we're giving each other attention. Cause no matter how much we try, like yes I might minimize slack and minimize my email, but I still have my screen in front of me. I still know how many messages I have. Like I know that it's gone from 15 to 23 in this conversation and you're still like, oh, like I gotta get to that, I gotta get to that, I gotta get to that.
But if you're on your phone and you're walking and talking, my only focus is on you right now. Right. And maybe the weather outside.
Melissa
I, this is, I'm gonna bring a parenting thing into the, into our conversation here just to bring the whole whole self of Adam and Melissa to the conversation. There was a concept I learned once about when you're with your children there's the concept of Chronos, which is time that moves along. And then there's the concept of Kairos, which is that time that's, it's basically eternal time. It's the moment. It's when you're fully in a moment and it's kind of that eternal time. And they would say once a day at the minimum, find a time where you're not thinking about time passing. You're just focused on that moment and you're really appreciating that moment.
And you know, when I think of that in relation to my kids, I start to tear up, right? Of course it's like cap, like stop letting time run by, capture that moment, be in the moment. But to another degree that's kind of what we're talking about with all, I mean from calendar blocking to being on a call and really listening to the questions of your team member. It's kind of what we're talking about. Which is that stop time and be in that moment for that moment. And you're gonna feel even even just the sense of like, I didn't miss the day, the day didn't run by the day didn't just fly by it. It's a really, I thought it was a fascinating concept.
I'm not sure why it popped into my head right now, but I've never really thought about it in the work scenario. And for some reason kind of the solutions that you're bringing up put me in that mindset.
Adam
I love it. I think we do get so bogged down in not being in the moment regardless of what it is. And I, I could think of so many examples work-wise, family-wise, both as a husband and as a father. I am certainly guilty of, you know, I used to stop work but I'd sit on the couch with my son but I'd have my phone in my hand and I'd still be going through email and responding to Slack and like I've made a conscious effort of like when I'm done I'm done. Yeah. And, and leaving that phone on the kitchen counter and making him put his iPad down and you know, to your point, just living in the moment, you know he's Zachary's 11 and he'll still occasionally like hold my hand when we cross the street or you know, whatever it is.
And like we're sitting on the couch and like I'm lucky he still loves to cuddle but living in the moment cuz there's gonna be a time that it's gonna be the last time he's gonna cuddle with me, it's gonna be the last time he's gonna hold my hand when we walk across the street. It's gonna be the last time that he's like, Daddy, I want you to finish work early so we can hang out. It's gonna be, Daddy, can you work later so I could stay at a friend's house. So you have to live in that moment as much as you can.
Melissa
Yeah. Well I feel like my heart strengths have just been tugged. I too have an 11 year old and I think I'm, I think I'm gonna need to make sure I wrap my day up at five o'clock today and spend every minute with them when they're ready to go. I love it. I wanna keep us on track. So we're getting toward, you know, the end of our time together. I'd love for people to be able to find you and kind of watch your journey as you share some of these ideas and certainly about other topics as well. Where can people find you online?
Adam
Best place to find me is LinkedIn. It is the only social platform I use. We gave up Facebook a long time ago. Focus too much noise, too much getting caught up in what everyone else is doing in the world. Love the power to connect with other professionals and really expand that professional network. Simple search on LinkedIn. Super easy to find.
Melissa
Excellent. Well I know where to find you of course. And thank you for the time today. I guess you can get back to those, what, is it still 23 Slack messages or are we up to like 42.
Adam
Now? I fill 20, 24. We're at 24 slacks. And I don't even know how many emails cause my email's totally down. I
Melissa
I say God help us if we start measuring our time in how many Slacks have accumulated as a, as a measure of time. But we'll hopefully we won't be there soon. Thanks again, Adam, it was great speaking with you today.
Adam
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
