RSS 75: Become Unblockable: The Mindset That Makes You Invaluable

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0:35It's 4.55 on a Friday. The campaign is going to go live on Monday. The landing page is broken. The developer is on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic and the client just sent you an email. Four words. Where does it stand? You get to pull one person off whatever they're doing. Who do you go to? Forget the org chart. Picture their face. Think about the person that you go to when this type of problem appears. That person that you thought of, that person that you want on this problem has the thing. Has the thing that most resumes miss. Has the thing that most interviews miss. And has the thing that every single leader wishes more people on their team had.

1:26I would bet money on it right now that the face that you saw, the person that is in your mind at this moment, is the most valuable person on your team, or historically is the person that you worked with that you wish everyone else emulated. These are people that I call unblockable. Here's the concept in a few sentences. Optimism knocks on the door and waits. Pessimism says, ah, they're probably not home. Unblockable is already around the host looking into the window to see if somebody's home, right? In this episode, I'm going to break down what unblockable means and why it's the value that more of us need to care about.

2:16The signals that somebody is unblockable and the ideas that unblockable people have in their minds that allow them to win. This entire episode is inspired by a conversation that I had with a colleague just this week. They told me, Ross, you check in often and ask if I'm blocking things, but I want you to know that I'm never blocked. If I'm ever blocked, I go and get the thing that unblocks me. Folks, in this episode, we're going to talk about how you can become unblockable and the things to look for to find people who are unblockable. If you're playing the long game, you're in the right place.

3:07Welcome to The Ross Simmons Show.

3:14Maybe it's all business.

3:20Ain't no such thing as nothing. Being unblockable is easier to recognize than it is to define. But essentially, the idea of being unblockable is something that I saw back in 2008. Airbnb, a company that we're all probably familiar with, has no money. They're running out. nobody's touching them from a VC perspective. The founders have about 20 grand worth of credit card debt and every investor who hears the pitch just passes. No one would do that. Stay in a stranger's home on air mattresses? Not a chance. For most companies, that rejection, that debt is the end of the story. But with these folks, the designers, they leaned into their thing that made them unique which was design, and they decided that they were going to make money creating something.

4:13They decided that they were going to design cereal boxes, Obama O's and Captain McCain's, and they were going to sell them, and they were going to use that money to further fund the deliverables associated with what we now call Airbnb. They were able to clear about$30 ,000, and the company was able to stay alive for a few more months. And here's the part that most people skip, folks. When they finally get in front of YC, one of the most famous investors today, Paul Graham, etc., the pitch still didn't really land. But on the way out of the door, they dropped off that cereal box. And the reaction from that was simple.

4:54We need to write a check. These folks aren't quitters. If they can convince people to spend$40 on a$4 box of cereal, then they can probably make this thing work. And they did. That's being unblockable. Now here's an unblockable moment that you might see in marketing. A marketing team spends thousands of dollars on a white paper. It's gated, it's beautiful, its aesthetic is chef's kiss, designed by an agency, but it gets 47 views. Meanwhile, the number one result for the entire category is just a random thread in Reddit, right? Nobody on the team's ever talked about it. Nobody's ever using it. Nobody's thinking about it, right?

5:40The teams are blocked by assumptions that white papers have worked, so white papers will continue to work. In reality, the unblockable team says, no, we're not gonna keep investing into white papers. They're not working. Instead, we're going to spin up a Reddit team that's going to engage in these various threads, and we're gonna drive value by commenting in them. I'm going to put my career on the line because I see the data and I know that this will work. So I'm going to present it to the team and get this through. Right. That is relentlessness. Being unblockable is the ability to say, OK, we're working on this project with a client.

6:23We have a due date for next Friday, but we know that they just brought in a competitor, a competitor who's trying to take our lunch. So what are we going to do? Are we going to just do what we usually do? No, I'm going to take the initiative to rally the troops on my team and say, folks, we have to take this to the next level. This isn't good enough. We can't just do a usual design aesthetic. I'm making the call to go and find a better designer to make this great. Great. That's unblockable. Unblockable is sending a client five deliverables, hoping that they approve them. And tick tock, tick tock, the clock runs out.

7:08No approvals. Unblockable is not sending them a Slack message and saying, can you approve this, please? Unblockable is getting in an Uber, driving to their office, sending them a DM saying, hey, I'm in the neighborhood. Are you around for a coffee? I'd love to chat real quick. Then when you're at coffee, you pull out your laptop and you say, let's go through these and get some approvals done. That is being unblockable. You want people on your team that are unblockable. Let's put it in an entrepreneur's mindset. For me, as an entrepreneur, as a leader, I've seen a lot of no's. I've seen no's from talent that I've tried to recruit on my team.

7:49I've seen no's from clients that I know I could serve better than their current agencies. I've seen no's from people who I think would benefit from distribution.ai. I've seen no from event organizers who don't realize that I would be a better keynote than anybody else that they have brought on. I have received these no's, but I strive to be unblockable. So when I see the no from a recruit, I might send a loom. I don't like to lose. So I might send them a personal loom. I might fly to their city. I might send them a DM. I might let it be for a few months, but the next time I'm in town, we're going to link up because I'm playing the long game and I want to be unblockable.

8:30When I hear a no from an event organizer, I might just happen to record an event and go to an event where their competitors held and knock it out of the park and then send them a recording after and say, hey, I got five out of five ratings from 99.9 % of the people who were here. Wish I could have delivered this to your audience instead. Give me a mine in 2028. be unblockable, right? You want to look at those opportunities. I did that exact same thing with an event and it led to me getting brought in for their keynote at an organization. They brought me in for their like annual summit and I did the same thing on the ground there.

9:10Knocked the audience off of their seats. And it was amazing for me, for foundation, for the business. We unlocked new clients, new relationships, a new partner, all because I strived to be unblockable. When a client doesn't approve something, be unblockable. Go to the office, bring coffee, bring donuts, whatever it takes. I've seen a lot of people and I love all people. That's my downfall. It's also my strength. I enjoy people and I've hired a lot of marketers. I've hired a a lot of strategists, I've hired account people, I've hired creatives, I've hired a lot of people, I've had hundreds of interviews.

9:52And I can tell you that the resume rarely tells you when someone is unblockable. But there are a few things that you can look for. Let me give you a glimpse into some of these things. And when some of you are thinking about applying for distribution.ai or applying for Foundation or one of my other companies, you might use this as a cheat code. And kudos to you, because you're increasing your likelihood of luckiness, and you're also increasing your likelihood of being unblockable. So what's the first one? Instead of just asking questions that clearly seem to be written with ChatGPT, you send me a loom.

10:25You send a loom breaking down your questions. You send a loom breaking down your insights around a perspective and an opportunity. The problem that you see, you solve it. You identify gaps, you identify issues, and you articulate how you would fix them. Low agency is, I'm going to send you some questions and wait. High agency, someone who is unblockable, is going to look at the logos on a company's website, go and find one of them, do an audit of their website, and give you feedback and insights around how you could fix that. That is being unblockable. Unblockable is the person who ships things that nobody asks for.

11:09We have a few folks at Foundation, and if they're listening to this. You know who you are. I am so grateful for you being on our team. You ship things that no one asked for. One person on our team recently shipped this Reddit monitoring system, which is 24-7, 365, consistently tracking and monitoring our clients' brand presence on Reddit using an AI tool. They didn't pitch this to me and say, Ross, I want permission. They just went out and built it. They launched it. They used it for clients. The NPS score with those clients go up. The rapport goes up. The value goes up because they're unblockable.

11:50This is the type of people you want on your team. They ship things that nobody asks for. When I was working directly with clients, I used to surprise and delight them by saying, hey, look, I know you didn't have this subreddit. I recognized that it was open. So I went and claimed it. It's under my account. I'll give it back to you. But I wanted to make sure that I had this for you in advance because I don't want someone else to steal it. What do you think the client said? They said, thank you. They were grateful.

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13:31They were grateful that we took the initiative to go and get this before a competitor did. Three, they test on their own platforms. They test on their own sandbox, and then they bring it to the table. For example, I used to intentionally experiment on X with different concepts. Then if those concepts work, I would bring them to clients. When foundation was just getting started, we would run experiments like, hey, we're going to create these decks on SlideShare and see how they influence the market. And then you fast forward, we were able to prove that it works in B2B and then we were able to do them ourselves.

14:11You want to be intentional with trying things and then presenting things. Four, unblockable people do not treat algorithm changes and shifts like the end of the world. They treat them like a Nova a Scotian weather. You don't know what you're going to get. You never know. It might be sunny. It might be spring. It might be winter. But do you get all in a gloom over it? No. You treat it like the weather. Everyone is furious about the latest updates in Google and ChatGPT and perplexity. Who cares? Business as usual. Let's educate. Let's get informed. And then let's react. Let's remove this negative mentality of, oh, woe is me.

14:56And instead, let's focus on outcome, outcome, come, oh come. What is my action? How can I be unblockable? Five, legal said no. Legal said no. That's okay. No doesn't mean that we can't keep talking about it. No doesn't mean that I can't educate legal into how competitors are doing it and how they were able to execute it. Can we rewrite it in a different way? It doesn't mean this stops. It doesn't mean this is over, that this conversation is a wrap. It means we need to think differently about how we can understand their red lines, understand their problems, their gaps, and help them get to a yes.

15:29The sixth thing about unblockable people is they know their numbers. Unblockable people know their numbers before the meeting starts, whether it's pipeline, traffic, cost, revenue, sales, churn. You give them a metric that they're responsible for and they read the metric every single day. They care about it because they want to be unblockable when it comes to the most important thing for them to achieve, right? That is someone who's unblockable. You want to know another signal of somebody who's unblockable? They light up when they get asked a question. When they get asked a question like, how would you do this with no budget?

16:09Most people hear, oh, here we go again. No, no, no, not unblockable people. They say, let me show you. I'll show you how far I can take this with no budget, because guess what? When you throw money at it, we'll be able to go even further. Folks, if you have a hiring decision this month on your desk, I want you to think about these types of signals as you start to figure it out. How do they respond to challenges? Throw a few their way. Say something to them in the interview process like, we tried that before it didn't work. Say something like, what if you had no budget? How would you approach it?

16:50Ah, the algorithm changed. What would you do then? If the person responds with defeat, then the person is probably not the person, right? At Foundation, we're trying to create one of the greatest marketing companies that have ever existed. And to do that, we need people who are unblockable. Unblockable people hear these sentences, these ideas, these concepts like there's no budget. Legal said, no, the algorithm changes and they don't hear end of the road. They hear the beginning of the opportunity to do something different. Unblockable people recognize the importance of not meeting an obstacle and throwing their hands up and saying, I ain't got nothing.

17:37They view an obstacle as an opportunity to prove everyone, but most importantly themselves, that they can get to a solution, right? But there are some traps. There are traps that we can fall into. We can fall into it because in reality, we also play a role in this. There's a trap that some founders make where they become blockers. And I encourage you not to be the blocker. Do not be the blocker who falls into one of these five traps in particular. The first one being the permission trap. The trap of saying everyone needs permission from me, right? That is a path towards disaster. On the flip side, you don't want to always be in a culture, in a system where you always need to wait for yes.

18:38Yes, from the CEO, from legal, from the budget cycle. Meanwhile, ideas by other people in other companies are being executed upon faster because you're waiting for yes. You're waiting for an approval. Don't fall into that trap. Just go. And as a leader, encourage your team to just go. The second trap is attribution, especially for marketers. Folks, if you tell your teams, if we can't measure it, we don't want to do it, then you are increasing the likelihood of your team doing things that make zero impact. When I look at some of the most successful brands today, they're sponsoring some of the most niche and unique podcasts and not getting any type of immediate ROI.

19:30But everyone knows them. Everybody loves them, right? Because they're attributed and associated with cool. When I look at brands that are launching wild, unique, cool, creative AI videos that are generating 5 million views on X and LinkedIn and Instagram, they're not always driving pipeline immediately. But they are putting those brands top of mind. They're starting a conversation about them. Right? You need to recognize that not every single thing that you do needs to be attributed to revenue and pipeline immediately. You have to play the long game. Trap three is the expert trap. Just because your title is VP, just because your title is junior coordinator, doesn't mean that your opinion doesn't matter.

20:17Your opinion matters. Your feedback matters. Just because someone with authority says something won't work, doesn't mean it won't work. You can prove them wrong. There was a lot of people who thought that Facebook was a stupid idea, that thought iPhone was a stupid concept, and that everyone would always want a keyboard on their phone. People who were experts in their industry, right? The VP who ran a test in 2020 and found that this certain approach didn't work has no idea what works today. So don't be afraid to fight for your idea. Be unblockable. And the fourth trap, the algorithm trap. Updates hit, reaches down, time to just have a quiet morning.

21:06Let's mourn. Let's actually mourn. No, treat it like weather. Treat it like weather. Distribute your story anyway. You had a vision, you had a plan, keep going, run the course, maybe do more things, but be unblockable and don't let an algorithm stop you. And here's the fifth trap. And this one gets personal. It's the trap of believing that you can't do something simply because of the rooms that you're in. The room trap. This one lives inside you, right? It's the, I don't belong in this room. It shows up as us leaving before even getting asked for the thing, right? Look, I grew up in Preston, Nova Scotia, small spot in Nova Scotia with no connections to the tech world, no agency connections, no obvious past to the industry, considered by many as an underprivileged kid who had no shot at breaking up, right?

21:59I still see folks who have the mentality that they can't make it because of the rooms that they started in. You can get into any door if you are willing to put in the work. Be unblockable. I know it's going to be hard. I know it's going to be challenging, but the reward is a life that you actually want to live. So pursue it relentlessly. You will not regret it and be unblockable. Okay, folks, we talked about a lot. My philosophy here is simple. I want you all to strive to be unblockable. When you get met with traps, roadblocks, all of those things, I want you to pursue it. Don't get me wrong. I've been blocked before.

22:52I'm not perfect. I have run into problems. I've talked myself out of opportunities because I've been blocked. But I do believe that by making the intentional commitment to yourself and telling yourself, truly, I am unblockable. I cannot be blocked. You've reduced the likelihood that you will be. Whether you're early in your career or you're later in your career, I want you to realize that just because someone told you no doesn't mean that you still can't get where you want to be. Just because there's a challenge in front of you doesn't mean you can't surpass it, get through it, climb over it, or dig under it to get to where you want to be.

23:39Folks, every single day you're going to run into a challenge. I hope that that is true. If you don't have a challenge in front of you today, then you're probably chilling on your own potential. If you have no obstacles in front of you, no big hairy problems, you're probably underestimating what you're capable of. So I would encourage you to go out and find new things. Go out and find new tasks. Go find a big, hairy goal that you can pursue that makes you uncomfortable. And when you find that, when you've established this is what I want to do, this is what I want to achieve, this is the impact that I want to make in my career, in my job, this is how I want to turn this project around, this client around, this company around, this is what I want to do.

24:32Solidify it for yourself and make yourself unblockable. If you have more questions about what it takes to be unblockable, you can find me on all of your favorite social media channels. I'm Ross Simmons. Thank you for listening to The Ross Simmons Show, and I will see you on the internet.