Before BreakfastEntrepreneur and author Molly Beck shares tips for making daily life more productive
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's episode is going to be a longer one part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and any advice they have for the rest of us. So I am delighted to today welcome Molly Beck to the program. Mollie is an entrepreneur, an author, and she also runs a substack newsletter.
Called beck on Tech. So Mollie, welcome to the show.
Laura, I'm so delighted to be here. Thank you.
Yeah, I'm thrilled to have you. So tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
My main job is I am a startup founder. My company is Workperfectly dot com. Our software helps large enterprises start private podcasts for their employees. And as you touched on in my intro, outside of Work Perfectly, I keep myself busy with a lot of smaller entrepreneurial ventures. I write that daily tech newsletter, I sell templates on Etsy, I do some investing. I just like to always have my hand and some other things awesome.
That is good.
Well, I first got to know you many years ago when you were sort of known as a proponent of what you call the reach out method, and that's the title of your first book. I wonder if you could tell people a little bit what it means to reach out as a method.
Reaching out is the idea of sending one message email social media. I even had someone wants to do a reach out on twenty three and meters to someone that you don't know or is on the edge of your network every single workday, and the idea being that there are so many opportunities out there bouncing around, but unless people know about you, it can be hard for those opportunities to come to you. And it's also hard to show up at some sort of conference and hope that you make a connection. But if you're really intentional single day about reaching out to someone on the edge or a complete stranger of your network, you can grow that network. And what we're trying to develop by doing it every single day is a bad memory. It can be really demoralizing. If you've found one person that you think will change your career, you reach out and you hear crickets. But if that one person is the person you've reach out to on Tuesday and by Friday you've already done three more reachouts you've completely forgotten. So you're trying to make it a habit of being okay with going out into the universe, saying hi, giving someone a gift, being a joy in their inbox, and seeing what comes back to you.
Yeah, how long does this tend to take when people do it?
You know? Before AI, I would have said, oh, maybe ten or fifteen minutes a day. Now I think that you can have used tools like chat, GPT or cloud to help you write a quick reach out to someone and send it off in five minutes or less.
And how do you think about which person to reach out to on any given day?
Like do you have a running list and you just work through it? Or I mean, how does that work?
I definitely have a reading list and I do work through it. But like this morning, my reach out was to someone that I was reading their substack. They're just a random person that I follow. I was so touched by what they write. I pulled out a quote from it and I said, I think that this quote is so amazing. You should do a podcast around this topic, and if you do, I will be your very first listener, just a quick little note hopefully it made them smile and then move on with my day. Yeah.
I love that idea, sort of being of service and like being a positive force in someone's inbox, like you're not reaching out asking for the person to do something big for you.
Right, Such a great point. Absolutely, And like Laura, that's how you and I met. In twenty twelve. I sent you a reach out although I wasn't even really calling it that then, and said, I absolutely love your books. I believe I just read one of them, and I'm just so excited to be a fan of you. And now, I mean, look at this is thirteen years later. We've I was able to quote you and reach out, We've had professional collaborations, I'm appearing on your podcast. Not every reach will be so successful, but we never would have met if I hadn't just sent you that email, not even asking for anything, just telling you what a fan I was.
Yeah, well I smiled to get that email in my inbox. I'm very curious, like how often do people get back in touch with you?
I mean, you know, like, what would you say the response rate is?
The response rate really varies on if it's someone that's actually on the edge of my network, like I've met them previously, or a total cold stranger, a cold stranger twenty twenty five percent, like one on a four. I'm getting our response someone that they at least recognized my name much higher eighty or even ninety. And then someone that I was actually like, used to be friends with or used to work with. You can say it like that's one hundred. Maybe not immediately, but they'll get back to you.
Yeah.
Yeah, So be prepared for the cold reach outs to have a low response rate. Yeah, But the ones that are more sort of on your on the edge of your network, friend of friend, like more like.
Someone you can name drop, like in the subject line like, oh I'm a friend of blah blah blah.
Yes, exactly, exactly. Well, what a great discipline to develop. I'm sure it's really helped grow your network over the years. So, but let's talk about your current project of Back on Tech. I mean, obviously you have your major startup stuff you're doing, but Back on Tech is a new newsletter where you talk all things tech.
So tell us about it.
You know, I just was really thinking, Hey, what am I super interested in these days? And it's really technology. I run a technology startup, I invest in other technologies. I love the Internet, I love learning about AI, and I have just been really interested in I like the process of creation, and I was looking at hunting around, casting about, as you might say, for an idea for a newsletter, and that's I decided to try it. I launched it a couple of months ago, and my rule when I first launched it is that I wouldn't tell anybody about it for at least a month make sure I could continually do it. It comes out every day at noon, so it's a daily newsletter, which you write one too. You know that can sometimes you start those and then you realize you run out of ideas. So I wanted to do it for a full month before I started, sort of lightly promoting it among people I knew. And now I'm a couple of months in it, and I'm just really enjoyed it. It's really short tech tips, interesting corners of the Internet, stuff I'm learning about AI that people can read every day.
Yeah. Well, I love the idea of making sure you have a lot of ideas as you are launching something. I know I've given the advice to people starting a podcast that you should have like twenty ideas for shows before you start, and because that tells you, really if it's something that you can keep running with, right, And I assume it wasn't that hard for you to come up with a month's worth of stuffing.
It wasn't that hard, But I didn't really know that going into it. And nobody likes to be this person, and I've been this person where you start something, you tell everyone you know and then you just kind of run out of ideas, or you didn't like it as much, or you don't have the space for it. So giving yourself a little bit of privacy to launch something. I think I had like three subscribers. It was literally my mom, my husband, and my sister for the first month, just making sure that I could get into the practice. And then when I did start promoting it, I had a whole backlog, so it looked like, oh, hey, Molly's actually doing this, like she's really into it, and then I felt more confident sharing it with others.
People excellent, Well we're going to take a quick ad break and then we will be back with a little bit more from Molly Beck.
Well, I am back.
I am interviewing Molly Beck, who is an entrepreneur and author, the founder of a substack called beck on Tech, which we've just been talking about. So Molly, back on Tech gives a short tech tip many days. I wonder if you could share one or two that you think our listeners might find useful.
You know a tech tip that I recently shared that's a very dedicated part of my morning routine is I do something called a money minute, which is every morning when I sit down on my computer, the first thing I do is I checked all of my bank accounts, credit cards, savings account I even checked my four oh one K my coinbase, And that means it takes probably it definitely takes less than a minute. I don't have that many accounts, but it means that I always have a really good handle on the total amount of money that I have. And I started this about two years ago when I was just sort of always feeling I'm an entrepreneur and sometimes I feel nervous about hey, like, what is my financial forecast look like three six, nine months? And to know what the forecast is, you have to know what's going on now. So now I feel really on top of it with this practice of quickly running through all of my accounts every morning. It's the first thing I do before I check my email.
Now, that's interesting that you would check your four oh one K every day, because I've certainly heard the advice that one should not do that.
Laura, I literally do you are going to mention that? As I was saying it, I was like, Laura's not gonna like this Sparrowaki thing.
Well, I mean, I get it. I totally get it.
But and a lot of my investment accounts are attached to my check account, so I have to see them anyway. Like, it's not a mystery. I totally get it. But maybe you can explain why you consciously get well.
For rest all, it doesn't change that much because it's just tied to the market. But you know what reminds me, I'm I you know, in thirty years, I will, hopefully God willing be here to tap into it and like what's going on there? And I also think like thinking about retirement is a big source of anxiety for a lot of people, especially if you have a more unstable income like a founder does, and just knowing that number, even if it's not always exactly what I want to see, but it's getting there and you can see the graph go up over time. I think it does help with anxiety for me. Almost anything that I'm nervous about in life, it's because I'm avoiding it, and if you just dive head into it, you know. I think in therapy they literally call that exposure therapy. I think it does, like really actually help to lower the anxiety.
Yeah, all right, so exposure therapy with our four one really care Yeah, yeah, and you had another one recently. We mentioned that there's some setting that you can automatically shorten your meeting.
Yes, it's called like the speedy meeting setting, and Google has it outlook has it Just like literally Google, Hey, I don't do the speedy meeting setting, and it will automatically make your meetings twenty five minutes or fifty five minutes, so you never even have to worry about like slightly adjusting the time. That just gives you a buffer. I also think when I get a meeting invite from someone that has set the meeting for twenty five minutes, I'm like, oh, this person is like they're on top of their life, like they know what's going on. Like we got to be on our game, and I think it's like a very positive signal to the other person that you are on top of your schedule.
Absolutely, and you'll have time to go to the restaurant before your next meeting, which is a big benefit.
Grab a little handful of eminem you know, just a little snack.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
So you said you do your money minute as part of your morning routine. I wonder if you have any other sort of routines through your day that are helpful to you.
Yes, I do. I would say one of my biggest routines actually is what I don't do, and that is that I do not have email on my phone and I don't check my tech messages very often. So that means that when I wake up in the morning, I'm not even like touching my phone until I really sit down at my desk, and that means in the morning, I'm focused on the kids. I am focused on getting dressed. I do think part of my morning routine is like getting dressed, putting on makeup. I wear a dress almost every day looking nice, and that means when I sit down at nine or nine fifteen to really start the day, I have not checked my email in a while, and I have emails to respond to, things to do, and so that's my first sort of part of my routine is what is not on the routine the rest of it. When I sit down, I do the money minute, I check all my email accounts. You know, most people these days have more than one. I'll work one, a personal one, and then I try to just dive into the day. Right now, I have a newborn at home, so my day is a little bit all over the place with breastfeeding on demand. And sometimes that's good to be shaking up the regular old routine being dependent on someone else. I also would say another part of my like sort of shutdown ritual is I do one let's check on my email accounts. I usually look at my to do list and I know what's the very first thing I'm going to do when I come back the next day. And then I just shut the computer and walk away. And I like to say, like I work in podcasting, like there's no emergencies. The biggest emergency is that my kids are not always going to be at my house. Like that's the most urgent thing in my life is that I should be present at home with my family right now. And the podcast will be there at nine am the next day.
Yeah, it is a normal work day starting at nine am. Do you have a target in time or I'm curious what that tends to.
Le Yeah, my normal work day, I drop my kids off at school at nine and then I live like next to the school, go to Starbucks. I try to be at my guest by like nine twenty every day. And like the kids school bell, I can hear it from my house and it rings at nine thirty, and like nine hundred percent when I hear that bell ring, I better be at my desk. So I use that as like a little timing ritual. I loved your before breakfast tip recently. That was on like alarm clock noises, and I was like, oh, the school bell's like kind of my alarm clock. To start my day start at nine thirty, and then the kids have to be picked up at four thirty. So I try to start that little shutdown ritual right around four o'clock. Sometimes I have little things popping up, but I do try to start winding up for the day around four o'clock.
And do you have a set sort of sense of what you make and how do you choose what you're going to do in any given day. Is it based on what you see coming in in the morning, or do you have a general guideline of how you're organizing things?
Laura, this is such the problem of being your own boss. One of the reasons I try to do my to do list the night before is because I haven't seen the emails yet for the next day. I try to choose two big things that I want to get accomplished in the day, and then the rest is actually pretty email driven.
You know.
I as a founder now, a lot of my job is sales driven. So I either have meetings, or I have customer service questions coming in, or I have like somebody emails me. I want to get back to them right away because I want to upsell them. I do. It is sort of email driven, and I've just sort of made peace with that. I think that's okay as long as you as long as you a lot into your schedule. And then the other thing I do is I do like to have little projects and like they are sort of like little hobbies to me, and I try to do those outside of that like nine to four hour sometimes later at night, I'll fire up the laptop, work on my aut csha's and I sometimes do back on talk because I try to do them for a week at a time. I like to have nine to four sort of protected for my quote nquote real work and then do my like fun little projects other times.
What's the Etsy Store?
Oh? Well, it's so fun. I sell little like habit trackers that are like really bright, really colorful. They're like eighties and nineties themed. It's just like a cute thing. It's called the Neon Upside. It's just something I do for fun, but I really enjoy it.
Well, do you have any habits that you are tracking currently?
Yes, I actually do so. I have an eight week old and this is my fourth trial, so I've been through postpartum previously, and for three months after I have a baby, I do something I called every Days and it's in a Google doc and it's about twenty items that you know, I think after you get birth, you're you can it's easy for things to get a little off track. And I track these twenty things and I have with all of the kids, and some of them are super easy get up, get dressed. One of them is like say I love you to someone, like easy that's one second. But some of them are especially in like the week or two after you give birth. I try to do like one career related thing a day, could be as simple as one email because I'm not really checking emails back then. One of them is have a longer conversation with someone in person. I feel like that's important for mental health. I just try to keep. One of them is making sure I'm meaning enough protein, like I try to keep. I try to be more diligent about my habits right after I give birth because I do think that that is like a sensitive time in your life.
Yeah, well, it's funny you and I've had enough babies that it starts to be a thing you can kind of have a set routine for doing.
But I love that you just, you know, by focusing.
On only having a few things though that you're doing, I mean, you probably do those things and then feel like you're the most productive person in the world.
One hundred percent. And like saying I love you comment that's like it takes more time to do the check mark. But I'm like, oh, and I don't always do all twenty things every day, but if I do fifteen or sixteen of them, and some of them are like, hey, make sure to have face to face time, like a solid meeting with each of the three kids. Just like trying one is like clean one thing around the house. Like the standards are low, but like it's a really nice way to feel productive, and I think it would work. I usually do it after I have a baby, but I think it would work if you were going through any sort of hard time. Just like, make that to do list really easy and get that thrill of checking things off.
I love the idea of checking off that I got up in the morning. I really like the idea I check off, yes, yes.
Open my eyes, got a glass of water, like my mind.
We're waiting already.
All right, Well, we're gonna take one more quick ad break and then I'll be back with more from Molly Beck. Well, I am back with Molly Beck, who is an author an entrepreneur. She writes the substack Back on tech. As she mentioned, she has four extremely young children. I'm curious, do you guys have a regular end of the day around your house? I mean, do the kids go to bed at a certain time? Do you go to bed at a certain time?
We do have a ritual for the end of the day. But it is just going to sleep, you know. Like I we have four kids, so we usually two. One of us takes two and then my husband takes the other two. And then I admit I usually fall asleep with the kid that I put to bed in my bed and then he and I snuggle up together, we fall asleep. He eventually gets moved to his bed around like midnight when my husband comes to bed, and then midnight is also when the baby gets up to feed, So that is our schedule these days. I also like to watch Friends. There's like one specific episode of Friends, season four, episode thirteen. I watch it every night to fall asleep. It's like as soon as I hear the first like three lines of dialogue, like it's like a Pevoli in response, like my eyes start to close. I just watch it every night. It calms me down. I'm always asleep, like within two minutes. So that is how I go to bed.
Now that's fast.
Is there anything special about that episode or it just happens to be you form this habit.
It's kind of a key episode, like Rachel's like having a crush on someone, but I like never even get to the part where she like meets the guy she sent me the crush on because I'm like a sleep so fast I.
Love that some people listen to a calming tape.
You've got an episode of Friends that is putting you to sleep as well, so Molly. As you know, I often ask people what is something you have done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
Laura, wait for this tip. I'm such a before breakfast fan and I've been waiting for you to ask me this. Over the last three weeks, I have been on a journey. And the journey started when I realized I really want to eat more protein, like that was important to me. So it was hunting around on Google, like what's a good food a lot of protein? And everyone said cottage cheese. But I'm like a texture girly, and I'm like, I don't know if that's for me, but I really wanted to try it. So I get the Good Culture brand. You can get it at Walmart, which is where I shop, put it in my fridge and I decided that every time I open the fridge, I would take the world's smallest bite of this cottage cheese in an effort to train myself to like him. So I start day one. My groceries come on Monday. I start day one. I'm like having a little bite, Okay, not for me Tuesday. This is interesting. Maybe I'll do more than one curd By Thursday. I'm craving it. And now it's three weeks later, I'm a cottage cheese person. I'm doing two tubs a week. I'm putting it on English muffins, I'm mixing it with ragu, I'm doing it all mixing with salty. Yesterday for chips. Cottage cheese has like when I ever you might eat it, I think, oh my gosh, I can do anything now. I love cottage cheese. And also, look all this protein that I'm getting to cottage cheese is the.
End cottage cheese. Well, you're making me wish I could eat dairy products.
It would be great.
Sounds like a perfect way to get more protein by so you get your That's another weekly routine though, here is that you get your groceries delivered every Monday.
Every Monday. It's a good And then you know what, I never keep a list. I just anytime during the week when I'm like, oh, we you should add that to the walmarter just instantly add it. Then Monday morning, my husband hits the button when he gets to work, and then it gets sill over. In the middle of the day, I put the groceries away and then we try to never have to think about like groceries.
Besides that, And does that have like a set meal plan that you're eating each night?
I mean, is that you know I'm not on the meal prep journey. I know I could say your meal plan, like I know you do your little pizza night and you have your breakfast for dinner, But that's not our journey right now. Whatever really the kids want. Sometimes we get chipoli takeout. I think maybe maybe that's a goal for twenty twenty six is to maybe virtualize some of those meal plans.
Oh, I just.
Wondered what you were eating. I don't know what. There's grories, there's groceries being purchased. There must be meals happening.
Casta to look at tacos. My husband makes this like keiche that we like for dinner. But it's nothing. It's nothing. Both my husband and I have the palettes of like children, and that's perfect because we have all these kids. Oh, we do a lot of chicken sees or salads. Actually, my kids really like that, and that's like to get me a little treat.
That's awesome. Well, that's more sophisticated.
It is kind of that's like the only complicated food my kids eat. The amount of times I drop that into a combo. Oh you know, my children eating chicken sees or salads. It's like that's the only thing that's complicated.
Like that, and the chicken nuggets. That's all literally literally and fishy.
Exactly right.
So, Mollie, what are you looking forward to these days?
I'm in just the best mood. I feel like that. I obviously love having kids around. That's why I have so money. I love having a baby in the house. I feel like I've actually really bonded with my dog more, which is like so random, and Blibberry and I have just been snuggling every night. I'm really excited about some stuff going on at work perfectly. I love having my projects. I am looking forward to a happy, healthy spring, and I am looking forward to trying to look for the good every day. It can be so easy to just really feel overwhelmed, but I'm I'm really trying to look for the good and I'm trying to if I think of emotions like I'm trying to stay at the top. Anything that's sad, I'm not just not thinking too.
Much about Yeah, it's a good time in life not to think about that. Also a good time to eat a lot of cottage cheese. I think there'll be a lot of cottage cheese in your near future.
Exactly.
Awesome, Awesome, Well, Molly, where can people find you?
They can find me. They can always buy my book reach Out anywhere books are sold. They can find back on tech at back on tech dot substeck dot com. They if you're interested in podcasts at their company, then go to workperfectly dot com and I am miss Molly back on all social platforms.
Awesome, well, Mollie, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback about this or any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. I welcome reach out, by the way, and in the mean time, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
