Pop-Tart Time

I’ll be honest, I have nicked the phrase “pop-tart time” from a splendid webinar with Zena Everett, a business speaker and coach, that I attended last week. It resonated with me, so I thought I’d share my take with you.

You might be a big fan of the culinary delights of a Pop-Tart, but clearly, while it is food, and technically you’d be eating, its nutritional value is… well… debatable.

Similarly, “Pop-Tart time” is the time you spend on doing the things that look and feel like work but don’t provide any nutrition for your business.

The webinar was offering individual coaching advice, but even in larger sales and marketing teams, we see “pop-tart time” all the time.

The sales hustle hero who humble-brags about their exhaustion, but isn’t putting numbers on the board.

The marketing team publishing content because “we need to post something this week.”

The leadership meeting where everyone agrees that marketing needs a Tikface strategy.

The request to do the marketing thing, because we’ve always done that marketing thing.

The lovingly curated internal marketing slide deck that is full of vanity metrics.

You’ve seen these things.

The danger with Pop-Tart time is that it feels productive. We’re all busy, the tide of tasks on the kanban board is moving right, the dashboard lights are blinking green, and things are happening.

But, to lean into this Pop-Tarts analogy, if too much of the time consumed is Pop-Tart time, the business is going to feel a little sick.

Marketing and sales teams are particularly vulnerable to Pop-Tart time because activity is easy to measure. The nutritional value to the business is often harder.

If you are a regular reader of this, you know I like to qualify marketing activity with the question: Will it create ART (Awareness, Revenue, or Trust)?

If it doesn’t, maybe it’s a Pop-Tart.