Knowledge, hacks, and ideas to level up your personal practical productivity skills.
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.
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.
The Video
The Audio/Podcast
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:
Virtual Assistant Services:
Fancy Hands (fancyhands.com) - mentioned $18-30/month
Fiverr (fiverr.com)
FreeUp (freeup.net)
Home Services:
Chore Relief (now called All Better)
Poplin (laundry service)
Contact Information for Marcey:
LinkedIn (mentioned she's only on LinkedIn)
Her new book: "Reclaim Your Workday, Sustainable Productivity Strategies for the New World of Work"
Photo of Single Brussel Sprout on episode page
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:
Calculate your time's value (use a time-value calculator)
Compare outsourcing costs against your time's value
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.
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
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:
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.
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.
10 Time Management Hacks for New Managers - with Eric Girard
Eric Girard joins Brian as a co-host in this episode to unveil 10 time management hacks for new managers, empowering them to balance their increased responsibilities efficiently. These hacks will help you carve out the time necessary to fulfill your team's needs while handling your personal responsibilities.
Eric Girard joins Brian as a co-host to unveil 10 time management hacks for new managers, empowering them to balance their increased responsibilities efficiently. These hacks will help you carve out the time necessary to fulfill your team's needs while handling your personal responsibilities.
The Audio/Podcast
Links to References In This Episode
Brian's TEDx talk "Reimagining the Value of Your Time"
Brian's time value calculator
Brian's post on stopping the back-and-forth to schedule meetings
AI transcription apps:
Video: 11 ways normal office workers can use AI right now to be more productive.
Blog Post: Dictating is 3x faster than typing, start talking!
Episode Digest
#BrianCheesesTooHard
Mastering time management is vital as you transition into a management role. In this episode, productivity experts Brian Nelson-Palmer and Eric Girard shared 10 time hacks for new managers. Here are their tips, check out the episode for more detail.
Eric’s Ideas:
Calendar block everything.
Put all tasks and appointments on your calendar, even small items like writing up notes. Block off specific times and treat your calendar as the boss. Eric aims for 15 minute increments. This ensures items don't slip through the cracks.Use a system that works for you.
For example, don't force yourself to use a complex system or app if simple to-do lists work better. Eric uses Apple Calendar, Mail, and Notes while Brian uses a calendar for places he needs TO BE, to-do lists for what he needs TO DO, and notes/lists/checklists for thoughts and ideas he needs TO REMEMBER. Find what is sustainable and scalable long-term. The best system is the one you'll actually use.Leverage AI for meeting transcriptions to capture summary and action items.
Use apps like Fathom to get full transcriptions of meetings. Review the transcript quickly after to pull out key points vs listening to long recordings. This saves time absorbing content.Run multiple calendars.
Have distinct calendars for work, personal, family etc. to toggle on/off as needed. This reduces overwhelm of seeing everything at once. Eric manages 5+ calendars based on priorities.Apply the 3 D's method for email.
Do it (handle quick emails instantly), delegate it (schedule time later for longer items), or delete it (remove junk mail). Stay on top of your inbox to avoid overload.
Brian’s Ideas
Stop running basic errands.
Order online or use delivery services instead of spending time on basic errands. Know your hourly rate to determine if it's worth your time. Leverage technology to optimize efficiency.Use subscriptions and auto-delivery.
Set up subscriptions for household items and auto-delivery for work supplies to save time. Get discounts with subscribe and save options. One less thing to remember.Leverage AI to redirect your time to your people.
Use AI to automate administrative tasks and free up time for people management, the key role of any manager. AI can't replace human emotional intelligence and empathy.Avoid “email tag” back and forth to schedule meetings.
Provide your availability or links to schedule time through calendar apps like Calendly. Don’t waste time on coordination.Talking to your computer is 3X faster than typing.
Dictation is faster than typing. Use voice-to-text built into your computer and apps to compose emails and notes. Stop typing, start talking.
In addition, Brian emphasized calculating your hourly rate to assess if buying back time is worthwhile. Eric noted that while technology can optimize efficiency, you should still control your system rather than letting it control you.
Key themes covered include leveraging technology for efficiency, structuring your time deliberately, streamlining communication, and automating administrative tasks wherever possible. The overarching focus is on freeing up time for people leadership - the core of management.
Assess your own work style and needs, then implement the approaches that fit you best. The right time management system will be personalized. Experiment to find what works. The goal is to establish a sustainable approach to maximize your time and energy as a new manager.
Today’s Guest
ERIC GIRARD
CEO, GIRARD TRAINING SOLUTIONS
Eric Girard has over 30 years of experience helping improve the performance of managers and employees. He specializes in the development of new managers, focusing on their successful transition to their new role and on their team management skills. He has a high-energy and engaging facilitation style.
Eric is a passionate, lifelong learner. As a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor, he is pursuing the rating of Master Scuba Diver Trainer. When not designing or delivering training, he enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife and twin 14-year-old daughters.
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/ericpgirard
Instagram: instagram.com/eric.p.girard
Website: girardtrainingsolutions.com
Podcast: girardtrainingsolutions.com/podcast
Why Subscribe To The Email List: Brian does special zoom events and shares hacks and tips exclusively for his email subscribers. Topics like “13 alternatives to checking social media on your phone” or “2 email rules which will cut your email inbox in half” and more. Sign up to start receiving the tips from these exclusive events!
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. I teach overworked project managers how to level-up their life balance and pump up their practical productivity through my Productivity Gladiator training system. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.
Brian Nelson-Palmer:
Eric, it is such a treat to get to do this with you today, man. I've been so stoked about talking about it. We said 10 time management hacks up and coming managers can use.
Eric Girard:
Yeah, I'm super excited. I've never co hosted before. So this will be an adventure. And you know, if you get tired of talking about time management, we can always talk about scuba.
Brian Nelson-Palmer:
That's right. We just found out Eric is an escuba instructor and I went through the YMCA dive thing in college and stuff and diving is fun. So we both found that out and we both found out that neither one of us have to wear swim caps anymore because we're both already aerodynamic in the water.
Well, thanks for getting together. And for folks, let's do a quick intro on Eric, just a little bit about your back. We're about to talk about 10 time management hacks for up and coming managers. So what's the perspective that you're coming to this because?
Eric Girard:
Yeah, so I am super passionate about time management. And I think that came, I'll be real with you for a second. I think that came from being a little ADHD and a little OCD. So I found that I had to be hyper organized in order to get through a day without just completely blowing off everything. So I have found that keeping myself organized means that everybody around me is happier. I'm happier.
And I've also taught time management as well. And that was like a duct to water where I teach time management and it's just so easy and so fun. I do things a little differently than most folks, I think, because I need to be really organized, but I'm happy to share those tips. And I invite folks to take what works and reject the rest. Just go with what works.
Brian Nelson-Palmer:
Absolutely. And for me, this is, I did a TEDx talk on the value, reimagining the actual value of your time is the name of the talk. And I was really blessed because it got picked by Ted and was out there. I was like put out there and kind of went a little viral. And it was also really cool because I've been teaching this stuff since 2014. I do with productivity gladiator. I'm teaching life balance and personal practical productivity skills and time management is a big piece of that learning. So for me, given these workshops for so many years, I've got so many of these ideas. So in the prospect of like, oh, let's get together with Eric and let's both share some and like go back and forth on this. This was oh, man, this is so cool. So and I'm with you. I've never really co-hosted an episode before. So we're trying something new in that like we're both hosts of shows. So let's get together and do a show together. This is this is fun. So let's jump in.
Eric Girard:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Let's do it.
So what about, well, why don't you kick it off? What's your first one? We said we're going for 10.
Cool, okay. Yeah, we're going for 10. Okay, so my focus and my background is on new managers. So specifically helping new managers transform from being high performing individual contributors or employees to being a great people manager. So that's the lens I'm looking through is how do I help the new manager figure it out and stay organized so that they can lead their team as well as possible. So with that kind of scene setting, let's dive in.
The first thing I would say is if it's on the calendar, it gets done. So make appointments for everything. I make appointments for tasks. I make appointments for meetings. I use 15-minute blocks for little things. I've gotten really good at estimating how long something will take. And so put it on the calendar. I need to pick up the girls from camp. That's an obvious one. But, hey, I need to write up the show notes from this episode. I'm likely to forget that unless it's on the calendar. And so I'll put that down for 15 or 30 minutes on the calendar. It's blocked off. It gets done. My calendar is my Bible. So that's kind of tip one and two built in together.
Number three is the best system is the one that you'll actually use. So I've got my system. It makes some people's eyes cross. So I don't force my system on folks. I say use the best system is the one that you'll use. I meet a lot of people who love pen and paper and have a paper calendar. Fine, I'm not gonna ridicule that, I'm not gonna say anything bad about it. My system is I use Apple Calendar, I'm a Mac guy, so I use Apple Calendar and I use Apple Mail and I use Apple Notes and that works for me. I've gotten to the point where I used it to carry around a little notebook with me at meetings all the time. And my handwriting has gotten to the point where I can't read my own handwriting anymore. So I spend a lot of time typing notes up. Or when I'm in Zoom meetings, I use Fathom.video to record notes and transcribe.
Brian Nelson-Palmer:
So can I ask you about it? I have a couple of questions on what you shared on that one, on the fathom. I've never heard of that one. Is it, that's an app on your phone or is that you take a picture of what you wrote or how does that one work?
Eric Girard:
Yeah, so Fathom, there are others like Otter.ai is another one. And there are a bunch of them. These are AI apps that are extensions. In this case, Fathom only works with Zoom. And it joins the meeting like a participant and records the whole thing. It records the video, it records the audio, and then it uses AI to give you a transcription. And so after a meeting, like if I'm in a client meeting or if I'm in a workshop and I really want to make sure I get the key points, all I have to do is, the recording is instantaneous. So as soon as the meeting is over, the transcript is ready. And I'll go right to the transcript and scroll through it and go, ah, there's the key point, boom, done. So rather than listening to a Zoom recording for, you know, and repeating the thing for another hour, in 15 minutes, I've scrolled through and gotten the key points and I'm on my way.
Brian Nelson-Palmer:
Oh, that's amazing. And you, and you were talking, I want to go back. You said you block your time in 15 minute increments. So in my head, does that mean that you have like multiple colors and every 15 minutes of the whole, like, is that just the work day? Is that the entire day? How, how, how big, how far does it go?
Eric Girard:
So let me, for example, if I look at today's calendar, I have, today I've got three calendars going. So I've got my work calendar, my Gerard Training Solutions calendar, that's blue. And so, you know, like this podcast is in blue for this time period. Then I've got my personal calendar, that's green. And so for example, meditating is in green and that's a half hour at eight o'clock and then going to take the car in to get serviced and call the scuba dive shop to ask a question. That's in green. Then the family calendar is in red. My wife runs that calendar. And I know that, for example, my twins are volunteering, doing some work over on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. So the nice thing about having these different calendars is if it starts to get overwhelming, if it starts to get too cluttered, I just turn one of the calendars off and then I can focus. So right now I've got the full look at the day or the week or the month, depending. If it's too much, I just turn one off and then I can focus and say, okay, that's what I have to do for work today and I can focus on that.
Brian Nelson-Palmer:
You know, I'm glad we're doing this together because the question I have is I use a similar approach except for me, the time block. If I have a task that I need to block, the tasks for me live on the to do list and the time block is the work time to get tasks done. And so if I have a lot going on, I'll try to block more time for that. But I don't actually put the task on the calendar. For me, it's on a separate sheet because things are always coming up and changing. So my question for you is if you plan to get certain things done and all of a sudden something high priority comes up, does that mean are you changing calendar events? Are you just moving things around? Or how does it work for you?
Eric Girard:
Sure, yeah, it's totally flexible. You just drag stuff around. So I actually, I adapted this from Franklin Covey. So I was trained in time management from Franklin Covey, and a guy named Dave Green was, you know, for a minute, he was like the expert in time management in Outlook. And he had this method called drag drop, turn it into what it is. So in Outlook, back in the day, there was the core four. There was mail, calendar, tasks, and notes. And so when an email came in, you decided what it was. Was it a task, something you had to do? Was it an appointment you'd drag in on the calendar? Was it a contact you'd drag it into to address book? Or was it a note you wanted to hang on to later and you'd drag it into notes? So you would drag these things around. And I'm just shortcutting that and just saying, you know what, I've got my email inbox, I've got my calendar, I make appointments to get tasks done. So I don't have a task list. Yeah, so.
Brian Nelson-Palmer:
You know, and I love that we're having this conversation because it just, just like you said, everybody has their different approaches, right? So what works for different folks? You find the tools that work for you. And for me, I have the calendar is where I need to be like places I need to mentor. It's like, I need to be somewhere physically or mentally or virtually. I need to be there. So that's the calendar and then the tasks are somewhere else. And so moving it on that's, Oh man, I like this. I'm going to play with this, putting it on the calendar thing. I'm curious about how that would work.
Eric Girard:
Yeah, it just, it helps a lot. I mean, it just helps me focus because like what I will often do is I will look at the week. So like on a weekend, on a Sunday, I'll look at the week coming or the next couple of weeks coming. And I'll make sure that there's that stuff that needs to get done is on the calendar. There's a time for it and I'll build in prep. So for example, I built in a half hour of prep before this podcast. Sometimes I don't do that. I'll block the book, the podcast, and then realize later, whoops, there's no time to get ready for that. And so I'll make time to get ready for that. And then if something else comes up, so for example, I've got a note here, a personal note, that I need to take care of something with my scuba gear. That's not high priority. And so if something else comes in, I'll just drag that stuff myself. It's no big deal.
And then my last tip, and sorry. Yep. Okay. We actually jumped into number four, which is using multiple calendars. Yeah, so personal work and so on. You know, I have a client that wants me in their system, so I've got their calendar. I was on a volunteer board and I was in their system. So at one point I was running five calendars. You know, and they all told me where I needed to be. And if it started to get too much, it was just easy enough to toggle them on and off.
That's why I advocate using multiple calendars, because you can reduce the overwhelm of, God, this is too much to do today. It's like, well, actually, turn off the family calendar, because you don't need to know that the girls are going on a picnic. That's not information you need right now, so you can shut that off. And then my last tip, and these are not in order, by the way, these are just, you know, as they as they came out. The last tip is do it, delegate it or delete it. So this is specific to email. So, so true story, true story. Right now I have 20 red emails in my inbox, and that's actually a few too many for me at the moment. I would be much more comfortable if it was down in the teens.
I know people who have tens of thousands of unread emails, and they're completely overwhelmed. They're just completely overwhelmed. They're like, why even try? Why even bother? So the method I use to handle email, which is a big time suck, I think, for everybody, is do it, delegate it, or delete it. If an email comes in, and it'll only take a minute or two to handle, do it right then. Take care of it, and then throw it out. Or can you delegate it? Can you have somebody else do it or can you delegate it to yourself just later in the day or later in the week? You know and then make an appointment for it Or if it's garbage just delete it and get it the heck out of your inbox like don't even deal with it Corollary to that is ruthlessly unsubscribe. You're gonna wind up on mailing lists Of course down at the bottom of every piece of junk email I've gotten is a little itty-bitty tiny in two-point font unsubscribe button But it's there. Look for it. And unsubscribe. And so I stay on that, because I don't want to be on mailing list I don't want to be on. Keep your inbox tidy so it's not overwhelming. And use a folder system to keep stuff you want to refer back to. So just like where I have multiple calendars, I have multiple email accounts as well. The reason I like Apple Mail is because it's an email aggregator. So I'm not tied into Gmail. Apple is platform agnostic. And so I've got my own personal server email in there. I've got Yahoo, I've got Gmail. It just, it sits over all of it and manages all of it. And so each of these email accounts have folders where I keep stuff if I want to refer back to it, but it's not in my inbox.
Brian Nelson-Palmer:
Right? That's you got to move it. Got to move it out of the inbox for sure.
Eric Girard:
Yeah, because if you're living in your inbox, you're doomed. Related, a lot of us will start in the morning and start in the inbox and just start clicking through emails. Don't do that. Start in the calendar. Start planning your day and what are you supposed to be doing? And then at certain points through the day, go catch up on your email. You got to break, a few minutes between meetings. Maybe you block half an hour to take care of email. But it's an intentional thing rather than getting sucked into it. And then you've lost three hours. And now you've got to scramble through the rest of your day to keep up, catch up with the stuff that you were supposed to be doing.
Brian Nelson-Palmer:
Eric, do you ever mess with the phrase that I learned is eat the frog first, but it's a, I can't, oh man, I can't remember who famous. I think it's Mark Twain. Mark Twain said this where if you eat a frog in the morning, the rest of your day can't possibly get any worse. It's going to be better. But the way that they use that is instead of opening your email, you do one big task. What's your frog for the day and do that first before you open your email. And that way, if you get, whenever you open email, you get sucked into email, you've already accomplished the big thing for the day. And so I've been doing that for years, but it's eat the frog first is the phrase. the big thing for the day. And so I've been doing that for years, but it's eat the frog first is the phrase.
Eric Girard
Oh, that's a good one. I'm, I, you know, now I can't eat frog legs anymore.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
You're switching to Escargot. That's right. Yep. That's funny.
Eric Girard
Oh my goodness. Yeah, I think yeah, it's been a while since I've had a good truffle. Perhaps I'll perhaps I'll switch to truffles.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Yeah. I'll put your pinky out. Stop. There we go. Do we? And you know, you brought up the three D's. What's interesting is that for me, it's the four D's. It's deal with it, delegate it, defer it or delete it. And so it sounds like you said delegate and defer are one in the same when you delegate it to yourself later, or something. But it sounds like we're using very similar approaches, which is that's awesome. Yeah. With the. Oh, man. I love this.
All right, five things. That was five. Let me try five. I've got, I've got one. My first one, uh, and this up and coming managers, stop running errands. Uh, this is one that so many things can be delivered these days and people get stuck in going to run the errands. And so one of the things, I mean, I talk about it in the Ted talk, I actually have on my website. If you haven't, or if you want to go to productivity gladiator.com and there is a calculator that allows you to calculate what your personal time, what your time is worth and it'll give you a guesstimate for your personal and your work. And so that is my metric for whether it's worth my time to run that errand. So for example, if you're getting donuts and coffee for the team and you could stop at Dunkin donuts and get it, or if you're going to get lunch for the team or something, you could stop and do that. Or if that's going to take you half an hour and delivery is available for 10 bucks, then maybe get it delivered. And that way you don't have to take that on or that extra errand on. So,
Look for that or time for your family at the home. It works the same way. You can get your groceries delivered. A lot of the things you need for the house, you can get delivered. And so if it's worth it, you can, now that you know what, if you go to the calculator and you know what your time is worth, it's easy to kind of an easy way to look at it on, okay, maybe this is or isn't worth it for me to go and do. So stop running errands that you don't have to, if you can. That's number one.
Eric Girard
Oh, yeah. So my background is Silicon Valley. I spent 20 years in Silicon Valley. And at first, I was floored because they had cafeterias on site, like really good food on site. They had laundry delivery service. They had a gym on site. They had all these things. And it was a little bit like Golden Handcuffs. It was like, yeah, let's make it pleasant for you to be here so that you can focus on work. But I really came to rely on that, especially the laundry service.
When I moved to Seattle and moved out of Silicon Valley, I didn't have purple tie anymore to take care of my laundry. So I was running errands, going to get the laundry. And just on a fluke, I asked my dry cleaner, do you do delivery? And they're like, oh yeah, it's six bucks round trip. I'm like, that is a no-brainer. That is a no-brainer. Absolutely, yeah.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Oh my gosh, I love that you mentioned laundry in DC and wherever you're listening from, there is likely a service similar to this or your local laundromat might do it. But I, you might judge me for this. People sometimes laugh at me for this, but I have not done my own laundry in seven years because I found, I found a service that will do it and it's a dollar per pound. And so it ends up being like, if you've got two, you know, overflowing hampers ends up being about 35 bucks or something like that. But to have that three hours of time spent laundry back for me is so worth that, that expense. And for the same reason you just said about like, this is why they do it in Silicon Valley and to keep free up your time so you can work more. Or in this case, sometimes you can life more instead of work more. So that's a good one.
Eric Girard
Yeah. Well, I mean, that kind of goes to my point about the best system is the one you'll use. If you think it's worth 35 bucks to have somebody else wash, dry, fold your laundry, and bring it back to you, then okay. I'm positive I could never convince my wife to go for that. She'd be like, take an hour on Sunday and go fold your laundry, go.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Right. Yep. And circumstances very much. So it depends. And so each decision is different for each person. Totally. So now, uh, okay. So number two, I'm going to take it. Stop running errands again, but this time I want you to level it up with subscribe and save or subscriptions. And the examples I have for this are like, we have a cat, all of the stuff for the cat arrives at regular intervals. So not only do you not run errands for it, but you also don't have to remember to order it. You don't have to like the kitty litter shows up every two weeks so that it can be changed. The food shows up. You know how much they're going to use in a two month period. So set up that subscription. And so if it's possible to do subscriptions, it's a huge help mentally and for your time. Right. The the other two examples for humans, I just shared cat examples. I share some human ones, too, like toothbrush heads. If you need a new toothbrush, you're not going to remember when the last time was that you needed a new toothbrush or when you started it. But if it's a subscription and it shows up at a regular interval, then you know that you're changing every three months when it shows up, you change it or same thing. Smoke detector batteries is like a big win because you never remember when the last time was that you changed them and you're supposed to do it every year or so. So these are just examples of things you can subscribe for. And the other piece is look for Amazon or for Chewy or for some of these websites that allow you to do this. They often offer a five to 15% discount if you subscribe for the item. So pay attention to those, this works for work stuff too. You can subscribe to paper and things you need at work so that not only do you not have to run the errand, but you also don't have to remember to do it either. It just shows up.
Eric Girard
Yeah, nice. I found, like, we were doing subscriptions for stuff, and I found out we wound up with too much stuff for some reason. And so, especially with spa chemicals, I'm like, you know what, I'd rather not have a year's supply of shock around. I just needed a bottle at a time. So yeah, but I see your point there. And going to my first point, if it's on the calendar, it gets done.
Guess how often I change smoke detector batteries? Exactly once a year on the same day every year. No, it's an all day event. It's just change the smoke detector batteries sometime today.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Once a year, six months. At the same time too, right? 9 AM. When is it? All day. All day event, yep. That is when you said all day event for a second, I was like, did he take a sick day just for smoke detector batteries? No, no, no. Okay.
Eric Girard
No, no, it's just like, you know, it's like, you know, get it done today sometime when you have a minute. Like it's time, it's been a year, sort of a thing.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
All right. Number three, use AI when you can. There are chat GPT. I've been doing a lot with this recently. I've got a YouTube video that just came out on the on 11 ways you can use it to be more productive at work. It also works at home. I just there's another podcast episode I just did on AI that was about with someone who, gosh, it was Christopher Lind, who was a big AI personality, industry leader. And we were talking about this topic. And one of the things we shared is like it frees up your time at work. It frees up time to spend more time on your people. Like Eric, you were talking about you teach lessons. You got to be a better people leader just because you're good at the work. Doesn't make you a good manager. What got you here won't get you there. And the same thing, if you can use AI. So, for example, here's an example. You go to one of these zoom meetings and you have an hour long transcript copy and paste that transcript into AI. Ask for, have it tell you what are the action items, give me a summary and generate slides to go over this. So if you're a project manager, you could do that with your weekly update and then the slides could go to your supervisors or your managers, you could have it do the slides and that kind of stuff. But by having that extra time that you would have spent two hours creating all of this, and now it only takes you maybe half an hour. That'll give you a little more time. Make sure that you use that time with your people. And so use AI to free up time to be a better people leader. That's such a huge one, I think. So get that time savings to be better.
Eric Girard
Yeah, totally agree. I mean, one of the things I realized, I went to the Association for Talent Developments International Conference in San Diego a month or two ago. And I went to every session on AI that I could. And the thing I walked away from those sessions was, first off, I was a little unnerved. You know, there's that, it's like, this is pretty scary. But also machines cannot out-human a human. And so if you can use AI to be more relational, more empathetic, a better human being to your people, and let AI take care of the back office stuff, then I think that's gonna result in a better workplace.
Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:34.37)
Totally. I mean, Eric, I'm sure it comes up in what you teach and stuff, but when you go to all the employee viewpoint surveys and the employee feedback and that kind of stuff, the top managers are the ones that engage with their people every single time. So make sure if you can use AI or apps or subscriptions, like we're talking about ways to free up your time so that you can spend that time with your people, it will pay you dividends in your career forever and ever. So.
man, do it, take advantage of that time savings. All right, number four. And you know, I love that you brought up email stuff because my number four is stop emailing back and forth to schedule meetings. I can't, just yesterday, I had somebody reach out to me inside my company, I also have a day job, and inside the company, the people sent me an email and they asked, hey, could we meet? When would be a good time to meet? And in my head alarm bells went off. It's like inside the organization. If you have Outlook, it's called scheduling assistant or Google has, you can see them or there's apps like Calendly that will do. It's amazing. Yes. And they can see when you're available. So no, I am not going to reply back and give you all of these options. And then you're going to reply back and say, well, I can't do those. What about those? And then I'm going to reply back. And sometimes it turns into
Eric Girard
I love Calendly. Calendly is my killer app. Yes.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
five, six, seven, 10 emails trying to get this thing set up. No, man, just go look at the calendar, see when it's available. So for you as an up and coming manager, please do not get in the habit of emailing to set up meetings. Make sure for yourself, if you're in an organization and you can set it up, you can hook up your calendar to a Calendly thing and you can, you can use it for free. It's a freemium service. So you can even start for free and just have a 30 minute
meeting that's available, but that will at least let you send a link to tell people when you're available. And it even works. Oh my gosh, I it's a you could even use it in certain circumstances in your personal life too. That's you know, Eric, there's a question for you there though, because I feel like in my personal life, if somebody wants to get together for happy hour, or they want to hang out, and it's a friend or something, and I send them a Calendly link, there's a level of like, nah, that's not a good vibe.
Eric Girard (27:59.995)
No, no, no. Everything, most of what I'm talking about is work related. Making sure that things are on the calendar, that's universal. But Calendly is a work thing. Like I would never send a friend a Calendly link to get together for fun. Like that would be, I think that would be offensive.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Yeah. And at the same time, Eric, I wish I could with my really good friends that know me. I do it anyway, because they know me and they know that I love them and I will absolutely cherish them. And I do great thing. You know, I feel like I am a good, I show up as a good friend in that relationship. But if we're in a text message back and forth, they know I do this productivity gladiator thing. And so if we text a couple of times and we can't find a time.
Here's the calendar link. Look at it and tell me when it works. We've gone back and forth twice. Now this doesn't go in anywhere. I didn't. Oh, that's fine. Um, so I did, and I'll include a link that I did do a blog post on how to stop the back and forth calendar and this kind of stuff. So if you're not familiar with what Eric and I are talking about with calendar and this other stuff, that stuff is available, talking about scheduling assistant and that kind of stuff. So if you're an up and coming manager and you don't already know about this stuff, please do check it out. Uh, that'll be a good.
Eric Girard
You know what, in my previous roles, I was a vendor manager, among other things. I also spent a lot of time talking with vendors about training products. And Calendly was not really a thing when I was inside. Calendly really blew up during the pandemic for me, where it became like the killer app. But if I wind up inside again, I'm finding a way to use Calendly or something like it to schedule meetings with people outside the company, because it's just invaluable.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Absolutely. And if you're an office person and you don't know, it's called bookings is the office app. And so if you Google it, if you're not already familiar, but if you've got SharePoint or if you've got office 365 through your organization, it's called bookings or if you have Gmail, you can use Calendly. That is a third party provider, but there's different solutions. So for your organization, it might be different, but yeah, look for it and find it and, and find a way to be able to send someone a link so that they can book that meeting.
So that's a good one. And then, you know, my last one, my fifth one is dictating is three times faster than typing. So start talking. And this is a, it's a blog post that I did and I can share the link, but there is a statistic that typing speed on average people speak three times faster than typing. And so what's amazing though, is that with AI and with all of the technology that they've gotten, the dictation ability.
is significantly better than it ever was before. So like the one that'll blow your mind, if you haven't done this, try it right now. You can pause this show and go on and hit the microphone button and tell your phone or your computer, how much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? And I guarantee you, it gets it right every time. All of the, it knows how to separate them up. It, you can insert commas. You might have to dictate the commas, but it'll do it.
And so the reason I share this is for me personally, it's a, there is a dictate button in Outlook that you use. You can hit dictate and then you can talk to your computer or in Gmail or on a Mac. Everyone has, every system has a shortcut to access a microphone so that you can talk and learn how to start talking to the computer. And my little rule for myself now is if I'm gonna type more than two sentences, speak it first. And then you can go back and just read it and make sure that it came out the way that you would.
because my process to send an email used to be to write it down, type it all, and then go back and reread it. And now I dictate it and then go back and read it. And it, at least it saves it's at least a 50% uptake and how long it takes me to compose emails, especially work longer ones. That's just something for me.
Eric Girard
Mm hmm. Huh. When you said dictate, I thought you were going to go and do a management technique, which worried me for a second.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Ah, yeah. Dictate short for dictatorship. Yes, we have a good time in this company. Absolutely.
Eric Girard
Yes. Do it my way now. So I'm glad we didn't go that way. But that's actually really interesting. I use dictation right now. I use it with Siri when I'm driving. So yeah, so I have Apple CarPlay in my car. And when I get texts from people while I'm driving, I'll respond via text. And that's handy because you can keep the conversation going without getting on the phone because the telephone is so passe these days. And so just being able to dictate a quick response to a text is handy. So yeah, I will play with that.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Absolutely. If you haven't every single one of them, I just found it took me forever to figure it out. But in Mac, I, I use windows professionally and I use Mac personally. And for personal, you hit the command button twice on your keyboard and it immediately activates the dictation feature so you can speak to text. And so it's a, it's a great, it's a great thing. So, you know, Eric, before we, we said 10 things, that's 10 things. And I wanted to ask before we adjourn, do you have any personal stories. We're talking about 10 time hacks for up and coming managers. Are there any personal stories that you have overall on this topic that, you know, like somehow this is a personal thing for you or clearly it's a passion of yours because you talk about this. Where does that come from?
Eric Girard
Yeah. So I think it's kind of keeping myself organized and then wanting to share that with other people and help other people be organized as well. So my whole focus is on wanting to help. And I've chosen as my niche is I want to help new managers hit the ground running. And so that's where all of this comes from. And the story I've got about this goes to the point I made about the best system is the one you'll use.
This is actually a story about a manager of mine named Jeff. And Outlook was fairly new to us in this organization. And I had figured it out. I'm kind of a tech head. And so I'd figured out Outlook. And the core four and the drag drop turned into what it is. And so I'm making Outlook sing and dance. And people around the office knew that. And so they would come to me and ask for tips. One day, my manager, Jeff, came to me and said, Eric, I'm having trouble with Outlook. Can you help me? Sure.
And he, my perception was that he needed to do a specific series of things to get Outlook to do what he wanted it to do. And let's just say for the sake of argument, it was a list of 10 things. And so I'm like, okay, first go here, click here, do this, change that value, that, and his eyes started to gloss over and he looks at me and he says, you know what, Outlook is not the boss of me. Outlook is not the boss of me. And I've never forgotten that because
It's not. Your system should not boss you around. You are in charge of your system. The best system is the one that you use. And so to the extent that you're able, because I realize that some companies say, all right, we're an Outlook shop or a Microsoft shop or we're a Gmail shop. But to the extent that you're able, modify and adapt the system to suit your style of working. That's what I would.
I would say for this is, you know, if you're not technically oriented or, you know, you just, you hate outlook, find an alternative. I, you know, I think, I think that there in companies, there is a certain expectation that you need to be able to handle the technology that's offered to you. And I think that you have a responsibility to do that. And at the same time, I don't think you should accept it on its face. It's like, you know what, there's gotta be an easier way. So let's find the easier way. So there you go. Outlook is not the boss of me.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Outlook is not the boss of me. I like, I like that a lot. I think that there's a lot of people that will relate to that in technology in general. There are some people that they sign off at the end of the day and they're like, oh my gosh, I will not go back on my computer again until I have to for work tomorrow. And so the only way you can get through to them after hours is via phone because they don't look at their computer unless they absolutely have to. And so technology and outlook is not the boss of me. I like that.
For me, it's actually, you know, Eric, I'm appreciating that you and I are almost like a great one, two punch because your, your target or your niche is up and coming managers. And you know, what got you here, won't get you there. Being a good manager is different than being a good employee. And for me, a productivity gladiator is about, uh, helping overworked project managers to level up their life balance and their personal practical productivity skills. And so it's really about starting out in the workplace as an employee.
And they don't often teach you some of these skills about life balance and how to have a good life balance and how to handle all of this stuff like outlook and all these tools. And so the interesting personal story for me is I, I worked in the government for many years and there, I worked with a lot of contractors for the government and also employees in the government who were not necessarily good. You had to chase them. You know, these people, you probably can relate to this.
There's these people that you have to chase them down because you ask them for something and then you don't hear back. And now the onus is on you to ask them again. And then you have to ask them again. And like, my gosh, wouldn't it be great if everybody had this system for being able to get back to you or, or be able to handle the overwhelm. If they've got too many emails, the people with 10,000 emails, how do you fix that? How do you handle that? And so it's a personal thing for me was one of my good, my good buddies.
was talking to me about this years ago and said, you know, Brian, you have a system, so share your system. It doesn't have to be the perfect system. It's not the only system. And I love that having this conversation with you, like Eric, you and I have different approaches to some of these things, but we both have a system. And so if you need to work with somebody working with Brian or working with Eric is going to be a good teammate to have because we have a system. So teach that system. And I love that so much. And so teaching, sharing these tools and these tricks and these tactics and the stuff that we're doing right now is my God, I could spend hours doing this and we're not going to, because we don't want to be in your ears for this long, as far as talking and podcast episodes aren't meant to be that long. So I think we've, we've gone, we've gone on and droned on about, we've done our 10, 10 hacks. Anything else that you've got today before we just kind of adjourn this one or conclude it.
Eric Girard
No, this was a lot of fun. You really kind of reawaken the passion of me. And if folks want to get a hold of me, you can always reach out to GerardTrainingSolutions.com and take a look at what we offer. Time management and prioritization is one of our classes.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
And that's, and for me, I'm Brian Nelson Palmer. I'm founder of Productivity Gladiator, and we're teaching life balance and personal practical productivity skills to overworked early and mid-career project managers. So along the same lines, time management, prioritization, those kinds of things as well. But I love this, it's through a lens of as a manager and a manager in training and coming up through it and starting off in the beginning. So I certainly would love to keep in touch as well. So.
All right, that's a wrap.