Austin Ryan is a Marketing Analyst at ThreeWill. Austin is certified in Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Hootsuite Social Media, and has experience SEO optimizing WordPress websites. He also creates and packages content for the website and ThreeWill’s social media channels including podcast post production.
Danny serves as Vice President of Client Development at ThreeWill. His primary responsibilities are to make sure that we are building partnerships with the right clients and getting out the message about how we can help clients.
Watch, Read, or Listen to: Linchpin Meaning from a Marketing Department’s Perspective
In this podcast, Linchpin Meaning from a Marketing Department’s Perspective, we discuss:
| Min | Topic |
| :14 | Introduction |
| :35 | Why read this book? |
| 5:37 | Is the Coast Guard just following orders? The opposite of a Linchpin |
| 9:00 | Characteristic of a Linchpin |
Transcript
| Danny: | It’s Thursday, September 17th. And today I talk with Austin Ryan about Linchpin, a book by Seth Godin. And we talk about what his takeaways are from the book. I hope you enjoy.
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| Hello Austin. How you doing, bud?
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| Austin Ryan: | Hey, how’s it going?
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| Danny: | Good, good. Let’s talk about the book you just read, a book by Seth Godin called Linchpin.
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| Austin Ryan: | That’s right.
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| Danny: | So this was your big goal for this quarter. Your mid goal for this quarter was to read the book and have this conversation, which is great. So let’s just get this kicked off and jump into it. What do you think are some of the things … And I think I asked you to read this book, I would guess awhile back. Why do you think I asked you to read this book? What would you get asked?
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| Austin Ryan: | Yeah, so … Yeah, I think it’s a good book to read whenever you’re starting a career with realizing that you can put creativity into your work.
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| Danny: | Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | And a lot of times it’s hard to see value into that. If you do exactly what you’re told and don’t add any of your unique genius to things, then you can get by, but we all have something specific to offer that will make our work a lot more valuable and it’ll make it a lot more enjoyable for us in the longterm.
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| Danny: | Yeah, I think it’s one of those, where you come into your career thinking of what unique qualities you bring to your job and what are the things that you can do within an organization. Are you just someone who takes orders or are you somebody who really comes in and draws? It’s constantly looking for how can I apply myself. I’m not here to just work the nine to five. I’m here to… While I’m going to be at work, I’m going to have a good time. I’m going to be creative. I’m going to really use the gifts that I’ve been given to go make a difference. And when you end up starting to do that, you become critical to the organization because a lot of the things that you’re doing, some of it has a recipe where you can sort of like go through and do, you do X, then Y then Z.
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| But a lot of the stuff you end up doing, the real creative stuff you bring it’s really pushing you to the next level. And I think that’s important as you… Also, from a competitive edge too. When you’re looking at where you’re going with your career, if you’re able to sort of frame something out, go solve the problem and come back and report on it. It’s so much better than you just sort of saying you’ve even learned this you know, even with the stuff today, you ended up trying to solve a problem and then once you couldn’t solve it, you came to me with it. But that’s a key thing you know. That’s one of those big important things that make you a lot more valuable to an organization. Is that thinking of what it is, what it is that I can do and bringing that energy to the job.
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| Austin Ryan: | Yeah. And it’s learning what your specific kind of abilities are, your specific genius is. And then having… I guess the vulnerability to give it in your day and then expect or usually pushback comes. And so if you don’t give your full self, then you don’t have to take that backlash because whenever you’re vulnerable, the backlash means a lot more.
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| Danny: | Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | So you kind of laid out that previous generations with the industrial revolution, I mean the majority of people kind of looked at their job as keeping their heads down and following orders.
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| Danny: | Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | And they would get something out of it. At the end of the day, they would have a stable life and stuff and get your happiness from the stuff that you get from your stable job. And so he’s kind of pushing back from that and showing that linchpins are… You can be one and still be productive and you don’t have to lose that passion that you find with the internal value with doing what was yeah.
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| Danny: | What do you think as you look at one of the things that a linchpin for like your… It makes you become a little bit sticky within an organization because you’re the ones out there making things happen and become critical to the organization. And with you sort of like wrapping up what you’re doing at ThreeWill and moving on to your next thing, what do you think in a part of this is like, I don’t sit to some of the supply data when going into the coast guard you, so it’s going to be ”you’re following orders”.
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| Austin Ryan: | Right.
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| Danny: | But then I.
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| Austin Ryan: | Yeah.
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| Danny: | Wonder what sort of things, is there anything you can take away from the book that sort of like, you’re going to bring to whatever you’re doing next or whether some of the things, or is it like the time being when you’re going through bootcamp and those types of things. Yeah, you’re just there to take orders but eventually some of this stuff you can apply it to what you’re doing.
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| Austin Ryan: | Yeah. So I do have a little bit of pushback from the way he’s thinking with going into the coast guard, there’s a purpose to bootcamp. And I think that’s maybe a little bit separate from the job that I’ll do after. They’re kind molding you into…In bootcamp, as far as I understand, I haven’t been in it, but from.
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| Danny: | Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | Who I talked to you about, they’re kind of putting you in situations where you can find internal strength and leadership. So they’re not trying to make you fail, but they’re, I guess, giving you the opportunity in hard situations to show that you can succeed and you can.
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| Danny: | Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | Make choice. And so a lot of the coast guard, what’s really important to them is that you take leadership positions and you take ownership for things. And so I think that aspect is really important with kind of tying it to being a linchpin. I’m wondering what the possibilities of… So I’m trying to be a rescue swimmer, and that’s a program that’s developed over the past couple of decades and it’s continually been improving. And so I’m interested to see kind of what ability that you have to help with the improvement of that.
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| Danny: | Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | So, that’ll be interesting to see, but you know.
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| Danny: | Yeah. Some of this might come a little bit late. You like later on, I could see going in, but I just read a book and I’m an artist and I want to do it this way. Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | Yeah. Probably not going to work. I guess you got to earn the respect maybe that support.
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| Danny: | Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And I think this probably is, a lot of this stuff you might want to maybe re revisiting it later on just, it’s one of those things. It’s probably a good reminder for us as well, especially as we start something creative or start something new, there might be this is a good book to take another look at. Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | Right, right.
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| Danny: | So anything else, what other things, maybe one more thing that we have that you sort of are taken away from the book that was a big thing.
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| Austin Ryan: | He talks about the characteristics of linchpins. Generally they run towards fear.
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| Danny: | Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | So he says that they do feel fear, but they acknowledge it and then proceed anyway. It goes along with failure and like continuing towards a path that you’re trying to go on. And so being okay with that fear and failure.
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| Danny: | Yeah.
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| Austin Ryan: | It’s a characteristic of the linchpin. And I think of the linchpin just as a lot of characteristics of a leader.
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| Danny: | Yeah, I think one of the big things with failure, what you find out is about when you’re growing, what you want to have is, you want to have these little failures, you want to have these little things that you learned from, you don’t want the Tommy, talks about waterline decisions. You don’t want these failures in your life or sink this ship.
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| Austin Ryan: | Yeah.
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| Danny: | But you want to be open to the possibility of failures, because those are the areas where you’re learning and you’re building up things like courage and persistence. There are lots of people. People think like if you have a whole career where it’s just success after success, after success, i.e I don’t know if you really pushed it.
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| And I think Tommy learned that waterline decision from like Gore, I learned very early in my career from when I was at Intel, they would actually set up internal competition, two departments going against each other. And one of them would fail. You know, failure was a part of innovation. And I think that’s an important thing to take away from the book as well. Well, thank you for doing this Austin. I appreciate you. Everything you’ve done and wish you the best of luck as things come up. I hope this book will be helpful for you, whatever you end up doing. And thank you so much for, I’m going to miss you doing these podcasts and all this stuff, but you’ll have to come back and do one with me.
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| Austin Ryan: | Yeah.
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| Danny: | One on boot camp. Tell me about boot camps all about.
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| Austin Ryan: | Right.
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| Danny: | Alright.
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| Austin Ryan: | [inaudible 00:11:35]
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| Danny: | Thanks so much.
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| Austin Ryan: | Yep. Thank you.
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| Danny: | Thank you everybody for listening, have a Good day. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to the work together, better podcast. We’re available on SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher, and tune in. If you’re looking for a partner to help you craft a modern digital workplace in the Microsoft, please come by and see us@threewill.com. That’s the number three spelled out W I L L.com. Thank you. And have a great day.
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