Real World Productivity

Joining me for this episode is Andrew Hartman, a seasoned operations leader and the founder of Time Boss, to uncover his insights into optimizing productivity.

With experience working with clients, teams, and more, Andrew developed his own systems that he shares freely with others. Drawing from his experience as both a founder and fractional COO for an IT provider, Andrew emphasizes the importance of habits over tools in achieving sustainable productivity.

Andrew and I share many common thoughts when it comes to productivity, and we touch on several such as being honest with yourself, making your time count, and the importance of a daily routine.

Join us as we delve into Andrew's approach to leveraging digital tools for tracking and journaling, reflecting on experiences for growth and pattern recognition. Learn how habit stacking and a strong sense of identity play crucial roles in effective time management.

Books, Resources, Tools, or URLs mentioned:

Joining me this time on the Productivity Podcast is Dr. Don Davis, author, and established coach & consultant for businesses in the healthcare and life sciences industries.

A big proponent of daily routines and time blocking, Dr. Don starts off his day by meditating and journaling to close out the previous day and prepare for what’s coming.

While it may sound weird to you to close a day in the morning of the next day, this is what works for him and it’s something that everyone has to take into account when building up a daily routine.

There are a lot of different routines that big names like Cal Newport follow that work for them, but that doesn’t mean that they will work for YOU—trust me on this one, I’ve tried...

You need to find something that works for you instead of trying to force yourself to follow a routine that was not meant for you.

Dr. Don shared several great methods to deal with over-commitment, focus, and goal setting in this episode of the podcast.

My personal favorites are the “DARE” method (listen and find out more!) as well as time blocking with color coding to show how much time you’re putting towards your goals.

There are many great actionable nuggets in the episode, and with all of his experience helping others, I highly suggest checking out Don’s book (link below), website, and more.

Books, Resources, Tools, or URL’s mentioned:

Joining me this episode is Pauline Malubay, Small Business Operations Expert, & Business Growth Strategist.

I like to start these podcast episodes by asking about morning routines.

Joining me this week is Neha Naik; Entrepreneur & Founder of RecruitGyan and several other businesses.

We covered a lot of ground in our conversation - including Neha’s daily routine with the importance of doing what matters first:

• Exercise
• Family
• Daily Planning

Neha’s also a strong believer in balance - having started several businesses, built teams, and helping run the family she knows the importance of avoiding burnout.

We also talked about perfectionism and how it can stop you from reaching what you really want. In her words, it’s better to take imperfect action and get results that you can iterate and improve upon. This can apply to yourself, outsourcing, just about anything, really, and is great advice for anyone that finds themself getting hung up on the details.

Listen to this episode and learn:

• How you can deal with perfectionism in yourself and team members
  
• What you can do to improve your recruiting and hiring
  
• Why her daily planning is so important to her success
  

Mentioned in this episode:

Joining me this week is Sydney Wong; Entrepreneur & Co-Founder of VenturX, and author of “How to have a good day.”

Joining me this week is Robby Slaughter, workflow and productivity expert.

With a background in technology and mathematics, Robby discovered that he liked best helping people overcome their problems rather than finding a solution to the problems themselves.

One of the things that he focuses on is not only the “how” of productivity (that next cool to-do list that claims to help you master everything) but on the “why” of productivity.

Robby thinks that human beings are at their best when they’re doing one of two things:

1. Getting things done
2. Or consciously not doing anything

And that by mixing the two troubles arise.

Productivity is about making the decision to do something or deciding not to do something and embracing the power of choice and not the mandatory nature of output.

If you decide to relax and manage to do it, you’re being productive.

Another thing that Robby believes in is to write down with pen and paper what’s on your mind so you can take it out of your head, focus on what’s on hand, and then address it when you need to.

Joining me this week is Zeb Evans, founder, and CEO of ClickUp.

Being an entrepreneur from an early age, Zeb taught himself how to code, dropped out of college, and created a social media firm. A lot of frustration from productivity software at the time was what inspired Zeb to create ClickUp.

If you haven’t heard of it, ClickUp is a project management & productivity app I’ve been using for the past 6 months that has tons of integrations and lots of features built into it that aim to reduce the number of apps you need to use.

I asked Zeb about his personal routine and the first thing he does right after waking up at 4:30 AM surprised me a lot: Taking a bath (if you wanna know his reason, listen to the episode 😉).

One of the things that make ClickUp and its team stand out is their core values, one of them being “Urgency and consistency.” Having had 4 near-death experiences, Zeb puts a lot of emphasis into doing the most you can do now and not leaving things for later.

We discussed a lot of topics, one of them was leadership. Zeb’s principles involve encouraging growth, sharing knowledge, and reducing red tape.

Listen to this episode and learn:

• How being transparent with people from the very beginning will help you get the best additions to your team
• Why hiring the right people at the right time matters
• How ClickUp is quickly improving, every day - and how you can do the same
  

Mentioned in this episode:

Joining me this week is Dr. Frank Buck, productivity speaker, author, and time management coach.

His efforts towards being an organized person began back in his high school years and went on through his college years and his almost 30 years in the public education system, and now beyond.

Even though Frank has been going mostly paperless and managing his organization digitally since 2001, he still uses a paper journal that’s always with him for note-taking.

Of note, Frank’s days actually start the evening before when he reviews his goals for the day, checks what was done, what wasn’t done, what needs to be rescheduled, and then what’s in store for the next day.

One thing that prevents people from being organized is not having a system - I’m in complete agreement with Frank here. You don’t need to have an overly complicated system, just by having a place to write your to-do’s instead of relying on your memory you’ll be way ahead of the majority of people.

It’s a “stepping stone” to systems that people like Frank and I put to use and adapt over time.

But, if you want to go even further, Frank shared with me the system he uses and has helped people go from an email inbox with 52,000 emails in it (this is not an exaggeration) to only 2.

Listen to this episode and learn:

• Why having a system sets you free
• How to not get overwhelmed by all your to-do’s
• Why following the system will set you free

Mentioned in this episode:

Joining me this week is Randy Clark, leadership trainer, and Amazon best-selling leadership author.

Over the last 30 years, Randy has helped a lot of companies and managers improve their leadership with his training; much of it based on mistakes he made in management.

He shared a lot of valuable content during our talk that can help just about anyone...not everyone in a managerial position knows how to be a leader - sometimes we’re put there and need to perform.

Randy showed how to hold people accountable without coming in with a hostile approach. On the contrary, showing first that you care for your teammates and you’re coming from a helpful place will yield better results - and how you can actually do this.

Another helpful piece that we often forget is that you need to find what it is that drives your employees.

Is it money?

Is it recognition?

Finding out and acting based on that will help them perform better.

We talked about a lot more topics but you’ll have to listen to the podcast to know more!

Here’s a little sneak-peak of what you’ll learn:

• Why treating others how you want to be treated is not the way to go
  
• How to delegate
  
• Why you shouldn’t multitask and definitely do not pass that on to your team
  

Mentioned in this episode:

Joining me this week is Joseph DiRoma, head of The Successful Male North America and someone with almost two decades of experience in the hospitality industry and helping developing others.

A good and productive day can be achieved with routines, and Joseph shared with me what he calls the CAMPV routine:

C = Contemplation

A = Affirmations

M = Meditation

P = Perspiration

V = Visualization

He made special emphasis on meditation and what you can achieve just by doing it 10 minutes a day - something that I’ve tried in the past off and on but will be working on creating a routine that incorporates this more regularly to get some of the benefits we talked about.

Just like me, Joseph is a fan of processes, and spending time developing processes for recurring tasks so they take less time after you’ve mastered them or just getting rid of tasks that you don’t want to do anymore (by automating or delegating them) can let you gain a ton of time back.

With every guest to the podcast, I ask them what their current book they recommend is – here’s the pick for this episode:

Joining me on this podcast episode is Corey Carter, who has been managing people for more than 20 years and recently has been helping entrepreneurs simultaneously increase sales, traffic, and visibility through JV partnerships and more.

Sometimes, while helping others grow, improve and develop, we neglect those that are next to us.

With Cory frequently travelling for work and having kids at home, he missed a lot of moments that you don’t want to miss...

After discovering Clickfunnels and a partner that was on the same wavelength, they started doing what they loved the most: developing people, but from home with the balance that he wanted.

Not only that, Cory started helping create JV partnerships with the right people and follow what he and his partner called the “Dream 22” (listen to the whole episode to find out more).

JV relationships are super powerful and great for any business if done the right way, and the best thing is that you don’t have to be an experienced industry veteran to make them work.

Cory likes to plan everything, from the days he will work late night to his own training because “If we’re not learning (growing), we’re dying.”

With every guest to the podcast, I ask them what their current book they recommend is - here’s the pick for this episode:

Laura Rike, the Rogue Pinterest Powerhouse, and content marketing expert joined me for a great discussion about Pinterest, teams, and repurposing content.

Seriously - if you do any sort of online content, please listen to this episode...you’re going to get a valuable idea, guaranteed.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think of Pinterest I don’t think of minimal work for hundreds of thousands of website impressions...right?

Well, that’s exactly what Laura is doing for clients and it centers around content, consistency, and repurposing content so that viewers get value and business owners of all sorts get results. Win, win!

We also discussed Laura’s background, coming from a VA “master of none” to focusing on her unique abilities to get these incredible results for clients and students on Pinterest.

Joining me on this episode is Grant Bledsoe, owner of 3 Oaks Capital - a capital management firm that he founded in 2014.

Grant makes use of many practical devices to stay productive and manage his time well, including automations from tools like Zapier that let him connect his software tools in order to spend more time focused on what matters - his clients and their results.

But it’s not all tactics and tools - Grant has some good high-level insights that help him achieve his goals and can certainly help you too.

Time blocking, as Grant says, is simple in theory but can be difficult to implement - but the results are worth it and speak for themself.

With every guest to the podcast, I ask them what their current book they recommend is - here’s the pick for this episode:

Amy Donaldson, real estate trainer with a strong background in sales and business development, joined me to discuss productivity from the point of view of a real estate agent and showed how many of these “issues” can apply to the rest of us - both the problems and the solutions.

We touched on several areas, including finding and understanding your Most Important Task - but also knowing what that means to clients…

Additionally, we discussed the importance of keeping your pipeline full and what that means to entrepreneurs, real estate agents, and anyone working with clients.

Joining me on this podcast episode is Angela Kristen Taylor, an integrative productivity expert.

We went into several topics surrounding the main issues that we all face in terms of life, productivity, and managing everything that that entails.

Angie is no stranger to chaos and finding her way out - through her own experiences she has found the frameworks that work (pun intended!) and helped many others.

Joining me for this podcast episode is founder, or Papa Bear, of Bonjoro - Matt Barnett!

As usual, we covered a lot of ground in this discussion but it did center around remote teams with the ups and downs that come with a truly worldwide operation.

Matt and his team are located in Australia, London, the Philippines, the United States, and other locations - he’s learned both the good and bad that can come from this type of setup.

Even better, he shared with us exactly what issues they’ve faced and some of the ways they’ve overcome problems like personal conflict, hiring, and “all hands” meetings.

We not only talked teams and remote management, but also dove into automation, tools, and routines.

From this came a great quote by Matt that I’m going to be adopting!

“Automate Processes Not Relationships”

I think this encapsulates a lot in one short quote - and reinforces discussions we’ve had with other guests on the Real World Productivity podcast.

I won’t give away the whole interview, but we also touched on personal routines, exercise, and more…

Be sure to listen to this episode if you work remote, manage a remote team, or are considering doing either in the future!

Resources Mentioned:

Tiago Forte, author, speaker, teacher, and productivity expert, joined me for this episode of the Real World Productivity podcast to cover a wide range of topics where we covered everything from mindset shifts needed for increased productivity to the tools he uses on a daily basis (his “stack”).

If you’re serious about increasing your knowledge base, easing your access to valuable information now AND later, and wondering what it takes to make sure you can take baseline productivity higher and higher - this is the episode for you!

We had a great time covering these topics as well as his reasons for creating and implementing courses like Building A Second Brain and so much more.

Rob Gelb, co-founder of Kindaba, BriefingRoom, and more joined me for a great conversation about team building, remote work, and how effective communication is so important for everyone inside an organization - it’s not just a personal relationship skill...and what you can do to improve it in your business.

There’s a lot more than just communication in this episode - check it out!

Jonathan Cronstedt, or JCron, joined me for a look into his priorities, the importance of mentorship and learning, as well as a look at why an on-site team makes sense for him and Kajabi.

We covered a lot of ground in the 30 minutes of the podcast recording - if you’re interested in how JCron, or someone at his level, organizes himself and where he places his time and energy to get the most out of himself, his business, and his team, do yourself a favor and listen to this episode of the Real World Productivity podcast.

It’s no secret that I like to read (and learn). Books have been hugely important to me in nearly all areas of my life.

In the realm of productivity, time management, and team building, there are some amazing resources out there, but also a lot of information to get through.

I really enjoy finding out what books and other learning sources people that I listen to, talk to, and engage with are using to improve their lives, businesses, and to help others - and my goal here is to do the same.

Christopher Sutton of Musical-U brought up a topic that hasn’t been featured yet on the Real World Productivity podcast - mindset and mindfulness.

How much does your mindset and “internal” game matter to building a business and becoming more productive? Short answer...it’s a huge part of mastering these areas and growing.

It’s also an incredibly complex and deep topic, one that I will certainly be talking to Christopher about again in the future.

If you’re interested in hearing about the ways that mindset and mindfulness have come about and played an important role in Christopher’s life and helping him develop and grow a successful business - this episode is for you. 

There’s a lot to take away and consider for use in your own life - like many important areas, it’s an ongoing conversation with ourselves and the real world application.

Mentioned in the episode 

 Tom Morkes, the man behind dozens and dozens of big online launches, joined me for a great conversation about one of the key components of creating successful launches that don’t require tons of money - relationships.

That’s right, whether you’re already at 7 figures or just starting out, building relationships now that are meaningful and genuine pays off. Taking the time to help others but doing it in a systematic way is possible and will help you and your business.

If you aren't already doing this in your business, I highly encourage you to start. If you are doing it, check out this episode and see how you could take it up a notch!