n
5b4e728604a86453be5b26bd64b04fda.m4a
00:00:00,000 follow it through and suddenly like, you know, we’ve got them to do it importantly while we watched and then there are a few questions and mistakes and so on until we live made those changes and suddenly you’ve now got account managers who are doing the quotes.
00:00:13,600 Save the business owner 15 hours per week. He was previously spending three hours per day doing certain quotes 15 hours per week
instantly, spatially as weekend back, per week from handing over one process and by the
00:00:27,500 way it impresses conversion rate because now the account managers were responding to customers in an hour where previously had been taken to three days to do that. But we’ve saved 15 hours per week through one process and then of course you play that
00:00:41,200 game again. You just say okay, where else are you spending your time? 00:00:45,800 You’re in next.
Open over and over and over nine months you removed himself day to day from the business. Okay, go from 60 hours a week, stuck in the doing to zero hours stuck in the doing and he can choose where he spends his time and after it.
00:01:03,200 Hi and welcome to the Sunday Launcher Project Manager podcast.
This is your host, Nigel Greese. And today I have Alexis Kingsbury, the business process guy on the show.
00:01:34,880 Hi, how you doing? Some of the alert among you will have noticed that 00:01:43,440 we’ve had some pickups with the show in the last few weeks.
We’ve struggled with some of the audio that has come down. So I’m
trying to fix that and then this got to be struggled really badly with that and put bends to show at the other day just to fill the gap.
00:01:57,140 I moved on to another episode trying to do that and that one will find
00:02:05,000 that that one was also corrupted a bit. So I need to fix that as well.
So I’ve now got this one with Alexis for today and that’s all fixed and all
okay so hopefully you will enjoy that. Bit of news, what have I been doing?
00:02:16,640 Getting back into a bit of running from a personal health side of it. My
thigh problem I’ve had and I’ve been doing the physio and I’m back into running again now.
00:02:28,120 I’ve got a 10k race this weekend coming up actually which I’m really
looking forward to first longish run for some time. Although I did a five mile at the other day so health and fitness and stuff is all good
00:02:40,000 and great. We’ve been spending all weekend as you can probably hear 00:02:48,280 but a bit of birds tweeting at some point.
I’m still out in the garden hearing in the UK and I’m going to send me
sunny afternoon the morning with a little cool breeze but otherwise nice being a gorgeous weekend. So as Asprits always do we grab the opportunity to be out in the sunshine.
00:03:05,280 We don’t see it that often or it feels like. Yes that’s the podcast we’ve
been doing great. Guns with the interviews, we’ve got loads of people coming forward with fantastic guests
00:03:17,760 that have interviewed and got some more great ones in the other
coming as well. I will be taking a break during July. I think I’ve got these two that are going out and then another two and then I’ll probably
00:03:34,320 do some rerun type things and then come back for all guns blazing in
September. And yes I’ll be interesting. From a other stuff point of view not being doing much for the right.
00:03:49,200 I’ll be busy with some changes in it working a few other things going on. So I’ve kind of managed my mental capacity a little bit by dropping things that I don’t have as much time in as to get done.
00:04:07,040 It is important. I think I have got the point where with the strolls I had a
couple of years ago I’ve learnt when actually the little flags are going up and I need to go hang on step back.
00:04:19,960 What can we cut from? Let’s make sure we’re doing and keep the focus so I don’t get overloaded. It’s good actually that those in those situations appear.
00:04:30,040 I am spotting it quite early on which is great. But I do want to get back
00:04:38,360 to it and I think the second half of the year is going to be a little bit.
The fingers crossed a little bit more stable for me and therefore I’m
going to try and crack on with one of possibly three of my books. The novel I’ve always got chugging along in the background.
00:04:54,320 I kind of like to get that into its first draft by the end of the year. But I
also have two books, sort of project management based that I have that I’ve been threatened into writing.
00:05:09,760 One based on communication, improving communication within project management and trying to project and seeing what, being able to
identify and solve some of those difficulties when the projects feel a bit
weird and I’ve got to, yeah, it’s a bit unusual in the way that I’m planning
00:05:31,120 to do it. I’m just going to get myself together and do that one. The other
one is the Sunday lunch project which has always been something I’ve needed
00:05:39,280 to do and get done as a vehicle next door to our own past. It’s always 00:05:49,480 on my list. So I need to do that one as well.
It’s just a case of knuckle in down and getting on with it really and just making the head space and the time to do that. And yeah, that’s the main thing.
00:05:59,960 So I’ve got a couple of conversations going on where I’ve got a couple
of speaking opportunities that I will be doing maybe in the summer or early autumn and always available for anyone that’s if you want a
speaker to talk about project management or about productivity within
00:06:22,040 project management or just general productivity. I’d be delighted to chat
to people about those speaking opportunities whether they’d be virtual or face to face.
00:06:33,520 And I think that’s all I would say today and yeah, that’s it really.
Probably the conversation with Alexis is really as you know, productivity is someone keenly interested in improving the way we do things and removing waste from our roles.
00:06:51,880 And some of the suggestions that Alexis has got and the tool that he’s
company uses certainly adopting the mindset of what he’s talking about
is something that’s having talked to him. I’m thinking how do I adopt it?
00:07:07,240 How do I make it? How do I make it default for me to be ensuring as someone leading a project that I’m not down in the weeds doing the stuff that needs to be done?
00:07:18,000 But also that when we have got stuff to be done that everyone in the
team can do it in the most efficient and effective way rather than having to reinvent the wheel every time we come to do something especially for tasks that aren’t done regular.
00:07:31,440 But have a listen and yeah, shout out, let me know what you think. Thanks now, bye. Hi and welcome to the Sonny Launch Project Manager podcast.
00:07:45,880 I’m delighted today to welcome Alexis Kingbury to the show. Alexis is an award-winning entrepreneur with over 10 years of experience currently running two SaaS businesses, M-annual and Spider-Gab.
00:07:58,800 With a remote and global team and supports others as board members
or consultants including well-known companies like Sony PlayStation. In the last few years, Alexis has worked with hundreds of business leaders to help them
00:08:13,120 save thousands of hours of their time each year and unlock their business growth. He’s been sharing his findings and has had a huge impact on many businesses. For example, Alexis won the most valued content award in 2021 for his workshop at Dan Bradbury’s
00:08:30,000 Success Mastermind. The community of 60 plus small business owners which led to over 300 business owners adopting tools and processes recommended.
00:08:38,600 He’s a husband and a dad of two and is passionate about balancing his
work alongside his life and makes sure his team does it too. He also
enjoys craft beer which we were just discussing at Alcole Free beer just a minute
00:08:50,880 ago. Whiskey, skiing, skateboarding, dancing, gaming, golfing, touch 00:08:57,640 rugby and squash. Alexis, welcome to the show. 00:09:06,480
It’s great to be here. We’ll need to have you on. Finally after my terrible intro is done.
And to the year people can ever listen to them on the bloopers. You’re a
whole tech. Yeah, every time I do it, most of the time it’s not in the actual show bit.
00:09:17,120 It’s usually in the bits after when I’m doing the little pre-ambles and 00:09:26,160 post-ambles that get it wrong. But then, yeah, I’ve saved them. 00:09:36,040
00:09:45,080 Yeah, no, one in the show, no, so that’s fine. I’ll do my best to heckle at the end to increase the blooper then, yeah, it’s up to my career.
It’s been hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw you enjoying every second
of that. So Alexis, tell us more about you and a little bit of a thing there.
Where are you? What’s your background? How you’ve got into what you’re going to?
00:09:49,880 Yeah, so I suppose it’d be fair to describe me as a serial entrepreneur in
that I have started, run, built, until I get sold, multiple businesses over my career and with the which now goes over two decades of entrepreneurship.
00:10:06,640 I have had a background of, well, I started pretty early, right? I was
early teening, yeah, when I started my first businesses. But when I was
trying to grow them, I just couldn’t scale any of them beyond just me.
00:10:24,560 It was, I thought it’d be easy, honestly. Back then I was a bit of a geek
and I would study the works of Richard Branson and so on. I thought, okay, I can do this and I just couldn’t make it work.
00:10:38,840 Every time that things would go well, whether I was washing cars or
sweeping drives or selling newsletters or building websites or whatever,
anytime it would go well, I would end up too busy and then wouldn’t be able to grow in any further.
00:10:54,120 And so initially I thought that the problem, sorry, got along going on.
Initially I thought the problem would be that I’d got the wrong business model, that the very product or service that I was offering was not scalable and so I thought that what
00:11:14,600 I needed to do was change that and so I would come up with business
after business and I kept on starting another and another and another. All with the aim of trying to create a business that would scale.
00:11:24,520 And so when I still couldn’t do that, I went to university and student management science, learning how to build big businesses, started
other businesses whilst still studying at uni, selling headsets, building computers for local businesses, again, like, can scale
00:11:43,400 in any of these IT support I did for the students at the university. And so
I thought, I’m not, I’m just, I clearly not cut out for any of this. So I became management consultant working at of London, working with large organisations
00:11:58,800 like AstraZeneca and BP and Honda and so on. And it was there that I
really learned, like, how do they deliver at scale effectively? And I found the answer was essentially people and processes.
00:12:10,920 And I learned that if you have OK people and great processes, then
actually the business still does really well. And those are the frustrating ones that you see where you can like, you know, how do they
00:12:22,480 even exist? Like these businesses that don’t have really smart people in them and yet somehow they seem to operate at scale and become massive blue-chick companies and whatever.
00:12:33,360 But then I also saw examples where you had really great people and not so good processes and that can work as well, like some of the
organisations I’ve worked with were, you know, really impressed by the leadership and the people within it are smart people.
00:12:48,640 But you kind of think like, how are they able to get things done consistently without, you know, without things going wrong because they haven’t got processes? And what I found is that the answer is inconsistently is the first thing.
00:13:01,520 But through flair, imagination and sweat, you know, they would work
late, they’d do the evenings, the weekends and so on. And often, you
know, consultants is a bit like that is often every project is slightly
00:13:12,720 different and they make it very much used. But ultimately you’re just
applying creativity and, you know, effort and hours and so on often until you kind of work out the model and can deliver some value.
00:13:25,440 So that was really interesting to me and a bit of a wake-up course I
realised, oh, if I’m going to grow businesses that can scale without me,
then I need to be able to build teams and build processes around what the business does, you know, make it repeatable.
00:13:43,960 And so that was really then when I left the sort of more corporate life to go and start my first consulting business and then since then two
software businesses and a few others where I finally managed to make it all work.
00:13:59,840 But even then that wasn’t easy. But I got to a point where I was able to scale, grew my business to seven figures, now got a globally remote team with team members in nine countries across five continents and
00:14:17,960 we get to help people doing amazing stuff, right? Like it’s hilarious to me now that back then I couldn’t see any way to not be doing everything in the business and now my day to day is strategic.
00:14:32,200 It’s working on the business, not required day to day. I can spend six
weeks on holiday and all that kind of stuff but yeah, it took me a long time to work it out.
00:14:42,280 Yeah, it’s interesting that it’s a number of rabbit holes that have popped
up in this conversation for me and it’s kind of the, I was going to ask you the first one is obviously your focus is on about this business process and helping organisations put those processes in place.
00:15:04,360 And the question that I initially thought and I was, are you a bit like a
mechanic or a doctor where the apocryphal thing is that the mechanics
cars never working or the builders houses falling down and is it the same or do you better eating your own dog food as the phrase goes?
00:15:24,280 Yeah, I think really interesting question because I would say, I do feel a
bit like that. I am the sort of person that, well, I think to put it a different way, I think a lot of
00:15:37,920 people see me as being this very organised entrepreneur who’s very
into processes and structure and logic and so on. And whilst there’s a part of that that’s true in the sense that I do think, you know,
00:15:51,720 I like to think logically and over the years I have learnt that, yes,
structure actually gives you freedom. That isn’t where I was naturally, naturally was me setting up businesses and not being
00:16:06,480 able to scale them because I never put any structure in. I didn’t want it
in my business. I liked the fact that everything was always different and that I could just go and be creative
00:16:18,840 and build things. And so to some extent that’s true in terms of my
attitude to a lot of these things about putting in the structures that allowed me to grow the businesses in the way that we have
00:16:32,440 has been really a process of me addressing some of my biggest gaps. Delegation and managing people is something that has not been
natural to me and it’s something that I’ve had to develop the processes of how do I do it and how do I make it easy to
00:16:49,880 do it well rather than having to rely on a set of natural skills that I did not
possess. So I think certainly that’s true in that I didn’t come naturally to me. That said, I definitely have good structure and processes in my businesses because I know
00:17:09,680 that I couldn’t have grown the businesses to where I’ve got to without
them. Now the fact that I have it there interestingly doesn’t mean that I’m the custodian of all of it.
00:17:20,760 And people often assume that, oh well Alexis is this process geek and
that’s a part of that that’s true. But as a result they assume that I must have managed and updated and created all the
00:17:32,760 processes in my business which isn’t accurate. I’ve only done that
where I’ve had to do that to get things off my plate. My preference is
massively that my team document processes and I get to just describe
00:17:46,280 the result that I want or highlight the outcome I don’t want and ask them
to improve the process to address that. And I think that’s been a big lesson for me is as leaders if we were going to build successful
00:17:59,800 teams, you know, whether it’s building a business, building a project
team, whatever, you need to be willing to address those shortcomings,
those gaps rather than say, oh well, I don’t like X, you know, I don’t like numbers has already come one.
00:18:15,160 I don’t like to duck it the financials is like don’t decide, oh, so we won’t
have any like instead instead focus on the outcome that you want from
the numbers like what I want is that my project runs to budget or what I want is that we’re profitable at the end of
00:18:32,160 it. We can demonstrate a return investment that the client or whoever that can see and then get smart people who have those skills and preferences to then support you in achieving
00:18:44,520 those outcomes. So I think that’s so yeah, that’s what I say is kind of
partially true. Yeah, it’s interesting because it’s me and I kind of wanted there’s a self focusing thing
00:18:55,440 there is one other things I’ve got is obviously got the podcast a few
other little bits and bops and systemizing it just that this little my little
thing is there’s just me I quite to do some delegation to my girls see if I could convince them to do some of the stuff and
00:19:15,320 then we do a bit of the social stuff and then contribute pocket money
towards that. I haven’t managed to persuade them to do that yet, but it was then a case of moving out to systemize a term.
00:19:26,800 This is how I do it. We talked about the little snippets I do from headline 00:19:33,920 or the post I’ll be on LinkedIn or whatever or using TikTok.
I’m actually actually my litle and it’s really into doing a little cap cut
video of some kind of again, it’s do some stuff on there with that kind of thing maybe, but but being able to put those processes in place and then think about doing I have to do it for myself.
00:19:45,880 I’ve realised that one of the things in our conversation today I read out a
load of things before we kicked off around how we’re going to be doing
this and I use my brain to recant that most of the time and then I forget to say have you got a hard stop and things like
00:20:02,560 that. Those little things that if I and the way to systemize that process is 00:20:10,000 I have a piece of paper, isn’t it?
I have a piece of paper that I pull out that’s laminated every time I do a
podcast interview. I put it there and then when I’m talking to you before
and I remember to read off all those five things, but have I done that?
00:20:21,000 No, I haven’t. What’s my job is to be organised in the day job is to be
organised and help other people organise themselves and work through the processes of a project and it’s funny, quite
00:20:33,160 difficult to…you’ve got organisational process and then your individual
processes that we sometimes don’t try to improve and that is the topic
of my writing has been about. We invest a lot of time in making sure that everyone else is resource in the organisation
00:20:52,000 is managed effectively and forget about it around. Yeah and ultimately,
because I think the concept of where you spend your time is fascinating to me, right?
00:21:03,120 Not use specifically Nigel, although I do care. But how we are human
spend the time because it’s one of the few resources that we all have
the same amount and yet we all spend it differently based on our own values and so on and also
00:21:21,800 have our own views on what good usage is versus not and the extent to
which we can leverage it. And also, as you say, for many people, their jobs, if you’re in project management or business
00:21:40,120 management, whatever, they’re often people’s jobs involved supporting the better usage of time of others, whether it’s making them more
efficient or whatever, even if you’re a specialist if you’re a designer or a marketing agency and so on, to some extent, what you’re doing
00:21:56,920 is yes, you’re delivering amazing designs, but some extent you are an
asset that helps other people spend less time doing it, like in theory, the internal business marketing team might have a go and have a go and iterate and so on and hopefully eventually get to the outcome 00:22:14,240 or they can get you to spend a few hours and you can get to the
outcome faster. So I think it’s really interesting how we spend our time and how we invest. And we take the podcasting as an example because I think that for all of us, there is an opportunity
00:22:28,680 for us to look at how are we spending our time. How would we want to spend our time? What’s the greater impact that we can have on ourselves, on our families, friends, colleagues,
00:22:38,440 clients, wider world? And because if you can spend more time on things
that have a greater impact, then everyone wins and you’re happy here and they’re happy here and I’ve found that impact ripples
00:22:49,360 outwards. So it’s one of those things where I think it’s worthwhile 00:22:56,520 looking at how we spend our time and improving it.
And in fact, you mentioned something like podcasting, which often
hosts do do a lot of the doing and some of the editing and repurposing. And in fact, we were working with a podcast, Anna Moran, so her background was a radio DJ,
00:23:14,120 now runs a really successful podcast called Brit Australian, which gets
like over a thousand downloads per episode, which is a pretty big deal in, in a milestone for a lot of podcasts to get to.
00:23:28,680 And yet, we’re still doing all the work herself, including getting sponsorship deals and tongs, most of the way it should get a lot of
income through sponsorship and advertising. But she was finding that
she was limited in growing that part of what she does, despite the fact
00:23:45,960 that she’s clearly doing a really good job because she was spending all
of her time doing the editing and the repurposing and so on. And so she wanted to have a greater impact, help more people, increase her income.
00:23:59,400 She needed to let go of that. But in her case, she said, well, she’s a radio DJ. She knows what the good show looks like and knows how it should be edited to do it.
00:24:09,680 And she’d love to outsource that editing, but calculated it probably takes
someone two to three days, a podcast editor, two to three days to edit each episode, which she worked out as going to be easily into four figures of cost for her, her episode, to get this kind
00:24:28,800 of stuff done. And so she said, actually, I just can’t swing to that at this point. I’m going to have to wait, but it’s wait for what?
00:24:36,560 Because she’s not able to grow the advertising and split-check income based on that current scenario. So what we did was they said, well, where are you spending most of the time?
00:24:45,680 She said, it’s editing the episode. So we said, right, let’s document that process of how you’re documenting the episode currently as a as a checklist.
00:24:55,960 And we used our software, but our air manual. So we got this step by
step checklist done. And then we said, OK, already, we’ve got it to a point where this could now be handed over
00:25:07,560 to a VA. You know, virtual assistant could do this. You don’t need a
00:25:16,520 specialist podcasted, because you detail it out in enough detail that the
expertise required is significantly low, which means that now, rather than paying someone 200 plus pounds per hour, you can pay someone 20 pounds plus per hour to kind of do this job. So already-
00:25:29,440 – And it does just pocket money. There you go. Fuck away. 00:25:32,440
So already, like, you’ve reduced the cost of the time taken by 10X,
right? But then you can go further. So what we then said is actually where in this process, like currently it takes you two
00:25:44,480 to three days, why? Where is it that takes the time? We identified a few 00:25:52,360 steps, including one of the steps was in the edit for her. 00:26:02,040
It was very important to remove bits and reorder it, and particularly to
remove filler words, like, ums and hers. It’s a very crisp episode and-
– Okay. – But of course, doing that takes a very long time. So we said,
well, let’s do a quick Google for how can I remove ums and hers from my podcast
00:26:13,320 using AI and a tool like Descript comes up where literally with a couple 00:26:22,120 of clicks, you can remove all those filler words. And she then-
She actually put that into her process, like, okay, it’s at this stage,
upload it into Descript, then click, click, click, click, click, click, click, and suddenly you’ve got many hours of work.
00:26:32,880 Many hours, like six to eight hours of the editing is suddenly reduced to a couple of minutes. So once you include the uploading and downloading and whatever, yeah, because she’s using some AI to get that job done.
00:26:46,400 And so suddenly you’ve got something that’s now take- The overall task
where the few other changes was now taking half the time and because it was a tenth of the cost is now a 20th of the cost.
00:26:58,280 So previously, let’s say that it was going to be sort of, you know, two
thousand pounds of what she’d have to pay and now she’s doing it for a
hundred, right? And so suddenly it becomes this thing that’s like, oh, now I can do that.
00:27:14,640 Now I can afford to outsource the editing of her podcast, which means
that she can then spend time by promoting it or whatever. And so that’s
pretty amazing because I think often when we think about stuff like this and
00:27:27,240 even in your own case and edge of the initial temptation, I’ve been in
this situation so many times, the initial temptation is it’ll just be quicker
to do it myself or I can’t afford to outsource this yet or, you know, no one else can do it quite as good as me
00:27:42,480 or that needs to be me. Like the number of times I still catch myself
saying that, right? I’m in theory and expert in delegation and freeing up time and using processes to be
00:27:55,440 able to build a structure that means that you can extract yourself. And
yet I still catch myself with those self limiting thoughts. And that’s really
the challenge is spotting those and being able to say, no, there will
00:28:08,920 be a way in which I can make this efficient enough that I can pass it to
someone else. And as a result, increase the value of your time, work on more value, adding tasks and deliver more impact.
00:28:20,760 Yeah, it’s interesting because it’s the, the one that had a section on
delegation that I wrote about and a lot of it, to be fair, a lot of it I picked up from Manager Tools podcast and credit and podcast.
00:28:40,720 And I know that they took a lot from Peter Drucker and people like that.
I mean, it’s kind of, yeah, so it’s kind of like a lot of these things, and
quite often, and a whole point is you’re saying there about the, the, why are you doing it?
00:28:56,160 It’s so hard to ask because I’ve said it to you members of mine about
the fact that look, the thing that I get is that leverage is that the point
that you as a leader of people have the ability to spend an hour that would influence 50 people and improve their job, save
00:29:21,600 time, do a business case to get a new tool in for them to be Jews that would save them 15 minutes every week. Or you can spend an hour like I would be, I’ve used a different word, messing around with
00:29:34,720 spreadsheet because I like messing around with spreadsheets because 00:29:42,320 I’m, it’s a nice place for me to be. It’s warm and fuzzy.
And it feels really like I’m achieving something. But, and that, and it’s
hard to do that. I think one of the things I found with that is firstly, looking at yourself and going, really,
00:29:53,440 have I got the time to talk to that person and it depended, sometimes
you have, sometimes you haven’t. It’s, it’s, it’s a repeatable, yes, if it’s one-half, maybe not.
00:30:03,240 But sometimes you need someone else, doesn’t it, to actually point it
out to you? And I’m not sure that we’re all that, we’re not all that brilliant
at me. But at being open or even challenging to say, for me to say to my manager, in some case,
00:30:21,040 I’ve said, why are you doing that? I’ve kind of said that, which is quite a
difficult conversation to have, but it’s kind of why are you doing that? 00:30:27,880
Why don’t you give it to one of your direct reports to do? You don’t need 00:30:33,520 to be doing that. Do you?
00:30:36,520
Yeah. And, and to my team, it’s easier. It’s right. Why are you doing that? Why don’t you get them to do it? And then
sometimes looking at my, but it’s, I think it’s that you’ve got your priorities.
00:30:45,120 Yeah. Sometimes assessing every time, and I’ve got some guests that have had in the show, and I’ve been on their show from code break marketing, Andy Rowan, Joel Stunt, fantastic guys, local
00:30:57,760 to me, going from, from marketing into business consulting and all
manner of things at a moment. And, and they’ve kind of, they talk about the 10,000 tasks, the 20,000, 20,000, 20,000, 20,000, 20,000, 20,000, and about the fact that, and the, that whole point of
00:31:17,200 why am I doing really looking at every task that you’re doing every, as you say, how we analyse our time and deciding whether it should be
you, whether you’d like it to be you. And then Joel gives the example, he likes to wash his car.
00:31:35,000 Yeah. And Andy doesn’t like to wash his car and pay someone to wash
his car. And that, that’s just two different scenarios, but then on other things, they’ll, one of them
00:31:44,960 will pay someone else to do something, right? Now, that’s taken into the
personal zone, but the set, it’s the same mindset in there, in those, if
you get pleasure in if it’s mindfulness and something out of that, that you get from doing
00:31:55,320 something in the job and actually allows your brain in some ways to just
disconnect from what’s going on, do some sort of standard processing
type thing that then allows that, they’ve kind of meditative in the ways, isn’t it?
00:32:11,400 Yeah, it is. So, there’s a few things there. Is that so? 00:32:15,280
So I’d say, one of the points that I thought you made brilliantly is that
often it’s easier to see in other people’s time where they should be
delegating and, and letting go of task. And that is absolutely true and it’s why often it’s easier for me and for my team when we’re
00:32:34,840 talking to people about, okay, how can we free up your time? How can we system our parts of business? It’s easier for us to see it and therefore ask the challenging questions that lead to
00:32:42,800 the breakthrough, right? And I’ll share an example in a bit around, an
example we did that was visited, but like the point of why is it difficult for us to do it on ourselves, I think is, is complex
00:33:03,120 in your answer, but I’d say one of the big pieces is that because if you try and delegate or to make whatever everything that you’re doing,
that’s overwhelming and being not desirable. And so I think that’s often the problem is that, well, and also we might even wonder,
00:33:19,760 what am I going to spend my time doing instead? Like if we applied that lens to everything that we’re doing, for example, you know, me
attending a podcast or a few weeks ago speaking at an event with 500 people, does that need to be me or maybe that doesn’t need to be me
00:33:33,600 and I can get someone else, I could hire a presenter, like I could hire a
professional speaker and go to the events. But then it’s like, what’s a better activity is exactly as you say with the 10,000, 100,000
00:33:45,840 on task activity is where you essentially say what’s the relative value
and relative impact of the activities that I’m doing. And that’s a better
activity and often what I will start with clients who just need to for at their time and don’t even know what start is to say,
00:34:01,360 well, list out like where are you spending your time and now group
those into low medium high value activities. And to your point around
something like washing a car, that can have value. It’s not necessarily financial value. It’s why often I don’t use 100,000, 100,000
00:34:18,040 and I use low medium high because it’s not all about the money. Like as
you say, washing the car can have value. But on the flip side, if we say
that it takes the guy two hours to wash his car and he does enjoy it, but he would prefer to spend that two hours in the golf
00:34:34,080 course or that two hours doing gardening or that two hours with family
members rationalising it as, oh, but I quite like washing the car isn’t
great because it’s like, yes, but there’s lots of things you quite like doing, whereas if we could throw it up your time for that. And
00:34:48,920 I think that goes to the same for work activity. I think we’ve got to be
careful about saying, oh, but I quite like kicking around with this bread
sheet. In fact, yeah, me too, I quite like the sentiment achievement on that, but also I really like talking on podcasts and
00:35:02,240 I really like coming up with new presentations or geeking out with
people on what they’re doing in their business that’s working right now.
It’s like, I definitely prefer to spend my time there. And so I think that’s the activity we really have to do is a relative exercise.
00:35:17,040 And the great thing is you can repeat this, you know, you can repeat it every week, but certainly repeating it every few months is a useful
activity to literally write down where are you spending your time right
now and check you’re happy with that mix because if there’s low, there are
00:35:31,800 likely to be low value and low impact activities that aren’t even like
things that you particularly enjoy that could be automated, simplified,
not done or delegated to other people. And that’s a shame when there’s so much more great stuff that we could be doing.
00:35:49,320 Yeah, I can. It’s, it, it draws me down to kind of, it made me think there
and the, okay, a couple of years now, well, just around this sort of
period actually a couple of years ago, I kind of went off sick with stress because of burnout. And since I’ve come back, since I’ve
00:36:10,640 been well, it was, I was off for five months, it was quite, it was quite,
quite a scary time. I’ve talked about on the show before and the thing
that I’ve done better since is that I’ve been looking at things like this. There’s a couple of things I want to do at the moment
00:36:28,120 for example, and there’s some stuff going on at work and there’s some
stuff going on at home and it’s kind of like, I want to do that now, but I’m
not going to do it yet because I need the mental energy to do that. And I know that the things going on, other things
00:36:45,960 going on until a certain point, I’m not going to have that mental energy
or, or I may have the energy initially, but then there’s a chance that it
will build up on it. So I’m kind of doing to say no to things. And some of those things will be about looking at automating,
00:37:04,880 looking at using, like I’ve got a load of, that one of my great ideas, one
of my many wonderful ideas was to transcribe all of the podcasts that I’ve done for the year, put them out in an ebook, and do them one a year. I started doing that using Otr AI a while back and
00:37:26,440 then the output that I got from that was, that needs loads of editing now,
oh crap. And then it, but as you know, as I was saying before, it’s all
this AI and all these different things have moved on. Yeah. That was 2019. I was looking at doing that. So the place we are
00:37:43,720 now compared to my 2019 trans transcription, I think I use the Amazon
as well as leaps and bounds, isn’t it? So I need to look at that again, but
it’s going to take some time to play around with a look at how I put together a view of how to do it, pull it all in, create
00:38:00,440 that through. So I think sometimes with just for a personal point of view
is those, there is a danger that if we don’t do that regular, am I spending
my time doing the things that are of value to what I want at the moment, whether that, but I just have an Ike, I’m lucky
00:38:17,720 because I had an Ike guy thing up there. And whilst I think it’s quite a
lofty thing to get into that middle bit with all four of them, it’s still
assessing yourself in that kind of, where does it fit with you, each of those tasks in that kind of quadrant? Is it the
00:38:33,760 one that’s in the middle? Is it one of the ones that actually, I don’t care
about? And doing that self reflection can help with mental health and
help with burnout because then you sit there and go, actually, I do not like doing that. And if it can, I automate it. I
00:38:51,200 don’t like reading that whole chapter in my, in my book is about outlook
rules and using that I mentioned it too early. And for years and it gets manager tools, I’ve automated how I deal with emails because the quality of the, the quality of data available to us to
00:39:13,480 make a decision about an email is crap at best and misleading at worst because what you look at, there’s nothing there that is a quality information to make decisions on. Now obviously outlooks, tools and
the AI tools in there popping up and you might want to read this before
00:39:29,480 this meeting. Oh, by the way, this, and it gets some great stuff in there.
But the first thing that I, I’m into many, about 15 years ago was to move
all of my copied emails into a separate folder called copied and not read them. And for years, I’ve had probably five instances
00:39:47,560 where I’ve got, oh, I could have done with reading that. And that generally would have been where there was someone who I didn’t put
on my exclusion list who was more important or more regular, whatever that I needed to keep going. But that’s automation. That’s
00:40:01,280 process, isn’t it? That’s putting something in as an individual to do some
of that prioritization and do some of that task handling. And I don’t know
how many people use it, but every time I talk to someone about using it, they go, oh, I didn’t know who could do that. I never thought
00:40:18,240 about using it that way. I don’t, meetings, for example, is another one. If
I get a meeting, that goes in a separate folder for meetings because I
don’t need to need to deal with it now, I can look at the end of the day, check the meetings, accept all the meetings. So it gets
00:40:31,840 rid of the week from the chaff. Yeah. And I think we can take that further
even to say, well, actually, how do we stop that email even getting to you? So, for example, for me, there was a time when I did all the
finance stuff in my business, right? I would do all the bookkeeping,
00:40:53,080 the paying of invoices and the reconcilations and everything. And then I
thought, well, actually, I would like to delegate this at some point. So even before I hired someone, one thing I did was I set up an email inbox as if I have a finance department, right? You know,
00:41:11,000 I finance that or whatever. And then set it up so that when an invoice
needs paying or whatever, it has to go to that inbox. Now initially that
then got forwarded to me, but at least it then got filtered and flagged and then the folder and whatever, fine. But of course,
00:41:25,360 the brilliant thing is that as soon as I then delegated that, I then don’t have that coming into my inbox. And the same goes for if someone wants to book me to speak in a vent or, you know, for a podcast or something, they can email marketing@manyo.co and go a range all of
00:41:42,040 that and that’s all managed there. And I’ve got lots of those sorts of
examples so that I’m not having to manage that in my in my inbox. And
I think that exactly as you say, those are all examples of processes and automation that ultimately allows you to free yourself
00:41:59,120 up from activities that either aren’t progressing and helping you achieve
your goals or are things that you don’t enjoy and achieve your other life
goals. And I think that’s really what all this this kind of comes down to. And yet so many people that we start working
00:42:17,000 with are stuck. Like they are working like I was a business leader, I
mentioned earlier, like a business leader of the printing business where
he was spending 60 hours a week working, which is not frankly, sadly, is not that uncommon for people. A lot people work crazy hours.
00:42:36,080 Especially busy. And then without you know, spending time with
Amiensone, you talk about burnout. Like this is what causes burnout, right? I was talking to another client who wants to, you know, was
starting to work with those. And one thing that she shared was that she
00:42:51,600 had been made ill essentially by stress and burnout. And so as a result, wasn’t able to work as many hours as, you know, she could anymore.
And so really needed help like freeing up her time because she can’t work that many hours. And so I said, oh, just like out of
00:43:06,720 interest, because we’ve all got different amounts. Like what’s what’s not
many hours for you? Like what can you work? Just like about 10 a day. Right. Wait, 10 a day is what you now can work, can only work while because you’re sick and your health is declining. And I’m thinking,
00:43:25,360 like I’m working never in a half hour day, right? And feeling healthy and you wonder why? And so I think a lot of people get stuck in that
situation. But that business owner who is working 60 hour weeks, this printing business, he couldn’t see even how to get out of that,
00:43:43,080 right? He couldn’t see how to start changing that. And so we played the same game that I talked about for where are you currently spending your time? We mapped out a load of areas. One of them was sending quotes to customers, so responding to customers requesting print
00:43:58,240 quotes. And so we said, well, you know, why is it like he said, look, I
like this. I know, I know I should delegate that. I know that I should
delegate, but I just haven’t found time. And I figure it’d take me like eight hours, probably just to document it. And I’ve got
00:44:10,280 training teams and all this sort of stuff. And I think often that’s where we
end up, right? We think, oh, yeah, I’d love to free up my time, but I
haven’t got time to do that, which of course is the wrong way to think about it anyway. But I said, well, we’ve got 45 minutes left
00:44:23,560 of this call. Let’s see what we can do. And we documented the entire
process for sending quotes at a high level, and then added in like the
tricky bits and the screenshots and so on. And we did that in less than 30 minutes. And then we arranged a call with this account
00:44:38,120 managers and got it handed over to them. And they used the interactive
checklist and follow it through. And suddenly, like, you know, we got
them to do it, importantly, while we watched. And then there were a few questions and mistakes and so on. So we live made those changes.
00:44:52,680 And suddenly, you’ve now got account managers who are doing the
quotes, save the business zone a 15 hours per week. It was previously spent three hours per day doing certain orders, 15 hours per week instantly, spatially as weekend back per week from handing over
00:45:07,040 one process. And by the way, it increases conversion rate because now the account managers were responding to customers in an hour, where
previously had been taken to three days to do that. But we’ve saved 15 hours per week through one process. And then of course, you play
00:45:22,680 that game again. You just say, okay, where else are you spending your
time? And you will pick that open over and over and over nine months,
he removed himself day to day from the business. Right. Going from 60
hours a week, stuck in the doing to zero hours stuck in the doing. And
00:45:40,000 he can choose where he spends his time and how to do it. And that’s
from a guy who, when, you know, we first started talking, he couldn’t even see where to start. And we know we were making bad decisions on how to invest in time and thought it would take eight hours documents.
00:45:53,360 So it’s mind blowing when you change this because this stuff’s life changing. This is the difference between burning out, losing your
business, losing your job, losing like your partner, going down divorced,
having poor broken relationships with your kids or losing your health,
00:46:13,160 like because you’re not able to look after yourself, like arguably the
most important things, like almost the meaning of life is at stake when
we are looking after how we’re spending our time. And it’s terrifying to me when I see some examples, but absolutely inspiring
00:46:33,440 to me in terms of what we get to do and help people to do when we
have that kind of impact, because I’ll say it’s incredible what even little
changes can, can make to people’s lives. So yeah, it is hard and it is hard to see it in yourself and in your own activity, but it
00:46:53,200 is an absolutely crucial thing to do, particularly if you’re hurting right
now. If you’re listening to this and feeling like, yeah, I feel crazy busy.
Like I’m currently listening to this whilst multitasking on something else I don’t want to do and whatever. And thinking, yeah,
00:47:07,520 I’d love to not be working crazy hours and feeling rubbish and not
maintain those relationships. But there is a way out, don’t think there
isn’t like that, you can absolutely get to a point where you’re doing the stuff that you love and spending time on what matters most.
00:47:23,800 Well, I hope you enjoyed that first part of that conversation I had with
Alexis. And come back next week and hear a little bit more about how
you can improve yours or your team’s productivity. Speak soon and look up, self. Bye.
00:47:41,680 So this is my final wrap up every week you’re going to hear this, you’re
going to get bored of it, but you can always click next podcast if so. If
you have enjoyed it, if you listen to this podcast at the end of this show and you think that was great, I’d love to be
00:48:10,120 able to help nide out. There are loads of ways you can do it. The first
and obvious way is to share the podcast, send it out to people. If you
know colleagues or friends who’ve benefit from it, think they’d enjoy it, just send them the link, grab one of the links,
00:48:29,160 or send them to www.NigelCriser.com/podcasts. That’s
www.NigelCriser.com/podcasts. And that will push them over to a link
tree link and it’s got all of the different ways they can consume the
podcast. If you are feeling generous and have a big bag of cash, you could grab a copy
00:48:54,360 of one of my books, obviously they’re available in all the usual places and print and digital. Again, jump on the website www.NigelCriser.com/shop and that will give you a list of all the
different ways that you can contribute and grab copies of the book. Also got links to all my guests,
00:49:17,760 books on there as well where I get a little bit of a kick back from them. If
you are of a sporting mind, I have a number through doing some of my
judo and running antics. I’ve managed to secure a few affiliate links and affiliates there as well. So in there, somewhere
00:49:40,400 in the sponsors page, there’s links to those as well. So clicking on to
those and grabbing your, if you’re looking to get super fit, then that
would be fabulous as well. I get a little kick back from those. I have a Patreon account, it’s patreon.com/sundaylunchpm. So again, you
00:50:02,480 can ping something in there by me, a coffee or whatever. And finally,
obviously the most important is coming back. Coming back, listen again because the more of you that come back, the more visibility I get because there’s more times that you’re downloading and all the SEO works
00:50:21,320 and things like that. So yeah, that’s it. So if you can help me out, I
would be much appreciated. If you can, don’t worry about it. Thank you very much. Cheers, no? Bye. Well, it’s goodbye from me, Nigel Creaser, and it’s goodbye from him, the Sunday lunch
00:50:46,920 PM. Goodbye. Introduction. Hi and welcome to Project Manager
Productivity Hacks. Why write another book on Productivity Hacks? Are there not enough of them already? The trigger was my interview with Sarah M. Hobern for my podcast The Sunday Lunch Project Manager podcast.
00:51:05,800 Plug, plug. Find out more at www.nigelcriser.com/sera-m- Hobern. We
talked about improving productivity for project managers, and during the
conversation I recalled that a while ago I started a blog post in which I
planned to share some ideas that I have used in my career to improve my productivity
00:51:26,880 and get out of the office that little bit earlier. Over the years I have
shared these with others, and almost every time I received a positive
and enthusiastic response. Having rekindled the idea, I sat down and noted 11 hacks, tips, shortcuts, whatever you want to
00:51:42,720 call them that I have used over the years. Why 11? Well, it’s one more
than 10. This book goes up to 11, one for the spinal tap fans. I see
productivity as remarkably similar to an exercise program, we all start off with good intentions, and some of the changes
00:52:00,560 work great for us and others don’t. Some changes stick and become
part of our daily life, whereas others are just a real chore. Even the ones we found that work well for us and are straightforward to implement can, under certain circumstances, end up being dropped
00:52:15,120 by us. Sometimes this happens consciously and sometimes little by
little over time. Whether building healthier habits or improving our
productivity, it’s not just a case of making the changes, and we are
done. It takes repeated work. If you find them hard to implement, then
00:52:32,960 they may not be for you in your current situation. If you start using them and end up letting them drift, then start again. Improving our
productivity is something many of us strive to achieve, aiming for some kind of efficiency, novana. Let me tell you, it ain’t gonna happen.
00:52:50,000 Perfection is a myth. Give yourself a break. It’s a bit like yoga, you can’t
win at yoga, no matter how bendy you get, you can always be bendier,
that’s the same with personal productivity, you can’t win at productivity, you can always be productivity. Ed, is that
00:53:06,600 a word? I have not always been able to apply these hacks successfully,
but that is not a reflection of the hacks themselves. It is more about my ability to stick with them even though I know they work.
00:53:19,140 One last point, as with your fitness regime trying to make loads of
changes at once can spell disaster. I recommend that once you have a read of these hacks, choose one that excites you, maybe not excites
but seems to resonate, and have a go at it. Once it is second nature
00:53:34,460 to you, move on to the next one that spoke to you. If you find that the
first one was not for you then bin it. Choose another and try that one out then rinse and repeat. So on with the hacks.
00:53:45,620 [Music]