Joe Escobedo is a Chief Content Officer and author of Asian Growth Stories: How To Do Business In Asia.
Joe has presented and trained over 7,000 Fortune 1000 executives from all over the world, helping them build and manage their digital brands.
Balance the Grind spoke to Joe about his diverse background and extensive experience in Asia, typical day in his life, scheduling in quality family time and more.
This conversation is brought to you by Teachable, a powerful yet simple all-in-one platform to create and sell beautiful online courses.
1) To kick things off, could you tell us a little about your background and career?
My name is Joe Escobedo. I’m originally from the U.S. but have been in Asia for 12 years. So at this point, I feel like a local.
I started my career as a market research analyst for a venture capital and have done everything including:
- a business and entertainment journalist
- a communications consultant for Fortune 500 brands in China
- a F&B comms guy building the regional strategy for Asia, Middle East and Africa
- a content marketer helping to build one of the most awarded agencies in Singapore
Now, I run a boutique consultancy and training firm that specializes in content marketing, social selling and branding.
I’m also co-authored a new book “Asia Growth Stories” which was designed to be a practical guide to doing business in Asia.
2) What is your current role and what does it entail on a day to day basis?
My job involves trying to make everyone happy, from my clients to my team members and my broader marketing community.
That involves a lot of calls, meetings and constant content creation.
3) What does a typical day in the life look like for you? Can you take us through a recent workday?
I don’t have a typical day per se but if I did it might look something like this:
- 6am: wake up and check emails
- 7am: get the kids ready for school and a quick breakfast and then back to work at
- 8:30am: calls with the team to go over the day’s priorities
- 9am: diving into client projects, which could include content strategy for a global tech company to social selling training for a Fortune 500 financial services brand
- 12pm: quick lunch
- 2pm: calls and meetings with clients and partners
- 5pm: workout, either walk, swim or playground workouts
- 6pm: start prepping and cooking dinner for the family
- 7pm: feed the kids
- 8pm: storytime with the kids
- 9pm: put the kids to sleep
- 9:30pm: back to work, finishing out any outstanding projects for the day
- 11pm: browsing a bit of 9gag and then to sleep
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
4) In between everything you do and all your responsibilities, how do you ensure you find some sort of balance in your life?
I specifically mark out family time with my kids. That means from 7-9pm I don’t work (or at least I try not to) and instead spend that time reading to my kids and playing with them.
5) What are some of the things you do to take time out and recharge?
Oh, I try to spend an hour a day doing some kind of exercise. I realized that by eating better and exercising on a regular basis, it would help me stay healthier for the family and business.
6) Are there any gadgets, tools or products can’t you live without?
I’m a huge fan of the Google online suite, i.e. Google docs, slides, sheets and so on. I love it because I work together with the team anywhere, even when I’m heading to a meeting.
As my team is based around the world, I’ve come to appreciate tools like Zoom where we can video conference and I can share a recording of our session, if needed.
Finally, because I have a small phone and fat fingers, I leverage the voice search function on Google, as well as the voice to text feature. I find I’m far faster at speaking than texting.
7) Do you have any books that you love and would like to recommend?
Yes! Anything by Dale Carnegie.:
They are the only books that I’ve read multiple times and they played a large part in my own professional successes.
8) What is the number one thing you do to make sure you get the most out of your day?
Prioritize. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you have multiple clients and team members from around the world. But I try to take it a project at a time, based on the urgency and importance of the project.
I place an emphasis on first client projects, then my team and then my own business functions.
