Dissecting a Winning Elevator Pitch, with Elevator Pitch Champion Chris Westfall

The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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Short Summary

Chris Westfall joins Brian on the show to dissect what it is that makes a winning elevator pitch. He is a regular contributor to Forbes, the author of The NEW Elevator Pitch, and one of the most sought-after business coaches & keynote speakers in the world.

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Content Overview

You step onto the elevator heading up to the corporate event, only to find yourself face-to-face with the CEO of the company. “What do you do here?” she asks. Your mind goes blank. You fumble over your words, unsure of what to say or how to make your role sound impressive. The doors open and your opportunity is lost before you can even begin your pitch.

We’ve all been there. The elevator pitch scenario can be intimidating and nerve-wracking. However, mastering the art of an authentic, compelling elevator pitch can be a game-changer for advancing your career. Follow these tips to create elevator pitches that open doors instead of letting them shut.

It’s Not a Pitch, It’s a Conversation

The most common mistake with elevator pitches is treating them like a sales pitch. You try to squeeze in as much persuasive information as possible in a few floors’ time. But elevator pitches work best when you approach them as starting a conversation, not delivering a monologue.

Your goal is to get the other person to say “Tell me more” or pose a question to continue the dialogue. You want to open the door for an ongoing discussion, not force feed them a persuasive speech. So slow down, take a breath, and focus on authentic interaction.

Start with Common Ground

Since the elevator pitch opens a conversation, begin by establishing common ground. Is there a shared goal or truth you both recognize? Use your knowledge of the person or their company to start with something easy for them to agree with.

For example, you could say “I know you’re focused on improving client retention this quarter...” This statement shows you understand their priorities and goals. Now you have a natural jumping off point to highlight how you can contribute.

Share Unexpected Information

After establishing common ground, you need to catch their interest with something unexpected. Help them see you or your idea in a new light by sharing information they likely don’t know already.

One way to do this is talk about a recent success or accomplishment and how you achieved it. You could also share news of an innovative approach you’ve taken lately. The goal is sparking their curiosity to learn more.

Ask for Permission

Don’t barrage them with an info dump. Wrap up your initial elevator pitch by asking for permission to follow up, like “Would you be open to discussing this more after the event?” This keeps the conversation door open rather than shutting it by talking too long.

Even if they don’t agree to talk later, asking permission positions you as respectful of their time and interested in an actual dialogue.

Focus Outward, Not Inward

When nerves kick in, it’s easy to get lost talking about yourself and come across as self-promoting (rather than audience-serving). Combat this tendency by focusing your pitch on how you can contribute value to the listener and their goals.

Talk about the positive outcomes or impact you can create for them, not just the features of your product or service. Demonstrate you’ve thought deeply about their needs to position yourself as a partner.

Find Your Unique Perspective

There may be many other people with similar roles and offerings to you. How do you stand out? The answer lies in finding what’s uniquely meaningful about your experiences.

Maybe you come from an unusual background that informs your approach. Or you’ve leveraged past failures into insights. Think about what distinguishes you and use that as the hook that grabs their interest.

Be Authentic and Real

Don’t rely on canned scripts or stock phrases in your elevator pitch. This forces you into stiff, inauthentic communication. Instead, focus on being real. Slow down your thoughts, get grounded, and speak from the heart.

Your genuine passion and personality are what elevate you above others pitching the same thing. Don’t hide them away.

Put It Into Practice

Finally, start practicing elevator pitches in lower stakes encounters, like professional mixers or networking events. Notice what intrigues listeners versus what makes their eyes glaze over. Seek insights from trusted colleagues on how you can improve.

Pay attention to body language and listening cues to become a more engaging, responsive communicator. With time and effort, you can turn the elevator pitch from dreadful to downright captivating.

The elevator pitch presents a valuable opportunity to make a great first impression. Follow these tips to transform shallow sales pitches into meaningful conversations that advance your relationships, career, and goals. Take the time to craft an authentic elevator pitch and discover the doors it opens.

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Episode Key Takeaways

For Employees

• Open your pitch with something that’s honest, and true, and doable, which they will agree with. The most powerful pitch is the one that’s honest and true.

• Next: Share something that’s unexpected, surprising, innovative, or counterintuitive.

• Last, some new information that will make them say, “tell me more”.

• The higher above you that you pitch, the more simple the concepts need to be, don’t get down in the weeds, zoom out to a level that’s honest and true for both of you at both of your levels.

For Front Line Supervisors and Middle Managers

Only difference between a pitch as an employee vs a pitch as a manager is to constantly remember “service”.

• It’s constantly in terms of “impact”.

• “With these resources, here’s what I’d be able to do for you…”

• “I’ve thought this through” and come prepared to share the thoughts.

The elevator pitch just starts the conversation, and gets permission to tell them more later.

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Videos of Pitches Referenced In This Episode

• Direct link to the pitch that won the Rice Business Plan Competition this year.
  Topic: Magnetic Gears
  Company: Fluxworks
  https://tinyurl.com/FluxWorksPitch

• Aaron Powell of Bunch Bikes in “verbal fistfight” with Barbara Corcoran in his pitch on Shark Tank and she “takes him downtown”.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXE7xkVZt8Y

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Today’s Guest

CHRIS WESTFALL
US National Elevator Pitch Champion, Author, Coach

Chris Westfall is an entrepreneur, business coach, and is recognized as the US National Elevator Pitch Champion.

A regular contributor to Forbes, and the author of four books - plus a ghostwriter for six more - he specializes in helping bring new stories to life. His titles include easier, Leadership Language and The NEW Elevator Pitch.

Chris has helped launch over five dozen businesses, and has appeared on ABC NEWS, NBC TV and CNN. He has worked with thousands of leaders at Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations and high-tech startups. He regularly consults with top-tier universities. and is a coach to entrepreneurs and executives around the globe. His clients have appeared on Shark Tank, Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank-Australia.

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/westfallonline/

Website: http://westfallonline.com

Forbes: http://bit.ly/Forbes-CW

YouTube: http://youtube.com/westfallonline

Books online:

• Leadership Language: http://bit.ly/leadershiplanguage

• Easier: http://easier-book.com

• The NEW Elevator Pitch: http://bit.ly/thenewelevatorpitch

Socials: @westfallonline

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Episode Transcript

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer on this show. I talk about life balance and personal practical productivity skills. And in this episode, we're dissecting a winning elevator pitch. And on the show with me today is Chris Westfall. Now, Chris, you've written a book on this topic. We're about to talk about elevator pitches. So for those of, for those people, for you who aren't, might not be familiar with Chris, what, talk about your experience and your, what's your cred with elevator pitches?

Chris Westfall (01:37.889)

Well, you know, when somebody says, tell me a little bit about yourself, the way that you answer that question is called an elevator pitch or an elevator speech. And, uh, and by the way, I've, I want to say thanks for having me here. Uh, and when it comes to elevator pitches or elevator speeches, it's really a way to introduce a person or a product like you see on Shark Tank or an idea. And a few years back, I was actually recognized Brian as the U S national elevator pitch champion.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:08.606)

Oh, stop. What does that mean? Does that mean you and a bunch of other people like competed a bunch of elevator pitch nerds and then all of a sudden you got a trophy? What happened?

Chris Westfall (02:18.297)

It's true. There were 40 of us in an elevator. It was very, no. What happened was there was, there was a national contest and it was opened up to see who had the best two minute speech in the country and you could speak about anything. And so I entered into this contest and you had to record a video, gain votes on social media. And I went through the experience. And when the voting came through, I actually came in second place in the voting and an entrepreneur from Atlanta actually won.

But the folks that put this contest together, watched all of the videos and they reached out to me and they said, Chris, listen, we've watched all of the videos, you're second place in the voting, but first place in the competition, you are the national elevator pitch champion. And that recognition was, Brian, that was what changed everything for me. And from that place, I said, you know, well, what am I gonna do? Okay, I could rest on my laurels of this odd sort of award that nobody seems to understand or...

I could turn this into something of value. I could take what I've been given and the recognition that I've received and see what I might be able to do for others. So looking in the direction of service, I turned this award into a consulting practice, a coaching business, as well as multiple books that I've written that always carry this thread or this theme of how do you create not just the elevator pitch that matters, but the conversation that matters.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:44.838)

Yeah. Oh, and I got to tell you, Chris, I have been so excited to talk with you about this topic specifically, because I especially with my show and we, you know, we talk the crowd and the people that I like to talk to on this show are definitely employees and frontline supervisors and middle managers and those folks. And I think often people think about elevator pitches as something they use on Shark Tank, but this is something that actually applies like every day consistently. You can use it all of the time.

So what's before we dive into that topic though, one thing that I wanted to ask, there are a lot of, I love asking guests this. And so I want to ask you to, there's a lot of people who bill themselves as experts on different types of things. And so there's certainly other people who might've written books or blog posts or whatever about elevator pitches. So what would you say makes you different from the other folks who put themselves out as some sort of expert on elevator pitches?

Chris Westfall (04:42.229)

probably the results of my clients that I would point to. I mean, if anyone comes in, comes to you and says, I'm a, I'm a coach and I, you know, I have an expertise and I'm a self-appointed guru or whatever it is that they're going to say, what you have to look at is not what they're doing, what they're saying or what they're publishing. You have to look at what their clients are doing. And over the years, I've been super fortunate, Brian, I've worked with some really, really bright and talented entrepreneurs as well as people. who are in the corporate game, who are looking to move forward, who are looking to create conversations that matter so that they can, you know, create promotions, create greater impact, et cetera, et cetera. But I've, I've coached clients of mine onto television shows like shark tank, uh, dragons den. That's what they call shark tank in Canada, shark tank Australia. Uh, I've been a part of raising over $350 million from investors and counting. Yeah. Which, I mean, that's, look, that's not all the money in the world, but like I say, my clients have, they've done well and I'm thrilled to be a part of that success. This past spring, I coached four teams in the South by Southwest pitch competition in Austin, came away with four first place trophies for, for the categories, including best in show. So I coached the team that was the best of the best at, at South by. And then this past, well, I guess it was in May, I coached the team that won the rice business plan competition. And that's the largest and most lucrative college competition of its kind in the world. So like I say, I, I don't know. I, I'm nobody special. I'm a guy. I'm a, I'm a fellow traveler who's looking in the direction of what, what stories and conversations are going to create the greatest impact. And how do we show up differently inside of Q and a, how do we, how do we step up and show up when the stakes are high, when the conversation really, really matters? That's where I can be of service to people. And the results that my clients have, have created have been just, it's been an honor, a privilege to work with some very, very brilliant, brilliant clients over the years.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:47.374)

Gosh, well after that intro, now I'm dying to know what you have to say. So let's tell, let's talk about it. Chris talk about. So first of all, first and foremost, please dissect with us. What is, what makes a good elevator pitch? And by the way, I should back up for a second. The scenario, I'm assuming you listening, you know what an elevator pitch is, but

What we're really talking about here is that the scenario is you jump on the elevator with someone who you need something from, or can help you in some way, or you don't know and you need to introduce yourself to. And the idea is you just have the time when you're on the elevator from when you start to when you get off on their floor, when they get off or you get off the elevator, you have that call it 30 seconds to two minutes, whatever that very short timeframe is to communicate what you need to communicate and get the result that you're hoping to get. So when we're talking about elevator pitch, that's

That's how I'm approaching it. Is that when you talk, discuss elevator pitches, is that track with what you were thinking, Chris?

Chris Westfall (07:44.645)

It is that's Brian. What you're kind of describing is the construct or the way that we traditionally think of an elevator pitch. But the, the thing that really is useful, if you want to turn the elevator pitch from a construct into something that's a powerful career tool is to look at it, not as a pitch, but as a conversation. And so if you write, because, because look, if we're in this mythical elevator, we, you know, we've got, what do we have 30 seconds to, you know, and that kind of pressure, nobody works well with a gun to their head. Nobody works well under pressure. And if you go, wow, I got to bust this out in 30 seconds. I've got to tell this person my life story from birth up till yesterday, or, you know, and you'll end up shotgunning ideas. And what really helps is to understand that the elevator pitch, it's not a pitch, Brian. It's a conversation. And just because somebody gets off the elevator doesn't mean that conversation ends. So what this means is a couple of things. First of all, if you want to know if you've got a great elevator pitch, it's not judged by what you say or how fast you say it or how much information you can dump in a certain time frame. It's about what your listener does when you're done. It's about finding a path to these three words. Tell me more in some form or fashion, tell me more. This idea that what you have said is interesting. It is compelling. It is, it's intriguing. And if you watch Shark Tank, you see that the folks that are successful, they create in that initial pitch, something that makes the shark say, tell me more. And in, so, and that's the other thing that we can observe from Shark Tank is that all of those pitches are won and lost in Q and A. They're won and lost in a conversation, not in some rehearsed speech, right? So people think there's just some misconceptions around the elevator pitch. They think it's short, so I got to just show up and throw up. How much can I dump into this quick? No, that's not what it's about. It's about slowing down, being deliberate, and choosing the words that are going to help you most so that you can create that tell me more because what everybody, nobody wants to be pitched, but everybody's interested in a conversation. Everybody's interested in having a dialogue, a dialogue around value or innovation. And that's, that's as true for entrepreneurs as it is for folks who are in management, who are leading teams, who are trying to make an impact in their careers. Your success starts with your story. And that's, that's really the framing that I think is most valuable.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:27.918)

I love what you said about that with the, it does take some of the pressure off when you think about it more as a conversation and less as the high stretch, high stress pitch. So I like that a lot. And I'm also thinking about...

I personally like being a podcast host and I used to be a radio DJ and a radio show host and in all of those, I'm very used to asking questions and I like asking questions. And one of the things I've noticed is sometimes if you start with a question, my normal MO in a normal situation would be to ask them a question. But when you're in an elevator pitch situation, if you ask them a question and they're long winded, they're going to get off on their floor and you will not have accomplished whatever. It is so dissect a little bit about, OK, there is something to it's not just a conversation. Like there's a little. So what it dissect a little bit about what do you recommend for folks when they're looking at, OK, how do you initiate or do a good elevator pitch?

Chris Westfall (11:23.541)

Well, when you think about it, an elevator pitch or let's, let's just boil it down. Let's simplify it. A conversation is really a word problem. And what I mean by that is it's not about, you know, learning how to speak English or, but it is about choosing the words that are going to help you most. And also as we know from math back in the day, the way that you set up the word problem is what helps you to succeed at it. So when you think about this conversation that you want to have, this pitch, this idea that you want to move forward, what is it that you can say that is going to be of greatest service? And I'll say that again, service to the person right in front of you. Because an elevator pitch that is self-serving, self-absorbed, self-conscious, you see where I'm going with that? That's not the approach that I advocate because walking into some pitch situation saying, I did this and I do that and I can, I can make this happen and I can, it's like, well, bravo. Good for you. Is this a superhero story? Are we just going to listen and hear about your accomplishments? Or what is it that people are really listening for? What are they really looking for? It's the same thing that people are looking for in this podcast. They're looking for service. They're looking for ideas that they can take and turn into action. And if that is the way that you set up the word problem of your elevator pitch, and just to reiterate, Take your eyes off the timer. Don't feel like it has to be one thing or the next thing before you get to the 33rd floor, whatever it is, whatever obligations you're putting on it, step back from that and give yourself permission to be of service. And if I may, Brian, I'm going to refer back to something that you said, because it's absolutely brilliant. I'm sure we're going to have a verbal fist fight a little bit later, but for right now, I'm going to tell you what you said was absolutely brilliant. Start with a question. And you know, there's some people that, you know, they want to play 20 questions. They're like, well, what would it mean to you if, you know, and you're like, ah, come on, that's, that's not 20 questions, but a rhetorical question can be really, really useful to get people thinking, to get people to consider what it is that you're going to share. And I advocate pointing people in the direction of, well, of the thing that makes a really, really good pitch. And if you think about it, a successful pitch, and this is, this is terrible English. I apologize in advance, but this is, this is the best I got. A good pitch is a series of yeses. In other words, it, you see what I mean? It's a series of agreements. And of course, no, no is sometimes a detour on the road to yes, but a good pitch is a series of yeses.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:05.838)

So we're talking about that, some of that concept. And I mean, I worked in sales for a bit. And so, you know, the concept of getting people to start saying yes, because that keeps the momentum going. So they get into the habit of saying yes. So when you said rhetorical questions, you're asking questions that will most likely have a response of yes. Does it lead? Is that kind of what you're driving at? It leads to then when you make a request or like when you have a potential solution, they're already going. Yes, I have these problems. I see your solution or tell me more.

Chris Westfall (14:39.213)

Correct. You're on the right track. Oh, look at that. You're quick. You're pretty quick.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:41.406)

You look at, you see, I gotcha. I'm onto this. See, tell me more. You got me going already, Chris. I love it. All right, yeah.

Chris Westfall (14:50.05)

Well, you're demonstrating something that's really interesting is that if that question comes from a place of sincere curiosity, that's where you want to start. You're not playing a game of gotcha. You're not trying to come in and, you know, say something like, you know, if I said you had a great body, would you hold it against me? Come on.

That's I've, no, no. I've listened to a lot of bad pitches. Um, but.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:10.67)

Chris, tell me, have you ever tried that line? Have you really? Be honest, have you? Okay, all right. Where did you get that from? Where did you hear that?

Chris Westfall (15:25.361)

You know what to play? You know what to play a game of gotcha? You want to look and it's not just about, some sort of verbal manipulation where you're like, well, if okay, if I ask them this question, then they'll do this and I can get them to, and you're trying to be like a puppet master pulling strings on people. Start with a question that looks in the direction of something that's universal, something that's relatable, something that all God's children, no matter which God they worship, all God's children know to be true. What is something that is that universal yes? And I can give you an example. I mean, one quick example would be, doesn't it seem like we all want a sense of family and belonging? And you go, and you know, look, you may hear that and you go, boy, that sounds a little form of family and belonging. I wouldn't say it that way. Well, good, I'm just, this out comes across for me. What do I know? Take these ideas and make them your own. Right, right, take these ideas and make them your own. But this idea, we all want a sense of family and belonging. There's no one in the world that goes, uh-uh. Everybody sees that. Doesn't it seem like we all want a sense of safety in the workplace?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:13.094)

Right. That's the way it works in your head.

Chris Westfall (16:32.297)

I mean, even if you work in an explosive factory, you want a sense of safety in the workplace. You see what I mean? And these are, yeah, that's where you wanna start.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:38.286)

true story. I see what you mean.

So, so what's, you know, I think one of the things that's really helpful, I'm picking up what you're putting down as far as like, okay.

where you're, you're wanting curiosity, make it a conversation. You're not coming off as too chauvinistic. I really like some of the things we've talked about so far. And for me, it's always helpful to have sort of examples. So I've got a couple of fun scenarios that I kind of want to ask you, okay, what would you say or what's your advice in this scenario? But the first one, tell us a real story of, I'm kind of curious on what is the best elevator pitch you've ever been involved in or a part of. What comes to mind if I ask that?

Chris Westfall (17:20.937)

Well, I was really thrilled with what I saw at the Rice Business Plan competition this year. I was working with a scientist who had invented an amazing new technology around magnetic gears. Magnetic gears. And you know how like gears when they, you know, they have teeth and cogs and when they, they torque too, too far, they, those teeth can break. And then you've got, you know, that's how your transmission's busted. That's

That's a real problem. Well, with magnetic gears, they, they're magnets. So, so nothing ever touches it. They're frictionless. And this technology is super slick and NASA is all over it because not only are these, these magnetic gears, they're, they, not only do they have higher reliability, but they're also lighter weight. Um, so, so think about, you know, lunar modules, think about spacecraft. I mean, all kinds of things that NASA is just super excited about this technology. And so I met this scientist and, uh, absolutely brilliant. I mean, Brian, I can't even begin to tell you how bright this guy is. But like a lot of really smart people, he had a challenge of simplifying this story. And he wanted to go into the details. And why wouldn't he? Because he's a scientist. That's what he looks into. And maybe there's people out there, maybe you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, yeah, my job is based on details too. And my credibility comes from the details. Well, I'm here to tell you that credibility in a pitch comes from relatability. And if you can't make a complex story relatable, you don't really understand it. And that's not just me saying that, that's a version of what Einstein said. If you can't boil it down to its simplest form, you don't really understand it. And so what we worked on was crafting a kind of understanding that helped translate this scientist's brilliance into something that an audience of hundreds of judges. The Rice Business Plan has hundreds of judges that evaluate 42 teams from all over the world. It was just an extraordinary experience. But watching him, and let me tell you specifically what made it an amazing pitch. A couple of things. He had a partner and she stood up and was talking about the usefulness of these magnetic gears on the moon, on the dark side of the moon in a lunar rover. And she said to the audience, well, think about it. You know, and you're like, whoa, this is lofty. This is, you are literally in outer space. Yes, that's true. But imagine if you are in a lunar rover and your gears seize up, you can't call an Uber. And that's exactly what she said. And the audience instantly went, we get it. We understand. And it is, it was that understanding that I think, and it's hard for me to, I mean.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (19:50.626)

Wow.

Chris Westfall (20:18.441)

What's your favorite pitch? It's like saying, what was your favorite kiss? They were all pretty good. But this pitch, what was... Ha ha ha.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:27.459)

Chris, I'm sensing a theme here. You had a pick-up line reference. Now it's about kissing. I see you're all about the sensual, emotional side of this thing. Alright, I'm picking up what you're putting down here.

Chris Westfall (20:36.985)

I'd tell you what, what can I tell you, man? I've been married to a redhead for a long time and she walks on the ground I worship. She walks on the ground I worship. Anyway, but, so back to, but back to the dark side of the moon and back to you can't call an Uber if your gear sees up. When I knew that this pitch was at its absolute best was when in the middle of,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:44.746)

Oh, spicy. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to derail. That was really funny. Okay, so, right.

Chris Westfall (21:03.329)

By the way, I've been rehearsing with this team and I know their shtick and I know the spiel and I've seen the slides and all this stuff. And the lead presenter, the scientist, he goes off script. He goes off script and he says, we're working on a special project right now and I can't tell you what it is, but it rhymes with Schmeiper Sonic Schmissle. And I about fell out of my seat. I'm like, you're kidding me that you just landed a joke.

And I'm not saying it's a good one, but he did that. He goes Schmeiper Schmonic Schmissle. And I'm like, where did that come from? But here's why, here's why this silly story stands out for me, because he was loose. He was loose enough to crack wise. And I'm not, again, I'm not saying it's the funniest thing I've ever heard and he should be a comedian, but it was unexpected. And the best pitch is unexpected. The best pitch is when you are not locked into a script when you're not trying to be memorized, but when you're trying to be of service. And sometimes having a sense of humor about sophisticated science separates you from the pack. It's, it's a mark of true distinction. And it was his, it was his flexibility and his confidence combined with the way that he handled Q and a that makes me give this guy some mad props today on your podcast for the best pitch.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (22:28.27)

That's awesome. And so just out of curiosity, is this pitch we've just talked extensively about it compared it to kissing. It sounds pretty enticing now. So if I is this like, is there a video of this somewhere that I could link for people or

Chris Westfall (22:41.326)

Absolutely. I'll send it to you and you can, you can drop it in and they can see, uh, exactly who these folks are and what they did. And I think it's very inspiring and his, his partner, uh, she, she is amazing as well. She had never pitched before we started working together. We worked together for two months and together these two went and one, they raced past teams from Harvard, Yale. MIT, BYU, Stanford, Northwestern, and every other, I mean, 42 schools from all over the United States. It was quite a journey. Let me tell you, my friend, it was great to see.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (23:11.74)

That's amazing.

Okay. All right. So best pitch, man. All right. Well, I'm looking forward to checking out that video. I'll make sure I drop that in the, in the episode notes so that you can, you can watch it here too. But what's the, so let's do some scenarios real quick because I think this is really helpful. Right. So let's say that I'm an employee and I'm a, I'm a project manager and I need resources, whether that be FTE or a little bit of funding for something on one of my projects. And I end up in the elevator with my boss. What would you, if you were coaching someone in that scenario, what would you say goes into that elevator pitch?

Chris Westfall (23:51.733)

first thing I'd ask him is what is something that your boss knows absolutely to be true? Not a matter of faith or belief, not a matter of geography or educational experience. What is it that your boss knows to be true with a capital T? And something that shows up for me in that direction, just to kind of give you an example and take from concepts to reality, because that's what you're going for. You need resources to generate revenue.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:20.014)

Okay. Yep.

Chris Westfall (24:21.573)

And I don't, I don't know if there's somebody out there that's, that's hearing that and going, I'd like to argue with that guy about that. But how do you, how do you generate revenues with that? Right. It's, it's the simple saying you have to spend money to make money. Right. So if that's true, looking in the direction of, um, something that is non-threatening but curious would be the place where you might find a start. You know,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:43.658)

So is that, there's two things, when I think of things that are absolutely true, it could be bad or it could be good. Is there like, would it be, for example, something that's absolutely true is, would it be bad if we failed this project? That of course is absolutely true. But then there's also the, you know, you could also do something along the lines of, would it be a highlight if we were successful in this project? And that would be a little more positive slang. Do you specify between the positive and the negative absolutely true?

Chris Westfall (25:11.733)

You want to sound real, neither positive nor negative would be what I would advocate. And I'll tell you why. And maybe some insurance agents or actuaries are listening to this and going, no, we want to, we want it to be negative. We want it to be very scary. Um, because I mean, think about it. I mean, it is absolutely true. And you could open your pitch by saying, isn't cancer horrible? And while that is true, now, now you gotta, I mean, you just dug a hole. I mean, not only am I depressed, I mean, I've lost people close to me due to cancer. I mean, it's, it's complex. Why would you want to go there? But at the same time, if you open with, with wild hype and some mad, uh, you know, vision of, of the, wouldn't it be great if, you know, if we had unicorns and transporter beams, none of those things exist. So what is it that is, that is real, that is true, that is doable? You know, I was holding up, we were, we were doing some silly little cards. And I was holding up a little card before we got going. And that card says something that I was trying to remind myself of my clients have, and that is do the doable. So if you're looking for where to, where to open, what is, what is doable? What, what is not aspirational, not depressing, not, not hype, but something that, that is, is doable and isn't it, isn't it doable for us to all say that we see and understand that. Without resources, it's hard to generate revenue. And if that's true, you see what I'm saying is you start at this sort of overarching concept that leads you into, because that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to bring, I need to bring on some resources. And you probably, if you're talking with your boss, they probably already know this. And if it is true, and it is something that they already know, say what's true. The most powerful pitch is the one that is, it is the most honest thing that you can say.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:09.599)

honest and true.

Chris Westfall (27:09.821)

And if you say what honest and true, it has to be. No hype, no hype, yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:12.714)

Honest and true. Right? Honest and true and doable. Like you said. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Westfall (27:19.085)

correct. What and why doable? Cause it's easy to say yes to.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (27:23.366)

Okay, so you lead with that, something honest and true and doable, and they're going to say yes. And then what?

Chris Westfall (27:32.769)

That's the hope that you find that first yes. And then what you're looking for is something that is one of these four things. Something that is unexpected, surprising, innovative, or counterintuitive. And counterintuitive means it doesn't work the way that you think it's going to. So, and you go, why are you saying this, Chris? Why does it have to be unexpected, counterintuitive, or innovative, or surprising? And the answer is, because this is what, in some circles you might call a hook. It's something that draws people into your story. It's something that you have not heard before. And it might be something like saying, you know, one of the things that we haven't discussed, boss, is the possibility of bringing on temporary workers for 30 to 60 days. I know you're probably thinking that the cost of that is outrageous because of the fees, but I've negotiated a special deal and I want to tell you about it. For example, you see where I'm going with that? It's that we didn't see this coming. And it's not, you didn't see this coming, gotcha. You're an idiot. Nope, that's not it. It's there's something new on the horizon. There's something that's unexpected. Something that's surprising. Something that's surprising like a birthday present, not like a tsunami or an earthquake, but something that is surprising and desirable and doable that makes people say, tell me more.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:57.155)

So it sounds like it's a question that they're going to agree with, and then it's some sort of statement of fact that they already know, combined with some new information that will make them say, tell me more. How am I doing so far?

Chris Westfall (29:15.501)

100%, you're on it. That is the elevator pitch system. That's what you're describing. That's what I've crafted. That's what I share with companies and entrepreneurs. And for people that are looking to create new results in their careers, I write about it in Forbes. That's the conversation that matters. That conversation that starts with something that we all know, we use what is known to get to what's new. And that's the path, that's the path.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:41.07)

Got it. Now, does that change if let's say instead of my boss, who's the one that I directly report to, but now it's my boss's boss. I happen to be in the elevator with the person above my boss. Is the approach the same or how does it differ?

Chris Westfall (30:01.165)

The way that it differs starts with the way that you, again, the way that you approach the word problem. It's what, what story are you telling yourself before you start telling your story about your boss's boss? Do you think that your boss's boss walks on water? Do you think that your boss's boss flies in a spaceship or has power over time and space because they can hire and fire employees? Again, look at, look at the story that you are telling yourself. And one of the things that I think that I have seen that is so powerful is the ability to just be very real. When my client was on shark tank season 12, a guy named Aaron Powell, you can look him up. I'll give you that link too. You can, you could watch him get into a verbal, a verbal fist fight with Barbara Corcoran where she, she takes him downtown. Quite frankly. Uh, it is, yeah, it's, it's a rough patch. Yeah. I'll, I'll send it to you and you can see Aaron is his company's named bunch bikes. Anyway.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:51.142)

Oh, oh my gosh. Now I have to watch. I'll give you the link. Don't worry if you're listening. I'll give you the link. Okay, cool. We got this.

Chris Westfall (30:59.857)

So Aaron Powell though was, Barbara Corcoran was coming after him and he had some debt on his balance sheet that she didn't like it. And she wanted to explain why. And instead of falling into a story about Barbara Corcoran's vast accomplishments, there are many, just like all the sharks, and falling into this trap of like, well, I just, I can't speak to her because she's, oh my God, she's Barbara Corcoran, I'm on TV and da da.

I mean, you can, you can hear all the mental chatter that you, that must have been going through his mind. And if you watch the clip, you'll see he's nervous. He's nervous like anybody would be, but in the midst of the nerves, what he does is he gets real and he talks to Barbara about why he made the decisions that he did, why the debt was created and what it was all about. And he stepped towards the truth of his story, not some made up story about who's who Barbara

is or was on that show. And it's the same thing when we go to talk to our bosses. If you're talking to someone two levels, you're doing a skip level meeting, that sort of thing, just look at the story. How can you see this person as someone who's real? And I'm not saying you walk into their office and go, hey bro, how's it hanging? I'm not saying that, right? I'm not saying drop all sense of decorum or chain of command, but at the same time, when we see one another's humanity, our pitch gets stronger. Our conversation gets more compelling. And just remember that because someone is older than you or younger than you or smarter than you or dumber than you or whatever than you or less whatever than you, none of those comparisons matter. Where are we the same? We're the same in our emotions, at what we want. Look in the direction of those universal things. We all want safety. We all want a sense of belonging. We all understand that you have to spend money to make money. what are those universal themes that exist outside of title or education or income level? That's where your pitch gets powerful.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:07.218)

Absolutely. So Chris, does it, does it, does the scenario change at all? If instead of the employee and you're the project manager, now let's say you are the manager and you need additional employees or full-time employees, or it's not just resources anymore. It might just not just be money. Now it's additional staff and you get on the elevator with your boss or your boss's boss. Is the conversation

The same, how does it differ?

Chris Westfall (33:39.853)

The difference that really makes a meaningful difference is making a shift. Some people are not able to make it, but I'll tell you what that shift is. It's shifting your attention off of yourself and onto service. In other words, I need more employees. I'm going to my boss and I got to ask for more employees. I need more resources. I need more software training. I need more. I need, I need, baby needs new shoes, right? Mama needs a new stove.

None of that is compelling. And you go, what do you mean? I, isn't an elevator pitch where I talk about what I've done and what I want. Um, not if you're in the advanced class and not if you want to get what it is that you're looking for, because people who are sophisticated and understand how to speak in the language of leadership, speak about impact. And, and they, they take the story one step further from ID new employees to

If I had new employees, here's what I might be able to do for you. Here's what we might be able to create together. Here's the impact of bringing new employees on. And here's what I would do for you and with you and through you. If you'll, if you'll green light two more FTEs, here's what that will look like. And your ability in an elevator pitch to go beyond being self-serving, go beyond being self-conscious.

go beyond telling yourself a story that does not serve you to creating a message that looks in the direction of service and impact. It's just really simple. Look in this direction of these four words. If you want to make more progress with your manager, you want to look at getting a promotion, getting new resources, these four words are key. Here they are. I've thought this through. I've thought this through because

You know, you come in and you go, I need, I need more employees. I need more training. I need, you know, you sound like a six year old. And I hate to say that about people, but, but seriously think, think it through. What is it that you are saying that is, that is helpful, that is useful. That's going to build your team. That's going to build morale. That's going to increase employee engagement. That's going to balance out the puts and takes that matter to your boss, to your boss's boss and to the entire organization. That's a pitch that's compelling.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:01.387)

So Chris, pretend you are that manager then, and you're about to talk to your manager's manager. If you were in that elevator, what would you say?

Chris Westfall (36:13.457)

start off by looking at what it is that I know the organization wants and needs. And I could make something up right now on the spot. But in the I mean, I don't know if that's what you want me to do if you want me to if you want to create something

Brian Nelson-Palmer (36:24.45)

That's fine. Go ahead. Yeah, make it see what does it sound like? Look, put yourself in their shoes and just pretend this is real. Even if you have to make up some details of it. What how would it sound for you coming out of your mouth?

Chris Westfall (36:36.829)

You know how we've been talking about increasing our market share by 2025, and we're going to do it based on acquisitions. That's one of the key themes that we've been discussing in our meetings. But you also know that we can't grow the business without additional resources. And I'm coming to you to ask for something that you might not expect it. It might be kind of surprising, but I need three full-time employees to join. So that.

Notice what I just said there, Brian. So that those two words, see it? Okay, sorry, I jumped out of the pitch. Back into the scene. I'm back in the scene. But so that is very powerful. But I need three additional employees so that we can be on track for those goals and so that we can do the research that's needed to have the conversations with these acquisition targets to help you to hit these objectives. And you may be thinking that I can do it without those resources, and I appreciate your confidence. But the fact is I want to step you through and I've got a little quick presentation I can share with you exactly what is required, what these people will do and how these three new full-time employees are exactly what we need. And when we create these acquisitions, their costs will be offset. I want to show you how I've thought this through and see if you agree with what I've put together. Would you be open to that conversation?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:03.502)

Got it. I see what you did there. I see what you did there though. I see what you're driving at here. This is okay. I like that. So you started with something that you knew to be true, and you stated a situation, a fact that they would also know to be true as well. Kind of state the problem that you both know.

Chris Westfall (38:06.061)

There's a lot of what if and a lot of making up stuff. But you see where.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:29.978)

and then offer some new information and a solution, just enough information to get them to say, tell me more, or at the end, ask them if they'd be willing to hear more, even if they don't say, tell me more. Can I share more later? Start a conversation.

Chris Westfall (38:37.921)

Let's talk them. Correct. You've nailed it. And notice that I didn't say, and I've got a 47 slide deck that I want to step you through. Plus a 200 page white paper that I need you to read, you know, and could I, could I, could I take your blood as well? I mean, it's just, no, it, I, you don't want to build a bridge too far. The best elevator pitch is not a barrage or a shotgun approach where we dive deeply into the details. The best elevator pitch in many cases, is about permission. Permission, giving yourself permission not to be intimidated by your boss's boss, right? Giving yourself permission to be a human being, talking to another human being, and giving yourself permission to recognize that you don't have to tell your entire life story from birth up till yesterday in 30 seconds. Nobody can do that. Do the doable. What is it that you can achieve? You can get somebody to say, yeah, I'd be curious to know more. Let's have a conversation.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (39:44.686)

Chris, this is so I selfishly, I want to pose and I'm happy to share this with you listening to I had a scenario come up from me personally where I did not hit a home run with my elevator pitch, but I also didn't fail either. And so I want to share the circumstances of that with you. And then I'm curious what you would have had me say if I could go back and do it again. Right. So the scenario is I productivity gladiator is about teaching

life balance and personal practical productivity skills to overworked early to mid-career project managers. And so I happened to be at a corporate event for Samsung and the director of their training and education department happened to be there, our diversity and inclusion department. It was somewhat up who's involved in training at Samsung, who's a pretty high level person there. And so

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:40.438)

the people to be able to teach productivity gladiator training to the people at Samsung. So I happened to get on the elevator with this woman and we have, we're going up to the roof. So it is literally the elevator pitch scenario in person happening in real life. I get on the elevator at floor five, the roof is floor 14. So I have that much time and she had introduced herself in the social scenario before we got on the elvator. We get on the elevator and she asks, so Brian, what do you do? Now, here's my elevator pitch. What would if you were in my shoes or you were coaching me, Chris, what would you what would you say? What's my. What would where do I start? What do I say there?

Chris Westfall (41:26.857)

I'd start with something that's really easy to say yes to. Like, you know how productivity training is everything here at Samsung, and you're very interested in getting the most out of your people. That's what I do. In other words, I would start by saying, I think I know what you want. And I'm actually that thing. That would be where I would start. That's, that's where I would look is, is by is acknowledging

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:49.379)

Right. That's it. Okay.

Chris Westfall (41:57.153)

the person right in front of you? What is it that you know about her, that you know that she wants? And isn't it true that for all companies everywhere, not just Samsung, but every company you can think of, as well as every government agency and every nonprofit, they're interested in maximizing productivity. They want to get the most out of their employees. And companies that are serious about that, they understand that investing in training is the best way to do that. Does this make sense?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (42:22.678)

Right? Yeah. See, and I see exactly where it's all. I'll tell you what I did instead in this real life world. What I did instead is I shared a little bit about what productivity gladiator does. I answered her question, which is, you know, I said, and for me it was fun because my different thing is I'm able to tell people that happy hour I'm able to say or in the elevator. People ask me what I do and I say quite honestly, I train gladiators and then I stop and there's a pause and generally.

Chris Westfall (42:28.914)

Okay, what'd you do?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (42:51.61)

It's the tell me more thing. I was successful with the tell me more moment in this case because then she kind of gave me that sideways look on wait a minute, train gladiators. And then I said, yeah, I teach life balance and personal practical productivity skills to overwork project managers. And so that started the conversation. And ultimately I didn't fail. and that she is interested. And I mean, I hope that this opportunity does come around. It didn't close, but at the same time, the part that I totally missed and I failed at was I didn't start with what does Samsung need? I just answered the question. I'm like, oh, I see it, Chris, I see it.

Chris Westfall (43:33.609)

It's a bit of a trick question and you're not alone. You're not alone. I've been there too. I've been there. And the impulse is strong to start talking about what it is that you do, but what it is that you do is descriptive. It is not compelling. The service that you offer, the service that you offer is compelling and also demonstrating your understanding of the audience that you serve. And if I may, some things that are showing up for me is could you say, you know how all project managers, especially if they're, if they're busy, they could be facing some burnout or, you know, when it comes to managing a project, organizational skills are key, but they're not the whole story to creating success. And you see what I mean? It's a little bit different than a, I mean, I like the gladiator thing, but you know, it makes me, I was like, American gladiators? What does he do? So.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (44:31.219)

And you know what? It went, that's so funny you said that cause it went sideways on me at happy hour the other day. I said that. And instead of being interested, they launched right into, oh my God, did you see the Netflix special on American gladiators, the 30 and 30 or whatever? And it was one of those things where like, dang it, Chris Westfall would be so disappointed in me right now. Dang it.

Chris Westfall (44:52.533)

And you're like, I want to, I want to create value and I'm having a conversation about nitro. I don't care about that guy. Anyway. Yes. How did I know? I just pulled that out of my hat. Yeah. You don't want to, you don't want to derail yourself. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. I hope that it does help you. And here's the, here's the good news. If I can say this to you as well, that conversation is not over my friend, the conversation is not over. It's just begun. So

Brian Nelson-Palmer (44:59.891)

My god, I used to love Nitro. Yes. Okay, totally. Yes. Right. Absolutely. Gosh, that's so funny. Okay. Well, that is hugely helpful, Chris. Yeah.

Chris Westfall (45:21.633)

Just remember that you can restart the conversation anytime. Uh, no guarantees that people will hit you back, but you can restart that conversation. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (45:28.51)

No, totally. Absolutely. And you know that you bring up a really good point there, which is if you flub your elevator pitch in the elevator and they don't, they aren't interested in knowing more. Do you, when you follow up with them or you to try to have that conversation again, how does that, how does that start? Is it similar approach? Do you have any thoughts on, on that? If you fail your first elevator pitch and you're trying to follow up with that person.

Chris Westfall (45:55.853)

The question that I would ask before you reach back out is what could make this easier? As you face into reaching back out, rather than looking at scripts, strategies, and techniques, what's the most honest thing that you can say? What's a yes? What's a when that you could get? What is something that you could say or share that will be a yes? And that will be where I would look and just...

because it's so easy to get lost in your head space and in your thinking of what does this need to be and what's the verbal jujitsu move? Do I do attack pattern, Delta 9, follow up 63B, go! And that's not the approach. It's about being real. And again, back to the story that I told about the guy who gave that terrific pitch, what was great about it was that he was real and he was loose enough to be real and to go off script. And...

Brian Nelson-Palmer (46:54.154)

Now, I got it.

Chris Westfall (46:55.173)

What is it that you can say to the person that you met that would restart that dialogue? And if you go, I just, I don't know. I don't know. I need somebody's script. I need somebody to tell me what to, I would just say, hold on, wait, settle down. Let your thinking slow down a little bit. That's one of the things I share with my clients, slow down. You got to slow down to go fast. You got to slow down to accelerate your results and let that conversation unfold. We all know how to have conversations. If we're sincerely curious, if, you know, if we're trying to be manipulative, then we're looking for scripts and tactics and, you know, verbal gotchas that that's, that's not a relationship. That's not a relationship. Yeah. Is that a hell

Brian Nelson-Palmer (47:36.634)

Right. Yeah. Get it. Absolutely. Chris. And you know, I'm curious, how did you get into this? It like, clearly, you've spent a lot of time on this. And I know you mentioned back in the beginning, you talked about how you, you know, you ended up being you win, you won this competition as the best, you know, elevator pitch. But what

Did you what happened? What was it for you that even pulled you into that comfort competition in the first place? How did you did you fail at an elevator pitch and you wanted to figure it out? How did it how did it happen for you?

Chris Westfall (48:08.938)

Yes.

I failed miserably at an elevator pitch and I did, it was an absolute disaster. And, uh, and I was working with folks at the time. Uh, I was a career coach at a university and I was working with folks at the time on their elevator pitches. In other words, how do you show up in the interview and create new results on that kind of thing? So what led me to the contest was simply curiosity to see if I could, if I could change the conversation and that was, that was what made me curious. But yeah, I, I'll never forget it. I gave a terrible elevator pitch. I was, I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. I crashed and I mean, you won't, I can tell you what, what happened. If you, if you want to know.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:53.454)

To, with an intro like that, you're not gonna tell us? Come on, Chris, you're a romantic. You gotta give us a, you gotta finish the story here. Come on.

Chris Westfall (48:57.701)

Well, yeah. All right. Come on. Come on. Brian show and confess your sins. All right. Here we are. So I was I was going back to school to get a graduate degree, and they had an icebreaker to have everybody in the room stand up and say, what was your last full time job before you came into this program? This this graduate school. So people are standing up and they're saying, well, I was the manager of a bank.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (49:05.219)

Uh... Yeah! HAHAHA!

Chris Westfall (49:27.597)

and somebody else stands up and says, well, I was a consultant with Ernst & Young, or they're saying all these very prestigious, and then it comes to be my turn, it's my turn. And I get to stand up in front of this cohort of people that I'm going to go to school with for the next two years and establish my credibility. And here's how I did it. I said, my last full-time job was I was a professional stuntman. Professional stunt man, true story. So I'm going into this program trying to figure out how to move my career forward, how to get into the boardroom. And I'm telling a story about how I was trading fake punches at a stunt show, an outdoor stunt show in the city where I lived. And I was just mortified. I was like, you know, I have to say who I am. That's what they're asking me is who I am. And I was just, I was ashamed.

I was insecure. I was like, I'm in the wrong room. I'm feeling less than I'm feeling like I'm not the guy. What I came to realize was that in my experience of working in this stunt show, I learned some valuable lessons. I learned about managing risk. I learned about how to navigate with a performer's mindset. Because again, this was an outdoor stunt show that I did in a Southern state when the temperatures on stage. Could be 130, 140 degrees. I mean, they were driving motorcycles and blowing pyrotechnics on this stage. And it taught me some things about the importance of safety. It taught me about the performer's mindset. It taught me about how to pace yourself so you could do that eight times a day. So I learned some things that I didn't realize when I gave my elevator pitch originally. And so from this place, I realized that I need to work with folks to help them to pull out their story, to not just stop with the feelings of imposter syndrome or feeling like you're less than, or that you don't have what it takes. It's going deeper to understand how to take from your experience, to look at it and say, what's good about this? What can I pull from this unusual, unique set of circumstances? And that's been the work that I've done with the US Navy SEALs and other organizations. Because if you think about it, every Navy SEAL has done and seen things that the average sometimes can't even imagine in the, in the pursuit of our freedom. You know what I mean? And they, they so, and kudos to all those who serve, but also to the Navy SEALs because their experience is so specific. Well, how do you take that specific and unusual circumstance and make it relatable? And that was what I, I discovered from this, this goofy elevator pitch, but you know, it's a part of who I am, uh, for better or for worse. That is, that is who I am, but looking in the direction of what's good about this.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (51:51.79)

can't even imagine. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

Chris Westfall (52:19.189)

What can I pull from this that can be of service to others so that I'm not just in love with my own experience or ashamed of it or going on some emotional journey because of my history? No, that the journey at hand is, how can you help other people? What is it that we can do to be of service? That, that I think is, is the place to look. If you want a powerful elevator pitch.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (52:42.286)

That's man. This has been so much fun, Chris. I tell you what, man, it is it has been certainly enlightening and eye opening for me. I feel like I've gotten a bunch out of this and I hope you listening have to. So thank you very much for joining today for are there any other resources in this area if somebody is looking to level up their elevator pitch? What else are there other resources that you would recommend on that? Certainly reach out to you and we'll talk about how they keep in touch with you. But any other thoughts that come to mind on good resources?

Chris Westfall (53:11.233)

Well, there's a few things I write about careers and leadership on Forbes. And so you can find those articles if you're interested in how do I turn my elevator pitch into a powerful interview? I've got several articles that I've written in very recent history, and you can find that on a Forbes.com. I also have a YouTube channel where I share videos and that is youtube.com forward slash Westfall online. And so there's a number of free resources that people can check out there. And of course you can find me on Twitter and the gram and that's also at Westfall online.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (53:41.166)

There you go. And I'll give you all those links in the show notes too. So you can check out some of these places and, and keep in touch with, and with Chris and Chris, here's what I love, man. I love that your story about being a stunt man turned into a career, turned into a book, turned into this podcast episode with us. And it has been absolutely, I feel like I am at least better equipped now after just talking with you here to do, uh, to do an elevator pitch or when it happens to me next time. Because realistically, it's never going to be perfect. And years and years of practice and you're still going to fail at these things. But at the same time, where do you start? It gives us a good basis. So I love that you're in and you're doing this thing and that you wrote a book on it so that we can pay it forward. Because I know I definitely want to want to check out the book as well. And I'll certainly include that link for everybody here.

Chris Westfall (54:33.069)

Thanks for having me, Brian. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (54:35.814)

Absolutely. And last couple things for you listening. I have two opportunities for you. The first one is, do you have a friend or colleague who you've talked about elevator pitches with? One of the things with podcasts is oftentimes me, the host will say, oh yeah, you know, and thanks for sharing the podcast or something like that. And my question for you is if there's somebody who you've talked to elevator pitches with, or who does elevator pitches like we've talked about in here, if you would share this episode specifically with them.

I know Chris and I would both love that because we both do this to kind of pay it forward and help others. So please do share this specific episode with them. That would be awesome. And thanks so much for checking out the episode and subscribing. I have special events and knowledge that I share in my email list. So I would certainly if you're not a part of my email list, productivity gladiator.com, I would certainly love to have you as a part of that. But I love sharing productivity gladiator with you. And that's a wrap.

AI & The Human Experience With Christopher Lind: Practical Applications of AI Now For You At Work

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The Audio/Podcast

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Episode Intro

Christopher Lind, Chief Learning Officer at ChenMed and industry thought leader around AI, joins Brian to talk about AI & The Human Experience, with practical applications and implications of AI for employees and supervisors right now at work.

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Content Overview

Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT are exploding in popularity, leaving many employees wondering how this will impact their work. While some fear AI will threaten their jobs, these new technologies also provide opportunities to improve our work experiences if used thoughtfully. This podcast discusses how employees, managers, and leaders can leverage AI as a “brilliant intern” to enhance work productivity and effectiveness.

For individual employees, AI allows automating tedious tasks like creating presentations, data analysis, and scheduling to free up time for more meaningful work. Rather than slog through building decks, pivot tables, or complex schedules, describe what you need to AI tools like ChatGPT. Think of prompts for them as you would instructions to an intern. You still review and edit the final output, but AI does the initial heavy lifting. This gives employees more time for the interpersonal and creative parts of their roles.

For frontline supervisors and middle managers, AI is a game-changer for elevating their people leadership. With AI handling repeatable analytical and coordination work, managers now have time to focus on developing personal connections and coaching their teams. Use AI meeting transcriptions and data to identify trends for developing direct reports. And practice having challenging conversations with AI to sharpen your listening and empathy skills. The key is using AI to be more present with your team, not absent through delegation.

At the leadership level, beware over-relying on AI for people decisions like performance reviews or layoffs. While AI provides useful suggestions, leaders must contextualize data and make final calls considering overall strategy. Also have honest conversations with teams about how AI will impact roles. Some may need to develop new skills, but frame it as an opportunity for growth, not a threat.

Ultimately AI allows focusing more on the “human work” of personal connections, creativity, listening, and strategy. But you must intentionally develop and protect that time saved by AI; it won’t free up space automatically. Approach AI as augmenting teams, not replacing roles. Share how it will aid colleagues’ development versus escalate fears. And involve workers in shaping how AI gets incorporated, not as passive recipients.

The key mindsets for effectively implementing AI include:

• View it as a “brilliant intern”, not a panacea - provide clear context and review its work before accepting

• Focus prompts on how AI can enhance the human experience for you and colleagues, not just maximize efficiency

• Think expansively about the new opportunities AI presents vs. dwelling on tasks it may automate

• Invest time saved via AI into growing strategic thinking and people leadership skills

• Keep the human in the loop at key decision points - don’t fully hand over discernment to algorithms

• Frame AI as a collaboration opportunity to develop workers’ capabilities, not downsize roles

The future of work will increasingly involve partnership between AI systems and human teams. But realize that AI on its own lacks the empathy, ethics, judgment, and strategy needed in most business roles. Therefore, focus AI implementation on liberating human talents to create a mutually elevating workforce. The benefits for productivity, innovation, work-life balance, employee development, and organization success can be immense if we use this powerful technology wisely.

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Episode Key Takeaways

For Employees

• Use Case: Look into how you can use it to design the first draft of things. Slideshows, meeting summaries, action items, templates, etc

  • Example: You have the status meeting with your team. It’s recorded. Copy/Paste that transcript into AI, have it identify action items, create summary, and generate update slide deck. You can have it create different versions for different audiences.

• Treat AI like a brilliant intern. You always should review the work that an intern generates.

• Don’t attach your professional identity to one of your job functions that AI can do. Example: If you are really good at making slide shows pivot tables, don’t resist AI because it might also do slides and pivot tables well, there’s more to your identity, lean into the other parts, don’t fight AI.

• Keep learning. Life is a journey. If AI can do a part of your job, learn how to leverage that and continue learning other parts of your job that AI can’t do.

• Epic Quote: “You’re not going to lose your job to AI, you’re going to lose your job to someone who’s doing your job with AI”

For Front Line Supervisors and Middle Managers

• Do not let AI do “the people part” of your job. For example, don’t let AI write performance reviews.

• Get better and more focused on the people parts of your job with the time AI frees up: For all of you that used to use the excuse that there was so much to do that you didn’t have time for the non-people parts of your job, those days are gone, leverage AI to help produce the non-people parts of your job, so you can spend more time on the "people parts” of your job.

• Leverage AI for a second opinion. If you’re contemplating someone, and you want to “bounce that idea off of someone” or “kick an idea around”, AI is a resource is.

• AI is great for creating schedules with all kinds of parameters, barriers, requests, etc.

• AI has leveled up translation - it’s not perfect, you’ll still want to create review the translated product, but the quality of the translation is even better. Stakeholders in other countries and languages, let AI regenerate a first draft of your work product in other languages

• AI is great for crunching numbers and identifying patterns. Example: Here’s the raw data from the Employee Viewpoint Survey, there’s thousands of responses to that survey, there’s thousands of lines of responses.

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VIDEO LEARNING RESOURCES in This Episode

• Unlocking Your Human Potential with Generative AI: A Guide to Becoming Distinctly More Human

• 11 Ways Project Managers & Normal Office Workers Can Use AI Right Now To Be More Productive

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Today’s Guest

Christopher Lind
Business, Technology & Human ExperiencE
Workplace Transformation

Most individuals who have dedicated their careers to transforming learning and talent development have spent the majority of their time in Human Resources. I’m different from most individuals. I’m a bold, digital-first learning and talent development leader that’s spent the majority of my career embedded in the businesses I serve. As a result, I’ve spent my entire career at the intersection of business, technology, and the human experience while working side-by-side with business leaders and being directly accountable for outcomes. This has provided me with a dynamic portfolio of experiences and expertise you won’t easily find.

Christopher talks about #futureofwork, #talentdevelopment, #digitaltransformation, #leadershipdevelopment, and #learninganddevelopment

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/christopherlind

Business Website: www.learningsharks.com

Christopher’s “Live Tech Talks” Youtube Show: learningsharks.com/learningtechtalks

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. 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.

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Episode Transcript

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer on this show. I talk about life balance and personal practical productivity skills. And in this episode, I'm digging into a topic that's come up so much lately, and that's about AI and practical applications for your everyday work for right now with AI. And with me on the show today is Christopher Lind, who's the chief learning officer at Chen Med. So Christopher, thanks so much for joining me today.

Christopher (01:10.804)

looking forward to this. It's been a little bit on the book so I was looking forward when I saw it was coming up today.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:15.982)

Absolutely. And for those folks who aren't familiar with you, talk about your background as it relates to like AI and this topic we're going to talk about.

Christopher (01:24.9)

Yeah, so I've got a very eclectic background. While I'm a chief learning officer, I'm very non-traditional in a lot of things. Let's just say that. I've never fit in to anything. So I originally was a total tech head. Everyone thought I was gonna go start a tech company, and I decided I was actually really bored with computers. They were ones and zeros, were very predictable. People were fascinated, fascinating to me. But...

Christopher (01:52.768)

Because of that, I've always had this bend on, okay, but technology's a real thing, and I'm a millennial that was right on the cusp of all these things blowing up. And so I was always fascinated with, but how is this affecting people and the human experience and the way we develop? And so that really is the trajectory of my entire career. So when people ask me, or kind of my tagline is, I've lived life at the intersection of business,

uh, technology and the human experience. And so that's really who I am. And the lens that I bring to a lot of different things, which is why, yes, I'm the chief learning officer, but I also lead digital transformation. I lead business process improvement. And then I also am a big voice in the industry. I do a lot of speaking on this topic, especially as AI has come out because of the fact that it's not just about the tech, it's about what this tech is going to do to the human experience.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:24.259)

interesting.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:47.202)

No.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:50.414)

And that's totally what we're talking about right now, which is the, what does it mean for you part, right? Like the tech can be transformative, but the people aren't going to just suddenly go away. You can get rid of the tech, but you can't get rid of the people. So now what? Oh my gosh, I've been so looking forward to this conversation. And so, yeah. And, we're,

Christopher (03:00.535)

No.

Christopher (03:06.434)

We're gonna have fun. We're gonna have so much fun. And we're both content creators. So like this conversation is just gonna come so much more natural.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:13.822)

And I feel like in our Venn diagram to what I also love about this is like I went to school for M.I.S. and computer science. I know how to code. I started out that way. I learned that much like you, my trajectory was I like the people and I was not as much into the tech. So while I have a really deep, intimate understanding of the tech, for me, it's about the people. And I mean, productivity gladiators about training overworked project managers on leveling up their life balance and practical productivity skills. Right.

Christopher (03:39.8)

Yeah, and I'm really happy with my choices because chat GPT-4 could code way better than I could now. And so anything I would even be able to do, I could just ask GPT-4 to do it and it'd do a better job than I would anyway. Ha ha ha.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (03:52.046)

Oh gosh, so true man. I well we'll dig into that. But one other thing before we jump in one of one other question I wanted to ask, which is also fascinating to me is what would you say? There's a lot of people who build themselves as experts or chief learning officers or that kind of thing. So is there something in particular that you feel makes you different from the other folks out there that talk about the topics we're going to talk about today and do what you do?

Christopher (04:16.92)

Um, so a couple of things. So first of all, one, you know, I mean, I actually have a day job too. So like that is like my chief learning officer is my formal title. So I run this foreign enterprise. I'm an accountable for a large healthcare organization and all of the implications of what does it mean to develop our employees well. So I've been doing this for big companies for a long time, which, you know,

And I grew up in the industry. And I think that's one of the things that my peers say is really unique. Is there like, you're not somebody who kind of like came in and took over. And so you kind of get it. I mean, I grew up in the trenches of this stuff. And so I understand the implications and the complexity that go around it, which a lot of senior leaders in my field, they came from other parts of the business. And it was kind of like, well, I kind of get learning so I can run learning. Or for me, it was, well, no, I actually grew up in that. So I think that's a little bit different.

Christopher (05:12.328)

I think the other one is I really approach things from a philosophical standpoint in many cases. I like to think deeply about this. So a lot of people are talking about AI in this kind of what can the tech do and all these other things. My worldview drives me to think much deeper about this in terms of how this affects humanity as a whole. And so even some of my very technical content, I get into a lot of the philosophical discussions around like...

How does this actually affect human identity? And what does this mean for our existence and things like that, which sometimes is a little deep. So I gotta come back. Everyone's like, you went meta on this. I'm like, well, okay, we'll keep it reasonable.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (05:52.426)

Yeah, well, just for the record, you're allowed to go into the deep end on this podcast. So by all means, bring it on, bring it on. You got it. I'll get the floaties just in case we get too deep into it here. All right. Right. Exactly. Yeah, we'll inflate the buoyancy control to get you back to the surface. We got this. So

Christopher (06:03.16)

Okay, hey, well, we'll go as I'll go as deep as you let me go. Don't you worry.

Christopher (06:12.448)

That's right. You can throw the diving bell and bring me back up.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:22.87)

All right. So today we're talking about AI tools that are available publicly and freely right now. Right. So what I want to talk, I want to talk in the lens of somebody who people who are listening to this podcast or many times they are project managers, they're normal office workers. There are people who are in the workforce, either as an employee or as a frontline supervisor, middle manager somewhere in the management chain of right now.

So what they've probably seen right now is there's chat GPT, there's Bard, there's AI tools like this that they can engage with. So I wanna start from the employee perspective, right? The, what are the, what would you say are the opportunities to get ahead right now for something sitting in that position? AI is this thing, it's not going away, it's gonna change the game, but what do you do right now as an employee to sort of be on the bandwagon or maybe ahead of the curve on some of them?

Christopher (07:19.148)

So practically speaking, and this is something where I've actually got one of my teams spinning up like, how is AI changing your job today internally at Chenmed to help people understand like how could I be using this or what should be the things that I'm using to help me just with my day to day stuff. So we did one recently where we focused on anybody in corporate is familiar with having to create presentations and the amount of hours.

that go into creating presentations for things. And so we're a big advocate, and by no means is this an endorsement for any product. So when I reference things, just so people know, I'm not saying go buy this product. I'm just referencing examples. So we recommend that people use Canva internally, because it's really good at helping people design PowerPoint presentations or presentations.

Christopher (08:13.296)

and they've incorporated some of these image generators and actually automatic presentation design, which is a huge time saver. Now granted, sometimes people freak out a little bit because they're like, well, can AI really make my presentation for me? And it's one of those like, no, you don't just wanna hand it over to it, but rather than spending all that time going through going, well, which template do I wanna use? And like, how do I want the bullets later? And all this time, it's a really great way.

to pull that together. And it's got almost every tool I see now has one of these easy writers in built into it that says like, okay, so what are the bullets that you're trying to create? And you can be prompted for like, what would you like those bullets to do? So some of these really practical implications of have it work with you on building some of these things that inevitably if you're a project manager, you have to create a status update deck.

Don't waste your time trying to come up with what should that status deck look like. Yes, you're still gonna have to think about what needs to be in there and what are the key pieces of information, but let the technology help guide it. And I know that Microsoft Copilot is now doing a lot with that. So there's some really practical ways where you can go, oh, okay, I wouldn't spend as much time on that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:32.302)

You know, of course, you just, as you were saying that, it reminded me like, gosh, that so the example for this would be you are some sort of project manager and you're required to give status updates. And generally you have some sort of status meeting with your team at the end of the week or something. And then that's normally done on teams or on micro Slack or not Slack, but teams are one of these zoom, one of these meetings. And you record the meeting.

And at the end of that, there is an automatically generated transcript that would happen. And so you could copy and paste that transcript into one of these AI products and say, give me action items and a summary of this meeting and put it in slides so that you can then turn around and brief the higher ups above you and think about how much time you used to spend doing that versus what this could do for you now. And that doesn't take away from.

Christopher (10:16.437)

Yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (10:25.43)

The important part of your job is to deal with the people on this end and the higher ups on that end and answer the questions. But the creating of the slide deck is not really a big value add for your position. So like, oh, that's cool.

Christopher (10:27.701)

No.

Christopher (10:37.276)

Exactly. Well, and something else with that, that again, I think is really helpful with AI, which I did a video on YouTube just about how AI can actually improve our human skills, which seems weird. Why would AI make us better humans? Like, well, if you're using it right, it can. And an example of this that I recently did with my teams was they had a presentation. So they had the content of their presentation in place. And as I looked at it, my feedback to them was

that's really good for your intended audience, which at the time was the frontline employees. You needed to deliver that message to the frontline employees. But I said, we've got an executive team meeting and I think we need a different version of that that's still based on that same content, but speaks at a more executive level. And the way I worked with my team on it is I said, now don't you go back through this PowerPoint presentation and recreate the PowerPoint presentation and you do all the rework.

ask AI to recreate it and describe this new audience. And that was, and again, it's called prompt engineering, but I've been working with my teams on how do you get good at prompt engineering. And so through this, I was like, recreate this presentation for an executive audience. You know, we created some details around what that audience was. And in 10 seconds, it created another version of that presentation that was much more tailored.

to that audience that they went through and obviously they made some edits and changes and things like that. But it took 30 minutes instead of the better part of a day.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:10.898)

Right. Totally. No guy. And you know, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I get so excited about this topic anyway. So it's so fun to talk with you about this because I just, one of the other thoughts that came to me, one of the other fields that used to be very unavailable for normal folks in the, in the front lines was the really deep data analytics and Excel work, right? That was, Oh my gosh, you want to go in and you need pivot tables to do this kind of thing.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:39.25)

And if you haven't experimented with it, you know, people talk about it. You just mentioned it earlier at one point. I can write code, which is great. Most end like most employees don't necessarily have to write code. But the place that you do end up writing something that's similar to code is with spreadsheets. And so being able to describe, I need to create, you know, what is the function that I need to do? You can describe this cell has this information. This has this information. What is the?

Christopher (12:55.796)

is Excel. Yeah.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:09.238)

the formula that I need to do this or better yet, you could say, create a pivot table for this information and this information based on here's the link to this, you know, chart or this data set or something. And so what it does is it allows you to kind of talk in plain English to get the data analytics that you're getting to try. So before you would have to be the employee that went to talk to the data scientist to get all of these number crunching done on all these Excel sheets and all this data.

And now, no matter how big the data is, you can describe in kind of plain language what it will do, what you're looking for, and it will get you 80 percent of the way there. Right. Like AI is not going to get you just done. You're not going to be able to just completely give it to it, but it's going to get you much further.

Christopher (13:51.604)

No, and to me that's not a, yeah, two things I would say to that. One, the way I tell people when I talk about, because again, we're doing a lot of stuff to upskill our employees and how do you use this well? And the way we describe it is, treat this like a brilliant intern. That's a really good way to think. They probably know.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (14:10.415)

That's a really good description, yes!

Christopher (14:13.024)

They, a brilliant intern, treat it like a brilliant intern. It knows all the, like you said, it knows how to do all these Excel tabulations, it can do all these calculations, it can do, but it doesn't have any contextual information to really understand what you're really trying to get at. So like an intern, you have to go, well, I need you to take this and this and I need, you need to give it that guidance and it will come back to you. And like you said, 80% there, just like a brilliant intern, you're gonna look at it and go,

Christopher (14:44.068)

Like, oh, not quite. But like, let's make this adjustment, or let's tweak this type of a thing, just like you wouldn't go to a brilliant intern and go, put together this presentation, as I'm about to go to the board of directors for you know, this meeting, and you don't even bother to look at the presentation till you stand in front of the board of directors and you start flipping through the slides and go, Oh, no, like, how did this get on? That would be a foolish mistake, as would just saying here, Microsoft Co pilot create this presentation.

Christopher (15:12.812)

But I think when you treat it that way, you can quickly start to see how powerful it can be.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:17.998)

Brilliant intern. That's a perfect two word description of how I think AI is right. Like businesses are not going to get replaced by brilliant interns. However, brilliant interns definitely help move the ball a little bit faster sometimes if you have an army of them. Yeah, for sure. Now you talked about mistakes. I want to talk about that too. What are some of the mistakes for folks that are on the front lines right now or maybe starting to use this?

Christopher (15:22.648)

I'm out.

Christopher (15:32.96)

They can radically transform a business if used correctly.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:46.154)

Certainly trusting it with your job. Like Brilliant Intern is such a great way to describe this. Are there other mistakes that you think or are seeing with folks with this whole AI thing?

Christopher (15:57.244)

Yeah, one of the ones and this goes back to starting to touch on some of the philosophical stuff, you know, we have a tendency as people to attach a lot of our identity to our work. You know, the work we do becomes part of who we are. And so even what we're describing right now,

Christopher (16:17.968)

you start to hear like, oh, wait a minute, I'm gonna let AI design my presentation, but I'm like, I'm a really good presentation designer. People tell me that they really like my presentations. And so it can start to feel like if I let AI do some of these things, am I somehow less valuable as a person to the organization? And I see that happen a lot. And it's not talked about enough because it's taboo and

We're all supposed to puff our chests and go, no, I never have, you know, identity challenges. I'm always perfectly confident with who I am as an individual. And it's like, well, no, you're not actually none of us are. And so when we start stepping into these and what I, where I see that go south is people resist it. Because they're afraid to let go of something that they think somehow is defining them. And so, you know, the examples we've talked about, well, crunching the pivot tables.

That was kind of like my thing because I was the only one that knew the Excel functions type of a thing. And so you can start to go, well, I'm not going to leverage or adopt this kind of technology and I'm going to kind of close myself off hoping that others don't find out that that's really what I do. And that's one of the things that I'm trying to break down in organizations and through the stuff I talk in the industry, because what's interesting about it is the very things you see people resisting AI against.

Like they're also the very things people say, I hate doing this. So like in one breath, they're like, I absolutely hate putting together presentations. I hate putting together spreadsheets. Hey, you should have AI do that. What? No, no, uh-uh, uh-uh. No, that's my thing. And you're like, I thought you hated it. So I think that's a real struggle that we have to wrestle with.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:03.918)

right? Oh, and you know, to tag onto what you're saying to one of the other things that, so I teach life balance. And one of the things about life balance that is kind of hard for people to understand is many times right now, people treat life balance as a feeling, right? Like you work too much and now you feel like life balance is off. So it's like, I feel happy. I feel sad. I feel lack of life balance. It's like a feeling, but

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:33.13)

you know, in the training that I do, we actually, all right, let's put together a plan. You are in the driver's seat. How is life balance? What's it going to look like for you? And how do we do this? And so that's a really rewarding conversation. And one of the pieces of that conversation is good life balance and really healthy individuals that are mentally like some of the avoiding some of the mental, the mental issues and the mental well-being that comes with work is.

your career is a growth thing, right? So healthy people look at it as a journey. You never actually get there. So for the people who don't want to, you know, let AI do the slideshow because that's their thing, they are at the end of a journey and they're kind of stuck because now they're just that person where if you look at life as a continuous journey and you're never going to be there, but you're part of the journey,

AI, what this is really revealing to me and what I want to scream from the rooftops is, oh my gosh, AI is going to allow you to go learn more skills that you're excited about. Because the stuff that you used to have to slog through your job to do, there was the parts of your job that you didn't like as much and the parts that you did. And so now make sure you're learning more parts of your job and your career that you like and you'd be interested in and get you excited because that's

That's the journey and that's where the life balance comes in too. I mean, and this applies to outside of work too, but just for that one, like, oh my gosh, it's a journey. Christopher, it's a journey.

Christopher (20:03.069)

Yes, it does.

Yes. Well, and I think a lot of people right now are in what's called liminal space. It's that space where you're at the threshold, you're standing on the edge of the door and you realize you've come to the end of this space, but you haven't quite walked through the next, through the doorway yet. And that's a really scary place to be because there is this fear of, I know I'm leaving something, but I haven't yet quite figured out what I'm walking into.

Christopher (20:36.076)

and that's an uncomfortable space. And I think a lot of people are in that space right now and like it or not, you're either gonna walk through that door or you're gonna get shoved through it. And I think that's the reality of where we are right now.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:49.806)

So true. Well, or if you don't walk through that door, then businesses are going to have to navigate around you and eventually you won't really be necessary because now you're not like AI can create the slideshow. So it's time for you to find another piece to your identity that's really valuable. And some of that is learning, right? But if you keep learning and you keep growing, that's the journey. And that's what so it'll it like brings it full circle, like man, go for it. Keep learning.

Christopher (21:14.46)

Yes. Well, and here's a perfect example of this. And then I want to talk on one of the, because you asked like, where do I see it going? Not well. And I think this is one on where we need to adopt AI more. I'll talk about where I think there's one to go back. But in terms of a story with this, so leading learning in a large organization. One example of this is I have a lot of instructional designers or experienced designers. They very much have been hit with the identity crisis of AI recently.

Christopher (21:43.52)

because the reality that AI can create content better and faster than a person is extremely intimidating. And I've been saying this, people are acting like this is all new. I did a podcast three years ago where I said, AI is better at creating e-learning than the best instructional designer on the planet. And people thought I was nuts. And like now we're here and like, well, okay. And it's even, it goes back even further than that. But...

Christopher (22:13.62)

this was something that I had to work through with some of these teams because they looked at this and they said, so like at some point, are you just gonna lay us all off and replace us with an app? Because someone could just go into this app and create this. And so we had to have a really honest conversation about that and my answer was, that depends on you. If you choose to just say my identity and my value is in...

manually doing all of these activities, then yes, then yes, then yes you will, because there are apps I could buy today that can do that better and more efficiently than you can. However, if you choose to adapt your skillset and recognize that the value I see in you and the reason I hired you and the reason I'm growing you as an employee is not because you're the best at coming up at the...

subject content in this field and picking the stock image that you put on this slide. That's not what I see in you. What I see in you is your ability to contextualize and bring to life something that someone couldn't solve before. And what I see is if you choose to say, I'm going to let AI take care of some of these robotic mechanical things so that I can spend more of my energy on the things I actually hired you to do. But I recognize that some of these

mechanical things needed to be done too. So I just have recognized that's just the cost of doing business. Then know if anything, I'm going to pour into you even more because I'm going to get to see more of what I originally hired you for. And that really, it wasn't like a one conversation that magically turned the tides. But that has really encouraged and inspired my teams to push beyond what they were doing before.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (24:05.574)

totally. I it's and getting that it's that context of you know, there's you can come at something from fear you can come it's there's well let me put it this way. There's that curve right you you've seen that curve of the early adopters there's the cutting edge people the early adopters the middle of the crowd the late adopters. And so this is one of those things where you if you look at this as something that is going to replace you then you're

Totally right it is. But if you step up and you learn how to use this tool and you become even better at the job you're doing by leveraging this, because it's not going anywhere, this is gonna stick around. I feel like what's happening now for the knowledge workers and those folks is the same thing that's happening to all of the factory workers when we brought robots into the factories and now their job. And like, it's the same, same context.

Christopher (24:52.728)

It's the same thing. Yes.

Christopher (24:57.932)

That's just it. And knowledge workers for a long time thought they were immune. They thought they were immune. It was like, oh, that's never gonna happen to us because you can't have robots do what we do. And it's like, well, actually now you can. Do we still have factory workers? Yes, I heard, I don't remember where I heard this, but it's, you're not going to lose your job to AI. You're going to lose your job to someone who's doing your job with AI. That's...

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:13.985)

Yes, we do.

Christopher (25:26.208)

That's the risk that you have to address.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:29.582)

That's an awesome quote. I like that. You're not going to lose your job to AI. You're going to lose your job to someone who's doing your job with AI. Oh man. There needs to be a meme. Make a t-shirt for that one. Christopher, you'll make some money on that. That's good. I like that a lot. All right. So let's shift gears. We've been talking about employees, right? Let's talk about from the management perspective. Now you have a team under your, you're a frontline supervisor. You're a middle manager.

Christopher (25:41.524)

Hahaha!

Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:56.586)

What are the opportunities to get ahead? Now it's not just about the work, but now it's managing a team underneath you too. What do you see as like the opportunities there with AI? Is it different? Is it the same?

Christopher (26:10.256)

So this will actually bring me full circle to the risk that I think I didn't get a chance to mention and then we'll talk a little bit about it. Because I think there's a few things that as people leaders, which whenever I say that people always think I'm saying people eaters. So leaders of leaders of people, people managers, right, is there is a real risk that we could start to trust.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:25.386)

Yeah, one eye, one horn, flying purple. Yeah, yeah. Ha ha ha.

Christopher (26:36.624)

AI to make decisions for us. And to me, that is a very serious risk. And I think the higher up you move, whether you're in people management, as you move into senior leadership, those kinds of things, I think that's a risk we need to be very, very careful of is delegating our decision making to the machines, because it does not have the contextual information. And I think as a

leader of peoples, there are going to be more things I'm involved with countless tech companies that are looking at how and I'm helping influence them on how they should be integrating AI into things. And there is going to be more and more pressure. If you are a people manager to be lured by this temptation, I almost think of it as like the fruit in the garden, where you go like, hey, like, you know, I could do this annual review with this person or

Workday just added this new feature that I give it a couple prompts and it writes the performance review for me and recommends what rating to give them and That could sound like a time saver At your peril and I think that's one of the things as leaders of people You can run into is if anything as AI rises the need for people managers to focus on their human interaction, their human skills, the time they spend getting to know individuals, contextualizing things, making decisions, that kind of stuff is going to be paramount. And I think that's the risk we have to avoid because the temptation is to go, hey, it's really good at automating this mechanical stuff. Imagine if we could use it to automate this human stuff too. And to me, you're playing with fire right there.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (28:19.33)

No. That's gosh. I so agree with this from the perspective of you. So I guess the message that I'm getting from this that I want to like shout from the rooftops to all of the frontline supervisors and managers listening to this is for all of you that used to have the excuse that there was so much to do that you didn't have time for the people part of your job.

those days are gone. So if you're not already on it, jump on this AI bandwagon to take care of the non-people parts of your job, because now as a manager, taking care of the people is the one part that you can do. So if you've got to create that slideshow that we were talking about earlier to brief the higher ups or whatever, and that used to take you two hours, and it will now take you 30 minutes, that gives you an hour and a half into the people. Check, check in with your team.

Christopher (29:10.808)

Put that other hour and a half getting to know your people and spending time, yes.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:16.91)

And because this is also the we're also right at the intersection of this happening at the same time as like the covid remote work. Remote work is now more popular than ever. And what happens with remote work is that you don't actually sit with that person. You don't stop by for coffee. So now that extra hour and a half that we just talked about is a chance for you to actually have a meaningful, meaningful conversation with your team or your team members.

about something that is human with them and that human connection. And so use a eye to automate the parts of your job that aren't human engaging and get good at that. Like, oh, man, that's powerful. That is powerful stuff.

Christopher (29:55.168)

And the other thing with that, that you can actually use AI to help you get better at that. And that's where I say AI can make you a better human if you use it right. Because even for, so this is something that I've done with all the people managers on my team. As I'm been working with them to teach them how to use GPT-4 to help them almost as like a thought partner with when they're dealing with difficult things with their teams.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (30:10.398)

All right. Say more. Yeah.

Christopher (30:29.408)

You know, describe the situation to GPT-4 and have it give you ideas for how you may want to think about it or share with you what might be the perspective of somebody who's going through this to give you greater empathy into it because it's a nice testing ground before you have to do the real thing. You know, I am no, it's not unfamiliar to me to have to deal with company layoffs and have to deal with things like that. And GPT-4 can be a great way to say.

Christopher (30:59.164)

I'm about to have to deliver this message. Here are some details about this individual. What would be some of the things that I would wanna be sensitive to? Or what questions might it be helpful for me to ask to open the conversation to have some of those dialogues in a meaningful way? Because the reality is, if COVID showed us anything, most people suck at interpersonal skills. I mean, that's just almost a universal statement. Most people just suck at it. And COVID showed us that. Because when we're in a room together, you don't notice as much. You're like, yeah, you know, fine. Yeah, we're friends, we smile at each other and we chit chat when we get coffee. Suddenly you're remote and you're like, yeah, actually I have nothing to say to this person and boy, when we're on a call, it's just awkward. And you start to realize, oh wow, maybe I'm not really as good at connecting on a human level as I thought. And tools like ChatGPT and other generative AI tools can be a really powerful tool to help you through some of that awkwardness in a safe space so you're not experimenting on the real thing.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:02.602)

It's just like you said that brilliant intern, right? Like you would not trust what you're about to say in a performance review to whatever your brilliant intern said. However, if you're looking for a second opinion on something and you don't know what, like finding second opinions to me, I love, I value AI for second opinions only because it gives me ideas and angles that I didn't think about before. It gives me wording and titles and these kinds of things. And so it's not something that I would ever replace.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (32:31.606)

with I wouldn't ever just choose. Like you said, it's brilliant in turn. Don't trust them with don't give them the keys to the kingdom. However, right? No, don't

Christopher (32:37.784)

Right, you wouldn't let your intern lay the person off, but you might be like, I'm about to do this. Here are some of the details about the situation. Here's some of the things I'm concerned about. What feedback would you give me on this? And it's AI. So it doesn't have the hierarchy thing where it's like, well, I don't wanna tell my boss what it doesn't wanna hear. It's gonna tell you. It's gonna be like, well, I think what you just said there was really offensive type of a thing. It's just gonna tell you. And it's less threatening because it's coming from someone you're not.

Christopher (33:08.02)

assessing yourself against.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:09.778)

Exactly. AI can give it to you really straight. And you know, it's like when kids like the five year olds tell you really honestly that like, my god, those jeans look terrible on you or something like that. If you ask your significant other, your significant other is going to find a way to beat around the bush and not they don't want to tell you that your butt looks big in those jeans, but your five year old will just straight up tell you and AI will do the same thing. It'll just be like, man, nope, that's not a good angle for you.

Christopher (33:32.312)

They'll just say it.

Christopher (33:37.436)

Yes, but what we've been getting at this whole time is you still need to hold on to the decision making on it. Like you said, it's feedback, treat it as such, and then make decisions on how that changes things. But it has the power to make you a more effective people manager simply by using it the right way.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (33:57.838)

Totally. You know, I made a, I made myself a note before this episode too. One of the things as I was thinking about, all right, frontline supervisors, middle managers, what's another thing that this can help you with? I remember as a manager way back in the day, I used to have to make schedules for people and you'd have like 15 schedule requests with all of these different things. And making the schedule for me was like,

sit down. I wish I could have had a beer, but it was work time. So, all right, you know, sit down with something in a quiet place where I can just focus for two or three hours to make this schedule for all of these people. And how are we going to get up too many people there? Oh, I forgot this work request that I got to move them, which means I got to change this. You can actually do that by typing with chat GPT or AI or one of these Bard or something.

Christopher (34:44.684)

Yeah. And what took hours take seconds. We did it at the beginning of this year when we were laying out our learning calendar for the year. We just literally gave it. Here's all the different things. Here's all the barriers. Here's all the different challenges we have. What should that schedule look like? And 15 seconds later, because it can calculate more tabulations than we could possibly do in a lifetime in seconds. And then it's like,

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:01.922)

Boom.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:12.426)

Here it is. Cool.

Christopher (35:12.568)

Oh, wow. Okay, I guess we're done. Like, I guess we're done. Like, now let's go back to the human stuff.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:19.23)

Right? Totally. I'd and all that the scheduling stuff, the wind. Oh man. Love it. Yes. So that was one of my other notes to myself was, gosh, it's, you know, it goes back to the point you and I have been saying, which is the human stuff. Right? This is stuff that used to take you a ton of time that took away from your time with the people in the business. And now use a leverage AI for that and schedule stuff like that. Or I was thinking like conventions, table coverage.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (35:45.802)

You need to make sure you have people for the different things. When you've got all these variables, data analytics, all that stuff, leverage, AI.

Christopher (35:53.172)

Yep. Well, and something else that actually came up today, I had a meeting this morning about this, uh, where again, one of the questions that a lot of times people hear is, is AI takes on more and more, and this comes from a scarcity mindset, will there be enough to go around? And I get it. It's a, it's a scary thing to think, well, but if AI just takes more of this at some point,

Christopher (36:16.904)

Isn't it going to take so much away that there's nothing left for me to do? And I still just chuckle at it sometimes because I go, I cannot think with the pace of change and everything that's going on, there has never been a day in my entire career where I've gone. I literally have accomplished everything that I could have possibly wanted to accomplish today. It doesn't happen. And so even just an example of this practical example of this was.

you know, translations. I've worked for big global companies. I ran global at GE and at Abbe. And one of the big things was you were dealing with all these different countries and you always knew that not everybody spoke English as their first language. But a lot of times it was just, what am I gonna do? I don't have time to sit and make different translations and create different versions of the same thing over and over. And I know it's a need.

but it's something I'm never ever going to be able to get to or have the resources to do it. These are opportunities that literally have gone untapped that now in a second, again, going back to our example, take this presentation, convert it to Hindi. Boom, it's done. And you can now send it out to these other stakeholders. It's something that wasn't even on the table before that you can now do. So even accessibility and things like this,

you're able to create opportunity that didn't exist before with it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:48.534)

Right. And gosh, in that example you just shared too, I'm just, I'm recalling what we were just talking about, about how there's not enough left to go around or something. And in that case, if it gives you the presentation in 40 different languages before you send it out to all of the stakeholders, the one that you have a really good relationship with them, send it to them and ask, are there any glaring problems with this language or something? Because it's a brilliant intern. It's not a finished product. So you still need

people part, but yeah, so much time saved.

It's not a zero sum game. And I think that's the thing. We're not playing a zero sum game where there's only so many pieces and once those pieces are gone, there's nothing left. We just seem to create more that weren't there before.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (38:38.502)

Are there any special use cases that come to mind for you that would help a manager stand out right now if they were starting to get in the game of AI or they were exploring this? What are the things that like, like we said, AI is not going to, AI is not gonna replace your job, but somebody who does your job with AI could replace your job. And so what are...

What are you seeing from a manager, frontline supervisor, middle manager, or even senior managers? What are you seeing as those opportunities right now?

Christopher (39:13.42)

So some of the ones, I'll give a couple examples of things that I think have been really helpful for those folks. One just very practical example is a lot of times, frontline managers, we get a lot of data about things. Here's a lot of...

I mean, good grief, the amount of data that we can find on stuff is sometimes almost overwhelming to the point where you're like, I don't even know. I'm seeing things and I don't even know what it is. And AI, whether you're using GPT-4 or any of these other tools, is fantastic at identifying patterns. And going back to some of this and giving it the data and saying, and again, you have to give it context, just like a brilliant intern.

manager of these people look at this information and analyze it what specific development opportunities or areas of opportunity should I be focusing on there's a lot of information here what things do you think are the most important for me to focus on and why and are you just going to blindly chase whatever it tells you no of course not but it will find things that you didn't even think

and actually give you that feedback as a frontline leader to then say, wow, okay, I missed that. Like here's an opportunity for me to go dig in a little bit more. And now you spend your time, not just blindly chasing it, but digging in to see, is there something there? Is there something I could be spending more time coaching or developing? We're looking into in terms of broken processes type of a thing. It's really good at helping find some of that stuff. Um, that again, who just has time in their day to sit back?

and go, you know what I'm gonna do is just look through endless PowerPoints of data and try and find patterns for things that I can go work on with my team. Nobody has that kind of time, but AI does.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:11.514)

Oh my gosh. I'm, you're saying this and I'm reminded of all of the employee viewpoint surveys that come in and stuff where you get responses from thousands of people. That Excel sheet is insane. And then they give it to you and they're like, here, what should we do with this? Right. And it's like, okay, well then let me give this to AI. What do you see as the top five to 10 things that I should look into from

Christopher (41:28.832)

Here, go make a development plan for your team.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (41:40.322)

this and isolate some of the really valuable things and see what your brilliant intern gives you as a place to start and then start there. That's not the end, but start there. Yeah.

Christopher (41:48.64)

Yeah. No, it's not the end game, but ask it. I mean, again, that's the beauty of it. You can just keep asking questions. Look for the top five things that you think I should be focused on. Why did you pick those things? What do you think might be some of the underlying reasons? Here's some details about our industry about the current dynamics of our team. What are some things that you might think could be leading to this? Just as that starting guide to go

Christopher (42:15.124)

Well, I'm a heck of a lot further than I was before. And that's something I would have never had time to do that now I can spend my time doing meaningful stuff. Just one other example of something that is really powerful that I'm exploring with some stealth companies right now as ways for leaders to develop and stuff because so much stuff is done on virtual meetings and things like that.

Christopher (42:41.128)

there's two areas that I think are going to be really helpful for managers. And one is there are now tools that can listen to your meetings, which sounds creepy, but it's not, and can give feedback on the dynamics of your meetings. And here, like where were the conversations, who did most of the talking? What were the things that were said in that meeting and what should you do as actions? Now, some of that's very tactical. Again, if you use some of these tools, if you're a project manager,

Good grief, put those on your meetings. And again, what were the action items? What were the major concerns that came up in that call? You can get a lot of that feedback. But something else that we're spending a lot of time on is creating simulations for people managers to be able to say, you know, hey, I need to have this development conversation. Or I need to have a one-on-one. A lot of people managers, they're terrible at having one-on-ones. And how do we create simulations with AI to practice?

how to do that, which again, most people go, well, I don't got time for that. Well, we're creating time so that you can have time for that type of a thing. And those are some real practical things that I would encourage anybody to find out if your organization's doing some of this stuff because it's here and it's at a state of maturity that you can actually really use it well.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (44:04.346)

And for everyone out there who thinks my organization doesn't have this, you personally have access to pretty much the majority of the stuff we've talked about. You might not have the actual add-on or whatever the setting is that you have to pay for in your meetings to get this just built into the meeting. But every one of your meetings, I guarantee you, if you record it, it has a transcript.

And you can take that transcript, copy it into the AI and ask it the same questions that we're talking about now, where this might take you an extra few minutes as opposed to having the button enabled, where it'll just tell you how much time somebody spoke. You could copy and paste the transcript in and ask AI for a summary and it will give you this now. So you right now have access to all of this ability. So make sure that you're digging into this and exploring it. And gosh, if there's one takeaway from today's

chat that I hope folks that you're taking away from this is that it's you. This gives you the time back to be better at the manager part of your job, the managing the people part of your job. And that's huge. So leverage that and become that manager who takes that, you know, you have you the

You as a manager could get replaced by somebody who's a manager that's good with AI that does your same job. Like, man, those two. Oh, man. Those two little nuggets right there are like, man, it's a brilliant intern. And you will be replaced by somebody who does your job with AI. AI is not going to replace your job. And like, oh, gosh, such food. They're nuggets. They're just golden nuggets.

Christopher (45:28.302)

doing these things.

You just think about it. I'm just, and again, I see these because I'm involved in a lot of the industry research, and then I sit in the C-suite and talk about this stuff with the business leaders. The things that are differentiating the people managers in the organization are these kinds of things we're talking about. These are the people that show up on talent reviews where people go, this people manager is doing something with their team. And maybe the leadership doesn't know the specifics of what it is.

but they're the ones, we're the ones seeing like, whoa, this team's performance is elevating. Their engagement scores are going up. There, and as you start to dig into it, you go, well, that manager's spending a lot of time getting to know his team. He's, he or she is clear on communicating effectively to the team. They're summarizing what's going on. They have a clear vision and connection between the work and the strategy. All this stuff, these are human skills that

AI gives you superpowers to be able to do and that's how you, you know, bulletproof your career.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (46:51.786)

Yeah, totally. Now I want to switch gears just for a second. We're kind of, we reached the end of our topic about some of the business and the work discussion, but I do want to just switch gears for you personally. What have, what is AI and some of the discussion about AI, how has it affected your personal life? Have you noticed that it's helped? I mean, my gosh, you, you told me before the show and the folks listening, might not know this, but you have seven kids. And so you've got

Brian Nelson-Palmer (47:17.194)

Certainly got plenty going on in your personal life. So talk just a little bit about AI and your personal life. Has it affected anything? How's it been?

Christopher (47:28.288)

I would say if anything more than anything I use it a lot to give me back more time to spend with my family. So a lot of it is freeing up time so that I'm not spending that time because again going back to it just like what we've talked about with being a people manager. Well what's the point of doing it? So you have time to spend time with the people and the same is true in my personal life. Like how do you

spend more time with your family while you spend less time filling out powerpoints and going through Excel spreadsheets. But even some practical ones, you know that my wife and I even joke about like, it's just a really simple one. Because as you can imagine, with nine people in a house, we eat a lot of food. There's a lot of food consumed. And so you'll have a lot of random groceries in your house that a lot of times you don't really know what to do with.

Christopher (48:21.968)

And there's some apps out there that literally you can take a picture of your fridge and say, what could I make with what's in the fridge? And it's pretty darn good with going, I noticed all these ingredients. Here's dinner for tonight. Boom. Didn't have to think about like, what do we have? What should we make? What do you do? You just go click. Here's a snapshot of the fridge. What could I make for dinner that would be and you describe it. We've got seven kids under the age of 12. You know, they are summer picky. They don't like this and that.

Christopher (48:50.236)

And it's like, here you go, here's what to make. And we don't think about it. We just take action on it. Sometimes my kids and I love playing with GPT-4 together, where we talk about, they're interested in Minecraft, or I don't know much about Minecraft, but I love engaging with them. And again, spending quality time going, well, let's ask GPT, what would be a great way to build this kind of thing? Or how would you architect this?

Christopher (49:18.656)

and let's get feedback from it, and then let's talk about it. I mean, they're kind of stupid, but honestly, I'm using it to make our human interactions more meaningful. Because if my kids just came to me and said, hey, we're stuck with Minecraft, how could we do this? I don't know anything about that, and I can't engage. And so the tendency would be to say, I don't know guys, go figure it out. But instead I go, well, I don't know. Why don't we do this together? Let's see what.

we can find and see if we can learn something as a team. I mean, we do a lot of stuff in VR for similar reasons. We can go together and experience. And I know that's a separate topic than AI, but with where generative AI is going to start pairing with virtual reality, some of the crossovers are gonna be extremely powerful. So those are just a handful of the things, but I think more importantly, whenever I would say one common thread you would see in all of it is, it's either giving me more time

Christopher (50:15.276)

to spend quality time with my family, or we're using it to enhance the time that we have together to make it more meaningful.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (50:24.982)

guys, please take heed on those things that is so it's, it's resonating so much for me because I so I mean, I did my TED talk on reimagining the actual value of your time, right? And it was picked up. I was really fortunate because it was a TEDx talk. But then it got picked up by the team at TED and made an editor's pick. And it was one of those things that kind of went viral. And one of my topics that I talk about in the talk,

that just continues to come up over and over again for me in life is that there's a section that we talk about where it's people in hospice. There's a woman who worked with people in hospice of all ages and what are their thoughts, their advice to everyone else and their final days with us? And one of the biggest things are the things that you just talked about, Christopher. It's the time with your family, being a better parent.

spouse, child like that. Those the time that you get to spend with them, like even VR, right? The VR experience you mentioned. While that would certainly be a cool experience, the time you spend with someone doing that is going to be the memories that you carry with you on and on and last forever.

Christopher (51:40.192)

Right. My kids will remember that we walked on the Great Wall of China together in VR. That's what they're going to remember. Now, I could have just handed them the headset and said, go. But it was doing that together and then talking about it. That I mean, that's what matters.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (51:49.128)

Yes, the engagement, those memories. And it doesn't matter whether you're a gamer or you're big into social media or whatever, none of those things will translate to at the end when you're looking back on this life. But the time that you spend together and the memories that you have with those folks and the engaging, the experiences that you have are the things that you'll always remember. And that is consistently based on the time you spend and the quality of the time. So, well,

Christopher (52:23.292)

Yeah, and it's very personal for me, not only because I have seven kids and a wife, but I grew up in a funeral home. And so for me, being faced with mortality, yeah, I know, there's, yeah, I know, there you go. There's a, we just, well, but here's the thing. It's dark, but it's not, in that death is an inevitability.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (52:31.718)

Oh my goodness. We didn't coordinate this ahead of time when I'm talking about hospice. I'm talking about hospice and you've got the funeral perspective. Man, we just went dark Christopher. Jeez. All right.

Christopher (52:50.696)

And that was the thing that for me growing up, you know, this is something nobody likes to think about or talk about. That's inevitable. It's like, there's no cheating that it's coming for you one way or the other. And so for me growing up with that reality, it was, so then how do I make sure that to the very best of my ability, every minute that I have while I am here, I'm being relentlessly intentional about how I use that time.

Christopher (53:18.816)

so that I don't end up looking back and going, that's what I chose to do with it? Like, that's what I chose to do with it? I don't wanna have those moments.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (53:27.99)

Yeah. Chris, for any top any ideas on this topic now AI and stuff, are there any good resources that you recommend for folks who are interested to learn more about kind of what we've talked about today?

Christopher (53:42.772)

You know, yeah, I was gonna say I don't. Okay. Yeah. So honestly, and part of the reason that I do talk so much so the live stream that I do, I spend a lot of time talking about all of the technology out there and its implications similar to this, like, what does it mean? How should we think about it? How are we using it to improve the human experience?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (53:43.186)

And certainly share your show too, because Christopher is one of the resources on this. So that was a that was a shameless opportunity for you to brag a little bit and any other ones too.

Christopher (54:12.54)

not to grade it. And so that is why I started that because the reality is I get and that's where when I come to other resources, it's tough right now. I mean, the number of conversations on AI right now is insurmountable. And I listened to a lot of them and a lot of them are fear mongering. They are doomsday. They're not productive for folks. And so you do have to my caution would be

Be really careful. So if you're listening to what I'm saying today and you go, I completely disagree with Christopher. I think he's bonkers. Well, then you're not gonna like my content and there's plenty of other content out there that you can listen to. But if you're listening to this going, this focus on the human experience and how to enhance the human experience through technology, that really is where I spend all my time and the content that I create is really around that. So are there some great...

Christopher (55:06.948)

I would say people could reach out to me and they're like, Hey, do you know of a really good conversation on this? That's where I can point people in directions. Cause there's some really good one-off things, but even myself, I create the content because I struggled to find a source of getting it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (55:22.966)

And so if they want to keep in touch with you and your content specifically, where do they go?

Christopher (55:27.756)

So I am on LinkedIn all the time. So LinkedIn is kind of my primary. But then in terms of longer form content where I get into some of the deeper, longer discussions around what does this really mean, I'm doing a lot more on YouTube. And so that's where all my video content is out on YouTube.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (55:46.274)

So I'll make sure that I drop, if you're listening to this now, I'll make sure I drop the links in there so that you can get to the YouTube and find the LinkedIn and all of this stuff. So you can chat with Christopher. So, so kind of bringing it to a close. Here's what I love. Christopher, I love that you are focusing on the human experience of AI because the reality is those two things are going to forever and ever be a factor for this topic. And so

focusing on the intersection of those two things is such a powerful thing for now and for at least the next decades. I mean, it's always gonna be a thing because the way we interact with robots will always be a thing. So I love that you're focused on it.

Christopher (56:27.156)

Well, and we're people, so what do we care about? The human experience. That's what matters to us. We care deeply about that. So we need to know how does all this stuff make sense when we think about it that way.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (56:32.295)

Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (56:37.226)

Yep. And so I love, love that you're doing that and that you're talking about this stuff. And thank you for taking a few minutes today to chat with me on this topic, because I'm looking at it from a personal productivity perspective on how does AI help you. But the discussion about how it intersects with you being effective at work is not just about do it, cranking out more widgets. It's how does it help you be better at your job and all that stuff? And I feel like we nailed that stuff today. Really good stuff. So thank you very much for

joining me today and for coming and being a part of the show. It's been a treat to have you.

Christopher (57:09.184)

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure getting to know you through this experience and always fun to just hang out with other content creators. There's just a connection that always seems to happen with that. So thank you for the opportunity.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (57:20.014)

Absolutely. And for you turning tuning in to opportunities for you. First is, do you have a friend or a colleague who is has been chatting about AI and their job? And are they a manager or somebody in the white collar area, the knowledge workers? And if you do have a friend who's been interested in that, would you share the link to this episode specifically with them? Because I think oftentimes it's great to say, hey, check out Productivity Gladiator, this show.

But more importantly, it's this one episode totally made me think of you. And not only will that be helpful for them, but it's also kind of a bond when you connect with people and say, you know, I thought of you when I saw this. And that might just make you have a great conversation with them. So I hope that you do that. And second, thanks for checking out the episode and for subscribing. I have special events and knowledge that I share with people who subscribe to my email list. So if you're already a part of the email list or you're not and you want to be, come join the fun.

But I love sharing Productivity Gladiator with you. That's a wrap.

Billable Hours: Life Balance Tips & Passive Income with "Time Freedom For Lawyers" Brian Glass

The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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The Episode Details

Brian Glass, Attorney and Host of the Time Freedom For Lawyers podcast, joins Productivity Gladiator to talk about Life Balance Mistakes & Best Practices for people that work in a billable hours career, and passive income strategies.

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Episode Content

For Employees

• Best Practice: Bring in business and look to get “Origination Credit”, meaning you bring in the customers. In most situations origination credit means you’ll get a small piece of all the billing toward that client.

• Best Practice: Be their guy. Make sure YOU’RE their lawyer. You’re providing so much value that they will think of you, not just your firm. This means for all future things, the customer isn’t just referring people to your business or firm, they’re referring people to you personally.

• Perspective: There's three ways to make more money in billable hours.
  1) Work longer hours,
  2) work for more dollars per hour, or
  3) figure out a way to originate the clients, getting a piece, even if it’s a small piece, of everybody else's hours, billed on that client down the line.

• Tip: Look for business to business opportunities to connect with people that have your potential clients
  (example: If you’re looking for people who have been in auto accidents, advertising to the general public, 99.9% of people have NOT been in auto accidents. Find businesses that serve people who have been in auto accidents (Dr Offices, Physical Therapists, etc) and help those businesses, they’ll connect you with that audience by referring you.

• Best Practice: Be the hub, the person they’re referring to when they say “I know someone”
  Be known among your circles for what you do, and actively seek to help people with what you do. By helping people, they’ll remember that you’re the person that helped them on a certain topic. That’s your way to become “the hub” or “the guy”, and seek to expand your hub.

For Front Line Supervisors and Middle Managers

• Best Practice: Get into management and out of the “doing”. Stay out of doing the small dollar tasks, even if they make mistakes. Every time you do your employees job, that just will perpetuate more of the same.

• Reminder: Good managers take the blame for screw-ups and highlight the employees for the wins. It’s HARD to do that, to let someone fail knowing you’re likely going to have to take some of the blame for some of that failure, but you have to manage, not do the work, so let them do the work.

Passive Income

• The lie of passive income - I see posts on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube where like, oh, I bought 18 Airbnbs and now I'm retired. No, you're not retired. You manage 18 Airbnbs. You just do something different, right?

• Real Estate Syndications - Investing in somebody else's deal, where I fund the deal with money. Typically, the minimum investment is $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 into these deals. And then somebody, the general partner goes and operates the deal. And then every month or every quarter, depending on the project, there's a check that just shows up back in my bank account.

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Books & References in This Episode

BOOK on being a good manager:
Liz Wiseman - Multipliers

BOOK on syndicated real estate:
Hands Off Investor - Brian Burke

WEBSITE for syndicated real estate deals
Crowdstreet.com

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Today’s Guest

Brian Glass - Attorney
Host of the “Time Freedom for Lawyers” podcast

Brian Glass is a personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia.  After a decade of practicing law across town from his dad, he joined Ben Glass Law in 2019 to run the auto accident section of the practice.  

Brian’s greatest hits as a lawyer include a $3.4M medical malpractice verdict (2019), the record-setting settlement of a minor’s wrongful death case in Virginia ($5.5M in 2020), and the largest auto accident verdict in the state in 2022. ($3.4M in compensatory damages and $1M in punitive damages).  He is highly skilled at distilling complex problems into simple, understandable solutions.

Brian is the rare trial lawyer who is as comfortable building a business as he is in the courtroom. Over the past four years, he has quadrupled the revenue of the auto accident section at Ben Glass Law and has big plans for the future.  Brian credits this growth to hiring the right people into the correct position, running the firm on EOS/Traction, and alignment of vision between he and Ben.  His business acumen has led him to be interviewed on the Tribe of Millionaires, Law Firm Movers and Shakers, and Millionaire Mindcast podcasts.

Brian runs Time Freedom for Lawyers, a podcast dedicated to teaching other lawyers and high income professionals how to win back some of the their time by running more efficient businesses, investing in real estate, and crafting the vision of their own perfect life.

Brian’s perfect life includes coaching his three boys in soccer, baseball, and whatever other athletic endeavor they want to pursue; travelling the world with his wife of 13 years; and competing in endurance events.  Brian is a finisher of the Umstead 100 Mile Endurance Race, the Laurel Highlands 71 Miler, and about two dozen other ultramarathons.  Lately, parenting has cut short his training timeline and he focuses on Crossfit and Spartan races, with a 2023 goal of traveling to Sparta, Greece to compete in the Spartan Race World Championships.

Brian is available to speak about:

• Vision Building – How to Design and Achieve the Life You Want

• How to Hire, Support, and Manage Great Staff

• Rethinking Retirement – Why High Earners Should Create Passive Income Streams to Make Work Optional 

• Managing Your Law Firm by the Numbers

Find Brian on:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fairfaxpersonalinjury/ 

Ben Glass Law: https://www.benglasslaw.com/bio/brian-glass-fairfax-auto-accident-lawyer.cfm 

Great Legal Marketing: https://greatlegalmarketing.com/ 

Time Freedom For Lawyers: https://www.timefreedompod.com/

• Productivity Gladiator highlighted on Time Freedom For Lawyers

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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.

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Episode Transcript

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer. On this show, I talk about life balance and practical productivity. And in this episode, I wanted to dig into two things that my guests could definitely speak to. And that's life balance in a billable hours career and truly passive income, which I'm fascinated with. So on the show with me today is Brian Glass. He's a personal injury lawyer and at Ben Glass Law and also the host of Time Freedom for Lawyers, the podcast, which

My gosh, me being the value of your time guy and talking with Brian about and his name's Brian too. And it's time freedom for lawyers. My guy, it's like that this is like my brother from another mother here. So Brian, thanks so much for joining me today. Brian, thanks so much for joining me today.

Brian Glass (01:41.186)

Brian, thank you for having me.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (01:43.48)

Absolutely. Now, what's the, uh, so talk about a little bit about your background. Obviously, we're going to talk about billable hours and stuff for people that aren't familiar with you or bang glass law. Talk, talk about that.

Brian Glass (01:56.194)

So I actually don't bill by the hour, which is the greatest thing about my legal career. So I'll give you the background. Ryan, so I graduated law school in 2008 into the teeth of the great recession. When I went to law school, the promise was if you do well and you're in the top third of your class and you graduate, big law will come and offer you a job. So big law is firms that have upwards of 2,000 lawyers across the country, many, many, many more than that.

Brian Glass (02:23.346)

And then in 2008, the starting salaries were like $160,000 for first year associates, which is in retrospect crazy. But as somebody who went to law school in 05 to 08, it was like, man, you just get to the end of the rainbow and there's going to be a big pot of gold for you. Well, in 2007 as the housing market started to correct, and then in 2008, when all credit froze, all of these big law firms canceled their summer programs, which is how they were recruiting new associates.

They canceled entire classes of hiring. And so, you know, my friends and I, um, you know, more me than them, we're faced with the prospect of like, all right, maybe we're going to start at a job where we don't have a one in the front of our salary and we're actually going to be paid more in line with what we were worth. So my first job coming out of law school, I was making $60,000 a year at a general practice firm where I was billing by the hour and I hated every minute of billing by the hour.

Brian Glass (03:21.398)

Because especially as a young lawyer, you go through in your mind this question about that thing that I just did where I was researching the basic principle of law where most lawyers who operate in this arena, they probably know it. Can I really bill a client for that? I struggled to value my time and say, okay, that thing that it took me three hours, well, really it probably should have taken me like an hour and a half. I lasted at that firm for about six months before I decided that I was going to be a

Billing by the hour really wasn't for me. And I left to go do really auto accident injury work, which is all contingency fee based. So I get paid now a third of the recovery on any case that we settle or that we take to verdict. And so the only math that I have to do, a joke is just divide by three. And I can divide just about any number by three, right? But what that taught me, Brian, is that the accelerator on my career

is not working harder, it's not working longer. It's figuring out how can I devote all of my time to high dollar value cases where I have a high likelihood that I'm going to get paid, and almost none of my time to low dollar value cases, and certainly none of my time to low dollar value cases where there's a contest about am I going to get paid at the end of the case or not. So that's really a long-winded way of getting to like, I actually don't bill by the hour. The vast majority of the legal world.

does, but I've worked my way into this niche where I can be valued for my time really based on how good am I at working on a case and not how long did it take me to achieve a certain result.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (05:03.292)

All right, I want to come back to that more because that the concept of almost commission based versus billable hour based is really interesting. But I want to talk just a little bit about you and your background first. So Ben Glass law, Glass is the same name as you. So what's the relation there?

Brian Glass (05:19.682)

So it's my dad and I joined that firm four years ago. So from 2009 to 2019, I was working really for a competitor across town and became a partner at that firm. And then a couple of things came up in my life. We decided not to expand in office space next door. We had a key employee leave that we decided not to replace. And then my wife had a very tough third birth of our third baby boy.

And it made me realize like, if I don't leave now and go work with my dad, I might never have the opportunity to. And so in 2019, I left the firm that I was at, joined his firm, which at the time was a medical malpractice and, um, ERISA long-term disability appeals practice, I brought the auto practice really to this firm and we've grown it ever since over the last four years.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:10.904)

And is that, it seems like you started out trying to avoid going into the family business or what made you, I mean, you started out talking about a billable hours firm and then you mentioned being at a different competitor firm. So what made it finally come full circle for you?

Brian Glass (06:25.558)

Yeah. So I, I, you know, always in the back of my mind was this idea that we would work together. And I think in the back of his mind that was also, but I certainly wanted to get out and make my own name and make my own friends and my own way of doing things before I came and, and just, you know, came under his wing. Like I have a very strong, um, sense that people think that I'm born on third and thought he hit a triple. Right. And so I wanted as best I could to avoid doing that.

by working for as long as I could and achieving some results on my own and outside of his umbrella.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (06:59.872)

That makes perfect sense. And I admire you for that. Nice, Brian. It's good to get that experience outside of just jumping into the family business. And at the same time, that's awesome that you jumped into the family business because there's a lot of family businesses that just die after the jet because the next guy doesn't want it. So that's cool.

Brian Glass (07:18.074)

Well, that's exactly right. That's the biggest problem facing not only law firms, but small businesses today is like, okay, mom and dad have grown a laundromat for the last 35 years, and the laundromat is the last thing that their adult children now want. There's going to be this incredible turnover. I read some statistics somewhere that 70% of small businesses in America are going to turn over as the baby boomers age out and retire.

Brian Glass (07:45.278)

And like, where are they going to go? Because the kids have gone off and maybe gotten a white collar professional job and they don't want to manage, you know, the dirty laundromat or the, the, the doggy daycare or whatever it might be. And so creates real opportunity for entrepreneurs that come into the market and figure out how to add a bit of technology to those practices and really, you know, really launch them. So that's, um, it's, it's a distraction for me is thinking about all of that stuff, but yeah, that's, that's, uh,

Brian Glass (08:12.886)

And one of the things that we're thinking about doing at the law firm, just as an aside is we're trying to acquire books of business from other lawyers because most lawyers have the same thing. Most lawyers get to the end of their career and then don't really know what to do. Right? If you have a hundred cases that you're working on and you don't have an associate who you can transition those cases to, um, like what do you, what do you do as a hundred becomes 75 becomes 50 becomes 25.

and you still want to maintain your staff and your own salary and your profit, like you've got to have somewhere for that to land. So one of the things that we've been thinking about in 2023 is how can we position ourselves as attractive to somebody that might be in that 60 to 70 year old cohort who might like want to slowly age out of the practice of law by bringing in all of the technology that the young people, the young people know about, right?

Brian Glass (09:06.99)

In a time where like chat GPT and AI is quote, coming for lawyer's jobs, like there's a Goldman Sachs report that 44% of the tasks in legal can be replaced by chat GPT. That's really scary. And in a time where Google SEO and pay per click and all that stuff is becoming more and more difficult, like, so that's, that's just what we're iterating on is how can we position ourselves to other law firms locally to be the place where.

Brian Glass (09:36.638)

I'm happy to be your retirement plan. Right.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:39.656)

Right. That's an interesting strategy there. So I guess that feeds into my other question on so what would you say makes Ben Glass law different per se?

Brian Glass (09:48.162)

Hmm. Yeah. Um, what may, here's what things, here's what most lawyers think makes them different. Most lawyers think that they are God's gift to law and to clients, right? Lawyers, we have enormous egos. And so honestly, Brian, I don't try to compete on I'm the best lawyer in the town because I don't know how you would ever judge that. Like how would we ever empirically know whether I got you a better result than the lawyer down the street got you.

And so the space in which we compete is customer service. So I want my firm to be the best customer service business that you interact with, not customer service law firm, but you know, you might only interact with three to five law firms through the course of your entire life. So you're not comparing me to that. You're comparing me to Panera and Kohl's and Amazon. And how can I incorporate all of the little things that those companies do well?

in terms of updating you on the status of your case, proactively telling you what the next thing that's gonna happen, getting a little bit predictive about, okay, when clients cross into this stage of the case, here's the five questions that they typically ask. And so let's see if we can give them those five answers before they even think to ask it. So that's the space really that we're competing on. And the other half of that is that we've over invested in the staff because the staff is the one

who's going to be fielding 90 to 95% of those questions. I really just want to be applying what we call a very fine icing on an ice cake, polishing the cases off. We are good lawyers. Don't get me wrong to think that we're sacrificing the quality of the law, but I don't, in an advertising and a marketing way, compete on that because you have no way to judge whether I'm number one or number 15 or number 130.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (11:47.312)

Right. That makes perfect sense. Okay. It's interesting to branch out outside of just, yeah, you're right. There's no way to possibly know who would give you, could you have gotten $30,000 more in your settlement versus somebody else? So that's smart. I like that.

Brian Glass (12:01.33)

Yeah. And I always, I, I always feel like I have to follow that up with like, it's not an excuse to not be a good lawyer, right? But it's, but it's not a marketing differentiator because everybody says that they're the best lawyer. Like the super lawyers ratings just came out in Virginia and all of my friends are quote, you know, humbled and honored to be super lawyers. Well, I don't know anybody who didn't make the list, right? So, so how, how do you, how do you judge?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:23.532)

Right. Is it a money grab? They gave everybody a trophy. It's the everybody gets a trophy thing, right? For lawyers.

Brian Glass (12:31.774)

It is. Well, in fact, in fact, I didn't, to be honest, I didn't make the list as you said, I didn't respond to the email. So I got the, I got all of the emails offering to sell me the decals and the plaques and whatever, but I didn't actually make the print list cause I didn't verify my information. So maybe that's maybe in retrospect, that was a poor time management move on my part. Um, but you know, it is what it is.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (12:52.171)

There you go.

Yep, totally. Now I want to jump into billable hours, but one, I did have two funny questions for just about you as a person that I stumbled across. One is apparently you're like a big runner or something. What are, what are you running from? Where does that come from?

Brian Glass (13:06.014)

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Everybody asked that question, right? No, I'm in, you know, past life about six years ago, I was a big runner. The, having the third, third baby boy sucked all of my training time away. Um, but no, I've, I've finished, um, you know, probably two dozen ultra marathons, which is any race over 26.2 miles. I finished a hundred mile

Brian Glass (13:35.838)

You know, my fitness is, is confined to the CrossFit gym and Spartan racing, which you can finish in about two hours. Uh, but no, I've done, um, 24 I've done a hundred miles in just under 24 hours and I immediately fell asleep.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:54.661)

Good gracious. All right. So lots of lots of running and then something about so apparently with three kids, little league is a big part of your, uh, your life too. What's, what are you coaching and what's the, what's proudest coach moment that comes to mind?

Brian Glass (14:05.154)

Yeah, I'm the head coach of my 10 year old soccer team and I'm an assistant coach on my eight year old's baseball team. I'm not coaching the five year old because that age doesn't really agree with me as much. I don't know that I have a proudest. I'll tell you what I enjoy the most in soccer is coaching the all-star teams because the all-star teams, everybody wants to be there and everybody's pretty good.

and you can actually coach, right? It's less time spent telling kids which line to stand in and more time like actually standing on the field and positioning them and showing, okay, here's how to open up passing lanes. And it's really the same thing with baseball. Like what I really enjoy about that is making like two suggestions to a kid while he's in the batter's box and he makes both of them and then he hits the next pitch after missing the last 10.

Like I really enjoy that. I don't know that I have any special skill at it, but it really makes me feel good when you make those two or three little tweaks and then they connect.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (15:15.696)

awesome. It's the improvement piece, which sounds a lot like what you're trying to do to the customer experience. And you seem like kind of a coach kind of guy with the, the podcast and all the stuff you're doing. Brian, this makes perfect sense. So let's shift, shift gears onto our topic for today, which is first about billable hour careers. And so I like to look at the, the, I like to look at the topic from the perspective of the employee and then as the supervisor or the manager.

over those employees. So is there any, what advice or thoughts would you give to people in billable hour contract, billable hour careers that are employees in those careers?

Brian Glass (15:57.65)

Oh, as an employee. So, you know, taken with the grain of a grain of salt, that even when I was an employee, I was an entrepreneurial employee. And so I'm always trying to understand how I can add more value to the company's top line that will translate into more value to Brian's bottom line. Right. So I was always looking for an, in the law, we call this origination credit. If I go out and I,

find a new client or customer and I sign them on to the law firm, even if I'm not the owner, I typically in most firms, I'm going to get a certain percentage of the revenue on that case and if we're like a general practice firm on all cases. For instance, if I went out and I signed up like a corporate client to draft the contract for, and then they later had a sales agreement and went south and they went bankrupt and we fulfilled all those practice areas.

under the right scheme, I would get origination credit for everything that we did down the line. That's the avenue that I approached it from. There's really two ways to make more money. It's work longer hours, raise my rates. There's three ways. Work longer hours, work for more dollars per hour, or figure out a way to originate the thing, originate the client.

and get a piece, a small piece even, of everybody else's hours, build on that client down the line. I'm not sure how many industries that translates into out of law because I've only ever been a lawyer, but that's what I would be thinking about is how can I best leverage my time in soft skills like client acquisition and follow up with that client and keep them down the line. The thing that I tell young lawyers is...

Even if you were not the one who's necessarily originating the case, you want to be the one that's dedicating the time in a soft skill way so that it ultimately becomes that the client thinks that you are their lawyer. No matter when they came in, you want them to, when they think of lawyer and legal problem and legal solution, you're the picture that comes to their mind. What can you do in terms of client communication, handwritten thank you notes?

Brian Glass (18:24.094)

all of those little things that they don't teach anywhere in law school, where the client is thinking of me first and referring not to my firm for their friends and their future cases but straight to me. So that's how I approach that. Right or wrong. And the flip side of that. Yeah, yeah. I was good at that.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:41.933)

Were you successful at that? How did that go? Like, tell a story about that, where you were, that happened.

Brian Glass (18:50.91)

Yeah. So one of the things that I started doing early in my career is anytime we resolve the case with a doctor or a medical practice that had an outstanding bill, I just made a point of hand delivering that check to the doctor or to the medical practice. And so why do you do that? Number one, it's like the most efficient way to market, right? It's

I think terribly inefficient for me to be marketing to people who've been in auto accidents because most people weren't in an auto accident in the last week, month or year. Like 99.9% of the population is not looking for an auto accident lawyer. But if I can go kind of in a business to business manner to people that have herds of people that were in auto accidents, now I'm leveraging my time.

can make friends and make referrals within the medical practice, or maybe at a collision repair center, or at a rental car center. Like, those are people who are already in front of audiences that I wanna talk to and can refer to me. So, just at a very low level, I just started calling doctors when I had the check and say, hey, I'm about to put this check in the mail. Rather than do that, like I'm gonna be in your neighborhood next Tuesday, can I just swing by, say hi, bring you a couple of our informational books that you can then give to the rest of your clients and say, hi to you. And what I learned during that is that most doctors don't like lawyers and they don't like lawyers. They don't like most lawyers because most lawyers are again, ego driven and arrogant and are always, you know, the only interaction they have with the doctor is, is along the lines of, I've got to get this case settled. And in order to get this case settled, you need to take a 33 or 25% reduction on your bill. I was coming with a different message. I was coming with, if you in the future refer me any cases, then I'm going to do my best to make sure you get it paid 100% of the bill, and I'm going to make sure that you get it paid faster than most law firms. Because a lot of firms that I saw were waiting until the end of the case, until closer to the statute of limitations, to do anything on the case, which I never understood. The only way that we get paid in these cases is the conclusion. And so why...

why wouldn't you be running as fast as you can after the medical treatment is done to try to wrap this thing up? But files sit and everything that we do is driven by deadlines. And so my pitch to doctors was not, I'm gonna send you clients. It was the clients that you send me. I'm gonna make sure that we maximize the number of dollars that are going into the client's pocket and therefore into your pocket. And then we do it as fast as we can because a lot of these medical practices,

will hold off on getting paid until the end of the case. So you might treat somebody for 12 weeks and then not see any money for 18 months, which I think is a crazy economic way to practice. I don't understand it, but they do it. And so my pitch was, what if I can reduce that 18 month period to nine, right? And that resonated with a lot of doctors. So it's all marketing and figuring out what your customers' points of pain really are.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (22:03.152)

Well, that's a really good point for, I mean, and we're talking about, you know, lawyers are on billable hours, but so are consultants. And so are a lot of folks out there. And so if you're bringing in the business or if your relationships are generating business, that does immediately put you at a, at a level above your other folks that are just hustling really hard to finish their busy work or their administrative work or whatever it is that

that if you're the connection that generates the dollars for the firm, that immediately, I mean, that's the difference between the first three, five year associate versus once you're up here at partner level, you are bringing in the business and that's your goal. So start young, even if it's smaller clients. That's a fascinating concept.

Brian Glass (22:48.494)

And it gives you security in times of recession. So I don't like, are we in recession? Are we coming up? I don't know, but it gives you security. Like we see tons of layoffs at big companies and the people who are generating the business aren't the ones getting laid off. It's the people doing all the work, right? Because if I lay off the person that's generating the business, well, they can just go start another firm and take my clients with them. And so, just from a job security standpoint, I think if you're in one of these companies and you are just an operator and you do really good work, like doing really good work is not a differentiator. It's being able to originate the work and being able to bring dollars in. Once you get past a certain level of number of years that you've been at the company, because nobody expects the guy on his third week to be generating business. But if you're...

three, five, 10 years in, and you don't know how to find a client, I have some worries for you from a job security standpoint.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (23:52.284)

Totally. Yeah. That's a, that's a really good point. So what about, so that's employee, employee perspective. That's a really good idea is bring, bring the dollars, right? Or, or look at that, bring the relationships. It's not even about the dollars. It's about who do you know, or if they, you know, you know, somebody, sometimes oftentimes I feel like a lot of what you might do, Brian is helping connect people to other people. And by being the connector, you become the person that they go to and being the guy.

Like everybody says, oh, I got a guy. Well, my guy's Brian. Well, that immediately at some point in the future is gonna pay off for you, even if it's not right now. And so that's consultants, lawyers, that seems to make sense for everybody. So.

Brian Glass (24:31.546)

And so the great story about that is I have this phrase, it's called be the hub. Like how can I be the hub of any of my circles? And I didn't do this because I heard about this after law school, but there's a brilliant tactic for setting up a study group of people that are smarter than you, which is like you send a note around to your circle of friends and you say, I'm putting together this study group, here's the thing. You have to have like a B plus average and above in order to be a part of it. And so, you know, whatever applicants you get, nobody else is looking at your stuff. Right. So, so if, if you're not, if you don't have these groups in your network, then just start one, just start a, you know, I'm a consultant at, at this firm and my niche is whatever your niche is. Right. Like, you know, 10 people that'll come to a brown bag lunch once a month and, and share ideas. And the problem is that most people approach that from scarcity mindset and they think if I give you an idea, you're going to take it and steal. There's no monopoly on good ideas, right? The monopoly is on executing the ideas and how do we, how do we speed up or compress the amount of time from idea generation to execution? And so all you got to do really is find five people that'll come and sit down and transparently share ideas. The best groups that I'm in for that are folks that are in different industries or different locations. Because people who are in your industry, in your location, yeah, there is some scarcity mindset there. But if you can get outside of the mental block that my business is different or my area is different, and you can talk to people who are in similar roles in similar level trenches that you are, you're gonna find that everybody has the same problems and the same opportunities.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:27.964)

That makes perfect sense. Connecting with where the opportunities are, not necessarily with, like there's something to be said for your peers because they can relate to you, but realistically in billable hour careers, most of the business does not come from your peers, it comes from potential clients, which are, so finding, find the clients and go hang out where they do. It sounds like a, yeah, it makes perfect sense. What? Right.

Brian Glass (26:49.334)

Yeah, yeah. How skate to where the puck is, right? How can I find out where the clients are and go there?

Brian Nelson-Palmer (26:55.476)

Exactly. So what about now that that's great advice for like from the employee perspective, you're starting out that kind of thing. But now what about for the, the frontline supervisors and say the middle managers of people who work on billable hours, what do you, what advice do you have for them on, you know, managing people and maintaining life balance and practice? Like, you know, the whole quiet quitting thing, and then there's the whole turnover and all that stuff. So what are your thoughts for the frontline supervisors and the middle managers?

Brian Glass (27:26.402)

I love all these terms that we have from the pandemic, like quiet fittering, quiet quitting. Isn't this loud firing one? There's some opposite of quite quitting. But then there was also this whole, there's this whole subset of people that just went out and got a second job. Like that I think is amazing. Which like if you're meeting the KPIs of both jobs, good for you. And why should either employer care? So, but what advice for the middle managers? I think it's really hard as a middle manager to draw boundaries around your job and to get into management and get out of the doing. I think so many of us, and I'm kind of in this evolution now, is we're hiring associates to come in under me and do more of the legal work and elevate me to really the high level thinking and to the running of the business.

I have to mentally remind myself to stay out of doing the small low dollar power tasks because if I don't let somebody else do them and screw them up every once in a while, then they're never going to learn in the same way that I learned by doing and screwing them up. And so you have to kind of let go of the vine and let the people who are underneath you make mistakes within whatever your comfortable safety net looks like for you, but you've got to get out of the habit of solving all of their problems.

And so, because if you don't, you're going to be doing two jobs. You're going to be doing their job and then you're going to be managing them and you doing their job. So that's a hard place to be. The middle manager, I think that's one of the toughest positions because you've got somebody on top of you holding you accountable and hopefully you're holding the people below you accountable. And you probably are still responsible for some of the day-to-day operations in your business.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (29:21.996)

And that's one of the hardest things too, is like now on top of that, the good managers, you have to stand up and take responsibility for the mistakes of your people. You don't hang your people out to dry. So you need to stand up for them and take it. And then when there are successes, they get the successes and you get their failures and that's the good leader. And man, that really sucks. Sometimes that's hard to do. But if you jump in there, like you said, and you're correcting all the

the errors and you're jumping in and you're doing the job for them, well, then there's not much of a job for them to do. They're only going to do what you tell them to do. And then you're not like ultimately the long game. That's that's the short game, not the long game. And that that sucks.

Brian Glass (30:04.398)

There's a great book by Liz Wiseman called Multipliers and it talks about multiplying leaders and diminishing leaders and how some managers make everybody else around them smarter by virtue of their management style and some managers diminish everybody. The more that you maintain this kind of parochial empire where you're the one that knows how to do everything and all the decisions have to come through you, the less and less your people are going to do.

month after month, year after year. But the more you create an environment where you're listening to new ideas, inviting them and setting people up with, here's the end result we want. And I care less really about how we get there within, you know, whatever legal and ethical and regulatory bounds are in your industry. The more you can be towards that end of the spectrum, the better off you're going to be. And yeah, I mean, you're going to have,

You're going to have to give up a little bit of the glory sometimes, but as long as you have a good corporate structure and a good manager on top of you that incentivizes you to stay there, then they're going to recognize that, that you, you know, with a, the, uh, what is it? The, um, the director of the orchestra, right? They're going to know that, that your subset of people is outperforming everybody else because of you, not just because you have the five best people in the company.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (31:32.292)

right? Well, and people want to be on the teams where the supervisors let them shine. And I mean, it's, it's, it's a self, it's a, it's, it's perpetuating. It gets better and better as it, as it goes. So, um, all right, Brian, I want to switch gears because the other thing that you really is a fascinating topic to me. And that's something that is certainly interesting. And you talk about is let's talk about passive income, but the key is let's talk about when we say passive income, or in this case, what I'm interested in is truly passive income. Like people have been talking about passive income for years. You might've read the four hour work week or some of these other books and like, okay, so you've got a portfolio of Airbnbs that you own or something, or you have a rental property or something like that. But even though that is sort of passive income, what I'm interested in like truly passive income, because if you've got to spend every weekend cleaning and rebooking your Airbnb,

then that's going to be a whole job in and of itself, even though it's not 40 hours a week or something. So, so, so I want to make sure when we're talking about passive income, yes, to an extent, it's something you don't have to show up and work billable hours for, but also let's dive into the truly passive income stuff too.

Brian Glass (32:50.046)

I call this the lie of passive income. So, because there's so many, there's so many influencers and I see sponsored, you know, whatever on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube where like, oh, I bought 18 Airbnbs and now I'm retired. No, you're not retired. You manage 18 Airbnbs. You just do something different, right? So I got interested in passive income in a roundabout way. A couple of years ago, I was really heavily into the financial independence retire early movement. So there's all these influencers writing about on blogs or on podcasts about how we can accumulate enough money. And if it's something like, if you accumulate 25 times your annual spend, okay, you're financially free because that's the 4% rule.

You can bleed down your portfolio at 4% a year and you won't have to do anything else. You won't have to generate any other income that allows you to retire. I was playing around with that idea and I was like, man, it's going to take me a long time to get there. There's another part of the equation, which is what if I can generate some additional income that either is truly passive or that I'm working not so hard at? My wife and we have an Airbnb at the beach. We are hourly rate on that. If we were tracking, it is really, really high. Um, and there's some tax, tax stuff that I won't get into that allows you to write off a lot of the income that's coming in from that real estate. I have somebody else who's paying down my mortgage. The thing is appreciating, um, at a certain percentage each year. So, so real estate tends to be a pretty high leverage, um, vehicle. It also tends to be a fairly time consuming vehicle. And so when we.

We first bought it in October of 2021, and I looked at the pro forma and I was like, man, all I need is four of these, four of these, and I'm set, right? That would generate enough income to pay all of my costs of being alive, even with kids in daycare. But it turns out that managing four Airbnbs in a place where you don't live is pretty time consuming. Like there's a lot of phone calls, especially during the heavy season.

And so, Brian, I've pivoted away from that. And the chief investments that I'm looking for now are syndications, investing in somebody else's deal, where I fund the deal with money. Typically, the minimum investment is $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 into these deals. And then somebody, the general partner goes and operates the deal. And then every month or every quarter, depending on the project, there's a check that just shows up back in my bank account.

for a preferred amount, right? So the last deal that I did is a housing deal. It's like 48. is a 48 unit deal somewhere in Kentucky. And the deal is I gave them $25,000. They're gonna send me a check for 7% per year, once a quarter. And then when the unit sells in six years is the pro forma plan, then we're gonna split. I'm gonna get 75% of the proceeds from that. They're gonna get the other 25%. Now, they don't bring a lot of cash to that deal.

And so they're earning their money by the work that they're putting in on it. And I bring all the cash, but after I vetted the deal, I don't have to do any of the work, right? I've now created an income stream that's showing up 7% of my money for the next six years and then the equity on the backend. So that's really the kind of things that I'm looking for now. You can do it with dividend stocks on a little bit. I don't know. You might call that less risky. You might call it more risky depending on which side of the equation that you're in. But almost nothing is truly passive except for these syndications. They're a little bit riskier because you have to trust the operator, but you get compensated for that risk in terms of the return. So if you're listening and that's kind of interesting to you, a book that I would recommend is something called The Hands Off Investor by Brian Burke. That's a really good guide to investing in your first couple of deals like this, questions that you should be asking syndicators. There's a lot to learn out there. And one of the things that we're learning in 2023 is as interest rates have gone up, which in retrospect, everybody should have expected, but in reality, almost nobody was planning on having a 5% Fed funds rate in May of 2023. That's making a lot of these deals go bad. And so there's, there's risk there and, and you, you need to approach it conservatively. But if you look at enough, you'll find stuff that fits your, your deal criteria.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (37:56.088)

So we talked about dividend stocks or that kind of thing. And that's true, right? It's fully passive income. So you find some of those deals. I'm heavily into that part. I've got it. I will say it's a comforting thing to know that like, for example, if I was able to, like if I were to win the lotto tomorrow or something, I know exactly where I would put that money to be able to not have to work again.

period. And so there's a, there's a comfort in like at least having the plan. I don't have the cash to do that. I'm still here hustling with everybody else, but over time, like that, that's the hope is to move toward that. So I like this, the syndicated real estate deals. Is there a certain website or something that you, is that like, Oh gosh, they're, they're, Oh, it was fund rise.

Brian Glass (38:40.714)

Now, so Fundrise is a, they may be doing something like that. I thought Fundrise was a little bit different. The website that I did my first couple deals on was CrowdStreet. And CrowdStreet, the great benefit of CrowdStreet is that you can go and you can watch 12 webinars in a day on different deals and you can get yourself an education. through no other means than listening to the questions that investors that are smarter than you are asking at the Q&A portion of that webinar. You know, I think especially the part in the market cycle that we are now, that the deals that are being crowdfunded, like you need to be a little bit wary of, right? There's a reason that those deals didn't get funded by sophisticated investors and that they've trickled their way down to crowdfunding sites.

And so, you know, the advice that I would give anybody who's, who's looking at those deals now is you find somebody who's already doing it and get a list of people that they trust. And most of these operators are really small and are doing one or maybe two deals a year. Um, but if you, my, my goal right now is to build up a portfolio of people that I trust that I will do deals with in the future so that I don't have to go and look for them.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (40:05.368)

Yeah. When you, when you look at the, you talked about 7% back or whatever is that, is it, do you approach that the same way? Are you evaluating that the same way you do? Like, well, I could put it in this savings account and make 5% or this one would be 7% or do you look at it as more of the equity on like, how do you like think to the equity on the back end? How do you compare them?

Brian Glass (40:30.602)

Yeah. You got to think holistically about the deal. Most of these deals are underwritten somewhere between 14 and maybe 18% internal rate of return IRR. The 7% back is only a piece of it. You're going to get the other 75% in the equity, which, okay, if everything bears out translates to something like 14 to 18% while the money market account is getting 5%.

stocks historically eight to 10. But the benefit is, and again, I don't want to go too far into the woods on this, the depreciation that comes with the real estate rules. And so as you build up a pool of depreciated assets and then your passive money is coming back in, then the IRS doesn't recognize that passive money that's coming back in as income. because you're offsetting it by the depreciation. So as you are buying more and more deals and accumulating more depreciation, then that 7% that's coming back is not taxed in the same way that your dividend stock or that your capital gain will be taxed. Now, on the back end, there's a tax, right? On the exit, you get taxed on the whole deal, plus the depreciation recapture. There's a couple of ways to get around that. It's called a 1031 Lake Kind Exchange. If you're selling one unit for another unit. you can roll that forward really until you die and then your errors get it at a stepped up basis. But all of these rules were things I didn't totally understand when I got into it. I was like, okay, great, depreciation, I'm gonna write off $20,000. And then I was like, oh, you can only write off the $20,000 against the income that was coming in from the asset, which is like 500 bucks. So that didn't work out the first year. But that's why I started small and diversified and I've learned a lot along the way.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (42:26.66)

Sure. Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. Gosh. Well, fascinating, fascinating one there. I'm going to include the links to you said the hands off investor by Brian Burke and you mentioned Liz Weissman to all. I'll include those links in the, in the, in the show notes for everybody so that they can, they can check it out. Um, for you, the one last thing I wanted to ask you is about, are any of these, is there, what does this mean to you?

Brian Glass (42:37.366)

Yes. Luz, yep.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (42:55.572)

And I'm stepping back here to talk about billable hours and passive, the past truly passive income. What does this mean to you personally? Is there like a personal connection for Brian Glass himself instead of this, you know, the business thing and the entrepreneur and the teacher? What does it mean for you?

Brian Glass (43:14.73)

Yeah. So, so what I've, what I've learned in this journey, um, is that nobody who has gotten themselves to a place where their passive income replaces their active income and pays all of their costs actually then goes and retires to the beach. So, you know, I heard you say, okay, I know what I would do if I, if I won the lottery, like you might know what you would do with the money.

but do you know what you would do with the rest of your life? Because if you went and just sat on the beach and drank my ties, like your health would go downhill really quickly and your mind would start to go too, because you're not intellectually stimulated. And so, so that's a roundabout way of saying, for me, it creates a sense of financial security where if I can get to a place where I know that all of my costs are paid for by something that I'm not working on, it really frees me up to say no to things that I don't want to do. To say no to the kinds of cases or to the kinds of clients that lawyers say yes to when we're financially stressed. The demanding clients, the more difficult, more risky, lower value cases. Because you can get to this point where, all right, I haven't signed up a client in two weeks, a kind of a C plus case calls and you go, well, I got to take it because the phone might never ring again. Right. But if you can build that portfolio to the place where you don't have those financial stressors, well, now you can go and concentrate really on the things that are the best use of your time that you're uniquely good at, that really, really make you happy. And so for me, it is coaching. It's it. I love talking to people, especially lawyers who are like three to 10 years behind where I am. So you know, I, again, I graduated into a recession. It looks to me like a recession is coming. I've been posting a lot of stuff on LinkedIn and just inviting law students to reach out to me and do zoom calls about like, how would I find a job? My career services office is no good at hooking me up with a small or a midsize law firm. Like how would I even approach somebody like you to find out if they had a job that I could have? Um, so, but I couldn't do all of that. If I was stressed about the next case,

and the next dollar. And certainly if I were billing by the hour, I wouldn't have the flexibility to have those calls for free without dipping into time that I would rather be spending with my family. So that's what it is to me. It's building up that stream of income for stuff that you're not working on so that you can go and do the things that you're really passionate about.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (46:02.752)

Absolutely, that makes sense. And I on a side note, I want to pivot and just ask this sort of maybe it's an obvious question to me and to no one else. But the question that I'm curious about is at what point do does someone approach someone like you, Brian, as far as if you've got a case or you were just in an accident? I they jokingly call you guys ambulance chasers because you can always leverage something for a settlement or something like what if you were giving advice to people who would be potential clients? Like what? How do you look at it and go?

Yeah, that's a case or no, I wouldn't take this on and that any thoughts there?

Brian Glass (46:34.574)

I wish I could always leverage anything into a settlement. I think that's the perception, but it's not reality. Yeah, so in my world, in auto accident cases, really I only want to talk to people who were not at fault, number one, who have good insurance coverage, number two, because that can really .. If the world's greatest $10 million value case walks into my office, but there's only $25,000 in coverage, the case is worth $25,000 because there's nowhere to get extra money from. So I'm going to talk to good crashes, good insurance coverage, and somebody who's probably already started a course of medical care. You've been to a hospital, you've seen your primary care doctor, and you're already in physical therapy. I really don't want to be talking to people who were in a crash yesterday, haven't seen a doctor yet, and are calling me to say, what do I do next? I tell this story from time to time. I got a call once in my career from a guy.

who'd gone to a Korean barbecue place and gotten food poisoning. And he'd gone home and gotten sick, but he didn't have any medical costs. And so I said, I can't help you because you didn't get any medical care. He said, well, I know that they don't wash the dishes very well at that place. And so I'm probably like, if I go back and I get sick again, what do I do next time? I was like, this is where we've gotten with thinking that you can leverage anything into a settlement. So.

No, really I'm going to be talking with good, honest people who were hurt and can't figure out what to do with the insurance company.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:08.952)

And is it your insurance company or the other party's insurance company or both?

Brian Glass (48:14.29)

Both and. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on what kind of coverage you have, what kind of coverage the other guy has, it might be yours, it might be his, it might be both.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (48:25.188)

Got it. Are you generally able? Is it normally one or the other? Like if you're taking, you're going after one or the other or are there situations where if both of you, both parties have great insurance coverage, then there's a payment from both.

Brian Glass (48:38.73)

Yeah. So it's different state to state. And so in Virginia, if you're hurt, so I know that you're a Virginia resident at least part of the year, you probably have some first party coverage on your policy that will pay you while you're getting medical treatment. Your chief claim is going to be against the guy that hit you until the limits of his insurance policy. And then if you have a case that's worth more than his insurance policy, and you have a better insurance policy than his, then...

We go back to your policy for the under-insured portion of the claim.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (49:12.208)

Got it. OK. That makes sense. So after you've seeked medical care, talk to Brian. OK. This is good. Yeah.

Brian Glass (49:20.054)

Yeah, or in the middle of it, right? Just don't call me and from the side of the road and say what do I do next? There's plenty of YouTube videos that'll tell you what to do that, you know, it's not it's not worth my time to be on the phone with somebody To explain how to get to the hospital

Brian Nelson-Palmer (49:34.664)

Yep, very cool. Well, Brian, here's what I love. I love that you are. I love that you made this pivot to I jokingly call it commission, but I know it's not commission. But at the same time, like you're paid for performance or that kind of thing. So you sort of pivoted away from billable hours to a situation where it's not the hours as much as it's the business in the bottom line. And what I what I love is that you seem to have embraced it and followed it. I know there are some people who

I guess I don't know. I don't want to say talk down, but I feel like there's some people who sort of have this look down their nose attitude toward folks that work like you. And what I see is I see a guy with a family who does good work and takes care of good people and that kind of thing. So I love that you made that business and that you're you made that pivot to that business and you're still you're still doing it. Thanks for thanks for doing that.

Brian Glass (50:28.534)

We've lawyers as a class, we've done ourselves no favors with the billboards and with the TV ads, right? So some of that we brought upon ourselves. Um, but, but yeah, I mean, no, listen, everybody looks down their nose until they need you, right? I'm okay with that. I'm just, just hire me. I don't care what you thought about me last week. That's fine.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (50:53.58)

I love it. Very good. And now you had, you had wanted to mention, so you've got this podcast. Talk about the podcast real quick.

Brian Glass (51:00.906)

Yeah. So wait, so I've got a show called Time Freedom for Lawyers where in general, Brian, I talk about living an extraordinary life as a lawyer. So my profession, we outpace almost everybody else. Like it's us and doctors in terms of stress, anxiety, depression, divorce, and suicide. And, and my message, the message of the traditional bar is that the way to avoid all of those things is like yoga and meditation and doing pro bono work. And my message is the way to avoid all those things is to create the kind of business and firm that you love to work at, because you're gonna be here 40 plus hours a week, right? So it better be with employees that you enjoy, working with clients who have interesting cases and who are nice to you, right? And most lawyers just never even think that that's an option. So we talk about that, and I talk to all kinds of high level

entrepreneurs, including yourself, about how do we best leverage our time in order to live the kind of lives that we want to live.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (52:08.408)

Yeah, absolutely. And I do have to say, shameless plug, I'll put it in the notes, but I did have the chance to go appear on Brian's show. So if you want to check out the episode that I was on, Brian, it was full of good questions. It was the Brian show. Like we got the two Brian's going on here, but it definitely, we talked about some really good stuff about the value of your time and that kind of stuff. So I had a really good time on the show and I've enjoyed checking out his show. So I hope that you will too.

And Brian, for the people that want to get in touch with you after this or want to keep in touch or follow you, what's the best place for them to do it?

Brian Glass (52:40.594)

Yes. I'm going to ask them to link it. And I try to post there once a day. Um, they say something controversial once a week, you know, and, and mostly entertain myself. Yeah. Most mostly, honestly, with my podcast and LinkedIn, I'm mostly trying to entertain myself, which I'm, I'm not ashamed to say.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (52:49.912)

Try to start something.

Brian Nelson-Palmer (53:02.488)

That's awesome. Well, and ultimately, I mean, the whole thing about influencers and you talked a lot about influencers earlier and that kind of stuff, or we mentioned that. And the thing about influencers is that pretty much everything you see online, if it's an influencer, they were probably paid to do that. So they were paid to get you to think a certain way or pay. They might've been paid to say, I think a certain way. And so wading through the message, whether they admitted it or not, getting your stuff on social media is that's, that's such a thing.

to find out what Brian thinks just because this is Brian talking to Brian Glass talking about what he thinks. So that kind of thing. I've, I thought your posts are refreshing. So, uh, so keep it up, sir. And, and for you tuning in one specific quest, if one specific request for you, do you have a friend or a colleague who works on billable hours who are, who is interested in passive income? And if you do would you share the link to this episode specifically with them? Sometimes people say, Oh, I love this podcast and you check it out and there's all these episodes and whatever like start with this one. But if you want to share this episode with them, I know both Brian and I, both Brian's who would love for to, to reach those folks with this discussion. So thanks for tuning in. And for those who are interested in more, actually do more with email along with providing episodes like this, and I provide them in readable form. But if you subscribe now, I also

we'll share my top three time hacks that are the biggest surprise in my discussions in productivity gladiator workshops. So that's something I've had a lot of fun with recently. So thanks for checking out. Thanks for subscribing to the show. And I love sharing productivity gladiator with you. So that's a wrap.

Commission Sales: 14 Life Balance Mistakes & Best Practices with Realtor VP April Myers

The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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The Episode Details

In this episode, April Myers, a Vice President and Realtor with RLAH @Properties,
joins Brian to talk about Life Balance Mistakes & Best Practices for people that work on Commission. 

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Today’s Guest

April Myers
Vice President & Realtor - RLAH @Properties

April is a licensed Realtor with over 15 years of experience in the real estate industry. April has helped clients buy or sell 200+ homes, and has been licensed in three different states. With a strong emphasis on excellent client service including transparency, education, and communication, she delivers an exemplary experience whether clients are buying their first or second homes, downsizing or upsizing, and everything in between. She has served on various committees and leadership positions within RLAH @properties, and the real estate community, and is heavily involved with the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. She is 2023 Chairperson of the NVAR Political Action Committee. 
Instagram
LinkedIn
April@rlahre.com

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For Employees

• Mistake: People let their ego get in the way. You think you know better than the people you’re working with, which can alienate the customer and cost you the sale. “Perfection gets in the way of done”

• Mistake: “If you love the team you work on, it doesn’t feel like work”. If team becomes your family and all you do is work, that’s not “Life Balance”.

• Mistake: Loyalty to a fault. You are replaceable and so is your workplace. If you’re work isn’t acceptable to the workplace, they can and will let you go. On the flip side, just because they gave you a shot doesn’t mean “you owe them” anything. If you’ve progressed in your career and the growth you want in your current role isn’t happening, it’s time to move on, you need to make that decision. Don’t stick around because you think you owe them something.

• Best Practice: Grow and develop relationships outside of work. Sales is often a “people” job. Good relationships with co-workers and prospects can be fulfilling, but over time, you will actually start to feel lonelier, since those relationships are for work purposes, no personal, and don’t feed your soul completely! You need friends and relationships that have NOTHING to do with work.
  New research shows that even a single conversation with a friend per day is enough to boost your happiness and lower stress. the conversation needs to be “quality” to improve your day, that can mean anything from deep discussions to just catching up or joking around. The study determined in-person interactions were better, social media didn’t count.

• Best Practice: Don’t lose sight of what the end goal is. If you get money hungry, life and “the universe” will catch up to you. If your focus is making a buck, that will cause more highs and lows. If your focus is helping people, that can keep paying dividends and be fulfilling,

• Mistake: More hours don’t equal more success. Work smarter not harder. In the beginning of any role, you need to hustle to get started, however, working 80 hours/week isn’t sustainable, you need to work on bettering yourself and your career.

• Best Practice: YOU are in charge of bettering yourself. Bettering and developing yourself will make a night and day difference in your career, but NO ONE will push your learning. Most workplaces are only interested in your sales. YOU have to push and stress your learning and development.
  Metaphor for this: Lebron James didn’t get to be the best just because he played a lot of basketball games.  Coaching? Training?  Practice? 

• Best Practice: Know yourself and your strengths. Make sure you’re spending your time on the important parts of the process that are the best use of your time. Realtor examples: If graphic design isn’t your strength, don’t design your own fliers.

• Best Practice: A teammate will allow life balance opportunities, instead of having to do every sale yourself. Perhaps splitting instead of working all the time to handle everything yourself.

For Front Line Supervisors and Middle Managers

• Mistake: “Good Salesperson” doesn’t mean “Good Manager” - You need to learn and develop as a manager now. Being a good salesperson might have gotten you the promotion, but “what got you here won’t get you there”. Your self development now needs to focus on management skills, not just continuing to be a good salesperson.

• Best Practice: “Mirroring” employees and customers so they feel heard. This is a game changing skill, whether it’s a problem one of your employees is sharing, or a customer communicating an issue you’re just now hearing about, helping them feel heard is a skill you need to learn and actually practice. Reference the book “never split the difference” linked below in the book section of these episode notes.

• Best Practice: Support your employee’s deals while they’re off - Trust is an important thing, and the trust an employee has when a customer of theirs interacts with a manager while the employee isn’t there is paramount. This is a “short game” vs “long game” conversation. In the short term, it may be better that you closed that sale or resolved the customer issue with a sale, but in the long term if the employee comes back and finds out that the manager “stole” the sale, or the manager “threw the employee under the bus” by saying the employee was wrong or didn’t know what they were talking about, these will cause a loss of trust which takes years to rebuild. “You haven’t hit your goal yet, so are you coming in this weekend, it’s the last day of the month”

• Best Practice: In Prospecting, help employees with “value” to offer customers when following up. After the first “are you ready yet” call, the customer will get tired of salespeople calling, managers can help come up with news and ideas for what value add for the customer to share in a prospecting follow up call. Some kind of news or reason for salespeople to call is important, and as a manager, feeding these ideas to your team is valuable help you can provide.

• Best Practice: Help your teams be involved in communities where the leads are warm instead of cold. Are there places online employees and teams can go to engage with potential clients who are already interested in what you’re selling? These places would be potentially “luke warm” connections instead of straight “cold” emailing/calling. Maybe facebook groups where they’re selling/buying what you have? Instead of waiting for them to come to you, how can you go where your potential customers are. Also, HOT TIP, offer value to these potential customers, don’t just log on and try to sell them something in your first interaction. Offer information and advice, establish yourself as a helpful resource.

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Good Books & References in This Episode

• The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery
  by Ian Morgan Cron

• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

  by Chris Voss

• Secrets of Closing the Sale: For Anyone Who Must Get Others to Say Yes!

  by Zig Ziglar

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

  by Patrick Lencioni, Charles Stransky

• 5 Voices: How to Communicate Effectively with Everyone You Lead

  Jeremie Kubicek

• Ninja Selling: Subtle Skills. Big Results

  by Larry Kendall

• Podcast Episode: End Your Struggle: Set Boundaries + Find Peace with Licensed Therapist Nedra Tawwab

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Why Subscribe To The Email List: Brian does special zoom events and shares hacks and tips exclusively for his email subscribers. Topics like “12 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.

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Episode Transcript

i'm Brian Nelson Palmer. On this show i talk about life balance and practical productivity it's about leveling you up as a whole not just for work or just for home and in this episode i want to dig into commission sales life balance mistakes and best practices this is on the show with me today i have april myers who is a realtor and vice president for RLAH at properties so april thanks so much for joining me today

april_myers__realtor (01:28.538)

hi thanks for having me brian

brian_nelson_palmer (01:32.22)

talk about now we're going to talk about commission sales talk about your background with commission sales and how you're relevant to this topic today

april_myers__realtor (01:37.058)

right

april_myers__realtor (01:40.258)

sure yeah absolutely so i've actually been in the real estate industry since college i took a little bit of a stint break when i came out to d c and used my actual communications degree for an internship but basically since two thousand and five i have been in the real estate industry serving either as a realtor or be in a leadership role managing agent

april_myers__realtor (02:10.278)

at brokerage so um so i yes yes so quite a long time on to age myself but i think i graduated from college sixteen years ago so quite a long time

brian_nelson_palmer (02:11.8)

wow i love i love that

brian_nelson_palmer (02:21.undefined)

oh you're putting it on the record you're brave you're brave i'm not going to admit it with us here that's now and i do love that it's funny that you said that because i think most people who work in commission probably didn't go to college thinking oh i want to work on commission like that probably didn't happen

april_myers__realtor (02:36.138)

yeah yeah yeah real estate's been in my blood so since i was a teen ager so yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (02:43.36)

yeah so and so we said or la at properties can you where does does that stand for something where does the name come from

april_myers__realtor (02:51.858)

so yeah so we actually jumped on the d c acronym band wagon when jason sherman who started or la started the brokerage he started it as a real living at home franchise so our la stands for real living at home and then at properties is our parent company we are an affiliate of there as there are ginormous brokerage outside of in chicago so

brian_nelson_palmer (03:21.undefined)

oh cool all right real living at home are got it and what makes arla differ i mean you could have joined you've been in this game for a while you could have joined any broker ridge or any real estate company what made you join arla

april_myers__realtor (03:33.138)

absolutely the glory of you know being in real estate is that there are so many different types of companies but i've somewhat divided them into two different categories you have a limited service brokerage and a full service brokerage so agents can go either way you know is the very entrepreneurial business but i selected or la becaus of the services and support that they have and they offer the agents in the background so it's somewhat of

brian_nelson_palmer (04:03.7)

nice like like what they offer in the background that's an appeal what do you mean say a little more on that

april_myers__realtor (04:08.438)

yeah so essentially instead of me having to hire out like a graphic designer or a marketing person to manage some of the pieces in the video and you know everything that comes along with being the sexy side of real estate company does that pairing down for me so they've already that ed the best venders or hired the best designers and they have them here on staff

so i don't have to go out and figure out who to hire for which project so really takes a lot of the overwhelmed off of my plate so yeah absolutely

and that kind of times into what we're goin to talk about today because if we're talking about commission sales the more time you spend on that other stuff is less time you spend selling so that would be a thing that's cool yeah and you know i will say for for me i started my career in commission sales mine was actually at a furniture store city furniture down in south florida was my home for the first five years of my career and so i when i'm i think so in our discussion today i'm going to be coming at it from a person working in a

april_myers__realtor (04:52.678)

exactly yeah we're going to get into that aren't we

brian_nelson_palmer (05:14.62)

furniture store because that's my sort of background as i look at commission sales and life balance stuff and you'll be coming at it from the real perspective so i like this little dynamic are going to have on a little different look at the same idea which is you're working based on commission and i'm assuming folks listening know when i say work on commission what that means is you make a percentage of whatever business you close so it's not a salary this is you know if you whatever the deal is if you make that deal like if i sell a sofa i get a percentage of the money of that sofa sale or in real estate you're probably familiar with this

brian_nelson_palmer (05:44.62)

but in real estate you know if you sell a home you get certain percentage of the sale price of that home so that's what we mean by commission is that your you are responsible for whatever your pay check is is based on your performance so so then april let's kind of jump in today what i wanted to talk about first is so these shows are always from the employes perspective and then i do want to touch on from the manager's perspective or front line supervisor that supervises a team of people that work on commission so let's start for the employes of the people who work on commission let's talk about mistakes and then best practices what are the mistakes that you have made or have seen made when it comes to life balance and commission sales

april_myers__realtor (06:27.378)

so some common mistakes that i have seen over the years i mean i hate criticizing people because i really don't think that there's ever one right way to do something however i do think that there's some commonalities right after coming across hundreds of agents in my career that i do feel like sometimes people at their ego get in the way they want to they feel like that they are want to do it their way and nobody else can do it better so i think sometimes that can be one of the biggest obstacles you know their entrepreneurs for a reason this is the very entrepreneurial business any sort of commission base sales is because you have to have that drive in you m so it somewhat attracts this like driver personalities so you see that a lot uh yeah what so i have some others that i had written down based on you now question yeah sure no i want to know what you yes

brian_nelson_palmer (07:21.46)

well let's go back and forth we can go one for one that's cool i like that don't let your ego get in the way i think getting like what is it's that phrase that that i always it's like a monte i love to live by which is perfection gets in the way of done and i feel like in sales that often is a is like it doesn't have to be perfect but get it done i can see that being a thing that's good i like you know one of the things i heard is that when it comes to life balance i've heard some people say you know they absolutely love the team that they work on and so the phrase that i've heard several times is love the team if you love the team it doesn't feel like work and the thing for me that i struggle with is if well that's really true and i don't wish a bad and i hope everyone loves the team that they work on that's why people stick with jobs that's why people leave their jobs if they don't so it makes perfect sense to say that however i also think if your team becomes your family and all you do is work that doesn't lead to the life balance that i think many people want inevitably they'll get the they'll hit the burn out stage where work is family is all together and then there's one bad day at work and your whole life feels like it came off the wheels because are off the rails not the wheels though the rails because it doesn't like that's that's all you have is this work and work family and so i personally don't think that's good i don't know if any everybody will agree with me on that but i don't think that i think you should love the team that you work with but you should remember that it is yeah yeah i mean i think sometimes when you are in a commission sales role it's very easy for things to become insessdual um you know like it's hard to draw a line because when clients need you you have to respond and so it's really tough create boundaries so um so i would i would agree with that maybe have some sort of space where you can you know have some relief from like work and it's just a part of you so yeah

april_myers__realtor (09:19.958)

being with everybody that you know you're working with would be good

brian_nelson_palmer (09:23.94)

for sure yeah what else do you got

april_myers__realtor (09:27.558)

so i think i've also seen a lot of mistakes and agents you know picking the right place to be um and when i say agents i mean real estate agents because that is basically majority of my experience but a lot of people are afraid to change and afraid to move or afraid to abandon something for maybe their next growth phase of life and so what that does is it keeps them somewhere that may not be the best fit for them so

you know when you were working at a furniture store you obviously learned skills that were necessary for you to potentially go on to a tougher or like maybe an easier sales role um so you know nothing i think loyalty that leads into really like i don't know why people feel like sometimes they need to be loyal because at the end of the day you know you you got you served them and they served you for a specific

purpose right so if you know you need to move on um so just making sure you're selecting the right place to be um whatever point you're at in your career and in your life if it's not serving you in you know three to four out of your five areas then maybe it's time to look elsewhere so i think getting caught in loyalty and caught up in being you know maybe it's not

the right place is a common mistake to hm

brian_nelson_palmer (10:59.3)

so true i think one of the best pieces of advice that i've ever gotten with the career and it wasn't specifically tied to commission sales but it was just the only person who's looking out for your career is you and so if you're if it's not serving you any more make it a change that makes perfect sense or find something that's if you like commission but you're not paying the bills then maybe it's a base plus commission or a different model or a different something that doesn't mean you have to quit your life entirely

april_myers__realtor (11:25.298)

m yeah sometimes it's a matter of just looking at like who you admire and where they are at and if you want to get there maybe you know let's not re invent the wheel let's figure out what they did along the way to get to where they are so yeah yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (11:29.02)

but i like that shifting gears that's a really that's a really good point i like that

brian_nelson_palmer (11:46.08)

right and you know i wanted to tag on one of my next thoughts was you know about it's about relationship sales is about relationships and i think one of the things that you get caught up in is more sales more prospects talk to more people and the thing that sometimes people forget with the life balance department is the relationships those relationships are client relationships and they're not necessarily your friends they might grow to be your friends in the long run but if you take more

brian_nelson_palmer (12:16.12)

sales calls it will start to feel lonelier and lonelier because there's actually new research that came out that shows that even a single conversation with a friend like one of your friends per day is enough to boost your happiness let me read this here is enough to boost your happiness and lower stress so the conversation needs to be quality though to improve your day so that can mean anything from deep discussions to just catching up or joking around but the study determined that in person actions were better social media doesn't count so what i take that to mean is if you're in sales or commissions and you're talking to customers all day i know for some people who might be a little more introverted you might be a little bit burned out at the end of the day but remember that you have friendships too and so talking to one of your friends even maybe even text message or something but a direct connection with someone who knows you and you know them is going o be really helpful for your life so i'm going to drop i actually have linked to that study that just came out it was in february twenty twenty three so i mean it's really recent one but i'll drop the link in the notes for anybody who wants to check it out but i found that was really fascinating just remember that that talking to someone who's a friend is a huge benefit for life balance which is awesome i like that a lot

april_myers__realtor (13:34.818)

yes yeh i believe it i would agree with that i know you said i could disagree with you at any point but i would definitely agree with you

brian_nelson_palmer (13:42.06)

yes april doesn't everybody you know it's funny man like on podcasts sometimes the hosts are just like oh that's great and oh that's great and it's like a big love fest and like no we can disagree but that's but we're also allowed to agree

april_myers__realtor (13:52.798)

yeah but that i would because i just was actually it wasn't crazy i was just talking to one of my girl friends from home a couple of weeks ago and i was like after that conversation actually tested her the next morning and i was like you have no idea like how good that conversation was for my soul you know and i think you know so it's there's proof in the pudding so

brian_nelson_palmer (14:12.44)

absolutely that's amazing yes i love it april what else you got any other mistakes that you've seen

april_myers__realtor (14:20.758)

i mean i see mistakes all the time but those are the you know the two main ones i should have probably had three um you know i think i actually for i do is sometimes losing sight of what the goal is and what the end goal is and falling out of love the reason that you decided to do something anyway like you just said you know being in commission baseslesb

brian_nelson_palmer (14:27.36)

oh you're allowed to have however many i've got i've got one more that i'll share though yeah hit me

april_myers__realtor (14:50.418)

and you know it's about relationships and i've seen a lot of people in this business get very money hungry and you know life at some point will catch up with you at that point you're starting to see it a lot especially with a lot of the anti trust issues that are going on in the real estate industry um and you know you have to truly love relationships and love working with people and love serving your clients and keeping your eye on that prize

day like making a difference you know in people's lives i think is something that i ve definitely seen um you can just see it and you can you can see it reflected in their sales when when there isn't a passion there anymore for doing the right thing

brian_nelson_palmer (15:37.92)

so true at the at the end of my furniture career i was starting to look at okay what's my next move going to be i was thinking about making a change and heat it up to the government and that kind of thing and at the end there my performance at work definitely waned as well and the longer you try to keep it going because it's what you've done the more people will eventually start to notice and it'll just like generally people don't at the end of their careers is not when they're when they're starting to get burned out is not the months where they break the records generally unless it's a fluke you know it comes through in your work i like that and you know the other the one other thought the mistake that i saw made there was one moment that happened in my career which i'll never forget it was my first month there i'm at the store and i was not going a hit my sales goal that first month and so my manager's words to me were well you're a little bit short so are you going to come in on your days off and hit that goal and it was that perception that like okay well you have to now i have to choose well do i want to have days off or because i'm not going to hit this goal and i going to give all of my time off up so that i can work more and that's that that thinking that happens with commission it's like oh gosh well the more i work the more money i make and then you just get in that you spin up and all you do is work all the time and that's not healthy so the thing

april_myers__realtor (17:04.078)

yeah it's not but at the same time i think in the beginning of people's careers especially in commission base sales you have to somewhat work harder and then that you wil three years from then or two years from then or even a year from then you got to kind of put in the work in the beginning and know that the seeds that you're planting will hopefully grow you know and be cud be able to be cultivated you know vio such a farm girl you know that will be able to you know like you'll you'll reap the benefit of the reward but i do see that too where agents will come in and they'll see you know the real estate industry obviously does not have an image problem i mean million dollar listing all of those things and that they think they're going to walk into this sort of life style and it's a bunch of little actions that combine into you know findlay a close deal and then you know it you have you just you may not it may not look like it does on t v and it certainly is and so i think that's one of the biggest mistakes too is that people don't really understand in the beginning you're going and to have to bust er about to get there so yeah you can't really think about okay yeah you do have to come in on your day off if you care you know

brian_nelson_palmer (18:25.58)

you know and and i wanted to share best practices and i one of the things that comes to mind as you're talking here is like you know actually just kind of feeds into what i just said which is so working more doesn't necessarily mean working better right it's the work smarter not harder thing and so the metaphor that i have and i think this definitely applied to my sales career was certainly the education and developing yourself is important and that kind of feeds into what you're talking about which is work harder in the beginning work harder but also any time you start a new job you're going to need to evolve so my metaphor for this is Lebron James didn't become you know one of the best basketball players and people might be disagreeing with me some of you might not listen to basketball and listen or watch basketball that's fine but la bron james is one of the all star you know considered one of the best n b a players of all times basically to me if you got a space jam movie then that put you up there right Lebron and michael jordan are those two guys so but you don't get to that level because you just played a lot of basketball games right there's education there's coaching there's training there's practice practice practice and so one of the things that i think people get hung up on is working more doesn't necessarily mean working better or working smarter and so you have to work on yourself like what is your practice you know you go to the gym to work out and get stronger well do you go to the gym for your career what do you do for like to make you a better sales person because just working more doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be more and more successful and so remember that

april_myers__realtor (19:59.278)

right i think that also right exactly i think that also comes with experience and maturity and confidence that is nothing anybody can give you but that is something that develops over time i mean i look at you know when i met you and when we decided to create that networking group in crystal city which was such a good idea i mean i will tell you i am still closing business off of that networking group years and years later so it works but you know if i knew now

brian_nelson_palmer (20:23.18)

that's amazing

april_myers__realtor (20:29.238)

then what i knew now um you know you can't like turn back you can't take back experience and what it gives you um so you know when when we met each other um there's definitely certain things that i should have been doing had i been coachable had i been trainable had i been mature enough to know that maybe other people know better than me um so you got to be open to also you know knowing that you're not going to know everything right away so

brian_nelson_palmer (20:57.2)

sure so true and it's a learning right you continue to evolve there's that whole thing about what it's ten thousand hours i think or something is the number of hours before you become really good at something or whatever there's a there's an uplift with everything but remember a lot of that is education and training and practice like do you actually practice your craft and that's a that's a thing i was at the fair the other day and i walked by don't know if this has happened to any of you but i walked by t mobile had a display and fair in florida we're selling the home internet for t mobile they've got like five g home inter that you can get now and they just give you a modem take it home and it's like a cell phone sitting in your house that becomes your modem for all your like so this is their five g home internet and they're selling it and this guy credit to him because when you work at a fair his commission or his performance is based on the business he closes at the fair so he only gets paid if you sign up for tea mobile there at the fair and nobody goes to the fair thinking i'm gonna shot for home internet that's gonna be so this guy you know it's funny because after all of the practice and everything i was able to the people that i was with were taking him at his word and oh you know he's he was creating a sense of urgency by oh you know there's not going to be well if you don't do it today there's going to be a sign up fee later and and i was just laughing because in my head i'm like oy he created a sense of urgency that was a test close that was a close that was but it only comes with that practice of going through the exercise of the sales so you can really pick these things out and and know that that's a what what's happening there so it was also fun because i mean i shot him down i didn't sign up for team mobile five g at the fair but i felt for the man on like boy it was an aggressive sale it was very aggressive because he if you didn't buy then he was also never going to see you again so he wasn't worried about the relationship with you either

april_myers__realtor (22:49.018)

yeah exactly and changing people's minds you know in part of my you know management role in real estate was helping recruit agents to a break rage so i'd have to call them on a day any given day most likely it wouldn't be the day they were mad at their current company it would be a day that they're happy with them but i'd have to over a period of time change their mind to even want to potentially come and meet with me so that the most difficult thing to do when you're working a furniture store and people are walking in to buy a couch they're probably moby couch most likely from you or the next furniture store they're walking into an open house my open house most likely they will buy a home they've already made the decision right to buy so that that those commission base roles where you have to convince people to do something that they didn't walk in knowing that they would even do are the most difficult so props to that dude

april_myers__realtor (23:48.838)

fair yeah cheers to that

brian_nelson_palmer (23:49.28)

probably to that guy at the fair for sure absolutely and oh so any other like best practices or hacks or things that you've thought you've got for you know in this for the person working in commission

april_myers__realtor (24:02.918)

uh i mean if we're off the mistake you know train i think the biggest thing is to really know your own strength and to know yourself m come to the realization where you know i do have a marketing background i do know what i think i want to see looks good but i also know that it's not the highest and best use of my time to be you know moving graphic around or images of a home on

on a bosher lay out my team does that for me and i am totally fine at this point in my life as i have a child i have a life people that need my attention outside of my clients that i realize i'm going to do my job at a hundred and fifty percent hopefully the people that are is employing are going to do their job at a hundred and fifty percent and their love its graphic design so i'm going to let them do what they love because they're better at it than me and

therefore i have that time you know and that that you know on the table for me so just knowing your personality in your tendencies on where you could potentially give some things away and give some things up i think one of the best things somebody can do who's in commission base sales or in you know an independent contractor roll of some sort so i've done a lot of you know i don't know if you read any good books about it and pass it the road back to you it's a great one reading about either the anagram and where you fall

your personality on the anagram who you would work well with where your strength and your weaknesses are and strength finder i mean that's an older book but it's such a great book to to kind of do an introspective look like where you might be able to give some things up or put them away that need to get done but you might not be the best entuting them so might not be the best use of your time to do th so yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (25:58.4)

absolutely that's i like that a lot it is about your strength and knowing your strength and you know there's only a certain number of hours of the day like i mean i've i did a ted talk on the value of your time and that kind of thing and like you only have a certain amount of time and your time is worth something and so think be conscious of the way you're spending it and that applies at work and at home too so if you're if if you could move graphic around and get a decent thing but there's somebody else who could do it in way less time way better than you

april_myers__realtor (26:24.318)

right find a service that can they are the ones that hire the people that have the passion for it so let them live out their passions while you live out yours

brian_nelson_palmer (26:28.42)

then leverage that relationship or that ability and and find out i do it and and you know the one other thing for for life balance one of the best practices that i certainly hope that that people embraces in sales oftentimes it becomes a little more cut throat where like you said you're very money motivated let me close this sale or in the furniture store the the idea was if somebody came in and they asked for a sales person and that sales person wasn't there you could simply say well they're not here today but i'm brian how can i help you and then if i close that sale it's mine and so that's this thing where if you're not there you might miss a prospect that comes in or something like that and so that the thing that i i think is a valuable tool is certainly everybody in the furniture store the big thing was hey man get some money down get a deposit on it follow up with them you can take a deposit over the phone but if they come in and you're not there then you might miss it or if they want you to get credit it's possible to split a deal and so the

it's thing if your partner with somebody at the show room and you're like hey this is me or my partner is such and such and you have a colleague then if you're not there you are still getting half of that sale and it's not a complete loss and so partnering up or tag team team work in sales while it's a real challenge because if you then that's not the whole commission you're missing on money right yeah but right

april_myers__realtor (28:02.618)

you have to accept what the other person could do yeah yeah it's a lot of trust you know in yeah that can they do this i don't know what if they screw it up for me m yeah i have we have i have two business partners you know in my career in my career as an agent and i mean mostly they are there for like if you're out of town if i'm out of town clients need things whenever you know it's like they know you're gone or something but you got to set it up if the ian and getting them what they want is really at the heart and the soul of that transaction and those decisions are made easier but yeah definitely has to be somebody you know you vie with so yeah yeah that's hard it's growth

brian_nelson_palmer (28:44.76)

for sure now um let's switch gears now and talk about so front line supervisors and middle managers who are overseeing commission sales people what are the lens we're looking through is how do you maintain life balance with your folks that are with the team the people that are on your team what are their mistakes and best practices what are your thoughts april on this one

april_myers__realtor (29:12.078)

um as as a manager of of real tors in the past is that what you're kind of getting at there sorry okay

brian_nelson_palmer (29:19.14)

yeah manager in the past or for people who currently are like what are your thoughts on that one now you're supervising the commission sales people

april_myers__realtor (29:27.238)

yeah so i mean i basically only always then at botiquebrokerages brokerages that real estate brokerages that provide a level of service in the back end for agents right so like it's hard to sell something you don't believe in um i probably wouldn't be anywhere else that wouldn't have that when i moved to iowa and i worked at you know a larger skill brokerage with limited service to their agents i saw

you know and i experience the challenges myself that that those situations and limited service agency provide so um so i've seen it at all i mean so i think the biggest mistake would be not yet again picking the right brokerage for your personality or your support because maybe you're worried about the split or like they take a higher cut or their transaction fee is higher and at the end of the day it's like okay if it's a couple of hundred dollars difference or even a thousand dollars difference over time like

if at the end of the day you use that time to dos something else to generate more business for yourself than it was worth it you know so i think like that's the biggest mistake i c people make is just getting stuck on these little the little numbers that add up to the big ones in the end

brian_nelson_palmer (30:47.46)

sure okay that and that makes i mean in total it's it's your life and the deal not just the deal the dollar doesn't is in the end be all that makes sense um what

april_myers__realtor (30:54.858)

m m yeah yeah so i mean managing agents it was you know you they'd come to you you know with a problem or an issue and you know it's most of the time it constituted like clients or a situation that had arisen but um you know tigers really don't change their stripes you see the same people have the same issue over and over so being open to growth and open to making yourself better

um is always the advice i would try to give people you know she books or resources or you know what i've done in the past and stories of what i've done you know and so that that was just the best way i could try to try to help guide people so yeah yeah so there weren't employees so that's where the great area is in the tough thing you know was you can't really say you know

brian_nelson_palmer (31:42.8)

yeah do you I think one of the other mistakes that i've seen to is that they uh there is this idea that just because you're a good sales person means you'll be a great manager and it goes back to what we were talking about earlier which is you know are our it's a skill set it's a learning that you have to do like lebron james didn't become the best without practice and coaching and so if you step into management that is a completely different skill from it's great that you can sell you can sell all day but now that you're in management that is a different set of skills so don't take your same sales approach into management learn the new skills learn the different perspective and really look at it home your craft now as a manager to so that you can help those people you have the perspective of having worked on commission so it's really valuable to be able to really understand where they're coming from but managing those people is going to be a different skill so it's that what got you here won't you're there and that's very very true of being a great manager versus a great commission sales board

april_myers__realtor (32:59.578)

one of the things that i had the experience of being able to go to i don't know if you've ever heard of it but black swan group is a huge consulting firm for negotiation skills for agents the pleasure of being invited to an event where they talked about the main points of the book called never split the difference so chris boss f b i negotiator for years wrote this book called never split the difference have you heard of it

brian_nelson_palmer (33:28.74)

i've read it huge supporter yes that's a great book

april_myers__realtor (33:29.918)

yes it's a great book yeah so i've been to some of their events and you know one of the things that one of the instructors went over one day was like mirroring and as a manager of people a manager also of a four year old which sometimes isn't that different than managing full grown full grown adults just and so i started to practice those skills you know that i had learned in that class i'm like well if i practice it on my cobbler is now for almost five year old

brian_nelson_palmer (33:45.54)

yeah definitely manager yet

april_myers__realtor (34:00.158)

maybe it will help me learn to naturally more do it in front of the adults i interact with every day and it really does work i think nearing what people say back to them so you can sort of people are like feel listen to and heard it's one of the best skills they feel like i walked away with after that class and taking it it was just seeing it live and seeing it actually change your interactions with people as a manager um that it's insane how

it works so that's awesome yeah yeah yeah and i actually highly recommend the audio book well you could buy the harder to or the hard copy as well but the audiobook is great because you have the inflection in his voice and so much of it is tonality his like the late of m d j voice or whatever he says he uses um it's really great it's a really great tool like in a man

brian_nelson_palmer (34:29.8)

that's awesome i will i'll drop the i will drop the link i will drop the link of that in the in the notes for this episode too so you can check it out if you're when you're listening

april_myers__realtor (34:59.318)

jan anybody so yes yes yes

brian_nelson_palmer (35:01.14)

that's good mirroring i like that a lot and actually it's funny you said audio book i think it's fair that if you listen to podcasts you probably are hipped to the game of audio books so it wouldn't be a stretch that somebody listens would would do it yeah

april_myers__realtor (35:10.598)

yeah little did i know audible audible actually charges you every month i didn't know i was like sitting around with a group of friends one day and i was like yeah i get free to free audible books every month with my free amazon prime and they're like you get audible for free with amazon prime i'm like yeah i do i went and looked at my credit card and i was like oh yes i know i don't i've been for this the whole time yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (35:32.26)

no definitely been paying for that absolutely i am a two book a month guy and i end up i read a bunch like a book a week is my average and i mean it's just a ton but i also listened to him right well i listen to him on two or three times speed by the way there's a life pack for you if you want to listen get through books faster most when they teach you how to do the the speaking or when you read a book for an audio book you have to enunciate clearly and speak a little

april_myers__realtor (35:40.558)

yeah wow life without kids yeah yeah yes

brian_nelson_palmer (36:01.88)

or so it's like if i go to the south and the people in the south i'm going to try to do a draw and they talk this fast versus you can just talk at a regular speed like this and this you'll totally understand me speaking at this way too that's the difference between the original and the two time speed so don't be scared of two time speed you can do it right one and a half start there or you'll get used to it i slowly crept up to three times speed and i love that now

april_myers__realtor (36:21.658)

i've tried it i can't keep up with it i can't i need like a one and a half i'm like wait what did they say re wind

brian_nelson_palmer (36:32.1)

yeah exactly um let's see so one of the things i wanted to share for front line supervisors and middle managers there's a couple of things but we talked about promoting partnering or being supportive of partnering or your people if they've got a deal coming in you certainly want them to be comfortable saying hey go talk to my manager who can help me get this deal done because i'm not here and by doing that not only do you help the employee in that moment but the impression that the employer gets is also that

brian_nelson_palmer (37:01.74)

you support them not being there on their time off and supporting people's time off is such a valuable thing in today's day an age of like people can work anywhere in the all the things you've heard about people switching jobs and stuff having a manager who if you're on vacation and you you come back and you find out that they they did that for you while you are gone is such a wonderful thing to have that kind of support from your manager so definitely promote the partnering among the staf

brian_nelson_palmer (37:31.92)

or supporting the staff i think that kind of goes without saying sometimes but i wanted to say it because it's the reason i wanted to bring it up is not just because it's what you should do but because the way it feels on the back end is very supported and people will stick around for that which i think is really helpful

brian_nelson_palmer (37:49.04)

and and one of the other ones that i just i'm on a roll here and i was just thinking about you know when it comes to prospecting now for teaching your teams you can't just keep calling and saying are you ready et are you ready yet are you ready et because those calls you're allowed basically one of those and then after that why are you calling me again so having something of value to offer them when you call so as a manager certainly from for the employees

brian_nelson_palmer (38:18.74)

espective you know have a reason besides i want your money i want your money i offer them something what's in it for them right at the witham what's in it for me so that's a thing but also remembering that as a manager now if you find an anecdote or a story or hears some kind of latest news thing on this particular item or there is something of relevance that you can help provide your team that would be a reason to follow up

brian_nelson_palmer (38:48.76)

but obviously everybody has there's a sale coming up so that's an obvious one where there is going to be a discount but besides that like for a real tore it might be hey there was actually an offer that fell through on this one and i heard that this little anecdote they might do it for this amount of money or some kind of story or something that's relevant to the person so that you're offering them some value or some tip some something interest rates just went down by point to five per cent or some reason to call them for them not for you

brian_nelson_palmer (39:18.9)

that's a huge thing on your prospecting so help help employes with that

april_myers__realtor (39:20.518)

yeah yeah absolutely i i think that's yet again another big difference between being at boutique versus a large um like run of the mill you're a number brand is that you know all real estate is local and happens you know in your area i mean you even know this living in pentagon city crystal city um that like it's different you know a mile away over here at my house where i'm in volvedin you know and so

you know it's so hyper local to the market and so when our brokerage got together and like our leadership got together every week talked about strategies and ways in which we could help support you know our agents we always talked about okay what is the best way what are the easiest things that we can get these real ters in the most specific way you know that we can add value to them which then they can be at bunch on saturday

sunday and and roll it into a conversation you know with with their clients and offer value to them so you know sort of that's the biggest difference between being somewhere you know like here is that i'm empowered with information i'm not taking the time to do those tats to crunch those numbers to know that i get an email every monday that tells me that there were two and a half offers on every listing in the d m v and half of those contracts that were ratified at home inspect

on that as in the past week that isn't stuff that i spent my time doing it's the numbers that my company has crunched and they send those to me which then i can i've literally brought it up in five or six conversations this week brought it up now again seven um and so it allows me to then talk um you know to to offer them something about to help guide them in their decision making when their house should go on the market

april_myers__realtor (41:20.218)

you know we're speeding up a listing now because he heard that he's like okay we need to get rolling we need to get this place on the market you know so if we can offer something of value that then trickles down through then then helping the client um you know i mean they have my loyalty you know until forever because it's helped me have easier conversations out there in the field so yeah yeah yeah i don't know if you saw it

brian_nelson_palmer (41:28.undefined)

wow

brian_nelson_palmer (41:44.46)

for sure offering that value i like that a lot that's a good one april

april_myers__realtor (41:50.478)

i don't know yet again we were joking like mails go to brian's priority box or do they go into the look at that later but if you haven't looked at it yet this week the email that i sent out last week is about you know i'm a real ter i come across contractors i come across home organizers i come across people painters like people all the time that people need to use right and so what i did as i offered you know who do you have who do you need what project

april_myers__realtor (42:20.278)

home is overwhelming you right like let me make it easy for you to make a simple phone call you on't have to go on google and find somebody you can trust i have the role acts of of people that you call a trust so making life easier for your clients when you are in commission base sales is just if you get that key and you can turn it in that lock like and keep you'll have people's loyalty you know for life because i think keeping people coming back is one of those things super and is the best furniture salesman i love my couch

april_myers__realtor (42:50.498)

thanks for coming over and watching the super bow but you should go go to him when you want one you know like think about the long game there not just the short game so yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (42:55.56)

sure

absolutely yeah i dig that a lot and you know one of the other ones that i thought as a supervisor the other thing you could do for for your people might be looking for ways to engage with potential clients and i know sometimes this is hard but as a manager it's like if for example cold calling someone is painful and it's not a high likelihood of success right so for my example here is like you could just call somebody

brian_nelson_palmer (43:28.28)

out of the blue or message like linked in all the time i get people who just email constantly in their email is their message is a straight up ask of hey i have this thing to offer you and i really just want to lie i delete those immediately those are ridiculous however in the in the world of furniture there are facebook groups of people that are trying to sell furniture so that's a place where the leads are warm not cold so if instead of cold emailing or cold calling or trying to

april_myers__realtor (43:31.198)

uh yeah i do too yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (43:58.22)

ok it that way if you could join a facebook group of people that are selling couches and then you can go on and you have a couch that's just like the one for sale and they're saying hey i'm trying to sell or hey i'm brian actually have this one right here here's the link to the website where this thing is listed also happy to share that one too or somebody says they're looking for something you know being available looking for those opportunities for leads that are right exactly and yeah

april_myers__realtor (44:23.278)

ah creating a space for that that's what the facebook group did right

brian_nelson_palmer (44:28.38)

and but create and you could create that group yourself but at the same time you know being a part of those groups joining those groups and engaging with those groups you even if they don't come to you the first time or the second time if you're a realtor or you're selling something that's it's finding the places where your potential clients hanging out and then don't show up and be weird show up and be helpful right don't show up and be like hey i want to sell a house

april_myers__realtor (44:53.838)

yeah exactly don't don't show up ante yeah walking out of her being like i'm gonna i'm gonna get somebody no that's not gonna work like you people will see through that like the clearest diamond they've ever seen you know like it's just like yeah people can sense it when you need something if you come across is like you want to help in a genuine manner yet again as a brokerage employee helping other employees

april_myers__realtor (45:24.058)

or even as a independent contractor helping those around you you have to come at it with a purpose and that purpose cannot be self serving it has to be for the greater good

brian_nelson_palmer (45:36.34)

and you know i'm and in sharing this tip to i'm not sharing this because i'm sharing this from the lens that i want find those communities find those groups and i share that because i i really wish no one ever had to get the i was put on the spot that story i told you where in my first month you're not going a hit your goal are you going to come in on your days off like well actually i don't want to come in on my day off but if i can jump on facebook and

brian_nelson_palmer (46:06.12)

find some leads and do some work or work find a way to do the work that doesn't involve me giving up my life to do it and helping me find opportunities like that or practicing or evolving or that kind of thing that is really helpful for the for the people that you're working with so

april_myers__realtor (46:10.878)

get people in the door

april_myers__realtor (46:14.898)

you just also never know where that will lead you just don't one of the things in another book that i love start with no which is where chris voss got a lot of the basis for never split the difference he talks about clean slating everything clean slate even if yesterday nobody came into the furniture or tomorrow today is a new day i assume nothing i don't assume anybody's going to want to walk in here and by five thousand dollar couch i don't assume they're going to

by a three hundred dollar end table like you literally it is a new day it is a clean slate like i love the clean slating um just attitude you got to have it because you just never know where things will lead so yeah i love that so

brian_nelson_palmer (47:08.18)

true and sometimes and you know it's funny we're saying this and then i know that that also on the flip side can be absolutely exhausting because you hustle and you hustle and you hustle and nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing happens and then i can't afford to pay this you know bill we're going to be a little short this month like that all of that is very real so the ebb and flow of it is very real so support you know finding ways to support your team with the ups and downs is

yes i think ah sharing sharing like you just saying that to me i didn't even know there were facebookgroups for furniture sales although you know um like i'm not in that arena but like now i know and so like i think that that is such a good being open to sharing with others and not gate keeping um you have like like attitude of more like abundance and being like hoo hey i went into that and this helped me because of that ike

april_myers__realtor (48:07.438)

sharing those anecdotes i think is also one hundred percent yeah you got to do it you got to grow and share and don't be scared that enemy is going to take anything from you because they're not

brian_nelson_palmer (48:19.12)

i mean it might happen but the number it's going to pay dividends so much more than it will the short term hurt will be worth the long term gain in my opinion so that that's a good one well those are the things that i had april did you have anything else as far as for managers or supvisors on mistakes or best practices packs tips stuff like that

april_myers__realtor (48:38.478)

i think yet again just being open to sharing and realizing that other people might be able to do something just as well or better than you you know there are definitely some times in my career as as a manager where you know i would want like a fellow in play like i'd want them to take on a project so i would sort of like okay will hear this is my idea for that and like and hoping they would take it you know and run with it because i know that i am not the best person here i don't have the

ground to understand how it would all happen you know and but then trusting that person that if they don't take that idea and run with it there could be a reason you know why so um yet again checking the ego i think that's where a lot of this spoils down to so yeah yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (49:24.88)

absolutely very good and you dropped a lot during this episode you said a lot of great books and stuff and so i'm going to make sure that i share those links in the episode notes here i did have one book that's i mean when i started zig zigler was that was the big name and sales and so secrets of closing the sale by zig zigler was the first book that sort of changed my life on the sales front and i'll share the link of that one too but that's just there's all kinds of great resources we talked about you know labronjane

april_myers__realtor (49:39.538)

oh i love him

brian_nelson_palmer (49:54.8)

didn't do it didn't become what he is today by just by playing basketball games all the time and so that making sure you're learning and educating yourself in this would be a good one do you have any books actually off the top of your head do you have any books for managers of sales people that come to mind if you don't i know i'm putting ou on the spot here but i'm trying to think

april_myers__realtor (50:11.458)

yeah the management part yes actually i do um u the five dis functions of a team is a really great book for managers of any sort of sales company or sales roles it's called the five dis functions of a team the other one is a ble tart with five is the five voices have you heard of that book five dis functions of a team and then yep and then five voices those are two great books for me

brian_nelson_palmer (50:35.44)

five functions of a team and five voices now i'm going to check these five dis functions of a team and five voices okay nice

april_myers__realtor (50:43.578)

and i er um like as i was in my putting myself in my leadership role i've really digested those books and they were very you know helpful um for me so you and then do you want me to get into like you know commission day sales what i think is a good book or not i have one more i have one more i have one more because i am obsessed with it right now it's called nig selling um it's yes it's so

brian_nelson_palmer (50:53.4)

nice cool

brian_nelson_palmer (51:01.56)

yeah if you got any other ones we're on a role with the books bring it on girl let's do it eh

april_myers__realtor (51:13.638)

good it's my favorite book i living breathing gives you the structure to your like everything to a t um so that's a really good one and then there's a really great podcast that i had written down it's about setting boundaries which i think kind of rolls into your whole theme right yes exactly and it's with nedrataa and it's on the pretty smart podcast about setting boundaries with nedratalaso

brian_nelson_palmer (51:27.52)

okay life balance that's exactly what we're talking about yet

april_myers__realtor (51:43.518)

i think getting into specific episodes of podcast is better sometimes than just saying what podcast um but yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (51:43.96)

i will

brian_nelson_palmer (51:50.22)

sure absolutely sometimes there's seven hundred episodes okay well i'll subscribe to this so it's if that's a specific episode that's cool yeah exactly so i'll get i'll get the link to that specific episode i like that that's cool i like that well april we're kind of let's bring it to a close here and so what i want to do is first i want to say here's what i love i love the fact that i appreciate and love that you have this perspective from both as a supervisor and a manager and also as a straight up realtor that works on

april_myers__realtor (51:53.698)

yes yeah and then you can't find anything right right right right

okay thank you okay

brian_nelson_palmer (52:20.02)

commission and that same thing and so i really appreciate that you have the perspectives and stuff you offered today are also i can see them applying both to the employee and the manager and supervisor and this is kind of really helpful across the board and stuff and so i appreciate that you are well thank you for sharing your i mean i talk i did a talk on time so thank you for sharing your time with me and with us with us today with these things and for those folk

april_myers__realtor (52:46.858)

thank you thanks for having me

brian_nelson_palmer (52:50.18)

who don't want to keep in touch with you or reach out to you because they have questions about real terris the stuff we got today what's the best way for them to keep in touch

april_myers__realtor (52:55.058)

yeah sure yeah so i know we kind of touched a little bit on social media i am on linked in um i am also in april myers i'm also on instagram april myers d m v you can get everything there like personal professional it all kind of rolls into one when you're in this business so those two places are the best way to find that you can also drop me in

i love a good cold email april at r l h r e dot com

brian_nelson_palmer (53:31.52)

those links in the episodes episode notes too so thanks april and for and for you tuning in one specific request which is do you have a friend or colleague who works on commission and if so would you april just made a good point which is it's not just sharing the podcast but the actual episode if you want to share that episode with the april nine really just where our goal with this was to share some perspective and possibly help folks in that department with life balance and commission sales so i would love that if you

brian_nelson_palmer (54:01.74)

would share that so thanks for watching thanks for listening and if you're more of a reader you like the short summary of things you can subscribe to my email list i'll send you my three favorite life hacks for time hacks right off the bat and you also get even more content it's not just the podcast i'm doing webinars and other things consistently and so you'll get all of that to so if you want a little more in life balance and practical productivity i would love you to join the email list but right

of sharing this productivity gladiator thing with you so thanks for checking us out and that's wrap.

Soness Stevens - TEDx Talks: Getting, Giving, and Excelling At One

The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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The Episode Details

In this episode, Soness Stevens, the Original TEDx Speaker Coach,
joins Brian to talk about getting, giving, & excelling at, a TEDx Talk. This episode is a departure from the normal episode, since Brian’s TEDx talk went live and went viral, Brian’s received a lot of questions about how to get a TEDx talk, and tips or advice on giving one. This episode with Soness shares solid answers to those questions.

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Today’s Guest

Soness Stevens
The 1st TEDx Speaker coach

www.yourspeakingjourney.com

Soness Stevens LinkedIn

Soness Stevens, the Original TEDx Speaker Coach is a communications expert, four-time speaker at TEDx, coach to more than 140 TED & TEDx presenters, and member of the TED Global faculty. Her stories inspire audiences to cry, laugh, and give standing ovations. Audiences of 10 to 1,000 are moved, connected, and engaged by Soness's presentations. 750,000 people have undergone transformation over 20 years.

You can contact Soness Stevens here.

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When do you know you have an idea that’s Good for a TEDx talk?

• TED calls a talk an “idea worth spreading”

• Chris Anderson, the head of TED says:
  “Everyone has an idea worth spreading”

• Soness adds to that:
  “…when they make it clear concise and replicable.”

The application process

• Brian’s Process: it took 2 years (with a 14 month COVID Delay):

  • Researched over 100 events.

  • 23 applications in total / ended up with 2 offers.

  • Idea combined with a story people can relate to.

  • 2 offers within a couple of weeks for each other.

• Pick an event that’s relevant to your topic and to your audience

• Recommend focusing on one event and one application at a time. A good quality and tailored application to a specific event, with a video of yourself mentioning your idea, will beat the “blast everyone with the same blueprint” every time.

• Only accept or plan to give one TEDx talk at a time, for one idea at a time.

• In a TEDx speaker application 4 things to address: 

1. What’s the idea worth spreading?

2. How does your talk align with that TEDx event’s theme? 

3. Why should anyone care?

4. Why should they listen to YOU share the idea?

Soness Stevens

Developing Your Talk

From Brian:

• Write it first, focus entirely on the content and “what you’ll say”, up until 4 weeks before talk, then switch to memorizing your delivery on “how you’ll say it”.

• For 6 months - 3x per week zoom calls with friends. I read them the talk and showed them the slides. At the end, I asked them “On a scale of 0-not at all likely, to 10-extremely likely, how likely would you be to recommend this talk to a friend or colleague.?” and “Tell me why?”. This is the Net Promoter Score question. When I was consistently getting 9s & 10s almost all the time I knew the content of the talk was ready.

From Soness:

• Takes more of a creative side, must bring in your personality. Bring out the type of person. Unique delivery to you. Make sure you bring in your humor.

• Feedback should be taken with a grain of salt. Everyone wants to be helpful, so they’re going to give you whatever they can think of, that can cause you to lose track of your talk completely.

Delivering Your Talk

• Clear & Concise

• From Brian “I recommend it’s memorized word for word, you should be so comfortable with it it’s like wearing an old pair of pants.”

• From Soness, one of her clients said “I know this talk so well I feel like I could give it while changing a tire in the rain.”

What to do after your TEDx talk Comes Out

• From Soness: Some people experience post talk shame where they want to “take it back”. Overcoming this comes from good preparation and connection with your talk. Often that shame comes from not being comfortable with it when you give it.

• Media blitz and share it with everyone you know.

• Set up your posts and emails in advance.

• You can even prerecord interviews and then have the channel wait to put them out until your TEDx talk is released.

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Links to TED Talks referenced in this episode:

Brian’s Talk:

• Reimagining the actual value of your time | Brian Nelson-Palmer | TEDxWhiting

Speakers Soness Mentioned Stories About:

• How to deal with toxic family relationships | Johnson Chong | TEDxRolandPark

• The Bystander Effect: Why Some People Act and Others Don't | Kelly Charles-Collins | TEDxOcala

• A Corporation is a Collection of Unique Souls like You & Me | Shirley Liu | TEDxCambridgeUniversity

• The Flipside of Loneliness | Monica Rivera | TEDxFlatbush

• Happy Soles: Happy Souls | Rob Nugen | TEDxOgikubo

• WHAT EVERY WOMAN NEEDS TO KNOW TO CLOSE THE GENDER GAP | AYSHA VAN DE PAER | TEDxLausanneWomen

Books To Help Prepare For A TED Talk

• Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds
  by Carmine Gallo

• How to Deliver a TED Talk: Secrets of the World's Most Inspiring Presentations: Revised and Expanded New Edition
  by Jeremey Donovan

• TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking
  by Chris Anderson

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Why Subscribe To The Email List: Brian does special zoom events and shares hacks and tips exclusively for his email subscribers. This like “12 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 results from these 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.

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Episode Transcript

00:00

Productivity Gladiator. I'm Brian Nelson Palmer. On this show, we talk about life balance and personal productivity. It's about leveling up the person as a whole with topics that work both at home and at work. And in this episode, I want to do a little something different because this is about getting, giving and excelling at TED Talks. And I wanted to share because I had the opportunity to do a TED Talk.

00:28

recently and it was a phenomenal experience. And I kind of wanted a bearing on, okay, how is this? It was my experience similar to the regular experience. And I kind of wanted to share for those folks that are interested. I've had some people ask me about what it's like to do a Ted talk and that kind of stuff. So with me today, I actually have Soness Stevens, who's the founder and creative director of Your Speaking Journey. So Soness, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. Such a joy to be with you, Brian. And what is for those folks who

00:57

don't know like Your Speaking Journey, they've never heard of it. Talk about you, Your Speaking Journey and your connection with Ted. Thank you. My name's Senes Stevens. I am the founder and creative director of Your Speaking Journey. I'm coached over 140 TED and TEDx speakers around the world. I'm also a TED Worldwide and four time TEDx speaker, as well as a three time academic journal publisher of talks about...

01:26

So that's the academic side of me. So people are like, wow, you spent all your time on stages and TV and radio is to us. And then like on the other side, when I talk about academics, that's when I start getting back into my introverted side. But I am an active publisher in academic journals. And yeah, that's very cool. So as far as Ted and my relationship with Ted and TEDx, I do not represent Ted or the brand. I'm literally the first.

01:55

TEDx speaker coach. So I started an industry back in the day based on one of the textbooks that I wrote about speaking from the heart. It was the first multimedia textbook used in the Japanese university system and based on publications that I wrote. And most people know me from Fox and NHK TV and how I was on the stage and tour for over 15 years.

02:19

Wow, that is well, it's certainly my hope for today was that I'd be able to, I wanted to kind of compare, okay, this was my experience versus the kind of overall experience. And so I really appreciate you being here to shed some light on with with all the different speakers you've worked with in your own experience. Clearly, this will be really good to kind of be able to give a general more general experience as opposed to just what I went through and that kind of thing. So this is thank you very much for being here.

02:47

And actually, I'm curious, along that topic, I want to know what would you say makes you different from? There are other, in my journey with Ted, I did run into other people who are Ted coaches or speaker coaches. So what would you say makes you different from other speaker coaches or Ted coaches? Well, it's interesting that you've talked to other people and then you were like, hey, Soness, I want to talk with you. Right. So, I mean, there must have been something there for you to say, wow, there's something unique about her process and how she communicates.

03:17

and what that looks like. You know, I think what we do is a little different because we start, most people are like, oh, here's an idea. And one of the first things we need to think about is, is the first idea the best idea? Because often it's not. How do we go deeper into it? As the cellist Yo-Yo Ma says, do you know Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist? I'm familiar, yeah. Brilliant. You might even see his commercials for Masterclass right now. But he says, without deep contemplation,

03:46

you're just communicating sheer sound. And so what we do that's a little different is not start with a formula or a structure. It's literally getting deep into deep contemplation, creative work. And how do we, how do we find what that, that heart of your idea really is? And I've lived in Japan for more than 25 years. I go, I'm like you, Brian, you're like a snowbird moving from North to South. I spend half my time in the U S and abroad and wherever my speakers call me to, and half my time in Japan.

04:15

And one of the things we talk about is our kokoro zashi. And Japanese kanji for this, or the characters for it, is kokoro is heart, and zashi means to pierce through. So to pierce through the heart, and we sit down and really search for what's piercing through the heart to find the universal truth and that connection. And then from there, we can start the creative process. Very cool. So it's very mindful, it's very Zen. I was gonna say, it's very different than, you know, Ted said.

04:44

The premise of TED is an idea worth spreading. And it sounds like for you, it's an idea worth spreading, but more about getting to the heart of the person who has this idea that might be worth spreading and connecting all of that together. I don't know, that's what I'm getting on this side. Well, yeah, actually, one of my speakers, Johnson, he spoke on how to break up with your toxic family. And when we started working on his idea, and it took a year to develop that talk. And when we started working on that idea, he's like, I think the idea is this. And I'm like, well,

05:13

you know, Ted and Ted X, he's a shaman. They're not gonna go for the shaman side of things. They're not gonna go for the pseudoscience. Let's dig and get to the heart of what it is. And on day one, I don't know why, but I mind map everything and I drew this piano keyboard. I draw this, I have no idea. And then session two, as we're deep, deep diving into his kokorozashi, his heart's mission, he says,

05:38

Did I ever tell you that I'm a classically trained pianist? No, I had no idea. He said, yeah, well, my mom wanted me to become one. So I could teach piano lessons at home, and she could take care of my kids. However, the only problem with that is I'm gay, I don't want kids, and I hate the piano. Okay. Well, there you go. And so we started diving down there and figuring out what it was, and he really wanted to communicate. I guess the piano keyboard came into play.

06:07

not a psychic, have played one on TV and movies. But yeah, so we get to go deeper into it. And really the essence of this idea was not about shamanism and it is because he is, but it's not just something that's ethereal, but how do we bring it back to easily digestible and accessible pieces that the audience can latch onto? And then as well, like his workshops have been filling up.

06:34

He's been doing retreats abroad. So those have been filling up. That's great too. And we want to give an access point. And it did come down to how to break up with your toxic family. It's epic. That's wild. Okay, I think I'm getting a good, I like this. I like this a lot. Well, let's talk about, so the Ted, I kind of want to kind of break it down into four sort of sections that I kind of want to pick your brain on and just discuss. The first is applying and getting selected for a TED talk.

07:02

You know, maybe a couple thoughts or tips on that and what that's like. Uh, then developing your talk. Once you get selected, you also have to develop. And of course that they might go in different order, understand, but we'll talk about the developing of your talk and the delivering of your talk. And then I'm kind of curious your thoughts on, uh, or recommendations on what, once you've done the talk, then what, so let's jump up to that. So in the first part, if folks are not familiar, oftentimes the question that comes up for folks that aren't familiar is, okay, how do you.

07:32

get a Ted talk. And before we do that, one of the things that I want to ask is, so now I'm kind of curious here when do you know you have an idea that's good for a Ted talk? Or is it just you can find like, is it the idea for I know you talked about getting into the person is it the idea first? Or is it what are your thoughts on on that? How do you know you've got everyone's a little different when it comes to this, the head of Ted Chris Anderson, he says, we

08:00

everyone has an idea worth spreading. And I'd like to add to that, when you make it clear, concise and replicable. And getting to the heart of what that is, like often people will come with an idea and sometimes people know exactly what they wanna do. So for example, one of my speakers, Kelly Charles Collins, she said, I wanna speak on the bystander effect when good people stand by as bad things happen to other good people and say nothing. And immediately that was the direction we did.

08:27

the deep exploration work, we did a whole bunch of creative work, and it all came through that anyway. It was directly going towards the bystander effect. And the talk is amazing. She had a standing ovation and now she gets, you know, like she has $100,000 speaking months, which is not the goal of my speakers and it's not the goal of my creative services here. It's really to be able to help you find that idea and script from your idea, finding the core thesis, which is the thread that ties together your entire talk all the way through.

08:55

to your audition piece and then to developing the entire talk, line by line, word for word, so that every word hits with impact. That's what we do. And the creative writing team that I work with here as well, we support you every step of that journey because everyone is a different level writer and how we create and write, is that really representing who you are and who you're becoming. On the other side of it is people who come and they're like, I think I have this idea. And some people come, they've already been booked for a TEDx talk.

09:22

maybe they were reached out to by the organizers, or maybe they submitted an idea and they're like, I don't know how to do this. And some people haven't applied for a TEDx talk yet at all. And they think, I know there's something in me, but I'm not quite sure what that is. I think it's this direction. And when we go in that direction, we get to have more creative play and see what's going on underneath all of that. One of my speakers, he...

09:50

he came to me and he's like, hey, I've got, looked for this TEDx talk. I want to speak about my company. We teach rich Indian kids how to get to Oxford and Harvard and elite schools. And, you know, he sent over his initial script and I was like, oh, how do I say I wouldn't put you on my stage? And we had, I was like, can I have a direct conversation with you about this? And he said, yeah. He's like, I wouldn't put you on my stage with us. Is this all about?

10:18

I went to the school and I did this and then I got my master's and then I got my PhD and then I got a doctorate and then I got a law degree and all these things. Well, you can be just like me, but where was he in all of that? It was more about you can be just like me versus how is that changing and growing? I'm like, I don't know. I have this feeling there's something else in there and I don't know what that is. Will you come with me on a journey and we'll explore it once and see how it goes. He's like, sure. We went through and explored and suddenly he...

10:47

He just had this feeling about him. So I just asked one question. I've never asked anybody before, and I've never asked anyone since. And I'm not gonna say what the question was, but he opened up about this one pivotal moment when he was seven years old. And what he doesn't tell people is that after he closes his elite school for the day, he goes off into the slums and he mentors kids there. And he teaches them the same things that he teaches the wealthy children for free. And his experience mentoring what that looked like, and he was...

11:15

thinking about creating a workshop on how to get these kids to be able to defend themselves because every hour in India, eight children are raped. And so we explored that some more and his talk ended up being about how to stop child rape in India education. Wow. Quite a difference. Okay. Quite a difference. And within a few months, it had over a million views and it's him and it's his personality that comes through as well. He's like,

11:44

I want to do the ABC song in our language. I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that for most people, but you know who you're trying to reach. And the talk's done in English. But you have to also take that into consideration. Who are you at the heart of all this? Where are you going? What kind of impact are you going to create in the world? And how do you make it so that it's clear, concise, and replicable? Because by the time he walked off that stage, he had 50 volunteers for that organization.

12:13

And now it's all across India. So I'm here, I like that. So it's clear, concise and replicable is your idea we're spreading. And that is okay. If your gut feeling is, it seems like you might have something there, then you might have a TED Talk. So that's how maybe you should, if you're looking to, if you're interested in it, that's when you might start applying. Yes. Thinking about it that way. So let's look at part B to your question. May I answer part B? Yeah. So part B is,

12:41

how do you know when you have that idea? Like I said, some people don't know that they have that idea, but what we'll do is we'll sit down and explore and see where that's going. And once we hit it, we know where we're going. 97% of my speakers get booked to speak at TED or TEDx. The only 3% that don't are the ones who don't hit the enter button. And we're not mass sending out applications. I know there's a new kid on the block who is...

13:05

pretty much copy pasted my website. There's a new kid on the block and he has like a team that's sending applications to every event, which is causing it to be very difficult to get local people into events. So it's kind of jammed up the system, but we wanna make sure that you're speaking to the right people, the right audience, and getting the correct avenue for you to share those ideas. And it's still working. We're still getting through. And every...

13:35

I missed every one of my speakers gets the feedback from the organizer. I saw it. That is the best application and best audition piece I've ever seen. So we make sure we get to the heart of the idea. We put just as much work into the audition piece as your full talk. Got it. So if you listening haven't been through the application process, for me, what I kind of discovered is you have these events and the events generally have contact information on their pages.

14:05

audition period where here the you know we're accepting applications from speakers. So you'll fill out the application and each one's a little different because each event is hosted by a different person or a different group. And so you kind of follow the instructions that they have and submit your idea worth spreading and then let them kind of evaluate it and each one is a little different. So I guess so for me my experience was that it took me.

14:32

two years to finally get selected, but that was also because COVID happened right in the middle. So I did some applications and then COVID shut like everything down. And then I picked it up again, but in the beginning, I did like 21 different applications and researched a bunch of events and none of them went through. And so then I kind of went back to the drawing board and what was going on. And it really was, it took a couple of rounds of applications and it was a lot of work to get there, but I did finally get a couple of them did get back to me. And

15:01

and accept my application. So I actually ended up with two offers in the end when I had, I feel like I finally sort of had a better idea on, okay, that you're portraying the idea. Some of the things you've hinted at, Senes with like the, you know, connecting it to your, it's a personal story too. It's not just the idea itself, but it's connecting it with the person who's delivering it and that kind of stuff. So putting that together, but that's generally the process. Is that, would you add anything to that? Does that sound about right?

15:28

Yes. I had a positive psychologist who had applied to 13 different TEDx events before he started working with me and then we started working together and immediately he got booked for three different events. Now here's the thing, and I'll go back and let me reference another person, Shirley Lue, she's the VP of L'Oreal Paris. When we were working together on her applications, there was a lot of like, I'm not sure, she kept saying this one phrase, which was beautiful. She said,

15:56

a corporation is a collective of souls to blossom. And I was like, wow, that's such a brilliant idea. I've never heard him. She's like, I want to talk about mentorship. It's like, that's been done. This is something unique I've never heard of. And finally, she got to the point, like, I had this idea. What if a corporation is a collective of unique souls to blossom? Like, there you go. But sometimes it takes people a while to get there. And she-

16:22

Applied to different 10X events. And I said, your events are definitely going to be, there's a Harvard of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. These are going to be your events. She's like, what about this little coastal town off the UK? I said, well, you live in Paris. I think this little coastal town is going to be looking for locals who maybe put up a dam for the flooding or doing something very locally oriented. I really think your events are Harvard of Paris, Cambridge, Oxford. She's like, oh, and she's like, yeah. I'm like,

16:50

What about London? I said, that's not your event. That's hard sciences, your social sciences. Let's, it's a waste of their time, a waste of your time. And you don't want to waste the organizers time because it's only volunteers who are working so hard. And we want to make sure that we're honoring their time, their space and ability to go through the applications. So we only apply for a couple of events. And I tend to have a good idea which ones are going to pick who. And she's like, okay.

17:17

Two weeks later, she's like, I got a rejection from that small coastal town. This system doesn't work. I said that was not your event. Then a day later, TEDx London said no. I'm like, that was not your event. Then two weeks later, Harvard to Paris, yes. This following week, Cambridge, yes. Oxford, yes. Then she's like, I'm going to do them all. I'm like, whoa. That's three TEDx talks in a matter of three months. When we look at these things, Brian, we have to think about how—

17:43

many wonderful ideas out there. How much time do we have to dedicate? Because it takes between three months to a year to develop a beautiful, hard-hitting TEDx talk that's going to reverberate for years to come and change the lives of everyone in that audience. And if you're just willy-nilly scribbling it together, it's not going to have as much of an impact. And that's what you want with your idea. Plus, there are other people with brilliant ideas out there too. And we can give...

18:10

other people those opportunities because maybe their ideas will change one person's life. It's not about how many views you get or how many talks and ideas you get out there. It's about who's that one person who's listening who really needs that idea and that could have a profound life-changing experience. So we need to look at that too. So how many events? Let's just focus on the one at a time. I have had speakers who've done back-to-back and we've worked together on that. But we already knew.

18:40

Like you said, and it's also generally if you have an idea worth spreading, if you land if you were to get three accepted, the idea isn't then to go create two more ideas and no, you started this with an idea worth spreading. So one talk, one idea worth spreading. And like you said, give other people the opportunity to do it. I mean, I was really blessed that I had two talks except me. It was like, holy smokes. Yes, I have, but I had already accepted the first one. And so I was honest with the second.

19:09

the second host and said, you know, I just, I accepted this other one a few weeks ago and I was gonna speak with them. I don't know how this works, but I'm assuming that it would not be good for me to, you know, do two of these things. So let's let other people do it. And they totally agreed and are totally mimicking what you're saying right now, which is yes, you've got your idea and that is one talk and you don't do multiples. Just do one and see where it goes from there. I love that about you, Brian. And that's why I think you and I connected so deeply is because of that.

19:38

You have integrity, you have this ability to say, I know where I'm going with this, and I want other people to have the opportunities as well. And it's not a scarcity mindset, it's an abundance mindset. And maybe somewhere years down the road, you'll be like, oh, I'm ready to develop a new one because I had this really great idea. So I think that's wonderful. It's such a great character trait that you have, Brian. Thank you for that. I'm blushing over here. You guys?

20:05

And just for the record, I want to say, like I said, this and I did not work together from like, I am not one of her speakers. I reached out to her for this episode specifically because I wanted her kind of neutral third person perspective on like, I had this crazy, my experience was three years long, this Ted thing and I was committed and I went through all of this. And she was like this amazing point of clarity when I was going through the struggle of like, I just wanted somebody to answer my questions on how does.

20:31

how does this Ted thing work? Cause nobody had shared kind of what we're talking about on this episode. So I wanted, I needed somebody to give a little clarity. So I had a conversation with Sonnette and she was nice enough to give me a few minutes to just talk about, well, here's how the process works. And some of the, like the, some of the clarity that came from, okay, she's done a lot of these. There's a little perspective there. So that was really helpful. So I wanted to reach back out to her so that I could kind of get some perspective on my experience is not necessarily the normal. So I appreciate you.

21:00

getting a chance to do this and making me blush at the same time. Stop. I only say what I see and experience. So yeah, very cool. Very cool. Can we, I want to shift gears to, so now there's the developing your talk part, right? And so I kind of want to compare notes with you because for me, when I went through it, the process that I used, and I'm not going to say this is the right process by any stretch. I don't have millions of views on my Ted talk. That's not a thing.

21:30

for me was, or at least what I found comfort in was I wrote the talk and for I had, I was blessed with six months to prepare for this talk, which is not necessarily normal, but I had a lot of runway. So for me, what I chose to do was every like three times a week for the five and a half months before the talk, I connected with one person on zoom and I read them the talk with, I speak with slides. So I had slides.

21:57

So I shared the slides and gave the talk with them. And then at the end, I asked them, the one question that kicked it off was, on a scale from zero to 10, was zero being not at all likely and 10 being extremely likely, how likely would you be to recommend that talk to a friend or colleague and why? And then we talked. And I asked, is there anything that I could do better? And for me, we kept going and kept going and it wasn't until four months, five months into doing these three time a week talks,

22:26

that I got to a point where I was getting nines and tens for that answer on like, yes, I would recommend that talk to a friend or colleague. And so to me, that was kind of the I kind of followed that approach. And then for the three weeks before the talk, it was memorizing. You said it earlier that I loved. You said, you know, you have to every word has to hit or have an impact, you said earlier. And that was very much a TED talk. You only have a certain number of minutes based on which event. So.

22:52

There is no wasted space. It's not the Ted speakers shouldn't. They generally don't. And you shouldn't get up there and just willy nilly wing it and just, oh, well, let me just talk about this with no preparation at all. Or no, like you should know exactly what you want to say because you have this amount of time to share this. And there are a lot of really good speakers out there. So if you want to do a good one, you can, I don't know. So that for me, that was the way that it evolved. But that was also me like figuring it out on my own and just trying it. So for on your side, is that.

23:22

What would you say about developing a talk, whether they're gonna work with you or not? Do you have any thoughts on that process and kind of how that works? I'd like to address two points on there first. One is the, first we'll start with the development and creative process. So I'm the creative collaborator who, if you're a logic minded person, I'll come with as your creative muse. If you're more on the creative side, I'm the logic that you needed. Got it, okay. I'm the thesis advisor you always wished you had.

23:49

The yin to their yang. Got it. Okay. And then having the full comprehensive team. So a lot of people, when they start off with an idea, they start writing around it and there's actually a typical TED structure. And I feel guilty about it because I think I'm the one who created it. It's literally based on my textbook and based on some of my academic journals. And of course, it's the first TEDx speaker codes in the world.

24:20

That's not how we want to create. A lot of people want to have a paint by numbers approach. Here's my idea, paint by numbers. Let's do this. This is what it should look like. However, if we sit down and do some creative play and you're like, Soness, I didn't sign up for poetry class. I'm like, yeah, Brian, you did. You signed up for poetry class. When you say creative play, me and the logic brain is like, oh, God, creative play? That's what so many people...

24:46

One of my speakers, Michael Tein, he's like the CEO of Greenhouse. He was like, why am I doing this? This is the dumbest thing ever. I don't have time for this. I have a month before my talk. And I'm like, you know, we're doing intensive. Are you in or not? And he's like, okay, I need to do this. He's like, oh my God, this is the most like insightful thing I've ever done. And we've gone through that and done the exploration. He's like, I had no idea.

25:11

How ins, this is somebody who's a CEO and an IT guy who created software for the largest HR software development firm in the world. And he's like, yeah, I'm more of a, so, but the whole entire thing brought about like the pinnacle points of his talk. And he ended up using some of this poetry that he had written.

25:33

in his talk itself and on the slides, he's like, I'm going to use this. I'm actually going to use this in our website and our marketing and training. So it is something that allows someone to have more creative flow. So what we're doing in a process where we're looking creatively is, let's see what you have available to you. When we're looking at creating like the paint by numbers painting of Starry Night, well, let's see what paints you have available. What colors do you have? How does this look? We put it all out on the palette.

26:00

And they're like, wow, well, you can't paint Starry Night without blue and yellow, and I don't have those. So let's figure that out. And it looks like a mess initially. And then we're like, there it is, this, this, this. And it all comes together. And when we're looking at a TED Talk, we're looking at it as an episodeal part of your series. Whereas a keynote, when we designed that as well, like we're working with one of my speakers on, I'm not gonna say the title yet because he hasn't spoken yet. So.

26:27

It's a really cool title. It's an amazing talk. But he gave this keynote in Australia. He flew from Canada, Australia to give this talk in front of 600 people. When we designed that, that was more of a dramatic film that has all the textures and layers that you need. You want to create those textures and layers within the episode, and you want to be able to see how you can expand it out into a longer dramatic form. I love the fact that he's also a nerd. My hobby is reading academic journals. I like all the data.

26:56

Um, you really have portrayed your yin and yang side. Creative side, the word play creative play followed by academic journals. Yeah. Well, it's great. You know, some of the best research comes out of Scandinavia, like in my future, my, my next incarnation of myself, my next birth will be in, in Scandinavia. So I can get grants for researching things like, Oh, there's a, there's a fantastic piece of research on why everyone hates Nickelback.

27:26

And that was done in Scandinavia. And I'm like, this is where I want to go before. These are my people. Yes. Look at this photograph. Yes. Why is everyone, you know. And that came from one of the jokes that we wrote in his keynote. That's so funny. Oh, gosh, it's hilarious. So yeah, anyways, we want to look at what paints you have available to you and create from there.

27:53

And so every single one of my speakers talks is different. Every one of them has to bring in your personality. So when we're looking at that, maybe you might be neurodiverse and how does that play in? How do you become you on that stage? Some people may look at your talk and they're like, eh, not my kind of person. And they think, well, that is that type of person and you have to bring that out. And on the other side, how do you create it so that it's uniquely you?

28:20

plus accessible to everyone. You see a lot of females who are trained by men and you can always like, yeah, you were trained by a man. But you also see a lot of the most viewed Ted talks are a majority of views come from women. So we also wanna make sure that there's the accessibility approach to it. So yeah, you definitely wanna take a whole encompassed look at it. You wanna figure out like, what's your sense of humor? Like Brian has a great sense of humor. I would love to see more humor and levity throughout your talk as well and how to paint that in.

28:49

What that would look like, what's your status when it comes to bringing that levity in there as well? How do you want to come across? Do you have a dry sense of humor? Making sure that it's wholly you, and that's the joy of it. That's the joy. And everyone's different. Cool. Like Johnson, I had a different vision. I'm like, wow, he's a trained actor from New York and a shaman, and he's the most amazing just spirit that comes out.

29:18

taking that and being able to play and say, hey, let's do something sort of, um, in a three act kind of sense and let's play that one. I'm going to want to give away the talk, but it's kind of got a little Harry met Sally kind of feel to it. And you're going to be like, wow, that really is him, which his initial drafts didn't feel like him. It felt like, this looks like what a Ted talk should look like. And I do. So let's make sure we connect. And I want to make sure I give it.

29:44

the to you that's listening, I want to give you all the links to these different talks that Soness, of course, will just brag about her speakers that she shared because I'll share my link for my talk and you can see some of these other talks that she's discussed if the doing a TED talk is of interest. You know, these might be, I know there's a lot of people who just love watching TED talks. And so I certainly have loved after I spoke with Soness, I checked out a lot of these speakers talks that she's talking about. So I really can identify with them. So I want to make sure I give you the links to.

30:14

which was about the feedback area. So, and I find that works very well for some people in certain stages of the stages of the talk. If it comes too early, it can redirect the talk in the direction that that person has a perception of you. So for example, one of my speakers, Monica Rivera, she was speaking at a New York event and we'd been working on her talk for like eight months and then she got booked and we walked around audition piece for like six months and then finally got her booked. And then

30:41

And I was like, we need to start working on your main talk because you're going to get booked. And she's like, no, no, no. You know, she didn't quite have faith in everything. You're like, just like, I don't know. Are they really going to pick me? And like, yeah, this is really solid of an idea. What is hers is the flip side of loneliness. And so as we're working on that, she got booked and they're like, we need your first draft by Friday. Like, oh no. It's like, she's like, I should have been working on it all this time.

31:08

And that's what often happens. Your situation, Brian, is very rare where they give you six months to work on it. Often it's, we want your first draft in one to two weeks. And that's too tight to turn around. Now we'd been working on it and we'd actually had a team of people to make sure that all the perspectives and the feedback was coming through, similar to what you were doing. Whereas one of the other speakers at our event, the week before her talk, her friends decided to throw her a feedback party. Oh, those are fun. Yeah. Those are fun.

31:36

Everybody jumped in is like, we want to be of service and be helpful. And they all gave her very helpful and insightful feedback to the point where she shredded her talk and she had a week to come up with a new talk in its entirety. Because people want to be helpful. And another one of my speakers, Rob Nugent, he spoke on being grounded from the soul. He's a barefoot person who walks around the world. He's also someone who works with suicide hotlines.

32:06

How do we look at suicide awareness and grounding to the earth and connecting? And it's a little wooey, but it's not, you know? And he initially got feedback from people on a weekly. When you described it, it sounds a little wooey, but I'm with you, I'm sticking with you. Tell me, tell me. No, because we can't do woo and get accepted by Ted and TedX and you can't talk about emotions and emotional awareness these days, because Ted has gotten strict again. They used to have like these strict guidelines and now they're back to like, do you have a license for this?

32:34

Not a coaching certification. Are you like, Jessie, um, Raphael and Juntha, she, she wrote a book called Life Launch. She's a psychotherapist down in California, 25 years experience. She's published, she's got all these things under her belt. And she was speaking about how to deal with anxiety and they're like flags. But fortunately we had enough to back it up. And, you know, she actually is a licensed psychotherapist and, you know, she's published and

32:59

all these points. They're being very strict these days. They were calling him to, but fortunately he has a lot of creditations, not through like, I'm a life coach kind of stuff, but more, this is the work and the services that we do as a suicide hotline operator and manager. But anyway, so his talk, so initially he was like, I'm going to run it through my men's groups and they'd go through and everybody like, yeah, I don't think you should talk about this because I know you as that. And it was their perception.

33:26

and projection of who they know him to be rather than the other elements that they didn't know about him. Because when we're connecting with people, like Brian, some people might know you as like the productivity guy, but then you might have another aspect to yourself that's there. I also do standup comedy. And some people might know me as, oh, Soness the standup comedian. Well, that's kind of a...

33:47

You know, it's a different Ted talk than the speaker coach and it's a different Ted talk than the TV personality and all your different. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you got it. That makes a really good point. It's a very, very different thing. So they're looking at you from one perspective and giving you the best advice that they can give you because they want to be a service. And when you get to a certain point, there is a point where people are never going to say, I saw this other guy take the stage and it was not that stellar. Let's just put that way.

34:16

But no one's going to say that. Everyone's going to come up and say like, oh, that was inspiring. Yes, exactly. Because if you can do it, I can do it. Uh-huh. You know, there's always going to be, nobody's going to come up and go like, yeah, that, that. Yeah. You really should have. And then the third thing that you brought up is, you know, a lot of people do want to speak from the heart. And I was at one of my speakers events and you know, we trained for, we trained for like six months for this. And I flew out to Pakistan to do this one. It was great.

34:45

I guess some of my speakers are so awesome. They're just like, I got air miles. I'm like, I'll go. Nice. And right after they were on the stage, the next person came up, heard their talk, and it was like, oh my God. What was that? That was, you know, it was standing ovation is what it was. And then they come up and they're like, I'm going to speak from the heart. And they take the script and go, ripping it up, throwing off the stage. And the audience is like, yeah, clap, clap, clap, speak from the heart. And like 10 minutes later.

35:15

speak from the script. And I know this because I have done this, you know, in my early days. I had done this before too. And what that boils down to when somebody says, I'm going to speak from the heart last minute is, well, I have this feeling, but it's also nerves. And I'm not that connected with this. And if I fail, well, it doesn't really matter because I, you know, I just ripped up the script.

35:42

But when you work on that idea for so long, like, you know, three years for you, right? Or when you're working on it for like six months to a year, you feel such a level of connection and conviction. With conviction comes confidence, and with confidence and competence in hand in hand, you walk on stage and create a different emotional connection. And you're not in a memorized state of mind. It's not like a last minute, like, let me throw this together. It's integrated into your body and soul.

36:12

That's like I describe it like wearing an old pair of pants. Like given that talk should be like wearing an old pair of pants, which isn't exactly the same. I feel like that pales in comparison to the amazing metaphor you just used about soul and all the other stuff. But for me, it was like, man, this thing, this talk is so comfortable. I have delivered it so many times. And that's so I that's a I love that sort of connection. And yes, it should be comfortable like that, too, with the. And that kind of leads to the third point that I want to talk about, which was

36:41

So then delivering the talk. When it comes to the talk delivery, I absolutely, I don't normally, so in my productivity gladiator workshops, I'm generally speaking to groups about the different, all the different aspects of productivity and life balance and all this stuff, but it's very much a back and forth, like a workshop kind of thing. However, with the TED talk, you have X number of minutes, you have to be very concise, you have to, so for me, I truly believe that in,

37:11

And I read books on Ted and for those interested, I will drop. I read two or three books on Ted. And if so, Ness has any ideas. I'll certainly share the links to those on Amazon with you, too, if you want to read a book about this stuff. But I definitely got the message from those books that I heard was, OK, definitely want to memorize, be very concise. This isn't a put a slide up and then kind of wing it kind of thing. This is you want to be very concise about that, because a every every word needs to be precious and crafted to get that.

37:40

emotional connection as well as the message across and the idea very concisely. So like you said, it was the two C words you said, concise, clear, concise and replicable. Replicable. That one. Yes. So I love that. Do you have any other thoughts on when it comes to delivering the talk? You said it beautifully. I'm done.

38:03

I'll take it. You heard it here, guys. She said it was good. It was great. And everyone has a different, you know, a different modality that they go to, their go-to modality. And when we bring it across every single modality in order to embody it, and it, you should know it, Monica said this great. She was like, I know this talk so well, I could deliver it as I was changing a flat tire in the rain. But every time. Nice. That's a good metaphor.

38:28

Yes. Not quite the pants. It depends on what kind of pants you're wearing. Hers is a way better metaphor and a way better movie than an old pair of pants. Oh my God. Like changing a tire in the rain. Very different mental picture. I like that. Yeah. One of my speakers literally, she literally had to give the talk after the sky was falling. She parked her car and she parked a car, parking meter.

38:53

And she's about to get out of the car. She's like doing her last run through to go on, you know, to go into the venue and go on stage. And suddenly the building next to her explodes. And just like all these bricks came falling down in her car, crashed into the windshield, everything. Apparently like a power, like a water vein had burst within the building next to her. And literally the sky was falling.

39:18

She did a runner because the windshield was coming in and there was nothing going to save her. I was like, I'm not sure which was the safer situation there. She went in. She was able to not only just integrate a micro story of 30 seconds for that, but it also led into her point because she was so well integrated with that idea and that talk that everything, all the words landed, everything landed. She was also able to integrate 30-second micro story of what had happened.

39:48

that was, it felt like it was part of the talk from the get-go because it fit with her teaching and her structure. It just totally worked. But yeah, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. And she's like, no, literally the sky was falling. My car is demolished. And so that's a really great place to be. Not so that it's so memorized that you're feeling static in it, but it's so that it's more of a-

40:16

How can I connect with the audience in this moment? How can I create that deeper level connection? And one of the things that I practice, I'm unusual background, but one of my Buddhist practices that we practice at the temple here in Japan is, it's a practice of compassion. And when we can walk out on stage and know our talk in our mind, but also look at the audience and think, just like me, this person has felt pain. And look at the audience and think, just like me, this person wants to create a change.

40:46

and just like me, this person wants to be loved. And when we can bring that element to it and hold that and connect that and know where those moments and pivotal points are in the talk, that it's not just that because we staged it, but because we created that intention with every phrase and every word of how is this moment connecting with you and the audience, how is it creating this neuro-sync that we can connect and be able to communicate that idea

41:16

without having to falter. And even if you do forget a word or two or a phrase, no one's gonna know it because it'll just come seamlessly into the next thing. Yeah, yeah. Mm, so yeah, I think you said it really well. Got it. Okay, that's, all right, so delivering the talk, that's, well, and that kind of brings us to the fourth sort of overall topic that I kind of wanted to ask you about, which is, okay, now you've done this TED Talk, and so now what? I mean, obviously, it comes out,

41:45

and you tell everybody, you text your friends, you post it on social media, like you, oh my gosh, that's so cool. And then what? So that's what, is there like, what are your thoughts on what now? Well, obviously everybody has a different path, but I'm curious what your thoughts are. I didn't mean to jump in there, yeah. No, there are two things that come up for people. One is post-talk shame. And I'm not sure if you've experienced that or not. Are you familiar? Did you experience once you finished your talk?

42:14

Okay, a lot of people experience post-talk shame and usually not my speakers so much because like they really, really nailed it. But even Brene Brown talks about this. Like she goes up, you know, she gets off stage and she's like, nobody can see that talk and vulnerability and she tries to break into the venue to steal back the talk. That is a real thing. That is a real thing that people can address. And the way to overcome that is one, for the process of the deliberate and deep connection with the talk that you build over time.

42:43

And that's going to eliminate the post-talk shame. So if you have overcome that, then you can move on to step two, which is, you know, of course you wanna go on a media blitz with it. And of course you wanna share it with everyone you know. And the algorithms for YouTube are constantly changing. What's working, what's not working, you know, how are we making that traction or not? And of course, you don't know when the talk is coming out. Sometimes it'll come out within a week. And I've had one of my talks that came out.

43:13

nine months later, it's like, my talk on miscarriage, what do you say? Like, I've had a baby in the time that talk came out, obviously. So when we look at this, we just think, you know, you don't know when that timing is. So be prepared for that. Have that ready to go. Set up your social media posts in advance. Set up your emails in advance for your list. Set up the connections like, hey, I gave this talk. I don't know when it's coming out. Could you do me a favor? Could you?

43:42

connect with me now and we'll do a recording about it. And then the week that the talk comes out, could you do me a favor and like just be able to nudge it in that week if possible, or just after it comes out. Sometimes, you know, again, YouTube algorithms are constantly changing. So you want to be prepared for that. I mean, you seem to have done a great job with that. How did you prepare? Well, mine was one of those stories kind of like, yours was nine months. For me, it was one of those, I had a really interesting thing happen to me, so that's with mine, which was, everybody else's talk.

44:11

for my TEDx event came out around. So I did my talk on June 25th was the recording date. And then everybody else's talk came out in like mid to late July and mine didn't. And so then it was one of those, oh, like, did I do something wrong? Did I say the wrong thing? Did I violate some rule I didn't know I was like, oh, I'm in trouble, what happened? Like, and so then, and all through the month of August and nothing. And so then in September,

44:41

I reached out to my host, hey, can you inquire about, and she wasn't getting a response back, my event host wasn't. So finally, by the end of September, I mean, at this point, it's now been three months since the talk. It's like, you know, I'm just, I'm gonna email them directly and see if I can get a response. And so I sent the email and I ended up getting amazing news, which was Ted received the talk and they liked it. And they did something where, I don't know what this means, but they said, we want to notify your talk.

45:10

And I still don't, I'm not clear on what exactly that means, but what it did mean is that they saw the talk and they liked it and they wanted to make sure that more of some of their followers would get to see it too. Which of course is a, to me, it was an amazing, that's just a huge, like I'm, I'm that the whole idea was that it's an idea worth spreading. And so if you saw the talk and you thought that too, then like, okay, yes, I'm glad I did this. And so, but then that was early September and then late September, no talk released October.

45:40

Still no talk released end of October. I follow up. Hey, am I still like, is this still gonna happen? So the bottom line is mine didn't come out until five months later, the end of November, November 29th was when my talk finally came out. And so for me, it's really exciting. And I did exactly what I just said, which is told everybody and posted on social media. And it was very cool. And at the same time, I consider myself really fortunate because I mean, it's been

46:10

As we're recording this, it's been out for just a couple of weeks and it's got, you know, five digit views. We're at 50, 60 something thousand views on this talk, which for me is also one of those. I know that my social reach is maybe a thousand or 2000 views. So like if all my friends watched it, that means a thousand or 2000. So I know that the idea was to get the, my, my goal was to kind of share this idea with the world and hope that it helps some people and it resonated with some people. And to me, I feel like that probably happened because I know that

46:40

All these views that are on there are definitely not my friends or people that I know necessarily. So I feel very lucky and fortunate in that way just because I feel like I kind of made a difference and I hope that it helps folks. And so that was I had one of those stories, but I am now putting together a press release because I certainly want to share it with if potentially this could be helpful for some media want to pick it up. Or to me, the interesting thing is everybody has groups that they're involved in.

47:10

If you like for me, I'm an Intel independent diabetic. So I would like to share this talk with, you know, some of the diabetic periodicals. And so I'm going to, you know, I kind of want to craft a press release, but send it directly to them, that personal message. And so reaching out to some of the media for that. But I'm curious, is there anything else that other talks, other speakers have done or other, besides putting press out and going for media or getting picked up on podcasts or, you know, and sharing it with their friends, are there any other interesting things that people have done with their talks after they've come out?

47:38

Well, actually, I would like to acknowledge what you said about getting the notification from Ted or the Ted Mainstage. What that means is they've decided, like, hey, we're going to hold this off for a minute and ping people when it comes up. They don't give alerts for every video that comes out. Let's say it came out on Ted.com. They may have done one of two things. They may have put it out on a newsletter or they may have just given like a...

48:05

The people who are subscribing, they will get a notification there's a new talk online or may have come up through their YouTube channel, which would have said, hey, new TEDx talk online because every day they're uploading how much TEDx talks. Like hundreds of TEDx talks go up all the time, yeah. Right. And they know there's a massive difference in quality these days. It used to be like, every TED and TEDx talk you see is amazing. Nowadays you're like, I'll watch a couple minutes of this. And then you're like.

48:35

I got to turn it off. Yeah, it's so true. You know what I mean, right? Yeah. You don't want to be that person. So to get that extra notification and that alert definitely increased your views. And if they watched it for more than a minute, that counts as a view. So that's a wonderful thing. That's a wonderful push that you got. So that's fantastic. All of my speakers have been featured on Ted.com and so were you. That was brilliant too, Brian. Not everyone does.

49:04

No woo woo, no science, no, how do we say this politely? Right. Right, no pseudoscience. Sure. And so we need to be careful about that. Do you have the credibility and authority and licensure to be speaking upon this topic? Like if you're talking about mental health, do you have a master's or PhD in this kind of stuff? And that's what they're looking for these days. Otherwise, they get flagged. So what you were saying was a valid concern.

49:32

What you were talking about was nothing that should get flagged. And I watched your talk. I was like, yeah, there was nothing in here that should get flagged. You were going around like, if you do this technique, your life will change and you'll lose diabetes. You'll never have to take another insulin shot in your life because you know how much you're worth an hour. Right.

49:52

You're like, you need to know how much you're worth an hour. Otherwise, you won't be able to afford your insulin shots. Because we know how the American medical system is. Oh, gosh. Yeah, let's leave that aside. My goodness. That's a whole episode on medical insurance. And as well, but yes, totally picking up what you're putting down here. Yeah. Right. And people also ask, like, is it the event? And, you know, I used to think more more views came from different kinds of events. Like there were certain events.

50:21

within each country that Ted pays particular attention to. That's not necessarily the case these days. And that's why your talk to be stellar. I spoke at this really tiny event. I think it was our first or second year. And this was a university I used to be a professor at. And they were like, hey, you know, we have this TEDx event, would you please come speak at it? And I just come back from Pakistan, giving a keynote there. And I was like, oh, okay, sure, sure.

50:49

And I was like, no one's gonna see this time. It's such a tiny event, it's gonna get no traction. And then a couple months later, Ted calls me up and says, can we interview you? Meanwhile, I'm in Switzerland, getting my speaker prepared to go on stage the next day. And I'm doing an interview with Ted in New York. Just like, and we would like to feature you on the Better Human series. I'm like, yeah, I know I could do a better job at being a human. Yeah. Right.

51:17

You're like, no, no, we think this talk could really help creative slides. It's a better human series, not because you don't need to be a better human, but because you can help people be better humans. Got it. Yeah. That's why. You know where the internal dialogue goes, like, you really suck. You're like, oh, I'm so much like Penny Brown, aren't I? I know, I was too vulnerable. I'm sorry. Dang it. So they did feature me in their better human series and interview.

51:47

And I think that gave a lot of traction for it. So it doesn't really matter. It was like, oh, the event's too small, it's too new. And it's not necessarily the case. I mean, I picked up on this really tiny event. Who knew? Why were they paying attention to that? It's an event in Japan. And I was one of like two or three English speakers at it. Right, yeah. It should not have been on the radar, but it was. So really focus on developing a great talk, something that's going to.

52:13

really transform lives, but also get that opportunity while you're creating it, what kind of personal transformation are you making? How are you changing as you're in the creation process? And that's important. One of the things that I can, and tell me if I'm on the right track, and do you feel like as you were creating, based on who you are, you created deeper relationships through the creation of this, is that correct? For sure. I, one of the things that I learned with this talk is to,

52:42

be a little bit more vulnerable and open because I did not come from a place of wanting to share my story. Like my first version of this talk is completely different from what you see now on Ted. My first one, I didn't include story about diabetes. I didn't include like there, there were a lot of things where I, my idea was I developed this way to

53:03

The fundamental idea was I developed a way to calculate the value of your time. And that's a really helpful tool in making decisions with your. And it was very other oriented. Let me help you. And instead it's a lot more stories from me and about me and my story and sharing some of that. And it took a long time for me to come in and finally be able to own that. And that was through that process of developing the talk, sharing it three times a week and sharing more. And every time I shared another story about myself, they told me that's the part that they liked. And it was.

53:33

I'm like, dang it, I don't want to share more about my... But that was it. So it's like learning. So for me, it was really learning about sharing my own story. And that was never something that was on my screen. So for me, that was part of what it was for me. And that's really interesting. And because you came from, you know, here's a talk about, you know, numbers and value and worth and all these things, you're like, my story is not worth anything. And you're like, no, it's, oh, my story is worth something.

54:00

On the other side, I was telling you about Jesse and her talk about how to deal with anxiety. Yeah. And her talk, she'd worked with somebody else prior to working with me and was like, oh, I got booked for this TEDx talk on anxiety, but I have no idea what I was going to talk about. And they're like, oh, we have a Toastmasters style group now, just deliver your talk. And she's like, okay, go in and she's like, write up a draft. And they're like, oh, do more about how when you were 16 years old, you slit your wrist and are like cutting or something like that and how your uncle committed suicide. She's like, well, that's when I was 16.

54:29

And she's like, all right, went back and rewrote it and came back in and she read it out and they're like, oh, that's good. And then she's like, this sucks. And then the next guy went and they're like, she's like, why is nobody telling him it's awful? And the next guy went like, this is so bad. And then she reached out to me and she's like, oh, okay, let's do this. And we worked through that. And what we had to look at is the world is in a state of global trauma coming out of a pandemic or however your status is on the pandemic.

54:56

with someone with long haul COVID, I'm like, oh, I'm still in it. I hitch everything. How do we navigate that and how do we make it so that the audience isn't traumatized? Because you can't repack the bags of someone sitting in row 16 CE or the person watching the video. How do you create it in a way that we're not talking about trauma drama?

55:24

and people wanna watch because they wanna hear the drama behind it. Oh my God, it's happening more. Because there's an elevation state. It's not necessarily the connection that we think we're creating. And on the other side, are we creating the potential for trauma? And so we restructured that talk completely backwards. And she said from the get-go, she's like, this talk is not about me. It's really not. It's about giving a practical tool. And it's a very simple one. So we built it up with the, how do we connect with that person where they're at?

55:53

in their lives and focus the attention. Cause if you're dealing with anxiety in that moment, you don't need to hear like, oh my gosh, I felt anxiety too. And when I felt it, I took magnesium. Right. Like I just went for a run, you know? Right, exactly. Yeah. It's like, here's how I dealt with it. And that's not necessarily the one size fits all approach she wanted to go with. So we need to look at that as well. So where as you, for you, you're talking like, here's my business thing. How do we craft that?

56:21

One of my speakers, Aisha, she had a, I don't want to do a spoiler alert on her story, but the story she's always wanted to lead with in her talk about how to bridge the gender gap through investing. She is a former VP of Credit Suisse in Switzerland. And investing, you know, exciting topic. I was like, yeah, it's the driest topic you can ever talk about. And she wanted to open up this really dark story. Well, I want to make your dreams come true. Well, we need some levity after that. I said, you know, seven years ago,

56:52

I watched this documentary about the bowerbirds. I remember everything. Seven years ago, I watched a documentary about bowerbirds. And I told her about the bowerbirds from the documentary and she's like, I'm not a bowerbird. I'm not gonna talk about them. Like you need some levity and shift of energy to create texture in your talk. You can't just leave them in this dark, negative emotional state and then lead to, so you need to start investing women and here's how you do it. You have to get them to where they are. And she's like, I don't wanna talk about the bowerbirds.

57:21

I don't want to know. It's not me. I'm like, but it's your audience. They are the power birds. So when I went to Switzerland and we did the run through, she's like, I don't want to do the power birds. I'm like, do the power birds, do the power birds. She's like, I hate this part. And did the run through with a different group that she was going to be speaking at. She was invited to another event, not a TEDx event. And everybody came running up. I am the power bird. They're like, I need to do this. And then at the TEDx event, there were 1400 people in the audience.

57:51

and standing ovation. They're like, oh my God, she's such an amazing storyteller. She's like, I hate stories. She's like, I love stories now. But people were running up to her after the event, I am the Bowerbird. Now she's got an entire course about financial investing and the pivotal point of the course is the Bowerbird. The Bowerbird. The Bowerbird. You got to go watch that. It's really fun. I don't want to give away her story because it's like spoiler. I don't want to spoil something, but nobody knows what the Bowerbird is unless they saw that same documentary I did seven years ago.

58:19

Right, right. Well, I will make sure that I go through and and so that's why you send me some of these links and I'll look up some of them too and I'll make sure that if you're for you listening that you can go through and check out some of these Ted talks that you kind of heard us glance about. Because it's funny to hear these back these background stories and then actually go watch the actual talk that's up there. And so this is cool. And and so that's really well, it's the net that kind of drives through that that last point, which is all right. So now you've done the talk and that's it. So I.

58:49

I kind of want to wrap here and what I want to start with is by saying first, here's what I love. So, Ness, I love that I feel like you have embraced your yin and your yang with like, you've got the data science formula side, and then you have the creative whatever side. And I feel like whoever you're working with, you become the end of their yang kind of thing when you're working with them. And even whether it's even in conversation, I get that vibe from you just talking with you today and as I did before. And I love that you bring that to the table,

59:18

with your depth of experience with. And so I really appreciate you sharing the stories too. You're clearly a very good storyteller and you totally get that. And so listening to people share stories versus, we could have taken a mathematical approach to here is the formula and this is what you should do. And that would be a really dry podcast episode about what you should do with TED Talk. So thank you for sharing all these, I love the stories and what you brought. So thank you for bringing all of that perspective. I really appreciate it.

59:45

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's such a joy to be with you. And I love that we can just have this sit down conversation very intimately and you know, like we're sitting at a cafe and having a great chat. Exactly, just the three of us talking. You listening and Suness and I, this is it. I love this. And now you had talked, so if people want to get in touch with you or they want to follow you or stay in touch, what's the best way for them to do that? Just come join me at YourSpeakingJourney.

01:00:14

YourSpeakingJourney.com. You can connect with me. I'm very rarely on social media these days, but I don't really need to be, which is fine. So yeah, come over to YourSpeakingJourney.com. If you do want a more analytical approach and you want the step-by-step, you can download your roadmap to TED from YourSpeakingJourney.com and that'll give you point by point what you need in order to get your talk and your idea in a structured order and get booked to speak at TED or TEDx.

01:00:44

Coming 2023 is very soon. When we do look at this, we're looking at, you know, if we're looking at applying today, let's say we sent in an application today, let's say January, we're sending an application January, every event has a different timeline. So it could be anywhere from June to next January that you could get booked for a TED or TEDx talk. So you want to download that roadmap to TED to make sure that you're ready to go. Absolutely. So connect with, and connect with CNS, that's so.

01:01:13

Well, you can connect with me on Instagram, Soness Stevens. I think you can still find me on Facebook, Soness Stevens. Just Google Soness, you'll find me. Well, and if you want the good, the stuff, and some of the knowledge stuff, yourspeakingjourney.com sounds like the win. Thank you so much. And for you tuning in, I do have one specific request, which is, do you have a friend or a colleague who has contemplated doing a TED Talk or has been interested in this?

01:01:40

And if that resident, if if somebody came to mind, as you were listening to this episode, if if you would hit that share button and send them this little episode, two things about that one, it it furthers the bond with you. I love sharing episodes and things that come across with friends or colleagues that I have because, you know, it's one thing to see how you do it or whatever. But it's very cool when you come across something and you think of them and you share that. So I plant that seed with you, because if somebody did come to mind, I certainly hope you'll share.

01:02:08

this episode because getting to talk with Sonneth and getting to share that with others who might be interested for me is a very cool thing. And so thanks for watching. If you watch, thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast or the video. And of course, and actually, if you sign up for my email list right now, I'll send you my three favorite time hacks so you can try them for yourself. These are like the three light bulb moments for people in my workshops that I teach so you can try them out for yourself along with.

01:02:33

the knowledge and info that I'll be sharing and I'll share via email as well. Because just like Soness said, I'm not on social media all that much either. I love connecting with people and I found I like email the most. So that's would love to invite you to subscribe. But with that, I just I love sharing productivity with Gladiator. I love sharing productivity gladiator. And that's a wrap.

My Personal Year In Review & How I Do It

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The Audio/Podcast

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Episode Details

In this episode, Brian shares his “year in review” for 2022, the process he uses to create the review, a template so you can try your own, and the steps he follows to automate the reminders to check back in throughout the year(s) to see if you’re still on track.

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The Evolution Of My Year-In-Review

Right up front, I admit that I poopoo’d this year-in-review practice for years. In my early career I heard about people doing this “year in review” thing. My thinking back then was “If YOU want to waste all that time reflecting on your year that’s fine, but I’m killing it at work right now so I’m going to keep killing it. I know what I’m doing, no need to reflect.” Looking back, I WAS WRONG.

Looking back now, I think I was wrong for 2 reasons.

1) I was missing that there is a lot of power in making sure you’re headed toward my goals.
I now think there’s real power in stepping back and looking at where you’re headed. In the day to day, I would often get so focused on driving metrics, completing tasks, and working toward goals, that I often lost sight of the big picture, I “couldn’t see the forest for the trees”. This reflection has really helped me to both appreciate just HOW MUCH I’ve accomplished AND reach some important realizations on whether I was really happy with the direction I was headed.

2) I was completely missing the reflection and course correction in my personal life.

Most of the reflection I did was entirely focused on my professional life. Performance reviews at work really facilitate this process. Your “annual performance review” is the time when you can and should do this professionally, and discuss it with your boss since they may have good ideas and further direction you can incorporate. The problem though is that I never gave myself my own personal performance review. My personal life was just “happening” to me, like I was a passenger on that train, not driving it. I missed doing a “performance review” of sorts for my personal life.

Coming around to it took years

For more than a decade of my early career, I never even considered doing my own “year in review”. Then from around 2012 to 2019, my steadfast opposition to the practice slowly started to soften. Each year, the people in the productivity space which I followed and looked up to would talk in their blog posts and podcasts about their “year in review” they’d completed and the realizations they’d had. Over the course of 7 years, hearing these messages each year was enough to slowly shift my thinking from a “this is dumb” idea to a “hmmm, I wonder what would happen if I tried it” idea. Finally, in 2019 I did my first one of these for myself and I can honestly say, I was wrong, I love this practice of reflecting on my personal “year in review”. I also feel like I leveled up my personal life significantly!

I think the power is in differentiating your “personal” from your “professional” Year-In-review.

My year-in-review I’m going to share is entirely my “personal” year-in-review. In all my work now teaching life balance and practical productivity, people often lose sight of the “life” part of their “work-life balance”. I think there’s real power that comes from doing this for yourself, for you as a person, separate from you as a professional.

What about my hobbies, & side hustles that produce income?

For me, I have a primary job/career that is my primary source of income, but I also have several side hustles. Some of you may probably identify with that. Those side hustles are included in my personal year-in-review, the main job is not. Here’s where I draw the line - if my hobby or side hustle includes an annual performance review, then I do my reflecting for that one during that review. It’s alright if I touch on some of these or mention them in my personal year-in-review, but it shouldn’t be the focus here. Your personal review is on your life and your personal pursuits.

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The Structure Of My Year-In-Review

I keep this pretty simple, I try to capture the “highs”, the “lows”, revisiting what I said before, and then what I’m going to do now. Laid out, the sections look like this, and I have a template you can use for this later:

• HIGHLIGHTS

  • Accomplishments & Things That Brought Me Joy

  • There were trips!

  • Relationships

• Last year, I said I was going to do some things this year. How’d I do on those?

• Other FRUSTRATIONS, disappointments, and things that made me sad this year:

• The CHANGES and NEW GOALS for YYYY

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Here’s My 2022 Year-In-Review

HIGHLIGHTS for 2022:

Accomplishments & Things That Brought Me Joy

• Lived a true snowbird life by spending the winter in Florida for 9 weeks from late December to late February: Panama City Beach-2 weeks, Downtown Tampa-2 weeks, St. Pete-2 weeks, Clearwater-2 weeks, St. Augustine-1 week.

• In April Nikki and I started working with a nutrition coach. We have been counting macros for the rest of the year; I’m down 7-ish lbs from my high and I’m a notch or two tighter in the belts.

• This was my fourth year volunteering with the Wammies, we were finally back “in person” too and had a big red carpet event at the Capital Turnaround at the end of March. Big event, Big success!

• TEDxTalk Success!  60+ Initial calls with people, and 50+ practice runs, the live event in June, plus a 5 month wait for the video to go live in November, but I finally did it!  Woo!  

• New Car for Nikki AND for myself!  Finally driving a vehicle I can tow a boat with!

• I was out on the boat 29 times!  

• Got to play drums again with Fellowcraft twice!  Reunion baby! Played a wedding, and a private show in someone’s front yard for Halloween.  

• Joined the “Big Brother Big Sister” organization as a volunteer Big Bro, was connected with my Little Bro and hung out with him about twice a month; 14 times in total!  

• Launched the Productivity Gladiator Podcast. 7 episodes completed this year! Averaging about one per month. LOVE the cool conversations I’ve had and the really cool people I’ve gotten to meet, and I feel like I’m really delivering value with each episode.

• Switched from a beard to a go-tee, and NO ONE has noticed or said anything, so I’m taking that as a good sign. Reinforces that my cheeks don’t grow hair thick enough to make it worth doing the full beard, so now have a “cleaner” look without all that sparse cheek hair.  Sticking with this for now.

• Started working with a coach for Productivity Gladiator and this has really helped me focus and start making targeted progress. I feel more focused than ever on what I’m doing there.

• We were able to find renters to live in our condo while we’re down in FL this winter! Woo!  

• I was going to have to step back from volunteering with the Wammies, but they countered and offered me a contract to keep working on it. I LOVE the Wammies, love the team I’m working with, and love supporting an organization like the Musicianship, which does so much good for the community in DC! 

• Wedding Venue Contract signed, date locked in, we’re off to a good start here!

There were trips!

• Florida snowbird this winter for 2.5 months 

• New York City

• Whiting, New Jersey

• Atlanta, GA

• Pennsylvania 4x - Philly & Blandon several times

• VA Beach 2x

• North Carolina 3x - Charlotte, Saluda (near Asheville) & Oak Island

• Maryland 3x - Baltimore, Kent Narrows, & Ocean City

Relationships

• I’m engaged!  I proposed, and Nikki said YES! I’m a lucky man with this one. Gonna be an amazing wedding!

• I so treasure my relationship with the “dinner party group” as we have come to call ourselves. It’s a close group of adult friends, and that’s not easy to do in today’s day and age.  We text each other directly, this isn’t just a social media connection.    

• 6 official “dinner parties” with our dinner party group, though countless other hangouts that go way beyond dinner parties

• Florida friends! I was able to reconnect with people I haven’t seen in years in Florida, making the time we spent in Florida during the winter so much more fun!

• Made some amazing new adult friends that have “stuck” this year. This seems to be hard in general as adults, ‌but it’s happening, and these are some amazing people!

Last year, I said I was going to do some things this year.  How’d I do on those?

• I SAID: Snowbird life continues: We’re headed down to FL for over 2 months to start the year. Last year we did a 3 week trip to FL during the winter and loved it. Since 100% remote work is still a possibility for both of us, we’re going again for longer this year. Ultimately, we think we want to be regulars going down to Tampa in the colder months, so this year we’re going to be checking it out, hopping around between different parts to scope it out while we’re there.

• Success here!  Decided that St Pete will be our move going forward!

• I SAID:  Boat Life: Still a member of the boat club, but the restrictions as a club member are annoying (ex: no evenings, no sunsets, I must book weekend reservations weeks in advance, there are no overnights available without booking at least a month in advance, etc). We’re ready to take the plunge and get a boat of our own. This will mean when my car lease is up this summer, we’ll be getting a truck or SUV that can tow a boat, then we’ll be trying to get the boat. *fingers crossed”

• Success!  Traded my car in for a truck that can tow a boat, and found the boat I want to buy, working on this up to the very last day of the year, anticipate getting the boat by February at the latest. 

• I SAID:  Weight Loss: It’s time to work with a nutrition coach. I feel like I recognize the things I need to change, but I also think there’s so much more I can and should learn in this area. I’ve got the gym part covered, but I have got to get the “diet” right, which means it’s time to “go back to school” on that. Most of it will just be better discipline on my part. I recognize this. That said, I want to work with a few different coaches/sources. I call it “learning by committee” and the older I get, the more I’d rather learn from “a committee” of different people with different perspectives. I think that leverages the knowledge to bring me to an even better place, rather than just learning one way from one coach.  

• Moderate progress here!  Found a nutrition coach! Working with him has been great.  I’m down about 7lbs from where I was, though I’m certainly hoping to be down more than that. Hoping this next year will bring even better results

• I SAID:  I’d like to do more volunteering with a youth organization such as the Boys and Girls club, or Demolay. I want to give back to the next generation.

• Success!  I joined the Big Brother Big Sister organization, and am a big brother. My little brother, Shiloh, and I have hung out a couple of times a month!

• I SAID:  I’d like some more “Uncle Brian” time. I want to make sure I play with the kids when I get together with the families I know. I’d like the kids to feel like they know me too, not just their parents. I want to be more intentional about changing that.

• Meh, I give myself a “C” for this.  I did hang out with the kids when I went to gatherings but didn’t do much of it, so I did better here, which is why I didn’t fail completely.  I still just don’t feel like I did as much with the kids as I would like.   

• I SAID:  For Productivity Gladiator, I’d like to book 2 events per month. I am looking forward to giving my TEDx Talk and actually already have 17 events on the calendar for 2022, so it’s looking good!

• Success AND failure on this one. 
  “Success” in that I did more than 40 events this year where I was speaking on my work through Productivity Gladiator and prepping for my TEDx talk. 
  “Failure” in that almost all of these sessions weren’t paid, or business development with the idea of connect with clients which could lead to getting paid.  I elevated the brand, but definitely need to spend some more time on this one.   

• Take trips, go see people, and reconnect with people I’ve lost touch with because of COVID.

• Success! I definitely feel like I accomplished this one.

Other FRUSTRATIONS, disappointments, and things that made me sad this year:

• The effects of diabetes were an issue in my eyes again this year.  I’m finally on a treatment regimen that seems to be working.  It’s just a bummer that my main choices to fight off the effects of diabetes on my vision are either a shot in each eye every 2 months, or a laser procedure which would be permanent change to my vision.  Since the shots are working as prescribed gonna stick with them.  Sigh…. 

• I got an infection in my foot which was so strong that my body couldn’t fight it off on its own, ended up going to the ER to get IV antibiotics, and had to stop teaching workout classes for a couple weeks to recover.  That was kinda scary to have 3 toes and part of my foot turn another color!  

• Hairline thinned out some more.  Sigh, I mean, I knew this was coming.  It’s only gonna get worse. Rogaine seems to be pointless, but somehow can’t give up Rogaine because the story in my head is that it will start receding faster than it already is?!?!  Sigh….

• My knees are starting to give me problems. Whenever I do lunges and squats, there’s a certain point in the range of motion where I feel a “twinge” and it’s uncomfortable. Not taking pain meds, but just an “ow, that’s uncomfortable feeling”. Been to the doctor and physical therapist on this, and it’s just not resolved.  Gonna stick with it, but sadly I may be headed toward a shot in the knees in the future if it continues getting worse.  

• There was the loss of loved ones both close to me, family and friends, which is always hard to process. These situations really reinforced for me how precious this life is.  Several times this year, I caught myself thinking about how I’m living my own life. Grateful for these year-in-review sessions because I feel like I’m absolutely on the right track, and don’t have any regrets.  Still kinda scary to think about.  

• Haven’t lost as much weight as I was hoping.  Metabolisms and dieting are a bummer!  I thought I’d work with this nutrition coach and the lbs would just fly off, but sadly that didn’t happen.  Also, I’ve always heard people talk about how it gets more difficult to lose weight as you get older, I feel some of that frustration.  I’m down a few pounds and all my clothes fit better, so I’m grateful, but still a little frustrated.

• The used car prices got me in a bad way this year.  The beginning of the year, my car which I was going to trade in was worth $10K more than it was by the time my new vehicle came in and I went to trade it in.  Grrrrrrrr…..timing is a b!%&$

The CHANGES and NEW GOALS for 2023

• Get ON the weight loss!  I want to get to 200 lbs by Feb 2024 (my wedding) so that means I need to get on it, that’s a rate of roughly 1.5 lbs per month-ish.  Gotta be more precise this year with my nutrition and counting PFCs.

• Become a boat guy! I’m almost there, the boat I want is within my grasp, just need to finish the deal and go pick it up, hoping by Feb 2023

• Level up “Uncle Brian” a bit more. I want to make it a point to have conversations and take some time to hang out with the kids specifically when I visit friends with kids.  I want the kids to feel like they know me too.  Keep showing up as a good Big Brother for my Little.

• 2 big bucket list things this year. A trip on the world’s biggest cruise ship for my 40th birthday, and Alaskan cruise with the family!

• I wanna work on being a better partner for Nikki, focusing on supporting her in the way she wants and needs. In our conversations I want to remember that it’s not my job to “fix it”, my main role is to listen & validate in our conversations.  

• I want to do 2 paid Productivity Gladiator engagements per month.

• Upgrade Nikki and I’s living conditions to support full time remote work.  We both work from home, and to facilitate that we really each need our own office with a door that closes, which means we really need 3 bedrooms.  We have a 3 bedroom in place for the time we’re in Florida this year, but I want to figure out how we can have 3 bedrooms when we get back to DC in the spring, while still living in an area we’d like (and hopefully being close to the water because we’ll have a boat).

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Now you try

I’ve created a template google doc which you can create your own copy from this link, or just view from this link. Use either of these to try this for yourself.

Instructions: 

• This should be done just for you personally for your personal life and passions which don’t already have an annual performance review. I recommend doing a completely separate review for those roles.  

• Look back through your photos, calendar and social media from this year

• Fill in the sections below. Capture the highs and lows. Once you feel you’ve really captured the year, fill in the CHANGES AND NEW GOALS section at the end. 

• This is written in a conversational way so that if you want to copy/paste/share this on social media or with family/friends you can.

• I’ve used the heading 1, 2, 3 to label the headings, so as this document grows, if you want to maintain the clickable table of contents you can.

Keep it going:

• For the next year, copy/paste/duplicate the previous year above the last, then you’ll have them all together. 

• Check in with yourself each quarter to see how you’re doing with your intentions for the year! To make this easy, you can click the “share” button at the top of your google doc, and copy the link to this document for yourself to access.  Then send an email to “every3months@followupthen.com” (this is a free email reminder service) with the subject “Am I on track for my year so far?” and put the link to this document in the body of the email.  Each quarter, the email will hit your inbox. Click the link in the message and it will open right up! Read through it and course correct during the year.

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. 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.

Maggie Gough - Right & Wrong Metrics to Measure Life Balance & Wellness

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The Audio/Podcast

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The Episode Details

In this episode, Maggie Gough, Chief Operating Officer of The Wellness Council of America (WELCOA) joins Brian to talk about the right & wrong metrics to measure life balance & wellness.

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Today’s Guest

MAGGIE GOUGH
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER OF WELLNESS COUNCIL OF AMERICA (WELCOA)

www.welcoa.org

Maggie Gough LinkedIn

Maggie Gough, Chief Operating Officer of WELCOA recognizes the structure and depth of the corporate wellness industry and the needs of the professionals and employees they support. As the Chief Operating Officer of WELCOA, she ensures that members receive outstanding service and build sustaining connections as a whole community.

You can contact Maggie here.

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RIGHT & WRONG METRICS TO MEASURE LIFE BALANCE & WELLNESS

For Employees

• It's important to understand what's in your control and what's out of your control. When you focus on what you can control, your thoughts can empower you and can trigger positive productivity and you’ll feel like you’re moving in a positive direction. Give yourself the freedom to release the things that are outside of our control. This will drastically improve your well-being.

• This simple shift in perspective is really helpful: Well Being is NOT a destination that you work towards and reach. Balance is not a destination that you work towards and reach. Well Being and Balance are a light inside yourself, and that light can be amplified or diminished by things both inside and out of your control. Focus on the things you can control that will help amplify your light.

• Consider changing the way you view well-being as the things you do which allow you to be responsive and resilient in your work environment, not a list of tasks to do daily to be “perfect”

• Self Care is time spent meeting your needs, NOT time spent becoming a better version of yourself. (Self Improvement would be the part about becoming a better version of yourself, and while that’s important, be sure not to lump self care and self improvement together, they’re 2 different things!)

• Check in with yourself on your well-being

  • Am I spending my time in ways that care for my well-being?

  • Am I spending my time trying to perfect myself for others or for me?

  • Am I letting someone else decide how my time should be spent caring for myself?

For Front-Line Supervisors & Managers

• Managers should NOT look at well-being and life balance as if this was an equation that we can manage.

• Do not rate someone else’s life balance or well-being, only the employee can determine their own.

• All organizations should be asking the question, in some manner, human to human, how can we better support your well-being?

• A Bad Metric for workplace wellness is “participation”. Looking at “how many people got their flu shot.” or “how many people are using the gym benefit” or “how many people are getting 10,000 steps a day” does NOT serve the people in your organization.

• Wellness should not be something your employees “need to do” for their job. If wellness means they need to “track this thing” or “report this number” and that’s part of their performance benefit.

• Don't be afraid to ask people how to solve a problem together. Collaborate. As a manager, especially in life balance and well being, it’s not your job to “fix it”. A manager’s role is to actively listen, and assist with the individual’s problems that are inside of the organization’s scope and capabilities. Respect & honor the other problems you cannot assist with.

Maggie Gough

• Good metric to use, Cantrell’s Wellness Ladder. Ask yourself and your employee, “If you are looking at a ladder, on 0-10 scale, where do you currently rate your wellness now? Why? Where do you hope to be in 3 years? Do they feel like they are headed up or down?

  • 7-10 - Thriving — wellbeing that is strong, consistent, and progressing. These respondents have positive views of their present life situation (7+) and have positive views of the next five years (8+). They report significantly fewer health problems, fewer sick days, less worry, stress, sadness, anger, and more happiness, enjoyment, interest, and respect.

  • 5-6 - Struggling — wellbeing that is moderate or inconsistent. These respondents have moderate views of their present life situation OR moderate OR negative views of their future. They are either struggling in the present, or expect to struggle in the future. They report more daily stress and worry about money than the “thriving” respondents, and more than double the amount of sick days. They are more likely to smoke, and are less likely to eat healthy.

  • 0-4 - Suffering — wellbeing that is at high risk. These respondents have poor ratings of their current life situation (4 and below) AND negative views of the next five years (4 and below). They are more likely to report lacking the basics of food and shelter, more likely to have physical pain, a lot of stress, worry, sadness, and anger. They have less access to health insurance and care, and more than double the disease burden, in comparison to “thriving” respondents.

• Using an individual’s biometrics to determine their well-being can trigger disordered or unhealthy habits, thus creating toxic narratives between weight and health. The answer is not a simple formula like: “your resting heart rate is elevated, you should drink less coffee.”

• As a manager, if you’re feeling burnt out of yourself, hearing somebody else needs is really hard. The more that you can remain in a state of curiosity and asking someone to tell you more, the better it will be in order to hear feedback and more thoroughly understand how you can help. If you need to take a vacation or take a step back, that’s okay too, you have to be in a place in your life where you can show up for yourself AND others.

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. 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.

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Episode Transcript

00:00

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer. On this show, we talk about life balance and personal productivity. It's about leveling up the person as a whole with topics that help both at work and at home. In this episode, I want to dig into what are the right and wrong metrics to measure life balance and wellness. With me on the show today is Maggie Gough. She is the Chief Operations Officer of WellCoA, which is the Wellness Council of America. So Maggie, thanks so much for joining us on the show today.

00:35

I'm delighted to be here. Can you say a little bit about, for those that aren't familiar with Wellcoa, talk about Wellcoa. So Wellcoa is actually a nonprofit that was founded with a pretty simple idea, which is that we spend the majority of our time at work. And what if the workplace could be a place that amplifies our well-being and not just a place where we go to do a job and get paid and leave at the end of the day. And so it started really as an idea.

01:04

that was really closely associated with the insurance world at that time, it was in the 1980s, and it has grown substantially in its scope and breadth. But you know at work parties when people say, what do you do? If I say workplace wellness, people immediately get an image of their mind of a pedometer with this goal of 10,000 steps. And so what I'll say is, but not in the way that you're thinking about it.

01:31

We do workplace wellness as a nonprofit that sets the best practice and ethical standards for the industry. And what that means is that rather than looking at employees who are unhealthy and trying to fix them, we are looking at the organization and the ways that the organization needs to develop so that it can better serve those employees in their time in that company. Interesting.

01:57

And I think that kind of speaks to my next question, which was just how, how is Wocco a different from the other people that are in the wellness space right now? That seems pretty clear. What else would you say makes you guys a little different from the others? I think certainly the aspect of looking at the organization and instead of, I mean, we're certainly looking at the ways in which an organization can purchase vendor partners to serve the employee, a suite of resources that they need to support.

02:27

those individuals. But what also makes us unique is that we are vendor agnostic. And so there's no way in which we are tied to other groups that might be selling products to a business. And so we are truly there to support the professionals of this industry and the organizations themselves. So are you guys

02:49

providing packages of templates then or blueprints or is it actual introductions to all the different vendors or to what extent do you go in with the organization? All of the above plus some. So what we have is a platform that has a model for which an organization can follow to develop itself. And then each of, we call that our seven benchmarks model that takes an organization through each of the benchmarks. So things like...

03:16

You need committed and aligned leaders. You need cross-functional support for your wellbeing initiatives for your employees. You need to know what people actually need. So you need the right data before you just go, oh, we'll go buy that and it's one size fits all. And now we've checked the box, it's done. It's like, if employees say that they're stressed, don't just go buy a stress app solution because what if the cause of their stress is

03:44

your managers need better training on how to communicate. So make sure you have meaningful data, make sure that you're treating this like any other business imperative and you have an operating plan. That's benchmark four, create an operating plan. Benchmark five is choose the right vendor and we can help you do that. We have a tool called Welcoa Select and it's the only search engine of its kind in the industry to allow you to search for your needs for a workplace wellness vendor.

04:12

And then benchmark six is looking at your policies and procedure environment. And then benchmark seven is celebrating and iterating and communicating what you've done. And so there's the model from there. We have an analytical tool called checklist, which will evaluate how well an organization is doing within those seven benchmarks and then provide you feedback on that.

04:36

So I always say we've been asking employees to take a health risk assessment for decades. This is the health risk assessment for the employer and how well they're doing and what things they need to be doing to better serve their population. And each of those benchmarks has its own toolkit and then we have trainings online as well. So it's an entire platform that basically makes it easier for someone who is either

05:06

workplace well-being or someone who is doing well-being internally for an organization. That can be either a workplace wellness professional or someone in HR, sometimes the CFO, sometimes the COO. The wide landscape of people who have their hands in this responsibility can all utilize that platform. I love the... I feel like in our world right now, there's three kinds of ways you can help folks with stuff like this. There's the...

05:33

do it yourself version where it's like, look, here's the template, go do it yourself. Or then there's the do it with you and then the do it for you model. And it sounds like you guys are down in the do it with you, do it for you end of the spectrum. And that's, I know that has to be really helpful for organizations that engage with you. So this is cool. Thanks for, and thanks for chatting with me about this. Let's talk about metrics. Cause that's the part that I'm really interested in, which is, you know, and so for this.

05:57

My context or my target audience for this podcast is really the employees and then the frontline supervisors and middle managers that are working above those teams. So for us, it's not as much about the organization as a whole, but about the people. What can you do in those roles for yourself? You're not stuck waiting for the organization to change. So from that lens, let's talk about the metrics that you've seen. And so what are some of the common metrics that people might be seeing around there?

06:26

workplaces for workplace wellness. And what are the good ones and the right ones and the wrong ones? Okay, so bad metrics for workplace wellness are participation. And for a long time it was like, how many people can we get to do this thing? And that's a bad metric. But when you're talking about for the individual employee or even the supervisor, I wanna kind of, I wanna back up a little bit because I think that we need to level set on.

06:52

what a balanced life is. And I'm going to share a little bit of background story here. So I have been in workplace wellness my entire career. I started as a dietitian. I wanted to help people understand really complex ideas about nutrition so that they could take good care of themselves. And that was, I started my career in workplace wellness found me. And I went in trying to support people in the workplace to be healthy. And about

07:20

A decade into my career, my marriage was a mess. I was suffering from postpartum anxiety that had gone undiagnosed because we screened for postpartum depression, but not postpartum anxiety. I was way outside of my career well-being. I was working for an organization that really did not align with my values. I had these three things that were my whole life, motherhood, marriage, and work, massive portions of my life.

07:50

that were all out of whack and I was not okay and I had a total breakdown in the way that we talk about those things, the way you can imagine them. And I had this epiphany that all the things that I had ever done to help people be healthier would not have helped me in that moment. And so I didn't need to walk 10,000 steps a day. I didn't need to eat more fruits and vegetables. I did not need to drink more water. And in reality, I needed to take all of that away.

08:20

because I didn't need any more pressure on myself. And so because I was out of alignment in my values with my employer, I decided I would start my own business. Because, you know, what should you do but start your own business if you're in the middle of a massive life crisis, right? Right. Yeah, just make even more change, Maggie. Just keep piling it on. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this is like, this is bad balance. Don't do this. Okay. Got it. And so anyway, I...

08:48

But I kind of went back to my roots as a dietitian of starting to go back and talking to people about their health and wellbeing and became a student of my experiences in those conversations because it was like we're missing something here. We're really missing something. And here's what I tell people now. Wellbeing is not this destination that we work towards and reach. Balance is not a destination we work towards and reach. Wellbeing is a light.

09:18

that you hold inside of yourself. And they can be amplified or diminished by things inside and outside of your control. So in our conventional wisdom about wellbeing and balance, we do this thing where we say there's who I am today, and then there's who I'd like to be if I were better. And then we say, okay, what's missing from who I am today and who I think is a better version of myself, a more balanced, a healthier version of myself. And then we...

09:45

build the Excel spreadsheet of ways I will improve. And then we say, starting Monday, I will insert all of the things that I have to do to be better. And when we do that, we create this version of ourselves that has wellbeing and the version of ourselves that is who we are today, and we separate ourselves from our own wellbeing. So when we talk about our wellbeing is already with us and it can be amplified or diminished by things inside and outside of our control.

10:12

that changes the entire way that we might even serve somebody toward their well-being. Right? So what I need to not do for you, Brian, is to look at your biometrics and measure that data and say, okay, Brian, you have high cholesterol and pre-diabetes. And so based on that data, I'm going to create a spreadsheet for you of all the things that you need to do to achieve well-being with lower cholesterol.

10:39

and you're out of pre-diabetes risk, right? So when you said, what's some important data that we can look at is I would invite people to sit down and take some time to tune inward and ask themselves the question, what amplifies my wellbeing and what diminishes my wellbeing? If you're a manager, if you were to ask an employee, what are the things that you're doing in your role here that amplify your wellbeing? And what are the things...

11:07

that are occurring in this workplace that diminish your wellbeing. Because as an employer, what we can't do is fix people. We are not in control of people's individual behaviors. That's a very toxic relationship. But what we can do is understand barriers that are getting in the way of people taking good care of themselves, and we can start to remove those. So data, to your question of what are good ways, what's good data that I can look at?

11:36

to create better balance in my life is first understanding what nourishes my wellbeing and what diminishes my wellbeing. And you know what's interesting is as managers, I feel like oftentimes the conversation is about us and them, right? Well, this is us and this is what we do. And instead, I think as a manager, if you actually are looking at asking those questions you just asked to yourself, and then looking at it personally,

12:02

You'll probably find more than half of the stuff that your employees are experiencing too, because you're in the same environment. You're not, your work might be a little different and each person is different. Right. So wellbeing is different for each person. But that question, the question you said, which is what increases or what, what did you say it activates or diminishes? What was the amplifies or amplifies. There we go. So if it's amplifying or diminishing, that is a very simple, as I think about that question and like my day job and other things that I do.

12:31

It's very easy for me to isolate. Yep, that's a plus. That's a minus. This is a neutral. And that's an easy conversation to have. So that's a powerful one. I like that a lot. As the employee, if you don't have power over some of these things, what kind of advice do you give in those situations where you've got a list of detractors now? I mean, obviously the first step is talk to your manager, but what else do you say to folks? Well, I think it's really important to understand, again, what's in your control and what's out of your control.

13:01

And we love to look at wellbeing in balance as if this is some equation that we can manage. And if we're not in wellbeing, that somehow we haven't done enough. We have this like meritocracy type of narrative in our society. And you know, a pandemic is outside of my control and impacts my wellbeing. A sick child is outside of my control.

13:24

and impacts my wellbeing. And so what we can do first of all, is give ourselves a little bit of freedom to release the things that are outside of our control and identify, okay, here are some things that I can invest in. Like I can go for a hike daily and that increases that fills me, it amplifies my wellbeing. And then when I do encounter those things that are outside of my control, that are negatively impacting my wellbeing, maybe I have a little bit more resilience to handle those.

13:53

For the things that are inside our control, that are diminishing our wellbeing, like in the case of my marriage was a mess, well, that's inside my control. I can go get a therapist. We can go get a therapist, right? We can do some work. So even identifying the things that are diminishing your wellbeing and even separating them from what's inside my control and outside my control is really important because then now you have data that says, okay, I'm gonna release these things.

14:22

I'm not accountable to a pandemic. I'm not accountable to these things. But can I, or like in the case of a sick kid, you didn't cause that, but you can respond to it in a way that cares for yourself, right? So making sure that you've given yourself the time and space to be present to the needs of that child versus like, I'm trying to get all this work done and this kid keeps nagging me because they don't feel good, right? So it's a really delicate balance and it's complex.

14:52

But I think changing the way that we even view well-being as not a list of tasks to do daily that perfect us, but something that allows us just to be responsive to the life that is happening that we're a part of. And you said, you know, this is one of those things where anybody who's a manager is also a person who's working for a company. Like, it's one of my favorite things to say is, by the way, if you do this work, you are somebody who works for your company as well. And are you creating things?

15:22

that you would want to do that would be helpful to you. And that's another really great question to ask yourself. There are a lot of people who've put wellness into play that would not do it. I have known CEOs. This is true. Share some of these examples. Yeah, like what? Okay. I know a someone in the C-suite who has their stay-at-home spouse.

15:47

do their online wellness platform for them. They have outsourced to their stay at home spouse, the wellness platform. And so it's like, why do you even have it? And by the way, if you're somebody who doesn't have a stay at home spouse that you can outsource the management of this platform, what about them? Okay, here's another one. When you say that, I'm not familiar. So when you say wellness platform, if you outsource the wellness platform, does that mean they have to go take a quiz online or they have to answer a question every day? What is that?

16:15

Yeah, it's like setting up this platform so that it syncs with maybe your iPhone watch or whatever your fitness tracker is and then going on and logging your points. Remember when I said participation is a bad data set? Because companies are like, we paid for this thing and now we want you to use it. When people don't use it, then they put incentives in place.

16:43

The incentives are usually a reduced insurance cost. You want that, right? Then who's managing all of this? Who's submitting the flu shots that your kids got? Who's submitting the well visits that you went to? All of that has to be submitted and approved and managed. This C-level executive outsourced it to their stay-at-home spouse.

17:10

So they don't even know what the platform is like. Oh, that's wild. OK. Right. But then the expectation is that the employees do it all. And so, OK, here's another one. A friend of mine said, I get my kids a flu shot every year because I want to get my kids a flu shot. And I understand the importance of that. But it is not worth it to me to submit the form to get the points for the reduced insurance cost. And now we have a situation where

17:39

is playing a role in our corporate wellness programs. Because if you're somebody who can't afford to not do that, you are now having to do the work where someone else said, I'll give myself the time rather than the effort. God, it gets back to this is what my TED talk was on and what I'm very interested in the, you know, the value of your time is a helpful metric for, is it worth it for me to, is it, you know, when the age old question, is it worth your time? I mean, I have a calculator on my site that we do this. If you haven't done that, I certainly hope you'll

18:09

Check out on the productivity gladiator site, go find out for yourself what your time is worth. But I share that not because that's a specific number you need to know, but because it kind of gives the, it gives a number to exactly what you just said, which is, well, is it worth it for me to go upload? That how long is it gonna take me to get the form from the doctor, get it signed, upload it in the thing? Then they're gonna have to follow up, and then I have to follow up with them sometimes. Totally understand the, not even worth my time to mess with that. I will just.

18:37

take the free flu shot and not get the points because I don't care that much. Exactly. Absolutely. So when we think about how do we care for ourselves, is it jumping through hoops or is it really tuning inward to our own needs? And to your point about time, am I spending my time in ways that care for my wellbeing or am I spending my time trying to perfect myself to some version of...

19:06

healthy and balanced that someone created somewhere. Right. Are you some algorithm's answer to what's good for you? Or did you create this picture of what's good for you? And are you working toward it? That's wild. I think you looked like you had, you seemed like you had another story that you were going to share on that. That was the CEO outsourced the chief, the C-suite person? That is one of them, which I just, I mean, there's so much in that story alone around.

19:36

privilege on multiple fronts. I think in that case, what's so frustrating for me is that it wasn't worth that CEO's time and yet that CEO would demand that other people do that, his or her employees to do the same. I think that when we think about whether or not people are healthy or okay and what in balance and what does that look like, we don't get to decide that for other people.

20:05

If we want to be a healthy community, what that looks like is believing that everybody wants to live a healthy and thriving life. And if they're not, there are likely challenges and barriers in their way. It's not just that they don't understand that broccoli has a good fiber source, right? There's a lot going on. Our lives are complex and we need for someone else to not decide how our time should and should not be spent to care for ourselves. Got it.

20:33

So wellness programs that are a little less prescriptive of thou shall do this, thou shall get 10,000 steps. Different, interesting. Are there, now what we just went through is kind of very personal or what we just talked about, you know, you have the, is it good for me? Or is it an amp, does it amplify or does it detract from your wellness? Are there metrics that you've found that are kind of measurable? I mean, certainly like what is your blood pressure?

21:01

or these are certainly indicators that you shouldn't ignore per se, but have you found good metrics for people and managers to use that are good indicators? This is an open source tool. It has been validated, but it's Cantrell's Wellness Ladder, and it's really simple. The question is, if you are standing at a ladder and zero is the ground floor and 10 is the top.

21:30

rung, where would you rate yourself in your wellbeing on that ladder? The secondary question is where do you hope to be on that ladder in the next three years? They've actually validated this to say, I believe it's zero to three is someone in crisis and four to six is moderating wellbeing and seven and above is someone who's thriving.

22:00

When I had my own business, I used as a baseline tool when someone would come in to do work with us, we would ask them that question and then we would ask them that in six months and then in a year. Because you want, if someone's at a four and they want to see themselves at a seven, then what do they need to get there? Again, now it's not prescriptive, but then I can ask them, why did you rate yourself as a four? What are the things that are keeping you?

22:29

at a four? What are the things that you think would help you get to a seven? So that's a healthy tool, a good tool that we've used. Can you imagine how different a performance review conversation would go if part of that conversation involved asking that question and that little part of the conversation? I feel like most performance reviews in many organizations are just, here's an hour, let's find some time. It's really busy, but we got to cram this in because the deadlines

22:59

by this date. So here, find a time and then here's what I think, here's what you think. And having a separate, if you're having your check-in meetings, you know, on how they're doing, it sounds like that ladder tool would be a great sort of metaphor or a way to check in with people in more than just, hey, did you do your job? That'd be a powerful thing. Well, Coa provides some consulting for organizations in addition to the services, if that's something

23:29

use us for. And we work with one of the major cities in the United States and they decided that they wanted to have wellness as a part of their performance reviews, as a part of their performance growth. And one of the things we have to be really careful about with that is that the people giving those performance reviews understand psychological safety. Because a performance review is me, Maggie, the manager, reviewing you, Brian, your performance.

23:58

And in that dynamic, I have the authority. So if I all of a sudden start talking to you about your wellbeing, am I starting to tell you why you are and are not okay in your wellbeing? Or am I asking because I need to, you're giving me feedback now about how I can be better supportive. And so what we did, it is really great if an organization wants to weave wellness into performance conversations. But if you do that, please make sure

24:26

that your managers understand that they are not rating someone else's wellbeing, because that's not their business. That is employee determined. And that it is an area where they are receiving feedback about ways in which they could be better at supporting that person's wellbeing. So maybe your communication style is really stress inducing as a manager and you need to work on that and you need to develop some skills.

24:52

Maybe the company needs feedback about flexible time or the total paid days off or my ability to take my kid to the doctor when I need to do that and how difficult it is to log my hours or ask for the time off. I mean, any number of things, but I think any organization, all organizations should be asking in some manner and human to human, I would say is best, how can we better support your wellbeing?

25:20

What's nice about a performance time to do that is you can aggregate that data at scale. That would be powerful to be able to see by what the employees are saying by group or by division or being able to slice and dice that on the different parts of the organization. I can see that being some interesting data to look at as an organization. But more important than that, it's about the managers looking at how for the manager to have that conversation with their own people and find out that everybody's at the bottom of the ladder.

25:49

is more powerful than a manager going to some tool and finding out that everybody is at the bottom of their ladder. Like the conversation that goes with that is probably pretty powerful. And when we're talking about data, you know, when I, and we talk about things inside and outside of your control, if I'm a manager and I find out that you, Brian, have high cholesterol, I have zero control over what you're eating or how much you're exercising. But if I find out as a manager...

26:17

that regardless of your cholesterol, you're working over time and you are unable to get ahead so that you can go take care of yourself and get some exercise or meal plan or whatever the case may be, that's actually something as a manager I can support and solve for. So I think that in some ways to give businesses permission and leaders permission to support individuals in this way.

26:43

is better than asking them to solve for how many steps you're taking in a day or your blood pressure. Right. Do you have your ears? You've you've sprouted off those ones, the steps in a day or blood pressure just lists off the top of your head. What are some other bad ones that you've seen over the years? The like, oh gosh, that's a terrible metric. Hmm. I mean, I think that when I think that whenever we get into an individual's biometrics weight,

27:10

We have done, it's not even just that that's a bad metric. We have created in this industry really toxic narratives around weight and health. I'm most certain that we have triggered people's disordered eating through our program, so that's a bad one. Another way I think to look bad data is to look at anything that is just like how perfect you're being.

27:40

I like to say self-care is time spent meeting your needs, not time becoming a better version of yourself. Ooh, okay. Say that again, because I feel like that's a really good point. Self-care is time spent meeting your needs and is not perfecting or becoming a better version of yourself. So let me put it in very specific terms since you're like the time and productivity guy. Let's put it like this. Yes. If I have time on my calendar.

28:09

to take care of myself each day, an hour each day. Then, and I go in and before I get to that hour, let's say I decided I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna run every day during this time. When I get to that hour, if running is not what I need, then I am improving myself. I am not meeting my own needs. So in the pandemic, my husband and I were like, what do we need? We have three children.

28:37

We lived in a very small house, which was great because we lived more life and we cleaned and managed less. But in a pandemic with three children, it was very challenging. And what we each needed, we were like, we each need an hour a day to have no one call our name, to have no one need us. So we did the calendar math. We made that time juggling schedules. We did the matrix every week. And I did the thing where I was like, okay, I'm going to do yoga.

29:05

And then I was like, every day resented that time. And I was like, right, because like, some days I need to go for a walk. Some days I need to go for a run. Some days I need to do yoga. Some days I need to pet a dog. Sometime I might need to call my mom or a good friend. So there are a lot of different things that we need and it doesn't have to look the same all the time. So bad, bad data is what is the prescriptive model for health and am I meeting it? Yeah, that makes sense.

29:31

Sometimes you need part of the planning is planning for time for yourself, period, not time for yourself for a specific purpose. That's a huge thing. Okay. Here's more examples, more story style examples. So almost everyone when they come into a health coaching session will say, I know what to do. I'm just not doing it. And that's because we have spent the past decade educating the death out of people, like educating people to death about health and wellness. People know that eating fish...

30:00

the majority of people know that eating fish is better than red meat. Usually, if I'm teaching a class on general healthy eating, someone will raise their hand and say, but what if the fish is farm raised and what about the mercury levels in the ocean and how can it be organic fish if it's wild caught and I thought wild caught is better, right? We get into all of these things that we've been taught about how to be better and perfect ourselves, right? Then I go, are you even eating fish at all?

30:29

I'm like, so you don't need to worry about this. And so we can think about our wellbeing in a lot of ways and we can choose to serve it in whatever ways matter to us. So I will often have people come in and say, I know what to do, I'm just not doing it. And I'll say, okay, what are the things you think you need to do? And I had a woman who said, well, I probably need to sign up for a marathon and I probably need to eat only organic food. And she rattled off all of these things that we in...

30:59

commodified wellness have told her, I said, okay, what are the things that you like to do for your wellbeing? And she said, well, I live on a farm and so I love to hike and we grow our own food and I have a great marriage and so I love to spend time in the hot tub with my spouse. I was like, every single one of those things you just listed is good for your wellbeing. And yet this person felt like a failure because

31:25

somewhere we, we being society have given her the idea that it has to be all of these other things. So learning to show up in time and tune into yourself. Do you have time on your calendar once a day to tune into your own needs? I think Adam Grant recently posted on social media, what was a couple months ago, he posted that research says that two to four hours a day of downtime is healthy, but more than that can lead to languishing.

31:53

And I just thought two to four hours a day is bougie. Who has this amount of time? Right? What research group did they use to get that information? Because I'm pretty sure all the people I know don't have that amount of time on a survey. I mean, and I'm sure there are, but like I do not, and the majority of people I talk to who are in, you know, general working America do not have two to four hours a day of downtime. Yeah.

32:22

What I often challenge people to do as they start this journey is to just start with, here's some good data. Do you have 30 minutes a day to tune into yourself and even understand what it is that you need for your wellbeing? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that might even be like solving for something that is diminishing your wellbeing. If I have a lot of stress about taxes or bills, maybe what's best for my wellbeing is giving myself time to go pay those things and take care of them, for example.

32:51

It kind of inspired me with the thought is like, okay, all of this well-being and a lot of this is like you're looking at yourself and like what are the negatives and the positives and we're looking at that and there is this lens where Looking at it that way for a business or an organization or at work you have to choose It's like either well-being or productivity and prof stuff Can you share a little bit about your experience with that conversation and how?

33:17

It doesn't, you don't have to be on opposite sides. They can be part of the same team. Talk about that a little. Okay. I'm gonna say this and it's not gonna come as surprise to anybody. We have a mental health care and burnout crisis in America. Your ability to keep your employees and to remain in business is predicated on their wellbeing, full stop. You cannot separate these two. If I asked any business leader,

33:44

Is innovation imperative to your business success in the next 10, 20, 30 years? 100% of them would say yes. They understand that innovation, the ability to grow with the changing world is imperative to their success. Innovation is intangible. You're creating for something that doesn't exist yet, solving for a world you don't know yet. But we don't call innovation fluff, but many leaders

34:12

will say or feel like wellbeing is fluff. It is the antithesis to productivity, right? Or self-care is the, and it's simply not the case. Your employees' ability to tune in to and meet their own needs and your ability to create an environment that allows for that is imperative for your business success because we don't have the great resignation and quiet quitting for no reason.

34:42

That would be so would along those lines then if you're trying to sort of engineer a comeback or something in the well-being, you're an employee, you're a manager and your organization doesn't really do this well, what can you do? For me personally, I don't like the helpless feeling of it's all out of my control. Everybody's making decisions on my behalf and I'm just stuck. I don't really like, I don't subscribe to that necessarily. Just like you're.

35:10

examples earlier about, you know, the pandemic is outside of your control, but your marriage wasn't. And that kind of thing, like there are things that you can do. So what can't, what kind of advice do you give for what you can do to make strides in this department because you don't necessarily have control over your organization's culture? That's for sure. So what would you say for the employees and then for the manager? Okay. So if you're an employee and you continuously exist in an organization that does not meet

35:40

your needs or allow for your wellbeing. First, you can try to communicate those things. We're allergic to feedback, giving it. Why is that, right? Sometimes it's like pulling teeth. Feedback's not helpful. It is really helpful. Well, I think that for a long time, businesses have authority over us. We need to name that. That is true, and they always will. They get to decide whether we work there and whether we don't, and they get to decide.

36:09

whether our performance is good enough for them, right? So that is authority. And so we feel like we can't say, hey, I need more from you because then we're risking something of ourselves. And if you're in a position where you can't risk your job, that's a big deal, right? So I think that to be fair, part of our reason we're allergic to feedback is we have, businesses haven't always been like, hey, listen, we would really love to hear how things are going and it's safe for you to do that. So, but I also think that we have,

36:38

a society where we're just not good at being assertive about our needs. So, another specific example, in the middle of a pandemic, I was working to refinance my home and I emailed the loan officer a question and I got an auto reply that said, please be patient. We are adjusting to a new normal with children doing school from home and working full-time from home. I was like, this is amazing. Stating expectations and owning your needs.

37:06

And so I wrote back and I said, or sorry, she answered my question within 24 hours, apologized for the delay. And I said, there's no delay. You answered my question within 24 hours. And I'm really grateful. Thank you. And then I said something like, hang in there, mama. And she wrote back and said, I am in tears at your email. Thank you so much for your care. And then explained to me that she had a child who had special needs who could not read the screen. So she was reading every...

37:35

thing that was coming off of the screen while trying to work full time. And she had a kindergartener and anybody who's ever tried to do Zoom school with kindergartners knows it's not really a thing. And her spouse was out of town for work for three weeks. So, you know, this is, I often wondered what conversation she had with her manager when she set that boundary.

37:58

But there are a lot of ways that we can own some of those boundaries and state those boundaries. I mean, I think that's why we have quiet quitting. Quiet quitting is not disengagement, in my opinion. It's simply boundary setting. There is a point at which I'm going to turn off my computer for the day. I'm not quiet quitting. I'm done for the day. I worked hard and now I'll be done. Right? So I think for individual employees, the better that we get at naming our needs and asserting boundaries to meet those needs.

38:27

that's within our control. If you've done that and you continuously are met with more of the same, go find a new job. That's a thing that we can do. And when we say businesses will fail if they don't take good care of their employees, this is what we're talking about. If you are a manager and you're feeling burned out yourself, hearing somebody else's needs can be really hard. But the more that you can remain in a state of curiosity in learning and ask someone to tell you more, the better

38:56

it will be to be able to solve that problem together. So it's hard to get feedback when we're already burned out ourselves as leaders, but it's also okay if you're burned out as a leader to step down from that role and let someone else lead for a little bit if you're not in a position to do that. And it's also okay to just say, how do we solve this together? Because you don't have to solve it all as a manager. That's the, you read my mind, that was the point I was gonna make, which is like, look at these conversations.

39:26

it's often not your job to fix it. Like oftentimes as managers, you fix it. You're in fix it mode all day, but it's not your job to fix it. It's like, tell me more. And what do you think it would look like if this were better, a better situation? And what can we do together? And there are some instances where it is a grant that using our authority as managers to grant permissions for things. Yep, grant. And when they give you all those ideas, when you have that conversation and they offer all those ideas,

39:55

See if you can pick one or two of those ideas that you could help with. Because some of them you're gonna have to say, no, we know that. They want, oh, they only wanna work three days a week. Okay, well that's not gonna work as much as that would be awesome. So like, all right. You know, so but find the one if they need to leave two hours early so that they can go take a dance class on Wednesdays because that just fills their cup up or they go with their family to do it or something. And you know, check those boxes. Yes, that, absolutely. I love that point.

40:22

I was asked to consult once for a small company, it was a family-owned company, and they said, will you please come in and help us buy wellness? I said, okay, but first, can I just talk to your employees? It's a small enough company, I can just quickly listen. We did a quick survey. It was like five questions, and the feedback was, we work hard, we're really committed to this company. It's like a family.

40:46

But like, I want to be able to coach my son's soccer team. And I can't leave at the end of the day and manage all of that. And so I'm sacrificing a lot. So I gave the feedback to leadership, you don't need to go purchase anything. You need to create some flexible scheduling. This was before the pandemic. Right. And you need to create some flexible scheduling. And the CEO looked me right in the face and said, well, look, literally, we are old school and we're not going to do that. And I thought.

41:13

well, at least you know yourself and now your employees can decide whether or not they want to belong here because there was nothing unique that this organization did. Those people could go find jobs lots of places. And so, and then the irony of like going and spending money on something that your employees didn't ask for and then wanting some kind of return on investment out of that spend is nonsensical. So I think sometimes, I think sometimes the solutions are, are much simpler.

41:42

Being a good community and serving each other as human beings and being a little bit vulnerable in that is really what we need right now. And oftentimes there's a lot of lovers we could pull. Seriously. Well, I want to bring us to a close. And one of the last things I want to ask you is if we can just kind of talk about this personally a little bit. Like I love the story you shared in the very beginning about how...

42:06

your solution to all of the problems was to quit everything and start your own business or something. So can you share a little bit about like how life balance and wellness has gone for you and what this means to you personally? Yeah, I mean for me it's ongoing. Again, I'm never arriving and even the things I teach this for a living, I am an expert in this. I've been doing it for almost two decades now.

42:34

And I still make mistakes like take the time on my calendar and put a prerequisite on it, right? Because doing it in a new way is quite countercultural. There's lots of people who are going to sell me something to fix me. And so me being in a mindset of having to fix myself and be better is not surprising, but really giving myself some grace and saying, you know, my job in this moment is to be able

43:03

is to decide what I need. So I do have on my calendar a hike on right now based on the calendar matrix. And it can't just be the calendar, it has to be the calendar matrix because there's so much happening on that calendar with two working parents and three children that two days a week is all I get to have this time to myself. And I do have an activity on there, but there are days that I arrive to that time with that activity, which is hiking.

43:32

trail running and I will decide I don't have the mental or emotional capacity today to take on anything harder So I will just walk with some music, right? Like I will do I will meet my needs in that moment and I still as I'm walking will have these feelings like I Should be you know, and it's like no, this is actually fine. This is actually okay and You know, so for me it's the work is never done and that

43:59

One of my good friends recently said to me, a lot of us are walking around and we don't lead well-examined lives. And that just really hit me. And I thought, this is really what I'm trying to do is just pause enough myself to examine my own life and to understand what I need. And I'm gonna add one more thing because we've talked a lot about self-care and what's in your control. Sometimes what's missing is your community care. So that's, if I'm gonna talk about my journey from starting my own business to where I am now,

44:29

I would say that a big part of that growth also to be able to care for myself has been ensuring that I had the right community care, which means that my spouse and I have an equitable workload in terms of child rearing and household management. It means that I outsource certain things. It means that I have really healthy friendships. So I have this community care so that I can also.

44:57

meet my own needs when that time exists. I think there's power in that. I've been reflecting on that a lot with social media lately, and I feel like people, when they want their break or their mental break or whatever, they resort to social media. And the thing about social media is it's not as engaging. It doesn't mean nearly as much as a direct text message to somebody who means something to you or the communication back and forth that comes from actually engaging with someone on the phone or texting, direct, even if it's just texting.

45:26

with your girlfriend or with your friend or whatever. That means so much more than scrolling Instagram and spying on what other people are doing that's been polished for the internet and happens to look amazing and isn't real. Like, ah man, my day sucks. And text that to your girlfriend. That means that's a way better conversation. Oh God, so I like that. So, well. Well, I have a tip on that. Ooh, yeah. One, don't put social media on your phone because then it's harder to access. Preach, sister. Yes, take it off.

45:55

And two, when you have that moment where you're like, because we live in this world where we're like, operantly conditioned to like pick up our phone any downtime we have. When I am detoxing from social media, I have that all the time, I will scroll through my photos. And then I am reminded of how really truly beautiful my life is. Oh my gosh. Total side note here. The newest iOS, I just updated my phone.

46:22

and there is a button at the bottom of your photos called For You, and they have basically taken this thing and what they've done is that your phone now picks this trip you did or whatever, and it will say this time four years ago in the Bahamas or something. And then you hit play, and it is a slideshow of all of the photos from that set to music. Like the first time I saw it, I cried. I'm a dude, I admit on this talk that I cried.

46:50

When I saw like the fun time that I was having with my boys, I love that idea, Maggie. I love that a lot. Like, yes, look at photos instead of Instagram. Your own memories. Oh, yes. And then text that to the person you had the memory with. Yes! Oh, and on iPhone, you can, now I'm sorry, Android users. I know how to do this in iPhone. I don't know what it is on Android or the other ones, but man, there is a little share button and you share that little, it's like a 20 second video. I sent my family one.

47:19

I sent my friend what like, oh, so good. Yes, I love that. It's just since we're like giving the full detail about how to do this, you can select a music option at the bottom and you have to select a music option that's like free licensing rights because if it's a music option that anyway, I failed at this. I was like, why won't this let me send? And then it was like, you have to choose music that you own, silly. And then I had to change the music and then it would let me send. Got it. Yep.

47:46

I didn't even know that. That's good. That's a good tip. I hope there was music with the stuff that I sent. It let me send so I'm assuming so. Yeah. Yeah, it would not let you send with music that you don't own. Trust me. Kick me out several times. You can't do this. Stop trying. Got it. Oh, I love that. Well, so Maggie, Maggie, here's I want to bring us to a close. Here's what I love. I love that

48:10

I love that this is just a personal story for you and this whole WellCoA thing and wellness is not just your job, but also kind of your passion that it really comes through in your talking and the way that you shared and what you do and everything. So I love that you're a part of this organization that does this and it makes me feel really good about your organization and the stuff that you do with this. And I love the tips that you shared. So thank you for taking a few minutes and sharing it with us today.

48:37

Yes, it was my pleasure. It was a delightful conversation. And for those folks who want to engage or interact with WellCoO, what are the different ways that they can find out more? What should they do? So if you think that your organization needs to do some of this work, or you yourself would like more support to do this work as a manager or a leader, you can go purchase a license for this platform. And then you can have access to things like.

49:03

surveys to get better data for your employees or you can tune into an event that we have. We have one in April of 2023 with Kristin Hadid. For those of you who know her work, she wrote the book, Permission to Screw Up. She talks about how we can develop leaders for how do you get great feedback from your employees and how do you lead in a way that supports this kind of work. From the trainings to the resources, it's all really grab and go.

49:32

We don't need everyone to be experts in all of these areas, but what we do need is to make sure that you have the support to continue leading within whatever your role is in your organization. So you can purchase a license to Wellcoa and get access to all of that. Very cool. Well, I hope that you check it out in Wellcoa. I'll drop the links to this stuff in the notes for this episode, but I'm assuming is it Wellcoa.org or what is the?

50:01

If they're listening now. It is welcoa.org. Okay. Yeah, and people can email me directly. It's mgoth at welcoa.org. Got it. I'll reach out to Maggie directly. If you've had any of the stories she shared, you identify with, I'm sure she wouldn't mind a story like that in the middle of her workday. So don't be shy and actually do that. So, and for you tuning in, one specific request. Do you have a friend or colleague who identifies with today's topic?

50:30

because I feel like this one, I feel like oftentimes you listen to these podcasts or you listen to these episodes and it often just goes by, oh, that was really interesting or something. But if there is someone who popped into your head and you haven't already done it, I hope that you hit share and share some of Maggie's tips with them too and send this episode to them and Wokoa. So thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. And if you're more of a reader or you like the short summary of things, I do that too.

50:57

So thanks for subscribing to the email list. These episodes will hit your inbox so you don't have to go looking for them. So I love sharing this productivity gladiator thing with you. So Maggie, thanks so much for joining us today. And that's a wrap.

Haysing Han - Productivity Should Create Capacity To Advance Your Life & Career

In this episode, Haysing Han, founder of H. Manifest joins Brian to talk about the ways productivity should create capacity to advance your life & career. If you only give 110% to your tasks, without any capacity left to network, or meet with a mentor, then you’ll only ever get more tasks instead of advancement.

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Today’s Guest

Haysing Han

Haysing Han
Founder of H.Manifest Inc.

hmanifest.com/

instagram.com/haysing_han

facebook.com/haysing.han.2

Haysing Han is a certified high-performance coach with 25 years of corporate experience. She was also a research and analytics consultant for top two things in Canada and United Airlines in the US.

You can learn more about Haysing and book a free call with her here.

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Life Balance and Personal Productivity To Create Promotion

For Employees

• Most people rate themselves as really high on productivity because they complete their work. But if you are known to be an effective and productive person, does that just mean that you’re given more work? Or that you’re also leveling up?

  Many people may not be able to tell the difference between you giving your 80% and your 110% at all of the tasks that are assigned to you. But if you work with a mentor and people who can help advance your career it may result in more meaningful work, not just more of the same work.

  Clarity and alignment between the way you’re spending your time with the direction you want to go professionally in your career is big! Reflect for a moment, do you have that? If you showed your calendar to someone, would you be able to point to where you’re putting time and effort into your own advancement?

  What do you really want?

• Can you visualize it?

• Can you dream about it?

• Would that income do exactly what you want to do?

• What are you going to do to make it more meaningful for you?

  You have to be crystal clear about what you want to avoid having years go by and feeling the burnout or like you didn’t go anywhere.

For Front-Line Supervisors & Managers

A high performing manager doesn’t just focus on the tasks. They recognize the “long game” for each of the people under them, and help with the clarity and progress toward that.

• In terms of leadership, how are you going to grow your team. Thinking you’re just going to keep everyone where they are, and avoid change, will not move you in a positive direction.

• A manager’s role is often to help their team to think differently. Supporting the creation of a working life balance as a whole person, not just for the hours they are at work.

• A manager’s role is to actively have the conversation about personal development objective. So then they actually feel like they have permission to set aside an hour or two hours every day to grow in a new skill set.

Most importantly, managers should take a look around, if your team has been the same faces for years, and you have motivated people who want to grow and advance, this is a problem, and you’re the main person who can help or hinder solving that.

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Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. I created Productivity Gladiator because I saw what a difference it made for employees to improve their productivity, improve their life balance, and live their best life right now, today, not wait until retirement. Thanks for checking out Productivity Gladiator! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.

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Episode Transcript

00:00

Productivity Gladiator.

00:06

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer. On this show, we talk about life balance and personal productivity. It's about leveling up the person as a whole with the topics that help it both work and at home. In this episode, I want to dig into the idea that productivity should create capacity to advance your life and career, not create more work, but create more meaningful work and more life balance.

00:33

I think the show will be especially irrelevant for the ladies actually, because with me today on the show is Haysing Han. She's a certified high-performance coach and the founder of H-Manifest. Haysing, thanks so much for joining me on the show today. Tell folks a little bit about how you're kind of related to our topic today. So thanks for having me. As Brian said, I'm a certified high-performance coach and I like to brag a little bit here. So I'm one of the thousand premier.

01:01

certified high-performance coaches around the world. I have 25 years of corporate gig. I was research and analytics consultant for top two banks in Canada and the United Airlines in the US and I am very proud to have led many, many transformative projects, CEO mandated projects for banks. In terms of the topic, it's quite personal to me.

01:30

And then looking back, I have become a coach. I am helping high achievers in corporate and other fields. And often people become very obsessed with productivity and achieving things without really broader vision of where their career and life should go. So what ends up happening is you become really effective and really productive and what I call a lot of project queens and kings.

01:58

and it creates more and you end up being burned out and you kind of overlook important relationship you need to build. So I know that you are you have done a lot of amazing work giving people tips and tools and really focusing on how to increase productivity but I wanted to kind of take you up a notch and let's just take a look at what productivity should enable you.

02:27

to take your career and life to the next level. Ooh, that's powerful. I'm looking forward, we're gonna dive into that. I do wanna ask before we get started though, I'm curious, H-Manifest, where does that name come from? I was in love with Wayne Dyer for a while and he was my unofficial mentor. Okay. Yeah, I mean, he passed, but everything I did, I loved. So he talks about manifesting and how, like, you know, mindset and all that. So manifest is a company name that I really wanted to adopt, but...

02:55

Gosh, everybody loves that name. So the name wasn't available. So I said, I'm Heizing, so I just threw in H. H Manifest, I get it now. That's cool. Well, thanks Heizing. So this, you know, interesting in preparing for this episode, you had mentioned to me before we started that, well, let's dive into the topic. So first, employees. I like to talk to two audiences. There's the employees, and then there's the frontline supervisors and middle managers above those, right? And so let's start first.

03:25

for the employee. When it comes to our topic today about productivity should create capacity to advance your life and career, say more on what you meant with that when we talked about this. So the coaching I'm certified in, we talk about like six-related and complementary habits, behavioral things that people need to develop to become not only just good at what you do, but become really amazing at what you do without burnout.

03:54

and costing important relationships. And so there are six different things going on and productivity is one of the most important, one of the six habits. But I often find that working with my client, you could be really productive, especially people in corporate and government or any large organization. Most people rate themselves really high on productivity because they do amazing things and they're high or cheap. But...

04:23

You know, you and I both know that if you are known to be effective and productive person, they say give more important work to somebody who's productive. He or she, no matter how busy they are, will find the time to make it happen. So often what I'm trying to work with my new client is they want, they know what they don't want. They don't want to be busy. They don't want to continue to do what they don't want to do, but they don't know what they really want. So it's lacking clarity. Where do you want to go?

04:53

in your career, in your life, you know, six to 12 months, and most people say, this is what I don't want to do. And I said, that's a good start. But what do you really want? Can you visualize it? Can you dream about it? Can you tell me like income exactly what you want to do? And like, you have to be crystal clear about what you want. Otherwise, you can be really productive. Amazing. But the time you saved, what are you going to do to make it more meaningful for you? Because otherwise,

05:20

You end up working for a long time and you get burned out. And you know, when we were preparing for this, there's something really powerful you said to me, which is that the it's that not many people actually really know the difference between your 80 percent and your 110 percent. And so the reason that really stuck out to me is the concept of, OK, if I'm giving 100 percent, 110 percent at all of the tasks.

05:49

that are assigned to me and I don't keep anything left in the bank to do the networking, to find a mentor and work with a mentor to move my career ahead, then all you're left with is more work because the people who do the best work are rewarded with more work. And so if all that's happening is you're rewarded with more work and you don't keep any bandwidth left for yourself to evolve, to grow, that's the really powerful piece.

06:18

I mean, I flashback to things like what in the seven habits of highly effective people book, they call it sharpen the saw, right? That's we have to one of the seven habits is to sharpen the saw, which is about increasing your abilities or so professional development is important, but you are the only person who's going to look out for your professional develop truly. So it was really, when you said that to me, it was like one of those light bulb moments that I just, I felt like somebody smacked me upside the head. Man.

06:45

really true that like you can learn all these productivity hacks. And if you create, you know, an extra hour in your day, because you're that much more effective and you just spend that hour on more of the same that you've done for the rest of it. And you don't build on that. Oh, that was like huge. So thank you for that. Hey, so that was like, Ooh, man, that's really, that's a, it's, that's an awesome point. I like that a lot. Well, I appreciate it. It actually came from my own experience of not knowing what's good. Right. I think.

07:14

I come from large banking experience and with a lot of senior executives. And when you, I mean, you, you have a lot of audience. It's just project managers, amazing people who actually pull many different peoples of many different backgrounds to have to move forward the big project. And I said, but they talk about flawless execution. So when people hear things like that, especially you're asking me from employee perspective, flawless execution. Gosh, I got to do like.

07:44

I got to give above and beyond 110%, 100%. And in North American culture, it's like nothing ever ends. Everybody's given a smartphone, company provided, it's like you're supposed to be on seven. So I made these mistakes throughout my career and you, and often, even from our young age, you were rewarded for accomplishing something and doing something effectively, which is productivity.

08:12

So people just are conditioned to do more and more and more and more. And what I'm saying, this is great, but you have to kind of take a step back and say, what do you really want and why do you really want it? And based on like, if you look at where you are, what you really want, you're from now and you really have to take the time, schedule that timing calendar to think about it on a regular basis and, and know what the gap that you need to close.

08:42

And that's what, but then who is going to help you because nobody succeeds alone. So then what, you know, you said employee perspective, like whether it's your manager, your peer, somebody that you don't know. And we talked about strategic networking. Everybody is doing a really amazing job working with people they know within their group and their partners. That's internal day to day networking. But a lot of people don't know.

09:12

don't have time to think about who else I don't know I need to reach out in order to be truly effective. And then productivity is just an enabler for you to get there. So amazing work you're doing, but okay, let's take up take some pause. Why do you want to be productive? What are you going to do with it? What time saved? Right? So I'm also taking away it sounds like with with that time, if you're able to save an

09:41

Where is the hour on your calendar that you're going to do the strategic networking that you talked about that you're going to do, you're going to meet with a mentor or you're going to go learn a new skill that's the skill. You know how the people talk about, you have to get, you have to be doing the job or dress for the job you want or doing the job you want, or oftentimes, you know, when they put job descriptions together, they often don't say, you know, I want someone who in two years is probably going to be really good at this. Like they're looking.

10:09

for the skills that you have right now when they're interviewing you and for those opportunities. And so having those skills, where's the time in your calendar to plan your level up so that you're ready for that next level? And I want you to talk a little bit about, you mentioned specifically, why is this for women more than men? Or can you speak a little bit about that with how this comes up there? Or what have you noticed in your experience? This is not.

10:36

complaining section, session, or it does not, but this is reality. I'm trying to address something as, as is not worse than it is, but real talk in corporate setting, especially, especially like if you, as you move up the corporate ladder, women are promoted for their actual experience, having to do everything, even for the CEO, men are promoted for potential based on their potential. So if he did something.

11:04

quite related, but he's showing leadership quality. And if he checked the box, like two out of 10 box, and people see potential in him, and he gets his consider for his potential for the next role, whereas women, both leadership, as well as women, employees were applying for the job, we feel like we have to check like eight, nine, 10 out of 10 in order to even apply for the job. So I work primarily with

11:33

women in corporate. And I'm just saying, like I come up with this word and a lot of people got a kick out of it. Don't be a project queen. Do not be a project queen because what happens is you become known as invaluable, too valuable to lose in the minds of your boss and your leadership. And then you're not carving up.

11:54

time based on your increased productivity to increase your networking skills and close the gap in skill sets, whatever it might be, to get to the next role. So you just, you know, hamster wheel that's going, it's like, you're getting really good at this, but it's just like, you know, I don't want to say productivity ninja, it's kind of negative, but you become a project queen. You're a project queen and that also pigeonholes you to always be that product.

12:23

that project queen and not moving on to the next one. That brings up ideas that we've talked about on the show in the past or things like, you have to make yourself replaceable, right? Because if you're the project queen, then nobody else can do it. But if you have an SOP and like, who's gonna cover for you when you're on vacation? Or when you go take the two week training, the leadership training that you talk with your boss and you know this is your next level, who's gonna be able to take over for you when you go? And so you really, you have to make yourself replaceable so that you can.

12:53

go to the next job without being stuck where you're at, which is, that's such a powerful thing. Or the other thing, you know, it's helpful. Your manager, if you're the project queen, I feel like they assign you work all the time. Like that's, oh, well, we know that Hastings is going to do it. So let's send it to her. Like, oh, yes, you're, you're the go-to person for more work. The fun, the, the way you can flip the script with your manager is to ask them for mentors.

13:18

Hey, manager, obviously I look up to you and the way that you work, but then can your manager connect you to two or three recommended career managers or mentors, career mentors that they'd recommend? And that's really powerful because now you're using their recommendation to get connected to spend your work time, to get connected to other people who are gonna help you advance. And it makes them shift their perspective like,

13:48

developmental networking here, I'm helping them do that. And so it's almost like a flip script, like not just, oh, Hastings might go to add more work person, but now like, oh, who can I send Hastings to about that? And so I think that's a, that whole of the mentor recommendations and flipping that script that yes, you are, you are gonna spend time on your development. Hey boss, who should I talk to about that? And if you haven't had that discussion with your boss, please do that. Please ask your boss for a couple of mentors.

14:18

around the office. You're going to get all the credit for that, but it's going to help you, exactly what Heisink said, it's going to help you move to the next level, create that opportunity, or at least start networking. Your boss will have recommended that you network with these people and you're doing what your boss said and creating those opportunities, at least helping get it started. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it's also, it's how you communicate with your manager as well, because one of my clients, she's been hired by her boss 15 years ago.

14:48

They haven't gone anywhere. They're in separate. Amazing. This is a classic case, both women. And my client wants to go somewhere and she's like, oh, my manager is not really helping me. She's not the kind of person who's mentoring or helping her direct reports with leadership skill set or something like that. They all keep their head down and do an amazing job. They're all project walking. I was mentioning a conversation I said.

15:15

I think it's, but then it's not, it's a little awkward. So I ended up saying things like, you start having conversation in terms of where you to be, but often women feel like if they express their desire for something new, even within the organization, they worry their boss is gonna think that they're not loyal. So people don't wanna talk about that. But this is the difference between men, and men seem to do this very well.

15:43

It's almost like you need to talk to your manager and other people, influencers within your organization that you're doing an amazing job, but you're always looking out for the what's next. It doesn't necessarily have to be advancement, but nobody can read your mind unless you express your desire. And the other thing that is also important. So forget about this guilty conscience that, oh, what if my boss thinks that I'm

16:11

not loyal, I'm looking for something else. It's how you talk about it. Because what they worry, if you're really valuable, they don't want to lose you because it's pain for them, right, to replace you. You're irreplaceable, and you're both guilty for knocking each other out. And I said, you know, if you think of, like think of the situation from her perspective, if you were her, how painful would that feel to lose somebody that you've known for 15 years?

16:40

Like, you know, you don't even have to worry about that portion of your portfolio because she's tried and true. So when you have discussion for something new, you really have to be compassionate about the potential pain the other person feels and how you're going to make sure that transition will be as smooth as possible, especially if you're looking for different opportunities within the organization. You really have to mention that to just put that.

17:08

doubt and uncertainty and discomfort out of the question. So yeah, it is, I do see that a lot in women. I think it's because we, you know, I don't know, it could be the motherly instinct. They wanna make sure that everything is taken care of. They wanna be responsible and dependable, but you are following everything that Brian has shared with you in the past. It's like...

17:33

How do you not work on things that doesn't matter to you? How do you remove distraction? How do you all these tips and tools? So say you save an hour a day, now your productivity has increased, what are you gonna do with it? Right, yeah, I feel like we've been kind of driving at that. What are you gonna do with it? So I guess, and you know what, to speak to the mother hens out there, I feel like you're describing a mother hen, that like you wanna keep your little, your group together, keep everybody happy,

18:03

That is, to be honest, it's a really wonderful quality. So we're saying that right now, calling you out, not in a bad way, but those people are some of my favorite people to work with. They're just wonderful. So I understand not wanting to lose them. So I almost want to challenge the mother hens of the group that are listening or whoever, if you're a mother hen listening, to can you invite someone in the group and you start training your own protege now?

18:30

And if that's your evolution is that you start training somebody who can take over for you so that when you go on vacation or you're looking at taking that training that takes you out for a week or something, you've already done that because your boss, what they're going to do is say, oh, I can't lose you because nobody else can do your job. So you almost have to show them that you can, but use that kind of mother hand, pull people in. And here's how the team, we're all covered for each other. And clearly, if you're that person, you already can do everybody else's job. That's how you got to be the

18:59

mother hand that you are. So make sure that others can do yours too. But from the perspective of then you get to go do bigger and better things. And, and I love that. Um, and Hastings, I want to, I want to shift gears now because we've been talking about employees and starting here. I want to speak to the managers too. So if you're a manager over some people, you've got people underneath you now. What can you do? What we just said is relative to you as a manager still for you personally.

19:29

You got to make sure that you're setting yourself up for the next level. If there's going to be a promotion, there has to be it. The people are going to avoid the pain of change, right? So if, if you are able to, you know, that things, someone could take your place. You've got that look, look at that perspective, but also looking up that personally. Look at me. I'm going on and on about this because I'm so excited about it. What I'm trying to say is you, we've talked about the employee. Now let's talk about the manager. If you've got people underneath you, how can you facilitate?

19:59

or what, Heizing, what would your recommendations be for managers to help create those opportunities for advancement with the people under them? If you have a mother hen that you love in your group, what tips do you have to make sure that you're taking care of them and their growth and what they're doing? Yeah, that's a good question. Let me address that. And then there was something else I was thinking about. I think, I think managers job is actually,

20:24

Team productivity and leadership, right? Those are the two things that are most important. I think you're talking about leadership perspective. How are you gonna grow your team instead of just keeping them, right? That's one strategy, but that's not really a great strategy. And you lose people who are ambitious and who are goals because obviously they're not gonna grow there. So for Matt, is it related to productivity? Well, just in general, so we talked about like our topic today really, we're getting back to

20:52

creating capacity to advance your life and career. So productivity should create that capacity to advance your life and career. So if you've got a team underneath you, what are there any specific tips or thoughts that you have for the manager in that role now to make sure that that happens for their team? I think manager's role is actually helping their team to think differently. Okay, so more on that. Say you have somebody who's really good.

21:21

And I personally dealt with this person in my previous role. Amazing. And I would say things like, you know, I see you in my view years from now. I'm trying to motivate that person to think differently, think bigger. And I would hear things like, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want your job because you don't have time to eat lunch and take a break. And I'm good where I am. And so.

21:47

So then I felt like, okay, there are two things going here because I'm not a really good role model to show this person that you could aspire to be me and you should because you're good. And if you're interested and you don't have to have my life because your life is your life and you can create work and life balance. So part of it was like.

22:08

was creating an ideal state for this person to aspire for my role. So that's one thing. And the other thing is you really need to make it a priority. It has to be their objective, personal development objective. So then they actually feel like they have permission to set aside an hour or two hours every week.

22:29

to grow in new skill set or strategic networking or something. And it has to be ongoing discussion. Like, I don't know, most people meet with their direct reports on a weekly basis, at least bi-weekly basis. And if you don't bring it up, then all you talk about is project. And how would your direct reports be like, they have permission to do it. Even if they do it, they will not discuss it with you, which is not an ideal situation. Sure.

22:56

And I think managers have to believe that that is part of your, the most, the biggest part of your role as people manager is leadership and helping people grow. And if your team is intact and it doesn't change, it's the same group of people year in, year out. There's something not right about that. Yeah. Right? It's like you're not going people. I think, so a couple of specific things I'm thinking about right now. One is you talked about the regular meetings with the managers.

23:24

If you're a manager, one of the bullets on your regular bi-weekly meetings should be something about development. If it's a training that they said they were gonna take or a mentoring session, I connected you with the mentors, were you able to connect with them? Then you check back in so that one of the bullets that you talk about is not just projects, but it's actually something that is for the good of that person outside of their day-to-day job, right? So some kind of evolution or something. And if you're checking in on that,

23:54

that definitely helps them feel important and like you care that they're going somewhere. So checking in on those things, keep their personal development things or if you have a development plan with them or whatever your organization calls it in that development plan, if you know that there's one or two things that are the next most important things they need to do to evolve or to grow or to train or something, check in on those things. Most places have an online training that's free to take.

24:21

So it's not always a, oh, let me sign up for this week long conference that's not happening until next month. Like, no, that's fine, check back on that later, but find something that they can do right now and include that in the things that you're checking in, especially, and for the ladies, for the women that are working for you and the men, of course, this is true of all sexes, but immediately after what's hazing after what you were saying about.

24:45

You know, the the ladies kind of getting into that. I love the the mother hen metaphor is very easy for me to to think about because it's like, oh yeah, you know, they're just they're they're fine here. This is their home. This is their family. They've got that. And so if you're talking regularly in your biweekly meetings with, OK, what do you what do you what's outside of that? That really helps them. So that's my my first takeaway on that is that is is that make sure you're checking in with them on their next something outside.

25:14

And the second thing that came to mind as you were just chucking was, you know, you really should also have personal development meetings where you both share where you both want to go because everybody has aspirations for where they want to go. And, you know, you as a manager, if you want to get there, you kind of, it's one of those things where you put it out to the universe and it can finally happen. Like part of it is talking with your team about not.

25:40

If you've created a culture where you share that you have aspirations to get to the next level, or another role, or another something, and as soon as you say that, everybody thinks that the world's going to end and the wheels are going to come off the wagon and that everything's going to... That is not a good culture that you created. So by you opening up and sharing something outside the team or outside the next immediate direct promotion, whatever it is, or maybe it is that, but share where you want to go next.

26:08

because by you sharing that, they can share their next one. And it might not be in your team. They might not want your job. And please don't take that as any kind of insult. That's not a reflection of you necessarily. As everybody's path, you know, everybody gets what? It's a new job every five years or something, and people change companies, and they just went through the great resignation where people were changing and looking for other opportunities. And so people are always gonna change. So try that. I feel like the attitude is almost like that thing

26:39

You're trying to smother everything to keep it where it is. Like, no, don't go, don't move, don't, everything's fine, we're trying to keep it. No, don't change, don't change, don't change, don't change. If you do that, it's not gonna, everybody's stuck, and that doesn't work. People who are stuck wanna get out worse than ever, and they write even worse things about you in the reviews when they leave, if you try to keep them stuck. So I share that because when you're having those things, be, share what you're interested in, even if it's just to start the meeting.

27:08

take a minute or two and share, you know, here's where I'm trying to go. And then let's talk about where you're trying to go and how I can help you get there. And make sure that you're having that meeting more than once a year during the performance review period, right? Like that's the, oh goodness. If you can once a quarter during your bi-weekly meetings, spend 15, 30 minutes talking about.

27:30

how the evolution is going on, what have they been working on or something. If you can incorporate that into once every three to six months instead of once a year during performance reviews, it really creates an opportunity for everyone to feel safe, to want to move ahead and do more and think about those next steps. Cause some people just think about showing up and doing a good job. Yeah, I mean, I think you just hit the nail on the head because I was just about to say, because as a manager, you know,

27:59

If you take care of your people by helping them think differently and really, you know, stoke their ambition and as you said, Brian, just say, so this is what I do. I mean, if you're looking externally as well, you may not want to share that, but that's fine. You have your own discretion, but you're giving people permission constantly. Let's talk about this. People feel like they're taken care of and your manager really thinks about your.

28:28

growth, they're going to be productive because they feel like they feel about and you're watching them. And the whole great resignation started with COVID and these managers are so insecure. They feel like people and they're not doing the work. And there were questions that some people asked, some manager in the situations like, oh, I'm really concerned about not being able to have team meeting and things like that. And so the HR person was asking, does the work get done?

28:56

Yes. Did anybody miss that line? No. Well, then what is the issue? So I think we kind of have to rise above. If you, you know, as a manager, your job is leadership and team productivity. It's a team sport. You worry about team sport, not your individuals. But if you start really taking care of your team's growth and really help them think differently, the product, they will be productive without changing anything

29:26

they're thinking, okay, I'm doing a really good job here, but my manager's actually helping me think differently and she or he might even open doors for me within the organization. And you have to reward your people as taking those initiative as being resourceful, not being potentially not loyal. Yeah. So, Hazing, talk about this for you personally. How have you...

29:51

run it because I've got like I've got a funny story that I want to share about this exact almost this exact thing that we're talking about and being stuck and and creating capacity to go further. So but I want to I want to give you certainly want to give you kind of first nod at okay what does this mean for you personally? I mean clearly you're passionate about this we're we're talking about it you're like oh this would be a good topic hey Brian I'll come on your show and I'll talk about yeah let's talk about this so what does it mean for you personally? Oh it's based

30:21

Queen and it took me about four years to feel comfortable enough to share probably on LinkedIn and that probably got the most responses out of it. I actually had a complete meltdown. Not meltdown, like complete like working hard, being productive, known to do things and you know I come from Korea.

30:45

Asian back. So it's, it's, I was conditioned to believe that you work hard and you're loyal to your employee and you don't complain. You don't talk about your next aspiration and you just make your bosses look good and somebody's going to take notice. That's how, right? You do your job. You're amazing. Somebody's that casing is amazing. You go to places, right? So I had this aspiration to become an executive. I was on the cusp of things and I'm, you know, leading

31:14

CEO mandated multi-million, multi-year project transformation. And I was like, it's got to happen. It's got to happen. But I became productive. People give me more time. You mean it's got to happen, meaning your promotion, it's got to happen, but it never did? You know, that's when recognition happened, but promotion opportunities, things should happen, but nobody. And you need to schedule time to build networks of supporters. And so me personally, I had a group of supporters. And

31:42

and the organization went to major reorg and the leadership changed from CEO way down. You know how that goes. The leaders want to bring their own people, various to change the culture and stir things up in a good way. So I faced a situation where all my sponsors, mentors, supporters, influencers I had built over the years are leaving one after the other and I did not have time. I did not, I wasn't disciplined enough. I wasn't thinking about.

32:10

I didn't take the time to reflect on where I'm heading. I wasn't disciplined enough to carve out and schedule time in my calendar to think about strategic networking. If I am productive, my boss, boss's boss gave me more job and it got filled up. And then I got burnt out eventually, physically, emotionally, and I was fed up because I wasn't going anywhere. And then I felt super alone. Like I had nobody to turn to. And then it turned into like...

32:40

This situation is not going anywhere. So I had all three things that is perfect storm to create almost clinical level of depression. It's like you take it personally, you think it's permanent, it's never gonna change. And every time I wanna go somewhere internally and my boss might gently block my way to go somewhere because I'm too valuable. She's got all this knowledge in her head. We can't lose her. Yeah. And so...

33:09

I am really passionate about this. It's not just women, it's also men. And I'm just saying that who is responsible for not sharing your aspiration, who is not responsible for not replacing your network and thinking about things. It's not enough for you to be really amazing at what you do.

33:33

It is so crucial for you to become resourceful and resourcefulness come from that. And it's not always have to be, oh, do you want to be my mentor? That's not the way you go about building relationship. You build relationship one person at a time without anything, not expecting anything in return. But you show genuine interest and you talk to somebody with one clear ask at a time.

34:01

to gain a little more information or to be exposed to or get introduction to another person you could possibly speak with. And I'm passionate about being start with where you want to be, even though it's not, it's hard to do alone. Where do you want to be career wise in six months to 12 months timeframe? And why is this so important to you professionally? And what that's going to enable you?

34:30

personally for yourself and your loved because then you find ways to get there because your what and why are so clear everybody is resourceful when they're what and why are clear and Then you become productive because you got to get your day job done and you have to carve out time to Let people know what you you know, you know a nice way But it's gonna take some trial and error to be in that thing. It's it's practice, right?

35:00

But I'm passionate because I was that. I was a project. I did not know how to communicate. And so it's like, okay, now I'm a coach and I'm shaking people up. It's like, wake up because I see a lot of women even, you know, I was looking at my connection on LinkedIn and some people say, my team is grown, anybody know anybody, please help them apply. And I'm thinking,

35:27

The way people communicate and the way things come across, I'm actually compassionate because I see somebody down the track three to five years from now will hit the point that I hit. And as a coach, I am just gently nudging those people like, Hey, let's look at it from a different perspective. Have you thought about? Yeah. Gently nudge or violently nudge in some cases. Some people need a violent nudging and that's, yeah, you get a coach.

35:56

If you need to be violently nudged, some people need a kick in the pants. I mean, it's, it's very real. I, this is personal for me because I, what you said really resonated with me. You said the 80% and 110% and those numbers really stuck out because you said nobody's going to notice the difference between your 80% and your 110%. And for me, I absolutely hit this point where I had worked my way up the ladder and I had reached a certain level and I was ready to go on to the next level. And my boss was four years from retirement.

36:26

and really just wanted everything to stay the same so that they could retire. They didn't want anything to get hard. And if somebody quit or somebody left or somebody was gonna go, that would make their job harder. And they really just wanted to make it four more years. So I was stuck under them for four years. Well, or I would have been. But instead what happened is, I noticed exactly what you said, which is I backed off my productivity so that I did my job.

36:53

and my job was done and it was good. And I gave 80% to my job and that left 20%. And with that 20%, I went to the online training and I started taking online trainings on different things, how to Excel formulas and different personal skills that I could develop. But then the other bigger thing that I did was I started looking around at the other jobs that I might wanna have, and I volunteered to participate in their meetings.

37:19

Because I guess in my current work environment, my boss didn't immediately see and review my schedule or anything. It really was just here, here's all the work, all the tasks you have, right? You're a project queen. Are your projects being done? Then cool, they don't ask you about exactly how you spend every minute of every day. So I was given 80%. And then with that 20%, I actually went and joined weekly update meetings for the team that I thought I wanted to be on.

37:45

just because I was curious. And I saw him approach the manager. I asked him from a mentoring perspective, you know, evolving the career. And I'm really interested in what this team does. Do you think I could just join the meetings? And so I started attending their weekly meetings. And then one year later, a position came up in that team. And lo and behold, wow, I'm now really qualified for this because not only when I apply, do I at least have some knowledge on this. And I've been sitting in and I'm like, I have the skills, but then also they-

38:14

They know my face. I've been a part of the team for a year of weekly meetings, chiming in and sharing perspectives and participating. So I share that because for me, that was the way I was able to break out from under this boss who didn't want me to leave. I unfortunately, with that job, I had to quit and go get another or not quit, but I had to leave that job. I had to quit that job to get another job. And so for the managers out there, for the others, if you do that 80% thing and with that other 20%

38:42

you start trying other things, it's kind of amazing because you get to try getting involved in new jobs and little projects that are interesting. And that keeps, even if the 80% that you're doing is you're bored with it, it's just like, you're so over it. You've been doing the same thing over and over again. At least you've got this other 20% that's really interesting and fascinating. And in the end, the balance feels pretty good and it allows you to kind of experiment with other things. So you don't have to quit your job to start.

39:11

trying dabbling in some other things and like meet with other teams and go if you have that ability go do it. And then so for me that was just wonderful because it allowed me to break out of that plateau. So what you said with the 80% and 110% really resonated with look man give them 80 and then keep that 20 for yourself. Make sure that 20 is on evolving and I love I love that man. So yeah, I mean you just said something amazing like it's my word not yours, but you said I was just

39:39

And curiosity is what people lose as they spend 10 plus years in their career. They become really good at what they do, but you lose curiosity. And then other thing that I picked up on is that, hey, I want to volunteer, nothing in return. I just want to learn. And that speaks for humility. So you have curiosity and humility, and then you become...

40:03

So it's human nature. People like to work with people they know. And so when the opportunity comes, you're the natural choice. And you also talk about, I wanna mention two of the six core human needs. People want to be certain, right? So you get a job and you feel comfortable. Your boss who are retiring, but he or she was holding onto certain guy, I'm gonna retire, I don't want to do anymore. But people also need.

40:32

you know, novelty. So that's what you're seeking. And I'm like, okay, I got really good at what I do. And my 80% is probably the other 110%. And knowing that and give you permission, I don't have to feel guilty because mine 80% is 100%, 110%. I've done my job to create that productivity and capacity. Now I'm moving, I'm reaching out to people to just learn and being humble.

41:00

And I think it's a beautiful story. That's exactly the core message of our chat together today. Amazing story. When you talked about this topic, Hastings, it was like, oh, I totally, this resonates with me so much because I have absolutely lived this one. So thank you for bringing it. And so just to kind of wrap then, here's what I love. Hastings, I love that it's H-Manifest is the name because you are manifesting what you want. And for you, that's helping others to break through.

41:29

the glass ceiling that they're stuck under and the mother hens out there that are listening. I love that you're doing that and you're giving this thing a try. And I also really love the metaphor about 110%. People might not necessarily see the difference between your 80% and your 110% so that you have something left for yourself. And that was, ooh, that's so powerful. So I love that.

41:55

And you, when we were chatting before we started, hit the record button, you had talked about, you had some kind of bi-weekly educational series or share with folks if they wanna keep in touch with you, where do they find you and talk about this bi-weekly thing. Connect me with on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with anybody who wants to know more what I do. And I do bi-weekly, I just launched the bi-weekly series of the Secrets of the World's Most Successful People. Basically, I'm talking about the sixth core.

42:24

that I'm trying to help my clients. And I'm gently introducing one or two habits at a time, at a very high level. So you get to know what that is all about, and whether there is something that you can relate to. And anything that I have to share might help you move your career life aspirations. The other thing that I also would like, would love is anything that we talked about,

42:52

In the beginning, at first, nobody knows what to do. It's scary at first and it's okay, right? It's like learning how to ride a bicycle and how to drive. At first, it requires some discipline and some tips and somebody who's been there before help a little bit. So yeah, book on the 20 minute call with me and I call that brainstorm call. Anything you wanna talk about, something that you heard today or...

43:19

I hate my job. I don't know what to do next, but I love my company. Anything. I'm just joking, but anything that you're like, I just need somebody to listen to me deeply so I can reflect on what I want to do next. I see. Got it. Look away. That's awesome. Thanks, Hasing. And for you tuning in one specific request, if you could, if anything that we said today resonates,

43:48

with you from someone you know. If you have a friend who's a mother hen who's been stuck in their job for a little while or any of the ladies that you know that have been stuck on in the glass ceiling, would you share the link with this episode to them? Because I know Hastings and I will. And thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. And if you're more of a reader or you like the short summary of things, thanks for subscribing to the email list because these episodes will hit your inbox with the short summary so you don't have to go looking for them when they come out. So I love

44:17

sharing Productivity Gladiator with you. That's a wrap.

Workr Beeing - 49 Tips to Manage Stress In A Hectic Work Environment

In this episode, with Patricia and Katina, cofounders of Workr Beeing and shared almost 50 tips to manage stress in a hectic work environment.

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Today’s Guests

Dr. Patricia Grabarek

Dr. Katina Sawyer &
Dr. Patricia Grabarek
Co-Founders of Workr Beeing

https://workrbeeing.com/

instagram.com/workrbeeing/ 

facebook.com/workrbeeing/ 

Community:  https://workrbeeing.memberful.com/join 

Dr. Katina Sawyer

On the show we found out that Katina and Patricia are friends from grad school. They created Workr Beeing to talk about the science behind workplace wellness and work-life balance. They both have a Ph.D’s in industrial & organizational psychology so you can say they're “experts” in how people function and behave at work. They provide science backed resources and information to make better and more positive work environments. The funny part, it all started when they were several drinks in at a wedding! 

Workr Beeing is different, according to Katina and Patricia, because they are “nerds about data”, and the science and research behind these trends. They summarize what exists in the scientific literature in, what they hope is, a fun and exciting way.

You can read their bios here.

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49 Tips & Tactics To Manage Stress In A Hectic Work Environment

For Employees

• Be able to name your own signs of stress, and learn to recognize them sooner. When you're in the moment of feeling stressed, all other things start to sort of fade away and you get very hyper focused on the thing that's stressing you out. When you get stressed you feel a spike in your negative emotions so you become more anxious & you start to think more negatively than positively. When that happens you go into a fight or flight type mode. Your heart rate might spike. Your palms might start to get sweaty. You might start to have racing thoughts. If you can catch yourself earlier in the stress process, like when you’re at a 3 or 4 on a 1-10 scale, you can start to deescalate sooner. If it takes you until you get to be a 10 out of 10 before you notice, then it’s a much harder and longer trip to bring yourself back down to a 1. To deescalate you can try:

  • Breathing Exercises (app on your phone)

  • Body scans (mental exercise)

  • Mindfulness Exercises (Have an app ready and loaded with your favorite 2 min meditation)

  • Nature Meditations

  • Quick Guided Meditations

  • Remove yourself from the situation physically for a few minutes (take a quick walk)

  • Quick workout during the day (try to hit your max heart-rate, like the moment from “Rocky” where you’re completely out of breath, even if it’s just a quick sprint during a walk.)

• Know your long term symptoms of stress, like chronic stress. For some people it’s chronic and persistent, you can’t isolate it to one stressful moment or event. What does that feel like in your body? Some activities that can help you cope and fill your cup back up are:

  • Mastery - Master a new skill or topic.

    • Work on a project, like a house project

    • Take lessons on learning another language

    • Try cooking a new dish in the kitchen

  • Do an activity where your brain is completely focused on the present moment. This causes it to leave behind the thing that’s stressing you out, and eases some of the stress from it. Something where you can focus ONLY on the present.

    • This is why vegging out, or TV, are NOT very effective for many people.

    • DO NOT scroll social media. Social Media is shown by research to NOT reduce stress

    • Hanging with friends who make you laugh

  • Remove notifications that will pull you back into stress. (Example: out with friends laughing and a work email notification goes off, you look at your phone, and you’re sucked RIGHT BACK INTO stress.).

  • Clarify your “disconnected” hours. For most people work is not 24/7/365. There are off times, be clear about those and eliminate or limit notifications that can get through to only true emergencies. Balance means you need to be “off” sometimes, not “on” all the time.

  • Journaling helps to get the stuff out of your head. Have you ever tried “writing morning pages”?

  • If ideas or stress are spinning before bed, write it down. Keep a paper/pen or device next to you in bed and if a thought is swirling and won’t let you relax, write it down. The act of writing it down will help your brain let it go, because your brain knows it written down and won’t be forgotten, so it doesn’t need to be “front of mind” anymore.

For Front-Line Supervisors & Managers

Now for front-line supervisors and managers, besides all the above recommendations, we added on these specifically for those who are managing others. What can you do for the people under you?  

• Individualization of your support is important.

  • Know the type of support that each person needs. If you know their personal stressors, they’re easier to accommodate. 3 examples:

    • If an employee has childcare issues, being aware of scheduling meetings (if possible) to not interfere with that.

    • If an employee has a health condition, be aware of that in your planning, and/or the support you offer them.

    • If your employees favorite extracurricular activity is after work on Wednesdays, then don’t schedule a meeting to conflict with that unless there truly is no other choice and it’s an emergency.

  • Understand that while their work-life and personal lives are separate, it’s still the same person, and one affects the other. Be open to the stressors in all forms. (Example: Don’t ignore the fact that they’re pregnant, ask for updates on how the pregnancy is going periodically, and if there’s anything you can do to support. Even if you can’t offer what they ask, decline nicely, it will still mean a lot that you asked.)

• Role Modeling good practices yourself

  • If you say to disconnect on the weekend, but you send emails on the weekend, that can be a stressor. SCHEDULE SEND emails you’re sending to arrive Monday morning instead.

  • Don’t highlight and reward only the behaviors that are unhealthy workaholic behaviors. Examples:

    • “Judy get’s this award because she worked so hard that she had her baby at work.”

    • “Johnny is sending emails on nights and weekends, he really shows his dedication to the job”.

  • When you’re on vacation, unplug completely. If you check your emails, your staff will think they need to.

  • Share some of your life outside of work with your team. If you have hobbies, that makes it safe for your employees to have hobbies.

  • Set AND SHARE priorities. There’s always going to be plenty to do, so the constant addition of more urgent things, and an environment where everything is urgent and must be done right away, there’s no sense of prioritization, and people won’t know how to manage their own time and stress. In short, don’t be an “Everything is always on fire” boss!

    • Let employees have a say if you can. As the boss, you know you can ultimately decide, but it’s helpful to involve the employees when you can. Share the things that are coming and see who is interested in adding more.

    • Allow your employees to disagree with you. Let them tell you what can or cannot be done without the fear of getting fired the first time they do. Build psychological safety with your team.

    • Model that behavior up too. If your boss adds more to your team’s plate, go to your boss and ask for priorities, for the sake of your whole team.

• Don’t be afraid to ask the question of your employees because you’re afraid of finding out “the bad news”. If that’s how you’re feeling as a supervisor, it’s probably even more important that you do. Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away.

• Support your employees fitness, sleep, & diet.

  • If you’re buying lunch, buy a healthy lunch.

  • Talk about finding healthy meal items you’ve tried. Even if you’ve failed, such as trying a meal service that didn’t work, drawing attention to it may help others to pay attention to it too.

  • If you ask your employees about their sleep, it helps employees to notice and focus on it.

  • If you ask your employees about fitness, it may help them to start to think about it too.

• Normalizing talking about something that happened outside of work. Remember what happens outside of work affects employees at work, so if there’s a challenging situation happening, it’s helpful for employees to feel safe to share that with you, their supervisor.

What about in the middle of an HR Action or Termination

Some managers are afraid to talk about stress with employees that are underperforming or that are under a potential HR action. What do you do there?

• Depends on the type of personnel action:

  • If the employee is just not meeting deadlines, conversations with them about their wellbeing will not ultimately affect the outcome of the personnel action.

  • If they may not be right for the role, sometimes having these kinds of conversations will help the employee realize that this isn’t the right role for them, and they may select themselves out of this role, which is the best outcome for everyone involved.

• Being interested in the person’s wellbeing will often deescalate and destress the situation, but that doesn’t need to affect or change the final action you are ultimately going to take. You can be kind, and be strong at the same time.

• Managers often try to “fill in the gaps themselves” and come up with their guess or hypothesis about why someone is underperforming. All of that “guessing” doesn’t actually help, and often creates more stress. Often the best approach is to ask, “Hey what’s been going on with you lately?” or “How are you doing really?” or “I noticed XX happened, that’s not like you, what’s up?”

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Video

There was a slight glitch in the video recording software which caused Patricia's audio to not quite align with her video. It's about a second off, almost like an echo. There was no easy fix for that and this was such a great interview on camera too, that I chose to share it anyway. Sorry about that!

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The Audio/Podcast

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. I created Productivity Gladiator because I saw what a difference it made for employees to improve their productivity, improve their life balance, and live their best life right now, today, not wait until retirement. Thanks for checking out Productivity Gladiator! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.

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Episode Transcript

00:00

Productivity Gladiator.

00:06

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer and Productivity Gladiator is about life balance and personal productivity. In this episode, I want to share top tips to manage stress in a hectic work environment. And I have the opportunity to bring with me today on the show, I have Katina and Patricia, who are the co-founders of Worker Being, which is all about this same topic, work-life balance. So for those folks who aren't familiar with Worker Being, could you describe Worker Being and how you guys are kind of related to this whole?

00:35

stress in the workplace environment. Sure. So Katina and I are actually friends from grad school and we came together to build Worker Being to really talk about the science behind workplace wellness, work-life balance, burnout, all those good topics that we love to discuss. We both have our PhDs in industrial organizational psychology. So you can say we're experts in how people function at work and how they behave at work. And that's...

01:03

That's kind of angle that we're coming at it from with worker being. And really we want to make sure that people can take science backed resources and information to make better and positive work environments. Well, my initial thought is, wow, that's amazing. And at the same time, my thought is, and at what point did you decide that that was the path that you wanted to take? I'd imagine, you know, as six year olds, you didn't think, oh my gosh, worker being is my dream. At what point did the did the road shift that direction? What brought you there?

01:30

We definitely didn't think it when we were six, I don't think. But when we were several drinks in at a wedding, we decided that it would be a really good idea for us to bring our passion for workplace wellness from a research perspective into the hands of employees everywhere. And so I think that when we decided that this was a path we were going to pursue was really when we saw that there was a

01:55

problem in society that needed a research-based solution. Patricia was hearing from her clients and I was hearing from my students that there were really basic wellness-related problems at work that people were struggling to solve. We knew what some of those low-hanging fruit answers might be from the research and what we did in graduate school. We thought that we should probably share the wealth and help other people to learn more about that too. Yeah. By the way, where does the name come from?

02:24

Oh gosh, it was so hard to pick a name. We were tossing around all sorts of names. We had this whole activity where we picked a bunch of different words that are related to what we want to be discussing. And then just one day I randomly was like, well, if we're talking about workplace wellness, worker wellness, worker wellbeing, worker being, there we go. So kind of just playing with words until we got there. And then we thought we were cool, so we just dropped him two miles around. Like a tech startup.

02:54

That's awesome. So it wasn't totally a random name generator, but went with it. Inspiration from those places. That's cool. I like that. Now what makes you guys different from, there's a lot of organizations out there that do training and stress management and the topics that we're talking about today and what you guys do, what would you say makes you guys just a little different from?

03:18

the others that are out there in the space. Yeah, I think what makes us a little different is honestly that we're nerds about data. Like we, we love data. We're really interested in understanding what the science and research have to say about these trends. And so what we do is we summarize what exists in the scientific literature and what we hope is a fun and exciting way.

03:43

But really, I think our differentiator is that everything that we talk about is data driven in science-based. And I think that makes us a little bit different because you can always count on us to keep you up to date in terms of what the scientific cutting edge resources are that help people to understand how to support wellness at work. And we're also doing our own research. Yeah, that's true. I was just going to say, we're also doing our own research. Patricia, great. Mine's a thing to like because I was just going to ask, are you doing the research?

04:10

or reporting on the research or both it sounds like. Yeah, it's definitely both. So we're doing our own independent research, creating some really exciting new frameworks that we'll be coming out with soon, as well as taking what exists already in the literature and packaging it in a way that's not as boring as an academic journal. Yeah. Absolutely. And I've had a chance to go to their website. If you haven't checked it out sometime while you're listening or later on down the line, please do check out their resources and the...

04:39

They've got a lot for you on the website and the community that they have. So definitely check that out. But let's jump into our topic for today. We were going to talk about top tips to manage stress in a hectic work environment. And my little primer for the listeners is I I'm well, all of us on this episode are kind of big personal development nerds and stuff. And so I know when you listen to this stuff, oftentimes the the listening that you're doing is, oh, I've heard about that or I'm familiar with that or that kind of thing. And so my I totally have a little.

05:07

challenge for you guys that are listening, which is instead of just asking, you know, did I already know this or am I doing this well? Well, instead of asking, did I already know this? Ask my question for you is, are you doing this well or how could I be doing this even better? Because I love I'm, I'm excited. I've got a couple things I want to share and I can't wait to hear what you guys are going to share. So as we're going through this and I'm listening to it later, I'm going to be asking myself, okay, how could I be doing that better?

05:34

So just a little primer, but let's jump in. There's generally two audiences that I like to talk to in this show. One is about, is the employees that are doing the work and then the frontline managers, the frontline supervisors and the middle managers that are over those employees. So let's start with the employees themselves. What would you guys say off the bat? What are top tips to manage stress that come to mind for you guys?

05:56

I think to kind of kick things off, the first thing to manage stress is to be able to recognize the signs of stress. So there are physiological signs that actually accompany becoming stressed. When you're in the moment of feeling stressed, what happens is you get focused on the stressor. The stressor is whatever the thing is in your environment that's causing the stress. So perhaps your boss puts something on your desk that you need to work on and it needs to get done immediately and you know that you have other things on your plate.

06:25

and now this thing is stressing you out. Or maybe you get a phone call finding out some stressful news from home in the middle of the workday that you need to attend to immediately despite the fact that you have other things on your plate. When you get stressed, you feel a spike in your negative emotions, right? So you become more anxious and you start to think more negatively than positively.

06:48

And that hones your attention. It serves a pretty functional purpose to hone your attention on the thing that needs your attention, which is the thing that's threatening you and that you wanna get out of your way. But the problem with stressors and recognizing these stressors is that it pushes all of the other things that you have in your environment into the periphery. So other people that you might need to be attending to, you might not even notice that they're there, you might not pay attention to the fact that they're there.

07:14

And so all these things start to sort of fade away and you get very hyper focused on the thing that's stressing you out. And so as you start to recognize those signs in yourself that you can think about when you start to feel stressed and you can almost notice that everything that you used to notice in your environment kind of goes away and you become hyper aware of one thing, right? Like this email that's in front of you or this thing that just landed on your desk or the kid that's crying because they just got injured in the house, right? And you don't notice the other details of what's going on.

07:44

So when that happens, you go into like this fight or flight type mode. Your heart rate might spike, your palms might start to get sweaty, you might start to have racing thoughts. So the first thing really to do in terms of addressing your stress is to start to recognize what your stress signs are, or what actually is a symbol for you that you're starting to experience stress. Because if you can catch yourself earlier in the stress process, you can start to de-escalate sooner.

08:13

But if you wait until you get to be a 10 on a one to 10 scale, it's much harder to bring yourself back to a one than if you start recognizing those things at a three or a four. Yeah, catch it before it goes off the charts. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I think that there's... So what about you? So that's kind of like, so that's kind of in the beginning of the stress cycle. There's also this idea of chronic stress, right? Where you are now dealing with a lot of stressors that are piling up. So I do think, I completely agree with Katina that recognizing when you're in a stress cycle, especially an urgent one.

08:43

and working on coping mechanisms to get you down from that space. But then if you're dealing with chronic stress, which I'm assuming that a lot of you are probably thinking about that. I know on this call, I can tell you that I've got a lot of stressors in my life, not just one thing that's happening and it's been building over time. Then you need to approach it slightly differently, right? So there's the de-escalation for...

09:06

the stress that's happening in the moment. So thinking about breathing exercises, mindfulness, how to get yourself away, break that cycle, move yourself from the situation if possible, bring in somebody to help you, etc. But then if you're in a chronic stress cycle, thinking about what you can do to recover so that you start to fill your cup back up because stress is going to deplete your resources. It's going to make you tired. It's going to make you exhausted when you get to that chronic stress level. What can you do to refill your cup? And there are some...

09:33

key strategies in the research around how to do that. One thing that is a little counterintuitive that I always like to bring up is this idea of mastery. If you're dealing with a lot of stress at work and then you leave work, a lot of people want to just go and veg out on the couch, watch their favorite Netflix show, things like that. That can be helpful and relaxing too, but what will actually help refill your cup more would be to work on...

10:00

a new project, something different, not in your workspace necessarily, but build mastery and confidence in something else that you're doing. Learn a new skill. Maybe you're really excited about learning how to cook. Take some time and start practicing whatever dish you want to learn to cook. If you want to learn another language, do that some evenings, work on your Spanish skills, what have you. That kind of mastery, building mastery in other areas actually helps you feel better, helps you feel more...

10:26

confident, more competent, and actually can help you reduce stress over time better than pretty much any other technique. So sounds counterintuitive to then add more things to do, but it can be really helpful. It's a way to kind of divert that attention. And that makes sense from the chronic stress perspective. That seems like the good counterbalance, right? That kind of keeps you in check from the chronic perspective. Katina, I want to go back to what you said.

10:49

What are when you're in that moment and you're headed up to the 10 and you're you started at a one now you're at a three or a four you're like oh gosh you can see that you're you're getting that almost it's almost like that metaphor of like when you're when you're stressed it becomes that tunnel vision like all of the sudden. Yeah you can see is that one thing that's stressing you or whatever it is what what are tactics to turn that around specifically I mean you can't just leave and go take a Spanish lesson I mean you could but now like in the moment then what do you do.

11:18

Yeah. So the research shows and actually some independent research that I've conducted on mindfulness as well, shows pretty strongly that mindfulness is a big technique that can help you to take yourself from a five to a one or a seven to a three. And the good news about mindfulness is that you don't have to say like, I'm leaving work to take an hour long break to do a mindfulness training or whatever the case may be, right? Like you can actually do like two minutes of mindfulness and get an impact to get yourself out of the stressful space.

11:47

So a really quick hit of mindfulness through an app can actually help you to start to deescalate. And the reason for that is because mindfulness actually does the opposite of what being in a stressful situation does. Instead of catapulting you into this tunnel vision space, mindfulness provokes more positive emotions and the ability to take the perspective of others, which actually broadens your scope back out. So you're able to notice those things in your environment that you're drowning out.

12:13

and you're able to counter those negative stress emotions with more positive emotions. So it might not take you from, you know, all the way back to a place where you're like, this is great, this is the best day ever, but at least it helps to combat those rising negative emotions. So in the moment, practicing some mindfulness, having an app ready and loaded with your favorite two minute meditation so that when you get into that space, you can take a quick break, deescalate, and then re-approach your task with a new mindset.

12:42

Not only does it help you to approach the task in a more sustainable, healthy way, but you're also more likely to get the task done in a more innovative and complete way because you're not so honed in on trying to get rid of this thing. You actually allow yourself to think more broadly about possible solutions as well. When you say mindfulness now, some folks might have never even put their foot in the water of mindfulness necessarily. So...

13:07

I mean, is it just you talked about an app or is it really meditation and breathing or is there more to it or what are the kinds of things you're referring to? Yeah, there are multiple forms of mindfulness that you can engage in and they all kind of do the same thing, honestly. There's a body scan where you can draw attention to and try to keep your attention in the present moment by focusing on just how you're feeling in different parts of your body in the moment. That's supposed to just keep you instead of like...

13:33

being really worried about what's coming next or what happened a minute ago, you get just very focused on what's happening to me right now. And that can be a useful way of centering yourself. But there are others that are more like meditations where you're really just focusing on, you know, envisioning yourself walking through a trail. So there's like nature meditations. There's also breathing meditations where you're really just focusing on your breath.

13:58

Any of those actually do something quite similar in terms of taking your stress levels down. Got it. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Actually, it's funny that we're talking about this because this morning I was at work and had one of those really hectic mornings where stuff keeps piling on and then there was one particular project that I seemed to go off the rails and then I was really focused on what happened with that and I found one of the things I wanted to share that so I go work

14:28

And I'm a certified personal trainer and I teach group fitness classes. And so I have a decent amount of background with this. But one of the things I've noticed is oftentimes in the advice, they say you can leave and go take a walk or, you know, for your well-being, you do something active. And I totally want to yes. And that advice. Yes, you should totally go do something active and and go walk or go pedal a bike or go take a trip around the neighborhood or something like that to leave where you're at, because a lot of what you're focused on is going to be.

14:58

right where you are, so moving yourself will do that. And my yes and yes do that, and if it's possible, I don't know how your lunch breaks work, but one of the things for me that was really helpful today is getting all the way up to a max heart rate, or where you're breathing so heavily when you're exercising that you can't speak a full sentence altogether in one breath because you're breathing that.

15:21

heavily. It's I'm imagining that moment from like the Rocky movies or something. You've seen those where you got Rocky and he's running down and he's so frustrated. He's gonna do it. Oh my god, I'm training and then he hits he hits me and he's like, and he can't breathe and the heart rates maxed out or whatever. And that moment is one of those magical times to let the stressor go. So for me today, even when I started the workout, it was about

15:47

You know, I was still thinking about the project or whatever, and it was when in the workout that we got to that peak moment where I just I had nothing left. We are absolute max. Even if it's just a sprint at the end of your walk where you're breathless or something like that, that's my yes. And thing for that's, oh, so helpful with the stress to like, let it go. That's that, that was really helpful. So I wanted to make sure that I shared that one too. Any other ideas on like,

16:15

these topics for top things. I mean, this is, you got a lot going on. What else comes to mind for you guys? Well, I think to piggyback on all the mindfulness piece in the moment, when you go back to the chronic stress, it's also helpful there, right? If you're practicing continuously mindfulness, the activity that you mentioned, right? Some sort of physical activity, whatever that looks like for you. I think in your example, what you experienced, when you get to that point of breathlessness, you're no longer able to think about anything else, but the present moment, right? So you're kind of.

16:44

getting to a point of mindfulness because all you can think about is, how do I get my breath back? Thinking about your breath, thinking about relaxing your body, you're not thinking about what happened two hours ago or whatever. That mindfulness piece, practicing that, getting better at it over time is really impactful for wellbeing overall. I think there's also social connection. We haven't touched upon that, but we know that having good social support both at work and both at home or your personal life can be really helpful.

17:13

when you had a stressful day going out with your friends for cocktails or dinner or your spouse partner and being able to decompress and have that support system will really help you deescalate that stress as well. Being able to find time, I know that the buzzword of self-care comes with some problematic issues of retail culture and things like that. But when we talk about self-care, it's really about...

17:39

Taking time to do things that are gonna make you feel better and refill your cup so that you can start the next day feeling better, feeling replenished. And so if that means practicing mindfulness, doing some physical activity, hanging out with your friends, learning a new skill or practicing some sort of hobby that you like, all of those things are really gonna help bring back some resources so you can start on a better foot the next day. I just had a mind blown moment as you were talking there, Patricia, cause it was just, you talked about

18:09

That's where you can't think about anything else. All you're thinking about is that. And it really, it kind of struck home to me that, oh, it's that in the workouts or you talked about learning Spanish or doing something that another project or something in the one thing that all of those have in common is what are these things you can do where you for like, don't forget about, but you basically forget about whatever the stressor is to give you a break from that stress and help it that helps deescalate it a little bit. And so.

18:38

I just my light bulb moment was holy smokes. Yeah, because that friends can do that when you're hanging out with friends or the fitness or the learning a new project or something where you can completely immerse your brain in it. So what's interesting is what doesn't do that for me at least is watching a TV show or even listening to music that I love. I'm such a music person.

19:04

But man, even the music, it doesn't take away the thoughts in my head of whatever it is that's stressing me. So it's finding those things that truly let your brain let it go completely. You can always come back to it. It's not like it's going away, but going away completely from that thought and focusing entirely on something else. Friends, laughter, something like that. If you're going to like watch TV to de-stress, it had better be something pretty freaking awesome or something that.

19:29

will really suck you in so that you can truly let go. Because if it's only a 50-50, half TV, half thinking about the stressor, you don't get those. And maybe I completely, if that's completely wrong, tell me now, but that's just the funny, oh yeah, light bulb moment that I just had. No, I think that's right. And I also think to your point, there's one more thing that really helps with that, which is disconnecting. So imagine you're with your friends.

19:58

you're socializing or you finish that last sprint of your run or you get to a place where you're really feeling mindful and then your phone goes off and it's a work email and it's related to the project you were working on and then all of a sudden you get sucked right back to where you were. And so part of what's also helpful for managing stress is putting boundaries around the time periods within which you're more likely to be exposed to stressors.

20:26

So if work is a stressful, a source of stressors for you, you don't wanna be exposing yourself to those stressors right up to the minute that you're going to bed because then you're in that zone of being amped and focused on negative things and ruminating and thinking about what's going on during your day right as you're about to lay down for bed, right? And that keeps you up longer. Or you may just bring yourself right back to a seven on the stress level when you just lowered yourself down to a one.

20:54

And so the benefits are short-lived if you're just continuing to re-expose yourself to those stressors over and over again. So disconnecting is a really big thing that we talk about and it's really hard to do because we're always on in society today and work expects us to be on for many hours of the day more than used to be true 10, 15 years ago. And so I think that something that we talk about doing from a time perspective is giving yourself back some time.

21:24

by converting either dead time that you would spend on a device that can make those stressors interruptive. So like, if you're scrolling social media, that's not really something the research shows actually helps you to decrease your stress. It's also a time where you might be more likely to be interrupted by an email that could cause you stress. So instead of scrolling social media and being on your phone and being in this always available space, put it down and go do something else and don't look at it for a while.

21:53

That's a way of converting some dead time into time where you actually can use it to engage in some of the techniques that we're discussing. And you're also eliminating or making it less likely that the stressor that's introducing itself is going to just intrude on your time. That makes a lot of sense. I'm suddenly drawn back to the conversation we were having earlier about having, well, disconnecting completely.

22:19

Full thought here that I'm having is one of the things I talk about in productivity gladiator often is the ability to let things go or disconnect like you said and one of the things that just popped into my head as you were talking was oh when we talk about the ability to Oftentimes when you're laying in bed at night or there's something that's that's up here And you kind of have to get it out and some people talk about journaling Are you doing your pages and those kinds of things if that's the habits you have those are great, but especially keeping

22:48

a year, maybe if it's your phone or a notepad or something next to you at night, when you're laying in bed and you have those thoughts, if you write them down, it's almost like giving your brain permission to let it go because it's not forgotten. It's not like you're, you come up with that really brilliant idea right before bed and then your brain just thinks, Oh my God, I can't forget this. I need this tomorrow. I need this tomorrow. I need this tomorrow. And then you can't sleep. And then that kind of thing. So having it a place where you can write that idea down and that way

23:18

you can let it go, which allows you to kind of let it go and almost fall to sleep or that kind of thing. And that's, as you were describing that, I was thinking, oh yeah, that's where, that's exactly, what you're saying is exactly where feeding that, writing it down, having something to copy, get those thoughts out of your head so that you don't have to worry about remembering them that allows it to kind of smooth out a little bit. So let's, I wanna shift.

23:42

gears just a little bit. And now let's talk about frontline supervisors and middle managers and somebody in management now. And from obviously managers and everyone in that category, all of the stuff we just talked about applies to you personally, right? So this is all still true. You face the same things plus some, because not only do you have your own workload and stuff, but you've got a staff and their team and all of that. So that's a whole nother level. So there's certainly stress and hectic work environment for them.

24:11

My framing for this is, okay, now you're the supervisor and you have the staff. I wanted to ask you guys about, okay, what's the advice to supervisors for how you can support or be supportive for your staff and helping with this whole stressful, hectic work environment? I love talking about what managers and leaders can do because it's so important and employees can only do so much, right? They don't have control over the amount of work that they're getting pushed down on them.

24:40

or the environment that they're in. And so, you know, giving stress techniques to employees is great for them to be able to handle that in the moment, but long term, it's, you know, the environment isn't good. You need to get out really what it comes down to it, right? If your environment's really bad and stressful. So leaders are the ones, the managers, the supervisors, they're the ones that can have the biggest impact.

25:02

to make it so that people are all in a place that they can thrive and do well. And so if you're a supervisor, if you manage a team, one thing that we're finding, so Katina and I actually are doing a lot of research right now around how you can lead for wellness in the best possible way. And one thing that we're finding over and over again is that the individualization of your approach is super important. So getting to know your employees, getting to know your team, what-

25:30

is happening in their individual lives, what is the support that they need? It's going to vary so much from person to person. If I am someone that has three kids and daycare times ending at different times and having to do all these pickups, that might be a big stressor on me and working eight hours in a row. Maybe there's a way we can accommodate and fix things for that person.

25:52

but then somebody else may have no children and but to have some sort of health issue that they're coping with. Or, you know, there's always some individual circumstance situation that's happening in personal lives that influences your work. You're not a separate person, right? You're a whole person that has a work life and has a personal life. So being able to work with that as a supervisor and understand where people are coming from and provide flexibility and some autonomy to your employees can go a really long way to help them manage their stress in an effective way. Sounds true. Katina?

26:20

Yeah. And I think in addition to learning from your employees about what they need and then trying to be responsive to those needs is also role modeling good practices yourself. So, when people look to their manager, they're understanding what does it take to be successful in this company? And most people want to be successful at their jobs, right? They want to learn from the people around them, especially people who are in positions that their role models about what's acceptable here. What are the norms? What helps you get ahead, right?

26:50

And so if the manager's saying, hey, you know, you all make sure you disconnect during the weekends, don't send any emails, and we're not going to work on projects over the weekends. But then you're getting a bunch of emails from your boss over the weekend, you're feeling inclined to respond to those emails, right? You're feeling inclined to do work on those projects. And so you can't really say as the manager, well, you know, I'm just going to send it when I feel like sending it, but don't feel like you need to reply because people will feel like they need to reply.

27:19

So something that we suggest managers do if it is better for your well-being for example Like let's say you're coping with some family struggles and really truly the most convenient Best time for your work-life balance to have gotten that stuff for the project done was on Saturday morning Do the work schedule the emails for Monday morning. Don't put the pressure on people to have to respond back to you Yes

27:43

Schedule send is amazing. Yes, use it. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Exactly. And like, you know, vacation time, we've heard some in our research too. If you're saying to everybody, hey, I'm going to be on vacation next week, but I'm available all week long if you want to reach me. It gives people the idea that when they go on vacation, they have to mimic that and say, well, I know I'm going to be out for a week, but hey, I'm available anytime you need me, boss.

28:10

And it starts a culture where now people aren't really actually on vacation because they're just working from a different place a little more sporadically than they do when they're on the clock. So I think with this boundary setting and also with talking about having a life, doing things outside of work, Patricia and I once interacted with a company and heard a story about a company that it was not while we were interacting with them, but they...

28:39

The boss was so excited to tell people that a woman had her baby in the office because she was so dedicated to her job that she actually had her baby in the office. This story got passed down by this boss as an indicator of, in this company, we really get our hands dirty and all hands on deck and we all do what we need to do to make it happen. What a terrible tone to set in a company for an expectation, right?

29:08

And she would tell it like someone had their baby in the office. And any other person that you talked to in the company was like, someone had their baby in this office. You know what I mean? It was a completely different tone. And so that's a very extreme example. But what kinds of stories or examples do you give of people who are successful? Do you talk about them as whole people? Or do you talk about people who are successful as like hard driving, they're always here, they're up early, they're working late? Like...

29:33

What are the exemplars or role models that you use of people who are successful in the company? Who are the people that you hold up as ideal employees? Because those employees are the people other people are going to look to, and that starts to shape your culture in a meaningful way. God, that's really true. You think about giving awards for the people who work the hardest. But if all you do is recognize the people who work the hardest and don't have good life balance and don't take care of themselves and don't, like Patricia said, have other hobbies or things or...

30:02

things that interest them or something don't disconnect and all they do is work, work, work, then you kind of create this self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. That's really true. I'm also reminded of the fact that you, well, supervisors should also absolutely keep things relative when it comes to priority. Everybody's had that boss where everything's a fire all the time. Like the next thing, whatever I'm telling you right now, it's that.

30:29

There's the it's like last in first out or first in last out or the kind of instructions where the whatever you say, if, if the kind of environment you've created as a supervisor is where whatever I tell you right now should become the first thing that you do, then you've created a stressful environment because inevitably there's 10 other things on that list. And if all you do is add to the top in the urgent department, that's tough. So if there's a relative thing where, and granted some people

30:58

aren't close enough to all of their employees where they're able to really get into the workload and know where this should fit or that kind of thing. But to talk about something in terms of the amount of time or the runway that comes with this thing and the expectation of how important it is, is really helpful context for people to keep the stress level down because they have that context of, okay, when, how does this fit into, I've got a list of 10 things already. All right, boss, here's number 11. Where does that fit in this, the scheme of it? And that's...

31:28

Yeah, that's super helpful too. Good ideas so far. What else you got swimming around up there? You guys are full of all these good ideas. I like it. Well, I was going to actually piggyback on what you just said at the prioritization. I think obviously prioritization is crucial and it kind of goes from the very top all the way down. Everyone needs to be on board with understanding what are priorities, what things might fall off based on workload, keeping workloads normal and appropriate. But like you're saying, if it...

31:56

manager doesn't know exactly what's on a person's plate at all times, make it so that employee is comfortable to come talk to you and say, hey, you just told me to do this. I have these six other things. Where would you put it? So then make it collaborative that the employee feels like they can have that conversation and understand that it's not like a bad thing to ask what can drop off based on workload. And allow your employees to come to you and say that, you know,

32:23

you don't think you can do all of these things. So let's be creative. Let's figure it out and practice that yourself, right? As the leader, come to your employees, say, I've got these five things on my plate and I need support with X because I don't think I can do them all myself, right? So if you're practicing that, going back to Katina's role modeling, they'll hopefully start talking to you as well. And then you can actually have really fruitful conversations around priorities so that you're not...

32:49

just adding, like you said, to that list, that never-ending list that just gets stressful and people don't know where to go and how to start. So I think that's really important. The other thing I think for leaders is giving, it's kind of related. It's kind of getting this idea of psychological safety where an employee should be able to push back. I don't see why this is important. Can you give me more context? I think the thing I'm working on now is going to impact.

33:16

company XYZ reasons and when it comes to priorities, but also really with anything when it comes to work and the way that you're working. So being able to have those really honest and safe conversations is really important for employees to feel like they can come and ask for time off for a family situation or shifting of schedules or what have you. So building psychological safety as a supervisor in your team is really important and the way to start is to be vulnerable yourself.

33:46

I want to yes and with you there. Yes, exactly that. And the role modeling or the sometimes you have to model that behavior up to if you're you are the middle manager and you've got the boss above you who's the everything's on fire all the time kind of boss, then you're going to need to go up to them and say, all right, I have three teams under me and you've given me the, you know, here's the five things that we're working on now. And you just gave two more.

34:15

where does that go in my list of things for all of these teams? And it's more of a big picture conversation, but it's that focus, right? Cause that you can't, it's that idea of fighting a battle on multiple fronts for all the military folks listening, or those, you're familiar with this metaphor where if you've got multiple fronts where you're battling, you're stretched more thin, but if you're able to help with the focus, what having that priority list does, whether it's up here at this level or down here where the troops are, or whatever it is,

34:45

having that focus on where am I battling? What's the number one front that I should be looking at and two and three? That is super helpful too. So sometimes it's modeling it up, not just down. That's gonna be good for managers. Kitsina, you looked like you wanted to get in here. No, I was just gonna say as well with the comments around having conversations with your employees and really.

35:10

understanding what those priorities are, not just from your own perspective, but comprehensive perspective and getting other feedback on what really is on fire. All of those things can be scary for managers to do, like opening up the door to say, I want us to talk more about our wellness or balance and I want to make sure I'm getting this right and I want to make sure I understand what your needs are. A lot of times people will say to us, like, if I ask the question, what if the answer is scary? Like, what if people are having lots of problems and I'm not doing a good job of this? And

35:40

I think the answer to that is you're living with the impact of whatever the answer to that question is anyway. Hearing the answer is the first step to actually addressing and gaining some control over that impact, but not knowing the answer doesn't mean you're not experiencing the problem. You're always experiencing the problem. Knowing the answer helps you to understand how to fix it. And especially if you're saying, I don't know if I'm going to like the answer to that question, then you probably already know the answer.

36:09

Right? You know you're not going to like it and you don't want to ask it because that seems scarier. But that's especially when you need to start having these conversations because the impact is there whether you understand why or not. And so let me ask for the managers on there that are one of the reasons you wouldn't want to ask that question because you don't want to know the answer is because you've got a problem employee that you're actually thinking you're going to need to part ways with. And so...

36:36

I could see there being some fear where you start having these conversations about, I'm really, you know, are you stressed or you're looking at that. And all of a sudden, because they're telling you these things, that becomes fodder for the lawsuit in the HR action where you weren't being a good boss and now you can't fire them or something like that. So I know I'm kind of putting you on the spot with that, but can you speak to that as far as what if they're telling you these things, but you need to take a personnel action on the or you're considering that? How does that play in? Can you talk about that? I think it's

37:05

depends a bit as to why you're taking this personnel action. Is it because they're not performing and they're not meeting deadlines, things like that? Or is there some glaring like they stole from the company issue, right? Obviously with that, there's no real reason to open the door and have those conversations. But if you're dealing with an employee that's not performing, that's maybe struggling in some ways, and you open up those conversations, you actually may find out that...

37:31

that employee has problems you can solve, and then you don't have to go through the process of parting ways with that employee. Or maybe you'll learn that there's a different role that's a better fit, because now they're starting to open up to you, telling you why they're struggling. Maybe they don't have the skillset that they thought they did, and if they feel comfortable and are able to trust you, then you can make that work. And you can have even honest conversations around, I've seen good leaders have conversations with people that are not good fits for roles or companies.

37:59

and they talk about it openly and they give people the space to select themselves out. And that's a much better result for everyone involved, right? Because as soon as you have to let someone go due to performance issues, then there's all sorts of rumor mills that start up within your teams because you can't say why, what this happened. And so that creates some instability and some lack of trust that's going on with the team that does remain. So it's actually better to

38:28

try to cope with it in an honest, transparent way and help either that person improve or find their path in the company or help them figure out how to get out in a successful, safe environment, that's gonna help the whole team overall. And you talked about performance issues and that kind of thing. I think even if you have an understanding of the stress and what that person's going through, that's not necessarily gonna change the parameters of the personal improvement plan, the PIP or whatever the...

38:56

The thing is that you're looking at for that person. They still are going to have certain deadlines. They're going to have to meet something like that. And ultimately being understanding, I think one thing. So randomly, I used to be the general manager of several furniture stores down in South Florida. And one of the interesting things that I remember from employees and customers is that you can be stern and enforce the rules or whatever it is and still be nice. You don't have to be.

39:23

mean, if you're going to let somebody go or take an action, it doesn't have to be because you're mean, you can be very understanding. And the only thing is you just have to stand your ground that this is the right decision. And here are all the reasons why I'm making that decision. And even if you found out some more information that helped you to help them or however, it made the conversation even more meaningful to them. But that doesn't change the action that you're going to take. And if they're going to be mad at you, they're going to be mad at you no matter.

39:51

whether you were nice and understanding about the stress or you weren't, that's not going to change the outcome. So you might as well embrace the person and kind of get to know some of that too, because that's not going to hold you back or handcuff you from the action that you want to take. I think. Yeah. I think that's a good point. And, and compassion goes a really long way.

40:10

Also, our brains are wired to fill in gaps. Let's say you're having a performance problem with someone who looks the same as or has the same name as or reminds you of a person you know from your past. You can start to fill in some details about, you know why I think this person's having a problem? Because I bet at home this is happening or I bet they're having a conflict with this person. We're not really actually that good at filling in blanks.

40:39

And so when you're trying to decide why someone's having a performance problem, you're operating on your own speculation. And a really good way to understand why someone's having a problem is to ask them what's going on, right? And to ask them in a compassionate way. So I think a lot of times when people are having performance issues, they're looked at negatively by others. And so they're approached in a different way. And if you approach it by starting off with some compassion, saying,

41:07

I know that it's your goal to do well, or I understand that everybody struggles sometimes to perform. My goal in this conversation to understand what we can do to get you to a place where you feel like you can do your best, right? Coming at it from the perspective of I'm going to assume that you want to do a good job. I'm going to assume that it's a barrier getting in your way and not you as a person that's incapable or bad or whatever. Coming at it from that kind of growth mindset, as opposed to a...

41:37

hey, you're a bad employee and unless at some point you stop being you, then I guess we're going to have a problem. The growth mindset helps you to approach the issue looking at it in a different way, right? And it puts them in a different mindset as well because now they see it as, okay, well, let me describe to you the problem and then there's a solution as opposed to I feel attacked as a person and you know what, I guess we're just not going to get past this because I'm always going to be me, right? So it puts them in a different...

42:05

mindset to use some compassionate understanding that it's a situational factor most likely and not that they're just not good. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, guys. So shifting gears off of the personnel actions then, that's kind of a negative. I don't want to end on that. That's not fun. I don't want to talk about stress as a reason to fire somebody. That is not how I saw this episode going. No. So I want to circle back then.

42:33

What are some of the things that the supervisors and managers can do to very much help them maintain the functioning of their team? So I know we've already talked about the mindfulness and the meditation and supporting that, even if it's having moments or taking a two minute break or even doing a mindfulness exercise with your employees in the beginning of your weekly updates or something like that. That certainly tracks with that. The other thoughts that came to mind for me would be like,

43:02

Well, you certainly have to support, please support their fitness, their sleep and their diet in terms of like if you're making, if you've got a stressed out team and you buy them pizza, that's really not going to help everybody in the long run. Pizza is good. It's kind of a reward, but at the same time, good health and good fitness and good that and.

43:27

having the opportunity to sleep and supporting sleep, supporting their mindfulness and meditation by asking them about it. Sometimes it's just having those conversations. Like, talk about what are your routines and being supportive. If they're gonna try something new, hey, I'm gonna try this new meal delivery service that will do, you know, the healthy meal. I'm gonna try, what, HelloFresh, or one of those names that's out there.

43:51

supportive, ask them how it went, how did it go and be interested in their eating, their sleeping and their fitness to see what that is. Because if it's important to you, it might be important to them. So that's just one example. Any other ideas come to mind for you guys on that? Well, you actually touched on something that is found in the literature. There's a study that we've talked about on our podcast at one point around sleep and...

44:16

When leaders ask employees about how they slept the night before or what sleep issues they're having, then employees started focusing on that behavior like, oh, I should probably pay attention to my sleep. It's not about you telling them what specific type of healthy behaviors they should have because obviously each person is unique, their own health circumstances, what have you, but to your point, supporting them, asking them about their sleep, asking them how they're feeling.

44:46

If they're sharing information around their fitness routine or what have you, and they're telling you these things, supporting them, showing signs of support, asking them about it, giving them the space to do those things, I think is really important because if you – yeah, like you're saying, if that person values it and then you're showing that you also value it, then they're going to continue to think that behavior is important. Yeah. And I think it goes back to that blanket solution piece. If you know people, then you understand what's important to them. You can help.

45:14

resonate with that and you can also make sure that you're helping create a circumstance where it's likely that they'll get that done. So if they say to you, look, my favorite thing in the world is to go to a dance class that takes place every Wednesday from six to seven and you know that about your team member, then don't ever schedule a call unless the world is on fire, right? From six to seven on Wednesday because...

45:42

you know that that's the time period that the employee really wants to hold sacred. If you see your employees holding stuff on their calendars, don't move it or block over it. If you know that there are things that are important to employees supporting it, normalizing talking about things that happen to people outside of work, and denormalizing the culture of overwork that plagues a lot of workplaces.

46:12

I used to work in a place where the person in charge used to say, I don't believe anybody in the world actually needs more than four hours of sleep. And that normalizes a conversation around no sleep is better. So that means that I'm learning. If I send the email at 4.45 a.m., I'm going to be the star employee. So it sets these tones, but you can set the tone the other way to say...

46:37

Wow, I'm feeling great this morning. I actually got nine hours of sleep last night as a supervisor. That lets other people know that if they slept a lot last night too, they can say that and not feel like you're going to think they're less productive because actually that person might be more productive the next day if they got a great night of sleep. So it's sort of flipping it around and saying, you're going to have a culture regardless. What culture do you want? Do you want a culture of overwork and sickness and people are not feeling their best? Or do you want a culture where people actually

47:06

are human beings and are able to show up and perform and be enthusiastic and energetic. And that starts with the people at the top. For sure. I just, I can see it as soon as you said that thing about sending emails at 445 or something, I immediately thought in my head, yeah, I'll send emails at 445 because I will schedule them to send at 445 and I'll be sleeping, but the emails will be going at that time because I am not going to be awake. The star pupil to the boss.

47:35

As long as the boss that wakes up at 4 a.m. is the only person on the email I approve. Oh my goodness. Absolutely. Yep. That award you've been wanting because you work too many hours. There it is. Schedule send, guys. Yes. Just schedule some emails to go at 9 p.m., some to go at 4 a.m. All night long. Oh, God. We're laughing about this because you should absolutely not do this. Please don't do this. Yes. That's just so... Anyway.

48:04

Well, guys, here's what I love. First, I love that some of the stuff you're referring to is backed by science. I love that angle that you guys take with worker beings. So please keep killing it at that. That is awesome. And referring back to the studies and such, I know for me personally, that's an area that I could be better in is a lot of the stuff I know from personal experience and from

48:29

working with people and teaching these workshops and hearing from people. And so a lot of mine is based on that. And so I think it's really awesome and powerful that you guys have also this whole research angle to what you're doing. So you've inspired me there. So thanks for, thanks for doing this. And thanks for the laughs in the chat today. I really appreciate it.

48:46

Thank you so much. We had a blast. This was super fun. And if they want to know about worker being and how to find you guys and to connect later, you talked about a community. Talk a little bit about how they can connect with you after this. Yeah, you can find us on our site, workerbeing.com. We've got all of our articles, podcast episodes, tons of resources for everyone. But we also do have this community, which you can find at workerbeing.com slash community. And basically we have a lot of perks for folks, but the biggest one is we have a Discord community.

49:15

where people can come and share ideas and ask questions. And we're in there all the time, giving feedback and asking questions from our community as well. And it's been a really fun place for us to kind of grow and get to know people. And that I think has been very valuable for us and for the folks in the community so far. That's awesome. And I will drop the links to the Discord and to the website and worker being has a very interesting spelling. So you'll see that in your episode notes as well.

49:44

It's not just exactly the way you think it would be spelled. It's spelled the cute way because they're clever with their wordplay and all that stuff. So thank you very much. Thank you for joining me today. And to you who tuned in, thanks for listening to the podcast. Thanks for watching the video on YouTube or subscribing via email. If you would rather get this emailed to you whenever it comes out in a format, you can read as well. But thanks for being a part of this whole productivity gladiator thing. I love this stuff and I love sharing it with you. That's a wrap.

Andrew Lawless - Your Workload Tripled, What Do You Do?

Your workload just tripled, what do you do? How do you handle it? We tackled more than 41 tips you can apply right away!

Perhaps someone on your team leaves for another job, or someone gets pulled for another project, or maybe a new initiative starts. All the sudden you find yourself with two to three times the work you had before. How does your life balance not take a hit? 

Even a 10% increase in workload will warrant looking at some of these tactics. Often people pick up “a little more work” and do things like skip lunch or stay an hour late. It’s the approach of absorbing the extra and continuing to do the same thing you’ve always done, just more of it. Don’t! I urge you to use these tactics for all situations where workload increases over 10% to help maintain your sanity.

Today’s Guest

Andrew Lawless

High Performance Coach
Founder - The Consultant Profit System

Website: teamlawless.com
IG:  @andrewlawlessdc
LinkedIn:  linkedin.com/in/leadership-and-business-coach

On the show, I speak with Andrew Lawless, a high performance coach, and the founder of The Consultant Profit System. As I was thinking about this show topic, Andrew came to mind because Andrew coaches people to go from $100K to $1Mil a year. That’s a 10x increase in work. Clearly in those circumstances, “What got you here won’t get you there” and you need to change your processes during that much growth, so I thought he would have some great insights as well. I was right!

41 Tips & Tactics To Handle The Overwhelm

We started out looking at this through the lens of an employee. What can you do for yourself to handle a 3x increase in your workload? Here are some recommendations we shared.

For Employees

• Most people do not have clarity in terms of what they absolutely have to do right now in order to move a project forward. 

  • Andrew’s Personal Example: My wife and I built a house in Ireland, we’re reviewing the plans and had a two hour discussion about the kitchen. The problem was we didn't even have a building permit at the time, so if we had spent ten minutes on the building permit we would have made more progress than spending two hours discussing the kitchen. 

  • Focus on “the one next thing”. Gary Keller wrote a book called “The One Thing” which is really helpful on this topic. For each project or effort you’ve now added to your plate, “what’s the one thing that I need to do next to move this effort forward” 

• Have the discipline to be focused on the work at hand, don’t let yourself get distracted by shiny objects.  

  • Andrew’s Personal Example: I started doing research on the topic on YouTube but ‌I ended up watching Bruce Springsteen videos for half an hour. 

• You can use tools to help with focus 

  • Addiction To Social Media: Fix It With Apps And Tech Hacks

  • Distraction Free Youtube - No recommended videos appear, just the ONE you’re watching.

  • Freedom - Blocks all distractions across all devices, currently one of the market leaders in this area.

• Mark your calendar for “Focus Blocks” - 25 to 50 minute periods. They’ve sometimes called these “tomato” or “pomodoro” timers. These are windows of time for total focus with the brain breaks in between.

  • I use focus music during these times.  I’m actually listening to it right now as I write this.  

  • Turbocharge Your Focus & Productivity Through Music

  • Search for and use ESM (electronic study music) playlists.

• Avoid getting stuck in email. Batch process it at certain points during your day, but don’t get stuck in your inbox. Most job descriptions do not include statements like “respond to all emails within 1 hour”.  Handling your email is a part of your job, but prioritize it accordingly.

  • A suggestion is to just have 2-4 time slots during the day for email, keep it closed at all other times.  

  • 'Email Inbox To 0' Hacks: Cut Email Down To Minutes-A-Day Through Batching And Notification Changes

  • 'Email Inbox To 0' Hacks: 4d Approach To Processing Your Inbox

  • Email Management Hacks: Deep Dive On Snoozing Emails To Come Back Later

  • Email Management Hacks: 2 Email Rules To Cut Your Inbox Down By More Than Half

• If you are not imperative to a meeting, ask for it to be recorded. Listen to the recording at 2x or even 3x speed. 60 minutes turns into just 20-30, and you can skip through the roll call and other less pertinent parts.

• Collaborate with your boss on prioritization. You’ll want their agreement on which/what you should do first and what drops.

  • Remember, everything is not an emergency. If there’s no blood, and someone isn’t dying, it’s not a genuine emergency, so make sure you and everyone take a breath and keep perspective.

  • Start asking about deadlines. Are those dates “nice to have it by” dates or “need to have it by dates”.  Don’t add stress working under the “nice to haves”.  

• Volunteer to write Guides and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on some of the work that you’re doing. 

  • If your boss can get help, maybe a temp, maybe a part-time employee, they’re going to need to ‌do the work, so having that SOP or instruction will mean they can get started right away with little training.  

• Self-Check Tactic from Andrew: “The first question I ask my clients is to open your calendar for me so I can look at it. If I cannot extract what exactly their priorities are by looking at their calendar, then there's a problem.”

For Front-Line Supervisors & Managers

Now for front-line supervisors and managers, besides all the above recommendations, we added on these specifically for those who are managing others.  

• Remove yourself from the production of the team underneath you. Your job is to work on improving the boat, not rowing it. You want to ‌support and pitch in, but if you maintain some of the work AND have to be the manager, then you will not have time to help develop and improve the team. In the long run, this will keep you and your team stagnant instead of‌ continuing to get better.

• Andrew: “The number one reason that I'm seeing is that individual team members are assigned tasks that require them to work ‘against their grain’. For example, I am a “short cutter” so if you want me to find a shortcut to get things done, I'm your guy. If you want me to follow a procedure and be meticulous about it, I am not your guy. I will be your biggest nightmare or it will take me longer.”

• Play to your team member’s strengths more than trying to develop their weaknesses.

• Kolbe-a and Kolbe-B tests are a great resource (the best one in Andrew’s opinion) to find the overlap of skills and strengths between employees and managers and help with team dynamics. 

• Remember to manage the energy of your team. Most managers spend all their time policing and chasing after the low performers and the low energy portion of the team. Instead, support the high-performers and bring the same energy to them that they’re producing.

• If it’s an internal promotion that brought you to your current management position, don’t bring your old job with you. Make sure you prioritize your transition of your roles. Sticking around doing your old job AND your new job at the same time isn’t going to do anyone any favors. Both jobs and both teams will ultimately suffer. That’s a lose-lose and isn’t sustainable. Make that as short as possible. Be clear on that with supervisors and management.

• Immediately notice all the places where you’re the bottleneck in a project or process.  What are all the places your team is “waiting on you”? Prioritize those as the first places to improve processes. Make sure you “get out of the way” of the work that needs to be done.  

• Don’t get stuck thinking you either need a new full-time employee or nothing. There are many in-between solutions that can work. Whatever the most low-level and redundant work is that your team is performing, have them write SOPs for that first, and ask for contract or temp support. You can even hire virtual support ‌inexpensively for all work that’s not in person. For virtual temporary help, no hiring process is required. Virtual help can start right away, as long as the work you need them to do is clearly defined.

What about personally, not just work?

We also discussed what you need to remember for yourself personally, outside of work. When the volume of work picks up, what do you need to do?

• You need to remember to defend your personal life. That means when you sign off, even if you stayed two hours later, you're off. Don’t go back and do more later. Engage with your kids, your family, your friends, and you’re still taking care of your health. You need to “turn off” and just “be you”. 

• Andrew shared an exercise that he says has saved marriages is to take a moment to mark your transitions throughout the day. In between each meeting, or before you walk in the door at the end of the day, take several slow deep breaths and then ask yourself “ how do i need to show up as the best [partner, parent, boss, etc] in the history of the universe.” Reflect for a moment, then proceed. 

• If things are so crazy that you’re buying lunch for everyone to work through, spend the money to buy a GOOD HEALTHY lunch.  Don’t take “the easy way” and buy everyone pizza.  Pizza or other heavy carbs will kill the productivity of your team.  Order good nutritious stuff, with vegetables and proteins and good food

• Fitness is going to be super important, all that stress gets released through fitness.  Make it your JOB to get your 3 workouts in a week. Even if the only mental bandwidth you have is to just show up to fitness classes, or take an aggressive 30 minute walk, mark your calendar for those and make sure you go. 

• Sleep! Mark your bedtime on the calendar if you need to. You need your rest if you’re going to operate under these busy times at work.  

• Drink a lot of water. Dehydration shows itself as tiredness. Especially if you are over fifty.

• The Eisenhower Matrix - If there’s too many tasks, for you or your team, visually organizing them on this matrix is really helpful to know where to target your effort.  Here’s a Youtube video which helps explain the Eisenhower matrix and how to use it.  

Andrew’s Offer

Andrew also offered all followers of the show free access to his “Influence Booster” and a free session to chat with him. I’d encourage you to check it out!  

Download: Influence Booster Training and worksheet (Be instantly more influential with your client teams and project stakeholders): https://accelerate.teamlawless.com/the-influencebooster

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The Audio/Podcast

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. I created Productivity Gladiator because I saw what a difference it made for employees to improve their productivity, improve their life balance, and live their best life right now, today, not wait until retirement. Thanks for checking out Productivity Gladiator! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.

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Episode Transcript

00:00

Productivity Gladiator

00:06

Hey, I'm Brian Nelson Palmer. This productivity gladiator is about work-life balance and personal productivity. Today, I want to talk about what do you do when your workload triples? You may have experienced this maybe as an employee or a manager. Someone leaves for a job, another job or a job assignment, or maybe some new initiative starts, and all of a sudden you find yourself with two to three times the work you had before. So I want to talk about what you can do to help manage that overwhelm.

00:35

in the scheme of work-life balance. That's our topic for today. And with me on the show today is Andrew Lawless. He's a high-performance coach and the founder of the Consultant Profit System. The thing that connected, that I really thought about Andrew as I was thinking about the show topic, because one of Andrew's topics that I've learned over the years is he's really, he's about taking people from $100,000 a year to a million dollars a year. And it's that 10x the performance. And so,

01:05

I wanted to, I thought, man, Andrew would be the perfect guy to talk about this topic, because this is what it's about, is if you're going to go from 100,000 to a million, well, that's going to require double, triple, 10 times the workload too. So I thought, man, Andrew would be great for this. So with me is Andrew's on the show here with me today. Thanks for being here, Andrew. Hey, super. You know, thank you very much and thank you for that generous introduction. And it's my honor to be here. Absolutely. So let's talk about it. I want to kind of start with.

01:33

the lens of an employee, right? You've got an employee and you're going to work, you're doing your job and all of a sudden your workload doubles or even triples really. What do you do? Andrew, what comes to mind for you when that happens? What would you say? When that number one, I mean the reason why you feel that overwhelmed in general is because most people do not have clarity. Clarity in terms of what do we absolutely have to do right now?

02:03

in order to move a project forward versus what do we want to do or what is cool to be doing or where's our pet project, right? So, give an example with my wife and me when we bought a, we built a house in Ireland, right? So, once you get from the architect, you get the architecture blueprints and we looked at it and then eventually found the kitchen. And she and I had a...

02:28

really good conversation about like two hours or two hours, like what do you want the kitchen to look like? Yes. And which is meaningful, like where was the oven and the stove and this sink and the fridge and so on. The problem was we didn't even have a building permission at the time. Right. So if we only had spent 10 minutes on the building permission, we would have made more progress in that two hour conversation. So now look at your meetings, look at all the activities that you're doing.

02:56

And please hear what is it that I must do no matter what to move a project? Andrew, it's so funny you say that because one of the notes that I had to myself that I that I had for myself that I wanted to share is focusing on. I call it the one thing. And it seems kind of similar to what you're saying. There's actually a book. I think it's by Gary Keller called The One Thing. I read that book and the book is all about it's kind of like clarity, but is what is the one thing that I need to do next? So if you've got double or triple the amount of things you need to do, if you're clear on what is the one thing.

03:26

that you've got to do next on each of these projects or initiatives or whatever the workload that allows that focus right all right what is happening it's the one thing for this and the one thing in this one and the one thing in that one and say like i love it we're almost speaking the same language i call it the one thing you call it clarity perfect i love i like it cool yeah what else uh anything else comes to mind for for this well the first is the absolute clarity on what

03:56

to be focused and blend out every distraction, including shiny objects. Yes. And it's hard right now, especially when you work from home and you have kids around and now they're off school or you have ailing parents or you have other things going on. But most people get distracted by shiny objects. Okay. Right.

04:20

Yeah, so like, hey, I would like to do this or no, I did research. I started researching the topic on on YouTube. Yes. And then I found myself watching Springsteen videos for like half an hour. So, so that's to blend out all the distractions, including shiny objects. Uh, it's super important. Absolutely. There's some people talk about, they call it the, uh, like focus mode or something, or you can.

04:45

There's even, I know there's actually, I'll try to, I'll put a, I'll drop a link in the, in the episode for this, but I did a write-up on some of the, there's tools to like block out social media or I love it. YouTube, especially they have a browser extension that will eliminate all those recommended videos on the side so that you will search for something and you only watch that. And then there's no recommended videos to get lost in. Just exactly what you were saying. That's so funny. But the app is called Freedom that I'm using.

05:15

and you have no opportunity whatsoever to to to disable it. But it's but it's active or go online and go to YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or wherever you go. Absolutely. Cool clarity that. Yep, exactly. That focus time is good. And actually, you know, speaking to the focus time, one of the other things I wanted to share with folks was was about the it's called. Well, focus time, really, it has to do with they call it's focused.

05:44

for 25 minutes or 50 minutes at a time. Sometimes they call it a tomato timer. They have different names for this that I've heard, but the essential idea is that you focus in for a certain amount of time. So you lock in your calendar for 25 minutes or 50 minutes. And my favorite one is I have specific focus playlists that I put on too. So I close all the other windows, the phones closed. And then I also have, especially like at work, if there's big projects or something, your job is an email.

06:11

your job when they hired you, your job description wasn't to respond to email. It was to do something else or so having that focus time. I have specific playlists that are actually folk that are designed to help you focus. So there's no words. It's very much like a certain music or something that and the music changes after a certain amount of time, which goes with I'll share a link to this in the in the show notes for this, too, but it's awesome.

06:37

Yeah, I have that on Spotify. If you go on Spotify and look for ESM, electronic study music. ESM. Oh, I like that. ESM, electronic study music. Yeah, that's awesome. And you said the right thing. Email. If there's one, there are two productivity suckers, right? One is email. If you want to kill your productivity, just go to an email inbox. Right. Yes. Yep.

07:06

A, you find most of the emails in there, you are on somebody's CC list or BCC list, you don't even know why you're on it. You are on somebody's mailing list that is not relevant to what you have to do right now. All of that takes time and it drags you down. My suggestion for everyone is just have two slots, one in the morning, one in the late afternoon where you check emails.

07:36

Right. And if it's really important, they find you anyway. Right. Absolutely. That that's exactly how it works. Call you the drive by your house, right? They come to your office, whatever. They find you anyway. So stop email. Number two, meetings. So if every meeting that look at have you ever wondered why meetings take exactly an hour? Because that's how much time you give them. Right. There's no reason. Yeah. That's the whole reason for it.

08:04

And most meetings that we are in are either not relevant to us. Have you ever, like when you're in the corporate world, have you ever sat in a meeting and you realized, I have no need to contribute. Nothing to say, nothing to learn. What am I doing here? So leave. All you got to do is get up, take your stuff and say, we've got to be somewhere.

08:26

And you've got to be somewhere even if it's a bathroom. Exactly. You just leave. Oh, or tagging on. I love that we're like, yes. And in each other right now, like this is, oh yes. And one of my other favorite ones to do is, you know, there it's, it's funny. They say that you, they invite you to this meeting and you need to be in this meeting, but there are people who are out on vacation. And so oftentimes they will record the meeting. And if there is a recording and you're like,

08:53

you have two meetings that you need to be to, or maybe you don't, but you've got so much going on and they'll record that meeting. One of my favorite things to do is take that recording and then watch it. You can watch it or listen to it on two times or even three times speed because you know, they, they just sometimes in the meetings, they wish they could go faster or something like that. And so in this case, if you have two meetings the afternoon, you get the recording and then you play it on two times speed.

09:19

and you get all the information from an hour meeting in 30 minutes. Like that's one of my, oh my gosh, I love it when they record meetings because then, oh my gosh, if the meeting's being recorded, I can do something else. I can listen to it on two times speed or I can get one of those other projects that I need to do done and then tune into this in half the time, which, oh my God, that's my own little hack here that I love that one. We could just ask for minutes, right? Or if you actually have either for one portion of it, ask the meeting organizer.

09:48

if they can move that up so that you can be the first speaker when you're done. Exactly, yeah. If you kill meetings and if you kill emails, you already have one half a week back. That's gonna help you for sure. Yeah, one of the other, I was making notes for myself on, oh, what would I wanna share on this from a productivity gladiator perspective? A couple of things, one, if you got two times or three times the workload, you're gonna need to work with your boss.

10:18

on priorities because the answer, one of the, one of the things that I, I, I, that came to mind is, you know, if you get a 10% increase in work, like let's say you have 10 projects and now you've got 11, one of the things, especially with COVID or with virtual or whatever it is, like things that came up, people's habit is to tend to do the same thing they were doing and just do an extra hour.

10:43

because it's 10% more. So you don't change anything, you just add that little bit more to the top of all the stuff you were doing. And one of the lines that I hope people recognize is if the workload changes by more than 10%, oftentimes it's time to reshuffle, or it's time to change, or it's time to delegate something, or it's time, you might need to work some things around, because oftentimes businesses will look at it and they'll go, all right, well, they're just gonna keep loading until something breaks.

11:13

And so that's where I want to make sure that people recognize that like, hey, you need to prioritize the prioritization or pardon me, the prioritization on on this stuff is super important. So and that works with your boss. You're going to want your boss to delegate, because one of the other things that I can share is if if that happens, sometimes it's possible to write an SOP or something that you're doing. Some of the work that you're doing could be done by other people.

11:43

And so if you take the time to write an SOP document, maybe there's bandwidth to hire a temp or hire a person to come in. And when that person comes in, they're gonna need that SOP so that they can pick up. You're not gonna need to train them for days and days on something that's going on. And so that, but all of that will be collaboration with the boss and that piece. So make sure that you're prioritizing, right? That's a big one. 100% of that collaboration. I think what was very important that you said is that

12:12

We are all good and eager to pick up new work. We are not so good at letting go. Yes. So we pile on, we pile on, we will pile on. And then we wonder that we have too much to do. So when that happens, what you can always do is like go to your superior and say, boss or manager and say, you know what? Look, I have these tasks that I'm already doing. You're adding like these five to it.

12:41

I only have so many hours in a day, help me prioritize one here, right? So which ones are the, which one is the more, which are precious and which projects are expendable and let them make the decision, you know? That collaboration is such an important piece to it, right? And the other thing that I was thinking about is, oh my gosh, everything is not an emergency. If somebody's not bleeding,

13:09

where nobody's going to die, there's no life threatening situations. If there's 10 projects, then you have to make the decision on it's that prioritization and figuring out what happens if there's too much. And so that collaboration with your boss. Deadlines, deadlines are all arbitrary. There's very often no rhyme or reason, you know, why there is a deadline. Somebody made that up and most deadlines can be negotiated and, you know,

13:38

I would always ask, what is the reason for the deadline? And sometimes, let's say marketing campaign that you're managing, they don't need all of the material on the deadline, right? So they need some of them on the deadline, and then the majority of the other work can be staggered afterwards. But we just take a deadline for granted, even if there's consultants, yes, when clients come to us and say, hey, now we have a deadline.

14:08

Why is that? Tell me about that, right? There's there's some like I know in the government, there is one deadline that doesn't change and that's the end of the fiscal year that September 30th. That's it. Yes. The money runs out. Appropriations are done. Like I know that that one is true. However, on most other projects, there is an opportunity to change some of those deadlines or what? What is the reason behind the deadline? Is it just because the boss's boss said, Hey, I need this by this date or is there a, you know, that

14:35

The critical path for project managers is something, all right, is this a critical path? And then what is that critical path? Or if this is just, you know, Tari, you're exactly right. Deadlines are asked about those. So. I would say all of that can happen. And there are always legitimate reasons for stress. And sometimes we just got to grow all of our sleeves and go into military mode. So, you know, it's like there's no solution. We cannot delegate, we cannot dump it. You know, we have no other resources. We got to do it. And we may have even.

15:04

pull an all-nighter, which I'm not recommending, but then you do what you said earlier. What's the next step? Exactly. Yes, when you're military mode for me is like, let's go that one step, and then we'll see what's next and you get through it. But in most of the cases, I mean, just extreme cases, in most of the cases, for example, my clients, the first question I ask them when I start working with them, they say,

15:31

Open your calendar as either Google Calendar or online or written in a hard paper format. Guide me through your calendar. And if I cannot extract what exactly they're working on, what their priorities are, there's a problem. Yes. And that's true for most of us when we're starting out. Look at your calendar. If a third person cannot extract what's important to you right now, then you have a lot of stuff in there that can be...

16:00

that can be thrown out. And the other thing that I wanted to build up on that you said is the constant re-energizing, right? So what we're doing is we are waking up in the morning, go to the office, switch off the computer, right? And then we look at emails and energy fucked up, right? Then we sit in front of our monitors all day.

16:25

Every 50 minutes, get up, do some exercise, do some vinyasa, breathe, and get energy back into your body so that you're refreshed. Sleep eight hours a day. We know that if you haven't slept enough, your productivity the next day, you're basically going through the day half drunk and your productivity will decrease by 30%. You do yourself a disservice by saying, I've got to plow through here.

16:55

without taking a break. We're not at war, right? So we can take a break. So take every 10 minutes, take a break, walk around the block and drink a lot of water. Right here. Yeah, water. It's important. Yes. So true. And you and I, we both have type 1 diabetes. And as you know, when you have type 1 diabetes, you think about your blood sugar levels like every minute.

17:24

Right. So when other people say, Hey, let's go to this and go that we go like, Okay, I need to first I need to get my insulin and I get my blood sugar, I need to have sugar pills with me. And you know, I need to make sure that it's not that my insulin doesn't heat up and plan all of that. Yes. And still get things done this at the same pace and everybody else. So people like you and I, I'm not surprised that you are a productivity gladiator, because people like you and I, without that ability, we would not

17:54

be where we are right now because we are a little bit disadvantaged. It's thinking about those extra pieces, right? Those extra steps. You're exactly right. And the world doesn't stop just because you have something going on and vice versa. You know, I'd even flip that on its head and say that the work is not going to stop because you have something going on. So one of the things that's important, you know, one of I want to flip the script now. Andrew, let's talk about we were talking about employees, and I think we had a lot of really good.

18:23

nuggets that we shared there that employees can do offer to write that SOP, all those ideas that you had, those were good. I let's flip it now. Managers, if the workload now you're in charge of a team or a group or something and the workload for your group doubles or triples, what thoughts come to mind for you? Like, what do you share coaching and stuff with your clients? Now you've gone from 100 to 300 or 400 K. And what what thoughts?

18:53

come to mind? So there's a lot of reasons, there are a lot of reasons for burnout, right? So the number one reason that I'm seeing is that team, individual team members have been assigned tasks that requires them to work against their grade, right? So for example, I am a shortcutter, right? So if you want me, if you need to find a shortcut to get things done, I'm your guy, yes?

19:21

If you want me to follow procedure and be meticulous about it, I'm not the guy you want to work with. I would be your biggest nightmare. Or it will take me longer. I would struggle. I'm more mistake prone and it drains me out. So a lot of productivity issues derive from...

19:48

not understanding your team members' unique ability. That's what we call it. We all have a unique ability in how we work. So either the task that's been assigned is not working or the strength match between the manager and the employee is out of sync. I would highly recommend and I've made no money with that. There's an assessment called Call BA.

20:15

and the first thing I would do, I would go to colby.com, k-o-l-b-e.com, and have my team take, it costs like $55 per team members, have my team take a Colby A assessment, and then you can have, after that you can call Colby, and they will provide a Colby profile for you that will tell you exactly where the burnout in the team happens and which team members are.

20:44

at stake, there's an entire process there. And there's no better process than do that. If you want to invest in your team, that's the one exercise. I have rolled it out in Fortune 10 companies actually, entire vice presidencies that made like a huge difference in people. It's not that expensive. Yeah, Kolbe, K-O-L-B-E you said, right? Okay. I'll drop a link in the notes. And what it does is that...

21:11

There are three reasons why your team members are burning out and are not operating at the highest level that they could, because you drain them out with tasks. A, you give them tasks for which they do not have sufficient knowledge. Yeah, it's easy to fix. Yes. That's like one training and so on. But the second is that I hate the task. And third is, it's on a cognitive level. They, their natural talents, or the task requires them against to work against their grain.

21:41

And that's when they're not, when they're not, that's the, the best advice that I can give you. And most teams, when I work with them, they will tell me that the day they took the call BA index was the most liberating day in their life. Interesting. Okay. All right. Let's go put one out. Yeah. Number two, as a manager, there's, there's two things that you, that you're responsible for. A, you've got to co-create the work with your team.

22:10

Most managers, they try to figure it out themselves, and then they're dumping it over the team. But when the team co-creates, they own it with you. But yeah, and second is, and it's so often forgotten, your job outside of that, it's not measuring KPI, it's not measuring how many hours have somebody worked. That is not measuring output. It is managing the quality of the energy in your team.

22:39

that you need in order to perform. And if the energy is low, right? If the energy is low, you can do whatever you want, then the team is just not gonna perform. And most managers do not manage deliberately the energy of the teams. They let underperformers underperform, right? They spend most of their time with underperformers rather than with the overperformers. And the overperformers go there, huh?

23:09

I'm busting my butt here, but my boss is spending all of his time with these guys. Right? So managing your energy is so important. Learn how to manage your team. Infuse energy in your team that the team needs to perform. And everybody who does not contribute to the energy and is an energy sucker either needs to be called out or go if you have the ability. That makes a lot of sense.

23:38

Let them go. The energy. I love what you said there about energy, because that's you're right. There it oftentimes you find yourself dealing with the under performers or the your energy goes to trying to push along the slowest piece and making sure that you're giving the energy where the energy is coming from is different. That's a different paradigm. I like that a lot. I also.

24:05

I very much think, as I was thinking about this, I was like, okay, well, a couple of things that I would say, one for managers, you can't do it all. One of the things that I've seen managers tend to do, and this goes to that, even if the workload ups 10%, if a manager gets a new position, you get promoted inside the company, now you're taking on another role, you've stepped up and out of this one, but people will then still help out the other.

24:32

team or they were helping with this and you can't that's not. That's not healthy for you because now you're doing two jobs and it's just like we were talking about where all just do two jobs like people solution. If there's one extra project or you're taking on that as just, oh, well I'll work, you know, I'll work over my lunch break and I'll work, you know, a little bit, an extra at the end of the day. And at the end of the week, that's 10, 15 hours.

25:01

that you're doing, but the work's never going to end. So you looking at the idea is, all right, if the work was going to, if the work, instead of just one project, what if it was 10 projects? How would I treat this differently? And thinking about that will help keep your head on straight for like all the things we talked about before, but for managers, especially now you're managing to your team. Well, you've got to keep your team performing too. So delegation.

25:31

is key, empowering the people that you know that can do it. If you have a lot of single, uh, single bodies on the team. And when I say single bodies, what I'm driving at is if you have people where they're the only person who does that one thing, then you create situations where they have to be there. If they go on vacation, everything stops and that doesn't work. So you want to create delegation. It's that we talked about, I talked about outlining or SOPs earlier.

25:59

working with your team to have that outlined so that if someone wants to go on vacation, you gotta support your team and their vacations and their life, right? They wanna go do something that's important. So make sure that you're doing a good job of documenting the work and the processes and what needs to happen, where are we, so that you're not reliant on one person. It's not those single, the bottleneck.

26:27

avoid those bottlenecks if you can, and standardize the work so that, you know, get another person involved if you can. And I know sometimes that's not possible, but also as a manager, you've got to be going up, looking up above you going, we need resources. Like you can't, you, you as the manager are the one that's going to find the resources. And maybe if it's private sector or wherever you are, if you're in a for-profit or a nonprofit or something, you don't necessarily have to hire, you don't need a new full-time person.

26:57

Often times you go and you ask for that and they're just like, well, no, we can't afford to hire anybody right now. Well, if you have an SOP or some kind of standard operating procedure or some kind of document that here is the project that I need done and let me go hire a temp and I've done a good job, I need help with this part of all the work that we've got going on right now. And it's written down, so give me a temporary person. You gave me two to three times more work.

27:25

So when you give me resources, here's what I need them for. I need this for this person. I need this person to do this. And even if they're not permanent full-time employees, you can hire part-times, you can hire temps, you can hire virtual teams from other parts of the world. There are resources out there to help you if you can standardize that work and you know exactly what they need to do. Make sure you're delegating some of that stuff down and writing that down. There's power there. So look for those solutions, even if it's not another full-time employee. And...

27:54

And I would say, as any manager, especially when you get promoted or you have a new job, the first question that you ask yourself is, how can I make myself redundant? So true. Right? So that means you need to be focused on building a self-running team. And that means to empower them, that means that you infuse the energy into the team and you remove yourself as much as you can.

28:24

SPS and all of that is all good. But everybody who has children knows that children, let me say it, your team members are like your five-year-old children. And I mean that with respect, yes? Because if you have your children, never ever listen to you. They don't remember what you said, yes? But they always observe you.

28:52

Right. You can say, you can say, never ever touch, never ever put that part in here. And they see you do that all the time. You know, so they're like, OK, you know, so he does. Or they you tell your kids, if you don't, if you do that, here's the consequence. They never get the consequence. They learn nothing happens. They always they kids are so great. They observe your energy.

29:18

and they learn because they're also in a hypnotic learning states, right? So they observe and they learn by observing. Your team is the same. If you tell them don't work overtime and you work 14 hours every day, you know, there's a discrepancy and they see that. When you say, you know, when you as a boss want to manage by data and your team member comes to a meeting,

29:46

without the updated report and you still have a meeting, what are you telling the team? You're telling them, you know what, it's okay, you know, not to have your work prepared before you get up with me, you know? So I had one example with a PM of mine and she came from Ohio to DC, yes, to for, we had like a team meeting, we got all the team together with a party at night and so on, and I said, like, when you fly in from other areas, just...

30:13

you know, use their time for like a one-on-one meeting, right? And so she comes in and I said, okay, so they have to, we have, what do we call like a project prompter where they need to prepare everything in advance and so that we can quickly go quickly to the meeting. And I said, so where's your, where's your prompter? And she says, you know what, I was flying and so I didn't do it. So I'm like, okay, great. Then meeting over. She's like, what do you mean? Well, you know, the rules, you know,

30:41

We're not going to meet without the prompter. We said, but I flew all the way here. That's great that we can party tonight and everything, but we're not going to need now to waste all my time. And what do you think? She was upset. But what do you think the chances were that she came ever again to meeting without that cheat of the PR first? That's true. Yeah. Roll modeling is important when you man. And I would say that. And I just flashed back on I was in a meeting today earlier where somebody came in late.

31:10

and the person who started had started the meeting because they were five minutes late. And then they went back and repeated for that person, the five minutes again. Oh my God, please don't do that. It's their job to catch up. You're late. Oh, you need to get the most important information in the first five minutes of the meeting. Oh, goodness. So Andrew, talk about it for you personally now. Like, all right, outside of work, what...

31:34

It's because we're all human beings too. So we can certainly come up with all these tactics for while you're at work and the workload comes in. But what about for you as a person, when at work it doubles or triples and now you've got more going on, what about personally? What recommendations do you have? Like for example, one of the things that I have a note for myself on, if stuff kicks in, even if it doubles or triples, it is even more important for you to defend your personal time.

32:04

or you're, you are still a human being. You're still a dad. You're still a mom. You're still a family member. You're still, all of those things didn't go away. So you need to defend those. And when I say defend, that means when you sign off, even if you stayed two hours late, when you sign off, you're off, you're not going back and doing more. You're engaging with your kids and your family and your friends. You're still going out and doing that healthy stuff. So defending your.

32:30

life, your personal time outside of work, you've got to find a place to turn it off. Even if you worked a little more, make sure you turn it off and you turn it off completely so that you can just be a human and recharge so you can come back tomorrow and do some more. That's one of my thoughts. Any ideas? Yeah. Okay. So there are multiple aspects in there. One is like how to not bring the stress and the negative energy from a stressful work back home. Right?

33:00

And number one exercise that has actually saved marriages from amongst my clients is, so when you look at your day as a series of transitions, so when you leave the house, you get into the car, you drive to the work, you arrive at work, that's a transition. You go to your computer, you switch it on, that's a transition. You read your emails and then you go to the next meeting, that is a transition.

33:27

You're done with the next meeting, you go to the next meeting, that's a transition, and so on. So at one point, you leave work and you arrive at home, and you meet your family. That's a transition. And before every transition, so instead of scheduling an hour of everything, schedule 50 minutes, and then you have five minutes to recharge, and then...

33:55

you can make a mental reset. And the way that works is this. You just close your eyes and you relax and you think, release, release, release. And you feel like the tension in the brain, the forehead, that all melts away and the neck, release, release, release. That's all you gotta do, right, for a minute or two. And then...

34:25

at the end you just ask yourself one question which is how do I need to show up as the best husband and father or mother whatever you are a significant other in the history of the universe yeah right and um yeah well and I give you that not for my by my own life uh what's that two and a half years ago about two hundred years ago

34:52

We lived in Ireland, my wife and I, we have property there, and in Galway, which is the West Coast. It rains, it was the worst day, blustery, rainy day, and nobody goes out when it rains that much on a Monday night. But we had the opportunity to find a babysitter, one of our nieces was available for babysitting, and we said, let's go on a date. Yes. So we rushed on the date, we parked the car, we couldn't park it right in front of the restaurant, so we just

35:21

rushed around the building. And as we go and get into the restaurant, we were soaking wet from the rain. It was cold. It was soaked with cold rain. Soaking wet. We go into the restaurant. We were just one out of two couples. And the restaurant was cold. The server was slow. The wine was... It sucked. But before we left the house, I went through that exercise and I said, okay, so release, release, release, release. And then I said, how do I need to show up?

35:51

as the best husband in the history of the universe at that date, for that date. And when you go on a date, then it's always about the other person. Yes, it's never about you. And so all of it, all of the circumstances were less than perfect. It was just me and her. And I was like, totally tuned in. You know, what about you? And in old days, I would have.

36:17

called the waiter and said, the food is cold, the wine is less, bring it back to the chef. But I would have dragged my wife to another restaurant and so on. But none of that mattered. And we had the best date that we had in such a long time. And we were so glad that we did, because little did we know that would have been the last date we will have in the next two and a half years, because like a month later, we went into lockdown. Oh, yeah. Okay.

36:45

Every moment matters. You never know when you meet somebody for the last time. You never know when you have a chance to do this again. Yes. And every matter matters. So, set an attention. How do I show up as the best husband, best father, best friend, best son, best daughter, whatever, in the history of the universe when I go there? That's powerful.

37:14

That's also true for like sometimes you have problems at home. Yes. So when you enter the door, do you already know what the problems are? Most of the time. Yep. So set an attention. How will I as a father or mother, my father or husband, handle that situation as the best version of myself? And that setting that intention is that makes such a big difference. I like that a lot. How can I how do I need to show up?

37:42

Say release four times, big four deep breaths. How do I need to show up? That would only take 20 seconds, but man that would be powerful. Between meetings, but ooh that's a good one. Just take a break, release, release, release, okay. Here's my next encounter. I'm going, so yeah. So when I go out with friends, you go show up, you know, ask the question. Ah, Andrew I love it. I got.

38:08

The one of the other things that came to mind for me was defending your, your, your fitness, your sleep and what you eat. Right. One of the things that happens if the workload doubles or triples or something, some businesses will buy lunch for employees, but if the lunch is to get everybody pizza, you just killed it. So as the manager, you know, remember that you're getting something that good nutritious food, make sure you're ordering.

38:38

good stuff, you're going for vegetables and proteins and good, you know, what a good food, not just get them some pizza and make sure for you personally, managers and employees and everybody, your fitness is going to be super important. All that stress gets released. Fitness is a big thing. So even if you don't have time, some people are gym fanatics. They plan their own workouts. If you get into a bind where you're just busy fitness classes are even an option because all you have to do is show up.

39:07

the instructor plans the whole, I'm a fitness instructor. When I show up in a class and I teach one of my classes, I know what's happening, all you have to do is get there. And so when time is crunched, make sure you're working out, like do it like it's your job. Like you got three times a week, you gotta make it, do something, even if it's running around the block or whatever it is, set aside that time, put it on your calendar, plan it. Even if you have to do it with the kids because you don't have time because of the work, make sure that there's fitness, you're eating well.

39:36

and you're sleeping too. You gotta give yourself a bedtime because otherwise you just keep running and keep running. But if you eat, sleep and fitness, make sure don't lose track of those. So. I whole lot agree with that. I would add to it, drink a lot of water because dehydration shows itself as tiredness first. Fun fact. Yep, exactly. Yeah, dehydration shows up as.

40:04

as exhaustion. Absolutely. Especially over 50, by the way, when you're over 50, your body loses the ability to detect dehydration. Really? Okay. And so that's why in Europe, when it's so hot and people die, most of them die of dehydration. That's a fair point.

40:28

You know, it's so funny you're there and I just subconsciously without thinking, I took my hand over and I was going to grab, you're talking like this, and I was going to grab my water bottle and take a drink. Oh, dehydration. Oh, let me get some of that. I didn't even think about it. Like, oh, I caught myself. Oh, don't put that on camera. Anyway. And you know, like a movement is so important. And even if you're out of shape, I'm out of shape a little. I always used to be on top.

40:56

but with all everything that was going on. So I let that go a little and I feel that you get sluggish and so on. And we know that the moment people start moving their bodies, yeah, stands while you're working. Yes. But even just half our block walk around the block makes like such a significant difference in level of energy. It doesn't have to be an exercise. Just a brisk walk half an hour on the block.

41:22

or the neighborhood. So one last one for you, Andrew. What's the any resources that you would recommend if people want to go further into this rabbit hole or they're in the middle of a double or triple workload situation for themselves? Anything that you would recommend? Slow down. I would always slow down and review your priorities. Look at what is what you actually must do versus what is what is wanted. Yes.

41:50

Make sure that you're from the very beginning, put a built in to your point, the re-energizing, rejuvenating exercises and time, which means don't by the way, check your emails first thing in the morning, never ever. The more you're in the email inbox, the better. Exactly. Plan your day. That's what I would do. Yoga is great. Meditation is wonderful.

42:20

And I've always underestimated the... Yeah, there's the... Well, a couple of things that came to mind for me. If you haven't, I've got the book that I mentioned earlier called The One Thing by Gary Keller. I'll put the link to that in the app. If you wanna, that's a good read if you're in the middle of overwhelm or you got a lot going on, it helps with that focus. And then the other thing, of course, the Eisenhower matrix is something that a lot of people have talked about over time. You've got the important and urgent scale.

42:47

If you have that many tasks and you're feeling the overwhelm or it's tripled, doubled or tripled, then you've got to start making decisions. That's, it's sometimes helpful to get it on that matrix. And you can go on YouTube and look up Eisenhower Matrix. And there's people who will help you with that if you've never heard of that. But many people have heard of the Eisenhower Matrix. And I'll make sure that I also share in here, you know, we talked, you talked about the Colby assessments. I'll drop that link in the notes for this episode. Yeah.

43:14

That was my other thing. I have a Colby A, Colby B. And then you compare Colby B is how you perceive the work and Colby A is how you measure what your strengths are. And then you can have a boss as well. And it's not so expensive. It's a very good, very, very good investment. The other thing that I want you to know is you can always reframe issues, right? So when you're on the receiving end and your boss says, you know what, we, I,

43:44

and the boss wants you to take on a task and you don't want, you can always say, I agree with you, that is a very important task. Therefore, I suggest that we give it to somebody who can give the undivided attention. So there are ways to reframe things more elegantly. Or when you're the boss, because I can agree that you overworked, but the issue is not that you have

44:12

too much work, the real issue is prioritization. So why don't we set an hour aside and we prioritize your work? Right. So for that, like, if you want to know how to do those reframes, from a behavior science point of view, I'm offering everybody here influence, prompter influence

44:40

And there's a training, 10 minutes training, and you can reframe any issue that you have so that you can give back work, refuse work, or change the nature of work in any way, shape, or form. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, the influence booster. I'll include that in the link for the episode here too, so you guys can check that out. It'll be on the page as well with Andrew. So here's what I love. Andrew, thank you so much for being on the show. Here's what I love that you, I love that.

45:06

You are taking what it's interesting how your work with individuals and high performance coaching really applies to this topic area too. But I love that you really, it's a, it's a personal thing for you too. You're talking about some of the stories you shared were, you know, your the situation with your wife or your kids or so what we're talking about is not just about being the best of the best at work, but this stuff applies.

45:32

outside too. And so I love that you bring that dynamic because it's about the person. It's not just about the job. So thank you very much for joining me on the show today. And if they want to read more about you or they want to connect with you later, where would they, where's the best place to go? First of all, thank you very much for having me. I have allergies here right now because we have cedar wood everywhere here in the hexes right now.

45:57

But it was an absolute honor to be here. If you want to get in touch with me, very easy, go to meetandrewlawless.com. Meetandrewlawless.com. You will get access to my calendar right away. If you went there today, you would see that you probably will not have to go to next month in order to find an appointment. So don't wait for too long. But yeah, so go there and...

46:26

I'd be absolutely. And that's a pretty conversation. So I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to Andrew over the years, and we've kept in touch about these different things and productivity and diabetes and all the different things. But so I love chatting with him. So if that's something that you're interested in, please do look him up. And for everybody else, thank you so much for tuning in today. And we'll see you next time on Productivity Gladiator.

Paul McFadden - Support Work-Life Balance By Changing Workplace Culture As An Employee & Supervisor

Guest: Paul McFadden
Founder, Zero Point Leadership
website:  www.zeropointleadership.com
IG:  @neurosomatic_leader
LinkedIN:  linkedin.com/in/pmcfadden

Overview

In this episode Brian and Paul dive into work-life balance, looking at it through the lens of what you CAN control as an employee and as a supervisor, and setting outside the things that are out of your control like company culture and policies. Getting over that helpless feeling of “there’s nothing I can do”. During the show, the following great knowledge nuggets came up:

For employees

• What does work-life balance look like for you?

• Are you clear on what your LIFE balance is? People aren’t often looking for Work-Life balance because they need help with prioritizing and enjoying “work” more, it’s normally because they feel like they’re missing the “life” part.

• Have the “expectations” conversation with your direct boss. Get really clear on what the expectation is. Ask lots of questions. Discuss with supervisor over work hours expectations & response times to communications. Differentiate between expectations after hours and during work hours.

• Sign off at the right time (the only person incentivized to look out for your life balance is you)

• Schedule-send emails after hours (avoid the “they’ll respond even at midnight” reputation). YOU can send the email at midnight, but schedule-send it to arrive at 8am the next day.

• If you have too much on your plate, collaborate with your boss on what truly is top priority. Make sure your priorities match your boss’s expectations.

• Do you have accountability for yourself on whether you “remember” to schedule send emails or forget one of the above? Creating a “pause point” to follow this is important

For Managers

• “Do as I say, not as I do” isn’t fair. Your behavior, your actions, will set expectations. You have to do what you say and say what you do, especially as it comes to work-life balance.

• Schedule-send emails after hours. You work late, your email shouldn’t arrive late though. Even if you say don’t work late, if you send emails late it sets a precedent

• Address every email with “Hi ____” because they’re a person. acknowledge them as a person first, before asking for something or telling them what you need. It just takes a couple words, a split second but it means a lot.

• “The pain of not changing has to be greater than the pain of changing in order for us to change.” This builds up over time, so making sure that you take a break.

• Supervisors have it even harder, you have to look out for your own work-life balance, AND consider your employees too. It’s harder, and more important than ever for you.

• Take an interest in your employee’s lives outside of work.  Make it a point to chat with them about things outside of work, at least 5 minutes every few weeks. It means so much to them.

• Support your employees time off, and ask how it went when they return. Make sure that anyone with use-or-lose doesn’t have it because they feel like they can’t take the leave, make sure it’s their choice. Push them to take their time to do something for them too.

• Have a channel in your Slack/Teams channel that’s NOT work related so people can just be funny, just be human. You as the supervisor should be stoking and feeding that channel too. Post about people’s bdays and funny stuff.

The WHY

Around the 36:30 time slot, Paul really dives into this one, you should listen to the full episode, and listen to Paul dive into some of the science. People who don’t have balance end up stressed. We create a toxic environment, and that builds up over time and that becomes “chronic”. “Chronic levels of stress”, “Chronic levels of anxiety” and more. 60% of our diseases come from our inability to handle stress. Without balance in your life, it builds up in your system and it causes adverse health effects.

Resources Discussed

Books:

• When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, by Daniel Pink

• Work Reimagined: Uncover Your Calling, by Richard Leider

• Work Life Brilliance, by Denise Green

Workshops & Coaching:

• Paul discussed his workshops and new coaching program he is launching through Zero Point Leadership

• Brian discussed his Work-Life Balance Workshops.

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Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. I created Productivity Gladiator because I saw what a difference it made for employees to improve their productivity, improve their work-life balance, and live their best life right now, today, not wait until retirement. Thanks for checking out Productivity Gladiator! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.

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Episode Transcript

00:00

Productivity Gladiator.

00:06

I'm Brian Nelson Palmer and I want to answer the question I hear most often from my work life balance workshops, which is what can you do as an employee and as a manager to help change your workplace culture to one that supports work life balance? Because it's this thing, oftentimes it's a helpless feeling sometimes with that because the policies are made and they're outside of your control. But there are things that you can do. And with me on the show today, I have Paul McFadden, who's the head of zero point leadership

00:35

And Paul, why don't you tell them just a little bit about you and Zero Point Leadership? Great. Thanks. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate that. So it's zero point leadership. I'm the CEO of Zero Point Leadership. And I basically work with high potential minority women leaders. I work with young executives and I work with business owners. I'm really trying to help them become better version of themselves. Right. And why am I doing that? Because that's going to help them have happier, healthier and more productive lives.

01:05

Because when you start thinking about when we were all growing up we went to school whether with the school or not trade school Whatever it was we all had dreams. We had kind of a spike we had this dream about what our life was going to look like Yeah, and some of us have found that doesn't look like that True story, right? Yeah, but you know But we all have that still that desire driving us to create that life that we've always wanted Right, and that means we have to do some things. We got to change ourselves

01:33

in order to make that happen. So it's really a shift in lifestyle. So it's not just a lease system, it's like shifting the entire lifestyle. So I help individuals shift, make that lifestyle shift so they can have what they want. Absolutely. So Paul and I were connected through a community organization that we both belonged to. And then I found out about Zero Point Leadership. And one of the things that he talks about is culture change. And that's what really drew him in. I'm like, all right, Paul, let's talk about this because this is something that could be it. So let's...

02:02

Let's focus it. The first thing I kind of want to ask you about, Paul, and I've got some ideas that I want to share with everybody too, but I, the big thing is focused on things you can control, right? There's the, there's that idea that there's things that are, you can control and things that are outside of your control. So things that are outside of the control that we're not really talking about today are, you know, policies or true culture of the entire organization is something that you don't have control over. But the feeling of helplessness, oftentimes there are things that you can do.

02:31

So I want to talk about employees and managers. So let's start with employees. Paul, what would you say for employees that are really, when it comes to work-life balance, what are things that you can do as an employee to make a difference? What comes to mind for you? Yeah, well, there's a couple of things. And I guess, as you were saying that, I was thinking about getting down to the roof. And so it's like, you sit there and think about, how do you define work-life balance? Like, what is it?

02:58

Because everybody's got this own version of what a work-life balance looks like. Like for me, I look at it as life balance because there is work and work is necessary in order for us to pay the bills, support our families, all the things that we feel like we need to do to make us feel successful and fulfilled. And then life is this experience that we live. Now, some of us allow our jobs to kind of overtake life and the job becomes life.

03:29

versus life being life and job is just something that you do to help you kind of feed into those pleasures and those things that you want to enjoy. So part of that really is, I mean, so I guess primarily first, it's a mindset around what balance looks like. And we certainly take cues from other people, we have certain belief systems and values, but we really got to get clear about what that looks like for us first. So that's the first thing I would say.

03:59

that comes to mind. But then secondly, once you have that clear vision of what it is, you have to align everything you do in your life to that. Right? Right. Yeah. We just say it out loud. It just got to align your life to these things, right? This is what I, this is what I envision balance looking like, and I'm gonna start doing that. But yeah, but then there's these other things that come in. Like you're used to working in a culture where you're on call 24 seven. You're used to, you know, responding to emails and voicemail whenever you get them.

04:29

what time of day it is. And if those things, and if we don't draw boundaries, personal boundaries around those things, those things we control, we control our boundaries. But it's how you articulate your boundary that becomes most important. Because you can have a boundary only work until 6 p.m. That's great, Brian, but when your boss calls you at 6.05, what are you gonna say?

04:52

That's a tough conversation. That's tough, right? Yeah. It's a tough conversation that you know how to articulate that in a way that the person on the other end of that line is going to be able to hear you and respect that boundary. So that takes some people navigation skills to be able to do that because it's not just saying talk to your boss or talk to your colleagues or talk to whatever that has to happen. But most people don't want to have that conversation because it typically causes conflict.

05:23

and we avoid conflict. Yep. So the answer is, I could say, well, the answer is to be conflict-avoidant. But that's different from person to person. We're all human beings. Yeah. So then how do you do that? So then you've got to learn how to navigate your own emotional responses. And you've got to be able to navigate how you have conversations. So those are the three things that popped in mind initially right off the top. Yeah.

05:50

For me, I was, first I like what you said about, it's kind of an internal thing too, because the interesting thing about work-life balance, like I teach a workshop called Work-Life Balance, Find and Plan Yours, where I step through with employees on, all right, let's find it. And managers, frontline managers, middle managers, that's that group, because it's not hopeless. But you also kind of have to have a plan. And I love what you said about finding that balance and articulating what it is for you, because it also is like,

06:19

People generally don't come for advice on work-life balance because they're hoping to work more. Generally, the part of this that comes into the conversation is it's the life part of work-life balance that they're missing. That's why we have this discussion. People are generally really good about put it going all in on just work all the time. So that's it. So for employees, I would actually say, first, the discussion you brought up about how do you have that conversation with your boss or what happens if they call you at 605?

06:48

And so one of the things is having that sort of expectations conversation with your boss is super important because your boss is gonna be your primary point, right? It's totally different if the boss's boss's boss calls you at 6.05, it doesn't matter what you and your boss said, but if the boss calls at 6.05 or having that discussion with the boss around the hours and response times on emails, that's super helpful. And for that one, as an employee, you don't have to go in with an agenda to that meeting.

07:17

You go in just asking the questions. You want to know what they're thinking, because it's really you syncing with your manager. So that discussion, that's a big one. And I think also, so my second point is signing off at the right time. If you work until six, oftentimes people will stay on and they'll work until six, 6.30, seven. Like my time is six, but I'll put in a little bit longer. And so then what happens is you start to let that bleed

07:47

that it's hard to roll that back sometimes. So standing up for yourself, the thing to remember is the only person incentivized for the life balance, the only person incentivized to look out for your life balance is you. Like your boss is incentivized to get the work done, and they want the work. But like, so the life balance, the only person looking out for you is you when it comes to that. So you have to stand up for yourself. The other one is schedule send.

08:16

your emails. And this is a good one. You were talking about six o'clock or 605 or they call it that time. One of the things is that people notice without even meaning to sometimes people notice what time your emails come in. And they assume that whenever you sent the email is when you're working until. So if you're going to work late, there's no reason if something comes to mind, you can't log on at midnight if you want to. But Outlook or Gmail, any of the email services you have have an ability to schedule send the email.

08:46

And so make sure you just hit that option. So you can send the email at midnight while you're thinking about it, but it will not get delivered until eight in the morning or whenever the start time is. And that will really help because that also affects people's perceptions of you and when you're actually working. So have at it whenever you want to, but remember to schedule, send those emails. And then, oh, and I wanted to, I have one more for you, Paul. I was thinking, and then I'm curious on if you had any ideas on what I would just shared,

09:15

If you have too much on your plate, the other reason people tend to be late is because there's so much they've got to do. And there's always going to be so much. So having that conversation with your boss also about, you know, you should have a touch point every once in a while with the boss about, here's all the things that I'm working on. And understanding the priorities. Because if you're going to stay late to work on something, it should be the important something. And if it's not important, then don't stay on just because. So having that.

09:45

priority check with the boss is also helpful, I think, for employees. So that was what came to mind for me. Did anything come up for you when I was talking there, Paul? Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you for, yeah, because those are things that, those are practical things we can do, right? And that's the thing, we got to do things practically. And to kind of piggyback on what you were saying about these different things, the actions we can take, it's really having a personal accountability system in place to kind of check yourself.

10:14

Right? Because it is easy to say, I'm going to schedule, send all my email messages after hours. But are you really doing it? Right? Because sometimes we get caught up in the moment. Right? We just hit send. And so we don't really create a pause point for us to think about, I'm going to send this message right now. How's that going to impact the person that's going to receive it? And what's their perspective going to be? Because am I feeding into this culture?

10:42

with my own behaviors or am I trying to do things to not feed into it? And so being able to create a pause point is something that's going to be very necessary and required in thinking about applying all these practical strategies because only you, like you said, only you are the one that's contributing to this. It's only you. So how do you make sure you don't make the wrong decision, even though you've got a whole checklist of things you know you can't do? Because...

11:11

We're not talking about rocket science, right? We're not saying that, oh, you know, if you do these 10 things, you're gonna be productive. Those things are true, but how are you gonna take yourself? You know, and that's gonna be something that's gonna be necessary as well. Yeah, I think you're right. Well, so shift gears then. We were talking about that. The idea first was the employees, right? You're an employee under the boss, and what can you do? Let's shift gears now to the...

11:40

of frontline supervisors and mid-level managers who have, you might have a level or a couple of levels underneath you, and how do you affect that work-life balance culture just for your team specifically? What can you control? What comes to mind? Yeah, so as a leader, there's a lot, the sphere of influence is much larger, right? Because it's not just you, it's other people's

12:10

Right, so it is incumbent upon the leader to kind of recognize that and knowing that their behaviors, whether the employees say something or not, they're trying to, they're emulating their boss. Whether it's good or bad behaviors, that doesn't really matter. It's what the boss or the supervisor kind of tone that they're setting. And most of that, much of that tone is kind of unconscious or non-conscious below where it's not explicitly stated.

12:34

Right. But it's the actions, not the words. And if the words mismatch, we're going to follow the actions versus the words. You know, this is like, for example, if a leader tells you that I've been working with many leaders, you know, um, I have an open door policy. So if you have questions or comments or concerns about how things are going here and in, in the workplace, you can stop by my office at any time, but then you go by that person's office and the door is always closed. That's not an open door policy. True story.

13:02

were stated, and this happened to, I've worked in many environments where this was true, and I'm sure people can relate to that. The words were stated, but the actual behavior and the accessibility wasn't given. So was it an open door policy? No. It was just stated that way. And so, and that has an impact on how people will perform in collaborating in the workplace. And so if you're a leader and you don't have control over your own life balance,

13:32

How do you expect your employees, your staff, your teams to have control over their life balance? So you have to really emulate that yourself first. So as a leader, there's a lot of times as leaders we think, well, I just need to have my team or my people do this. Are you doing it? That's the first step, are you doing it? And if you're not, figure out how to get a good balance in your life and then that way you can then impart that on other people. Because again, people are gonna say,

14:00

do as I say, not as I do. And it's actually the opposite, do as I do, not as I say. Amen, right? It's that whole like put your, you're on the airplane and they're like, yeah, put your mask on before helping others. And that, I mean, that's the idea. Like you have to be living it too. People very much follow what you, you're exactly right. What you, they follow what you do, very much so too. Yeah. And it's biological. I mean, it's a biological thing. I mean, we're human beings. And so we're kind of wired that way. Yeah.

14:30

We have to have that understanding that, yes, people have to individualize. Yes, people make their own individual choices. That's true. But we have, we have the ability to influence what others do. Basically. Yep. And that's, so that's, that's important. As, as I was preparing to chat with you about this, I had like thoughts that came to mind and one of them that came up again for managers is also the same tip, which was, do you schedule send your emails?

14:59

and especially to your employees, right? Because you're allowed to work at midnight. I mean, these days with a lot of some of the remote work that's happening and people around, like you're not necessarily sitting in your office from nine to five and those are your work hours and when you leave your office, you're done. Now, you and your work are kind of coexisting in your life together at various times. And so respecting people's, if you send an email at 10 p.m.

15:29

on Friday, then are you expecting a response any time before Monday morning? And if you're not, then schedule send that email for Monday morning at 8am. So that and it doesn't and it's fine. You can you can work late. I'm one of those people that has to get stuff out of my head immediately when it happens. Like if it's something that's coming up for work, I got to get it out of here because you can't remember everything. So I just I send the email but schedule send the email so that it doesn't

15:58

come late, and especially for your employees, that's part of them, you were just saying do as I say, not as I do, or that, it they're going to very much look to you as do what you do, because you're supposed to be setting the example. So if you're sending emails at 10 o'clock on Friday, they're going to think, Oh, my God, this person works. I don't know if I'm going to jive with this person, because they work at 10 o'clock on Friday. So you know, so that's make sure you take advantage of that, because that's a that's a very easy thing that actually makes a big difference.

16:27

So that's, that came to mind immediately. And another one that, you know, idea for managers to, in your emails, address every email with, Hi, Paul, or Hi, Brian, or address the person. Very much in email culture, I mean, I have a day job where I very much work in a big organization, and I have supervisors. And so I very much, I can relate to this too. And I also have people underneath me and have worked in supervising. You know, it's that,

16:56

There's all these different levels, but one of the things is if you acknowledge them as a person in the beginning of every email, so you say, hi Paul, and then I need you to do this, this, this, and this, but you acknowledge them as a person first, not just as your colleague. That kind of speaks to some of that culture we were talking about. So that actually means a lot when you acknowledge the person before you asked or tell for something. So that's a funny one. And it's an important driver for all people.

17:25

So all human beings, there's really like five primary social needs that we have. And what you're talking about is this need for relatedness, which is really about the need for connection. And we all need it on different levels. It's how we've survived as a species for as long as we have. But even in the workplace, we still need to feel connected with the individuals that we're working with. We need to feel connected with the individuals who are leading us. We need to feel connected with ourselves. And we need to be able to trust that connection is there and it's genuine and that it's real, because that's how we build trust.

17:55

And so if we're not having that connection and someone's just kind of directing us, of course we're gonna respond in kind. And many times we're gonna respond to avoid some negative repercussions, we're out of fear. So I'm trying to protect myself and I'm wanna protect my job and I'm getting these messages or have these expectations placed on me, but either spoken or unspoken, typically they're unspoken, in order to react and respond in...

18:22

Of course I'm going to do that because I don't want to see what's going to happen if I don't. And that happens in a split second. We don't consciously even think about those things. It's just because once that has been established as a pattern, we will continue to follow through with it until we find a reason not to follow that. So it's like we won't change anything about ourselves unless the pain of not changing is greater than the pain associated with the change. So we won't change anything.

18:52

Yeah, because that's enough. That's a big point Right Let me say it again So the pain of not changing has to be greater than the pain of changing and if that is true Then we will change If the pain of changing is worse than the pain of not changing. Guess what? We're not going to change Yeah Wow, it's so true paul and all those

19:18

And I feel like what happens too is if you do this over, what we're talking about right now, schedule, sending emails, using high or whatever, what happens is it builds up and builds up over time. And so then people get to the point where they're like, I just got to quit my job. We're in the middle of the great resignation and that kind of stuff. And so you've got five years of them never saying your name in the beginning of an email and sending emails at crazy times and whatever, and then it builds up and it builds up and it builds up. And then finally you're like, man, rather than fixing any of this,

19:48

get out of here, I am done. Like then you burn out and those kinds of things. So that, and that's where you talked about the pain of change. Oftentimes, it's a buildup, right? That's not a sudden, that's not a knockout punch that just happens where the pain, I can't take another one of those I'm leaving. It's like a little more and a little more and a little more. And then that's where the pain is so much, right? That's exactly, that's exactly it. Because you know,

20:13

If you think about how we, and I'm gonna talk about it from the perspective of stress, because we talk about how we deal with stress, stressors in our environments, right? And so you go to work, if you have dealt with someone who is a workplace bully, or if you've dealt with someone who maybe is a little bit overly aggressive with you, and you kind of feel like there is a disconnect between your relationship. So there's conflict, right? Basically, it's called a conflict. There's conflict. Over time, that becomes chronic.

20:43

The little things, they start to nag at you, but as long as it happens day in and day out, it builds up and it builds up and it builds up. This is why burnout happens because we can't manage and navigate anymore, but it really is about our response to the stresses that we're dealing with day in and day out. If they make us feel great, it's fine, but if they make us feel bad, we probably got a problem if we don't do anything to shift that. So you're right. Having that burnout and that situation happen, we have to, like you said, the great resignation.

21:13

The individuals who are leaving are basically saying, you put me on pause for two years where I didn't have to deal with this situation anymore and I became aware of it. And I became very, very, I became aware of it consciously that this was the cause of these situations happening to me or the situation, maybe it impacted my health. Maybe I have anxiety, maybe I have this fear of avoidance of conversations. And I didn't have to experience that for two years. Then you tell me, I go back to the workplace and then...

21:42

Well, did you fix that situation? No. Okay, well, we fixed your physical safety. Yeah, we made sure everything was clean and we did this. We got protocols in place and guidelines. What about my psychological safety? Because at the end of the day, if we want to change the things we can control, right? So as a leader, you can impact someone else's perception of their psychological safety, just by how you address, how you approach and how you interact with an individual.

22:10

And so we have to change the way we interact with people that we want, particularly if you want to talk about culture change, but if we're just talking about work-life balance, we have a biological impact on other individuals. If we don't, like I said in the beginning, if we don't demonstrate it ourselves, or the people that we work with aren't going to see it. They're not gonna think it's attainable because we're not doing it. We're not emulating ourselves. And so our responsibility as leaders really is to manage and manage ourselves.

22:40

better. That's our primary responsibility. Manage ourselves better.

22:46

And I want to, I even want to tag in and appreciate frontline managers and mid-level managers, kind of like we're talking about now, you get it from both sides, right? Because you have your own work-life balance, which is a thing. And you're also dealing with directors and people above you and managers and chiefs and whoever, whatever titles they have, there's people above you that are coming down. So now you're getting it from above and below. So the balance is even, it's even more.

23:15

And so you very much the, you know, the stuff we talked about for employees applies to you because you still have your workload and then you have the stuff you have to take care of the people below you as well with that kind of stuff. And so it's, it's a lot. So I, as I, as you were talking, I was thinking about, okay, well, actually I had a couple other things that I wanted to share for the managers too. One of the things aside from doing everything that we talked about for the employees, also for you guys, the, for the middle managers, a couple other things to remember.

23:45

is to take an interest in your employees lives outside of work. Because part of it just has to do with, are they a person? If they're just, you know, the oftentimes the feeling of burnout comes, it's a, it's like you're just a cog in the wheel. They don't care about you. They just want to know, did you respond to my email? And that's it. But if you ask about how they're doing, how their kids are doing, do you know them at all or take an interest? Do you know their name? Do you, that kind of stuff that's, that can make a difference. So,

24:14

having that interest in that person and I gotta say it, but standing up for their time off and what happened in their time off, that's a big thing because part of it is if you're just looking to them on, Hey, what have you done for me at work lately? And that's it. That's where the light we talked about work life balance. Well, at work, there's only work and there's no life. And so then their perception, whether you meant it that way or not, their perception is my life.

24:42

doesn't matter to you at all. You don't, it's just work. All I am for you is work. And so over time, that's what we talked about, that buildup where it becomes so too painful to stay kind of thing. It's that buildup. So having those conversations about what, you know, what are you doing for vacation? Where are you gonna go? How was it? Tell me how the trip was, or and ask those specific questions. You know this stuff as managers, but like, you know, asking instead of just, how was it? Was it good?

25:12

Like ask them, what is the top two things that come to mind from that trip that are so memorable or something? And then they'll tell you a story. And man, like, you know, human beings are about stories. It's about the stories. So having having that connection with them where they shared those couple of things and then you, you know, remember that you take an interest in them. So remembering to support their time off because the time off is where they get the balance. That's we talked about building up and building up. They take that leave.

25:41

And then they come back and you're interested in what they did, where they went, even if it's a, it's like a four minute conversation. It's not a lot, but then you're interested in that kind of resets them down to here. So they don't want to run away and quit like I'm done. So that's just that it's that personal interest stand up for their time off and ask them about them, know them as a person too, not just as a cog in your wheel or a cog in the system. Yeah. And so here's, here's one of the things that

26:11

when I was when I was employed years ago when I was employed, you know, it takes me back to thinking about how I treated my the people that work with me. Right. So, you know, some practical things. And I think that sometimes we forget we can do these things. My one on ones were never about checking in on status of report of programs and projects and where we were this week with this thing. My one on one was a 15 minute check in about where are you with your life? How's the family doing?

26:39

What do you need? What kind of support do you need in order to kind of achieve your goals? You know, there was an authentic, genuine interest and curiosity in what was going on in our life. Like you said, you gotta make people are human beings and we gotta treat people as humans, right? There is a connection that needs to happen. We don't have trust if we don't connect. So we have to connect in order to build trust. So there's that rapport building, but it's like, as a leader, when do I do that? Try it in your one-on-ones.

27:08

It doesn't have to be in that you can do a stand-up meeting for 10 minutes and get status. You can build dashboards for status. You don't need that as an individual to do a report weekly on your face, you know, just so you can feel like you got control. Find other ways to do it. You can make people feel more comfortable in these processes if we just treat people like human beings versus, like you said, the cog in the wheel. So that's something that certainly stands out.

27:33

as a reason why you'd want to do it and how effective it is. Because I can tell you that when I was doing that, I was working for the DC government and I was working with an agency that was laying off approximately 500 people. Well, that 500 people translates to about 2,000 individuals who are going to be impacted because they had families. Right? They had families. And I'm having personal conversations with individuals.

28:04

And my attrition rate was about 1% when people knew they were going to lose their jobs in six months. Now, why is that? Because I treated them like human beings. And I gave them what they needed versus kind of let them be out there in limbo on kind of guessing what was going to happen with them. I mean, so what I'm talking about is really powerful if we just remember, think a step back and remember, we're dealing with a human. Yeah. And we got to be curious. And we got to have a little bit of compassion. And we got to treat them like human beings. All right. And so if we do those things.

28:33

So it's not like we have to make these huge shifts. Even as in the vision, we start thinking about how do I improve my work-life balance? Well, what do you do for fun? Maybe do that more intentionally. Maybe you like to see movies. Maybe you go to the movies twice a month or once a month. Maybe it's having date night with your significant other, whatever it is. Maybe it's having a night with your kids. Maybe it's all sitting down for dinner on Sunday night and having dinner together. Yeah, it gets harder as they become teenagers, but I mean, these things that we kind of, right?

29:03

to do, but that bring us joy. Those are things, little things we can do now, get back to doing, so that we feel like we have a little bit more balance than what we may believe we have. Because when we all we see is work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, that's a song, right? You know? Um. Yeah, true. There's a lot of songs about work, Paul. Let's say we start down that keyword.

29:32

popped in my head like immediately, but yeah, we put so much emphasis on the word, like you said, we forget that it's not the vacation. It's not the vacation. It's not the long trip for two weeks. It really isn't. And sometimes it's not even the weekend getaway. Sometimes it's that Friday afternoon or that Monday afternoon or whatever, the Thursday afternoon or going to the soccer game or actually going, doing something where we're connecting back with nature, where we force ourselves to find the balance. So it's almost kind of like,

30:03

Don't forget that it's the small things that can bring us back to balance versus the large things because ultimately when you start looking at this thing statistically, I mean, there's been plenty of studies done on this. I mean, people are actually taking vacations every year. It had it. Oh, that's funny. Here's a mind blowing step. Paul, on that one right there, how many people have user lose leads? And if you're looking for a target audience.

30:28

to reach out to them and ask them about their life balance and what are they gonna do and what the people who have use or lose because they never took their vacation time, those would be a prime place to start looking at who these folks are, all they do is just work and so where's the life balance? And you're right, maybe that's just their MO and there are some people who just don't do vacations and they just like to, they like, they're very stuck at their normal thing, but...

30:58

taking an interest in their life and giving them a chance to take those vacations because you know, if they're if they're on the use or lose leave list because they're good, they've got too much vacation time. And if you as the director's director, if you're up a few levels from that team and you're looking down, you should definitely make sure that it's not because there's so much on their work plate that they feel like they can't take vacation. This is like red flags everywhere here and you can see it.

31:27

far in the distance. Paul, we just talked about how it builds up over time, right? You could see that one far in the distance. If this person's on the, that is your red flag six months to a year in advance on who, who are these folks that are struggling because if it's because they can't take lead or they feel like they can't, even if they could, that's, you know, that's kind of part of what you have to do as a manager. That's tough, but it's okay. It is tough because I mean, and I've heard as a manager when I was, like I said, when I was employed, I heard it all the time.

31:57

I mean, I heard it all the time. It's like, you know, I got so much on the plane. It's like, well, but you don't have to do it all today. Take the time. Um, right. So, you know, so I would make people take the time. You should lose it. Well, you got 30 days, go ahead, take a month. You know, we'll figure it out. Um, those things go a long way, you know, and obviously certainly yes, there are people who will take advantage of those situations and manipulate those situations, but that's very, very small percentage of people. I think as leaders, we get so hung up on the. But.

32:27

bad people could do with that versus the masses of good that generally speaking, most people would certainly appreciate and reciprocate that kindness in term with performance. So it's like, a little bit more kinder and people will perform better. Big time. Huge. Absolutely. And most of your workforce is going to be on the good department, right? And especially are the good people taking their vacation time?

32:55

but then still checking emails when they're supposed to be off. Like if you have an out of office, a message up, or you're not supposed to be there because you're on leave time, you're on vacation time, but then you still check in on things while you're off. That's part of it. Like, no, no, don't do it. Don't don't. And you as a supervisor can be going, wait, hold you kind of have to stand up for that person. Cause part of you as their supervisor, you're sort of setting the expectations of the organization in the biggest way.

33:25

It doesn't matter what the policy says or what the bosses bosses say. If you are coming to him and if you're expecting a response to an email on their day off, then huge red flags here like this. Whoa. So I that's yeah, you're right on. Absolutely. It goes back to your point that you said earlier, if we as leaders are taking the time to get to, we're taking time to get to know people. We're not nobody's saying you have to be best friends with your teams.

33:55

And I think a lot of times people here get to know your people and they think, well, I don't want to be friends with them. And it's like, well, nobody's saying you have to be friends with them. What we're saying is get to know your people because in those scenarios, then, you know, I know you're on vacation this week, Brian, and you were sent an email. Hey Brian, I thought you were on vacation. I don't need to see messages coming from you until you come back. I mean, as your boss, I could say that. Right. And it's almost like.

34:24

You're allowed to say that if you've built a rapport with this person. But if you haven't built a rapport with Brian and you say that to Brian, I see it. Brian, I've never talked to you before about your personal life. And suddenly you're on vacation. You send them answers. Hey, Brian, you know, you really don't have to respond back to emails, but I'm glad you did, but you really don't have to do that. Okay. Now that I told you, I'm glad you did. Guess what you're going to do the rest of time you're on vacation. Cause you don't know if I'm serious or not. You have no idea. Yep. Because you haven't had a conversation with me outside of

34:52

Responsibility is at work what I expect from you and how things are going on your projects. That's the only conversation I've had. Yep Right. So so we have to we have to do a better job We got to do a better job with and I think that I mean it really sounds you know as I'm talking and so, you know I think a lot of people here talking about a lot of the soft skills. Yeah, I am because You know again, we can give you a list of 20 things you can do. Here's

35:17

20 things employees can do, here's 20 things employers can do. You do all these things, remember to do those things, you're gonna be fine. There are courses that are taught on that. And you can find them anywhere. But then I'm gonna ask the question, why aren't you doing it? And the question is, the answer to that is simple. One, I don't know how to, because I'm not doing it myself. And because I already have my own way of operating, I have my own habits, I have my own belief systems, I have all these different things within myself.

35:47

that either I'm willing to change or not willing to change. And if I'm not doing it, you can't expect other people to do it. It doesn't work that way. It's like thinking about your children. If you're not being a kind person and then your children kind of see that and emulate that and they start being unkind, and you say, Johnny, why would you do that? Because I saw you do it, dad. Well, mom, I saw you do it. You know, just look at a two-year-old, you know, drops the F-bomb.

36:16

Or drops and drops another word, you know, where did that come from? Oh, I don't know. Yep. I didn't teach him that. You did teach him that. Absolutely. Gosh. Well, is there, so we talked about what we've talked a lot about the, what you can do and so I, the tag on question to that kind of Paul is I'm curious, can you talk a little bit more about the why from what you've seen, like why should you be?

36:42

tuning in. Of course, I mean, we kind of sprinkled through this topic while we were talking about what to do, but speak a little bit about why. Yeah, I think the why is really interesting because, you know, the why, and this is a lot of science, right? So I'm going to try to condense a lot of science into a few minutes in this response. Okay. And maybe point to some resources too, you know, maybe at the end of the day. Yeah. So what's happening is, so...

37:07

we don't have balance, right? And because we don't have balance, that has created, we will call it the stress response. But people really need to stop saying stress as such a generic term and kind of break that down. Stress means something. That means we are experiencing different emotional states that are taking energy away from us. They're making us feel bad. They're making us feel like we're in a toxic situation. We have conversations about toxic cultures all the time. It's the state that people feel when they're in their environment.

37:36

And so we are in and around toxicity, and we are actually perpetuating a cycle of toxicity within ourselves. So that emotional response over time, as we were talking about, builds up. So we can get to chronic levels of stress. People have heard this term before, chronic levels of stress, chronic levels of anxiety, chronic levels of depression, chronic levels of frustration, whatever the emotional state is that we're feeling, that's what we're experiencing.

38:05

But that has a physiological impact on ourselves, on our bodies as human beings, a significant physiological impact. You can go to the Institute of Stress, and they'll say that 75 to 90% of all primary care visits are rooted in our inability to manage our stress levels. Why aren't we able to manage our stress levels? Because we don't have balance in our lives.

38:28

If you go to the AMA, they will tell you that 60% of all diseases are rooted or an inability to manage the stress response. This is not new data. This is data from 2014 and a little bit before that. I mean, this is data. It's the same data. It's getting worse. And so it's almost kind of like, why is it important? Because if we get burned out and we're not careful, we can, that in turn, turns into chronic health

38:58

situations. And in some people, I mean, so you start thinking about, what are the big four? You got cancer, you got cardiovascular disease, I mean, you got high blood pressure, you got all these different diseases that are rooted in our inability to manage a stress response. And if we don't find balance and we find ourselves in those situations, that could be not only detrimental to our health, but that could actually be killing us. And when you start seeing people in your workplace

39:28

And at age where you don't expect these chronic diseases to happen, and yes, they work out, and they have a great diet, and they seem to be a pretty balanced person, but they fall dead of a stroke in the middle of the office, which I have seen happen in one of my employer's offices before doing it with an HR director, who everybody thought was perfectly healthy. Well, why did that happen? Because she wasn't able to find balance in her life. She worked 12-hour days.

39:57

She didn't do the things that she enjoyed. She didn't spend time with the people that she loved. She didn't have effective conversations with people. And because she didn't do those things, it built up in her system, and according to her physiology, her system couldn't handle it. And this happens to a lot of people. This happens to a lot of people. And we don't make the link about what's going on in their lives. And so it really, you know, and I hate to say it that way, but it's almost kind of like,

40:26

we have to get really focused on how much time we actually have here. I mean, everyone is born into this world and we got 29,200 days.

40:36

That's the average lifespan of a human being. Where are you right now is the question. And how much time do you have left? And then when you start thinking about how much time you got left, what are you gonna do with it? It's important because we can continue to work in the same conditions and have these situations happen. And then eventually retire. And then we have this much time left. Right. Yeah, and then how do we live life? But we don't know how to live life because we've never lived it.

41:06

right, because we got so focused on work. And so, in the second part of that is it ends up being regret. Because the last thing we wanted, I mean, and there's many studies on this, particularly when you start looking at the science around purpose and things of that nature. So a lot of people who come to the end of life and there's a lot of regrets, and I wish I had lived, I wish I had done this thing, I wish I had taken a risk on that and done that other thing. And they didn't do it.

41:35

And now it's not enough. There's no more time left. And time, we're not going to get back. There's no rewind button. We're not going to get it back. So, you know, I hate to kind of be poignant, you know, with this, this comment, but it's really like, yeah, we only have so much time. So how do we want to live our lives? Right. So that's why it's important. I can go to other reasons why for me, we have an impact on other people, you know, you know, it's so as a leader, we get people, we can,

42:04

our behavior can put people in this chronic state, and then we almost become responsible. It'd be irresponsible for us as leaders that once we know that we have an impact on other people, and that we do something that has an impact on them, negative, and we keep doing it, we have a personal responsibility to stop doing that thing. You know, a personal responsibility. We're responsible, and then what does that make us? Does that make us a good person or a bad person? I mean, these are things we have to start weighing out the morals of all this thing. So-

42:34

Yes, we're talking about small steps to do, but you know, it's, that's, that's the reality of it. And I want to tag onto what you're saying here with the why, because it's also, why is also creating habits, right? And if your habit that you have fallen into is working on nights and weekends, if going above and beyond extra, it's hard to change a habit. There's all kinds of research on that as well. And so if you fall into the habit,

43:04

of not a good work-life balance, then that is the thing that perpetually builds up and builds up like pressure in a container, you just it builds, it builds, and then you get to what we were talking about earlier with now I just, I got to quit because I got to let all this steam and this pressure go. Whereas if you build the habits around going exercising regularly, and like planning your week, planning your balance, right? Do you know that there's going to be balance? If you get into that habit, it keeps the pressure

43:34

down. It keeps all of that down and that takes into like you said the health consequences and all of that stuff. But it really starts with those habits. And so if you have habits around work of not the or habits around work life balance that don't support you with your life balance, then that it's it's easier to perpetuate the problems than it is to make the change. So if you heard one or two things that Paul and I have said so far that are helpful, that you could

44:03

if you could do one or two of these things and help change one habit or two habits over time that pays dividends over and over again. Absolutely. And it's good that you said that because it kind of goes back to the thing before. You gotta have a vision or an idea of what balance looks like. Because I think for most people, we didn't just decide to go to work and to jump into the situation where you didn't have balance. There was a time.

44:31

Well, it was early on or not where we felt like we had a little bit more balance. We were able to do the things we enjoyed doing. Plus, we were getting things done from a work perspective and we felt satisfied. And then maybe that situation changed because we got a promotion or this other thing happened or our perspective around the job shifted. And as that happened, we started letting go of the things that were most important to us. And so we have to find ways to get back to that. So you're talking about habits, right? And it habits.

45:00

or you create new habits with intention, right? So there's intention and there's attention. You can create new habits. And there's neuroplasticity. I mean, that's been heavily researched. So if we have intention and attention on new behaviors, those can become new habits. Now, a lot of people get caught up in the thousand times rule and that's not necessarily been proven to be accurate a hundred percent, but you know, but it's about the intention, the attention and attention.

45:29

attention and intention around what you want to do and what you want to see happen. That's a big, you know, play on. Yeah. But, you know, but it's small things. Like you said, exercise, meditation, right? Building time in your calendar for time off, whether it's 30 minutes or 15 minutes, do a reboot, do a reset, go take a walk, you know, get in nature, do something, like I said, these things aren't, and these things seem like they're not even work related. You don't know. They're not really there.

45:58

They're human related, right? If you want balance, you got to create your own balance. I mean, we all have the ability to do that, but we need to figure out what does balance mean to me? Does that mean I need to listen to more music? Does that mean I need to dance? Does that mean I need to go play basketball? Does that mean I need to work out, exercise? Do I need to go sit in silence for 20 minutes under a tree and take in the fresh air? I mean, what is it, you know, and do that thing.

46:28

So Paul, what does this mean for you personally? Is there a connection here for you personally on this whole topic of work-life balance? Yeah, this whole thing is, I mean, I got to a point, I can't even, there were several periods of time in my careers where I've experienced the burnout, but I would say it was actually the primary driver for me to kind of shift from being a C-suite executive in the IT world to doing what I do now.

46:56

which is really about coaching and training and kind of teaching people how to be better versions of themselves. I left what people would say was a pretty sweet deal, working in the IT world. Why? Because I got burned out. And the burnout was not necessarily around, people treating me inappropriately, but just kind of realizing that there was a general sense of not caring about people.

47:25

A general sense of not really having vision. There was a general sense of not being aligned to a purpose, or a means to like, this is why we're here. This is why we do what we do, because we're supporting this particular mission. And, but for me, it was mostly about the people. The people thing kind of stuck out to me the most, because like, if you don't take care of people, I don't care what kind of processes that you have, and I don't care what kind of systems that you have. People work the processes and the systems, and it's in balance right now. And people aren't just gonna do,

47:54

Dude, that's an outdated paradigm. That paradigm is over 100 years old now. It's much different now. And so if we lose sight of the people that are in these processes, then we've lost sight of why we're even doing what we're doing in the first place. I mean, so people were talking about how do we bounce back from this great resignation? Well, we gotta learn how to reconnect again. We've forgotten how to.

48:24

to establish rapport and build relationship. We've forgotten and it took two years. But here's the interesting thing. We weren't doing a great job of it beforehand. It's just that this kind of highlighted an aspect. It highlighted some of those things. Highlighted, highlighted all the comments. And on that topic, I heard two interesting things I've heard. One is if your team doesn't have a channel, if you have Teams or Slack or whatever the communication channels are.

48:50

you should have a channel that is not work related so that people can just be funny. Like if you don't have a channel for humor and jokes or something like not work related or somebody had a baby or somebody like the, the human part of things, since we aren't in the, in the workplace, you need to have a place to share those things. And so there should be a channel for that so that people can do that. And you as the supervisor should stoke and feed that channel.

49:19

And I mean, maybe that means you're posting happy birthday messages because you know from the HR file that it's somebody's birthday and they're not going to share it themselves because not everybody does. So you just go on and say happy birthday and you know what you can celebrate their 25th birthday no matter how old they're turning. Everybody can just always turn 25 at work. That's cool. You know, like make it that's cool. So have have those things. That's good. And I'm a why for me. One of the reasons I bring this up.

49:45

Why I wanted to do this episode was because this is one of the most common questions that comes up is it is a feeling of helplessness around work-life balance. And the reality is you are in the driver's seat for part of it. You are, you do have some control over your part. So it's, I wanted to make sure that we talked about what you can do because there's a lot of feelings of helplessness around work-life balance. So make sure that you're doing your part.

50:13

Is that why? And for me personally, it's also because I have been an employee and a manager and a senior manager and I've been through a lot of these situations and I've definitely noticed that there is a lot of feelings of helplessness and everybody kind of does this thing where they just you know Oh, it's them over there. Oh, it's this work policy. It's this thing and the reality is There were there was somebody doing your job before you did it and there's gonna be somebody doing your job after you did it

50:42

And so you got to figure out how to find that balance. And so the why for me, that's the point of why is like answering that question of, look, it's not total helplessness. You're right. There are things you can't control, but make sure you do the things that you can control. And if you do that, it's going to be better. Even if it's not great, it's going to be better. Absolutely. Do that stuff. Now, Paul, any, just kind of bringing it back to any.

51:08

Additional resources or things that you recommend on this topic for folks that are looking into this more Yeah, you know so, you know one of the things that came to mind for me was a couple books You know Daniel Pink is an author and he wrote a couple books It's really interesting because he talks about there's a book he wrote recently called. I want to say it's called when And it really talks about finding the times where you're kind of working at The time the time of day when you kind of work at your best like so these are times a day of like you might

51:38

You might carve out time for yourself to work because you're going to be really focused. You might carve out time for you to do some meaningless things, but necessary, like, you know, getting your account on read emails and that kind of stuff to respond to email messages. Or you might find there's here's a time where I need to be very really creative and I need to kind of focus on my creativity and or focus on my downtime because I'm not going to be as productive. That's a really great resource for people that are looking for how do I how do I even you know, because like you said, people feel helpless. Other things people

52:08

don't even know where to start. Right. Right. So that was this because I know where to start. I want to change this. I have no idea where I can begin. Right. So some business thinking about how you spend your time, right? You know, I think that, you know, there's a great book, it's called finding your purpose written by a man named Richard lighter. He's a he's a business coach. And he talks about finding your purpose. But there's another one about I have it back here. I want to say it's

52:37

reimagining work, right, which is really good. And it's about how do you find reasons why you do what you do so you can kind of connect with the job and mission and have it align with your own personal values. Because a lot of times people think I got to leave if I want to find fulfillment. No, you need to find a reason to stay. You need to find what is it about this thing that I do that I'm spending a lot of time with.

53:04

that I really enjoy and connect with that versus talking about all the things you hate about it. I mean, yes, sometimes people need to leave, but sometimes people just mismatch and they probably need to find something within where they are, but maybe just do something different. But you never get there if you don't even understand how it connects with what you're doing. Right? So, you know, reimagining work, that's another good one. Richard Leiter is the author for that one too. So those things kind of stand out for me is what's, you know, kind of helping.

53:33

Understand not even research behind it but like looking at some practical things we can implement in our lifestyles to kind of shift A little bit because we had to shift mindset Yeah, if you don't mind say we're gonna we're gonna continue doing the same thing we're doing and that's insanity Exactly same same thing and you know You were talking about books the one that I can share is there's a book called work life brilliance And it's by Denise green and I really appreciated her book because one of the things that people get

54:02

there's a feeling of overwhelm around work-life balance because it's just, it feels like it's so much. And you know that saying, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, right? So if you're taking one or two steps, or you just, this month, I'm gonna do this, and you do that one thing, and that'll help turn the ship just a little bit, and then a little bit more. And so for some folks, it's the momentum of getting started is really helpful. And so in that book, she talks about a lot of very practical little things that you can do.

54:32

to make these shifts. So it's very practical advice on Do This, not just the thoughts. So I really appreciated that book. And of course, you know, for anybody listening, I'm Brian with Productivity Gladiator. I teach workshops on this. Paul with Zero Point Leadership. We also, Culture Change and Leadership and the stuff that he's doing. And actually, Paul, this is a good point. Why don't you talk about, you've got some new coaching sessions or things you're going to be, what's coming forward for you in the future?

54:58

Yeah, so I have a couple of different shifts that I'm making within my organization. So I'm putting together these, I will call them science-based immersion programs. Right? And so really it is a combination of some learning and group coaching to be able to not only get the information that we need to have in order to start making different decisions, but also, you know, creating accountability, self-accountability systems so that we can actually...

55:26

put some things into practice, right? Because the biggest thing is it's all about how do I make this practical? And I think the science is great. I mean, it's very informative, but, you know, how do I translate that into activities that I can take and steps I can take so I can start improving my habits? And I will even go as far as to be shifting our routines or actually creating rituals. And when I say rituals, it's about creating an intentional routine, right? That's a really-

55:53

an intentional routine because it has a means to an end. I'm doing this because I want to achieve this thing. Right? And so create those intentional routines or rituals so that you can start getting the results you like to get. So I'm putting together a self mastery journey, which is looking at how we optimize ourselves in multiple human domains such that we, one can be on the road to truly becoming a better version of ourselves.

56:21

And if we can do that and actually put some consistency behind that, we can change how we are. And that really is basically a mini evolution, if you will. So imagine it being you becoming human 2.0 because you are a different person than when you started. That means you've changed. That means you've evolved. Within the organizations, I'm looking at doing smaller micro learnings where organizations are really learning how to, and leaders are learning how to.

56:51

one, lead themselves better. Because part of our conversation is, if you're not even, if you're not emulating what a balance looks like, then it's hard for you to expect others to do it, right? You can't make others do it. So you gotta lead yourself first before you can actually lead others more effectively. And so I take them through this process of where they, one, learn how to better lead themselves so they can manage and navigate themselves better. But then how to then, looking at it from, you know, from a team perspective or looking at, you know, looking at people that they work with.

57:21

How do I help them see it? How do I manage them in the moment? And what are some of the strategies I can employ so that they can certainly do the same thing that I'm doing? Now, all this is really caveated around everybody needs to start at point A, right? Everybody needs to start at point A. It's self leadership. Doesn't matter if you are the manager, doesn't matter if you're the frontline worker. Self leadership is for everyone. So we have to start there. If you're leading others, then you start going down a more advanced track.

57:50

But again, these are macro learnings that are going to be done over 90 days where individuals are going to have the accountability systems put into place so that when they're actually taking action and implementing these steps, they have some way to kind of do a check in and kind of get that feedback loop they need so that they'll know if they're doing it right or if they need to make adjustments. And so those are two big things that are coming up in the next 30 to 60 days where we want to see some shifts happen. Well, that's cool. Well, Paul.

58:20

Thanks for coming in and doing this episode with me. I think here's what I love. I love that you've kind of taken this journey and leadership and culture change, and you seem to have gone way into the science and the study of the mechanisms of how. For me, I'm always fascinated with, tell me the little steps, tell me the little things, like that journey of a thousand steps. I mentioned, man, let me take 10 more this week and see if I can keep moving, and I like that part. But I love that.

58:47

you've gone through and you've really got some of that science in there. And I love some of the perspective that you're sharing from your time, you know, and I love that we both share from, I mean, we're sharing from not from a what we wish the dream state was, but we both have been there in the trenches on what it is and how it is now and what folks are facing. So I, so I, I really appreciate you joining me today for this, this episode. Thanks for coming in and chatting about this.

59:14

Absolutely, it's certainly been a pleasure to speak with you and certainly share this information with people in your audience Yeah, and so now folks that want to find out more about you or social media website. Where's the where's the best places for them to go? Um, well the website is www.zero point leadership. That's all spelled out zero point leadership It's all one word.com and my Instagram is at Neuro somatic underscore leader and I'll send those to you

59:43

Oh nice, I'll get those in the show notes too so that you can click in your episode and find those here as well Um, and of course i'm productivity gladiator. So feel free to subscribe So for those of you that are listening Thanks for the likes and the follows and the subscribes if you sign up for the email list I will send these things to you straight to your inbox So you don't have to go looking for them and you can catch these videos whenever they come out and each one of these episodes I'm capturing in a podcast or if you like video you can watch paul and I talk about this. This will be on youtube as well

01:00:12

So there'll be video too. And then also as a blog post, if you're more of a reader, you can certainly subscribe and get this reading, read through these things too.

Introducing The Show

I’m Brian Nelson-Palmer
& this is Productivity Gladiator.  

I want to share knowledge, hacks, and ideas on work-life balance and personal productivity. I also want to talk to knowledgeable people in those areas, to share more than just my perspective.

I used to write a blog, and I realized that not everyone prefers to read, myself included! Some people prefer to listen, and some people prefer to watch. This show is about taking the educational topics that would have become blog posts, and TALKING through the ideas, not just writing a few hundred words. Also, I love having conversations with experts in the field. This show gives you a front-row seat to those conversations as well.

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The Video

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The Audio/Podcast

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The Concept - Learning By Committee

In the world of personal development, I love to learn from multiple perspectives. I call it “learning by committee”. What I mean by that is, I would rather leverage the knowledge from many different perspectives, and take the parts that resonate with me from each, rather than learning everything from just one person. That’s what I mean when I say “learning by committee”. 

Here’s a story that happened to me recently which further demonstrates what I mean. I’ve become a boat guy recently as an adult. I’ve never had someone in my life to teach me about operating power boats and being a captain. In order to learn, I have been out for lessons with several commercial captains. The first one was a surly, opinionated old chap named Captain Bob. Captain Bob told me “You must always have paper charts and maps. The biggest mistake you can make is to rely on electronic devices for navigation.” See, what Captain Bob doesn’t know about me is that I went paperless in my personal life years ago.  I’ve also gotten rid of all my physical books because I’ve streamlined my home life. The concept of keeping a book of navigation charts isn’t my style, but I saw his point.

My next outing was with Captain Frank, a middle-aged friendly guy who was a little more hip. He wore his captain hat crooked and had a heart of gold. Frank introduced me to Navionics, which is an online chart mapping app that is like GPS for you while you’re on the boat. THAT was more my style! I also discovered it was $50/year, which was kind of a bummer, because I don’t go out that often, and I’m spoiled by Google Maps which is free GPS when I’m in the car. Since I’m frequently on the same waterways, going to similar places, having to pay that much for the app when I often knew where I was going was kind of a bummer!

My third outing was with Captain Brady, a “by the book” kind of guy, who talks to you with an aura of expertise from 3 decades of experience as a captain. He used to work for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He told me about NOAA’s role in navigation charts, and how part of their public service as a government agency is to provide depth and navigation charts for all of the US’s waterways. Their charts are free! Now we were talkin!  

That night, after meeting with Captain Brady, I was at home and started searching NOAA’s resources. While researching online, I found an app called Sea-IQ.  Sea-IQ is a maps and GPS app like Navionics, but it has a free version which lets you see the latest NOAA charts from your phone. That was my win!  I now use Sea-IQ as my navigation app.

For me, I learned a little bit from each captain I met. I saw Captain Bob’s point, that electronics could leave you stranded, and if I’m ever going on a long open water overnight journey, I bring a backup map device. Captain Frank gave me hope with the idea of a GPS app. Capt Brady introduced me to NOAA charts.  Google helped me find the NOAA charts on a free app. I feel I’m better because of all of their perspectives. I think of this as me “learning by committee.”

This is also how I approach learning about work-life balance and personal productivity, which I’ll be talking about on this show. It’s a voyage. I hope there will be many captains for you in your voyage. Take the best things you hear from all the captains you follow! I’d be honored to be a part of that journey, and I hope this show helps you to become better and better.

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Where This Is Headed

On this show, I’m bringing you along on my conversations, and my voyage. I teach Work Life Balance and Personal Productivity to employees of businesses and organizations. I’m also a self-improvement nut. I started this show because I wanted a way to continue to add value to people I’ve worked with. I don’t know about you, but in my career, I’ve been to so many work training sessions where at the end the instructor puts their email or contact info up on the board and invites people to keep in touch. In most cases, I’ve walked out of those sessions and not given them a second thought. My hope is, by doing this show, I have something to offer, to continue to add value for the people I’ve met. 

Thanks for checking this out. Thanks for subscribing, listening, and engaging if you want. And thanks for being a part of my voyage with Productivity Gladiator.

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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 created Productivity Gladiator because I saw what a difference it made for employees to improve their productivity, improve their work-life balance, and live their best life right now, today, not wait until retirement. Thanks for checking out Productivity Gladiator! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.