Your Communication Protocol Can Make or Break Your Team’s Productivity - With Theresa M. Ward

In this engaging episode, Brian Nelson-Palmer interviews Theresa Ward, founder of Fiery Feather, who reveals how communication protocols can transform team productivity and effectiveness.

As a team effectiveness coach with experience across multiple industries, Theresa shares how structured systems combined with emotional intelligence create thriving workplaces.

The conversation explores practical steps for crafting and implementing a communication protocol, making this episode a must-listen for anyone looking to streamline communication and boost team efficiency.

For more information, or a template to copy, visit the blog post on this topic!

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The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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References In This Episode

• Fiery Feather Website – fieryfeather.com (Theresa Ward’s consultancy on team effectiveness)

• Theresa Ward’s LinkedIn Profile – LinkedIn Profile

• Calendly (For scheduling without back-and-forth emails)

• Books and Concepts Referenced:

  • The One-Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson (on leadership and productivity)

  • The Waterline Concept, from the book 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer (on decision-making in organizations)

  • Patrick Lencioni’s Work (on leadership and team communication)

  • Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross And The Five Stages of Grief®

  • David Allen's work (Getting Things Done methodology)

• Related Podcast Episode:

  • Breaking Your Team’s Success Barrier with Maura Thomas

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Episode Digest

How Communication Protocols Can Transform Your Team’s Productivity

In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven workplace, clear and effective communication is essential for productivity. Yet, many teams struggle with delays, misunderstandings, and unnecessary interruptions that hinder efficiency. A communication protocol—or situational communication guide—can help by establishing agreed-upon rules for when and how different types of communication should occur.

This structured approach doesn’t just streamline workflows; it also fosters better collaboration, reduces frustration, and minimizes wasted time. Whether your team operates remotely, in an office, or across multiple locations, having a shared set of communication agreements can eliminate guesswork and ensure everyone is aligned.

Why Communication Protocols Matter

Without clear communication guidelines, team members often experience confusion and inefficiency. Common workplace complaints such as, “I never got a response,” “I didn’t know this was urgent,” or “This meeting could have been an email” arise when there’s no structured way to handle different types of communication.

A communication protocol sets expectations for how team members should initiate, respond to, and escalate communication. It outlines which tools to use for different types of messages and clarifies how to handle urgent matters versus routine updates.

“A communication protocol is a shared set of agreements that guides how you initiate, respond to, and escalate communication—both through conversation and technology.”

With the rise of remote work and digital tools, workplace communication has become more fragmented. Some employees rely on Slack, while others prefer email or video calls. Without a clear agreement, messages can get lost, misinterpreted, or ignored.

A well-crafted communication protocol solves these issues by providing clear guidelines for when to use specific channels, how quickly to respond, and what qualifies as an emergency.

The Power of Communication Protocols in the Workplace

1. Establish a Clear Communication Protocol for Your Team

To ensure smooth collaboration, create a simple document that outlines how communication should flow within your team.

How to create a communication protocol:

• List all communication channels available to your team. Examples: Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, phone calls, in-person meetings, video meetings.

• Define the purpose of each channel. When should Slack be used instead of email? When is a phone call appropriate?

• Set response time expectations. For instance, Slack messages should be responded to within two hours, while emails can be answered within 24 hours.

• Determine escalation pathways. If someone doesn’t respond in the expected timeframe, what’s the next step?

This doesn’t need to be a complex policy—a simple shared Google Doc or internal wiki page is sufficient. The goal is to provide clarity and consistency in how messages are sent and received.

“If you don’t have a communication protocol for your team, you can create one—regardless of your position. Clear guidelines reduce frustration and improve efficiency.”

2. Balance Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication

One of the biggest challenges in team communication is knowing when real-time interaction is necessary versus when an asynchronous approach (where people respond on their own time) is more efficient.

Key Differences

• Synchronous communication (real-time): Phone calls, video meetings, in-person conversations. Best for urgent matters, brainstorming, and sensitive discussions that require emotional context.

• Asynchronous communication (delayed response): Email, Slack messages, recorded video updates. Best for updates that don’t require immediate action, documentation, or when working across different time zones.

A communication protocol should clarify which method to use in different situations. For example:

• Use Slack or Teams for quick check-ins and non-urgent questions.

• Use email for formal documentation or when a longer response is required.

• Use a meeting only when collaboration or discussion is necessary—otherwise, an email or Slack message may be more efficient.

• Use phone calls or video meetings when clarity, tone, or urgency is important.

“Asynchronous communication can boost efficiency, but there are times when a quick phone call can save hours of back-and-forth emails.”

3. Define What Constitutes an Urgent Matter

Many workplace frustrations stem from misunderstandings about urgency. What’s critical to one person might not be urgent to another.

To avoid miscommunication, your team’s protocol should define:

• What qualifies as an emergency. Example: “An urgent issue is anything that directly impacts client deliverables, system outages, or high-priority deadlines.”

• How to escalate an issue. Example: “If a Slack message goes unanswered in two hours, escalate to a phone call.”

• What NOT to interrupt people for. Example: “General questions that aren’t time-sensitive should be posted in a Slack thread, not sent as a direct message.”

By clearly defining these rules, teams prevent unnecessary stress and interruptions while ensuring urgent issues get addressed promptly.

“Instead of labeling something as ‘emergency vs. non-emergency,’ think of it as levels of escalation. Your team should know when and how to escalate communication without overusing urgent channels.”

4. Normalize Communication Protocols Beyond Your Team

A communication protocol isn’t just for internal teams—it can also apply to clients, external partners, and other departments.

For example, if you work with clients, you can create a mini communication guide that includes:

• Best ways to contact your team (e.g., “Email for non-urgent matters, phone for immediate issues”).

• Expected response times (e.g., “Replies within 24 hours on weekdays”).

• Escalation process for high-priority issues.

This ensures everyone involved knows what to expect, reducing frustration and improving overall efficiency.

5. Encourage Adoption and Accountability

A communication protocol is only effective if people actually follow it. To encourage adoption:

• Lead by example. Managers and team leaders should model the correct behavior.

• Make it easily accessible. Store the protocol in a shared drive or internal system where everyone can find it.

• Regularly review and refine. As teams grow and technology changes, revisit and update the protocol periodically.

• Offer feedback and course corrections. If someone repeatedly ignores the protocol, have a private conversation to reinforce expectations.

“A good leader is a ‘chief reminding officer’—repeating communication expectations until they become second nature for the team.”

Communication protocols are a simple yet powerful way to improve team efficiency, reduce miscommunication, and create a smoother workflow. By establishing clear guidelines, balancing synchronous and asynchronous communication, defining urgency, and ensuring accountability, teams can significantly enhance their productivity.

If your workplace struggles with slow response times, unnecessary meetings, or miscommunications, consider implementing a communication protocol—it may be the missing piece to a more effective and productive team.

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Chapters

03:45 Understanding Communication Protocols

07:45 The Importance of Communication Protocols

11:45 Asynchronous vs Synchronous Communication

15:51 Establishing Personal Communication Protocols

19:27 Emergency Communication Protocols

25:38 Empowering Communication in Crisis

26:25 Understanding the Waterline Concept

28:41 Communication Protocols with External Partners

29:28 Organizing Communication Protocols

30:14 Managing Non-Compliance with Protocols

32:57 The Importance of Praise and Criticism

36:32 Personal Communication Pet Peeves

40:51 The Purpose Behind Communication Protocols

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Today’s Guest

Theresa m. WarD

Team Effectiveness Coach & Founder of Fiery Feather

Theresa M. Ward is a team effectiveness coach and the founder of Fiery Feather, a consultancy dedicated to helping teams build strong systems and improve interpersonal intelligence. With over a decade of experience in the financial technology industry, she has worked in roles spanning sales, product innovation, and strategic training—gaining a deep understanding of what makes teams thrive.

Since launching Fiery Feather in 2017, Theresa has been known as her clients' Chief Momentum Officer, facilitating workshops and driving initiatives that create lasting organizational change. Her expertise extends across industries, including utilities, non-profit, media, hospitality, and healthcare, allowing her to bring a broad, human-centered perspective to team development.

Beyond her work, Theresa is a certified yoga instructor, avid book lover, and dedicated fur-mom. She finds balance outside of work through fly fishing in the North Georgia Mountains with her fiancé.

Connect with her at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresa-m-ward/
Website: fieryfeather.com

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. After spending a career hands-on in the trenches as a leader at all levels, I now train Productivity Gladiators to level up their careers. Graduates wield superpowers in time management, practical leadership, communication, & productivity. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat!

“Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.”

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Transcript

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:06)

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer on this show. I share personal practical productivity skills. And in this episode, we're talking about tips for your communication protocol, which can make or break you and your team's productivity. And with me on the show today is Theresa Ward, who's a team effectiveness coach and the founder

of fiery feathers. So, I'm going let you introduce yourself. Thanks so much for joining me on the show and talk about your connection with communication protocols.

Theresa M. Ward (00:35)

Love it. Thanks, Brian, for having me. I love right off the top all of your alliteration there, all of the great P words that have to do with productivity. And obviously you can tell I'm a fan of like memorable alliterative things as well. Like the sound, you're a fiery feather. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:46)

Fiery feather.

Exactly. Love it.

Theresa M. Ward (00:50)

Feather is a team

effectiveness consultancy. And what I think about the two pillars of team effectiveness, it's structured systems, you standard operating procedures, all of those really functional systems that help us be efficient and clear. But it's also that secondary pillar of the soft skills, interpersonal, emotional intelligence, how we interact with one another. So oftentimes I'll get called in by clients to help build a new

onboarding process or to help document some new project management checklist. And really what's happening is people aren't seeing each other. They're not asking questions. They're not developing empathy. And so the communication protocol,

or I kind of like to refer to it as a situational communication guide so it can soften it a little bit because it really should be more of a guide than like a policy. That is something that can help with both of those pillars. So I'm excited to talk more about it today.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:48)

fair and right.

Yes.

Makes perfect sense. So what what would you say makes you different from all those other people in the space?

Theresa M. Ward (02:01)

gosh, I love this space. I'm glad that the space is so big. I started my career in FinTech and within that singular industry, I did sales and I did product and I did innovation and I played a lot of different roles, but I always ended up doing the training in each of them. So really I am a passionate student about

experiential education, human psychology, adult learning theory. So I took those training and facilitation skills that I learned in one industry and picked them up and kind of said, can I apply these in a bunch of other spaces? And that's where I think I've been able to add value

And humans are humans everywhere. So I love being able to kind of translate these case studies and skills that I've learned in these different industries to, you know, just kind of the human population, because we all want the same things that work. We all get slowed down or bogged down by the same things that work. Whether you use Slack or you use Microsoft Teams, we all just want to be able to get in touch with each other, get a response and get on with our day, right?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:48)

Yeah.

Yes. And you know, oftentimes some industries use the tools different and or better than other industries. So if you stay in your silo, you might not get some of that good stuff that you kind of bring from all the different industries, which is cool.

Theresa M. Ward (03:18)

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's true. I do think that there are industry norms that don't really get spoken out loud. And if you go from one health care to another health care to another health care, it's just kind of assumed that, yes, this is how everybody does it. But you throw in, you know, a media startup from Silicon Valley into a big hospital system in the Northeast and you're going to get some really fun disruption.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:46)

Absolutely. Well, let's talk about communication protocols then. And I like that you soften the language, but for the purposes of the episode today, let's say communication protocol, because ultimately these are the guide rails. It is the protocol that you're having people follow. And it's certainly a guide and somebody's not going to be fired if they don't follow the protocol. But at the same time, you do need that structure.

And so right off the bat, Theresa, just for those people who might not have heard this term, what is a communication protocol and why is it important for your productivity?

Theresa M. Ward (04:21)

The thing to know about a communication protocol, an effective, realistic communication protocol, is that it is a shared document.

A communication protocol is a set of agreements that is somewhat democratically determined, that guides how you initiate communication, how you respond to communication, and how you escalate communication using both your human voice or fingers and how you also use the technology platforms or the tech stack.

that's available to you and your organization.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:55)

So communication protocol, you have this agreement. What does that look like in practicality?

Theresa M. Ward (05:01)

It's really simple. honestly think it's a Word doc, Google doc, you know, maybe a basic spreadsheet, but don't get too many, too many columns going. Really, it's just kind of a table that in the first column, you have the technology platform. So for example, that might be Slack, that might be Microsoft Teams, that might be as specific as meetings in person, meetings on the phone.

meetings on video. So you've outlined all of the different communication channels that you have available to you. Email, of course, you all of those different things. And then in the second column, you've got the specifics of when and how to best use that specific communication platform. So I think if you end up with a Word doc that's got kind of a two column table, you've got maybe a few things at the top.

that outline, hey, here's how this was developed, here's who it's for, here's how to reference it or best use it. For example, it might be in situations like when a new employee gets onboarded, obviously, but it may also be impactful when you're starting a new project and you're gathering together a bunch of different folks from different departments who have not regularly communicated before. And then at the bottom of the table after you've kind of outlined everything,

There's always going to be disclaimers, exceptions to the rule. So yes, I agree. Let's call it a protocol, but know that there's always going to be these outliers. So good to acknowledge those instead of pretending they don't exist, I

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:36)

Yeah. And why is this important? What difference does this make?

Theresa M. Ward (06:41)

Well, I will say that the times when I have seen this be most impactful is the times when you hear a team starting to make a lot of excuses and the excuses seem to be based on responsiveness or there's like a sense of blame about, well, I couldn't deliver that on time because I couldn't get a hold of Tommy or

I just went ahead and reached out to the client because so-and-so never responded to my Slack message those types of things. So if you start to see a pattern where, I called you but you didn't get back to me or I emailed you but you never got back to me.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (07:25)

Yeah.

Theresa M. Ward (07:25)

Those

are the triggers or the indicators that we really need a communication protocol. My hope is that your listener will develop one of these before those excuses start to happen, but it's okay whether you're in proactive or reactive mode. It can be helpful in either situation.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (07:40)

And you know, I've got a couple things for you listening right now on this. Go ahead and start.

anybody can initiate this discussion and it will help with my other point is one of my most popular. I have four signature keynotes that I give and I speak at conferences around the country and the one that is the most popular right now is this meeting could have been an email and we talk all about meeting effectiveness, right? And what I want to point out is one of the things about a communication protocol that's really helpful is one of the lessons I teach in that talk is about

Theresa M. Ward (08:01)

I it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (08:13)

asymmetrical versus symmetrical communication, right? So asymmetrical means I send you an email and then you can read it and respond to it at a time that is good for you later. That's asymmetrical where symmetrical is like Theresa and I right now are having symmetrical communication live. And so that live communication would be a meeting. So when I say this meeting, which is symmetrical, could have been an email, which is asymmetrical.

I share that because asymmetrical is more efficient for the team's productivity. So the other thing that you get with the communication protocol also kind of have the protocol will help you with what needs to be a meeting. What are things that I need to interrupt people for versus what are things that I don't need to interrupt people for?

Theresa M. Ward (08:45)

OOF

Brian Nelson-Palmer (08:59)

So that's just food for thought. Theresa, any thoughts, any yes ands on that? What are your thoughts?

Theresa M. Ward (09:04)

I have a yes and and a yes, but yeah. Okay. So my yes and I love the distinction between symmetrical and asymmetrical. I have also called that synchronous or asynchronous my thought, my challenge is the

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:06)

Okay, hit me. I like this. All right.

Theresa M. Ward (09:23)

blanket assumption that asymmetrical communication is always going to be more efficient than symmetrical communication Because we have all gotten caught up in the 14 back-and-forth emails that some where someone is trying to communicate something with context emotion sensitivity and it literally could have been a phone call that takes 37 seconds

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:38)

Totally.

Yeah.

Theresa M. Ward (09:53)

instead

of the kicking back and forth and the misinterpretation of tone and things like that. And the reason that I want to call that out is just because what I see happening in generational communication trends, which Brian, I'm very curious to see if you see these same kinds of things, but for digital natives, so for millennials and younger, the go-to form of communication is asymmetrical or asynchronous.

text or slack message or an email first. And that comes along with this sense of, I'm respecting your privacy. I'm respecting your time, your flexibility, your work from home schedule. But it also means there's this weird

avoidance if someone does initiate symmetrical communication, an unannounced team's call, an unannounced phone call. And I don't want your listener or any of their direct reports to be afraid of symmetrical communication because in so many cases it can save time and save assumptions and emotions. Does that resonate with you?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:51)

Yeah.

On my side, I'm going preach sister. Yes, absolutely. That's a good point. And we talk about all the reasons why a meeting is the best form of communication. There are plenty of scenarios. It's not just let's get rid of meetings altogether. That's actually not productive. And what you gave is one of the many examples we talk about where yes,

Theresa M. Ward (11:07)

Okay.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (11:17)

this should be a meeting, make it a meeting.

Theresa M. Ward (11:20)

it depends right on your company culture, the size of your team and how much, know, are you making this communication protocol just for your team? Are you trying to make it for the entire department? Are you trying to make it for the entire company? But you can get pretty nuanced even beyond just meeting or non meeting because there are so many different types of meetings. It doesn't have to be sit down, put it on the calendar.

have all this anticipation for it, it literally can be, you know, I FaceTime you while you're walking the dog or I give you a call while you're driving to the dentist. Those things can be just as efficient. so I don't know if you would call that a meeting or if that's just.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:01)

Sure,

well, yes, or that could be a phone call or yeah, all of these different forms of communication. you know, while you're while you mentioned call you while I'm on the way to the dentist or something. And what I want to point out is that while many people might not and in many of the workplaces I've been in, I've been in a lot of workplaces and in many of them that I've been in and the many different teams, none of those teams had actually a written communication protocol.

And when I introduced it to the teams that I've been on, it's made a huge difference. So I'm assuming that you listening might or might not have had these things before. But what I want to point out now is you probably have a communication protocol just in the way that you operate in the world for yourself individually. Right. Like you might generally, if you're a millennial or you're on the younger side, you might just text people

have whole conversations just in text. And so that's your personal protocol. You have a way that you like to communicate. And so people have their own protocols. And so this concept isn't new. for, for Theresa, for this, if you're taking like your individual protocol, do you, do you have any thoughts offhand on any or tips on somebody's individual?

communication protocol, like any recommendations on what's good or not good for just the way that you do it personally.

Theresa M. Ward (13:21)

Yes, okay, so self-awareness is step one in everything that I do for a team. And so whether that's an individual contributor or that's a leader on the team, it is very good to write down or to take a mental inventory of, yeah, I do tend to text first. I tend to decline calls.

So to take a mental inventory of what your own preferences are then allows you to have a baseline of communication. Is that similar to most folks on my team? Am I more of the exception or am I more of the standard? So to your point, I don't think it's labeling it good or not good, but it is being able to bring it to the table, especially if you're the one initiating this, being able to say, you know what?

I have a strong preference for typed asynchronous communication. I'm realizing that that has places where it's most effective and places where it's not. then gathering like a small committee of maybe some peers, some direct reports, know, multi-level folks in your organization, getting a small committee together and saying, what is actually the best?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:13)

Sir.

Theresa M. Ward (14:29)

It's uncomfortable because what's the best is not always your own personal preference. For example, I am a huge fan of asynchronous video communication where you simply record three minutes of a message and instead of sending it, in a typed, paragraphical email or a Slack message, you just send the video. That way you get the benefit of the

vocal tone and the body language, but you didn't have to schedule a meeting for it. There are plenty of clients that I work with who you say video and their shoulders tense up and their voice gets all weird and all of a sudden they're not actually being themselves. So if that's counterproductive, you have to be aware of that, being willing to share that and saying, okay, I'll try and use video in this part of our communication protocol.

but everybody needs to know it's gonna be weird for a little while. So there's also that learning curve of getting used to the new protocol once it's established.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:29)

You know, on this same topic, I was in a really large organization and I ran a really large project that had, I don't know, there were like 4,000 people affected by the project and there were 26,000 people in the organization, right? And I was running this program where it was impossible for me to actually get a meeting with everyone at the same time. And so what we did is we did an internal video podcast where

Theresa M. Ward (15:45)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:51)

It was actually discussing, right? Just like you said, you said three minutes and in my mind, thought, yep, video broadcast. And what's great about that is some people like to watch, some people like to listen, and some people like to read. And what's amazing about the technology we have now is you can record a video and then you can send that and they can listen to it or they can watch it.

And then you can also drop the transcript into AI and it will give you a summary of the action items and the whatever else it is. So if they want to read, they can read the transcript. They can read the action items. Like it's possible for you to communicate more efficiently to everybody's different preferences.

That's a great tool that not many people use. So I love that you mentioned video because it's like, yes, absolutely.

Theresa M. Ward (16:36)

Yeah.

And I, okay, so this is a little bit outside of communication protocol, but what you just mentioned brings something up for me that I'm really curious how you're seeing it. So with the advent of AI and the incorporation of, this meeting is being recorded. It is being transcribed. It is being summarized by, you know, this artificial assistant. I have started to see this trend where then if I'm invited to a meeting,

an individual will be invited to a meeting. They will attend the meeting, but they will use the meeting time to do other things because they say, I'm just going to listen to the transcription or read the AI summary afterwards. And it's like at the top, I'm like, that sounds efficient, but it's very, in my opinion, counterproductive.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:20)

Yes.

Theresa M. Ward (17:28)

Have you seen that that happening? I mean, that it kind of breaks my heart.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:32)

it is. And at the same time, this drives back to this meeting could have been an email, a broadcast, a video message would have been more efficient for everybody since or everybody who's not. You didn't have to be there live.

Theresa M. Ward (17:36)

Don't be happy.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:44)

part of why a communication protocol is good, because unless you pose situations where you should consider this kind of communication, most people, especially in the older generations, there's only two ways that they communicate, email or meeting. And that's it. But there's so many more.

that people might not use. just that's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing the same thing as you're seeing. And I really just it's such a good indicator of, there's you should leverage some of these tools, these other tools you have.

Theresa M. Ward (18:13)

Now I will say for you listening, if you are going to leverage some of these more recently developed communication techniques, such as, I'm not going to attend the meeting, but I'm going to let my team just read the AI summary. One of the best things that I've seen is I saw a leader every morning, he blocks off an hour on his calendar and he calls it like communication catch up.

And it's the time when he's cleaning out his inbox, he's reviewing Slack messages, he's reading or listening to the transcriptions from meetings from the day before. And I love that that's normalized, that your day doesn't need to be filled with simply tasks and meetings. You have to create this white space for navigating all of these different communication messages that are now.

being available to you.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:08)

Totally. It's super important. please you be the spark to start recording your meetings because a lot of organizations and individuals have it like they're just opposed to being recorded necessarily. But if you record it, anybody who misses it, instead of you having to catch them up, there's a recording and by the way,

productivity hack shameless. one of those guys who listens and watches on two times or three times speed because I mean you might be listening to this episode on two times speed or three times speed and if you are right now I am applauding you right now. Well done because your brain can process that information faster than we can speak it necessarily. So yes, take advantage of that too if you're catching up on recording. if if if there is

Unless there is some sort of legal reason why you can't record, just record. Because then there's so many good reasons.

Theresa M. Ward (20:00)

the recording also helps us remember, especially if you're not on video, if you're not in person, the more technological or the more asymmetrical our communication gets, the more rude we let ourselves get. That is unfortunately why cyberbullying is a thing and people will just troll through.

YouTube, you know, comments and things like that. And I think if we are acting as if we are being recorded, I think it reminds us to be our best selves and to pay attention to one another and to really tune in and sort of, you know, sit up a little straighter and be like, I'm being recorded. And I don't mean that in a

Big Brother kind of fear-based way. I think it's just a way for us to remember that, you know, we need to show up and be our best selves with each other whenever possible.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (21:00)

true. And anything you put is going to be a reflection of your performance professionally. So yes, absolutely. Theresa, I want to jump into you. So you did a great job earlier describing what a communication protocol might look like, right? And so one of the things that is

I think super helpful. And I give, if you go back and listen to Maura, I did an episode with Maura Thomas who came on the show and she talked about the one thing that was one of the first times that I had heard reference. I've heard it called a communication protocol. I've heard it called a lot of things over the years. She called it a communication protocol and she said that emergency, who to contact an emergency is one of the, and how to contact them.

Theresa M. Ward (21:24)

Yeah!

Brian Nelson-Palmer (21:43)

is what qualifies as an emergency? So I want to note that because when you're talking about this, it's not just should you email or should you have a meeting, but at what point should you call the person, like what qualifies as an emergency? And so I thought that was a really good tip that she had. And so I want to yes, and with you then, Theresa, besides what qualifies as an emergency and how should you communicate in an emergency?

Theresa M. Ward (21:45)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (22:08)

What else goes into a communication protocol? What are your thoughts?

Theresa M. Ward (22:12)

Mm-hmm.

I don't think it's binary in most industries, okay? Like even in, you know, you've got your doctor and then you've got urgent care and then you've got the emergency room. And I think in a lot of cases, emergency is subjective. And hopefully you, the listener, you're hiring professionals who have a decent amount of discernment.

if, if you, I think if you frame it as how to escalate instead of, this is emergency versus non-emergency, it empowers the discernment of your direct reports. And then if they don't get it quite right, then it's a teaching opportunity. So for, I think it's nice to do it in like levels or stages. So maybe it's Slack first.

And if you don't get a response in X amount of hours, then escalate to a phone call or a text message. It also depends if you work with people overseas in different time zones and all of those components. But I think the most important part is just either deciding together

what a phone call means. Is an unprompted phone call an emergency escalation or is it just, hey, I wanna shoot the shit? So that is what I think sends a lot of folks into a panic is, no, my boss is calling me unprompted. And the person who's receiving the phone call thinks it's an emergency escalation, thinks there must be something wrong.

Whereas the person who's initiating the phone call is like, no, this is just what I do when I'm driving to the dentist, right? So I'm not sure if the emphasis needs to be on what is an emergency. It's just how to work your way towards something. And one of the things that drives me crazy, whether it's a text or a Slack or an email, is when somebody says, hey, do you have a minute?

because that gives me no context on how to respond. So I think when you're, when you are working up towards an emergency, give context and say, I am calling you because there is an urgent client issue and I really need your help. Or I am emailing you even though you are three levels above me because I have already tried to contact my boss and their boss.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:28)

Yes.

Yes. Yeah.

Theresa M. Ward (24:38)

about this specific outage and I am

not getting a response within the last two hours. So that kind of thing can really also trigger the person who's receiving the communication to say, this isn't our usual protocol. And I understand why they are going through a non-typical communication channel. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:57)

Absolutely. I'm

laughing because whenever people ask me if I if they if I have a minute, I generally respond and say I have about 90 seconds. And then the so go ahead. What do you got? Because then they have to get to the point or whatever it is. But then the other thought that I had is

Also, it's about permission. know, your communication protocol shouldn't just be between you and your boss and your teammate. The communication protocol should also be something that the people above are aware of because it's also permission, right? Like it's permission on, listen, if you're, if it's going to cost the organization more than X number of dollars or

Theresa M. Ward (25:36)

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:38)

There is blood involved or someone from a hospital or like these are all things that are absolutely you have permission to go all the way up and it empowers people to like, yes, please do that as opposed to well, I was just waiting to get ahold of the boss and I couldn't like there are going to be. So it's also the permission piece that you have permission to do these things or it also is efficiency too, because there's going to be there might be certain things if you need IT.

Theresa M. Ward (25:46)

Hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:06)

then you don't call your boss. Or there are certain kinds of support that you need where you should just go straight to that person. And so you've talked about those scenarios and that's where I think the communication protocol is super helpful.

Theresa M. Ward (26:20)

Yeah, I'm also now thinking about, you know, Jim Duthmer's concept of the water line.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:26)

Hmm. Well, if pretend I'm not familiar, what's that?

Theresa M. Ward (26:28)

Okay,

so it is, if you think about the way a boat sits in the water, part of the hull is below the waterline and part of it is above the waterline. And so rather than thinking about, is this an emergency quote unquote, like is there blood involved? Kind of like each team, each organization needs to understand, is this a pirate ship, like a cannon got shot?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:44)

Right.

Theresa M. Ward (26:55)

and is the hole in the boat above or below the waterline? Because if it's above the waterline, it's not gonna sink the ship. know, you can usually just, people can take care of it themselves. It doesn't require like emergency call to the CEO. So where is the waterline? If it's like, I'm about to piss off our most important client, like that's, if it's in danger of sinking the ship.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:11)

Sure.

Theresa M. Ward (27:21)

then that can sometimes be a helpful metaphor. Because I think emergency is just, too much of a loaded word sometimes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:28)

True, urgent and I love, ultimately I hope you're taking away from this all of the different sort of scenarios or ideas for how you describe this when you're talking to the team and you're setting up this tool for your team is there are these different scenarios. So talk about that with the group because your team's dynamic, your team's situation is gonna be different. If you're sales, it's gonna be a difference like.

your chart is going to look different than if you're in customer service or if you're in delivery or if you're in operations or all of those things look different and you all speak the same language. So we're just giving you ideas for the different ways, whether it's dollars or pissing off a client or all of these things are ideas. But I love the waterline as a good sort of metaphor for what, where, where that lies. So good, good.

Theresa M. Ward (27:56)

Thank you.

You know, you could

even do like a mini communication protocol with a client, with an external partner. If you know, for example, I work with a branding agency and they, you know, are building a new website for a client and we got to get it launched in six months. And there's all of these deadlines and things like that. If it's one of those things where, Hey, we need your approval on the homepage wireframes by tonight, or we're going to mess up your launch date. Then.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:33)

Yeah.

Theresa M. Ward (28:42)

There can be a, yeah. So this doesn't only have to be for your insular team or for your department or your organization. It can be external as well.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:42)

Yes.

True.

Yeah, it could be for the customers too. I like that a lot. Theresa, where is this stored? Is it on a website? Is it in a shared folder? Is it any best practices there?

Theresa M. Ward (29:02)

Mm-hmm. I mean, that that's kind of part of the communication protocol, right? Is also being intentional about where things are stored and where things are shared. So if your company uses Google Drive, if you have access to Google Drive, you got to nominate a champion to make sure that it's organized and that everybody's using the same folder structure and, you know, the shared drives versus the home drives and all of that kind of stuff. usually.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:07)

Yeah.

Theresa M. Ward (29:29)

the development of a communications protocol will, it will reveal some of those other gaps. Like, ooh, we got SharePoint set up two and a half years ago, but everyone's just been using file attachments and email and downloading it on their desktop, you know, much to IT's dismay. So I think wherever you have decided that it's going to live,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:47)

Sure.

Theresa M. Ward (29:52)

It's good to nominate an accountability champion.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:55)

And I want to yes. And what you're saying, Theresa, my yes. And is please, wherever you put it, make sure that it's searchable. And if I go to whatever we're in a Google society these days, if we don't know the answer, we Google it. And inevitably, whether it's SharePoint or whether it's Google Drive or whether it's whatever, they can go in and they can search.

or depending on the size of organization.

Theresa M. Ward (30:14)

Right. Naming conventions. That could be a whole other podcast,

That's true. Yeah. Love it. Good. Yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:21)

So

what about, what do you do when people don't follow the protocol? Theresa, what happens?

Theresa M. Ward (30:27)

man, yeah, we can solve for the outliers, right? I mean, I think set your expectations at the start, okay? Not 100 % of people are going to adopt it. They're not going to adopt it overnight. My typical thing lately is like, if you can get 80 % of folks doing it, then at least it can become a cultural norm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:32)

Right?

Theresa M. Ward (30:54)

And sometimes that takes a few weeks, sometimes that takes a few months. Patrick Lencioni, right, one of my favorite authors, he talks about how a good leader is a good chief reminding officer. And I just, I say that all the time everywhere. And I'm sure, you you can think of your best leaders are the ones who almost annoyingly repeated themselves until not only did you remember it, but you were empowered to then go spread the,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (31:08)

Yes.

Theresa M. Ward (31:21)

Rallying cry or the this is our new process. You were empowered to go spread it to everybody else So I think it's set your expectations up front and and be empathetic to how people react to change I was just giving a keynote about this last week where like the change cycle what our brains go through when we're told to do something differently is the same as the grief cycle

Brian Nelson-Palmer (31:22)

Yeah, spread the gospel.

Yes.

Theresa M. Ward (31:44)

Like we go through shock and denial and bargaining and anger and blaming. when you lose the status quo, people are losing a sense of comfort and some people navigate that change curve faster than others. So know that as a leader of a team.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (31:47)

It's so

Theresa M. Ward (32:02)

You're gonna have a couple outliers. They're gonna need a little hand holding and you have to sort of tap into like, what's their cookie, right? What's their reward? What is their sense of motivation? Do they want public praise? Like, do they want gifts? Like, what is the thing that's gonna get people on board? Is it a little bit annoying? Do you wish, you know, maybe you didn't have to babysit people through these changes? Sure.

But as long as it's 20 % of your team that just needs like the little sprinkle of something extra, then yeah, you've probably got a good team if 80 % of your folks can just get on board. Eventually, you're just gonna become the weirdo who doesn't track your time or doesn't use Slack correctly, or, you know, still sends emails and that has its own.

I don't think negative reinforcement or shame is a great technique, but people do want to feel like they belong in the culture. eventually, we usually see some late adoption. That's my experience.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:57)

as you're talking, two things immediately came to mind. One, remember that praise should be public and anything that's a performance thing should be taken offline or in private. So if someone doesn't follow the protocol and you're going to remind them or point it out, it's best not to do that in front of everybody. So that's one thing to keep in mind. And the other one is

It's the, there's a book and I'll drop the link in the notes for you, but it's called the one minute manager. And the one minute manager is all about when you see something good, say something and be supportive. When you see something that's not right, address it right. Take one minute and address it right then. And so I think that is super important for a protocol situation. If somebody misses it one time or it seems like it's logic. I mean, everybody, we're going to have an understanding, right? It's guide, just like you said, it's a guide.

Theresa M. Ward (33:27)

Hmm.

Okay.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:49)

And if people keep, if they keep stepping outside the guide, then you need to point it out. And it's best to do that right at the time when it happens. So do that in private.

Theresa M. Ward (33:58)

Hmm.

things coming up for me. love what you're sharing. think the first is make sure that your final version of your communication protocol has a solid why behind it. Besides, this is just the way I want things. So if I put out a communication protocol, Brian, and you're not following it and I bought, I say, Hey, you're not

you know, we all agreed that it was going to be Slack and you're emailing. I have to be able to answer the question, well, why, why are we not doing email anymore? And it can't be arbitrary. It can't be the two year old, you know, because mommy said so. so that's probably the hardest part of this whole thing is, is making sure that there is a legit why. So don't rush this and don't make it overly.

Don't overemphasize on your personal pet peeves. The other thing that I'll push back on just a little bit is when you were talking about like praise in public, generally, I would say that's a best practice. But the, you ever taken the appreciation languages assessment?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:53)

Yes.

Touche, yep, some people don't

like the public appreciation, so that's fair, yep.

Theresa M. Ward (35:12)

I think public praise is the jam, but I've really heard from a couple of my clients as a trend that it seems in some cases performative or cringy. And they prefer like, if my boss's boss writes me a handwritten card and puts it in the mail, that means more to me than being called out in front of a hundred people. Now, who knows why I'm not saying, but.

As a manager, you should tune into those kinds of nuances with your team. So that's, I mean, that's really the hardest part about these protocols is finding that sweet spot between, yes, we all need to get aligned and do generally the same things. And there are always going to be exceptions and empathetic managers will be into those exceptions instead of being realistic or fundamental.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:43)

Yes.

I love that you pointed that out because the point of bringing that up was really more about if you're going to criticize, you want to do that, not in public. so I like it. Like, and I mentioned that the praise can be public, but you're right. Everybody's different. And that's also true. And that's part of being a leader is knowing

Theresa M. Ward (36:10)

don't throw up. 100 % agree.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:23)

These are the ones that like the public praise. These are the ones that are very shy and would absolutely be just embarrassed as heck if you brought them up, even if it was something good So yes, I love that you mentioned that good point there. Now, what about the?

Theresa M. Ward (36:28)

I would die.

Thank you.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:39)

Can I want to take a side note here just as a fun thing as far as communication protocols go? What is a communication habit or behavior for you personally? Theresa that drives you crazy? Because I've I've got one, but I'm just curious what what are like? Is there one that when it happens and you're just like, gosh, come on people, why did I know so I have I have one, but I want to ask you first.

Theresa M. Ward (37:03)

I think mine is probably the Gotham in it. Yeah, what's yours?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:06)

Ooh, yeah, yeah, OK.

Mine is, do not email me and ask, can we, when can we meet? That email is such a waste for everybody involved because you're gonna email that. And then I might send you some times back and then you might not be able to do that time. So then you've got to find other ones or even worse is when I, and don't get me wrong, there are professional situations where I don't have any

Theresa M. Ward (37:19)

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:34)

I get that email and I don't have any alternative but to send sometimes. Like, and I cringe when I do it, but I do it. And then the worst is when they write back and they just say, I can't do any of those times. Can you send them more? that is my, that is my like pet peeve drives me bonkers. my gosh. Like,

There is an app for this people. You can see my calendar. You can see when I'm available. So please just like let's not do back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Just trying to find a time to meet. So that's just my that's my little one that's just like God when it happens it drives me crazy.

Theresa M. Ward (38:06)

Yeah.

I think I'm the last person in the world to not use like a Calendly or like a public shared calendar because I'm one of those like crazy old David Allen, you know, people that like every hour on my calendar has something booked. And so it doesn't look to the algorithm like I have any free time because I don't I don't use white

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:27)

Sure.

Theresa M. Ward (38:36)

space on my calendar. Like my days have like chunks already assigned. So I like I can't I don't do the you can see my calendar and I can see your calendar and it's nice when at least one of us you know has that. But if both people don't I totally agree with you at least be like here are the times I can meet if none of those work for you please send times that do. And you got to think about it like

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:38)

Sure.

Yes.

Theresa M. Ward (39:02)

We are all working towards, you know, the touchdown and like, please do things that move the ball down the field instead of just like this space or like the backwards motion. Yeah, I feel that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (39:09)

the ball down the field. Yes, please. Yeah. gosh. And

Theresa, I'm totally going to call you out here because I fully support being a David Allen person and having your time blocked and all those time blocks. But here's the hack that you can use to still use Calendly if you do that, which is and if you listening, if you if this is you too, if you're like Theresa, please do this, which is set up a calendar.

Theresa M. Ward (39:27)

Tell me.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (39:35)

for another calendar for your tasks. And when you go into Calendly, you can set up Calendly so it will look at which calendars. And so if you have meetings or I fundamentally believe your calendar should be where you need to be, not what you need to do. So that's my own personal thing. But if you have your to-do items all in one count, so let's say purple is your to-do list calendar or whatever, and this is Theresa's to-do list calendar.

Only put the tasks and those things in that calendar and you can set up Calendly to not look at that calendar. So it will show the times when you are available that you're not already in a meeting and you maybe could move some stuff around, but you can still put stuff on every hour of the day and use both. So just food for thought if you haven't thought about that one. Highly recommend.

Theresa M. Ward (40:24)

No, that's

good. And it's so great to hear that because I'm such a proponent of everybody should be willing to evolve and change, know, change your communication status and change the way, you manage your productivity.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:40)

Right,

totally. if you ever reached out to Theresa, I hope she sends you a Calendly link with all of the times that she's available.

Theresa M. Ward (40:47)

Challenge accepted challenge accepted and

So here's the yeah

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:51)

Let's do it. I love this. Well, last question for you.

Last question for you, Theresa, which is, so what does this mean for you personally?

Theresa M. Ward (41:00)

Gosh, okay, so I don't have kids. I've always been really focused on my career and I feel like I've personally experienced the full gamut of misery to thriving when it comes to our professional space. So when I think about like my

purpose in the world, I want to be able to contribute way more to people's thriving than their misery. you know, a lot of folks out there, even if you do have kids or, you know, you have other personal priorities, we spend so much of our lives at work, most of us, right? You know, 40 hours a week is...

if you're living in a typical, you know, American corporate situation. Sure. And I know there's exceptions to that rule, but it's just, I do believe that work can be a place where our souls can thrive and that we can be our best human selves. And if we can get some of this crap out of the way,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:49)

Stereotype. Yeah.

Theresa M. Ward (42:07)

with pet peeve emails like you're saying, inefficient exchanges, just missing each other, not seeing, hey, this is what I meant, this is what I want to offer. I think this communications protocol is just a really practical way to remove some of those barriers from us enjoying one another and enjoying our

Brian Nelson-Palmer (42:27)

love it. You know, well, so here's what I love. I love that you're bringing this desire to be better for everyone to thrive comes with you in this. And I love that you're coming at it from a perspective of let's take the best practices from many different silos and use those, the many different industries that you've touched.

to help level this one up and level this one up in that perspective and everything. And so I love that you created this, the fiery feather is your thing. You can check her out. I'll have the link for you in your episode notes here. I love that you're doing this thing and you found it. And I think what you're talking about and what we're talking about today is things that will make everyone's work lives better, which will make their lives better, which is just a win for everybody. So I love that you're doing this. Thanks for being here and doing this.

Theresa M. Ward (43:17)

I'm so happy that Maura, your previous podcast guest, got a chance to introduce us. And it's been really fun to see how aligned we are on so many things. This is a fun conversation.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:28)

Absolutely. And for those people who want to keep in touch with you after this, where should they go?

Theresa M. Ward (43:33)

LinkedIn is the best

place to find me. So Theresa as in Marie Ward. The fieryfeather.com website is another good place. Those are pretty much the spaces where I hang out.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:43)

You got it. And I'll have those, those links are in your episode notes right now. So you can go check those places out. And for you tuning in, do you have a friend or colleague who you've had some of these nightmare communication conversations that Theresa and I have been talking about right now? And if you do, would you share the link to this episode specifically with them? Cause I know Theresa and I would love to know that our conversation and our back and forth and the tips and the things that we've shared today would

would help others and a few and please do text them because and I say text because I know it's funny like we just talked about communication protocols, but I'm actually saying text messages because this is about that personal connection and a couple of texts back and forth with you because you heard this episode and it reminded you of that nightmare boss that you had with that person from five years ago that you haven't talked to in a little bit. If that connection and that that back and forth

We'll go a long way toward filling up both of your cups in a way that like posting on social media or just basic stuff wouldn't do. please do send that text message. I know Theresa and I would both appreciate that. And whether this is your first episode that you've ever heard of Productivity Gladiator or if you're one of my regular subscribers, regardless, I love sharing Productivity Gladiator with you because together these productivity skills are going to change your life. That's a wrap.

ADHD-Inspired Productivity: Mythbusting & What You Can Learn From This Condition - With Skye Waterson

In this engaging episode, Brian Nelson-Palmer interviews Skye Waterson, founder of Unconventional Organisation, who challenges common myths about ADHD while sharing research-backed strategies for productivity.

As a former academic turned entrepreneur who has ADHD herself, Skye offers unique insights about how ADHD can actually be an entrepreneurial advantage when properly managed.

The conversation explores practical tools for focusing, including Skye's innovative "dopamine dial" approach, and reveals the surprising fact that many successful CEOs and business leaders have ADHD, making this episode valuable for both people with ADHD and those who work with them.

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The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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References In This Episode

• Article Brian mentioned on Focus Music

• Brian’s article on Tech Hacks to avoid the neverending social media rabbit hole.

• Skye’s LinkedIn profile

• Unconventional Organisation’s Instagram

• The ADHD Skill’s Lab Podcast by Unconventional Organisation

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Episode Digest

"Your boss probably has ADHD. More likely than you. Your CEO almost definitely has ADHD."

This surprising insight sets the tone for a fascinating exploration of how ADHD manifests in the workplace and why it might be more of an asset than traditionally believed.

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) is often misunderstood. While commonly associated with childhood, many adults deal with it daily, experiencing persistent issues around restlessness, distraction, and feeling like they're being "driven by a motor." For those who have it, it can feel like being simultaneously foggy and jangly - similar to when you haven't gotten enough sleep and then had too much coffee.

"On a very practical level, what ADHD means is basically it's about persistent and pervasive issues around restlessness, distraction, people who feel like they're being driven by a motor... Some people say it's issues with too much attention."

Common Myths Debunked

Several prevalent myths about ADHD were addressed during the discussion:

1. "Medication is the only way to manage ADHD at work"

• This is false. While medication can be helpful, it's just one tool in what should be a comprehensive toolbox. Other effective strategies include exercise, movement, organizational systems, and environmental modifications. The key is having multiple management strategies available, as medication effectiveness can vary over time or become inaccessible.

2. "People with ADHD can't be detail-oriented"

• This is partially false. While people with ADHD might not be detail-oriented across all aspects of life, they can be incredibly detail-focused in areas of interest. As one expert noted, "I've never met anyone with ADHD who's detail-oriented across everything."

3. "Someone with ADHD can't handle leadership roles"

• This myth is completely false. In fact, many entrepreneurs and CEOs have ADHD. The condition often comes with strengths in creative problem-solving, quick decision-making, and innovative thinking - qualities that can be valuable in leadership positions.

Practical Management Strategies

The discussion revealed several actionable strategies for managing ADHD:

The Dopamine Dial Approach

Instead of attempting a complete "dopamine detox," which can be counterproductive for people with ADHD, try the "dopamine dial" method. This involves gradually reducing distractions rather than eliminating them entirely. For example:

• Start by turning off notifications while keeping some background noise

• Gradually transition from video content to audio

• Eventually move to just music or ambient sound

• Find your personal sweet spot for background stimulation

"Sometimes you need to have some form of low-level stimulation in order to focus... silence can actually be quite loud."

Managing Hyper-Focus

While often considered a superpower of ADHD, hyper-focus needs proper management to be truly beneficial. Without strategies to control it, hyper-focus can lead to burnout or misdirected energy. The key is learning both how to:

• Channel it toward priority tasks

• Step out of it systematically to avoid exhaustion

"Hyper-focus really is mostly for things that you're interested in. So if you're like, 'I'm going to hyper-focus on my really boring job,' the chances are that's going to be pretty difficult."

Workplace Considerations

For managers and colleagues working with someone who has ADHD, the most effective approach is to focus on optimization rather than diagnosis. Instead of pointing out potential ADHD traits, ask:

• "How do you work best?"

• "How can I help you work in that way?"

This approach benefits everyone, regardless of whether they have ADHD, and avoids potentially uncomfortable conversations about diagnosis.

Environmental Setup

Consider all five senses when creating a productive workspace:

• Visual: Plants, pleasing decor

• Auditory: Appropriate background noise

• Tactile: Comfortable seating and tools

• Other sensory inputs that help maintain focus without overwhelming

The key takeaway is that ADHD management isn't about forcing yourself into a conventional productivity model. Instead, it's about understanding your unique needs and creating systems that work with, rather than against, your natural tendencies. Whether you have ADHD or work with someone who does, the goal is to create an environment and systems that support executive functioning for everyone.

Remember: what works for one person may not work for another. The best approach is to experiment with different strategies and build a personalized toolkit of techniques that you can deploy as needed. Success isn't about eliminating ADHD traits - it's about learning to harness them effectively while managing potential challenges.

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Chapters

00:00 Understanding ADHD: A Personal Journey

03:18 The Practical Implications of ADHD

06:00 Recognizing ADHD: When to Seek Help

07:45 Executive Functioning and Support Strategies

09:16 Myths and Misconceptions about ADHD

18:40 Medication vs. Alternative Strategies for ADHD

21:12 Toolbox for Managing ADHD

27:43 Myth Busting ADHD Management

32:14 Detail Orientation and ADHD

33:32 Leadership Roles and ADHD

38:40 Hyperfocus: A Double-Edged Sword

42:04 Recommendations for Productivity

46:30 Personal Journey and Vision for Change

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Today’s Guest

Skye Waterson

Academic turned ADHD Coach & Founder of Unconventional Organisation

Skye Waterson founded Unconventional Organisation, an international ADHD support service, after receiving her own ADHD diagnosis during her PhD studies. She transformed her personal experience into research-based strategies, authoring over 50 articles reaching 250,000+ readers. Her expertise has attracted clients ranging from healthcare professionals to Fortune 500 directors, including consulting work with the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service.

As host of the ADHD Skills Lab podcast (100k+ downloads), she features prominent ADHD experts and leaders. Through her coaching program, writing, and speaking engagements, she helps adults with ADHD develop practical strategies for creating focused, balanced lives. Her work has been featured on multiple podcasts and she regularly speaks to professional networks about ADHD management.

Connect with her at:
linkedin.com/in/skye-waterson
UnconventionalOrganisation.com

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Why Subscribe To The Email List: Brian shares separate hacks, tips, and actionable learning exclusively for his email subscribers. Sign up so you don’t miss out!

About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. After spending a career hands-on in the trenches as a leader at all levels, I now train Productivity Gladiators to level up their careers. Graduates wield superpowers in time management, practical leadership, communication, & productivity. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat!

“Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.”

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Transcript

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:06)
I'm Brian Nelson-Palmer and on this show I share personal practical productivity skills. And In this episode we're talking about ADHD Inspired Productivity Let's do myth busting and what you can learn from this condition And with me on the show today is Skye Waterson who's a former academic and the founder of the company Unconventional Organisation which supports business owners with ADHD Skye, thanks so much for joining me today.

Skye Waterson (00:35)

Yeah, it's wonderful to be here.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:38)

And say a little bit about your background. We're talk about ADHD today. So talk about how you're related to that topic.

Skye Waterson (00:44)

Yeah, so I'm a former academic. That's what I thought I was going to be doing for the rest of my life. When I started my PhD after a couple of burnouts, I decided I needed to figure out what was going on. So I went to my learning center. They did a bunch of tests on me and they said, we think you have adult ADHD. And I was like, I think you're mistaken. I think that's only something that you can have when you're a kid. And that took me on the whole journey of, you know, researching it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:11)

Yeah.

Skye Waterson (01:13)

I'm an academic, I couldn't help myself, you know, writing articles and eventually founding this company.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:20)

And for those now we've been using the acronym ADHD. It used to be called ADD, but what does that stand for?

Skye Waterson (01:26)

Attention deficit hyperactive disorder, but you can also have it as attention deficit hyperactive disorder primarily inattentive. The names have been shifting around a little bit.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:37)

You know, they get fancy with the acronyms and then want to change it a little more. And so, what does that mean on a very practical level?

Skye Waterson (01:39)

Yeah.

On a very practical level, what ADHD means is basically it's about persistent and pervasive issues around restlessness, distraction, people who feel like they're being driven by a motor. Those are kind of the things that, issues with attention. Some people say it's issues with too much attention. Those are the things you're having with ADHD.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:13)

I see. Okay. And I the people that are doing ADHD work right now?

Skye Waterson (02:19)

Great question. I think the biggest difference, at least the one that people have said that they've sort of appreciated the most, is that I work from primary sources. So I'm lucky enough to have been an academic. I have an understanding of how to read neuroscience papers, things like that. we have a researcher on our team who sources journal articles about ADHD, and we read those and use those to develop the systems that we then

use over time with one-on-one clients and eventually it become part of my group coaching program. And that's really how we develop our systems. So whenever you're learning something with us, you have that knowledge that it's coming from that research background.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:05)

I see. So it's coming from academics, not just from what Skye thinks is cool or something like that.

Skye Waterson (03:11)

No, no,

what Skye thinks is cool. Occasionally I will say it, but then I'll be like, there is no data to support this. So.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:18)

Fair enough. That's good. I love it. Alright, so let's jump into the topic today. we talked about ADHD and you talked about it being like a motor or inability to focus or now I'm not a person who has been diagnosed or I don't think I that I suffer from this. So how would you know and for a layman who doesn't understand it at all...

Skye Waterson (03:37)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:42)

what is it like? How would you describe it? Like share some examples.

Skye Waterson (03:45)

That's a great question. So I guess, have you ever had a day where you didn't get enough sleep and you just could not focus? You were just banging around all over the place, tired, but also too tired. Have you ever had that experience?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:59)

Yes, certainly.

Skye Waterson (04:00)

What does that

feel like to you?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:04)

I mean, it just feels like everything's foggy. for me at least, that's maybe slow to respond, slow to be able to come up with the answers that I need.

Skye Waterson (04:09)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

And then maybe you have coffee to feel better, right? In that moment, you might have coffee and now everything's foggy. You're a bit slow and you're a bit jangly at the same time. That can kind of be what it feels like to have ADHD all the time.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:28)

Right.

Goodness, gotcha. but if you've like, know there's plenty of there are, know adults that have been diagnosed much later in life. So you might like that's just the way that you've always been. So what's the point at which maybe you should talk to somebody about it versus this is just normal or is this one of those things where everybody should just go get the test just for funsies to see or like what do you think?

Skye Waterson (04:46)

Mm-hmm.

Well, the test

is really expensive. So most of the time if people are getting the test, you're usually like I remember there was a big thing in Britain around people being diagnosed and how they were being diagnosed but the person who actually from the NHS who was talking about this said look if people are paying like a thousand dollars to get an ADHD diagnosis, they've probably got something. It's just whether it's ADHD or not, you know, usually it's become

Brian Nelson-Palmer (05:02)

Okay.

Skye Waterson (05:24)

Like a straw that breaks the camel's back. It's gotten to such a point where we're like, okay, now it's a problem. So, I mean, in terms of people not realizing that happens, like we're so used to being in our own head, in our own world. We just assume that it's this difficult or this easy for other people. mean, ADHD has strengths as well as weaknesses. So we just kind of assume that this is how everybody else's lives are. They also, you know, can't turn on an oven without also turning on a timer so that they don't burn the house down.

So this has kind of been the case for a lot of people.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:00)

So let me say it this way. I feel like there's a spectrum, right? It's not like an on or off switch. You either are or you aren't. It's not like that. It's probably some sort of like spectrum of people have different abilities to focus and not focus and that kind of stuff. So what would your advice be to someone who's

Skye Waterson (06:03)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:22)

Not really sure. Like maybe, maybe not. What's the first step to start down that path without jumping to the $1000 test?

Skye Waterson (06:25)

Yeah.

So One of the first things I would say is that getting support for executive functioning is helpful with ADHD. So if you're talking about, know, I mean, we work with people who are diagnosed and undiagnosed because one, it takes ages to get a test and it's very expensive, but two, executive functioning support doesn't require medication to get supported. Like medication is obviously a helpful part of that, but you can get that through strategies as well. So my recommendation would be

If you feel like this is ringing true for you, have a look at ADHD support that's out there. and start using it because there's no rule that says you can't, you can't use it. can't start getting prioritized and focused now and then, you know, get the diagnosis later on.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (07:18)

And you know, I would say like you and I both talk. I mean, Productivity Gladiators about being more productive. And I have a lot of conversations with folks about ADHD and this kind of thing, too, because ultimately what it is is all the different things that have been holding you back from being productive. And so I agree that ultimately, if there is a resource out there that helps you focus a little better, you don't need a diagnosis or a test or a something to level up your

Skye Waterson (07:23)

Mm-hmm.

I imagine.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (07:45)

productivity If you know that this is something that you could use some help with. I'm here Skye is here like start exploring some of the free stuff that we've got sitting out there that you can use and see if it helps you. Because ultimately we're just all trying to be better human beings anyway, regardless of whether we put ADHD as a title in front of it or not. Like let's just be more productive so. I like that a lot.

Skye Waterson (07:56)

Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. I mean, I like to give things away. If you guys, an Unconventional Organisation on Instagram, I'll send you my prioritization filter, how you get focused. it's all there. It's all free because I want people to have the strategies. And I think a lot of people feel like that, you know, these systems are accessible. They are usable. then.

When you get the diagnosis, then you can have that conversation about medication as well. It's about having all the tools in your toolbox, know, mental health, executive strategies, medication, like health, exercise. There's research that movement helps your working memory. So, yeah, things like that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (08:49)

Now this episode, we're going to talk about some of the myths and do some myth busting here, but ultimately I do want to say that this episode is focused on, it's not just the person who potentially has trouble focusing or ADHD or whatever it is. It's also the people that work with them, the managers that oversee them. It's something that everybody should be aware of. And so I want, I'm going to speak to this. I want us to speak to this.

Skye Waterson (09:02)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:16)

both from the lens of the person who has it, but also from the people that love them and work with them. I want to look at it from both of those situations as we talk about this. let's do some, let's talk about that then first. What's the biggest misconception that managers or coworkers have about working with someone who has ADHD?

Skye Waterson (09:24)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Number one, it's probably the boss. Because a ton of entrepreneurs and CEOs have ADHD diagnosed and undiagnosed. Those are primarily the people I work with. So number one, it's probably the boss. Not necessarily, but statistically, you're probably looking at that. And number two, it's probably something you're not spotting.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:44)

Wait, wait, what? Say that again. It's probably the Boss?

Okay.

Skye Waterson (10:08)

A lot of people have ADHD and it goes unnoticed. Not everybody has the classic ADHD and the people who have the classic ADHD have more likely been already identified as having ADHD. there are people in your organization that you don't that, know, are struggling with this. They might have ADHD. They might not know it. You might not know it. It's very under diagnosed despite what people think. And so this is something that, you know, it's about

Creating a flexible environment to support executive functioning for everybody. For people with ADHD, but also for Brian when he didn't get enough sleep that day. You know what I mean? For everybody.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:49)

Right?

Yeah. And you keep saying that phrase executive functioning. What do you mean?

Skye Waterson (10:54)

So that's a really great question. When you look at the research, which I've done, there is not a 100 % definition of executive functioning, which is crazy, but there it is, because we're still figuring it out. There's like whole books on working memory. But basically what it means is that it's the systems that you might take for granted that allow you to remember that you need to

put the washing on when you get back and not necessarily write that down or to know that there's been 10 minutes and you only have 10 minutes left to go or actually understand what it means when someone says, could you please plan, you know, what is the timeline on this? When could you get this to me and have some information for that? There are a lot of people out there for ADHD reasons, but also for, you know, mental health and then also brain trauma reasons who don't have those skills.

And that along with impulsivity are the primary deficits when it comes to ADHD.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (11:58)

And impulsivity, say more on that. What do mean?

Skye Waterson (12:01)

So impulsivity is this idea of basically when you look at the brain, there's like a bit at the front. Sorry guys, I'm gonna go nerd for a minute. That's got like the prefrontal cortex. It's the prefrontal cortex. And so there seems to be a difference in how you're wired when you have ADHD where everything just is a bit closer. So where someone else might take a beat, we just go for it. Where someone else might say,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:13)

Let's it. Let's do it. Yeah. huh. Okay.

Skye Waterson (12:30)

Yeah, but I can't get up right now because I'm in a conference and that would be weird. We're like, get up, you know, so, or if it's primarily inattentive where other people might say, I have to keep focused on the class that I'm listening to or the lecture that I'm listening to. We might be off, you know, thinking about something else, coming up with a new idea, leading our team in a different direction, but it's just such an exciting idea. You guys don't understand. So like that is very ADHD.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:37)

Got it.

Got it. It's the look at the shiny thing over there. Thing and what's funny about that too and we should. I totally want to point this out right now is that. Our cell phones do this to us all the time because of all those notifications and the pop ups and the thing it wants our attention and so the world.

Skye Waterson (13:04)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:26)

Currently, one of the biggest things, one of the most valuable things that you can give in the world right now is your focus and your attention, your time. You can give them your time. And all of the apps on your phone want your time. They make money when you spend time on their app. So they have notifications and ads and all the things to try to get your attention. So being able to stay focused and not, ooh, look at the shiny thing is a, is a productivity superpower. it's, it's a very important thing.

Skye Waterson (13:33)

Exactly.

Mm-hmm.

becoming a struggle for everybody.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:56)

Right. And so like doing simple things like turning off, I turn off notifications for every single app except maybe three or four that are communication because it's urgent. Otherwise, I want to go in when I want to go in, not when you, Mr. App, want me to sign on so that you can get my attention and like stuff like that you have control over. And if you do that, my gosh, you just don't even understand the dividends. It'll pay per year.

Skye Waterson (14:05)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

But I will say, know, Brian, that I do have a disagreement with the idea of the dopamine detox, because we talk about this idea of a dopamine detox. Have you heard of this phrase kind of similar to what you're talking about?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:34)

Dopamine detox is that basically like don't use your phone or don't look at your phone. Okay.

Skye Waterson (14:39)

Just like don't have a phone.

Don't have a phone. mean, the most extreme example is like, you know, wake up, no phone, no music in silence, have a cold shower, you know, go outside and you know, that kind of thing. It's, you know, sort of aesthetic kind of way of doing things. I disagree with that for ADHD for a very specific reason. And that is because

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:57)

Okay.

Skye Waterson (15:04)

What we're looking at when we look at the neuroscience of ADHD, and this is not locked in neuroscientists are still figuring a lot of this stuff out, is that we seem to be operating at a lower level of dopamine, which means when we start something and you have it, when you're neurotypical, so you don't have ADHD and you start something, your brain kind of gives you a thumbs up like, yeah, you're going to get a reward. This is awesome. Like we know that. we're giving you the chemicals, make you feel good. When we have ADHD, there seems to be a bit of a gap there.

where our brain just looks at us and goes, what the heck are we doing? This sucks. And so when you just remove dopamine in that way, you're actually just putting yourself in a position where you're either going to be very unhappy or you're going to just continually break your own rules and feel bad about it. So I have an alternative that I've developed, which I can share if you'd like.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:00)

sure I will with an intro like that. Now I'm just curious like OK, are really so little. don't know if we want to sidetrack from all the myths, but I mean you can't toss something out like that and not finish. Come on, what do you got?

Skye Waterson (16:04)

Yeah.

Yeah, so basically I talk about the dopamine dial. And so what that is, is it's just the idea of going, okay, let's see where you're at in terms of the distractions that you have right now. And then let's just dial it down rather than turn it off. So it's like dial, not switch that concept. So if you're the person who's always getting distracted by your phone notifications, could we turn those off and maybe listen to something instead of watching something?

Like kind of like, then from there, like maybe from there we could say, let's just go to music. Let's just turn it off, like bringing the levels down so that it doesn't feel as horrible. A lot of what I do with ADHD is about reducing that bad feeling of just going from dopamine to no dopamine.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:59)

I see I'm drawing a parallel in my head here with the phrase that I use a lot is the there's three types of people in the world. There's the people who make it happen. The people who watch it happen and the people who wonder what happened. And so I feel like in specifically for notifications on your phone, your phone is the one who is making it happen. You're watching it happen. You're like, here's this. And then here's this. And I want to put you back in the let's make it happen.

Skye Waterson (17:12)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:28)

department where you decide. So like, yes, if you want to check your phone, awesome, do it. Or like I have a, have an article that I did that still gets a lot of people just stumble across this article. Cause I guess people must be Googling it or something, but they, there's an article that I did on how to, little tech hacks that you can use to help avoid the never ending rabbit hole of social media where we can get rid of, like I use an app that lets you get rid of the newsfeed so that when you go in there, yeah.

Skye Waterson (17:29)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:58)

Oh my gosh, it's been a game changer because now I go in there and I don't have the never ending scroll. It's not even on the screen, but I can go in, check the messages, check the notifications. You can respond to them. You can use social media exactly the same way, just without the newsfeed. And so something like that where you're back in the I feel like when you're talking about dopamine dial and to me, I think of it as getting back in the driver's seat on. OK, this is what I want right now, not what.

Skye Waterson (18:00)

So good.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:26)

something else has decided I should get my attention.

Skye Waterson (18:29)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And agree long term, I want the same thing, helping you focus, helping you, you know, do it. I just want to make it do it in a doable way.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:40)

I feel like that's a that's a tagline for website somewhere. Skye do it in a doable way. Let's say yes, I love it. Alright, so then let's alright. So myth busting now I'm what I'm going to do is basically share. I've got things that I've heard people say overtime about ADHD and so then you tell tell me tell us is it True or not true and comment on it. So the first one is.

Skye Waterson (18:44)

Yeah, probably.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:07)

Medication is the only way to manage ADHD at work.

Skye Waterson (19:12)

Yeah, that's not true. No. So a couple of reasons. First of all, will say medication can be a helpful thing. I have seen a lot of people really benefit from medication, but it's a journey. I've also seen a lot of people go on medication and then find themselves in a position where the medication wasn't as good as it was before.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:13)

Not true. Say more.

Skye Waterson (19:34)

I've seen people lose access to that medication because the system stopped giving it to them in different ways. That's the fun thing. I've seen people have hormonal shifts that mean the medication isn't working anymore. And I've seen people just really not benefit from it. I don't take medication. People often ask me, I don't take medication because I want to be as ADHD as possible because I want to figure out a bunch of strategies. So that's why I'm out here just doing it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:04)

Is that true? You do that? there you go. You're that person out there like, look at me! I got it!

Skye Waterson (20:04)

Yeah, it's

like, yeah, the natural version. But I think medication is really helpful. So, no, there's tons of other strategies. Some of them for other people work better. They work in tandem. Sometimes you'll have a period of your life where you especially were talking about like perimenopause, things like that. Women talk about that much more now.

where medication just won't seem to be working anymore. So having the strategies is useful. You want to have both. And sometimes the government will just take away the medication because they don't have it anymore. So it's always good to have something else.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:45)

Yeah,

government or insurance for that matter, you change the parents and all of a sudden it's not covered and it goes from $40 for a month to like 500 and then you that's not going to work. Yeah, totally.

Skye Waterson (20:48)

Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. And

they all work. They all work and they all work well together.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (21:01)

And so when we're talking about that was medication is the only way to manage ADHD. So instead you're talking about some of the other tactics and strategies that you teach or that I teach or like those kinds of productivity things that help you.

Skye Waterson (21:12)

Yeah. Or exercise

or movement, things like that as well. You know, I would say if you wanted to get an answer to that, it would be like, there are a toolbox of things that support ADHD and having a toolbox available to you is the best way to manage your ADHD.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (21:31)

I love that I'm thinking about the the scene or the moment in your life where there is a looming deadline for something at work and you've got to get it done. So what do you do to get into work mode to get that thing done? You started this long time ago in school. It was the paper is due tomorrow. You have 12 hours to submit, so like you have to. It's not an option anymore. So then what? What do you do? Do you know? Do you have the tools like I absolutely have?

Skye Waterson (21:40)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

yeah, I know exactly what you

do.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (22:00)

Sky has tools,

but my question for you listening is, do you have those tools and what are they? Many people have one tool and what we're talking about here is, especially for folks who might struggle with focus, you might need more than one tool. Like maybe there should be three or four so you could try one and then try another or put them together like I hey, I Sky I want maybe I'll put you on the spot. You could share one. Here's one of mine. Might I have my turbo focus mode when I really I gotta dial it in like it's gotta be now.

Skye Waterson (22:29)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (22:30)

There's no I got

right now. have to get all these things done before the end of the day. Let's go. I use focus music and I'll drop the link to the article I wrote on this in the notes to this episode. But ultimately, what it is is there's a certain type of music where it changes every there's a there's a bunch of studies that were done on the amount of time that you can focus. And it's generally from like one to three minutes. And then your brain kind of wants a little shift or something.

And so what they've done is they have music that is created so that it is the same continuous, repetitive beat for the appropriate amount of time. Thirty seconds to a minute. It changes its actual music. It's not like weird techno stuff. It's actually like good music that you can listen to. They have it in all different genres. They do it in classical. They do it in house. They do it in rock. But it's the same. And then it changes. And so it allows you.

to what the research says and what it does for me. The reason it works so good for me is because I'm a music person. And for me, that little bit of shift every 30 seconds to a minute, the beat changes and then something changes and it allows. It's like a freaking zombie mode like I and I'm so mad that I didn't discover this until I was in my 30s because I really wish I would have had focus music when I was in school. God, that would have been so helpful. But man, put the focus music in the headphones, the noise canceling with the AirPods like I'm dialed in.

It's like I feel like Superman, like all of a sudden it's just I'm dialed in. That's it. So that's one of mine. What's one of your Skye?

Skye Waterson (24:04)

So I teach the step into focus routine and I do everything I teach. So, yeah, see previous note, not medicated. so the, you know, one of the, things that I do is basically going from a high focus space to a low focus state. So you're kind of like, sorry, a high dopamine distraction state to a low dopamine distraction state. So you're kind of up here, you're on your phone. You don't want to do the thing you're on your couch. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. You're scrolling. You're kind of trying to get yourself there.

And then you have the space where you're actually doing the thing. And there's a big gap in the middle of those two things, which is the resistance. People have called it like something's eating their soul. They feel like they have a heavy weight. Like there's a lot of like, and usually what people do is they will wait until the very, very last minute to, you know, get the motivation to push through that thing. What I teach is essentially adding steps in and doing each of those steps to

be like, okay, well, can do the first step. And then when I'm doing the first step, I can do the second step. And so you get to the part where you're focused without having to do that resistance. And your thing is very much part of that. you know, one of the first stings you do is, I recommend with ADHD, give yourself a reward for sitting down at your desk to do the thing. Because so often, you know, we, again, the research, we're not getting it. Yep.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:26)

Sweet.

I want you to do imagine this. So this is you now do a scenario. So this what does this look like? I'm curious. So you got steps. What does it look like? You're going to sit down. You got a deadline looming. Walk us through it. What is that?

Skye Waterson (25:35)

Okay. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay. So what I do is I will grab myself a cup of coffee decaf these days, probably something nice to eat. And I'll sit down and I'll actually watch a YouTube video first because I would never get to my desk otherwise. Different people have different things. Some people want to read an article. Sometimes YouTube is too distracting for them, but something that you will finish pretty quickly.

And then from there, I'll sort of watch it. And then at that point, I'll turn off my notifications and everything that's going to distract me because I'm in a pretty good feeling, pretty good and feeling pretty generous with myself at that point. And then from there, I'll grab a post-it note that I have by my desk and I'll write down exactly what I want to get done during this period of time. Like it's a recipe, like someone else is going to do it and I'm going to leave the room. And

That will give me what I need to actually understand when I get distracted halfway through, which I will where I was at and kind of keep in the zone. At that point, know, YouTube starts to be a bit too distracting. So I will dial it down to like a podcast or maybe straight down to music, depending on how I feel. Your music is a great example. And then, you know, from there, I will open the application and I'll just tinker around in a little bit, write a few headings.

Write some notes, no pressure to get started just yet. But once I've done that, I'm feeling good, I'm not distracted, I know what I need to do, some things down. At that point, inertia kind of goes the other way and I just get started.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:10)

And then you get started. Cool. OK, I like that. It steps. That's funny for me. I just jump right in deep end headphones in like no force it to make it happen. And I like that is a very different approach, which is, yeah, let's step into it. And, know, it's OK if you've got to do it by the end of the day, taking five minutes to ease into it versus like, no, now like totally.

Skye Waterson (27:18)

Mm hmm. It's gonna happen.

You

know, person listening, you know how long you procrastinated on that. It might've been days. So 20 minutes is not that big of a deal.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:43)

Right, true story. The deadline doesn't change either when you have to have it done by isn't going to end either is change either. So yes, I the that's interesting. Thanks for that, Sky. That's cool. OK, all right. So rewinding, we were talking about myth busting. The first one was that medication is the only way to manage ADHD at work. Here's the next one. I need to watch TV while I'm working to help me focus. Myth or not myth?

Skye Waterson (27:48)

No.

It's all good.

Sometimes it depends. sometimes you're lying to yourself, but sometimes it's helpful. if we go back to that dial idea, right? Sometimes you need to have some form of low level stimulation on in order to focus. Like that is true, especially with ADHD. Like silence can actually be quite loud. know, things happening, it can be quite like, what is that noise? What's going on? My fridge is really loud. Who knew?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:13)

Okay, say more.

Skye Waterson (28:40)

so that can happen. Background noise can be good, but you and I both know that sometimes there is that background noise that you're convincing yourself is helpful, but it's actually super distracting and actually getting anything done feels like you're kind of wading through a pile of distraction to get to it. So if that's you, you might want to dial it down to some music or something.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:02)

So is that I'm thinking of two things as we're talking about this one would be if you have the TV on, that's one thing, but the TV cannot be in your line of sight. Meaning if you OK, if it's if you're trying to actually be productive, then you shouldn't be able to see the screen because if you see the screen, you're just going to turn and you're going to watch it and you're not actually going to work. You're just going to be distracted. So is it having friends on in the background where like the TV show Friends or something where you already know the words and it's back there, but you're not actually watching it? Or does that matter?

Skye Waterson (29:24)

Hmm.

Yeah, I don't necessarily agree. You have to have it hidden. You can have it viewable. you will naturally look at something and it could add a little bit of visual stimulation to help you stay engaged. But the most important thing is the fact that it has to be something you don't care about. You're not going to pay attention to like the news is a terrible version of this. friends that you've watched a million times is probably a better example. but if you catch yourself just kind of staring at it and watching the episode, and then when the episode ends,

going back to work, then you've probably dialed up too much. You need to dial it down.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:07)

And the other thing that comes to mind for me is words versus no words in music. So the, the turbo music that I talked about, it does not have words. And that's important because when you think about your focus, we are an auditory society and that you hear and you process things. Many people are auditory learners. Some people are visual learners. Everybody's a little different, but for the most part, we communicate ever since we were a kid, we've communicated through words and through listening to words. So,

Skye Waterson (30:13)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:36)

By having no lyrics, no words in the music, it allows you to focus in a little more because you're not processing. There's not a part of your brain that's processing the words that are coming in. You don't have to comprehend what friends is saying in the background when it's on the TV, because there are no other words. So the only words you're hearing are your own as you're thinking through whatever the problem is you're working through. is that but but is that.

Skye Waterson (30:44)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Uh huh. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (31:04)

different for that's still true for folks with ADHD or it's a little different. What are your thoughts?

Skye Waterson (31:11)

It gets really personal. that's when I work with people, we will build out a dial that fits them. And some people tell me it's got to be nothing. It can't even be music. has to be like white noise. And some people say there has to be something. And so, you know, it might be something like, just like coffee shop background noises is helpful for people. Like there's words, but they're not important, but there's that feeling of being in community. Sometimes that can be the case. So I would say there's no.

There's no research that indicates one or the other is better that I have found specifically, at least for ADHD people. It's more of an experimentation process, which is what I recommend always is like experimentation and then like figuring out what's working for you based on that experimentation.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (31:58)

Got it. Okay, that's really helpful. All right, so now onto the next one then. I heard people say, or somebody I've heard said, people with ADHD can't be detail oriented. Myth or truth?

Skye Waterson (32:14)

Myths sometimes. one thing is that if you have combined ADHD and autism, that's obviously a different thing. And that can happen a lot. But also people with ADHD can be really detail-oriented about their focus of interest. So sometimes, you know, if you've ever seen an ADHD person plan out their day when they're really hyper-focused on doing so,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:16)

Sometimes.

Skye Waterson (32:41)

they might have put every single thing that's gonna happen that day in the calendar. And they can be super detail orientated about it. And sometimes if they've set up a plan and you try and go and change the plan because you have executive functioning ability to do that, they can be super resistant to changing the plan. Cause they're like, no, I have to do it like this in this order or else I have to rethink the whole thing. This is something I teach people to do how to build more flexible systems. But if you don't have those, you can get quite focused.

I've never met anyone with ADHD who's detail-oriented, oriented across everything. That's what I would say.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:21)

Got it. Okay. So it kind of depends. Okay, here's another one. Someone with ADHD can't handle leadership roles.

Skye Waterson (33:32)

Your boss probably has ADHD. More likely than you. Your CEO almost definitely has ADHD.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:42)

And what? So, say more on this. Why? Why that? Is it just because since they've never fit into anybody else's mold, they make it all the way to the top so that they don't have to fit in anybody mold? They make the mold like what is that? Say more.

Skye Waterson (33:56)

can be a little bit of that. I mean, I think it's funny because when I work with business owners, they all have it. It's gotten to the point where I'm just like, I could just say I work with business owners and then that would be, yeah, I wouldn't even need to say the ADHD part. And then occasionally someone would say, by the way, I don't have ADHD. And I'd be like, that's so interesting. Because that can be how it works. But it's because of the strengths of ADHD. So when we look at the research, creative problem solving, creative thinking,

The ability to move, to move fast, to make decisions combined with, like you said, the inability to work a job. Like if you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners, they'll be like, yeah, I would not be able to do your job. That can all put you in a space where you really have almost no choice but to try and go for those top spots.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:44)

Got it. Or you work for yourself because you can't work in for anybody else. You can't focus for. That's an interesting, interesting observation that there might be more folks with ADHD in the entrepreneurship realm. That's a ooh, I never made that connection in my head. That's an interesting one. OK.

Skye Waterson (34:47)

Yeah, exactly.

changes the game,

that's why I'm so passionate about it, right? You start to rethink the whole thing.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:08)

Now there's a lot of super successful like so the phrase was someone with ADHD can't handle leadership roles, but they are in leadership roles. So clearly they can handle leadership roles. It's just a question, I guess, of how gracefully and how well they handle it and how successful that business ultimately is, is probably a functional.

Skye Waterson (35:30)

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, everybody has had terrible bosses, right? Terrible, you know, entrepreneur and some entrepreneurs really don't succeed because they don't know how to handle people. If you're going to go from, you know, that 300,000 to a million space, you're going to need to learn how to work with people. You know, if you're under 300, you can kind of white knuckle it yourself, but post that you need a team. So at that point, you're really looking at, yeah, those leadership skills. And a lot of what I do is I help

simplify the scorecards and those kinds of systems and help people empower people to work through them because that's a really important part of it. But I would say with ADHD leadership, it's kind of a skill like everything else. I people with ADHD are more likely to be quick to feelings, happiness, anger, all of them. And that is a straw. And you'll probably find that there's a ton of entrepreneurs out there who have a very

specific kind of rituals and systems that they've put in place to manage their day. And that's part of the reason.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:36)

You know, that's funny as you think about some of the. This just happened to me the other day. I was I'm in Florida and I have a in our condo. We have a we had our ducks cleaned and the person who came in told me that when we were paying the bill we were settling up at the end. They said, well, there is a 3 % charge for credit card and I I personally can't stand it when that

Skye Waterson (37:02)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:06)

It's like, look, if you want my money, you need to take it however I want to give it to you. Like, come on now. Don't. All right. Three percent. That's then you write it in, raise the cost by three percent and just let me pay with credit card if you want to. But don't don't do that. But they still do. And I just wrote that off as, you know, some people being old and not understanding technology because they also could have accepted Zell with no fee. So the whole concept of a credit card being a fee. Well, you also could have Zell Venmo. There's ways for me to transfer you cash.

that doesn't cost anything. But what's funny is I just thought this is I pictured the person in my head that I pictured. this person must be one of those old people who should have retired years ago, but now they just do it the way that they've always done it. And now we're saying this and I'm going, or maybe they have ADHD and the way that they do it is the way that they do it and don't change it because then I'd have to rethink it and I don't want to.

Like that's a.

Skye Waterson (38:05)

Yeah, or maybe

that's a detail that they haven't, you know, sometimes when we are ADHD entrepreneurs, really need an EA or a director to help us like spot those little details that really annoy the customers. And if you don't have that kind of support, you can miss those things.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:23)

True. Good deal. OK, I had one more one more for you. This is a myth. So is it a myth or not? Hyper focus is a superpower of people with ADHD.

Skye Waterson (38:40)

No, it's not a superpower if you don't know how to use it. So if you don't know how to use it and the yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:42)

Okay.

Can you now rewind for people who

don't know we said hyper focus talk about context of what is hyper focus? What do we mean by that with people with ADHD?

Skye Waterson (39:01)

So hyper focus is the concept that you will get really locked into something and you will do it for hours. So once you're in, you're kind of locked in and you know, especially if it's something that's interesting to you with ADHD, you can go from not working on something to building an entire website, which I've totally done in like 24 hours, you know, building an entire website and a whole thing and just like starting a business in 24 hours or building out a new product launch.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (39:29)

Mm-hmm.

Skye Waterson (39:29)

And

you have, once you're in, it's like almost as if you're working memory and everything is online and you're like rushing to do it all before you lose the enthusiasm basically.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (39:40)

Got it. And so so the phrase was hyper focus is a superpower of people with ADHD and you said no. So now say more on that.

Skye Waterson (39:49)

So I said, I said, no, if you don't have the strategies to manage it basically, because hyper focus on its own can be really destructive. can be like, I didn't get the work that I needed to do done, but I deep dived into this new hobby that I bought $300 worth of product for, and now I'm busy crocheting a hat. You know, like that can be a day in the life of ADHD and hyper focus. So if you.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:11)

Right.

Skye Waterson (40:16)

If you channel it in the right direction towards the thing that you are actually going to do, then that works. And if you know how to step out of focus, so we talked about stepping into focus, how to step out of focus so that you don't do this thing for six hours and burn out and need a day off tomorrow to recover, then that is also doable. But unless you have those two things, you're just kind of in a world of like, what's going to take me over next? And I have no idea.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:45)

Yeah. So is there a way to... You talked about the tools. there a way, like what's a preview? What do you mean by a tool that will help you control it?

Skye Waterson (40:58)

Yeah. So the first thing I will say is that hyper-focus really is mostly for things that you're interested in. So if you're like, I'm going to hyper-focus on my really boring job, the chances are that's going to be pretty difficult. In that case, you're probably trying to like keep the hyper-focus to the weekends. If you have a job that you're interested in and you'll tend to hyper-focus on parts of it, then the problem becomes the opposite. And that's about how to stop. So the step into focus routine I taught you before, you just do that backwards.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:22)

Yeah.

Skye Waterson (41:27)

So you just go from like working on something to kind of writing notes and tinkering around like this is I'm gonna do next. Like giving yourself that working memory support. Then you like turn on music and on TV and on notifications, you write about what you've done and what you're gonna do next. And then you take a break. So you're kind of going up the stairs.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:49)

Got it instead of coming down. Okay, that makes sense. Now what work, that was my last one on the miss. So now I'm just curious in general, what are your, what recommendations do you offer someone with ADHD to be more productive?

Skye Waterson (42:04)

That's a great question. So I work on like a couple of different things. So most people who come to me, they're struggling with overwhelm, stuck or inconsistent. I don't know where to start. Even if I know where to start, I don't know how to start. And if I do know how to start, I don't know how to do it consistently. So what I teach is I support around, you know, the prioritization filter, which like I said, you can DM me on Instagram and I'll just give that one to you.

how to make really good decisions, how to step into focus, how to actually get started, which is what we talked about, organization, then ADHD dopamine. And this is a little bit different. You know, I haven't seen this one around, but essentially looking at like what, you know, think about your five senses. Like what are all the different sensory things, touch, taste, smell.

site, you sometimes we think about ourselves as overstimulated, but we can be under stimulated across all of our senses. And what can we do to increase the sensory stimulation in your workspace specifically? And how do we stack that to kind of be like, it's not that bad. There's like a plant and some music and there's like, you know, pretty things to look at and eat and stuff, you know, things like that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:19)

And now what would you also tell? So what would you tell their coworkers? Who here this advice like what? What basically? Would you tell their coworkers to share this advice or like this episode or that with them? Or if not, then what would you tell them to share? Like is it a if you work with somebody who has a hard time focusing, it's kind of hard to say.

Skye Waterson (43:26)

I'm sorry about the plant.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:48)

You know, I think you might have ADHD. You should listen to this like that. That doesn't come across well. So what advice do you give to the coworkers or the managers or that are that are noticing or seeing this stuff?

Skye Waterson (43:51)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No.

This is a great question. actually worked with New Zealand's intelligence agency to help them with this exact problem because they came to me because they were like, why everybody in our intelligence agency has ADHD. What do we do? And, know, the biggest thing is really what I, what I would expect you would do for everyone, which is how do you work best and how can I help you do that? So asking them those two questions and then trying to figure out how to help them.

with the answer to those questions.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (44:31)

So even a brainstorming session on helping them understand like, okay, well, like we were talking about your tool belt of if you need to dial in and be productive, what do you do? What are the tools in your tool belt? Do you, you know, is it music? Is it focused music? Is it dialing it stepping in? Like you talked about, is it, do they have three or four tools? If they don't, can you help them find some share some of yours? But that's a way to sort of like hint at it. And maybe you can share that some of those tools.

Skye Waterson (44:47)

Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (45:01)

do come from tools that help people with ADHD, but you're not telling them that they have a problem. You're just sharing solutions. And it's like that kind of thing.

Skye Waterson (45:09)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't even necessarily say that they have ADHD. I make it a rule not to diagnose anybody and I literally do this. But because sometimes they could have had head trauma and you don't know, so it could be other things as well. But number one thing is I ask them how they're gonna work, how they work best because when I'm working with ADHD clients and they're not comfortable disclosing,

Then I recommend that they say that this is how I work best. work best in this environment with this kind of deadline, with this kind of support. And then they can go, well, I want you to work best. Like I want you to do your best in this environment. So let's help you with that. And then nobody has to have that conversation unless they want to have it. because it's a long journey to get ADHD diagnosed. And you might say that they, think they have ADHD and then they get diagnosed and they're

you know, psychiatrists says they don't and maybe the psychiatrist is even wrong, but they just don't like diagnosing people with ADHD. Like you go down a whole journey. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (46:15)

Right. Yeah,

yeah. OK, that makes sense. Now, what does this mean for you personally, Skye? Like this is a I mean, you suffer from it. That makes sense. But what is it that a lot of people go through life and never tell people about this and they try to minimize it as not a part of my life? And instead you dove in the deep end and like are all about it. So like what talk about what the thing for you.

Skye Waterson (46:31)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I mean, my vision, my goal is to build a program, which I've already built that has, you know, that supports so many business owners with ADHD who then go on to be public about it, that they have to reorganize the whole diagnostic process.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (47:04)

Wow, OK, reorganize how? that's a that's a lot.

Skye Waterson (47:06)

So that's what I mean by that is

like the DSM is what they use to diagnose people and every couple of years the DSM gets updated. So changes get made to the DSM and what, you know, the diagnostic and statistical manual. So when your psychiatrist diagnoses you, they, I mean, they don't really, there's no internet now, but they'd open like a big book and like look through it. And yeah, that's kind of the old school. Yeah. And so that's where the like,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (47:17)

DSM would have said.

right? What are all the things? Okay, got it. Yeah, yeah.

Skye Waterson (47:33)

the Bible of what it looks like to be ADHD and theoretically they're supposed to be using that. And so, you know, what I want to do, like My goal is to help, you know, with Unconventional Organisation to help so many people develop the strategies to support their weaknesses and go and develop their strengths that they have to change how they think about ADHD and what it means. They've done it before and I think they can do it again.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:02)

That's awesome. Well, Skye here, here's what thank you so much for joining me on the show today. Here's what I love. I love that you've taken this passion or this thing that you suffer from or work with or suffer from sounds like the wrong term, but this thing that you deal with and that you have and that it's now become a passion and that you're helping others with it. But really, I love that you have embraced it and love it because oftentimes when we talk about

diseases or things that people struggle with. I'm a perfect example. I'm a diabetic. I don't like talking about diabetes. I don't want to be somebody's superpower diabetes resource. I personally don't like it at all and I don't want to talk about it. So the fact that not only do you have this thing and that you've embraced it and that it is something that you love and are helping others with that. I think that's such a powerful position to come from. And so I just love that you're doing this. Thanks for sharing some of that with us today.

Skye Waterson (49:00)

Thanks, I'm happy to.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (49:02)

And for folks who want to know, you mentioned that if they you said if they message you, if they DM you direct message you on Instagram, you will send it to them. But what are what are the best ways for people to keep in touch with you if they want to keep in touch with you later?

Skye Waterson (49:09)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. So you can find me UnconventionalOrganisation.com. That's my website. So you can find our podcast, the ADHD skills lab, where we go through some of this research, we make it fun, I promise. And we also have articles. And if you want to talk to me and ask me, you know, workbooks, et cetera, best way to do that is through Instagram at unconventional organisation with an S. And I do have a coaching program. Like I said, I help entrepreneurs with ADHD.

I build a focused balanced growth blueprint for them and, we work through it together. in order to sort of apply for that, you have to reach out to me or fill out a form on the, and we'll see if you're a good fit.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (49:56)

And for all that stuff she's talking about, I'm going to go through that website, find those links. And if you check your show notes right now, it'll be linked right there so that you can check out some of these things that Skye's talking about. So, and for you tuning in, for you listening, do you have a friend or colleague who either suffers from ADHD or somebody that you've laughed about it with or talked about it with, or that shared conversations with ADHD about, would you share? Here's my request. Would you share?

the link to this episode specifically with them, send them a text, not a message, not an email, but a text to their phone. Because I know that Sky and I would love to know that our conversation today touched people that are facing ADHD and that the few text messages back and forth. That means so much more than posting on social media. Social media is a bunch of distractions anyway. So if you text them and then you get to chat with them and catch up and like that.

Skye Waterson (50:44)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (50:50)

somebody who comes to mind that you might not have talked to in a bit. If you'll share this episode with him, I think that it'd be fun for you and it would be wonderful for Skye and I. whether you've jumped in and joined my membership already or you've taken the first step of just joining my email list, or maybe this is your very first episode listening to productivity gladiator. Regardless, I love sharing Productivity Gladiator with you because together these productivity skills are going to change your life. That's a wrap.

Project Management Hacks, Skills & Tools You Can’t Get From Software or AI - With Bonnie Biafore

In this engaging episode, project management expert Bonnie Biafore shares invaluable insights about the human skills and techniques that software and AI simply can't replace. She reveals her top "non-tech hacks" for successful project management, including smart approaches to estimating, cost management, and running effective meetings. Whether you're a seasoned project manager or just starting out, you'll learn practical strategies for leading teams, negotiating outcomes, and organizing information that will make you more effective in any project role.

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The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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References In This Episode

• The Eisenhower Matrix video (mentioned when discussing time management and prioritization)

• Book by the FBI hostage negotiator - "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss

• Ways to connect with Bonnie Biafore:

  • LinkedIn profile

  • Newsletter

  • bonniebiafore.com

• The Project Management Institute (PMI) Rocky Mountain Chapter

• Information about Toastmasters

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Episode Digest

In a world dominated by project management tools and AI, it’s easy to forget that the true magic of project management lies in human skills.

In an era where AI and project management software dominate conversations about productivity, it's crucial to remember that successful project management still hinges on human skills and expertise that technology cannot replicate. Here's a comprehensive look at the essential human elements that make project managers effective, regardless of the tools they use.

"The value of project management isn't in the tools—it’s in the people managing the projects."

The Limitations of Project Management Software

Even the most sophisticated project management tools and AI have significant limitations. Three key areas where software falls short:

Estimating Complexity

• While AI can provide estimates based on historical data, it can't account for the unique challenges of each project, team dynamics, and contextual factors that experienced project managers understand intuitively. The human ability to consider multiple variables and draw from past experiences remains invaluable.

Cost Management Nuances

• Software excels at tracking time and materials but struggles with complex cost factors like delays, market impact, or reputation costs. Project management tools typically can't handle varied cost types like fixed-price contracts, training, travel, or timing-dependent expenses.

Resource Allocation Reality

• Tools struggle to account for the real-world complexity of resource management - from vacation schedules to part-time availability and competing project priorities. Even advanced software like Microsoft Project can't fully optimize resource allocation across these various constraints.

Essential Human Skills for Project Managers

Here are the critical skills that set successful project managers apart:

1. Communication Mastery

• Adapt communication style for different audiences

• Learn individual preferences for communication

• Practice active listening

• Understand when and how to share information effectively

"Communication isn't just you puking up information into your audiences. It's about listening and learning how to listen well."

2. Time Management

• Differentiate between urgency and importance

• Block time for strategic thinking

• Master prioritization

• Learn to manage competing demands

3. Negotiation Skills

Key Insight: Negotiation isn't always about compromise. Sometimes you need to:

• Find what's important to others that doesn't matter to you

• Look for win-win scenarios

• Know when to stand firm on non-negotiable items

• Build relationships through strategic give-and-take

4. Information Organization

• Develop systematic approaches to managing large amounts of data

• Create logical naming conventions for files and folders

• Structure information for easy retrieval

• Balance both art and science in organization methods

"Even on a small project, you will end up having a lot of information. And then if you get on a really big project, it's ridiculous how much information there is."

5. Meeting Management

Critical Practice: Run efficient meetings by:

• Inviting only essential participants

• Managing costs by limiting unnecessary attendance

• Using a "parking lot" for off-topic discussions

• Capturing and assigning action items

• Taking detailed discussions "offline"

6. Leadership and Problem-Solving

• Develop creative thinking for unique solutions

• Build trust with team members

• Learn to delegate effectively

• Practice public speaking skills

Practical Project Management Hacks

• Smart Estimation Technique: Instead of asking for single estimates, to provide a more realistic range and helps account for uncertainty, request three numbers:

  • Optimistic scenario

  • Pessimistic scenario

  • Most likely scenario

• Buffer Management: Rather than allowing individual padding of estimates, create shared buffers at the end of task sequences. This encourages more accurate individual estimates while still protecting the project timeline.

"If you run a meeting well, people will love you and you will be able to get a lot more done in your projects."

• Task Ownership: Assign every task to a specific person, not a team or group. Use a responsibility matrix (RACI) to clarify:

• Who is Responsible

• Who is Accountable

• Who needs to be Consulted

• Who needs to be Informed

Getting Started or Improving Your Skills

For those looking to develop project management skills:

• Assess Your Skills: Review each skill mentioned above and honestly evaluate your proficiency. If it's not a "hell yes," it's an area for improvement.

• Gain Experience: Volunteer with nonprofits to practice project management skills. This provides:

  • Real-world experience

  • Opportunity to make and learn from mistakes

  • Practice in delegation (since you'll likely be balancing with other commitments)

  • Concrete examples for your portfolio

• Continuous Learning: Take advantage of:

• Professional organizations like PMI

• LinkedIn Learning courses

• Toastmasters for public speaking

• Industry conferences and symposiums

The most successful project managers combine technical knowledge with these essential human skills. While software and AI can handle many tactical aspects of project management, the strategic thinking, relationship building, and complex problem-solving abilities of human project managers remain irreplaceable.

Remember: Project management isn't just about tracking tasks and timelines - it's about leading people, solving problems creatively, and delivering results through effective team collaboration. Focus on developing these human skills alongside technical proficiency for maximum impact in your project management role.

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Project Management Hacks

02:28 The Unique Perspective of Bonnie Biafore

04:33 Limitations of Software and AI in Project Management

06:53 Estimating and Cost Management Challenges

08:57 Scheduling and Resource Allocation Issues

11:44 The Importance of People Skills in Project Management

13:48 Non-Tech Hacks for Effective Project Management

15:15 Training New Project Managers: Essential Human Skills

25:32 Mastering Time Management

27:01 The Art of Negotiation

30:25 Organizing Information Effectively

31:44 Running Effective Meetings

35:05 Leadership and Problem Solving

38:09 The Importance of Delegation

39:44 Passion for Project Management

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Today’s Guest

Bonnie biafore

LinkedIn Learning Author &
Consultant on Project Management

Bonnie Biafore is a seasoned project management expert, consultant, and LinkedIn Learning instructor with a passion for making complex concepts relatable. With over 35 years of experience, she has authored more than 35 technical books, including bestsellers on project management and financial software. Bonnie has helped businesses large and small streamline processes, improve team dynamics, and achieve project success. Her engaging teaching style and real-world insights make her a sought-after speaker and educator in the field.

Connect with her at:
linkedin.com/in/bonniebiafore
bonniebiafore.com

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Why Subscribe To The Email List: Brian shares separate hacks, tips, and actionable learning exclusively for his email subscribers. Sign up so you don’t miss out!

About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. After spending a career hands-on in the trenches as a leader at all levels, I now help others to level-up through my Productivity Gladiator training. Graduates wield time management & life balance superpowers, activate a laser-guided ability to focus & prioritize, and implement a sniper-precise approach to task & email management. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat!

Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.

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Transcript

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:06)

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer on this show. share personal, practical, productivity skills. And in this episode, we're talking about project management hacks, skills and tools you can't get from software or AI. And with me on the show today is Bonnie Biafore, who's a LinkedIn learning author and a consultant on project management. Bonnie, thanks so much for being here with

Bonnie Biafore (00:29)

Well, Brian, thanks for inviting me. This is going to be fun.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:33)

Absolutely.

And now, you know, so we're about to talk about project management skills and hacks and that kind of stuff. So for those folks who aren't already familiar with you, tell them about you and how you're related to this topic.

Bonnie Biafore (00:43)

Well, so I was actually like born to be a project manager. You know, from a very early age, I was organizing things.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:49)

What was that? Really? yeah.

Bonnie Biafore (00:53)

drove my mother crazy. But what's interesting is I ended up going to college and grad school and had a master's in engineering and started working as an engineer and just did not like it. And just by chance, I got the opportunity to manage a project.

And of course, I knew nothing about project management, so I learned a lot by making mistakes. But I ended up, I mean, it just, came very naturally to me. And then over the years, it's, you know, the great thing about project management here,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:23)

huh.

Bonnie Biafore (01:32)

I get bored very easily. So the thing that I love about project management is one, I'm good at it, but two, every project is different. project management is never boring and there's always something new to learn. So basically if you're a lifelong learner, it's perfect.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:50)

Bonnie, you're preaching to the choir with me Like that's my that's my career also. And so I totally understand that every project is different. And that's kind of what makes it fun for me is like now you're working on this and then you're working on this. And so it keeps it interesting. I love that. That's a really good point. Now, for those, there's a lot of. ahead.

Bonnie Biafore (01:59)

It's.

And the

other thing I was going to say is, you know, I use project management, you know, in my life all the time. mean, it's, know, whether it's, you know, cooking a big dinner for friends or, you know, going on vacation or whatever it is, I am managing that as a project.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:17)

So true. Yeah.

It like happens that you don't even think about it, but you're like, well, then here's the steps to this project and here's how this is going to roll out. Totally Well, now for there's a lot of people out there who talk about project management. So what would you say makes you a little different from everybody else out there that's doing this?

Bonnie Biafore (02:29)

Mm-hmm.

Well, let's see. For one thing, I don't take myself too seriously. I mean, I can be serious, but you know, I used to write technical books and I made them funny because the things I wrote about were very dry. And you're talking about adult learners. So I would

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:49)

Okay, sure.

Bonnie Biafore (03:04)

you know, I actually had people contact me and say, I had to explain why I was laughing reading a book about accounting and bookkeeping. I, yeah, I try to, I try to, I try to make things relatable.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:17)

yeah. Got it. So you don't take yourself too seriously.

Absolutely let's let's jump into our topic then so today we're talking about. Those project management hacks skills and tools can't get from software so just for context when I said software in preparation for this I was thinking OK it's sought project management software and AI so I was thinking about you're not going to get these things from.

Asana or Trello or Microsoft Project or the AI ones like chat GPT or any of those. Now are there other ones that came to mind for you when I said project management software and AI?

Bonnie Biafore (03:57)

Yeah, well, for project management software, there are a lot of tools out there, particularly the lighter weight tools, which honestly, I think are more for work management than project management. But they're out there like Trello, Basecamp.

I use Basecamp just to keep track of all of my to-dos, my infinite to-do list. But, you know, other ones that are kind of at the middle level, which are probably worth, you know, talking about, we've got monday.com, Wrike, and Smartsheet is...

is interesting because it's, it's, it really is like a super smart spreadsheet, but they've added a lot of things to it. So like those, those three, you know, when I, cause I've evaluated a lot of tools and they're, you know, they're pretty good. And when you get to that high end, like you said, Microsoft, you know, particularly if you're going to go to project online,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:49)

So.

Bonnie Biafore (04:57)

If you have lots of projects and if you have very complicated projects, then Project Online and Primavera can handle a lot. However, they often require a knowledgeable consultant to get them set up. I have people, it's like I work with Project Online, but...

Brian Nelson-Palmer (05:15)

big time. Yeah.

Bonnie Biafore (05:22)

I could not set it up for somebody. It's just, it's very complicated and primavera as well.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (05:28)

So let me ask you this, Bonnie, Like even with the advanced software and AI that's available, what can't they do?

Bonnie Biafore (05:31)

Yeah.

Well, there are a couple of things. The first one I will mention is estimating. And the thing about estimating is you can actually get that from, particularly from the AI side.

However, there's a lot of estimating given again that every project is different. Every project has a different team, has different challenges. That's where having just having that je ne sais quoi of knowledge in people's heads of, you know, given

Brian Nelson-Palmer (05:54)

Yeah.

Bonnie Biafore (06:07)

Given what we're looking at or given these constraints or given the people who we have on the project, here is my estimate of what it's going to take. then you can also, for example, one of the estimating tools that I really like is the Delphi method, where you get a bunch of experts together and you say,

know, come up with your estimate and then you share the estimates. You don't share like why, but you just share the estimates amongst the group. And then if somebody, you know, estimated a lower amount, they might start thinking about, why, know, hmm, maybe I forgot. And you do a couple of rounds of that until everyone starts to get, you know, closer.

to the same number. And so, yeah, I mean, in some ways, you could say, oh, well, you know, we could get like three AIs together and, you know, they could do the same thing. But honestly, right now, I would not trust that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:53)

Yeah, they come to a consensus of sorts. They all started at different places. Yeah.

my god, like total side note Bonnie, I have to share this with you. It's so funny that you just said that because I totally do that. And what I think about it like it's it's knowledge by committee in that I inherently don't trust an AI because they like the best metaphor is that my gosh, it was I did a there was a show we were talking about. It's like having an intern. They're really smart.

Bonnie Biafore (07:22)

Yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (07:33)

but like book smart and they're not street smart. So the stuff they say is like, I don't know. So I will feed it to one and then I will copy and paste from one into another and ask, is there anything about this that doesn't make sense? And I will like, so it's almost the Delphi method that you just talked about except using AIs. I totally do that.

Bonnie Biafore (07:33)

Yeah.

So I think that the experience that people have...

in a lot of cases that they really can't explain. They just have this intuition and you know when you think about just the amount of experience that that people have you know even I mean even someone who's 20 years old they've still had 20 years worth of experience and that stuff is just sort of simmering in there and you you just can't get that from from tools.

So that's one thing.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (08:24)

got estimated.

Okay, that's a that's a really good one. What else

Bonnie Biafore (08:27)

The

second thing is cost management. Now, I will start by saying...

my first couple of projects were, you they were very small projects. They were very informal, small, small teams. And, you know, like I didn't, I didn't actually, you know, have to do like a formal risk management plan. And this one project like really didn't have a budget, you know, cause it was just, it was very small. was mostly me. So I just did it. However,

you know, if you're going to, if you're really going to do projects smart, you want to say, okay, what is the goal of the project? What are the outcomes that we want to get from this project? And, you know, is the cost of the project, you know, worth the outcomes? You you have that business case that you need to achieve. So,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:17)

No.

Bonnie Biafore (09:19)

you know, so you're going to have a budget or you're, you're, may be tracking revenue, know, increased revenue, what, what have you. And honestly, like the, all of the software tools really don't do a good job at all on cost management. They don't, they don't have the features to, track the different kinds of costs. I mean, they, they will to some extent, but

You you think about the, just the variations of costs that you can have. And a lot of times it, you're just, you're having to force it to, I mean, I tend to with, with projects, I end up outputting data and using spreadsheets and. You know, outside of the project management tools, because they, really, they just don't handle costs.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:51)

No.

Right. Because the because the time

in the time and materials are the two things that the project management tools can track. Right. Like people's time. How many hours? How many people at what rate they do that? And then they of course have. All right. And now we have to buy these materials or these softwares or these whatever fixed priced things. That's one. But then how do you factor in the price to delay by a month? Because you like then this is going to cause.

Bonnie Biafore (10:34)

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:35)

CNN to pick up the news and then that's going to make you the stock price go down. I mean, like there's like you can't possibly that project manager software can't do that. It's just time and materials. That's what they do.

Bonnie Biafore (10:38)

Yep.

Well, and

yeah, and then there but there there's also there and there are other there are other kinds of costs. I mean, you know, you have things like, you know, travel or the cost of a training class. If you if you have if you're bringing a contractor in on a fixed price contract, and then and then there's also the timing of the costs.

Like when, because they don't, I mean, you're right, with time or with labor, yes, the tools can track when that labor cost occurs. But when you have something like travel, so when do you want to have that appear in the project?

Same thing with the contractor, things like, permits, different things like that. So there are a lot of things that, I know that, for example, some of the tools that I looked at, they wouldn't even handle the labor costs. You would basically just put a cost on a task. That was it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (11:44)

Wow, yes.

Well, hopefully it's. Tens of thousands of this many tens of thousands of dollars in labor costs, but if we go over by a month, then it's going to be way beyond that and you can't subdivide that. Wow, that yeah, it's true. I love that. So estimating. And cost control.

Bonnie Biafore (11:57)

Yeah.

the another one, and I do, I'm not sure I have a funny story about it, but another, another thing that tools don't do a very good job with is even if they offer like Gantt charts for scheduling. So you actually have a Gantt chart and you can, you can create dependencies between tasks. And it's like,

I have a schedule, great. But the tools, when it comes down to, first of all, when you start assigning people to tasks and then they go on vacation or something else happens or there's a delay and then that person isn't available, they can't start until a certain date, there's just, there

or people work different, they don't work full-time, they have varying schedules.

And when you start taking into account all of these different things that happen with the people who work on the project, there just aren't enough features to make that happen. And so the somewhat funny story is, you know, I use Microsoft Project a lot and I have spent hours, probably days, maybe even weeks.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:57)

Yeah.

Bonnie Biafore (13:13)

playing around with the resource allocation tool in Microsoft Project to try to get it to work out when tasks need to occur based on the various constraints in the project. It's like, no matter what I did,

it really just, can't do it because it's very complicated. I think there are probably some software tools out there that...

that people have put together specifically to handle those things. But that ability just does not seem to be available in all the main tools on the market.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:03)

It makes perfect sense that that would the more complicated the the more many different factors there are the more they interplay between each other and even though even AI is good at even understanding some of that scenario, but it can't you know, what's funny is this all circles back to the one note I made for myself going into this episode. The first thing that came to mind for me was all the people stuff. The people stuff is what

Bonnie Biafore (14:27)

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:29)

AI software, none of it can do right. You got you got to deal with all of the people as a project manager. You're dealing with all the different personalities. You talked about hours. You talked about somebody going on vacation. You got this person's part time and they only work on Fridays, which means even if you plan it for a five day period, but they don't get it that Friday, it's going to be a whole nother week because I mean, like the and it's not even that like the person's part time. It might just be you only have access to them for.

Bonnie Biafore (14:35)

Hmm?

Yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:57)

four hours a week because there are other projects too. I would like there's so all those different factors. And that's where the beauty of your brain, you as a human being, you as a really experienced project manager, that's where you deliver. The value is all of the people stuff because they cannot outsource that to software.

This is maybe like a random question, but I want to ask you since you've been in this game for a long time. Bonnie, what's the what are your some of your favorite non tech hacks that you can use to manage projects effectively? What what comes to mind for you?

Bonnie Biafore (15:27)

Okay,

the first thing is if it isn't offered to you, ask for contingency time and money for your project.

And that contingency time and money can be helpful in a lot of different ways. I first of all, when you think about risks, there are risks that you can identify. And if you can identify them, you can plan for them and you can plan how you're going to handle them if they actually occur.

But then there are there are unforeseeable risks. And you, you need contingency to handle these things. Because you can always if you have your risks that you identified and you you put, you actually put some money into the budget and time into the schedule to address those things.

just have it there that you can use. then there's then there are the things that you really can't foresee and that contingency time really comes in handy.

how you choose contingency time. A lot of times companies will, they will have a percentage that they will, you know, allocate based on the budget for the project. And, you know, and if they, if they have something like that, then that, that's what you get unless you have some way to, you know, to convince them otherwise.

The other thing, which is somewhat related to contingency time, but it's a little bit different, is when you have your project schedule and you have all these tasks and you have certain tasks that come in a sequence that leads up to a deliverable and there are all these different parts.

If you ask people to estimate, going back to the estimating, here's a people thing. You will have people who will pad their estimates when they give them to you because they want to have that flexibility. It's human nature. If you want to succeed, you're going to do that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:30)

Sure.

Sure.

Yeah.

Bonnie Biafore (17:36)

The next thing is project managers will pad the estimates that they give to management again to make sure everything goes well and that they in the end look good. so the thing is, first of all, so how do you know whether an estimate is padded and how do you know?

how many levels of padding went into the estimate that finally gets to the person who's going to approve the project. I mean, it's just.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:00)

it.

Bonnie Biafore (18:06)

It's almost impossible. here is my hack.

What you do is you add shared buffers in your schedule. So at the end of a string of tasks, you will have a buffer that can handle things that go wrong, delays and someone getting sick, whatever it is.

But not every task is going to be a disaster. instead of, and if you explain to people, it's like we have a shared buffer. So you don't have to protect yourself in your estimates because we've added these buffers to the sequences. And that way,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:34)

Right.

Bonnie Biafore (18:49)

You know, and I'm not saying it's going to be instantaneous that they're going to feel comfortable, but just working with people and letting them know that that is there. basically, you know, we've got CYA built in. You have a much better chance of having more accurate estimates that are not padded.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:08)

And that's also helpful because then you, you call it out specifically in terms of this is how long that I think it's going to take at the time. And this is the buffer. And so you do differentiate that. So when you're the project manager, you can look at that and know that, and you can share that with higher ups Yeah. that's a, that's a really good point. I like that.

Bonnie Biafore (19:26)

Yeah.

And another related point to that is you also don't ask people for one number.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:37)

Hmm. Yes, three, right? Low, medium, high, right? Give it to him. Yeah.

Bonnie Biafore (19:39)

Yeah, well

it's actually pessimistic, optimistic, and most likely. And the most likely might not be right in the middle. The most likely could be closer to the optimistic or closer to the pessimistic.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:54)

Ooh, I like those words. Yes, you know I love

I like those words so much better pessimistic optimistic and most likely and you're right.

Bonnie Biafore (20:04)

that and that's now there there are some software tools out there that can actually work with you know with that variation because I mean you think about

financial software. mean, whenever I go to like my financial advisor and then they show me the graphs of all the possibilities of what my investments might do. And they're all over the place and projects are the same way. So there is some software that can handle that, for the most part,

what you do is you can use a formula to calculate the number that you want to use based on the pessimistic, optimistic, most likely. And then you add that with your buffers and your contingency to give yourself a chance to succeed.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:54)

No.

Yeah.

You know, Bonnie, I've got one that I'll throw in here too, I think of it as a non tech hack, but one of the biggest mistakes I feel like is tasks get lost in the group, meaning, we have to do this or we have to try this or we have to, so every task has to be assigned to a person.

And you as the project manager hold that one person accountable. Because what happens is this team provided this thing and then you have feedback which goes back to the team and everybody on the team went. I thought you were doing it and it's like no I didn't. sorry. we didn't do it and so instead it's always any of your tasks that you give have somebody's name attached to it and it's their job to lead it. Even if they're not doing it, they're the one that's fielding it or something.

making sure that when you give a task, it's associated with a person. I think that's huge.

Bonnie Biafore (21:49)

I agree with that. going to do a yes and. So in addition, you absolutely need to have an owner for everything. But there is a form in project management called the responsibility matrix.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (21:53)

yes, Ann! Let's do it! Yes, Ann!

Bonnie Biafore (22:09)

What that does is it actually has multiple levels. So you have the person who is accountable for something, which is your owner. But you also have people who will be consulted on this or who will just be informed.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (22:15)

Okay.

Yes.

Bonnie Biafore (22:32)

or

who is responsible. So you'll see it a lot of time as RACI because one of the problems is something gets dropped and that nobody does it. And another problem, which in some cases could be even worse is when you have more than one person who is determined that they are going to be in control of something.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (22:54)

Yes. Yep. And then you got competition on who's actually gosh. Yeah, well, that's a really good point. Well, Bonnie, what's. Let's do what I want to do. This is the one question, and I feel like this is one of the gold parts of this this episode that we can talk about is, let's say you're training a new project manager. What are the human skills or techniques?

that you would prioritize over software skills. so that you listening to this, if any of the things we're about to list, because I've got my little thoughts that I was going to share, and I know Bonnie, you probably got some too. So as we run down this list, if any of these things are weak spots for you, there's going to be opportunities here on finding this, because I think these are the human skills.

Bonnie Biafore (23:29)

Okay.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (23:41)

that you need to be successful, no matter how big or how small your projects are, this is what you bring to the table, regardless of the AI environment that we're in right now. So yeah, go ahead, Bonnie.

Bonnie Biafore (23:51)

Okay, well, I am going to preface this by going back to what I said when I was describing my life as a project manager is project managers need to be able to do a lot of different things. They need a lot of soft skills. They need a lot of technical skills. There are a lot of things that they need to be able to do and

you will be you will be learning throughout your career. So don't don't kick yourself if you're you're going dumb dumb dumb I didn't know how to do that it's it's just it's going to take time. So I actually and I made a I made a list because there are a lot but

The first group is these are things that come up right away and they are super important. So the first one is communication. And that is...

That is not just communicating with people. It's about understanding that you have to communicate differently to different audiences. You need to do background to understand. You also have to have the wisdom to learn people's preferences for

how they are communicated with. It's about listening and learning how to listen well. There's so much and one of the great things about learning to communicate well is

know that's not just for project management but that that applies to everything you do in your life so

that's the first place to start.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:30)

Yeah, this is good. Keep going.

Bonnie Biafore (25:33)

next one is time management.

because there is so much to do. I worked on this one project with a big telephone company. even though I was working for one of the small companies that was part of the project, I had so much to do.

I was working really long weeks and you know, the different time zones. So like I started super early and a lot of times I would work past everyone else was gone. I was the only person in the office.

You have to, you have to be able to, to manage your time. You, you need to understand prioritizing. need to understand the difference between, it's a Stephen Covey thing. It's uh, urgency and importance. There are things that are urgent and they are not important. And so you have to learn.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:32)

Yep.

Bonnie Biafore (26:36)

to not get sucked into those and you need to learn to prioritize and actually put longer periods in your calendar so that you can actually think about the things that are really important but that aren't urgent.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:52)

Yes. Yes,

prioritizing that stuff. it's the Eisenhower matrix, which Covey is is referencing. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I like that, Bonnie.

Bonnie Biafore (26:58)

Mm

Yeah. Another thing is negotiation.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:05)

yes.

Bonnie Biafore (27:06)

because regardless of the size of the project, regardless of how many people are working on it, I work on projects where I am the only person on it and I'm still negotiating with myself, which proves to be very challenging.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:22)

so true.

Bonnie Biafore (27:25)

You will be negotiating with executives. You will be negotiating with vendors, with contractors, with team members. There will always be things to negotiate. so it's worth learning.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:47)

Bonnie, I want to yes and with you on this one, because this was one of mine that I brought to. But the point that I want to make, too, is that there's different kinds of negotiation, right? I feel like sometimes negotiation, if you're coming in from the outside or depending on how much experience you have, negotiating might just seem like, all right, I start here and they start there and then we end up in the middle. And that's like compromise. And when you're a project manager, there are times where there is no compromise. You are negotiating to get your way.

100 % and there is no negotiation, but it's going to feel like a negotiation back and forth. So sometimes you're good meeting in the middle. Sometimes they're wrong and you need to get them around sometimes. So it's like it's negotiating in different. Maybe it's not different forms. That's also there's a little bit of sales and a little bit of selling. You like there's a lot that goes into that. But when we say negotiation, it's just not always meet in the middle. That's not negotiation.

Bonnie Biafore (28:25)

you

Mm-hmm.

And another thing with when you're in those negotiations where it's not compromise, you know, one of the techniques that I really like is that idea of at least attempting

to find something that is important to the other person that you don't care about. So you can you can give them something that they want that really just doesn't affect you at all and and then they'll you know they'll be hopefully more more willing to you know give you something that is important to you. So and it's it's interesting how often that

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:03)

Yes.

Totally.

Bonnie Biafore (29:22)

that really is true because people have different things that they want.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:26)

Yeah, if you show up in your eye when you lose, nobody wants to lose. So then you just turned it into a fight that it didn't need to be.

Look, here's how it's going to work out. Here's the way we want it to work out. And when it does this way, it's going to be good for us for these reasons. It's going to be good for you for these reasons. It's not always a lose. That's a really good point.

Bonnie Biafore (29:45)

Yeah,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:46)

All right, what else you got on that list?

Bonnie Biafore (29:46)

Okay,

so I have two that go into the category of part art, part science. And the first one is organizing lots of information.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:57)

Okay.

Ooh, okay.

Bonnie Biafore (30:04)

Because even on a small project, you will end up having a lot of information. And then if you get on a really big project, it's ridiculous how much information there is. And I'll go down to even a micro level. One of the things, because I did a lot of technical writing, I'm a pretty good writer.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:15)

Totally.

Bonnie Biafore (30:25)

Even getting the points you want to make in an article, like a short magazine article, getting the points you want to make in an order that makes sense can be really challenging for a lot of people.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:41)

Yeah.

Bonnie Biafore (30:41)

Because

if you jump around, it makes it very difficult to understand. So organizing information really applies from the micro to the macro level. And I say it's part art and part science because clearly there are document management systems that can help you. I have these weird

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:47)

area.

Bonnie Biafore (31:07)

little techniques that I use just in terms of naming folders and files to keep things organized. you know, it's always funny when I see how other people name files and it's just like, how can you possibly find what you need? So

Brian Nelson-Palmer (31:15)

Yes.

God, tell me about it.

Bonnie Biafore (31:26)

So that's where the art comes in of just thinking about how you are going to make the information easy to find, easy to understand. And then it's part science because you can use tools and there are all sorts of ways to do that. But that's one of them.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (31:44)

Yeah.

Bonnie Biafore (31:45)

And the second one is, this second one, you will have a fan club if you master this one, and that is to run meetings well.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:03)

OHAHAHA-

Yes, yes, preach sister. Yes, I love it. my God. I'm always saying that man. I teach my number one session right now at conferences. I'm getting booked all over the place for this one and the name of the session is this meeting could have been an email. And like, my gosh, yes meetings. This is my so keep going. I'm sorry I interrupted because I got so excited. No, you're saying yeah.

Bonnie Biafore (32:09)

Because...

Mm-hmm.

Okay, as

a project manager, one of the reasons that running meetings well is particularly important in a project is when you have a task in a project for a meeting, the more people you invite to the meeting, the duration does not change, but the number of work hours and the cost involved

goes up very, very quickly. So you want to make sure that you have the people who need to be at the meeting and they need to be there and no one who doesn't need to be there. That's.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:02)

So and you know, can we just say, Bonnie, if you were working with a contractor or a project manager or someone who is doing this and they are not good about this and you're part of you're on the side of the people that are paying the bill, please be vocal about these people do not need to be here because you're right. If they're making 50, 100, 200, I mean, some of these contracts, if you look at them, 500, 600, 1000, some of these attorneys are making multiple thousands of dollars an hour.

You do not want to pay that person's bill to just sit there if you don't need them in the meeting. So yes, good point. like man. Yes.

Bonnie Biafore (33:40)

And the other thing, the other part of that too is, and I see this all the time and I...

and I'm pretty brutal about this because I just I can't stand it is you know the people who are very passionate about whatever the particular thing is that they're talking about and there ends up being this focused conversation about this topic and there will be you know eight other people sitting there going

And it's like, take it offline. know, do the thing where you have the parking lot on the whiteboard and it's like, okay, this is for you to take it offline. Let us know how it turns out.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:10)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, totally.

Bonnie Biafore (34:22)

And you know, like I've called people on that. I usually don't do it publicly. But after the first time it happens and I know that somebody tends to do that, I just will make sure that it doesn't happen. But yeah, if you run a meeting well, just like people will love you and

you'll be able to get a lot more in your projects if you, you know, one, don't waste people's time, but two, actually make the meetings effective. You know, make sure that, that you've, you've captured all the action items you, and you've gotten owners for those action items. just it goes on and on.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:50)

Yes.

Yes,

totally. My gosh.

Bonnie Biafore (35:05)

And then there are another couple that are very important. I will say some people are naturals at these, other people are just gonna have to work very hard to learn it, practice it. First one is leadership.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:10)

Okay.

Yeah, OK, certainly.

Bonnie Biafore (35:23)

Some people are natural

leaders if you aren't a natural leader It's gonna take a lot of work, but you can learn to lead But it's it you so you know take the time I've

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:34)

Yes, I agree.

Bonnie Biafore (35:40)

You know, when I go to the project management Institute, I, I'm actually, you know, involved with our, our Denver, the Rocky mountain chapter. And so we have this big symposium every year and the keynote speakers, they're not always about leadership, but the ones. The ones that have been about leadership, it's amazing. The, the, the nuggets that you get, just from listening to someone and you're like, yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:04)

Mm-hmm. So, all right.

Bonnie Biafore (36:05)

That's something I can

apply. and then the other one, the other one is problem solving.

Problem solving is, you know, because there are always problems in projects. There's always something that you have to sort out, figure out, like, what are we going to do about this? So.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:22)

Yeah.

What and you know what I by now at this point, so I'm going to have listed these in your show notes and if there's any of these that you don't look at and say confidently, if this is a hell yes or no situation where you look at that thing on that list and you're like hell yes, I'm good at this or. If it's not hell yes, if you're like well, maybe or a little bit. No, that means no, and that's where your opportunity is and take some courses on.

Like I like like Bonnie said, you're not going to this isn't you're not going to be an expert overnight. It's not like you missed this class in college or something. A lot of the stuff is you just haven't had to face it before. And so you learn it. But go down this list that you're looking at. And if any of these things are things you don't have, then look into LinkedIn learning. Obviously, you can find Bonnie on LinkedIn learning so you can take some courses there. They're not super expensive. A lot of the stuff is available online. You can ask chat GPT about it. You can.

Some of these things are good, but also it comes with just practicing it and doing it. So get the education, but then try that experience too. I hope that you dig in.

Bonnie Biafore (37:27)

And the thing with

problem solving that can be challenging is the fact that a lot of times problem solving requires creativity. And if you're not a creative person, that will probably not be one of your...

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:36)

Yes.

Bonnie Biafore (37:41)

you know, really strong skills ever be just because you need to be able to think out of the box a lot of times.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:48)

sure. Well, Bonnie, I've got two that I'm to add and then I got one more question for you. So two that I wanted to add that as I as I was because I had made my list to the couple that come to mind first is public speaking. If you don't already have the skill of public speaking or like it's a hell yes or no. If I ask you, are you good at public speaking? If you don't answer, hell yes. Then practice is real easy. And that's Toastmasters. If you haven't already signed up for Toastmasters.

Bonnie Biafore (38:08)

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:14)

There's they've got something called a competent communicator where you can. It's a certain amount of speeches that you have to give, but it's really just that continuous practice. Everyone that I've watched who has struggled with public speaking, who has consistently done Toastmasters all the way through and gotten, they got like a couple of levels. So go finish a couple of those levels of Toastmasters. That's a real opportunity there because you're going to need it when you're running projects. It's always public speaking. It's going to be a skill.

Bonnie Biafore (38:39)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:40)

I think that one's a big one. And the other one is delegation you cause the project managers that sink are the ones who don't know how to give the task to someone else and then let them do it because there's so much to do. Like Bonnie said, you know how much she was working hours and hours and night, like there's always going to be more to do than you have time to do. So being able to leverage the team and give away the stuff and not keep it for yourself is a skill.

Bonnie Biafore (38:51)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (39:08)

And so if you didn't, if I said delegation and you didn't say, hell yes, I'm good at this, then it's time to practice and it's time to work on that a little bit. And you need to learn the most successful people are the ones that can use a team to accomplish a big thing. And so being able to delegate and work with people that are smarter than you and better than you and get the stuff done like, so good.

Bonnie Biafore (39:23)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (39:30)

So I wanted to share those two and Bonnie, one last question I wanted to ask you is clearly you've got a career in this. What does this mean for you personally? Is there a personal story about why you're passionate about project management and still working in the field all this time and.

Bonnie Biafore (39:45)

Well, you know, in some respects, I mean, I'm passionate about it in part, like I said earlier in the session that, you know, it's...

It's my nature. A lot of the things that you do in a project, they're just things that, like I'm just wired that way. I like the fact that things are always different. even take the example of, know, I worked as an engineer. I was like, well, that wasn't really quite right. Then I started managing projects.

But then, you know, and I did that for quite a while, but then I got into this thing where I started, you know, writing technical books. And, you know, I published like 35 books, and some of them are huge, like they're really

Some of my books are actually more like weapons, you know, than anything, because they're so heavy. And then, you know, I got into consulting and training and then doing the courses for LinkedIn learning. You know, like I have done so many different things, but through, you know, it's just that project management is just, is the theme through everything that I've done. And so now I mostly...

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:39)

Hahaha

Okay.

Bonnie Biafore (41:00)

train. But, you know, people contact me all the time. And every once in a while, they'll, you somebody will have something that sounds interesting, and I will get involved with it. But so it's, it's just, yeah, it's, I just find it, I just find it to be fun, difficult, challenging.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:11)

Okay.

Bonnie Biafore (41:19)

rewarding. And the other thing, the other thing that is really cool is like I actually spend a lot of time volunteering now. And let me tell you, like nonprofits,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:29)

Yeah.

you-

Bonnie Biafore (41:32)

When they find out

that you're a project manager, mean, I'm managing all sorts of projects for these different organizations because, think about it, they need to do a lot with very few resources and very little money. And a project manager is really helpful with that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:42)

Yes.

And Bonnie, for you listening, that is an amazing opportunity right there. if any of the things we just listed, the skills we just listed are things you need to practice and you're not already getting them at work, you could volunteer with a nonprofit to be their project manager and learn all of these things. And what's great about that is we just talked about delegation and how that's important. Well, if you're volunteering for them,

Bonnie Biafore (41:56)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (42:17)

You still have a career. So you don't have the time to go in full time for them too. So you have to learn how to just manage the project and let other people do the things. And so like that's like such a golden opportunity for folks who want to get better at this. my God, Bonnie, I'm so glad you dropped that little nugget. That's that's awesome.

Bonnie Biafore (42:18)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So I

have people, I have had so many people on LinkedIn who will send me messages and like, how do I get experience? Because a lot of times companies don't, they want people to have experience. So, well, how do I get experience if no one will hire me as a project manager? And it's like,

And that is my main piece of advice is volunteer. That could mean volunteering within the company you work for. I've done that. But it could be volunteering with a nonprofit. then you start and here, so here's the path, at least as I see it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (42:56)

here for

True. Yep. Yep.

Bonnie Biafore (43:15)

is you so you volunteer, you start doing just all the regular stuff that that people they need volunteers for. And you look for places where, you know, things aren't efficient, or they aren't effective, or, you know, they're disorganized, and they're not achieving their goals. Then you can say, Hey, I, you know, I, you know, notice this, and I was thinking we could we could do a project to

achieved this outcome and I'd like to manage it. Most of the time they will go, thank you. And then you get a chance to practice and you get a chance to make mistakes and learn from them. So, yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:49)

Yes.

Yep.

Bonnie, I love that we ended up on that nugget. That is beautiful. Well, so Bonnie, here's what I love. I love that you've kind of spent this whole career doing all these interesting different things and it's all centered around project management. And we got to talk about the things that are not available for software from software and from AI on that. And so I love that.

Your life path has led us to this episode so that we could do this and that you're spending your life helping with these things. I just think it's very cool what you're doing. And so thank you for spending a little bit of time with me today to talk about this stuff. I think this is really helpful. There's some good nuggets in

Bonnie Biafore (44:31)

well, I really enjoyed it, so thank you for inviting me.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (44:34)

Yeah. And for people who want to keep in touch with you, if they want to circle back, or what's the best play for them to keep in touch with you?

Bonnie Biafore (44:40)

Actually, really the best thing is on LinkedIn. You can send messages or if you end up going, I actually, in addition to my courses on LinkedIn, actually do events called office hours on LinkedIn.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (44:56)

this.

Bonnie Biafore (44:57)

They're live events, but you can watch the recordings after the fact. a little bit like this. In fact, the format is a lot like this. I also have a weekly newsletter so people can comment on things or send me messages. That's probably the best way. You can go to, I have a website and you can send messages there as well.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (45:03)

Yeah. Yeah.

You got it.

Well, I will. Those links will be in your episode notes so you can check those out as well. So and for you tuning in, do you have a friend or colleague who does project management or knows that that's a part of their job or struggles with it or anything? If you would share the link to this episode specifically with them, I know Bonnie and I would love to know that our conversation today touched people that are facing project management and hit and and at the crux of where

Bonnie Biafore (45:41)

you

Brian Nelson-Palmer (45:45)

Well, there's all this software out there. Yes, you as the person are still super important. So imagine if your friend who you hadn't talked to in a bit sent you a text message like that and you guys got to catch up, wouldn't that would be that's the type of meaningful communication that I hope that you can enjoy because of this episode. So please send them a note and whether you've joined my membership or you've taken the first step of just joining the email list.

or this is your very first episode listening to productivity gladiator with you. love sharing this with you because together these productivity skills are going to change your life. That's a wrap.

18 Tasks I Outsourced That Changed My Life (And How You Can Too) - With Marcey Rader

Ready to win back hours of your life? In this episode, productivity experts Brian Nelson-Palmer and Marcey Rader reveal 18 tasks they've successfully outsourced - from hiring a culinary grad to chop vegetables to finding affordable ways to never do laundry again. They break down exactly how to decide what to outsource (including a simple calculator to determine if it's worth it), share hilarious stories like the infamous "single Brussels sprout" delivery, and offer practical tips and examples for both your personal & professional life. Whether you're just starting to explore outsourcing or you’re experienced and looking to level up, this episode packed with actionable strategies shows how you can reclaim your time without breaking the bank.

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The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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References In This Episode

Photo Reference: The "single Brussels sprout" photo (from the funny grocery delivery story Marcey Rader talked about)

• Brian's Value of Your Time Calculator

  • Referenced in relation to his TED talk

• Marcey’s TEDx Talk - “Relentless pursuit of more”

• Meal Services:

  • Factor 75

  • Blue Apron

  • Hungry Root

  • Gobble

• Virtual Assistant Services:

  • Fancy Hands (fancyhands.com) - mentioned $18-30/month

  • Fiverr (fiverr.com)

  • FreeUp (freeup.net)

  • Upwork.com

• Home Services:

  • TaskRabbit

  • Thumbtack

  • Chore Relief (now called All Better)

  • Poplin (laundry service)

• Contact Information for Marcey:

  • LinkedIn (mentioned she's only on LinkedIn)

  • helloraderco.com

  • Her new book: "Reclaim Your Workday, Sustainable Productivity Strategies for the New World of Work"

• Photo of Single Brussel Sprout on episode page

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Episode Digest

Time is our most precious resource, yet many of us spend countless hours on tasks that could be delegated or outsourced.

In a revealing discussion between productivity experts, a powerful truth emerged: outsourcing isn't just for business owners or the wealthy—it's a strategy anyone can use to reclaim their time and focus on what truly matters.

"There is no prize at the end because YOU did it. The prize is…I got to my outcome, whatever that was, in a way that was smarter."

The Complete List: 18 Game-Changing Tasks to Outsource

Personal Life Tasks

• Gift wrapping (use Amazon’s wrapping service, or hire local students for holiday perfection)

• Food prep and vegetable chopping (professional food prep services)

• House cleaning (regular cleaning service)

• Laundry (wash-and-fold services with pickup/delivery)

• Grocery shopping and errands (delivery services)

• Travel itinerary planning (local experts via Fiverr or AI tools)

• Screen repairs (specialized handyman services)

• Home repairs and maintenance (TaskRabbit or similar)

• TV mounting (skilled technicians)

• Furniture assembly (service providers via apps)

• Cooking/meal prep (meal delivery services)

Professional Tasks

• PowerPoint presentations (design services)

• Bookkeeping (professional accountants)

• LinkedIn/market research (specialized researchers)

• Graphic design (professional designers)

• Software/tool setup (technical specialists)

• Podcast production tasks (virtual assistants)

• General virtual assistant tasks (various administrative support)

How to Decide What to Outsource

The decision to outsource shouldn't be complicated. Here's a practical framework:

1. Calculate your time's value (use a time-value calculator)

2. Compare outsourcing costs against your time's value

3. Consider these key factors:

   • Is it a repetitive task?

   • Does it require specialized skills?

   • Could it be dangerous if done incorrectly?

   • Do you consistently procrastinate on it?

   • Is it a one-time task where learning the process isn't worth the investment?

"Every day that you procrastinate and you move that task forward, ‘I'll clean the gutters tomorrow, I'll clean the gutters tomorrow, I'll clean the gutters tomorrow.’ Every day that just makes you feel like I failed today, I failed again, I failed again, just outsource it."

Three Models of Virtual Assistance

• Pool Services (like Fancy Hands):

  • A pool of people available, like Uber, but for tasks

  • Membership-based ($18-30/month)

  • Best for occasional, varied tasks

  • Perfect for beginners

• Fixed-Price Contracts (like Fiverr):

  • Clear scope and cost upfront

  • No risk of unexpected charges

  • Ideal for specific, defined projects

• Hourly Assistants:

  • More traditional virtual employer/employee relationship

  • Ongoing support for regular tasks

  • Best for consistent, recurring needs

Practical Tips for Getting Started

• Start with Free or Low-Cost Options

  • Try grocery delivery & other errand services (often just $5-10 for delivery)

  • Test basic task services before committing to bigger ones

• Begin with Repetitive Tasks

  • Think about how often you do certain tasks.

  • Think about time spent vs cost to outsource.

• Address Safety and Quality Concerns

  • Use platforms with reviews and background checks

  • Start with low-risk tasks

  • Take safety precautions when someone is coming into your home.

"Think of it as an investment and you will get it back with your time, with your energy. Maybe you will get promoted faster."

Common Objections Addressed

"But they won't do it as well as I do"

Solution: Be prepared for that, you’re still getting some of your time back even if it isn’t perfect it still may be worth it. Remember that perfection isn't always necessary for every task.
Example: For tasks like grocery shopping, order an extra item if there’s a chance they’ll pick one that doesn’t work (like produce) or pick your substitute and have a backup plan in case something is out of stock or they bring the wrong quantity. For the 1 in 10 times they don’t do it right, you’ll be ready.

"My company should pay for this"

Reality Check: Don't limit yourself by waiting for company approval. Consider personal investment in professional development as a path to advancement.

"It's too expensive"

Perspective Shift: Consider the cost of your time, including stress and lost opportunities. Often, the investment pays for itself in reclaimed time and energy.

Real-World Success Strategies

• For grocery delivery: Order 4 items when you need 3 to ensure quality selection

• For house services: Use platforms with reviews rather than random classified ads

• For professional tasks: Start with one-time projects before committing to ongoing services

• For virtual assistants: Audition them first. Begin with a small project to test compatibility

The key to successful outsourcing is to start small and gradually expand as you become more comfortable with the process.

Remember: The goal isn't to outsource everything, but to strategically free up your time for what matters most, whether that's personal joy, family time, career advancement, or personal development.

Every task you successfully outsource is an investment in your most valuable resource: your time.

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Outsourcing and Productivity

06:03 Defining Outsourcing: What It Means

12:07 Personal Experiences with Outsourcing

18:07 Outsourcing Food Preparation and Cooking

23:59 Outsourcing Errands and Grocery Shopping

29:35 Leveraging AI for Travel Planning

36:03 Outsourcing Home Repairs and Services

41:10 Professional Outsourcing: Enhancing Productivity

52:50 Starting Your Outsourcing Journey

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Today’s Guest

Marcey Rader

Speaker, Coach, & Author on Productivity

Marcey Rader is a speaker, coach, and author who champions health-powered productivity™. Founder of RaderCo, she works with Fortune 500 companies and startups, inspiring global audiences. A multi-award-winning speaker, TEDx presenter, and one of 900 Certified Speaking Professionals®, Marcey’s authored four books and created the Powered Path Program™. Her mission is to help individuals and companies reclaim their workdays and build sustainable habits to work well and play more!

Connect with her at:

marceyrader.com

helloraderco.com

linkedin.com/in/marceyrader

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Why Subscribe To The Email List: Brian shares separate hacks, tips, and actionable learning exclusively for his email subscribers. Sign up so you don’t miss out!

About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. After spending a career hands-on in the trenches as a leader at all levels, I now help others to level-up through my Productivity Gladiator training. Graduates wield time management & life balance superpowers, activate a laser-guided ability to focus & prioritize, and implement a sniper-precise approach to task & email management. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat!

Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.

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Transcript

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer. On this show, I share personal, practical productivity skills. And in this episode, we're talking about the tasks that we've outsourced to save time and never looked back, both personally and professionally. And with me on the show today is Marcy Rader, who's a speaker, coach, and author on productivity. And she's the founder of Rader Co. Marcy, thanks so much for joining me on the show today.

Marcey Rader (00:42.675)

I'm excited to talk about outsourcing because everybody can outsource something and it doesn't matter. Even if it were personal, doesn't matter your position, you can outsource.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:54.56)

everything personally, professionally, it's available to everybody. I've been, I did a Ted talk on the value of your time and like this whole concept, it's all baked into there. And I've been so excited to actually do an episode on this. So thanks for doing with this, Marcy. This, I'm excited we're doing this together. And so now talk about your background. So we're to talk about outsourcing and productivity and stuff. talk about how you're relevant to the topic we're talking about today.

Marcey Rader (01:17.911)

So Raderco has been around for 11 years and we are a health powered productivity company. And what that means is that it doesn't matter how many boxes you check off your to-do list, if you're losing sleep to do it. It doesn't matter how fast you respond to your emails, if you are doing it at dinner with your family and it's affecting your relationships. So it's about being productive for the right things, but without sacrificing your health and relationships.

And we work with a lot of companies, both individuals and teams around their email management, email and chat tool management, their meetings, meeting effectiveness, how to manage their task and prioritization. But we are always looking at it with that health aspect. Do people take screen free lunches? Are they working as if they have to always be available, checking their email at night or on the weekends?

And so we are a team that is out to save the world when meeting and email at a time.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:23.622)

man, Marcy, you and I are so aligned. It's not even funny. So for anyone who's interested in productivity gladiator, Marcy is like, yes, absolutely. Everything you just said is exactly the kinds of things. And my whole motivation for me is about you. You only have one life.

we're going to make you more productive so that you can have do more of the things that you love so that you can have the memories when you look back at the end are not going to be because you were more productive. So you did more work and like, yes, my gosh, preach.

Marcey Rader (02:57.271)

Can I, I do want to preach for a second on that because you mentioned that you did a Ted talk. I did a TEDx in 2024 called the Relentless Pursuit of More. And it was really about living the first 40 years of my life, I'm 50 years old, being such a high achiever and such a perfectionist that

It seriously affected my health. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease, which I believe that I triggered through that. I didn't have a period for 12 years because I put myself in such stressful situations. And for the men out there, that's serious. That's not, know, it sounds like it'd be a great, you know, great convenience, but it's actually really dangerous for your body.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:49.262)

yeah.

Marcey Rader (03:53.745)

And it really affected my marriage. I traveled 48 weeks a year for almost a decade. We're cool now. We're great. But it was part of the reason why I started my company. so, you know, there are goals to chase, but not at the expense of someday. Like someday when I get a promotion, then I'll slow down or

Someday when I make X amount of money, then I'll hire somebody to help clean my house. Someday when I run the marathon, then I'll be home on Saturday mornings. So it's really a reset and rethink of what our goals and priorities are. so if you're trying to do everything yourself, know that there is no prize at the end because you did it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:51.405)

Yes.

Marcey Rader (04:51.827)

And the prize is that I did, the outcome, I got to my outcome, whatever that was, in a way that was smarter. And maybe, and I guess this is a good segue for outsourcing, maybe I hired somebody along the way to help me get to that outcome so that I didn't sacrifice other things that were important to me. And I gave this person a job as well.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (05:17.518)

Mm hmm. Totally. You know, Marcy, on that topic, I'm curious. You you talk about productivity. I talk about productivity. There's a lot of people that talk about productivity. So the one other thing I want to ask you is what do you think makes you different from everybody else out there that's talking about productivity like we

Marcey Rader (05:35.351)

For me, think part of it is the health piece. My degrees are actually in, my bachelors and masters are in exercise science and health promotion, but I worked for 14 years in clinical research in the pharma and biotech world and climbed up the ladder as high as I wanted to go. And so I think having that health background, but also that aspect of being a perfectionist, being a, you

super high achiever and I'm still, you I still have goals. Of course, I still have achievements that I want to do, but it's a, you know, I have put myself in the dumpster, you know, and, I've, and I've been able to get myself out of it. And if I had been someone like 13 years ago, even just 13 years ago, if I had started this business, well, even five years ago, the way I approach things are different.

than I would have 15 years ago, 13 years ago, 10 years ago, because I suffered those things that I did. And it wasn't really until about four years ago that my husband told me how desperately he missed me when I was out, know, jet setting around the country and everything, but he never wanted to tell me because I was the primary earner. And so when I look back, I made a lot of mistakes.

And I definitely have regrets and I don't think regrets are bad. I know some people said no regrets or whatever. Well, I believe in the book, The Power of Regret and regret is where we've where we've learned and earned our lessons because I believe we earn our battle scars. So it's lessons earned and you know.

I got a lot out of that and I think it makes me a much better coach and speaker because I can attest to the things that, you it's not all about getting the most done. Just like, you know, it's like when we die, it's not like the person with the most toys wins. You know, it's the things that really matter.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (07:47.768)

Totally. Well, let's jump into outsourcing then. And one of the things to kind of set the stage, I want to clarify that when I came to this, my thought was I want to clarify when we say outsource, what are we referring to? And in this case, to me, when I thought this, I'm referring to basically the idea that it's no longer going to take my time. So we're going to talk about outsourcing and some of these things you might pay for some of these and some of them might cost more than others, but some of these things are free.

And it's still outsourced because it's not taking my time. So that was my frame of reference. Did you have anything to add on that, Marcy, or is that track?

Marcey Rader (08:23.709)

No, but I'm glad that you clarified it because when I first started my company, this is so hard to believe that 11 years ago, it was considered like, whoa, what? To hire overseas, to outsource to a virtual assistant, or to hire somebody from Fiverr. And so sometimes when I would use the word outsource back then, people would think it was like,

manufacturing, outsourcing product and things like this. And so I'm with you like outsourcing to me means hiring somebody to save me time doing something that I don't want to be doing or maybe I'm just not good at.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:07.116)

Yeah, totally. All right. So that's the kind of outsourcing we're talking about. And then I guess I have my frame of reference for how the question is, how do you decide what to outsource? And so for me, I actually have a very methodical approach, which is I have a calculator. So for you listening, if you go to productivity gladiator.com and you scroll down, there is the value of your time calculator and you can find out what your time is.

And so I did, that's the Ted talk that I did that was picked by Ted and it was became an editor's pick and they like promoted it on their website and socials and stuff. And I talk about kind of the frame of reference for the discussion we're going to have now. We're going to talk very practically on what we outsourced, but the decision on when to outsource it or if like where those opportunities are for me, it's a, if I know my time is worth this much and I can pay less than that.

to have somebody else do it, then those are my first opportunities that I'm looking at as opposed to things that are the other way around. So that's my approach to how do you sort of decide. What is it for you, Marcy?

Marcey Rader (10:14.529)

Yeah, before I say that, I'm just gonna, being picked by Ted is a really big deal. So congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. And I was so thrown by that, that I need you to ask me the question again.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:26.094)

Felt pretty good. You can go for Boston over here. So that's the question is how do you decide, like how do you make the decision on I should outsource this or I shouldn't outsource this?

Marcey Rader (10:37.416)

yes.

Marcey Rader (10:41.963)

Yes, so first of all, that's awesome that you have this calculator and I have determined, like I have a set rate hourly. I don't charge by the hour because I believe in value-based pricing, but in my head, I have an hourly rate and then I have, and I worked this out with my CFO and then I also have another rate that is kind of like the, this is what my time was worth to me.

And so when it's business related. I think about, you know, like, what's my time worth? Is this person's time worth going to cost me less? But also is is this something that I only need to do one time? If so, it's not worth it for me to do it. And an example is I just bought I'm switching scheduling systems, I'm such switching.

from one scheduling tool to another. To set it up, is not a good use of my time to go through all the learning modules and do all the setup. I don't need to know, I don't need to learn how to set it up. I need to learn how to work it once it's set up. So I hired somebody, I outsourced the setup, she'll set it up.

and then she'll just train me how to use it now that it's in place. Because I don't believe in spend. I love learning. am number one learner and strengths finders. If you know what that means. So it's not that I don't believe in the in learning. It's that there are certain like if it's something that I'm going to learn that I'm going to continue to use, then I want to know the ins and outs of it. But I don't need to know how to learn something.

that's only going to happen one time if there's an expert that can do it and save me. So that's that's one way I look at it. I also look at like, do I just hate do I hate doing like, is there something I just don't like doing or I'm so not good at it and I don't care that I'm not good at it and I don't even care about becoming better at it? And that is gift wrapping. When I wrap a gift, my gifts at Christmas.

Marcey Rader (13:02.935)

People know, they know it's my gift under the tree. It looks like a five-year-old wrapped it. Like I don't make the paper long enough. It's so bad. I like half the box will be showing and I'm so frugal that if I make the paper too short, won't like, you know, I won't throw it away. I will just use it. Sometimes I'll make like a patch. It is so, so bad, but I don't care.

But so I have, I know, I know, but I have actually outsourced gift wrapping.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:39.352)

to Amazon? I was gonna ask you, you, I always check the box to gift wrap it for me. It was the best, everybody knows it's my gift under the tree because it was wrapped by Amazon. That's just great stuff.

Marcey Rader (13:49.495)

No, I hire somebody. So I have hired a high school student that loves to wrap gifts. And I think I paid her like 50 bucks one year and this girl and she came over and wrapped all my gifts in like, it was like an hour or something. I don't even know if I paid her 50 bucks. It was probably more like 30 bucks. It was so worth it and it was, they were beautiful. know, so, so, so that's also a way that I look at it is

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:56.856)

Nice.

Marcey Rader (14:18.933)

Do I care about getting better at wrapping gifts? I don't because I only do it once a year. And she loves it and she needed the money. So I look at it that way too.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:31.83)

Yeah. So I love what you said about, is it something that you are interested in or like that's, and I talked about it in my Ted talk too. It's like things that are worth your time are like, are you going to learn something? Is it going to be a fond memory that you look back on forever and ever? Then it is worth the time. Like you could, you could hire somebody to paint the house. Or if you do that with your son or your daughter,

and that's gonna be a memory that you have forever and ever and ever, then it doesn't matter how much it costs to have somebody else do it, you should do that. And so those are like, learn something, does it bring you joy? Cause if it brings you joy, my gosh, like every one of the things that we're about to list, every one of the outsourcing opportunities, if it's something that brings you joy, don't outsource that. Do outsource the things that don't bring you joy. That's, I love, yes. So I love your point, man.

Marcey Rader (15:23.483)

That brings up a good point. So in my business, it took me a long time to outsource my bookkeeping because I actually really like that. I like going in and reconciling my account and I do it. I did it every I do every Friday. You know, and I liked it. And after a certain point, I was like, this is not my my time is worth more than that. I should not be doing this. But I held on to it for a while because I just really like it. So.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:33.581)

Mm-hmm.

Marcey Rader (15:53.409)

So I agree with you for that. But I thought of one other thing that is another rule for me is, is this dangerous? Because we just put on a new screened in or put a new roof on our screen and porch. And my husband is very handy, but he also knows his limits. Like if it's plumbing, that is a skilled trade that if he messes up, like it could cause a flood or it could be something really bad.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:01.934)

I'm

Marcey Rader (16:23.255)

An electrician, he's not gonna mess with that because that is a skilled trade and it's almost like an insult to the skilled trade, but also it could be dangerous. So I also think of those types of things. Could I be doing something that could, if I try to fix something on my car, could it turn around and haunt me later as I'm stuck by the side of the road?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:30.242)

Right. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:46.444)

Yeah. Nice. Yep. I love that the danger point is a really valid one. So let's jump into things that we've outsourced. Let's just start running down. And Marcy, figure you go first, and then I'll share one, and you share one. And let's start with personal stuff that we've outsourced that, my gosh, have been game changers. So you first. Go ahead. What you got?

Marcey Rader (17:09.975)

I already said the gift wrapping, so good. Food prep. So for four years, had a woman until COVID and then, you know, everything changed during that. But she came in every Thursday. I had a produce box delivered on Thursday mornings and she would come in and chop all the vegetables for like a week. You know, like she chopped everything. And she actually had a degree in culinary arts.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:11.99)

Nice.

Marcey Rader (17:39.765)

So she chopped really well. Like it looked great. And so I didn't have to, and I really liked to eat healthy, but I'm terrible at food chopping. And so she would chop all my vegetables. I've had somebody that would, after her, that would come in and chop everything. And then she'd also make a couple of meals as well, which was, and you know, so then I would have those to eat throughout the week.

But the first woman, she also did our laundry and she cleaned the house too. But a lot of people have house cleaners. That's not a creative way to outsource. It's an awesome way to outsource, but it's not really creative. But a lot of house cleaners don't do food prep and also your laundry. So we called her, her title was house manager. And this is what she did full time.

She had one house that she went to every day. She came to ours on Thursdays. She would chop vegetables, she'd clean our house, and then she would do our laundry. And this woman folded clothes like the gap. I mean, it was so perfect, so perfect. And I miss her so much. that, when I would tell people that, you know, it's like, I have a house manager. it was amazing.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:43.999)

and do the laundry.

Yes. huh.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:00.67)

And Marcy, love that I'm going to yes and a couple of things on this. First, the cooking thing. I have totally outsourced cooking for years and years. And the reason I did it is because I'm first of all, it's the it's the worth my time thing and it doesn't bring me joy. I am capable of cooking. I absolutely can do it. And it doesn't bring me joy to be in there and do it. I tend to.

put it off to the last minute or I'm like, I'm hungry now. I'm gonna eat something and then you eat unhealthily because you do that. So for you listening, if you haven't checked it out, there are services like Factor 75, which is a meal prep service where they have a five-star chef make you a meal. It's fresh, never frozen. He cooks it. They put it in a container. They ship it to you in a freezer container. And then it's like a microwave meal that's fresh cooked by a chef. And you can get six meals, eight, 10, 12 meals a week or something like that.

So if you're one of those people that goes out and eats crappy lunches because you're on the go or, hey, we're gonna, I didn't think about lunch. So then you go down and you go to McDonald's or whatever. This is, it's like 10, 12, $14 a meal, something like that. So it's the same as you would spend going to a fast food place, but it's way healthier. You can lose weight this way. So that's the full service option. They also have, if the cooking brings you joy, but.

The actual going to the store part doesn't. They have services that you've probably heard of by now like Blue Apron, Green Apron, Blue Apron and stuff like that where they send you all the ingredients and the recipe and all you have to do is prep it. That's another way to do it. There's the latest one that I haven't tried yet, but my God, Marcy, I'm excited to try it is they have a casserole style one where they send you the casserole.

Marcey Rader (20:30.903)

Blue apron.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:49.034)

in a dish and then you just have to put it in the oven to cook it on the day of or something like that. So anyway, I've gone way down the rabbit hole on. Yeah. Yeah.

Marcey Rader (20:57.737)

No, I want to add something to that because this is serious stuff here. I tried all the like blue apron and Hello Fresh, but it's still a lot of work because you have to prep all that stuff. So I for the last like year have been using Hungry Root and Hungry Root is one of those delivery services that you pick your meals like I picked four recipes for the week.

and you can choose between two servings, four servings, six servings, eight servings, I think. But most of the vegetables already come prepped and some of the meat already is cooked and you just have to like heat it or something. So I don't have to pull out the knife very much and I love it because it's all fresh. But most of it, like the peppers are already chopped up or.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (21:46.968)

Yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (21:52.717)

Yeah.

Marcey Rader (21:53.099)

You know, the cabbage is already shredded. I'm like, this is the, it's the go between, like between the Hello Fresh, which takes a lot of work and what you get, which is the, you know, just pop it in the microwave. So I'm a, I'm a big hungry root.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (22:05.006)

Yeah.

And by the way, for you listening, I'm going to give you links to all this stuff. It's going to take me a minute to get all these in the episode notes, but I am committed to giving you the link to every single thing that we talk about on this. So check your notes if you want to see all of the stuff that we're talking about, because I'm going to yes and you there, Marcy. The other one that my wife and I found was a service called Gobble. And Gobble was the in-between between your hungry root and my factor where they chop almost everything, but you do still get to chop one vegetable.

So it's like, and they give you all the sauces already pre- and so all you have to do is throw it in a pan and you have to chop what, I don't know how they know, but they just know that if you have to prep too much, it's too much. So we're going to give you one thing to do that exists too. And it-

Marcey Rader (22:55.415)

to do well some recipes I might have to chop a cucumber or something but I'm hungry but I can do that

Brian Nelson-Palmer (23:01.548)

Yes, totally. Well, so it's funny, you brought up house cleaning. That was one of mine. House cleaning and laundry. I haven't done my laundry in 10 years and I don't miss it and I'm very good at it, but it just isn't worth my time. There's a service called poplin that I used for years and it's a wash and fold service and it's like a dollar a pound. So it's the same price as if you went to the laundromat and brought it to them.

but they include pickup and delivery. And it's literally like Uber, but for people who love washing and folding laundry. So you put your laundry outside and the laundry fairy or the Uber, the poplin person comes and picks it up and then they bring it home. And then 24 hours later, they bring it back and it's a dollar a pound that includes the delivery and the pickup. it is the most, it smells wonderful and it's folded immaculately, like you said, because these people just love doing laundry.

And I loved supporting them doing what they loved with this.

Marcey Rader (23:59.617)

Yeah, yeah, yes. I know some people find it very meditative. I'm not one of those people, but yeah, that's awesome. I love that service.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:08.206)

You know, and Marcy, the one that I wanted to share is that's different from what you've said already is errands. I outsourced errands. I haven't been to the store in I think 2012 was the last time I went to the store because I get it all delivered. And man, that seriously, I used to go to the store three, four or five times a week. I added it up. It was roughly seven hours of my time. So I talked about my little calculator.

Marcey Rader (24:25.714)

me too.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:37.014)

I went online and I found out I right now I value my time at about 30 bucks an hour. It's changed over the years. It's gone from 15 to 30 depending on my financial situation. But there is a number and I know what it is. And so the thing is the air at the delivery for groceries is free depending on what you do or like five dollars or it's something very reasonable. So if I can get an hour that's worth thirty dollars to me back for a five dollar delivery charge.

Then I'm totally in. And the one thing that Marcy, whenever I've had, I do these discussions. have this is this what we're talking about now is one of my keynote speeches that I that I give my presentations, workshops that I do. And whenever I bring this up, the number one thing that you listening might already be saying is, well, they don't pick vegetables as good as they don't pick fruit. I know it's that's the that is the number one objection. It's like, they don't know.

Marcey Rader (25:27.653)

gosh, I hear that.

Marcey Rader (25:35.895)

vegetables.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:36.552)

Right? that's, and so here's, here's my, this is my response to that, which is first of all, remember what I said, which is if you love going to the store and if bringing, if picking vegetables brings you more joy than all the other important stuff in your life, then by God, go pick your vegetables. I support you. However, for me, if you think about you go to the store and you're not quite sure how to pick something, you're going to ask somebody who works at the store, what's the good one to pick? And these people all work at the store.

Marcey Rader (26:00.629)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:06.348)

They know what the good ones are. And so for every 30 vegetables that I get, maybe one or possibly two are not gonna be as good as the one that I might have picked. But the amount of time that I saved, I'll just, if I need three, I will order four just so that they'll give me their top four and I pick the top three from that. And so it like, you accommodate that risk per se, but.

Man, absolutely, you can, errands are such a time suck. So if you can not run errands, I have so many stories, hilarious stories about not running errands that I love to share, but this is just one that I'm like, I'm so motivated on errands. Don't run errands.

Marcey Rader (26:48.183)

Yeah, well, and with the vegetable thing, I knew you were gonna say it, because I hear that all the time.

Marcey Rader (26:58.081)

groceries either not I don't have them delivered but I go and pick them up and somebody else shops for them and again I would I would shop the same just like you said there has only been like three or four times where I've had to write to the app and say like this wasn't good or whatever and two of those times I had asked for a pound of Brussels sprouts and the person put one Brussels sprout a sprout

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:25.432)

No!

Marcey Rader (27:29.015)

in a bag, in a bag, wrapped the bag and put it in the cart. And I thought, this person has never eaten a Brussels sprout in their life, because they would know that nobody eats one sprout. So I took a picture of it. But then I also both times cut the, cut the sprout, sauteed it, put a little bit of balsamic over it, put it on a plate and send that to the app company as well. And I said, I'm, I'm eating my single Brussels sprout. Please tray.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:29.272)

What?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:39.502)

Clearly.

Marcey Rader (27:58.613)

your people better. But yeah, I still have a picture of my Brussels Sprout.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:05.302)

And you know, don't stress about every one of these companies that does these grocery deliveries. They build into their whole system. The fact that their people are going to screw one up because they didn't pay attention to whatever the serving size was or whatever. So when you go in to report these things, it's not like a long process where you have to call somebody and then these companies don't even want to talk to you. If there's a problem, you can just go in and say, I got this wrong. And they will just give you the credit back and you.

Marcey Rader (28:16.214)

Yeah.

Marcey Rader (28:26.87)

No!

Marcey Rader (28:32.757)

Immediately. Yep.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:33.344)

order another one. There's no conversation. It's an immediate resolution to your problem in like 20 seconds, 30 seconds. So it is not a big thing. So yes, errands. That was my next one. Any, what else comes to mind for you on the personal front?

Marcey Rader (28:40.939)

Yes, yes.

Marcey Rader (28:45.772)

Yes.

Marcey Rader (28:51.285)

Yeah, well, I think now I would use chat GPT for this, at least for part of it. But in the past, I have hired people from Fiverr to create travel itineraries for me in the city where they live. So when we go, yeah, when we go on vacation, example.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:08.749)

No.

Marcey Rader (29:14.709)

I find somebody on Fiverr who lives in San Diego who will create a four day itinerary for me. Here's what we like to do. Here's where we're staying. It was very customized for a hundred bucks. And you you can spend hours, hours researching and this person even like, here's a list of gluten-free.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:31.979)

Awesome.

many hours, yeah.

Marcey Rader (29:42.325)

restaurants in the area where you're going to be on this day. Don't go here because the seals smell like it was so good. Whereas now I think I would outsource I would outsource to chat GPT. We are going to on a big New Zealand Australia trip in April and I will use chat GPT to help me at least like narrow down or give me ideas.

for me to start with because you can get lost in travel trying to figure out itineraries.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:11.982)

So, yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:19.15)

I want to yes and you there because that's literally one of the examples when I when I do an AI session and we talk about AI for productivity That's one of the examples that we actually use is you've got eight hours Between the time that you're done on your work travel and the time you have to be at the airport So what can I do in these eight hours? So you can feed chat GPT or whatever AI you use Claude or Gemini or whatever one

you go on there and you type in, I'm at this location. I've got to be at the airport in this many hours. What are the top rated tourist things that I could do in this period of time that would be on the way? And it will do all of that for you. And that's, I just, man, you were trendsetter, Marcy, because I didn't even contemplate like getting somebody in Fiverr to do that. That would be.

But when chat GPT came around, was like, this is amazing. Yeah, they can find.

Marcey Rader (31:17.195)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's there's actually an app called Giftstar that uses AI and I've used it. If you put in people like I put in my friend Lisa and my husband and different people and get like say their interests and your price range and all these things, it will come back with gifts for them. But like I always choose experiences and

you put the zip code that they're in and it'll come back with links to experiences in that zip code. So that is a way to outsource too, if you don't wanna just be, know, just trying to fill your holiday shopping that way.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:02.222)

Totally, totally man. That's I love love that use. I've got another one for you, which is and you you alluded to this when you talked about the roof or whatever, but when it comes to home repair, there are services like thumbtack or chore relief or boy, there's one more that and I'll put the links in the task rabbit. Yes, that.

Marcey Rader (32:26.199)

Task rabbit. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:29.516)

they will go, they'll actually come do the chores. So the latest one is that I was using it to find somebody who would come and repair screens. I had a couple of screens that were damaged in the hurricane. And so, you know, it's one of those things where they're just the screens flapping free and I could go buy the screen repair kit and watch the YouTube videos and figure out how to do that. But when you look at how much of my time that's gonna take versus how much it would cost,

I found out in my area, the going rate for somebody to repair a screen, including all the supplies, is 50 bucks. And it was like, sold. I would rather let you, because I don't have the right tools and I don't know how to use them and I could learn, but I'm not passionate about screens. I just want the bugs to not come in. like, was a sort of home repair is definitely, there are websites that are dedicated to helping you find people. And for some of the stuff, like a screen repair,

Marcey Rader (33:08.181)

Yeah, no brainer.

Marcey Rader (33:12.459)

Yeah.

Marcey Rader (33:18.325)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:27.916)

You talked about license stuff, so plumbing or electricians where that stuff that requires a license and there's danger and stuff. Some of the stuff is just you don't want to do it. Assembling Ikea furniture is what we're installing TV mounts. There's all the stuff you can do around the house and that you can totally find people to do. And they don't necessarily need a license or some type of some of the stuff, maybe not insurance that you can totally do that.

Marcey Rader (33:55.989)

Yeah, and I wanna, so first of all, if you are single, like I had a friend who outsourced through TaskRabbit, she bought a big screen TV and she's like, I can't carry it up the stairs. I need somebody to mount it. And so, I mean, she helped him because it was so big, like she needed to hold it whatever, but I think she paid like $30 or somebody for the, but she said, I need somebody to do this. And she didn't have any friends that could help her and things.

So that's one thing, but I don't know about the two that you mentioned. I do know about TaskRabbit, so you might want to share. But I like something like that better than Craigslist because TaskRabbit has reviews and you're paying through TaskRabbit and not just some rando on Craigslist. And we have had some randos on Craigslist that are like, yeah, that's not good. That's not good.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:40.184)

Yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:45.867)

Yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:50.078)

Hahaha!

Marcey Rader (34:54.037)

With TaskRabbit, it has reviews for certain things. are background checks and things. So I would go with that type of thing, especially if you're having somebody come into your house. And just for the fee, you know, if you're female, one thing I do, if I'm by myself and somebody's coming in, in my house to outsource, no matter who they are what they're doing, I will often call somebody

that I know and say like so-and-so or text somebody and say, you know, the cable person is here or whatever. Text me every 20 minutes until I tell you they're gone. You know, and then that's just a safety thing for females. I've even called somebody and just had them listening. Like I just had the phone in my pocket while I was, know, men don't often think, you probably are like, I've never even thought about that before.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:43.843)

Nice.

Marcey Rader (35:51.147)

But my girlfriend, Shane, if there is any kind of man coming into the house to do any kind of service work, we always like call, you know, just say like, text me in like 10 minutes or whatever. This turned it from outsourcing to safety in your home.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:51.79)

Thanks

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:03.31)

Totally. I love it.

safety, but all of this is part of it, right? You're dealing with somebody you don't know. So I love that you brought that up because you're right. As a guy, I don't think about that as much. And that's something that for all you ladies that are listening, you should still outsource the stuff that you can. And when you do, this is just how you do it. So Marcy's your pro. I love it, Marcy. That's, that's awesome. Can we, let's shift gears and talk about professional stuff now, things that you've outsourced. So what comes to mind for you professionally?

Marcey Rader (36:10.517)

Yes. Yes.

Marcey Rader (36:31.67)

Yeah.

Marcey Rader (36:36.791)

So a lot of people that work for companies think I can't outsource anything. Wrong answer. So one thing is your PowerPoint presentations. I have seen the most horrible PowerPoint presentations. I used to create the most horrible PowerPoint presentations. People that work in companies and when I worked in companies are notorious for putting books on slides. It's nothing but words.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:42.584)

Wrong.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:03.623)

God. Yes.

Marcey Rader (37:05.047)

and people end up just reading them, they're terrible slides. And a lot of what you put on a slide is not proprietary. And so you could outsource on Fiverr or Upwork or something like that, give them the information, have somebody put your slides together. And if you did have something, you know, super like a graph that's well, know, proprietary or something like financials or whatever, you can add that later.

but there's so much like little tiny like formatting stuff and lots of time wasted for PowerPoints and you don't need to be doing that. And often if it's something like say that you have to present to your board every quarter and it's always the same slide template and all you're doing is switching numbers in and out or whatever, have somebody do it for you. And then all you're doing is switching stuff out every quarter and you will look like a rock star and who cares that you didn't do it?

because when you were hired, you did not say, I am the best at making PowerPoints that you will ever meet. You know, like I'm going to be number one at PowerPoints. They don't care about that. It's not about you're not. And you're not going to be promoted because of your ability to create the PowerPoint. You're going to be promoted because of the what the outcome of the PowerPoint is, the final product. So that's one of my go tos. Like you don't need to be doing that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:30.764)

Marcy, I want to yes and you on that because the other thing, if you don't know how to do this already, it's time for you to go explore the AI tools and figure out how to have the AI tool make the first draft of PowerPoint slides, that kind of thing. Because I agree with you, if this is going to be a public thing that you're going to present for people that are more than like, we're talking two levels or more above you, I would absolutely get a pro slide. It would be worth it to me.

to spend the $10 on the expense account that you have or whatever, 15, 20, $30 to have a fiver, go in and make that thing really look good because that's gonna be your impression. So it's more than two people or if it's gonna be very public, absolutely the ProHelp is good. But for the everyday slides, if you're not good at it, you can totally copy and paste this whole text of this report and say, I need to give a presentation on this report. Please give me slides for this and AI will create

the slides for you. And if you don't know how to do this, this is one of, know, Marcy and I were talking about Googling and, or something that you're going to do over and over again, that's worth learning. I'm telling you right now for the rest of your work life, this is one that's worth learning. Make sure you know how to do this one, cause it's going to be good.

Marcey Rader (39:46.263)

Yeah. Yes and use AI to say like, this is what's on the slide. These are the different slides, but then hire somebody to make the slides. Cause AI is not going to make it look good on a slide, but you could have somebody then take that information from Gemini, ChatGBT or whatever, and then put it on the slide and make it look good.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:11.31)

I think you're right. That's where a lot of the back and forth is going to be, is if you already know what you want to say on the slides, especially to the text, you know exactly the text that each one's going to have and they just need to make the slides and make them pretty. That's going to be way more efficient because most times the back and forth with the people making the slides is going to be, well, I didn't like this on this slide and you said too much on this slide and a lot of it is it's the nitty gritty. So I love that point. Good point, Marcy. And you know, on this one, my

Marcey Rader (40:36.139)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:40.576)

Well, the one that I was going to share is a virtual assistant. I've had virtual assistants since 2008. have, I love, love, love being able to outsource. And this is for me personally and professionally. I have them do so much stuff that I don't want to, don't want to spend my time doing, or is it worth my time doing? But the thing I want to share that I think is helpful context is when we talk about outsourcing, I want to share the three kinds of virtual assistant setups that you can have.

that are probably helpful for you listening. the first one is, if you've got an, it's almost like, fancyhands.com is the one that I use, but it's, these are, it's a pool of assistants. So I want you to imagine like Uber or Lyft, where you got a bunch of people that are out there that can all do tasks and you put your task in the queue and somebody, whoever's available comes and picks it up and does it. Any of that kind of stuff.

That is a it's a membership. It's a flat rate. So it's like 30 bucks a month or you can even get down as little as $18 a month. If you've never hired a virtual assistant before and you're like, God, Brian and Marcy are talking about this and I've never done it before. If you want to know where to start and you want the shallow end, this is the dip your toe in the pool and don't spend too much money. $18 a month for fancy hands dot com. You can totally do this and try it.

have them put together a trip itinerary, have them do some of the things that you hear. If they can do it by searching the internet or being on the phone, that's your place to start. And this is the, that's the Uber model. So there's three models. That's model number one is the Uber like service. The middle, the next one is, yes.

Marcey Rader (42:19.607)

Wait, Brian, I do one thing from Fancy Hands? Can I say one thing? A company that I worked with about 10 years ago, they had a subscription to Fancy Hands. And for their employee of the month or whoever, they got to use Fancy Hands for that month on anything they wanted. So they could use it for work.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (42:43.278)

So good.

Marcey Rader (42:43.499)

They could use it for work. They could use it to research where to put grandma for her, know, assisted living, which was something somebody did that they didn't care, but they pulled their, their team. was a small company. I think it was like 15 people. And they said, would you rather get a gift certificate somewhere, you know, parking space, or to be able to use fancy hands with this many credits a month. And everybody was like, fancy hands. Isn't that awesome?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:11.828)

hands. Yep.

Marcey Rader (43:13.431)

That was such a great use of... I know!

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:14.734)

Smart, so smart. Yes, so so fancy hands is your first one, right? This is where you got credits and it's a fixed cost each month, so you don't have to worry about budget or blowing it or that kind of thing. So that's option number one. Version number two of virtual assistance is where you have a it's a fixed price contract. So think about it like Fiverr. Fiverr is where you know exactly what they're going to do and exactly how much money it's going to cost.

The same idea is if you're going to have somebody work on your house, you want to get a quote first so that they don't just run up the bill and all of sudden it's going to be a whole bunch of money. This Fiverr and those at fiverr.com is the one that the example that I'll give you. But this is where you know exactly what they're going to do and you know exactly how much it's going to cost. So there's not a risk of running up the bill. So that's your fixed price outsourcing. And then the last one that's worth you knowing, if you weren't already aware of this, is then it's the pay by the hour, almost like an employee thing.

And my favorite resource to start people on for that is called freeup.net. And what they do is they go out and they have interviewed virtual assistants from all over the world and they pick only the top 1 % of the really good ones. And so you go on there and you say, I need somebody who will do this. And it's an ongoing thing you're going to need regularly and you will just pay somebody to do it. You can have them. They'll give you the top two or three people that are really good and you can interview them. And then you just get started.

and it's not an employee, it's not like hiring somebody full time, this is just a really somebody you can outsource to. But that model is one where you pay them for their time. And so that's one where you wanna be clear on what they're doing because they can run up the bill because they're gonna keep working on all the tasks you give them and they're gonna charge you for all the hours that you work. So just wanted to share that.

Marcey Rader (45:06.353)

Yet you have to say spend no more than two hours on this task or something like that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (45:13.208)

Totally. Absolutely. So virtual assistant is one. And on that same topic for me, actually having someone do setting up the podcast stuff, it's funny. I'm really missing them right now because like I do these. I I host the show. And for the longest time, I had people that would do it's the it's the it's the nuanced stuff that it takes to crank out an episode. You edit. You need to create the Web page. You need the social media post. Make the clips. Do the there's so much of that.

And so I have not, I've been doing it myself for a little bit. And my gosh, in next year, that is one of the first things that I'm doing is I have all of the steps written out. I just need somebody else to do them. So that's one that man, outsourcing tasks like that, which take a ton of time and you could pay someone in overseas, maybe the Philippines or India or something like that. They don't have to be the smartest of the smart person. If you can lay out the steps. gosh, that's a big one for me.

Any other, what else professionally? Anything else that comes to mind for professional outsourcing?

Marcey Rader (46:19.649)

Professionally, something else that I've used was, I've used them for image search for any kind, like for PowerPoints things like that. But also, mean, this is kind of professional, but it's also kind of personal, I guess. I have hired graphic designers to design logos, but also like one of the,

people that worked for me, she had this major faux pas once and we laughed about it. And as her anniversary gift, I had to make a graphic, which then I then put onto a t-shirt. There are quotes that I have that I have had them make and put onto a t-shirt. it's, know, things like that for your business, if you have it, or for your clients.

That is really easy to do as well. just research clients in general. I have used them to comb LinkedIn and find me 50 people in Salt Lake City that are interested in X and work for this size company because I'm going to be going out there.

and I want to be able to network and whatever. So I have used, I have outsourced from a work perspective to do that as well. And so if you, if you're a manager and you have a sales team or maybe you manage, because I worked in clinical research and so we worked with a lot of doctors. mean, that is a way like, use somebody that loves data.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (47:54.158)

Yeah.

Marcey Rader (48:11.751)

And that's all that they love. I mean, I hired this guy that his joy was to comb LinkedIn and find certain people that fit a certain profile. Like he loved it. He felt like a detective. And so, you know, that's what we used him for. He loved it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:20.43)

Fuck.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:25.826)

huh.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:30.574)

Yes. And you know, when you're, we're talking about professionally, we talked about, if you haven't, like, again, I have the calculator that'll tell you what your work time is worth per hour and what your personal time is worth per hour. It'll give you an estimate, but that number is an easy way to then go to your boss and say, look, boss, my time is worth 50 bucks an hour, 30 bucks an hour, 25, 15, whatever it is. And I found a solution that does that for me that only costs this much money. That's

There's two things in that conversation with the boss. First, show them that it's cheaper for you to get it done somewhere else, so they just need to let you get it done. But the second thing is, remind them of the more valuable thing that you also need to do that you can't do because you got too much on your plate. Remind them of those things that you would rather be doing, so let me outsource this so I can do more of that.

and any of those tasks that contribute to the bottom line or add to the customer experience or things that are going to improve and the long term things that move the business forward that are more valuable, especially if you bring that into that conversation, that conversation with your boss will often go much smoother. And you'll probably get more yeses if you paint that picture on those two things. Any thoughts on that?

Marcey Rader (49:48.379)

Yeah, I think that could work sometimes, but I bet there are, I bet someone out there is thinking like, my boss would never go for that. And here's what I have found in the last 11 years. And this used to be me when I worked for a company. So I'm not dissing anybody out there, cause this was me.

I'm not going to spend my even though it would have saved me time. I couldn't you know, I was making six figures, you know, over 10 years ago working for a company and I was like, I would not pay somebody $20 an hour or I would not pay somebody $50 to do X for me. The company should pay for that. And if the company doesn't pay for it, like you're saying that, well, I'm not going to pay. I shouldn't have to pay for that. But what you're giving up, it's hurting you.

because you're spending that time, you're wasting that time. Maybe what you would get is two hours less work on a Friday or an hour less work every day. And it's interesting to me because business owners and small businesses will hire me and they, know, somebody could be making, you know, seventy thousand dollars a year or one hundred fifty thousand dollars a year or two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. And the person

who is the business owner making $70,000 a year. They're more likely to hire me and I'm not cheap. Then the person who works for a company making $200,000 or I'm sorry, $250,000 a year because they expect their company to pay for it all the time. And it's just really interesting the mindset of a business owner versus making hardly any money because they see it as an investment.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (51:39.65)

Yes.

Marcey Rader (51:40.159)

And somebody from a company also see almost, you know, they see it as an expense. And if their company's not paying for it, they're not going to. I want you to, if you work for a company, don't think of it that way anymore. Think of it as an investment and you will get it back with your time, with your energy. Maybe you will get promoted faster. And again, this used to be me. Like, you know, I felt like

I'm not going to pay for that conference. My company should pay for that conference. If they're not going to, well then I just won't go. Like it was punishing them. So think about it as an investment in yourself.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (52:20.92)

Totally. You know, I could tell that we would go on and on and on in this one. I want to leave you listening with Marcy and I both, if you or your business or any of this, if this is an area that you think is an opportunity, both of us, Marcy, we could come up with a two pack where they can get both of us to come in and do a session. I'm sure even the different perspectives on just the way she looks at it.

I've gotten so much out of talking with her just because I have my own business and thoughts about this. But man, the different perspectives, hearing different people's opinions often helps move the needle a little bit more when you hear it from more than one person. So I say that because Marcy, let's, I want to start to bring us kind of wrap us here because we've been going and I know we could keep going. What I want to ask you is what Marcy, what would you, what advice would you give to someone who's just

starting out outsourcing who hasn't done a lot of this or any of this. What would you say to them?

Marcey Rader (53:26.647)

If it's from a work perspective, fix something that it's okay if it breaks. And by that I mean, don't outsource something professionally that if somebody screwed it up, it could be disastrous. From a personal perspective, think of one thing that you just procrastinate on all the time and you just don't wanna do it. And instead of,

feeling like a failure every day, because every day that you procrastinate and you move that task forward, I'll clean the gutters tomorrow, I'll clean the gutters tomorrow, I'll clean the gutters tomorrow. Every day that just makes you feel like I failed today, I failed again, I failed again, just outsource it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (54:12.204)

Yes. Preach. Preach, sister. Yes, I love it. For me, the two, I got three pieces of advice for you if you've never done it. First, start with the free or the inexpensive opportunities. So I talked about errands, how it only costs like $5 to get stuff delivered. Or like, I remember when I used to order pizza and you, it was like $3.50 for delivery, or you could go pick it up. And my younger self was like,

I'm not paying your $3.50. I'm going to go pick it up. And like, my god, it took 45 minutes. And inevitably, there was a line when I got there. like, my god, $3.50. Please try the free or inexpensive options. Experiment.

Marcey Rader (54:54.103)

And you didn't have the heat thing that they drove to your house with the pizza in so by the time you got home it was cold

Brian Nelson-Palmer (54:59.712)

Right? And gold, yes, see? Totally. So that's the first thing is start with free or inexpensive options. And I will say the second thing is there's two, here's my top two indicators for the best opportunities for you. The first one is if it's something that you repeat multiple times, what are the ones that you do so many times?

that's going to be a great place to start. like for me, going to the store was five times per week and that was seven hours. That was a really big opportunity for me. So I started there. That's where I started was figuring that out. And if it's not the repeating things or if the biggest difference in your time's worth versus the cost. So again, we, we go back to the, I mean, store thing again in the store example.

it was free or it was like $5 to get the groceries delivered. Nobody was doing this until COVID happened and now everybody's tipped to the grocery game. But man, I used to pay the $10 to get the delivery charge back in like 2014, but it saved me so much time. Like the difference between how much of my time and how much that was worth versus the groceries, that's a huge opportunity. So look at that one. And my last one, please give yourself grace.

And what I mean by that is the first time you do it, you're gonna screw it up. It might not go as planned. It might not go perfectly. They're gonna bring you the wrong fruit that's not quite ripe. They're gonna do something wrong. They're gonna, man, there's gonna be something that isn't quite right. And give yourself grace in that. Try it two, three, four times before. Don't just, because it didn't work the first time doesn't mean that you can't do it. It just means that you might.

need to learn a little bit more about how it works to get better at it. But stick with it. Please do not give up on it. Marcy, my last question is, what does this mean for you personally? You and I both talk about this and we even we were like, we could do this episode. And you and I both were like, yes, I would love to talk. So what does this mean for you? What does it mean to Marcy?

Marcey Rader (57:13.279)

I just, I hope that you listening will be inspired by one of the things that we've talked about and write to Brian, find me on LinkedIn, write to me and just say, I tried this and maybe it was out of your comfort zone, but just that you tried one thing to either save yourself time

energy, money, your relationship, your health, because all that is more important.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (57:49.87)

So true. You you talked about your story, Marcy, for me personally, I'm passionate about this because I was diagnosed with diabetes at age four. And I remember sitting in the doctor's office and finding out that my life expectancy was 10 to 20 years less than everyone else. So I've always operated with this idea that I'm not going to have this long retirement. So I need to live it up now. So I got really good with the time stuff because I want to live now. I don't want to wait till retirement to do all the good stuff.

I wanna do it now. And so that's the why for me. And so to Marcie's point, try once. Give it one, try one, give it a try, see how it goes. If nothing else, it's gonna be a story. And then you can send this episode to your friends and talk smack and say, you know what? I tried what they said and it didn't work. And then you and your friends can laugh about it. And we still add into your life with some humor if nothing else, because now you got a funny story.

Marcey Rader (58:45.739)

Yeah, cause I have a story of one Brussels sprout.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (58:48.462)

Right? Totally. my God. I really if you have that picture of Marcy, send it to me. I want I want the picture. Check the if you you might have to go to the actual link. I don't know if it'll show up in the episode notes. You can't get pictures in there, but in the actual link on my website, I'm going to give you the one Brussels sprout picture so that you can see this because man, that's that's just funny. I love it. Well, Marcy, here's what I love. I love that you are.

Marcey Rader (58:53.559)

send it to you. I'll send it to you.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (59:15.04)

You've like gone all in and you wrote books and you're all about this topic of like how to be more productive and outsource. And I just love that you are so committed to sharing this stuff and that you're willing to come on the show and just share all the things that we talked about. Man, this is so helpful. So thank you very much for coming and being on the show today. This has been awesome.

Marcey Rader (59:38.135)

This was super fun. I love talking about this. Thanks, Brian.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (59:41.63)

And for those folks who want to keep in touch with you or check in with you later, what's the best way for them to keep in touch?

Marcey Rader (59:47.575)

Well, I'm only on LinkedIn, so they can find me there. My website is helloraderco.com or they can check out my new book, Reclaim Your Workday, Sustainable Productivity Strategies for the New World of Work. And it has eight chapters and they cover email and chat tools, meetings, remote work, vacation and time off, and healthy habits and so on.

But the productivity tips and strategies are actually separated by individual contributor, manager, and C-suite business owner. So they can find the specific level for them and incorporate a new productivity strategy or two.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:00:31.01)

Man, and I love that too, because even if you pick up that book now and then you get promoted over the years, like even as you get promoted into manager, you are still an individual contributor. So even if you just start with the first base layer, then when you move up, you're now gonna get the still, the base layer still applies plus the next layer. And then when you get promoted again, because I hope you still keep in touch with Marcy and I when you're some badass C-suite person way later. And like that's, I hope you're still that.

Marcey Rader (01:00:49.089)

Exactly.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:00:59.97)

Totally, all the levels, man. So I'll include all those links. Check your episode notes. That'll be in here. But thank you very much. Thanks. I appreciate that, Marcy. And for you tuning in, do you have a friend or colleague who you've talked about the outsourcing thing with, whether it's at work, where you wanted to outsource something and they wouldn't let you, or if it's a coworker, or maybe it's a friend, and you've toyed with grocery store horror story, grocery delivery horror stories.

Would you share the link to this episode specifically with them? Because I know Marcy and I would love to know that our conversation today touched people that are actually facing this right now. So a few texts back and forth with you is even if it's just for a laugh or something is going to mean so much and fill up both of your cups so much if you'll do that. So and I know Marcy and I would just love to know that you shared this and we helped make that happen. So whether

Whether you've joined my membership and you've taken the first step of joining the email list, or even if this is just your very first Productivity Gladiator episode, I love sharing Productivity Gladiator with you because together, these productivity skills are gonna change your life. That's a wrap.

Breaking Your Team's Biggest Success Barrier: 7 Simple Changes - with Maura Thomas

Productivity expert Maura Thomas joins Brian to tackle this #truthbomb:
Your team's biggest productivity barrier might be you.

Through engaging stories and practical examples, Maura reveals how leaders unknowingly create chaos through their communication habits and "always available" mentality.

Learn simple yet powerful changes you can make as a leader to transform your team's effectiveness, including why "I trust your judgment" might be the most important phrase in your leadership vocabulary, and why being too available to your team can be just as damaging as being unavailable.

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The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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References In This Episode

• Maura Forbes Article on defining Open Door Policy - 10 Things Leaders Need to Get Right For Happy & Productive Employees

• Harvard Business Review Article, The Downside of Flex Time, the Communication Guidelines chart Maura mentioned in the interview is down at the bottom of the page.

• Maura’s Forbes article: What Does Work-Life Balance Even Mean?

• MauraThomas.com
  

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Episode Digest

Breaking Your Team's Biggest Success Barrier: 7 Simple Changes

While many organizations still frame productivity challenges in terms of time management, the real barrier isn't time – it's attention. Maura Thomas said it best:

"We've all had days where we said to ourselves, 'My gosh, that was such a good day. I got so much done.' And we've all had days where we said, 'My gosh, I was busy all day and somehow I got nothing done.' and in those two instances, same 24 hours."

You can't solve a distraction problem with a time solution. The real challenge lies in how organizational culture, particularly leadership behavior, shapes productivity.

Here are seven specific changes leaders can implement to transform their team's productivity:

1. Be Specific About "Responsiveness" Expectations On The Different Communication Types.

When leaders tell their teams to "be responsive," what they're really saying is "be fast." This creates a culture where employees feel compelled to monitor every communication channel constantly, making it impossible to prioritize effectively.

Instead, clearly define what responsiveness means in different contexts and establish realistic response-time expectations. State these somewhere so staff can point to them and reference them.

2. Create Clear Communication Channel Guidelines - What Type Of Communication Goes Where & When.

Organizations often introduce new communication tools without providing guidance on how to use them effectively. This results in redundant messaging (like sending a chat to say "I just sent you an email") and information overload.

Establish clear guidelines for which communication channels should be used in specific situations. Examples:

—Your “bat signal” - Which method is your “stop everything, I need you right now, it’s an emergency” channel?
—What’s worth a phone call?
—What’s a Teams/Slack Message for? Or an email? What’s the difference?
—Do we text message for work? If so, for what, when, and why?

"If you communicate urgent or time-sensitive issues the same way you communicate every other issue, then that creates a real problem in your organization."

3. Have a system for how work flows to/through your team.

Rather than having team members field requests from all directions, establish clear processes for how work flows into and through your department.

This doesn't mean all requests must go through the manager, but rather that there should be organized systems for handling different types of requests.

This helps prevent the constant "emergency" mode many teams operate in.

4. Use These Responses To Remove Yourself as the bottleneck to your team’s productivity. Empower them instead.

Instead of always wanting work to flow through you, and always being available to answer questions, use empowering phrases that build confidence and autonomy.

Rather than saying "Don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions" (which still implies the need for you to approve), try:

- "I trust your judgment"

- "I will support your decision"

5. Set Clear After-Hours Boundaries On work communication. Do Not Break them.

Despite what leaders might say about not expecting responses after hours, their behavior sets the real expectation.

If you're sending emails at night or on weekends, your team will feel compelled to check and respond. You can still choose to jump on after hours if you want, however all communications you send during this time should use the “schedule-send” feature so it will arrive during the next work day.

This capability is available for all major platforms so if you don’t know how to do it, google it and find it. Follow your established clear protocols from #2 above for genuine emergencies which require communication after hours.

6. Define Terms Explicitly

Common phrases like "open door policy" often mean different things to different people. Some interpret it as "interrupt anyone at any time for any reason," while others see it as "be available for important discussions."

Explicitly define these terms and their practical implications for your team. Top examples from Maura include:
—Work Week: What days and hours is this?
—Vacation Time: Does that mean you ARE or AREN’T available?
—Communication Hours: Is this the same as Work Hours? What times are messages to be received and processed?
—Emergency: What constitutes an emergency? A financial penalty above $#,###? Bleeding? Legal remifications? Something’s going to be on the front page of the newspaper?
—Open door policy: If you have one, what does that mean? Doors can’t be closed?

7. Model Work-Life Balance

Perhaps the most powerful quote from the discussion puts it simply:

"You can't get a fresh perspective on something you never step away from."

Research shows that working between 38-45 hours per week is optimal for productivity, happiness, and health outcomes.

Leaders need to model this balance, recognizing that scrolling through work emails while watching TV still counts as work.

The Impact of These Changes

These changes might seem simple, but their impact can be profound. When leaders recognize how their behavior shapes team culture and make conscious adjustments, they can transform their department from a reactive, always-on environment to one where people can do their best work.

Key challenges many teams face today include:

- Constant interruptions disguised as collaboration

- Difficulty prioritizing when everything feels urgent

- Burnout from always being connected

- Inefficient communication across multiple channels

- Disempowered team members who feel they need approval for everything

By implementing these seven changes, leaders can create an environment where their teams can feel satisfied at the end of each workday, knowing they've accomplished meaningful work rather than just staying busy.

Recognize that being too available to your team can be just as problematic as being unavailable. True leadership means creating an environment where team members can grow, make decisions, and manage their attention effectively – not just responding quickly to every request that comes their way.

Most importantly, remember that creating change doesn't require a complete organizational overhaul. Start with one area, such as communication protocols or workflow management, and build from there. The goal isn't perfect execution but rather conscious improvement in how work gets done.

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Productivity and Success Barriers

11:06 The Impact of Communication on Productivity

19:19 Strategies for New Leaders to Foster Productivity

26:09 Preventing Fires: A New Leadership Approach

34:30 The Power of Clear Communication

44:25 Work-Life Balance and Personal Well-Being

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Today’s Guest

Maura Thomas

Speaker, Trainer, & Author on Productivity

Maura Nevel Thomas is an award-winning international speaker and trainer on individual and corporate productivity and work-life balance, and the most widely-cited authority on attention management. Her proprietary Empowered Productivity™ System has been embraced by the likes of the NASA, Comcast, and Google. She’s ranked in the Top 10 Time Management Professionals in the World, and was named a Top Leadership Speaker by Inc. Magazine. She’s also a TEDx Speaker and the author of six best-selling books. Maura is frequently featured in major business outlets including Business Insider, Fast Company, and the Washington Post, and she’s also a regular contributor to both Forbes and the Harvard Business Review, with articles there viewed over a million times. 

MauraThomas.com

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Why Subscribe To The Email List: Brian shares separate hacks, tips, and actionable learning exclusively for his email subscribers. Sign up so you don’t miss out!

About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. After spending a career hands-on in the trenches as a leader at all levels, I now help others to level-up through my Productivity Gladiator training. Graduates wield time management & life balance superpowers, activate a laser-guided ability to focus & prioritize, and implement a sniper-precise approach to task & email management. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat!

Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.

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Transcript

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:03.156)

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer. On this show, I share personal, practical productivity skills. And in this episode, we're talking about the simple changes that you can make to break your team's biggest success barrier. And with me on the show today is Maura Thomas, who is a speaker, trainer, and an author on the topic of productivity. So I can't wait to have this discussion. Maura, thanks for being here with me.

Maura Thomas (00:28.683)

I'm happy to be here, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:31.094)

Now say a bit about your background. said productivity, but we're going to be talking about success barriers and such. So tell them, tell how your background relates to that topic.

Maura Thomas (00:41.471)

Yeah, I've been in the productivity field for my whole professional career. I started out for a decade working for a company that sold paper-based planners and training to go along with them. And when I left there, I started my business a really long time ago. So my whole professional career from my first job out of college, my entire professional career has been in the productivity industry and helping people.

achieve more of what's most important. The definition of the word productive that guides my work is achieving significant results. And that means anything from what's most significant to today, to this week, to this year, to this lifetime, and really anything that you consider important in between.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:33.388)

I love that and you talk about paper planners and it's so funny because I I tell people did not use paper planners because online is even better. So it's just so funny that that's the like man. We're going back in time to the paper planner days like yes, that's what we're talking about now more a lot of people talk about productivity. So what would you say makes you a little different from all these other people that talk about productivity?

Maura Thomas (01:59.125)

Yeah, I think most people still translate productivity into time management. Most people frame their ability to be productive in terms of time management. And I think that that phrase has far outlived its usefulness. The reason that we don't achieve, the reason that we don't achieve all the things that we want to achieve is not because we don't have enough time. We've all had days where we said to ourselves, my gosh, that was such a good day. I got so much done.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:19.0)

Mm-hmm.

Maura Thomas (02:27.989)

And we've all had days where we said, my gosh, I was busy all day and somehow I got nothing done. And in those two instances, same 24 hours. We didn't have more time one day or less time another day. And also everybody knows that we cannot manage time. It doesn't, we can't slow it down. We can't back it up. We can't get more of it. We can't bend it to our will in any way. Our biggest challenge in the 21st century is not that we don't have enough time. It's that we have too many distractions.

You can't solve a distraction problem with a time solution. The antidote to distraction is attention. And so I think it's time to kick the phrase time management to the curb and start thinking about how we manage our attention. Because the more we talk about attention management instead of time management, the more aware we become of how distracted we are. And the truth is, while we can't manage time, no one but you

can manage your attention. And when you get distracted from the things that are really important to you, unfortunately, we have lots of stories that we tell ourselves, but the truth is it is 100 % in our control. And being a control freak type A personality, that frame works much better for me. And I think it's much more relevant to the world that we live in today because the techniques of time management.

created in a world that no longer exists and is never coming back.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:59.816)

I mean, I did. You say that and I'm I'm I'm laughing. Cause on the one hand I'm like, wait a minute. I'm the guy who did a Ted talk on the value of your time and like time management is a thing. But at the same time, the whole premise of my talk is about spending your time more wisely and how you spend it and the value of it, which is really kind of exactly what you're talking about, which is you can't make more of it. So you have to choose how you spend it, which I am so excited for this conversation. OK.

Maura Thomas (04:09.803)

Thank

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:29.088)

So let's talk about it then. So what is our premise for today is the simple changes you can make to break your team's biggest success barrier. let's spoil the surprise here. What is the barrier? What is it?

Maura Thomas (04:47.455)

Yeah, well, I know that you are a primary audience, is recently promoted people managers. And so I think one of the biggest mistakes that even seasoned CEOs make is not recognizing how much influence you have on the people who report to you. And the way that you behave creates the culture. So when I say culture, the culture of an organization or the culture of a team,

I just mean the way everybody on the team behaves. so that means every single person on the team contributes to the culture, but nobody contributes to the culture more than the leader. Because people look to you to how to behave. And so when I talk about culture, I talk about the culture of productivity, right, as I'm sure you do as well. Are you creating environment where your team can really, really do their best work?

or are you creating an environment where your team is reactive and distracted all day long and leave work every day saying, my gosh, I was busy all day and yet I still got nothing done. And so I guess I have to get my work done when nobody's bothering me. Well, the only time people are not bothering you is at 11 o'clock at night or 4 a.m. or weekends or holidays. And...

What I have found is that the biggest obstacle to the team's productivity is often the behavior of the leaders. and the culture of the organization or the team. so Recognizing how much influence you have is really, really important.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:22.476)

Whoa.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:29.01)

my gosh, so just had this reaction like, my gosh, so we're going to pull out the guns and go after the senior leaders now. Is that what's about to happen? Heck yeah. Okay, let's talk about this Maura. Yes. And everybody, whenever you, the ideas that she gives you, you can blame Maura for all these ideas that we're about to point at the, no. Okay. So it just kidding. But that said, so it's ultimately the biggest barrier is the culture. Is that what I'm taking away here?

Maura Thomas (06:34.678)

I'm not sure.

Maura Thomas (06:56.125)

One of the biggest things standing in the way of the team, I mean, there's lots of things, certainly. Like a lot of people just simply don't have the skills to manage the realities of business today. We live in an unprecedented time with constant distraction, a fast pace, technology advancing faster than we can keep up with it.

And so it is a difficult place to live. And back in the day, for those people old enough to remember, I mean, when you, if you got a corporate job, like an office job, when you got out of school, you, you got sent to the time management class and you got your leather binder with the zipper and all the pages in it. And you got taught like, this is how to be a grownup. And this is how you manage a life. And now you have lots more responsibilities and this is how it goes. Well,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (07:44.952)

and

Maura Thomas (07:53.095)

The world is way more complicated than it was back then. And we don't get that anymore. Most companies don't send their people to that kind of training anymore. And even if they did, a lot of those techniques are outdated and not relevant anymore. So it's a real, really challenging. Most people simply don't have the skills that they need. But even when they do have the skills that they need,

so many cultures, the culture around productivity is so dysfunctional. Most organizations have a culture of urgency or a culture of chaos or a culture of distraction. Everything is an emergency. Everybody needs everything now. And we're drowning each other in communication and we're drowning each other in messages of all kinds. Everybody's telling everybody everything.

And it's just impossible. Every minute that somebody on your team has to spend in an inbox is a minute that they don't get to spend doing something that feels important and meaningful and like it moved the needle because nobody goes home at the end of the day and says, my gosh, it was such a good day. I read like 200 emails. It was amazing. Nobody says that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:14.328)

It's so true!

Maura Thomas (09:19.691)

And, but we tell all ourselves, all these messages and all these stories about why we have to spend every day in our inbox. And, and it feels true because if I miss, God forbid I should miss an important message from my boss, I'm in big trouble. Even though my boss sends me 70 messages every day, there's one or two that I really couldn't miss, but it got buried in the 68 others that I was sent.

And then the hundred that other people sent me. so it's, know, team communication is overwhelming and the leaders just sort of go, well, mean, I guess I figured out how to do this kind of. I guess everybody just needs to figure it out, know, figure it out. Everybody wants to do more with less. That's a, that's a wish, not a strategy.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:53.592)

Hello.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:11.906)

Gosh, yes. I mean, the focus and the prioritization is such, that's what, I mean, that's what productivity Gladiator is about is, all right, you just got that promotion. Welcome to the team. And what most companies do is they just say, congratulations, you're promoted. Good luck. And then figure it out. And like, so they do a really good job with onboarding training is a thing that a lot of organizations focus on.

but then they kind of leave out the training for the next step promotion or the one after that. Like what goes with that? That's a real opportunity. And so you're preaching to the choir with me and I'm sure you listening can absolutely relate to the chaos that she's talking about and the last minute culture that she's talking about. so if the culture of the leader is that, how big,

Maura Thomas (11:02.537)

behavior of

Brian Nelson-Palmer (11:06.092)

Give me an idea of how big of an issue this is, Maura. We both work in the space. We both work with different organizations. So like, what is the difference? Many people have no frame of reference beyond the place that they're sitting right now. So what is the difference when the culture is different? How big of an issue is it?

Maura Thomas (11:26.943)

I mean, so a lot of people talk about a culture of safety and a culture of trust and a culture of accountability and all that stuff is great. I'm talking about the culture of productivity. Are you creating an environment where your team can feel satisfied at the end of the workday? And so many leaders prioritize things like, for example, okay, here's a real concrete example.

bosses, supervisors, managers often say, we need to be responsive to our clients or we need to be responsive in our communication. And so if you just tell me that, what I hear when you say we need to be responsive is you need to be fast. You need to be fast when somebody reaches out to you, when somebody sends you some sort of message, voicemail, email, text, we need to be fast.

And if I want to be, I don't want to just be baseline at my job. I want to be really good at my job. So I want to be the best version of fast. And that means immediate. And so if in order to be, if I hear you saying, we need to be responsive without any other context. What I'm going to try to do is answer every message immediately. And then I'm going to get the gold star. But if I have to answer every message immediately, then I have to monitor every

every message on every channel as soon as it arrives. And so then how do I prioritize anything? Because everything that's coming in might be an emergency. And so if everything might be an emergency, then how do I do anything else? Because I have to monitor all of the information. And so that language on its face, it sounds pretty good. We need to be responsive. Sure, we need to be responsive. What do you mean by that?

And why, why do you want to be responsive? Do you just want to, I mean, are you competing on fast? Is that like your differentiator? Because anyone can be fast. What does good customer service mean to you? And what kind of expectations are you setting both internally and externally to provide whatever your definition of good customer service is?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:37.111)

Mm-hmm.

Maura Thomas (13:53.092)

So that's just one example. Another example is people... sorry. Yeah. Yeah?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:56.404)

my gosh, Mark, wait, can I yes and? Can I yes and you on that? Because while we're talking about this, I just had this debate in a session with an organization last week and it was so relevant to me because on this topic specifically, they say be responsive, right? And so people think, sometimes I engage and you've engaged and I know you listening probably have met the people that are glued to their inbox. Like they just, they can't close it, it's up all the time.

in the middle of a meeting, they will interrupt the meeting because something came in an email, which is disrespectful anyway, but they're just on their inbox all the time. And the conversation that we had that was so funny as you're saying, let's be responsive, which means let's be quick. But then on the flip side of that, how fast if that boss expects responsive, that organization expects responsive, how long do you wait before you follow up

on an email that hasn't been responded to? Because in my experience, you generally have to give the person, and this is general, so every situation is different, but generally, a couple of days. If they don't respond the next day, you might wait two days before you ping them again and say, hey, just checking in. And in some organizations, if you were in two days, they'll be like, listen, it might be like three days or something. So on the one end of the spectrum,

They want you to be responsive in a matter of minutes or hours. But then if somebody doesn't respond to you, you have to wait two days to follow up with them, to be, to give them time to process. So it's just this funny juxtaposition between the expectation of response time and the expectation of how long they get to respond to you. So as a supervisor or a leader, as we're talking about this, it makes sense to make those things even.

Right? Let's balance that expectation so that the amount of time that you give, the grace that you give somebody else, you're also allowed yourself or something like that. That was, it was just a really interesting conversation on that.

Maura Thomas (16:04.863)

Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure about balancing those things, but I think that another mistake that organizations make is that they don't provide any guidance. We have all these different ways to communicate inside organizations, and we keep introducing more ways to communicate and share information inside organizations, and we never provide any guidance.

that says we use this in this situation and we use this in this situation and we use this in this situation. And so what happens is it becomes personal preference. And so I work with, I have 10 people on my team and this one likes email and this one likes chat and this one likes voicemail and this one likes to have meetings and I can't remember what everybody likes. So I'm just gonna send all the things in all the ways.

And so now you end up with the chat that says, Hey, I just sent you an email. Right. And so now you have, now you have two messages about one thing instead of one message about one thing. And now you can see why everybody is drowning in too much communication. And when I talk about defaulting to personal preference, people say to me, you can't dictate these things. I mean, everybody's different.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:06.68)

huh.

Maura Thomas (17:26.559)

Yeah, everybody is different, but you have policies at your company that this is how you do things. You don't let every new employee just say, do things however you want here. It's fine. Whatever you want to do is fine. We don't have any policies. You don't say that. Communication is one of the most important things because it is something that

people in the organization spend the majority of their time on, at least those people who work in the office, right? If you're not actively like building things or on the manufacturing floor or seeing patients or directly serving customers, then a big part of your job is communication. And yet we have no policies around how we communicate. And so...

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:54.786)

Yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:14.946)

Yes.

Maura Thomas (18:15.795)

And so I have to treat every incoming communication as an emergency because it might be. And so that means every new thing has to be the priority until I know that it isn't the priority. And so then I can't prioritize really anything. Leaders call me in and they say, my team doesn't know how to prioritize. I need you to do a class on prioritization. And what I find is that the team knows how to prioritize. They just can't in this culture because everything feels like a fire.

that they have to put out right now. And so that's a culture problem.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:50.124)

Yeah, gosh, for sure. all right. Well, let's I think we've all right. We've declared we're at the point where let's talk about culture and that thing. So what? What do you do? What what what are what are Maura's thoughts takeaways on? What do you do in that scenario? Let's say and the people like you listening, the people that that I talked to and about on this show is generally not you are not the CEO.

You are not the very top. You're either the person, the troops on the ground, or you're the first or second level above them. You've got a team underneath you, but you've got people above you. So you can't issue that policy that fixes all of it, but now what do you do? What are your thoughts, Maura?

Maura Thomas (19:38.655)

Yeah, many, many things. mean, the first thing is that as the new leader, you have to be brave enough to set the example. And so that means you have to manage up as much as you have to manage down. And so you want to make sure that you are protecting your team from the dysfunction in the organization to the extent that you can.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:04.055)

Huh?

Maura Thomas (20:04.425)

So if you're so it's helpful, for example, to have a conversation with your boss about how is work going to flow through your department? Because probably most people on your team get emails and other communication from everyone in the organization about everything. And

And how do they prioritize? And all of those emails, by the way, are typically another thing to do, right? Here's something that's really is going to be a to-do item for you. And so if you as the leader are not paying attention to how your team receives work, processes work, and pushes work out of your department, then it's going to remain chaotic.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:41.432)

True story. Yeah.

Maura Thomas (21:04.509)

And if it's not the leader of that department figuring out how the workflow is going to happen, then who is it? There's no one. And so recognizing how your team receives their work and therefore how they can prioritize it is a super useful thing to do as you take over as a new manager of a department. And that will protect your team from

feeling like they're pulled in a million different directions. That's one thing.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (21:39.68)

I love the it's ultimately it's managing the work right so and can I so I want to ask you a clarifying question on that then because there is this what you don't want to do is shut down the communication but at the same time where do you draw the line of what they can go like so I mean I mean the example I have is let's say somebody has a question about something question goes directly to the person they answer the question.

Hey, a question about this policy, a question about this thing, whatever it is, questions are fine. If it is, to answer the question sometimes takes a little bit of work, but if it's just a clarifying thing, that's one thing. If it is a task, then the task goes through the manager, or is it a task under a certain amount of minutes, or is it just that the person on your team knows to let the boss know or log it in some system? Where's the line between

what does go through you as the boss and what still goes straight to the person.

Maura Thomas (22:40.619)

Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that everything has to flow through the boss, right? I definitely don't want to, I mean, the boss shouldn't be the gatekeeper. The boss should work, the head of the department should work with their boss to figure out how the work of the department is going to flow through the department. And then,

getting support in terms of, know, every salesperson can't, shouldn't be going to every member of my team with everything that they need, right? We need a way to sort of, to centralize and prioritize requests because every salesperson is going to think that their thing is the most important and my team is in a position to decide for themselves. so every, so,

Right? So a lot of times people feel like they report to many different bosses. And so it's not to say that every request has to come through the boss. It's just to say, what process are we going to encourage, say, the sales team to follow when they need things from our people? Are they going to go directly to the person? Is there going to be a ticketing system? Who's going to be in charge of what? Does somebody have a finite number of accounts that they service?

just stepping back and taking the big picture view of how does this department operate and how does work come to us and flow through and go out so that people individually in the minute of their day saying, I just got five different emails from five different salespeople who need five different things and each one of these is going to take me an hour to do, but I already had my own plans for the day. So how am I supposed to know what, right? And just feeling frustrated. That doesn't mean that

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:38.199)

yet.

Maura Thomas (24:39.339)

that every request has to go only to the boss. It just means to take the big picture view of how are we going to handle this? Because we know this is going to happen.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:48.15)

And you know, I almost think about it as like necking it down. Oftentimes when you describe that, that scenario, people, you come into a new position maybe, or a new manager of a team, and you feel a little powerless because the way that it's been running is the way that it's been running. And so you don't want to ruffle feathers. You don't want to be the one that comes in, but at the same time, you do need to get your hands around the work. And so you as the boss are in charge of the work.

That is your, you're in charge of the people and approving vacations, but reality is you're in charge of the work. So even if that means getting your hands around the big picture requests, even if just start there, like the advice is, my God, please start somewhere. Like start with the big stuff. And then once you figure out the big stuff, the little stuff might be running around all crazy still, but you got to start somewhere. So start big.

and then come down to the medium stuff and get a good system in place for those and then move down. But don't just look at it and go, well, I can't fix this all at once. So let's just not fix it at all. That's not going to be effective. So please don't do that. Please start somewhere. And I love your idea, Maura. How does the workflow? That's a really good one. I like that.

Maura Thomas (26:09.279)

Yeah, a lot of times recently promoted people and sometimes even seasoned leaders will view their job as the one to fight the fires. And I really think that the leaders should be the ones looking at why the fires are starting to begin with and preventing them. When I ask, when I go into a leadership group, often the first question I ask is,

What is the one thing that is most likely to derail your plans for your day? And they say unexpected issues that pop up. And I say, okay, unexpected issues are the most common thing. So this happens every day. Yeah, it happens every day. Well, doesn't that mean that it should be expected then?

And why are there so many unexpected issues? Because that tells me that you don't have processes for how things should operate. I mean, I understand everything doesn't always go according to plan, but if you have unexpected issues every day, then you should start expecting them. And you need to start to think about why they're happening to begin with. So thinking about your job as the one to prevent the fires instead of the one to fight the fires is a...

way that you can be a really powerful contributor to the organization because a lot of people don't add value in that way. They just put their head down and do their job instead of thinking, how can we get better every day?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:45.432)

True story. I love that. Prevent the fires, not fight the fires. And that's really hard because you as the supervisor are often held responsible for the fires. So you basically have to stand there on fire and try to figure out how to prevent this the next time, which is counterintuitive, but also super important. Like, don't forget to, if you put the fire out, make sure that it doesn't start again. Like, yes. Love that. True.

Maura Thomas (28:00.754)

You

Maura Thomas (28:15.371)

And you know what? Yeah. So that leads me to another one, which is kind of related, which is that leaders, mean, everybody really, everybody wants to be helpful, but especially people in leadership positions, they feel like it's their job to be, we've heard this idea of being a servant leader, right? And being, everybody wants to be helpful. Everybody wants to support their team. Everybody wants to answer questions and, you know, be the mentor and be the person that their

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:15.564)

What else?

Maura Thomas (28:45.269)

team needs, but here's the truth. It is just as bad to be too available to your team as it is to be completely unavailable to your team. Because if your team is always coming to you with, for guidance and answers and help and support, they're always interrupting you for these things. And you always allow the interruption

and you always provide the guidance and the sounding board and the support and the answers to the questions, then at best, at best, you are teaching your team to be a little lazy because they're sitting in their office thinking, you know, I could probably figure this out on my own, but if I just ask Brian, he'll tell me what to do. that's the most efficient thing is just to go, is to go ask Brian at best, you're making them a little lazy.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:34.025)

Right.

Maura Thomas (29:41.893)

at worse, you are disempowering them. You are teaching them that they have to run every little question, every little issue by you to get your input. And some people recognize this. Some people, they recognize that they need to teach their team to be independent. And so they usually say one of two things. And I think both of these could be improved upon. So when they realize that being too available, perhaps

is making their team a little lazy or disempowered. They'll say either, don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions, right? Well, my response to that is if they know the problem and they know the solution, why do they need to come to you at all? Right? Or they'll say something like, what do you think we should do? But both of those things still imply that

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:22.018)

Right.

Maura Thomas (30:40.521)

that the leader needs to bless this, right? Come to me with solutions and I will tell you if that's a good solution or not, right? Or what do you think we should do so that I can tell you thumbs up or thumbs down on what you think we should do. That still disempowers the team. So I have two phrases that can be super powerful, especially even for seasoned CEOs, but especially for new leaders.

Try one of these. The first one is the one I always use and somebody just last week gave me a really good one too. So try this phrase instead when your team comes to you. I trust your judgment.

I trust your judgment is a much more useful thing to say because it empowers the team member to take ownership of their job and to be more accountable and to solve problems on their own and to learn and grow and take responsibility. I trust your judgment or.

That's the one that I've been using for a long time. Somebody last week gave me another option, which I also love, which is, I will support your decision.

both of those empower your team. And so remembering that being too available is just as bad as being never available and trying one of those two phrases will help your team to learn and grow and feel empowered and take responsibility and accountability. And the benefit to you is that you will be interrupted less often.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:19.382)

Last off. Yep.

Maura Thomas (32:20.841)

and you'll more time to get your homework done.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:23.532)

That's true. If you think about the supervisor, when you read every position description ever, well, ever might be a strong term. Now I'm getting extremist with my language. if when you read most position descriptions, the supervisor position description does not say be available to answer your team's questions within moments or at any time that they have them. That generally doesn't say that.

Maura Thomas (32:51.989)

Well, it doesn't say that, but here's another mistake. When I talked about words have power, we say things that we think mean a thing and other people think they mean something entirely different. So here's a phrase that the job description doesn't say that, but how many companies say that they have an open door policy?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:11.384)

true story.

Maura Thomas (33:12.381)

And what do, if you say we have an open door policy, what most people think that means is come on in any time. Anyone can interrupt anyone at any time for any reason. If you say open door policy, that is probably what your team means. Or I have worked with teams who, when I talk about controlling your attention and maybe close your door to get work done, and I have had people say to me,

We are not, we have an open door policy here. We are not allowed to close our doors. And when the leader of the team heard that in the training, it was like a face bomb moment, right? Because we think that everybody has the same definition of the words that we use. I wrote an article for Forbes called 10 terms that you need to explicitly define for your team. And open door policy is at the top of that list.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:07.496)

Nice. OK, I will search that and make sure in your notes for this episode, you can check out that one because that sounds like an interesting read more. like that. OK. So we we all right. So encapsulate, we just went down. We had some good anecdotes there. What is the bottom line? That bottom line piece of advice was.

Maura Thomas (34:30.411)

Well, we said a lot. be very clear with the words that you use and make sure everybody's on the same page with what they mean. Like culture. Culture means how everybody operates, how everybody behaves in the department. And so when you talk about culture, if you, for example, never respect a closed door and you always knock, knock, hey, do you have a minute? Then everybody's going to do that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:42.882)

Okay.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:49.132)

Right.

Maura Thomas (34:59.217)

If you yell over cubicle walls, everybody's going to yell over cubicle walls. If you email people after hours, everybody's going to email people after hours. So understanding that you're all on the same page with words, words like culture, words like open door policy, words like vacation. What do you expect from your team when they're on vacation?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:22.047)

huh.

Maura Thomas (35:25.803)

because most people say that they expect nothing from their team when they're on vacation. But the way they behave implies that they actually expect quite a lot more from their team when they're on vacation. So, so words have power and understanding the words that you use, that's, that's one thing. Having a, a big picture view of how your department operates.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:40.045)

they take.

Maura Thomas (35:53.831)

so that there's a process for things, so that all of these unexpected emergencies that really should be expected then get handled more efficiently and then you're really adding value by improving the way that the department operates.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:02.02)

huh.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:08.973)

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:12.684)

And I wanna go back to one, Maura, that you said, or one thing that we talked about, which I think is important for you and I to talk about now, and that is we talked about all the different communication mediums. And you had said that, you mentioned earlier, and it just jogged my memory about how culture, there are all these different mediums, and people say, we can't put a policy around those, or we can't necessarily.

you as a supervisor, you as an employee can create expectations around those things. And so the example that I have is many organizations now have something like a Microsoft Teams or Slack in their organization. And what's funny is the organizations brought in this tool, but then they never talked about communications and how that's routed and setting expectations around it. So for example, for me, when my organization brought in Teams,

or Slack, to me, the very, if you actually go read the studies and you nerd out on productivity like I do, and I'm sure you do, the beautiful thing about Teams and Slack is it allows you to communicate internally without blowing up somebody's inbox and email. So the simple line would be email is external and Teams and Slack is your internal communications. That's an easy way to do it. Now that's not always true.

But what I find happens is that organizations just now have two mediums when they used to have one and they use them both the same. And then people have different expectations around it too. So for me, if I treat it like email, except this one's internal and this one's external, then that means if 24 hours is how long you expect, by the next day you'll get back to somebody on an email, then that's also true of your team's message. But organizations don't necessarily.

that expectation or they might not have done that. So you as a boss with your team, you don't have to dictate this, but at least sit down and have the discussion about how are we best going to use these platforms to communicate, whether it's teams or Slack or I don't know about you, but I've gotten text messages from my boss on or client or whoever. And so now there's texting phone calls. So what is that and create an expect or a norm?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:29.976)

Create a norm for your team if nothing else. But I don't know, what are your thoughts on

Maura Thomas (38:35.967)

Yeah, I mean, I think an expectation of response times can be helpful, but to me, the first step is which tool in which situation. So for example, I mean, at the very minimum, the way that I like to put it is that you need a bat signal, right? Like what's what's the like, this is urgent or time sensitive, right? Because if you communicate urgent or time sensitive,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:56.184)

Okay.

Maura Thomas (39:03.751)

issues the same way you communicate every other issue, then that creates a real problem in your organization. So at the very minimum, you need a bat signal. You need a bat signal internally and you need a bat signal externally. If it's time sensitive, do this. But then there's also some communication guidelines and there's an article out there probably

I think it's Harvard Business Review that I wrote in this one with a chart, a sample chart of communication guidelines, because it's not just urgent time sensitive. It's also during work hours, after work hours. Because sometimes things come up after hours, but most things that get communicated after hours really could have waited. So how do we communicate then? Also,

If it's another problem that we have, especially with some younger folks, is that they tend, sometimes people tend to hide behind email. And so they try to communicate a very sensitive or, you know, complicated issue by email because it's easier to do it by email than actually looking someone in the face and telling them like they're not doing a good job or they are disappointed.

what they said or something like that. And email is not appropriate in that situation. identifying the different ways that you have to communicate in your organization and providing some guidelines around if it's urgent or time sensitive, do this. If it's complicated or sensitive, do this. If it's routine questions, whatever, do

So there's a chart in that HBR article about that that is really useful. And also after hours versus during work hours. And this comes down to recognizing how much influence leaders have and what that does to your team. It doesn't matter how many times you say to somebody like, don't worry about this. Sometimes I'm up late at night or Sunday.

Maura Thomas (41:25.371)

mornings, I'm sending emails. I mean, don't even worry about it until Monday. It doesn't matter. You can say that until you're blue in the face, but if you're the boss and you're sending email after hours, your team's going to be reading email after hours. And that's affecting their life. And there's all kinds of really powerful studies about that. I'm afraid that we're running low on time, so I don't want to go too far off the rabbit hole.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:46.59)

my gosh, can we? gosh, Mark, can we just say that it is please if you are a supervisor, if you are over people or, you know, honestly, even if you're not a supervisor, if you want to correct that culture of you need to be checking your email all the time, it's called schedule send.

And with the latest version of iOS, you can now do that with text messages too. So if you don't know how to schedule send in Slack or schedule send in Teams or schedule send in your email, it's in Gmail. It's an outlook.

And now I'm pretty sure on every platform you can Google it. There is a way to do this. You should know that if you're going to send something, it's fine that you think of something at eight o'clock at night. I nerd out on things and think about it at nine or 10 or whatever. And you want to get it off out of your head. So you write it down or you send an email to that person. But instead of hitting send, hit schedule, send and schedule it to arrive at eight o'clock the next morning so that you are not the person who's emailing.

at 10 o'clock at night. Please, please, please, unless like you said, it's urgent, unless it is urgent, please don't send emails after hours. Not even that. Call. Yeah.

Maura Thomas (43:00.617)

Definitely even, okay, Brian, I gotta disagree with you here. Yeah, don't send an email in the case of an urgent issue after hours because I have to check it to know, right? So what's the bad signal for after hours? What's the bad signal for after hours communication? People need to feel like they can disconnect at night. And so there needs to be an understanding that like if there really is an emergency and let's face it, most people's jobs do not require

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:11.778)

Fair. True.

Yeah.

Maura Thomas (43:29.0)

after hours communication. If you're like a middle level manager and you've got a team of customer service people reporting to you, there's nothing that needs to that they need to be acting on after their work hours. It can wait until tomorrow.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:44.844)

Yeah. And in most cases, generally, it can wait until tomorrow. And it's fine that you just want to get it off your plate now because you got a lot to do tomorrow. But schedule, send that thing. Please do not send that message like, gosh, yes, I love. And the bat signals are great. I love that metaphor. That's a great metaphor. You need it. You need a signal that cuts through everything when you need it and you only use it when it's necessary. Don't be the boy who cries wolf. You know, kind

You know, now one thing I want to ask you is what does this mean for you personally? Clearly you're pretty passionate about this. You've been doing this for a long time, so talk about what this means for Maura. Why? Why? Why is this so important to you?

Maura Thomas (44:25.663)

Yeah. So I work with super accomplished, super dedicated, super motivated people who have very busy lives by choice. And what I find from these people is that they are, they're able because they're driven and motivated and passionate. They are, they are offering so much value to the world.

They're offering so much value. you know, they're volunteers, they're family people, they're community members, they're employees, they're leaders, they aspire to improve. And that is great. So they're offering so much to the world, but they're offering it at a very high cost to themselves. They're offering these gifts to the world in a way that is exhausting and depleting and...

and stressful. And I mean, you've maybe heard the expression busy is the new fine, right? How are you busy? Or people, what I find out I'm hearing people say is either bit, how are you either busy or tired, exhausted, right? And so the re the

Brian Nelson-Palmer (45:34.635)

I dunno.

Maura Thomas (45:47.871)

The reason that I do what I do is to help people bring these amazing, these driven, motivated, smart people, is to help them bring these gifts to the world in a way that is inspiring and energizing and motivating instead of in a way that is depleting and stressful and overwhelming. And that's why I do what I do.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (46:08.598)

Yeah. Have you? Have you talk about a time you've hit that point in your career and what's your do you have like a bat signal for yourself when like, OK, all right, I know I've reached my threshold. Now it's too much. How does it work for you?

Maura Thomas (46:29.067)

Yeah, I mean...

So I succumb to many of the problems that I help my people manage. Like I am easily distracted. I sometimes am on a device when I should be present in something else. And sometimes I'm not giving people my full attention even when I intend to or want to, or sometimes I am that person.

that, you you've ever seen that person somewhere at the grocery store on the plane and they're just on their phone and they're just oblivious. They're in the way. They're yelling there. Right. And everybody's like, dude, hang up the phone. Right. Sometimes I'm that that person. I admit it. But one thing that I I think that I have dialed in is the whole idea of work life balance. And I wrote an article

because words have meaning for Forbes about what does work-life balance even mean. And some people talk about work-life balance as if it's convenience. Like, I like to work at home because then I can, you know, start dinner or take the dog out for a walk or run an errand real quick. Well, that's convenience. That's not work-life balance.

Or some people say, like, I need to run out and deal with the kids and I don't have to ask anybody's permission if I'm working from home. Well, that's freedom. That's not work-life balance. And so the one definition that I have found for work-life balance, and, you know, I don't agree with this, like, work-life integration or work-life harmony or whatever. I think that

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:10.666)

Yeah.

Maura Thomas (48:14.941)

I think that the more that we, I mean, we have one life, no question about it. Sometimes you do work stuff at home and home stuff at work and that's way it goes. We only have one life, but there is reams and reams and reams of research that shows that.

working too much is not only bad for us, but it's bad for work. you are more, we are healthier, we are happier, and we are even more productive at work if we don't work too much. So the definition that I encourage my clients to use is for work-life balance is simply don't work too much. And if you want to know what work, what too much means, the research shows that on average, now,

Every business has crunch times and I get that. But on average, somewhere between 38 and 45 hours a week is optimal for productivity, for happiness, for engagement, for health outcomes, for all of those things. And even if you love your job, you will still be better at your job if you don't do your job too much. if you're scrolling...

Brian Nelson-Palmer (49:27.304)

us. Preach. Preach.

Maura Thomas (49:29.393)

scrolling your email from your couch when you watch TV at night, that counts as work. And so that's one thing that I really take seriously. It's the whole like, you know, put your oxygen mask on first idea. Like nobody's any good to anybody if you're exhausted and burned out and overwhelmed and stressed and you're not good to your family, you're not good to your coworkers, you're not good for your organization. It's not even good for your career advancement. If this is how you

Brian Nelson-Palmer (49:35.063)

Yes.

Maura Thomas (49:58.897)

operate. I can't sometimes the best thing that you can do for your work is not work.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (50:07.554)

So true. And knowing that line, I love what you said there because I feel like there is this misnomer that many people have jobs and they have careers. And then, you know, the concept is, well, if I won the lottery, I wouldn't do this job. So this isn't my life's work or something like that. It's that that miss. I think that's a misnomer. The reality is we do jobs that are interesting to us and can be interesting for us.

And having that balance is so true because I'm here to tell you right now that I have met and spent time with so many people who were doing their life's work where it doesn't feel like work. And you know who gets burned out? Those people all the time because they work too much and there's a limit to that for that person too. So I love the balance has to do with not working too much and balance is about.

having a personal life that is not necessarily your work life. You can't do them all together all the time. That that still isn't good. You as a human being want to have different dynamics, different angles. There's different things to you. So balance means you're not just a one trick pony. You don't just have that one thing that you do and that's your that's it. So I, I'm sorry. I get really motivated about this stuff. I love it, man. I love what you said there, Maura. That is that is awesome.

Maura Thomas (51:25.865)

And here's another way to put it. You can't get a fresh perspective on something you never step away from.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (51:33.078)

Ooh, ooh, that's that's sexy. I like that. Yes, absolutely. Step away from it and look back at it. Get little sassy look back like yep. Look at that over there like yes, dude. I don't that wasn't sexy at all. What I just did there if you're watching the video. But anyway, that's what I was going for here. OK gosh well Maura. Here's what I love. I love that you are doing your life's work in a way and at the same time I love that you just told us.

Maura Thomas (51:42.987)

Ha

Brian Nelson-Palmer (52:00.836)

that 38 to 45 hours is your life's work and the limit on what's good for you too. And yes, we're all gonna fall off the bandwagon and all of that. And I love that you own it, but then you're teaching people to do it better. And you know, we just keep trying and each time we try, we get better. And I love that you're helping these people do that. And I love that you shared some time with us to share some of these ideas. So thanks for being here. Thanks for doing this.

Maura Thomas (52:27.507)

It was such a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (52:30.336)

And if people want to keep in touch with you, what are the best ways to keep in touch with Maura?

Maura Thomas (52:35.625)

Yeah, mean, everything you need is at maurathomas.com. There's a page called Free Resources where you can get like a guide to controlling your tech and for getting out from under your email and for decreasing burnout. And there's discussion guides for the books. You can learn about all the books there. I've written, in addition to my Forbes and my HBR columns, there's probably 300 or more articles on my own blog.

So there's all kinds of resources at MauraThomas.com.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (53:11.096)

Got it. Check that out. And if they have never met you or heard of you and you were going to tell them what is the first thing that they should check out of yours, what's your favorite? Where do you send people first of all those things you just listed?

Maura Thomas (53:25.129)

Well, we have designed, well, we've got a new website coming out and we've really designed it in a way that helps people figure out where to get started. So I would say at moratomis.com, that should help you find the path for what will help you the most, whether it's independent study, whether it's support for your team, whether it's just a book or an article or a specific problem that you're trying to solve, you should be able to get to what you need.

pretty quickly by starting at maurathomas.com.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (53:58.52)

And that link is in your notes. So check that out. Very cool. And for you turning in, do you have a friend or colleague who struggles with the culture of productivity in their organization? Or does this remind you of a coworker or someone that you've worked with where you hit some of these issues that Maura and I talked about? Because I know my request for you is would you share the link to this episode specifically with them? Because I know Maura and I

would love to know that our conversation today touched people that are facing that issue with the barrier to success and culture and productivity, a culture of productivity and how they can do that. So a few texts back and forth with you directly because you thought about them would be so meaningful to them and would go a long way to filling up both of your cups. So please do that if somebody came to mind for you with this episode. And whether it's...

just your first episode or you've taken the step and joined my email list or you've joined my membership. I love sharing Productivity Gladiator with you because together these productivity skills are going to change your life. That's a wrap.

How Your Purpose Will Multiply Your Productivity - With Stan Phelps

Stan Phelps joins Brian and explores the deep connection between purpose and productivity. They dig into the importance of aligning personal and organizational goals with a clear purpose.

They also dive into helpful tangents including:

• The 4 versions of the workplace and how productivity is tied to the current version 4.0

• the significance of warmth in relationships,

• Generational shifts in workplace values.

• The 8 purpose archetypes

• Practical advice for individuals seeking to find their purpose.

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The Audio/Podcast

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References In This Episode

• Purple Goldfish (the first/original book) by Stan Phelps

• Red Goldfish (about purpose-driven business) by Stan Phelps

• The full Goldfish series of books

• Article about U2, Bono, and the “Red Campaign”

• Mark Twain's reference to "lagniappe" in his autobiography - What’s a Lagniappe?

• Mike McCallowitz (regarding BANG - Big Audacious Noble Goal vs BHAG - Big Hairy Audacious Goal)

• Simon Sinek (mentioned regarding the importance of "why")

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Episode Digest

Purpose and Productivity: Finding Your North Star

The relationship between purpose and productivity is more profound than many realize. When individuals and organizations align their actions with a clear sense of purpose, productivity naturally follows. But what exactly is purpose, and how does it differ from a simple mission statement?

Understanding Purpose vs. Mission

““People don’t buy what you do. They buy how you do it. And maybe more importantly, why you do it.””

— Stan Phelps

A purpose is your guiding North Star - something that drives you and provides directional guidance. While you may never fully reach that North Star, it serves as a constant guide. This differs significantly from a mission statement in several key ways:

- Purpose is the "why" while mission is the "what"

- Purpose is the calling while mission is the job

- Purpose comes from the heart while mission comes from the head

- Purpose is ambitious while mission is pragmatic

- Purpose focuses on goals while mission outlines the plan

The Evolution of Business Purpose

Business has evolved through four distinct phases over the past century:

• 1.0 (Pre-1970s): Focus solely on shareholder value

• 2.0 (1970s): Recognition that customer focus drives shareholder returns

• 3.0 (1990s): Understanding that engaged employees create happy customers

• 4.0 (Present): Purpose-first approach driving employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and shareholder value

Actionable Insights for Finding Your Purpose

Use the "Hell Yes or No" Test

When evaluating your purpose, there are only two possible answers - "Hell Yes" or "No." If you're unsure or thinking "maybe," that's effectively a no. Your true purpose should evoke an immediate, enthusiastic response.

Identify Your Purpose Archetype

Organizations and individuals typically fall into one of eight purpose archetypes:

- **Protector**: Environmental/social protection (e.g., Patagonia)

- **Liberator**: Promoting freedom and new ways (e.g., Harley Davidson)

- **Designer**: Creating innovative solutions (e.g., Apple)

- **Guide**: Helping others navigate (e.g., Google)

- **Advocate**: Standing up for causes/groups (e.g., AARP)

- **Challenger**: Questioning status quo

- **Unifier**: Bringing people together (e.g., Whole Foods)

- **Master**: Revolutionizing industries (e.g., Warby Parker)

Understand the Warmth-Competence Dynamic

"People value warmth more than competence. They're both important, but warmth trumps competence every day of the week and twice on Sunday."

People make quick judgments based on two factors:

1. Intent (Warmth): Understanding why someone does something

2. Ability (Competence): Can they deliver on that intent

While both matter, warmth - understanding someone's purpose and intentions - typically matters more in building trust and relationships.

Making the Transition to Purpose-Driven Work

For those looking to align their work more closely with their purpose, here are practical steps:

1. **Start Where You Are**: You don't have to quit your job to pursue purpose. Look for ways to bring purpose into your current role or organization.

2. **Consider Adjacent Moves**: Instead of completely starting over, look for roles in related fields where your experience remains valuable but aligns better with your purpose.

3. **Test Through Volunteering**: Before making major changes, volunteer with organizations that align with your potential purpose to test the fit.

““We used to live in the tyranny of ‘or’ where you either had to pursue something that truly gave you purpose and meaning but live the life of a struggling artist, or do something lucrative but feel empty. Now we’re in the power of ‘and’ - we can have both.””

— Stan Phelps

Bottom Line

Purpose isn't just about feeling good - it's a practical driver of productivity and success. When people understand and connect with why they do what they do, engagement increases, resilience grows, and productivity naturally follows. The key is finding that "Hell Yes" moment and building your path forward from there, whether through dramatic changes or incremental shifts toward your North Star.

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Purpose and Productivity

03:01 Stan Phelps' Journey and Marketing Background

05:42 The Evolution of Business Purpose

08:14 Understanding Purpose vs. Mission

10:57 The Importance of Warmth in Business Relationships

13:47 Identifying Your Purpose

16:26 The Power of Purpose in Productivity

18:58 Finding Balance Between Purpose and Compensation

21:57 The Concept of Lanyap in Business

24:40 Purpose-Driven Organizations and Their Impact

27:25 Engagement and Productivity in the Workplace

30:07 The Role of Gen Z in Shaping Workplace Values

32:57 Archetypes of Purpose in Organizations

35:59 Stan's Personal Purpose and Its Impact

38:29 The Goldfish Metaphor for Growth

41:20 Conclusion

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Today’s Guest

Stan Phelps

Certified Speaking Professional
Global Speaking Fellow
Author of the GoldFish Series of Books

A show and tell speaker, Stan empowers audiences to take action that delivers bottom-line impact. He strives to change the paradigm of marketing by encouraging audiences to focus on experiences as the ultimate competitive differentiator. He believes purposeful DX wins the hearts of employees and customers, and differentiation ultimately boosts loyalty, retention, referrals, and results.

A masterful storyteller who quickly connects with audiences, Stan has delivered keynotes and workshops for Fortune 100 brands including IBM, Target, Exxon Mobil, Boeing, Caterpillar, Ford Motor, Kroger, Cardinal Health, Walt Disney, UnitedHealth, Rocket Companies, and more.

He works directly with you to customize content that matches your audience and your goals to create a memorable and meaningful experience every time. Count on Stan to show up early, arrive prepared, and disrupt the all-work-and- no-play methodology with his sharp wit and trademark showmanship. He makes it his mission to exceed expectations and inspire audiences in ways they just can’t help but talk about — and won’t soon forget.

stanphelps.com

linkedin.com/in/stanphelps

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Why Subscribe To The Email List: Brian shares separate hacks, tips, and actionable learning exclusively for his email subscribers. Sign up so you don’t miss out!

About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. After spending a career hands-on in the trenches as a leader at all levels, I now help others to level-up through my Productivity Gladiator training. Graduates wield time management & life balance superpowers, activate a laser-guided ability to focus & prioritize, and implement a sniper-precise approach to task & email management. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat!

Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.

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Transcript

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:00.204)

and smile for the start.

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer. And on this show, I talk about personal practical productivity skills. And in this episode, we're talking about your purpose. And here's how your purpose has everything to do with your productivity. With me on the show today, my guest is Stan Phelps, who is a certified speaking professional and global speaking fellow. And he's the author of the Goldfish series of books that are right in this lane.

So Stan, thanks so much for joining me today.

Stan Phelps (00:34.42)

Yeah, thank you for having me, Brian. Great to be here.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:38.412)

and say a bit about your background. we're going to be talking about your purpose and how what that has to do with your productivity. Talk about your relation to that.

Stan Phelps (00:47.22)

Yeah. So I, my background was I worked for a couple of decades in marketing. I've worked with big brands like Adidas, the New York Yankees, the PGA of America. I've also worked on the agency side. and for me, I'll just my personal story. I, I, I worked on some great marketing campaigns and activations, but I started to feel a disconnection in marketing and I thought marketing could be.

have a bigger purpose. And I just knew I was part of the problem and not part of the solution. And I had this kind of moment of truth that led me on this journey to first start a blog where I spent a year just writing about all aspects of marketing. But I was looking for the one thing that I thought could be a game changer. And I found it and it led me down this path of creating this kind of

big goal of collecting a thousand and one examples of this little thing that I found and that ended up becoming a book which has now become a series and now there's 20 books in the series so.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:01.07)

That's amazing. so, and that was in the focuses on marketing or productivity and purpose.

Stan Phelps (02:08.512)

So, yeah, so the, so my background from a marketing perspective was, I used to do stuff that was focused on kind of the eyes and the ears and interrupting. And I thought marketing should be more about the experience and the experience that you specifically create for your clients and customers. and so for me, anyway, when, when I found what my personal purpose was,

my productivity soared because I had a clear kind of north star of where I wanted to go and that led me to do the work that I've done.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:48.384)

I can't wait to talk about you listening. You're North Star and my North Star and Stan's North Star. This sounds fun. Let's let's do this thing. And I got one other question for you before we dive in, though, and that's there's a lot of people who talk about marketing or talk about purpose or productivity. So I also want to know what do you think makes you different from all these other folks that talk about this topic?

Stan Phelps (03:10.758)

great question. what makes me, if I think about myself, we'll talk about maybe some purpose archetypes. I find myself as what I call the challenger archetype. You my purpose is to get people to think differently about how they treat their customers and employees. And so,

I think that separates me a little bit from, those that are quote unquote experts. also what, what separates me, it's not just my opinion. I've collected now more than more than 5 ,000 case studies. And what I do is look through these hundreds of examples to see where I can see how successful organizations navigate in this kind of new economy.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:50.85)

Mm

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:02.346)

Interesting. OK.

Stan Phelps (04:03.926)

And I truly believe We're in the 4.0 version, Brian, of business. And that purpose is at the center of that. So if I can quickly rewind, think you only have to, you know, The modern corporation or modern business organization really only dates back less than 125 years. Right. And

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:12.152)

Okay.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:30.69)

Yeah.

Stan Phelps (04:31.542)

For the first 75 years, who came first in the 1.0? It was all about the shareholder and the purpose of a company, if you were being honest for the first 75 years was just to do things to maximize the return to the shareholder. Not a really lofty goal or purpose.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:59.952)

You

Stan Phelps (05:01.27)

In the 1970s, so you only have to go back less than 50 years. I think there was a kind of a shift to the 2.0 and the 2 .0 said, yeah, profit is important and return to your share low is important, but ultimately you can't do this. you know, the purpose of business is to create and to keep a customer.

And so if you put your customers and your clients first, then ultimately you're going to be successful and you're going to generate that return for shareholders. The 3.0 Brian, think is, you know, dates back to maybe the early 1990s where there really was an understanding that, you can put the customers first every day of the week.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (05:28.888)

Yeah.

Stan Phelps (05:55.03)

But unless you have employees that are actually engaged in that mission, right? And in that, that you're never gonna be able to create those happy. So you can't create happy enthused customers unless you have happy engaged employees. So the 1990s in this 3 .0 was really a recognition of how important employees and culture was.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:02.669)

Yeah.

Stan Phelps (06:24.854)

Well, I think you only have to go back less than 15 years ago where we're in now what I call the 4.0 and that's where purpose comes first and that if you put purpose and if you understand your why, right? And especially for the younger generations coming in that really want meaning in what they do. If you put that at the center of what you do,

You get your employees more engaged in bought in your customers benefit from that. And ultimately you create an environment where you're creating that return for your shareholders. So putting purpose first.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (07:07.446)

Yeah. Purpose first. Well, that really, you kind of struck at the my my first question to you is going to be alright. So what do we really mean by purpose? So let's let's jump into that. So you said put purpose first. So what do mean by purpose? Is it the purpose of why we show up or the purpose of the business? Is that just the mission statement and everybody has a mission statement? Talk about

Stan Phelps (07:32.764)

No, I think there's a bit and we'll get into, I think there's a big difference between a mission and a purpose. So you think about any type of organization, maybe your purpose, Brian or mine or for any organization, it essentially started with the founder and why, what was the why behind creating the organization?

Stan Phelps (08:02.186)

To me, a strong purpose is like this guiding North Star. It's something that drives you. It helps you from a directional point of view. You may never get to that, that North Star, but it's always there as a guide in the background for why you do what you do. And I, you know, I'll give a lot of credit to Simon Sinek, who I think is really

Brian Nelson-Palmer (08:09.1)

There's the North Star. Yeah.

Stan Phelps (08:30.998)

kind of shine the light that people don't buy what you do. Essentially they buy how you do it. And maybe more importantly, why you do it. And the companies, the companies that do really do well have a strong understanding of, their why, and they're able to create meaning for the employees that, that are part of the organization.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:00.236)

Yeah. So it's the why behind what you do. do you have sort of an example on the difference between a mission statement versus your purpose or what that actually looks like in words?

Stan Phelps (09:14.676)

Yeah, so to me, if you understand what your purpose is, Brian, then your mission is the things that you do to kind of work towards that North Star or purpose. So if the purpose is the why, to me, the mission becomes the what. If the purpose is the calling for why you do what you do,

The mission becomes the job that leads you to that. If the purpose is all about the heart, to me, the mission is all about the head, right? And to me, the purpose is very ambitious, where the mission tends to be more pragmatic. Does that make sense? The purpose is about the goal. The mission is more about the plan. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:10.85)

Got it. That makes sense. then, so, so how do you, how do you know? How do know if you're acting on the right purpose?

Stan Phelps (10:24.502)

Well, I think, I think in a certain sense, and it's based on how our brain has evolved, Brian, I don't know if you've ever, know this, but 80 % of how we view other people comes down to just two basic questions. So the first question is always this. What is the intent of this person that I'm working with or we're dealing with?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:43.136)

OK.

Stan Phelps (10:52.372)

And then very quickly, number two is what's their ability to carry out that intent? So this is how our brain evolved. Our survival depended upon us making split second judgments about everyone and everything we came into contact with. And so that intent piece is what social psychologists call warmth. Warmth.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:52.62)

Yep.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (11:01.105)

Brian Nelson-Palmer (11:12.706)

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (11:22.232)

done.

Stan Phelps (11:22.898)

And the ability to carry it out, they describe as competence, warmth and competence. And, here's the thing, when people understand why you do something, they understand your intent. That is a key critical driver of how people view you. And then of course, you can't survive without being competent.

Right, so you have to back up what you do. But let me ask you a question, Brian, what do you think's more important, warmth or competence?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:03.402)

It depends. My my immediate reaction is it depends. And it's because it depends on the circumstances and what I need.

Stan Phelps (12:08.2)

It depends. You have to get off the fence, but more often than not, what do you think is more important to people? Warm or competent?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:16.097)

Okay.

more often than not, competence, probably. Although warmth is what starts the you wouldn't engage with them if they're competent and not warm. having said that out loud, I think I'd probably warmth is probably the starting point.

Stan Phelps (12:35.144)

It is people value warmth more than competence. They're both important, but warmth trumps competence every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Yeah. So, so, so here's the thing. How do, how do people, and again, it's, we make these judgments at a very subconscious level and we make it very quickly. And then we start to look for things that confirm

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:50.05)

You know, that has to.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:59.181)

Yeah.

Stan Phelps (13:04.968)

our initial bias or judgment, right? So people understanding why you do what you do is absolutely key. And I think, you know, I think we used to live from when we thought about what we did for a living, we used to live in what a friend of mine calls the tyranny of or.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:09.038)

Okay.

Stan Phelps (13:34.398)

right, Brian, where you either had to pursue something that was truly gave you purpose and a sense of meaning. But if you did that, you live the life of like a struggling artist, right? Or, and the order that is you, did something that was, you know, very lucrative.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:34.402)

Okay.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:52.577)

Right. Yeah.

Stan Phelps (14:02.506)

but at the end of the day, there wasn't a sense of meaning or purpose in what you did. And so you might be very successful, but you might feel empty as a result. And I think we are now in a place where instead of the tyranny of war, my friend David Howitt calls it the power of and.

We can have purpose, but we don't have to sacrifice. We can have both, right? Profit and purpose. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:28.876)

Okay.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:38.136)

Yeah.

this. Yeah. Together. Do well so then that I loved that that interlude is really powerful with the I like the warmth part that it starts with warmth. That's really true when you think about all of your business relationships and who you refer, who you recommend. Most all of that is based on warmth. Even if it weren't competent, if you're going to refer your friend or colleague to somebody, and they were incredibly competent, but they were not warm, you would probably not

Stan Phelps (15:09.992)

No.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:10.044)

you wouldn't make that intro like job interviews, all of that. I love that tangent. And we

Stan Phelps (15:15.166)

And here's the thing, when you deal with somebody who is high warmth, you have a sense of why they do what they do. And then they're highly competent. Here's the feeling that we get from that experience is one of pride. Like we feel, we understand, we feel part. And absolutely to your point, we go out of our way, not only to come back, but to tell other people.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:31.203)

Yeah.

Stan Phelps (15:42.674)

about our experience and we become advocates for those organizations.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:46.722)

Yeah. Yeah. So then, and that kind of circles back to the question then on how do you know that you're acting on the right purpose? How do you know that you found it? You got it.

Stan Phelps (16:01.514)

Yeah, so great. So I think, I think intuitively we can feel it like in our gut when we know we're doing something. So I, I'm a big, big believer of like, listen to your gut, right? We can rationalize in our head, a lot of the things that we do, but we can feel when we're off course or we're off center and we're not doing something for the right reason.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:07.139)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Stan Phelps (16:29.394)

I think it's also a part of understanding who we are and what, when have we been in situations where we feel like we're kind of in the pocket or in the zone, like we're doing something that we believe in and that we're really good at it. We may not have mastered it, but we feel like we're truly engaged in what we do. And I think the more that we can understand that,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:42.691)

No.

Stan Phelps (16:56.84)

We can go from looking at something that we view just as a job Right and there's nothing wrong with having a job you get paid you can support your family you support yourself But I think we can start to move to from a job to more of a career And when you have a career you tend to be more invested Right, you're you're in it for the long haul But I think even if you have just a career

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:19.851)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Stan Phelps (17:25.672)

If you can move a little bit more further and get to where it feels like more of a calling, like this is what you would do even if you weren't getting paid for it, is where I think there's true power. And so I think it's trying to get move on that continuum to figure out where do we feel like we're more called and that we get energy back from doing the work that we do.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:32.334)

calling.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (17:42.861)

Yeah.

Stan Phelps (17:55.614)

And when we do that, and when we're fully engaged, we're more productive. and it just fuels us in terms of what we do. Whereas if we're doing something that we feel is more like a job, we tend to procrastinate. We tend not to be engaged. We don't take pride in what we do. and I think our productivity suffers.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:24.664)

You know, I think I, one of the phrases that always that I've, I've kind of lived helped change. It changed my life. This phrase changed my life and that there's only two answers to the question. Hell yes or no. And that's really it. And so when I, to go back to my question was, how do know you're on the right purpose? I think if you ask yourself that question and the answer is, I think so that's no, there is only two answers. And if it's not hell yes.

then it's no. And I think that drives to your point too, where if you ask yourself, is this my purpose? And your answer is hell yes, this is it, then I think you got it. But if it's maybe, then you're probably not quite there. No, that's not your purpose yet. You haven't found it yet. You can be close, but it's hell yes or no. And that seems to go with what you're describing is like you go from your career to your calling. I mean, I think it sort of all

Stan Phelps (19:21.758)

Right. Yeah. I agree. And here's, here's the thing. I think, there's a guy named Mike McCallowitz and I love how he says this. says, we need to move away from B hags. Do know what a B hag is? A big, hairy, audacious goal. Right. So, you know,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:22.594)

the same soup that we're talking about here.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:42.996)

a data goal. Yes. Yeah. they got so many of those phrases. Yeah. I've never heard me hag but

Stan Phelps (19:49.438)

And what I love, what he talks about, says, we need to get rid of the BHAG and get what he calls a bang. And a bang is a big, audacious, noble goal. Right? How do we get in touch with something that we've truly believe in? And how can we, know, towards that North Star, how do we create something

that really taps into that, that we can feel good as we move towards it, right? And it aligns with what our purpose is. So I'm a big fan of that. You know, my big purpose is to get people to think differently about how they market their businesses and to be more about the customer and less about thinking about marketing as, you know, like trying to chase the prospect and get them in the funnel.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:47.244)

Right. Yeah. gosh. I feel you there. My my purpose is to teach personal practical productivity skills, but not so that you can then work more hours or do more stuff. The point is, if you're more productive, that means you are a top performer at work and there is still time for you to have the amazing life you want to have to. Because if all you do is work, that's where the midlife crisis and that's just so I'm with you on.

It's the why the why is not so that you can work more or do more work or work more hours. It's so that you can have that time. So I, yeah, I like that Stan. So we've been

Stan Phelps (21:25.59)

Sure. You can have the power of and work and life, right?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (21:30.286)

Yes, it is the whole work. mean, work life balance. This all came to the forefront with COVID, especially I've been doing this long before COVID. But, that was the, that was the piece that really started. People were paying attention because now you used to be forced to separate them because you were working at work and you were at home at home. so life created the differentiation for you. But when you do them both at home now,

You have to figure that out and you have to defend your life. It's easy to anyway. That's a total side note. But yes, that man, the why I love this conversation. It's giving me goosebumps, Dan. I like this like, all right, we're on this. We're on this right track. It's like the feels good. So let's let's take that pivot then because the purpose it was talking about how purpose changes your levels up your productivity. So let's say you're on the right path or you're close your hell yes, your

Stan Phelps (22:03.381)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (22:28.93)

You got the North Star, you're headed toward the North Star. now how does that, what does that have to do with productivity?

Stan Phelps (22:32.063)

Right.

Stan Phelps (22:37.6)

Well, again, I think when you're aligned with what you do and why you do it, it just makes the how that much easier. You're just more focused and more engaged in what you do. And we all know how we feel when we're, we've got a hundred percent engagement towards something rather than trying to just check something off the list. And, and my,

my lens that I look through is to try to get people away from just transactional the transactional nature of business right you give me x I give you y and the problem with that it's a zero -sum game brian where where can you go when you you want x I give you y it's equal you can't go anywhere

So what I love is this concept of doing a little bit more, something that gets added as part of the transaction. It's a term that comes from New Orleans. It's called Lanyard. And it dates all the way back to the 1800s. And it was back then and it's still around now. It's typical.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (23:58.455)

Okay.

Stan Phelps (24:06.102)

for a business to do a little something added to honor the relationship. And to me, when you can start doing that and you can start doing little things that kind of elevate your purpose and bring it to life in service of your clients is when it gets really powerful.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:29.346)

Yeah, it's that little something extra. that it's the it's what they always say exceeds expectations. It's the exceed, but it's planned exceeds expectations, not just oops. I'm so glad you're happy and you loved it that much. It's no, I plan to make it that good that much. And here's the plan on how we try to do that.

Stan Phelps (24:46.354)

Right and here And here's the thing this is this was the turning point that led me on this this kind of moment of truth We all have moments of truth that lead us on these journeys for me brian, It was a simple interaction that I had in New York City. I'm at one of these rooftop bars And i'm waiting with a colleague. We're about to go to a networking event

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:00.163)

Yeah.

Stan Phelps (25:12.7)

And I meet this older gentleman who's on his own. and he's obvious. He's waiting for someone as well. And I just strike up a conversation and somehow we got on the idea of being on time and the importance of being on time. And I'll never forget it, Brian. He looked at me in the eye and he said, no one in life is ever on time.

And I said, wait a second. go, I've been on time before. go, not often, but I've been on time. And I'll never forget, he stuck his finger in my face and he gave me the Dikembe finger wave. And he went, no, no, no. And he doubled down. goes, Brian, goes like this. goes, he goes, in fact, he said, on time is a myth. He said, no one in life ever is just on time. He said, people in life.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:44.444)

huh.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:49.698)

Yeah

Stan Phelps (26:08.328)

are either early

or they're late. He said, no one is ever just on time. And I'll never forget, I took the train home where I was living in Connecticut at the time. And I thought to myself, that same reasoning applies to everything we do. And think about things that we do for the clients and the customers that we serve. Does anyone just simply meet expectations?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:34.466)

Yeah. Yeah.

Stan Phelps (26:40.596)

And if you use that same reasoning, no, you either exceed them or you fall short. And so given the choice of doing more or doing less, I started to look for companies that did little things. Now, as it relates to purpose, the fifth book in my series is called the Red Goldfish. And it was inspired, why Red was inspired by Bono.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:58.434)

Mm

Stan Phelps (27:10.194)

of U2. Are you familiar with the red campaign?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:10.934)

Okay. Okay.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:16.107)

No, tell me about that.

Stan Phelps (27:18.742)

So the red campaign, there's just a ton of companies that have kind of partnered in this, but it's a very simple concept. So Apple, for example, as part of the red campaign, they will create a certain product, maybe like an iPhone that's red. And the idea is it's a limited edition product, special product. And when you buy it, certain, certain part of your purchase goes towards

charity. And so it was this model that could raise money, not by just giving money, but by buying something and being working with for profits that gave a little something back as part of it. And so the red goldfish, my, my coauthor and I, Graham Newell, we looked at over 300 organizations.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:51.277)

Interesting.

Stan Phelps (28:17.556)

that really were purpose driven of how they did little things to be able to bring their purpose to life for both their employees and their customers.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:20.835)

Okay.

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:27.875)

Got it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:32.376)

That's so a little something extra and to give back. I like this. Are we?

Stan Phelps (28:36.084)

Yeah. And to bring that purpose in the wide of life. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:41.87)

So let's circle back to the productivity part of it then. So if you have your purpose and you said that has everything to do with your productivity, it, are we talking really about it's the want and the desire, I found my why, so you're willing to do more and so you're more enthusiastic, which means you do more or is there, talk about the productivity aspect of it.

Stan Phelps (29:06.048)

So I think when you understand your why, again, I think you're more engaged. I also think you're more resilient, right? You're able to look at things not as problems, but as challenges. And every challenge can be addressed. And when you realize that, hey,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:17.431)

Okay.

Stan Phelps (29:33.534)

I'm working towards this higher purpose. You realize, Hey, in your lifetime, you may never get to that North star, but if you can see incremental progress to me, that fuels productivity. and here's the thing we, again, I'm going to go back to, do a lot of work with organizations around employee engagement. And when people are bought into the Y for the organization,

They're more productive. They stick around longer and they're more engaged in what they do. And just as a byproduct of that, again, having that engagement being bought in, you tend to be more productive.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:13.667)

Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:24.664)

You know, I think it's probably important that we talk about the the focus that it gives you by locking in on that purpose, too, because productivity just isn't just about the number of widgets or the number of emails you respond to or the number of tasks you complete. But it's also about moving you toward that North Star. And so if you're focused on that purpose, it also keeps you from going off all of the side tangents that come up.

all the time. Your boss has, here the boss comes and they say, hey, I think we might have a, you know, a new opportunity here to do something else, to add to what we're already doing. And everybody's looking at the boss going, I'm already busy. What do you, what, with what bandwidth do, should we do this? And the boss is thinking it's a good idea. Cause maybe they went to a conference or they got some idea from somebody and they read some book and they're like, let's do, let's do this too.

And you could look at them and talk about the North Star and say, hey, did we, does this fit that? Is this going to move us closer to that? And is it better than all the other things that we're already doing at doing that? And that way it keeps you because by choosing not to do the things that won't take you to the North Star, you will go significantly faster toward that North Star by maintaining that focus on your purpose, your why. think that's

Stan Phelps (31:23.434)

Right.

Stan Phelps (31:32.192)

towards that.

Stan Phelps (31:36.948)

Right.

Stan Phelps (31:51.496)

Right. Yeah. And here's the thing, the Gen Z's that are now coming into the workplace and have for the last decade almost, they're looking at meaning and purpose and they're putting that ahead of compensation. They're the first generation to do that entering the workforce. So if you can't be able to attach meaning to what they do,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (31:52.696)

That's huge.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:16.493)

Really?

Stan Phelps (32:22.526)

And you can't, in addition, you can't give them the flexibility of how they do that. They're going to find somewhere that does.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:33.666)

Man, Stan, I don't know. I struggle with that. Because I think, I mean, you listening, if you listening right now, think about your own paycheck. If they, if you were to have an outstanding purpose and your money were to, and the pay that you're getting were to be less. I see them both as tied, but I have a hard time thinking that they would choose purpose over compensa

I don't know. It's the you're you challenged me earlier with you have to pick one. And so I guess I see that but ooh, I just

Stan Phelps (33:06.954)

Again, I don't think it's an or, it's an and. And here's the thing. Again, I'm just saying as they rate opportunities that they're thinking about, purpose and meaning is more important. And here's the thing, when they get into the organization, if the organization's values don't live up,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:10.891)

and yep.

Stan Phelps (33:37.287)

to kind of what they've been told, six out of seven will leave when the values no longer fit with their own and what they've been kind of sold when they're coming in.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:51.778)

Yeah. Wow, that's I mean, it's definitely true. And I think to to some extent, every one of us thinks about that, too, because even if you have like earlier, you were talking about you have the really high compensation, but not good purpose. And then over time, it just it's not really sustainable. And then at some point, you're just going to it's the midlife crisis. It's the my gosh, what have I been doing with my life?

The people who are really mission oriented don't have midlife crisis is where they need to go buy the sports car and like that's not a thing. If the why and the North Star, they've been headed that direction. So like the compensation. Yeah, it's the end because you can't you do need to have some of that purpose and you can find that purpose in a lot of different ways. It doesn't have to be. I feel like there is I don't know. Tell me what you think about this, Dan, because

Stan Phelps (34:32.51)

Right, right. There's alignment.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (34:49.674)

I have always struggled with the idea. Like for example, I'm a diabetic and I need health insurance. And so I maintain a day job, though productivity gladiator is my calling. And I do that because I have to pay my bills and diabetes is a freaking expensive disease to have to live with every day. So I don't have the luxury yet of only doing the North star free, burn the boats, forget everything else. I'm just going to figure it out. So

Stan Phelps (35:09.984)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:19.242)

I found an and, and my day job career is actually pretty fulfilling. So I think there is a world where you can be, if you're moving toward your North star, maybe at a little slower pace and the day job compliments that, you can do that sustainably. I don't feel like I have a midlife crisis and I need to quit everything and buy a sports car.

Stan Phelps (35:46.592)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:48.792)

freaking love the life I have. I struggle with that sometimes because I agree that if there's one purpose, it makes it easier. But I do think that there's balance. Talk about that.

Stan Phelps (36:00.31)

Well, I, I don't think it's an or thing, right? And I think there's the power in the AND. You can do both. In fact, you know, it's like 40% now, of people in the workplace, don't just have one job. They have multiple jobs, right? And, and, and this is interesting. This is the first time.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:20.279)

my

Stan Phelps (36:28.534)

I talked about Gen Z earlier. This is the first generation that when they asked, would you want to go work for a company or would you rather work for yourself? Over 60 % picked, I'd rather work for myself. And then they're also the first generation. Like I say, if there's one word that really encapsulates them, it's integration.

Right? They don't see like I'm a gen X or for us it was work life balance, right? Work hard, play hard for them. It's like they can wake up in the morning, work, take time and take time in the late morning for themselves. Go back. mean, literally go back and forth. That's inconceivable to probably my generation. They can work two or three jobs.

Right. And I think part of that is probably there's probably a side hustle or something that they do that's really fulfilling to them that allows them to have, you know, the life that they want, and the control and flexibility that they want as well.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:42.776)

It's true.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:47.148)

Yeah. I like that. Well, Stan talk about, so what does your purpose need? Let's say you're, you're sitting here. We, we, we asked that question earlier. We talked about if you're not at the right purpose, then, you know, it's the hell yes or no. If you're thinking about your purpose and where you're going right now and the answer is not hell yes. Then what is your purpose need? What do you do? Stan? What's your advice to that person? Listen.

Stan Phelps (38:14.646)

Well, I don't know if I have a ton of advice for for from a personal perspective other than To trust your gut look back in your life when you've been the most engaged where you felt A strong attachment to what you did you felt meaning in what you did? When my co -author graham and I looked across these 300 organizations

My struggle was, Hey, it's not just important to know your why, but I said, are there types of wise out there? Because I wanted companies to go, I can see myself in this archetype, right? My purpose might ultimately be different. So I'll give you, there's eight archetypes. When we looked across these hundreds of organizations. and really quickly, the first is what we call the protector.

archetype. So think of like Patagonia out there. They're all about the environment, right? Giving back, creating more sustainable world. The second type is the liberator and the liberator is all about freedom. It's about finding new ways to do things. you know,

Giving people personal freedom. like Harley Davidson is a what I call a liberator, liberator archetype. They're all about helping people define their own freedom and identity through my motorcycling. the third one is the designer. You know, the designer is looking at new ways to be able to do things like Apple's a great example of like a designer brand. How can they create simplicity? The fourth is.

what we call the guide. And so the guide kind of helps people navigate. so Google is a great example of of the guide. The fifth is what we call the advocate and the advocate is they stand up and they're you know they they're advocating for a group or a cause or something like AARP is a great example of an advocate.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:16.172)

Hmm.

Stan Phelps (40:33.204)

The, the, the six type is the challenger and the challengers, you know, I put myself in that category. It's really challenging people's way of doing things and figuring out maybe there's a better way. And it pains me to say this because I used to work for Adidas, but Nike to me is the ultimate challenger brand.

They're like, if you have a body, you're an athlete. Like everyone can be an athlete. and they give you the tools and the tips and the motivation to be able to go out and achieve the seventh type is what we call the unifier. And the unifier is about kind of bringing people together. and like whole foods is a great example of that. Like really trying to.

through their packaging and through everything they do to kind of bring more sustainability and define what organic means. They're trying to unify the industry. The last one is what we call the master. And this is kind of like Jedi type of stuff or like Yoda would be the example. We have

people that represent each of these archetypes and like Yoda is the one, the ultimate master. And that's really rethinking the way an industry works and being super attached to purpose. like Warby Parker is a great example of like revolutionizing eyewear, but doing it in a way that be able, gives back in a sustainable way.

And also leads the way for how other organizations can act in that manner So protector liberator designer guide advocate challenger Unifier master to me if you can see yourself in one of those archetypes it may be easier for you to Understand what really motivates you for your why?

Stan Phelps (42:48.852)

And at least from an organizational level, that's what I was really happy with being able to contribute to that conversation.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (42:57.472)

And Stan, I want to yes and you on that because I love there are definitely a couple of those archetypes that I think that I identify with and it makes sense that you and I know each other and we keep in touch and stuff because challenger is one of the ones that I also because that's productivity gladiator is about challenging the way that you've always done your personal practical activity stuff. And how do we level that up? But also for the wise. So like I identify with some of that.

Stan Phelps (43:20.159)

Right?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (43:26.55)

And my yes and here is if you're listening to this or watching this and you want more purpose, there is this fallacy that I think is out there that I want to I want to squash this right now, which is you don't have to totally quit your job and quit your life and start over to get going in that direction. What you can do instead and what I hope that you'll do two things. One, if you're miserable at your job,

and you definitely know you need to totally shift because your eight hours that you work is just painful, then think about One of the biggest hurdles that people have is the golden handcuffs. You talked about getting the money back, right? You like you, you make a good salary so you don't want to lose how far you've come in the salary bracket and go all the way back to the start. And you can't do that. People with families can't do that. People with diabetes can't do that. But what you can do is find the companies that are

Stan Phelps (44:01.216)

Right.

Stan Phelps (44:07.637)

Right.

Stan Phelps (44:14.933)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (44:23.99)

like the archetype, like you just said, and find one that is tangentially related to the career you already have and the experience you have. so you won't drop down. So like, for example, it was, I'm going to call her out. My sister was was trying to make a switch and she was in, She worked in property management and She wanted to get out of property management. But

Stan Phelps (44:33.652)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (44:49.962)

She if you go to another career, you have to go all the way back to the bottom. So instead, what you can do is what are the things that are tangentially related to property management where all that experience counts for something, but the business does something else. So it could be property management software or it could be a service that supports property management or it could be something with Airbnb or something where all of that property management counts for something.

Stan Phelps (44:54.346)

Right.

Stan Phelps (45:10.432)

right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (45:16.972)

And same thing if you're in I .T. and you're tired of writing code and you want to bring it like that's that's that thing. So if you look for the companies that have the archetype like Stan's talking about and you look for the ones that are tangentially related to what you have, that's a way for you to make a move without having to go. It's like shoots and ladders where you take the shoot that goes all the way back to the beginning and starting like, no, don't do that. You don't have to or volunteer, volunteer with everybody. These volunteers volunteer with an organization, find a nonprofit that does this.

Stan Phelps (45:36.606)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (45:45.996)

and volunteer with them and try it out. Start the hardest part is to start. So that's I hope that you'll you'll take Stan's idea of archetypes. I love, love, love that. And don't just sit on it. Do something about it with take a little step. Try a little something. Go volunteer. Bring your family to volunteer. You know, there's there's ways to do this. That's a.

Stan Phelps (45:49.438)

Right.

Stan Phelps (45:58.602)

Right.

Stan Phelps (46:07.022)

And I think what's interesting is that it used to be, and again, go back business wise. It was always an or question. were either for profit or you were nonprofit. And now with B Corpse.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (46:20.534)

Not productive. Yeah.

Stan Phelps (46:24.498)

certified B Corps, corporate benefit corporations. there's now this gray area between the two. And this was the premise of our book is that going forward, people will not look at you either as nonprofit or for profit. They will either look at you as for purpose or not for purpose. And they're going to want to work for

and do business with companies that are for purpose. And that's where I think you have to align yourself going forward.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (46:53.272)

Bye bye.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (47:03.148)

Yeah, Stan, talk about this for you. What does this mean for you personally? What drives you about this? This is your North Star, but what is it about this that drives you? What does this mean for you?

Stan Phelps (47:20.298)

Well, for me, through the keynotes and the workshops that I give, it all ties back to that initial purpose, which was to get people to think differently about business and less about trying to attract the prospect and more about taking care of the customers. And so my marketing background, I thought the customer was the end all and be all.

And then I realized, no, because the companies that I studied that really got it for the customers put their employees first. And then when I started to study the companies that really put their employees first, I realized really quickly, hey, they're also really steeped in why they do what they do. And they put purpose before even their employees.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:01.397)

No.

Stan Phelps (48:19.35)

And so everything I've done now that 11, 11 different colors in the series, and we've talked about red, you know, it's all been for me, how my thinking has evolved over, over the years and how I've looked at different things, but it's all led back to that North star of rethinking business, and putting more of an emphasis on the experience that we provide, what I call

a differentiated experience.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:52.098)

Yeah. Now, Stan, we've talked about a lot today. If people are interested in our conversation, and well, I say we've talked about a lot, but also you've written a lot of books about this now. You're quite accomplished in the author. If you haven't looked up Stan, check out his books. I'll drop the link so you can see his books there. But oftentimes, where do you start in that? So if you were really inspired by Stan and I's conversation, Stan, which book should they pick up to start with what we've been talking about?

Stan Phelps (49:22.014)

Yeah, I think either red goldfish or you could go back to, call it the OG, the original goldfish. That's purple. And the first three in the series is purple, customers, green is employees, and gold are your most important customers and employees.

Stan Phelps (49:49.96)

And that was strategic because the three colors of Mardi Gras are purple, green, and gold. And New Orleans, New Orleans is the birthplace of that word I shared before, Lanyap, the idea of doing a little bit more, a little bit more that the, to honor the relationship. And, yeah. And then I'm not going to share the rest of the colors cause we'd be here all day.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (50:17.78)

Right? Well, and I thought that was an incognito way of you telling us that you're actually kind of a party boy and you just like to, mean, it's Mardi Gras. And so like, heck yeah, let's get the beads and let's go down to Bourbon Street. Come on, baby. Like I thought that's where we were going. So, there's a profound meeting. land yap. All right. Got it. I got, there's a piece of me that's disappointed, but someday we'll go to Mardi Gras together, Stan. And I'm sure that'll be a heck of a good time.

Stan Phelps (50:37.845)

Right.

Well, I always loved sharing this Mark Twain in his autobiography, you know, he spent a fair amount of time in New Orleans when he was young. He said in his, in his autobiography said, land yap is a word worth traveling all the way to New Orleans to get. And so my, my hope is we've saved maybe Rob, some people have some fun today, but we saved them some time and money.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (51:12.518)

sure. I you know, you didn't have to travel all the way to get it. You discovered it. Stan revealed the secret you you secret teller you look at you. That's funny. Well, Stan, here's what I love. I love that you're taking this, this purpose in this land yap and these these these nuggets that you've that you've captured over the years and that you're putting them into these books and the speaking and all of the work that you're doing. I saw Stan

I give a presentation, a keynote at a conference that he and I were both speaking at back in, gosh, it was 2014, 2015. And yeah, boy, it's scary to think how long ago that was. But at the same time, I definitely remember looking around and everyone in the room was very focused in on what Stan was saying because he talked about himself as a challenger archetype. And Stan, will absolutely vouch for testimonial given right here that

Stan Phelps (51:48.118)

10 years ago, 10 years ago, yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (52:09.794)

challenge your archetype and helping you think a little differently and think more profoundly. I give you a super high mark. So I love that you're doing this and continue to do this because it's not easy being speaking and author and all of that. That's not an easy path for sure. So thanks for doing this and thanks for joining me on the show today.

Stan Phelps (52:30.516)

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (52:33.982)

And I'll drop the links to your books, especially the red and the purple as starting points for folks if they're just checking out the Goldfish series first. last thing, why Goldfish?

Stan Phelps (52:45.046)

So goldfish is a metaphor for growth. So the average goldfish is about the size of your thumb, just over three inches. If you had to guess, Brian, what do you think the largest goldfish in the world is? Not a carp or a koi. How many inches? Yeah, largest goldfish in the world.

Stan Phelps (53:17.462)

almost 20 inches right

Brian Nelson-Palmer (53:21.847)

That's from your like your elbow to your hand. I mean,

Stan Phelps (53:25.258)

That is the size of an average domesticated house cat. That's average. That's average, right? And so the quick, and I'll try to do it quick for you. It would be like you walking out of your house right now or your apartment, right? And bumping into somebody who's three stories tall.

Stan Phelps (53:55.764)

Right? How is that? We can't even conceive that right? five to six times our size, but here's the deal. If you're a goldfish, your, they grow their entire life. Their growth is impacted by five factors. And here's the thing. Those same five factors apply to everyone and their business. And I'll go through them really quick to tell you the goldfish growth factor.

Stan Phelps (54:25.598)

Most people have heard the first one, Brian, the size of the bowl or the pond will influence your ability to grow. So if you're a goldfish, the bigger the bowl, the bigger the pond, the more they grow. What is the size of the bowl or the pond? If you're in business, it's simply the market, right? The market for people that are interested in productivity.

Stan Phelps (54:55.432)

right? The market for people who are looking for a keynote speaker or workshop facilitator. Here's number two and it's dead simple. If you're a goldfish, your growth is also determined by the amount of other goldfish in the bowl or the pond and this one works in the opposite direction. The more goldfish there are, it tends to limit their growth. So, who are the other goldfish in business?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (55:20.654)

Interesting.

the other companies, the other organizations. Yep.

Stan Phelps (55:25.694)

Other yeah, you're a competition The third one is the most difficult for a goldfish. They're also Influence their growth is influenced by the surrounding environment that they're in So the quality of the water that they're in will also play a role in their growth. So the nutrients the clarity of the water So what's that in business? It's simply the economy

Right? All of those outside factors influence your ability to grow. Number four is how they, a goldfish does in its first four months of life.

Stan Phelps (56:09.622)

So they're tiny when they're born. have 80 to a hundred brothers and sisters. You imagine that they're the size of a top of a pin. and so how they do in that critical period will also be a factor of their growth. And so we say in business, what do you call your first four months of life in business? You're a startup, right? And how you get started.

Stan Phelps (56:37.862)

is a big factor in how well you ultimately do. Number five is genetic makeup. Right? So what is that goldfish born with that kind of separates it from all the other goldfish and the stronger their genes are and the more that they're separated, the bigger they typically grow. Conversely, if their genes are weak,

and they're like everyone else, the less they typically grow. So what do you think genetic makeup is if you're in business? How you're, what makes you different? Yeah, it's your differentiation. And we're gonna come right back to what we've talked about today. You don't differentiate by what you do.

Stan Phelps (57:31.806)

Right? If we're being honest, we live in the day of the internet. There's a ton of other people that do what we do. Right? How do you differentiate? You differentiate by how you do it. And maybe more importantly, why you do it, the warmth and the competence, right? And so I tell people, right? If you've already been in business for more than four months,

Stan Phelps (58:00.598)

You and I've been both doing this for more than 10 years. We're out of the remaining four things. What do you control? Okay. Do you control the market? No. How about your competition?

Stan Phelps (58:16.928)

How about the economy? know, please, I tell people I joke, go, please see me afterwards, right? The only thing you control is how you differentiate.

Stan Phelps (58:32.68)

and stand out. And again, it's not by what you do. It's why you do it. And I think is equally important. It's how you do it. What's the experience that you provide as you deliver that what? And so that's the metaphor of the goldfish is that if you think about it, it's just a metaphor for growth via differentiation.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (59:04.428)

Yeah. I love it, Stan. Well, if folks want to keep in touch with you and what you've got going on, where's the best place for them to find you?

Stan Phelps (59:13.856)

So I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Reach out to me or follow me on LinkedIn. You can also look me up at stanfelps .com.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (59:23.276)

You got it. I'll drop those those links in the in the notes. So open up the notes in the show in this episode and check him out. So thanks again, Stan. This is great. And for you tuning in right now, can I give you something? Do you have a friend or colleague who you've talked about purpose with? You've had these conversations like, why are we doing this or should I make a change or that kind of thing? Would you share the link to this episode specifically?

with them right now, because Stan and I would love to know that our conversation actually touched people that are facing purpose and productivity and leveling up their productivity. The purpose question, a few texts back and forth directly with you, not post on social media, but like a direct text to a friend that because you thought about them, that would that's going to fill up their cup in your cup way more than any sort of posting on.

So that's my request is if you could text somebody the link to this episode, if you thought about them, please do that for your friendship with them. That'd be amazing. Yes, more hell yes. Please find that. Yes. And and hell yes, that's I love it. And and whether you've joined my membership and you've taken or you've taken the first step of joining the email list or this is just your very first episode, I love sharing productivity gladiator with you because together

Stan Phelps (01:00:28.478)

More hell yeses, right, Brian? Yes And…

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:00:49.57)

these productivity skills are going to change your life. That's a wrap.