Paul Minors - Tools And Strategies To Be Ultra Productive Every Day

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flow chart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear.

Hello.

How's it going? Are you meditating? Did I. Did I hit record in the myths of a meditation?

Indeed you did.

You sound very chilled out.

I am.

Or just high af?

You take your pick. Yeah, no, I'm breathing, I'm chilling.

He's not high. I can attest.

Well, we were at. This is kind of funny because we were at the Padre game last night and we were looking at our very. He's scored a big contract. Manny Machado on the Padres. And he just constantly looks so calm.

Yeah.

I'm like, how do you look? We were both looking at him. It's like, how would life be to just look so calm and. I don't know, it's probably an appearance thing and some people just have that natural tendency.

No, he really is, like, zenned out looking.

Yeah, it's amazing. Like, look up a picture. He looks very high a lot of.

Times compared to Austin Hedges, who looked like he was going to shoot us with laser beams.

If you don't know what any of this means, just Google search him. Manny Machado and Austin Hedges. Manny Machado, he's just chill. Austin Hedges, he's got crazy eyes. But that's focus, damn it. That is focus.

Well, it's funny because we're sitting here going, last night we went to the Padre game, but this episode's coming out, I think, on like, July 28th or something like that. And so, like, no, we went to the Padre game, like, two months ago.

That's a good point. Hopefully we go before then.

Yeah. So it was not a good time. So welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. My name is Joe Fear and I'm here with my fabulous co host, Mr. Wolf. Matthew Wolf.

Like Bond.

That's right.

And I like that. I'm fabulous. I love being fabulous.

Yes, you do. It's a good time. We were thinking, actually that would be. You know how, like, at the baseball stadiums, they all have, like, their walkout music, like, they have like, whatever. The Pump Up Jam. And then, like, you have the relievers, usually the closer has like, some epic thing because it's like this big. And we're like, man. Oh, yeah, that was it. Because there was someone on the other team, the Phillies called, named J.D. hammer. Yeah. And we're like, dude, that is a badass name for a pitcher. Like, bring out the Hammer. Yeah. But then we're like, wait, Our names are pretty cool too. Like, bring out the wolf, bring out the fear. Yeah, that's true.

We could be.

We should be.

We need to be a pitcher, pitcher, pitcher, catcher, combo. And this, like, actually saying this out loud. There's some innuendos that probably don't sound great, but.

You blew yourself, Matt. I just blew myself, Tobias.

Jeez.

I've been watching Arrested Development a lot lately.

Oh, yeah. This episode is degrading fast. Let's bring it back around. Let's bring it back.

You know who's going to bring it back for us?

Paul Miners.

That's right.

He is.

He is the productivity machine. He's actually passionate about productivity, which I thought was an interesting statement, but, dude, it comes out like he's passionate.

He's really excited about it. And I mean, I nerd out about this stuff too, because I'm, you know, I don't. I'm not out there teaching productivity strategies, but I am very much a productivity nerd myself.

Yeah.

You know, a lot of the tools and strategies he talked about, I have experience with, so.

And guess what? I am not. I'm learning. I'm trying.

But we talked about a lot of different strategies that, you know, time blocking your days and making sure you've got your task list set up right. Batching. Batching stuff. And we talked about podcasting a little bit and some really interesting, exciting ways that you can leverage podcasts that most businesses don't, but would be pretty fricking easy for you to do it.

Yeah. He laid out a bunch of tools that he loves to use and how he automates a lot of this kind of just the day to day stuff that we all kind of take for granted.

The tools part, I think was my favorite part of this episode when he was kind of rattling off tools. Cause there was three or four of them that I'm like, I need, that I need, that I need.

And I mean, me being more the outward communicator, I would say for our brand to bring on podcast people, set up meetings and interact with our clients and customers and all that stuff. Paul actually laid out his process and it's very, very simple. Duh. But we should all be using this is to clear out his inbox and stay on top of everything and achieve Inbox zero, which I think I've only achieved once. That is when I opened my Gmail account for the very first time. That's funny. No, I go in waves. But it was honestly a lesson for me. I was like, damn, it's just so easy it's just sticking with it. And it's like. Because I know there's so many people very successful. And this is what's interesting, is Matt and I have this interesting dynamic, is you are Inbox 0 Most of the time, I think, and I am not most of the time, but I stay fairly close. And there's so many successful folks out there that just have thousands or I've even seen 100,000 messages in the inbox.

Are you trying to justify the inbox unclutter? You're trying to justify your inbox clutter.

Yeah, well, shit, if they can pull it off, then I can do it.

If you're trying to find reasons to justify inbox clutter, don't listen to this episode.

I'm just kidding. I'm definitely. It's just. It's given me hope. Yeah, I have hope.

Joe has hope for once. There's finally hope for Joe.

Finally. Yeah, I'm definitely a hopeless soul. Right? Yeah. Right. That's not my middle name. Yeah, man. So let's. It's good. There goes my note sheet. And you know what? We took some damn notes for you, and they're epic.

Yeah, but you just threw them on the floor.

No, no, those are different notes. Those are my podcast notes. I've already done with the podcast here. We did that episode, but you. You guys listening? Are you listening? There's not multiple. You's probably go to hustleandflowchart.com comp c o m p for about a week. You have free notes for this episode, so go get them quickly. You just gotta. Just sign up for free. You'll get the notes immediately. There's no weird shenanigans and all that stuff. But you do. You're gonna basically have this action guide that's printed and ready for you to act on this episode.

Yeah. And he talks about a lot of strategies for productivity and a lot of tools and a lot of various resources that you're going to want to remember. So make sure you grab those Notes, hustle and flowchart.com comp and if you want to support the show, we need support.

We love support.

We love support. We don't need support. We love support.

We love it. Yeah, we actually don't need it, but it, you know, it helps us help you.

But do you think they'll support us more if they think we do need it?

I don't want to look like we're desperate.

Okay. Go to EGpletter.com and subscribe to the newsletter, because then we're going to mail you the notes in the mail every month.

What? In the mail?

Yeah, we're going to give you access to our private forum because we're awesome. And we're going to give them training every month with like, past guests and like a lot of cool stuff. You. All the backlogs, the archives.

There's a lot of backlogs too.

Yeah.

Like you got a library of knowledge to just have fun with and implement.

The sum of all human knowledge is inside of our members area for you to explore.

It's in the vault. That's the vault here. It's metal. It's very, very strong. It doesn't sound like tin at all. Like a hydro flask.

No, not at all.

Yeah, go there. EGpletter.com that's like your fast track to just get everything and stay in the know. Because the more you're in the know, let's be honest, you're going to make more money.

You're also going to support this podcast and let us know that you're enjoying what we're doing by signing up to. That's like your seal of approval that you like what we're doing. So go to egpletter.com and to get the notes for free on this episode, assuming you're getting them in that limited window, go to hustleandflowchart.com comp, grab the notes. Let's go talk to Paul Miners.

Yeah. Hey, Paul, welcome to the show.

Hey, Matt and Joe, thank you for having me on.

Of course, of course. Yeah. So we're. We got introduced through some podcast connections and I feel like, you know, if there's a good connection out there, saying we gotta chat, we gotta chat, then we don't really question it much. And then.

Yeah, yeah.

Upon further review. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're the man when it comes to just productivity and, you know, just the right tools, automation, automating the right things, it looks like not everything. So. Yeah, I don't think we've had a good productivity expert on the show, like, specifically.

No, no, We've had like a lot of business owners who have little bits and pieces of advice of productivity, but nobody really that, like, that's the specialty.

Yeah.

Oh, cool. Cool. Well, I'm not a huge fan of that word expert. I try not to use that label on myself, but my take has always just been, look, I'm passionate about productivity and I like to think that I'm pretty organized and get stuff done and I'm going to just share what I've Learned, really? That's my strategy so far.

Yeah. Well, you share. I know you have your podcast, the Paul Miners podcast, all about productivity, business, self improvement, all sorts of cool topics that we all need and in love too, saving the time. So we're curious just to get to know you and your story. Can you take us back to what got you so passionate about productivity and kind of what led you to the stage you're at now?

Yeah, I think subconsciously it's always been something I'm interested in. I think I can probably date it back to like when I was at school or university. I would get given like a schedule for when I was doing a new course or a new paper. They'd give you the schedule of like, this is when every single exam is. This is when every single assignment needs to be turned in. Here are all the dates you need to know. I thought, okay, cool, let me just put start plugging this all into my calendar. And then I would kind of take it a step further and I'd be like, okay, this, this essay is going to be a thousand words. I know it's gonna, I'm gonna need like an hour to do like paragraph one and two and the introduction, blah, blah, blah. And I just kind of go through this process of dissecting these assignments and studying and when I was going to read chapters for lectures and things, and I just dissected it all down and into little pieces and start putting it onto my calendar. And so it was really just something that evolved. It's something I started doing quite naturally just while I was studying. And so I think just subconsciously it's always been something I'm interested in. It just made sense at the time. Right. I've got all this stuff I know I'm going to have to do. It's non negotiable. I know I need to get these assignments turned in. So how can I make it really easy? How can I plan my time really well to make sure I'm doing everything on time and I'm not kind of scrambling at the last minute. And then it was a few years later, I'd say probably when I started working full time. And I've always been interested in business and I knew I wanted to work for myself, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And it was actually through Simon Sinek, who people may recognize the name either from the very famous TED talks he's done on Start with why or his books as well. He's written a lot about leadership and he one of his most successful books start with why. Kind of talks about how you can find your why or your purpose. And I kind of consumed some of his material and did a course of his, which is about really helping you to understand who you are, what makes you tick, and what is your why. And I found that I'm someone that's very driven by self improvement, achieving my goals. And if that's my why, you know, I just want to kind of improve myself and be the best version of myself I can be. And I'd say most people are probably fairly similar. If that's my why, then productivity is how I do that. The way I look at it, if I can be more effective and more efficient with how I spend my time, I can improve myself. I can be better at work or, you know, more successful in my business. And productivity is the vehicle that I think we can all use to just be more successful, achieve more, and get more out of life. And so it really kind of spiraled from there. I started writing about productivity on my blog again, like I said, just sharing what works for me. And I think that, gosh, that almost have started back in like 2013, 2014, something like that.

Wow.

And that's how I got started. Yeah.

So you've been at it for a while and it sounds like, yeah, you're just documenting your process because you have a podcast, the blog. I know you do a lot of book summaries on your. On your blog as well. Looks like that's probably a good SEO Legion type thing for you. Just seems like you're kind of covering all your bases, which is really. And then you do consulting probably to teach the similar stuff you're doing. Yeah, it seems like, yeah.

Is that describing what I. Yeah, describing what I do is pretty. It's pretty interesting for people. There's a kind of running joke in my family. I'm one of four boys. And there's a joke because my parents, when they, they are introducing themselves and they say they have four boys, they say, right. We have one son who's a pilot. One of them is a policeman, the other one's a cameraman. And Paul, we're not really what he does.

So I sort of have, yeah, definitely, like a lot of plates that I'm spinning. There's kind of my. I have my blog and my podcast and all the content that I'm producing, and I really use that to just kind of build. Build an audience and build a personal brand. I use that to sell digital products, like have a productivity course, a consulting course that I sell and then there's kind of another whole half to my business, which is consulting. So now I've specialized in a few different tools like Asana, which is a project management tool, pipedrive, which is a sales CRM, and a couple of others as well. And basically I found there are a lot of small business owners, medium business, small to medium sized business owners who don't have the time to like learn how to use these tools despite, you know, there's loads of free material. It's just one of those things. They want someone to just sit down with them and say, right, this is how you should use it and set it up with them and train their team. And so that's, that's how I spend a large amount of my time now. But yeah, in terms of like my hustle, it's. There's a lot of things that I'm doing and I've kind of. It's nice because I, it keeps things interesting and I can diversify my income having things. Income coming from consulting and sponsorship and affiliate marketing and yeah, a few places.

Nice. Well, it sounds like you're doing a lot, so you probably have some decent systems to make sure that you consistently do a lot. So let's, let's go ahead and start diving into some of the ways that you're, you know, you're using your time wisely and building systems and automations and I'm not even totally sure where to start.

I wanted to ask you a question. Is, and I've always kind of wondered this about very productive people. Do you procrastinate ever?

Yeah, I do. Like occasionally, you know, I'm just. I know there's something I need to do and maybe I put it off, but sometimes I'll put something off kind of in an intentional way. Not because I'm just feeling lazy or because I don't want to do it. It's more because I don't think now is the right time to do something or I think like, you know, there's other more high priority things I need to work on now. There's just better ways that I can spend my time. So there's things I occasionally just push back again and again and again. But it's more that I'm deprioritizing something rather than I would say procrastinating.

So. But yeah, I mean, I occasionally struggle like anyone.

Yeah, yeah. And I think this leads into what you're asking, Matt, is like, where would you recommend someone if they don't feel like they're as efficient or they're as productive as they would like to be. So they're willing to improve, which I'm sure most people listening here are, or you want to be listening. So where's like a good starting point for optimizing our time in business and life?

Yeah, I mean, firstly, I think it's important to not get caught up too much on tools, right. Because I think that's the shiny distracting part of productivity that we often get caught up in is which tool should I use. And people often think that they're not organized or not productive because they're using the wrong calendar or because they're using the wrong to do list and they think if they try something else that's going to fix all their problems. And I see it a lot people often switching between tools and I think very rarely is the tool actually the problem. And it's usually how you're using it. It's usually the principles and routines that you've kind of adopted that, that what are letting you down. It's just hard to admit. So I think, you know, there's a bit of a process that you can go through. Firstly, you need to have some kind of clear sense of direction about what it is you want to achieve going forward. And actually somebody asked me the other day, he said, you know, do you plan quite, do you plan ahead quite far? And interestingly actually, no, I don't. Like maybe, maybe a few years ago I was planning like a couple of years ahead. I had a bit of an idea of what I wanted to do. Right now I'm pretty happy with where I'm with my business. I'm not super motivated to grow much, much more than where I'm at right now or grow a team. I'm really happy with the state that I'm at right now. So I don't really have that many long term goals. I mean definitely personally there's things my wife and I, we've got on the radar, having second child and stuff like that. But I'm not, I'm not really one for planning like 10 or five years out, let's put it that way. So really when it comes to planning, I have more like values and principles and beliefs that I follow. And so these are just guiding beliefs that help me make decisions, if anything. Right. But I think in saying all that you want to have some idea of what's important to you right now. So for it, for the, when I start my year or actually ending the previous year, I'm looking at what do I want to achieve next year? Like, what are some general things I'd like to do? How would I like to spend my time? What do I want to do more of, what do I want to do less of? And I set some targets and things and put some numbers on them, and those are things that kind of guide my decisions throughout the year. But then really on a, on a kind of weekly, daily basis, you know, I think it's really important to have some kind of task list where you can really lay everything out. So I use Asana, which is a project management tool. But again, the tool doesn't really matter that much. There's pros and cons to every tool that we use. But having, just having everything kind of laid out in a tool, this is everything I need to do in the next couple of weeks. And not having to try and rack your brain or remember everything you need to do is really important. So just having it all kind of do that brain dump, get it all out, and then you can start to kind of prioritize and order everything. Tools like Asana, for example, they have like timelines and Gantt charts. So you can actually lay everything out and say, right, well, I need to do that one first. And then in order to do this one, I really have to do that one first so I can create a link there. And just that thought exercise of thinking about the priority, the sequence of in which order you need to do things is really useful. So using some kind of tool like that to just kind of plan out this is what my next couple of weeks looks like, I think is really, really useful. And then the kind of third step, and this is where I get real, real kind of nitty gritty, is I actually do something called time blocking that' I don't know if there's any one set phrase or term for it, but I call it time blocking. So that's this practice of basically scheduling time on your calendar for tasks that you need to do. So I'm looking at my calendar now and I was this morning. I've been recording some videos for my YouTube channel. I've got a blog post to write this afternoon. I'm meeting someone. So all these little tasks and things, they're actually blocks of time on my calendar. And the reason I think putting them on your calendar is so useful is, number one, with all your tasks, it forces you to think about how long is it going to take to do. Because to put a block on your calendar, you have to allocate half an hour, an hour, two hours. So it Forces you to think, how long do I need and when am I going to do it? So if you have 10 things to do in a week and you start putting blocks on your calendar, maybe your calendar is filled with the first eight. Now if you want to put one of those other two things on, well, you're going to have to take something off. It's sort of like playing Tetris on your calendar. You're going to have to prioritize and say, right, well, what can I take off to make room for this other thing? So it forces you to be much more realistic with your time. And so it's something I've been doing. Yeah, Like I said back at university, that was when I first started time blocking. And the scary thing for some people hearing this is like, oh, I couldn't possibly have such a strict, rigid system for planning my time. But I say like with, with my calendar, with my task list, these are tools that I have open all the time and I'm constantly updating. So it's a bit like how if, like if you imagine a chef in a kitchen when he's cooking, he doesn't go to the cupboard and get the salt and then salt the dish and then put it back. He has the salt there on the, on the counter in front of him ready to go. It's like his tools. It's like a mechanic has a tool belt. You know, they have these tools readily available. And so my calendar and my, my task list, these are in my tool belt. I've constantly got them open. And so throughout the day, as my plan changes, if I finish something early or if something comes up, I'm constantly shuffling blocks around. And so it helps me to kind of plan and update my plan on the fly in real time as I need to. So it's actually sounds like a bit of a strict system, but it's actually very flexible when you're, you're doing things proper. So I'll stop talking there, but that's kind of a bit of an outline of how I've, how I kind of manage my time.

That's, that's cool.

I mean, we're both big proponents of the time blocking stuff and we're even like a. It even adds more complexity when you have two partners that try to time block and block times against each other and things like that.

So it's. Working together is key for us. Communication and not stepping on each other's toes. For sure. I like the flexible idea of time blocks. Actually. I haven't really heard anybody talk about that being almost like a fluid. So you start, it sounds like you start with a good plan and then you know, if something ends early or maybe cancel like a meeting, you have the flexibility to shift around the blocks as you need still.

And yeah, yeah, like I'll, I'll pretty much, I'll plan my week on a Friday. I'll do like what I kind of call a weekly review. So on a Friday I'm looking at everything I have coming up over the next seven days. And I do this on a Friday because it's kind of a nice way to close out the week. And I can kind of start the new week with a plan ready to go. And so I'll look at. Right. This is what I have coming up next week. Let's put some blocks on. Let's go right. Here's some stuff I need to do. Let's create those blocks. And I don't want to fill my week. That's important as well. You want to have some white space available for those last minute things that come up. The plan is not, it's not going to go to plan. You're going to have to move things around. So let's not have the expectation that we need to create the perfect plan. So I'm trying to get my calendar like 80% like set. You know, here's the blocks that I think I'm going to do and this is how I think I'm going to spend my time. But yeah, as stuff comes up, a call gets canceled. I think it was on Monday actually. I kind of finished a bunch of work earlier than I thought it was because I often over schedule, I'll plan too long to do something. I do that intentionally so that when I finish early, I've kind of got the gift of time now. So I actually finished a piece of work early and I was like, well, my wife was out. I work from home sometimes, so my wife was out. And I was like, well, I've probably got like half an hour here and a little half hour block that I had on the calendar for the following day. I quickly shuffled it across and I was able to do it on Monday ahead of time. And so yeah, it's very fluid. You can, you can definitely move things around as you need to. So essentially when I get to the end of my week, because I'm updating blocks to actually show how long things actually took as well at the end of the week, I basically have a perfect record of exactly what I did. So over time it's really cool to Be able to go back and look at how you spent your time and especially if you're running a business, to kind of have that, have that view of what you're spending time on and you can use that to make better decisions in the future is really, really valuable.

Okay, I'm really interested in this now because you're adding in there weren't before. I am, but no, he got me hooked. But he got me hooked. You're hooking me even more because I'm one to overstack a calendar. Matt is aggressively. Matt, don't break your neck with how much you're nodding.

Basically. I like what you said, is that you overestimate. So you have the gift of time, which is the best gift of all because you can't get that back.

Well, if you're overestimating, maybe you would think you can do eight tasks in a day. But because you're overestimating, you only book in six, right?

Yeah, it's overestimating for the time you're allowing yourself. Is that something like. Because I know for me that's, I think a lot of people is you underestimate how long it's going to take for a task. So is this kind of your way to battle that? More or less?

Exactly. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. Most people will underestimate and they say, oh look, that should take an hour. And yeah, maybe in an ideal world where you're not being distracted, people aren't walking over to you or chatting you on slack and disrupting you or you don't have to go and answer the door if you work at home. Yeah, maybe if all the conditions are perfect you might get that done an hour. But chances are things are going to take longer and especially with maybe more like creative work, writing a blog post or doing a video, sometimes it just takes longer. And so if we plan for the worst case scenario, which is I usually add about 50%, 25 to 50%. So if it's an hour, I'll plan an hour and a half. Then we can kind of plan for that worst case, prepare for that worst case scenario and hopefully if the plan does go well, we've now, yeah, we can, I'll finish that, that one and a half hour block after say 45 minutes or an hour and again I adjust that block to say, right, it only took 45 minutes or an hour and now I can. The next block that I had queued up for 2:30, I can start at 2:00 clock and that everything kind of moves up yeah.

Now, how strict are you in the moment when, when you've got something blocked out and you're working on the thing in that time window? You know, you mentioned things like Slack and maybe emails popping up or the phone ringing. When you're in the moment, when you blocked out an hour and that stuff pops up, things start dinging or ringing around you. Are you very strict and you stay in the moment and stay in the flow of what you're doing, or will you often find yourself breaking away from what you're doing?

Good question. Yes and no. So it really depends. Firstly, I think you need to get your notifications right on your phone and your computer. So like the only notifications I really get on my phone are like text messages and calls, even things like Twitter, Facebook, even Facebook Messenger. I've kind of turned most of that off. So I'll kind of just get to them when I, when I see them, like at lunch or something, if I'm scrolling through my phone. But yeah, so if I do get a text or something flies into my computer screen, I'll quickly glance at it just to see what it's about. And generally we can make a quick decision about do I need to respond to that now or can it wait now? Most things can wait. It doesn't matter if I have to wait an hour to get back to somebody on Slack or a text, it's usually not going to, you know, the world isn't going to burn down if I don't get back within an hour. I think we feel pressured sometimes to get back straight away because instant messaging by its very nature kind of there's this expectation that you get back to them straight away and I've just made the decision that actually, no, I'll just get back to you when I'm ready. Now sometimes maybe I get a call from a client and actually I've been trying to get them, I've been trying to close a sale or I need something from them so I can do some work and they call me if I'm, if I decide to, I might make a split second decision there. And then to be like, yep, that's actually pretty important. I'm happy to stop what I'm doing because I know that this is really important. So you just have to kind of, usually, you know, 80% of the time you'll probably ignore it, but I think if it's a high priority thing, you can respond to it if you need to.

Yeah, makes sense. Are you familiar? I'm sure you are, but David Allen's getting things done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we actually had him on the podcast and it sounds like like a handful of the philosophies you've adopted are, are similar to his strategies because he's got the, you know, the concept of what, brain dumping and then.

Which is my favorite, and then doing.

A weekly review on everything that you've brain dumped. And it sounds like there's some similarities. And, and, and are some of the philosophies that you follow are, are they influenced by that or.

Yeah, yeah, definitely getting things done. It's quite a sort of, quite a rigid sort of philosophy to follow. And look, I think it definitely is going to work, like, wonders for a lot of people. Personally, I've chosen not to follow it to a T. Like, I've borrowed parts of it that I really like. So there's things in there, you know, he has this concept of next actions which are sort of small little things that, you know, maybe aren't time sensitive. You'll just kind of do them when you get a chance. If you have 15 minutes before a meeting or the call you budgeted half an hour for ends early, you can quickly look at one of those next actions and see if there's something quick and easy you can do. So I really like that idea, which I've borrowed. Same with. He has a way of separating tasks into like a waiting list. Waiting is kind of stuff that, you know, maybe it's a client. I'm waiting to hear back from them. It's like a task that I need to do. Maybe I need to import someone's data to their account. I can't really do it right now until they answer some question that I've asked them. So it's kind of a way of separating those tasks that you can work on now from the ones where you're waiting for something on. So I've borrowed concepts that I, that I really like, and I think that's what, you know, anyone can do, like listening to this podcast, reading books. There's no one perfect system. I think the system is the one. Well, the perfect system is the one that you design for yourself, the one that you actually follow. Trying to change yourself to fit somebody else's way of working can be really hard. And I'm more of the approach of, yeah, I'll kind of look at all these ideas, but I'll borrow the parts that work the way I like to work.

Yeah, yeah, because it's, it's interesting because you can apply a strategy and of the GTD method Like, I know, Matt, you follow it probably a lot closer.

Yeah, but I mean, like, you know, like Paul said, it's my variation of the GTD method.

Yeah. And my variation is different than yours, Matt, and. Yeah. Cause like, Matt uses omnifocus primarily for his to do list, whereas I'm using more of the asana. I used to use asana a lot. Now it's more notion, but same idea is you have kind of a process. And for me, like the brain dumping aspect of your process. His process doesn't matter. Just getting stuff out of your head, I thought was the most relieving part of the whole thing. Most people don't do that. Yeah.

And there's things like, I think in gtd, David Allen says the only things you should put on your calendar are time sensitive things. So like meetings like this, that we've got an hour block now for this podcast. That's something that would go on the calendar, that's time sensitive. It needs to happen at a specific time. But things like tasks under the GTD approach, he would not be putting on the calendar. But now I've decided actually time blocking is something I really like. It works really well for me, so. So that's what I do. But GTD doesn't have that. So. Yeah, again, you kind of just borrow the parts that you like. And I kind of just cobbled together this system or workflow, a way of working. That works for me.

Yeah, I like it.

So I have a question.

We have notes in front of us. We actually have a research assistant that helps us with ideas to go on on the podcast. And there's a note that she wrote that I'm kind of intrigued by. So hopefully you know what I'm asking, asking here, but she said that you have a data based, like, objective scientific way to analyzing your tasks.

I don't know what they're referring to.

Okay, well then notes failed you, Matt. She's fired.

I'll take it. I'll take it.

But that's funny. Well, I was going to ask because with our podcast we do this and you might do this in your podcast. So this might be a nice little overlap conversation, but we batch everything we do in the podcasting, just recording time for us, for Matt and I's time and that it's been like the saving grace because we had previous podcasts and they've all kind of fizzled out because of the consistency. Just kind of dropped off where it was just like, hey, Matt, when do you have some extra time? And that does not work. So this, we're planned out months ahead of time. You saw it in Calendly when you booked and yeah, we typically do about minimum two, but max four per day. So what's your philosophy around batching tasks and maybe combining it with this method we're talking about?

Yeah, I mean, batching is great. It's. I mean, I'm doing it as well. Like, I have kind of like themes for my days, like Monday, for example, because most of my clients are in the States and Canada and in New Zealand, we're sort of a day ahead. It's like time traveling. So on. On Mondays, most of my clients aren't really working. So it's a day that I can allocate to content. That's kind of the theme for the day is content. Theming is actually a concept I've borrowed from Mike Vardy from Productivityist.com and so it's kind of the. It's the overarching theme for the day. It's not that I'm only going to do content that day, it's just that it's sort of the primary focus. And so Monday, for example, I'm usually publishing a blog post for the week. I am writing a new post for the following week. I'll have to record a podcast or maybe I'm doing some video. I'm just kind of in content mode, especially with things like recording I have to do. I work at a co working space as well. But when I'm recording for my podcast or YouTube, I have to be at home. You know, you have to get the microphone set up, get lights light set up and things. And I think just when you're in. So it's not just setting up my environment, but getting in the mental space as well. Once I do a podcast, I'm all set up, which is great. But I mean, I'm mentally, I'm like, great. I'm in the zone now. I'm feeling good, I've got some energy. I'm speaking clearly because sometimes it takes a bit of time to warm up and get going. And so because I'm warm now, my setup is ready to go. I may as well do a couple of videos. I did that last week. I did like three or four videos in an afternoon. My videos are pretty short. And so, yeah, I think you can really realize some efficiency benefits by grouping a lot of those types of things together. So, yeah, all for it.

Yeah, I know the batching, like everything we're trying to do now. I like the themes of the day idea too. Because that's something I don't think we've totally adopted perfectly. And not all at. As a systematic way, but like we were talking to another guy, Chris Guerrero. He manages all sorts of different companies and he themes everything out and like Wednesdays for him is his only consulting day, like when he advises with all of his clients. So it was kind of, you know, just this theme. It's almost like the theme of today is theming your weeks and days. So batching. I mean that's how you can manage big companies or even manage something that's. That seems like, you know, something that's kind of within your grasp, like you have. And speaking of that, like what kind of, what kind of team do you have if any?

It's really just, just me and my wife helps me with a few things at the moment. So yeah, I've been working pretty much on my own for. Well since I started really. I've been doing this full time since the end of 2000. Well, beginning of 2017 really. I've been. Been doing this myself. But yeah, and at that time when I quit my job, my wife and I, we actually took six months to travel and I was kind of doing this part time. But yeah, she, she helped, helps me with a few things. We have an eight month old boy now, so she's pretty focused on him at the moment. She still helps me with a few little, you know, helping with email and stuff and a few other little tasks during the week. But it's actually just me and.

I am in the process of trying to find a virtual assistant. I've had experiences with virtual assistants in the past, didn't go that well. They needed a lot of management and probably my fault for not managing things properly or hiring the wrong person. I think you definitely get what you pay. Oh yeah. I'm in the process of trying to find someone now. I would like someone to work with who can help just take a few things off my plate. But going forward. Yeah, like I said earlier, I'm not particularly motivated by growing too much more. If in like three years from now I haven't like if the business hasn't failed and my income hasn't dried up, that would be great if I could just kind of maintain the level I'm at that would, that would make me happy. I'm not super motivated to like employ lots of people because. Because it looks like a lot of stress and responsibility and not that that's wrong and I'm not saying anyone doing that is doing it wrong. It's Just for me, for the business that I want to run for the balance that what I have with my lifestyle. I don't really want to hire lots of people and I do have a few contractors that I work with. Some somebody helps me with my website, obviously have an accountant. So I contract with a few people to help with specific projects. I'm looking at using someone now to help with some SEO. So I do. I'm definitely a fan of like contracting people, people for projects or kind of adjust in time basis. Just when you need someone, you can contract someone. But yeah, that's just my approach, not saying hiring anyone is bad. I'm just kind of happy with where I'm at. And you know, the other thing as well is it's a lot easier to maintain productivity and be organized when all you have to do is manage yourself.

Right. That's what I was going to say is like you have, if you have yourself down, you might as well keep rolling with that. It seems like you're doing an impressive amount of stuff, stuff all at once as yourself too. So hats up to you, man.

Now.

I'm not referring to tools right now. I want to talk about tools for a second. So I'm already getting ahead of myself in this statement. So I want to talk about tools and I don't want to talk necessarily about like the actual productivity tools. You know, you guys, you use Asana. I think Joe said he uses Asana, I use Omnifocus. Like you said, the tool doesn't matter as long as you're consistent. You kind of build your system around it. But I'm curious as far as from an automation standpoint, what sort of automation tools do you use in your business to help you stay productive? So, you know, stuff just happens behind the scenes.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of automation and I think this is a great way that you can kind of in a sense scale without hiring. So like Zapier is a big one for me. I love Zapier. I do it. It kind of factors into my consulting quite a lot because a lot of clients want to automate stuff. But yeah, really does handle a lot of manual stuff that I have to otherwise do manually. So example with my consulting, somebody, you know, usually finds me on YouTube. They'll go to my website and the call to action is go and book a call, an introductory call with me and they can, they can schedule that using calendly. Now when I started, I would manually enter that data into pipedrive. My CRM maybe took like 10, 10 minutes per lead to just kind of copy across all the information, set up some activities for myself as well, to call them and that kind of thing. And then I thought, actually Zapier can do this for me. And so now it handles all of that happens almost instantly and it means I'm not having to manually do that. So I'm a huge fan of automation. Zapier is a big one for me. I've automated. I don't even know how many zaps I've got up and running at the moment. But there's a lot of stuff that really helps me to be quite organized and have stuff go to the right place. Like when a deal, when I have a new client, for example, that has paid, that then gets marked as one in pipedrive and it'll then go in. Zapier will then set up a bunch of tasks for me in Asana, because now there's a bunch of things I need to do to onboard that client again. Now I don't have to manually do that or use a template. Zapier just does it all for me. So, big fan of Zapier. Another tool that I really like is on the Mac, it's called Hazel. It's a basically a document kind of automation tool. So one of the main ways that I use it is throughout the month I get a lot of receipts from things like paying for Zoom or Dropbox or mailchimp, all these services that I'm signed up for to run my business and they email you a receipt and I need to kind of save that receipt or PDF and put it in Dropbox. So I've kind of got it for my accounting purposes, you know, and a lot of people don't do this or they wait till the end of the year and they have to spend a lot of time doing it. I've actually set up firstly an email rule. Email rules are pretty good for automation, but I have an email rule that will say right when mailchimp sends me that receipt, forward it to Zapier. Zapier will then save that, take that attachment and put it in Dropbox. Hazel, which is this automation tool, is watching Dropbox, and when it sees a PDF come in with certain keywords like mailchimp and receipt receipt, it'll extract the invoice date, it'll rename the file to the date of the invoice, call it mailchimp and it'll put it in the correct accounting folder. So all of that kind of stuff, mail rules, Zapier, to the right folder renaming, all happens in the background. So when I get an email, I usually just have a notification on my computer that says, hazel's put this in the folder. I know it's all worked. And all that kind of document management that I would have otherwise had to do manually all just happens like magic in the background. So that's really cool.

Now is that actually like putting the data into like your bookkeeping software as well, or is that just kind of keeping records for you that. So it's easy to find in case you need them at the end of the year when you're doing your accounting?

Yeah, it's the latter. So it's just keeping those, those receipts and documents organized with, with the actual input into accounting. Like, so I use Xero, which is a great New Zealand company.

I love Xero. I use Xero too.

Yeah.

Oh, cool. So, yeah, you probably know that it connects to your bank account. So the transaction that, you know, Dropbox bills me for another month of storage. That transaction just shows up in Xero. And there's a rule set up in Xero that says, you know, if it, if it's the, I don't know, merchant is Dropbox. Code this to software expense or something. And so I just need to go into Xero maybe once a week and click yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Just confirm all those transactions.

That's cool. Now, when you're talking to your consulting clients and whatnot, are there some common zaps. Uses for Zapier that you just find yourself going to or recommending to these folks?

Yeah, like a very common one, for example, with clients I work with on pipedrive. So pipedrive, again, is a. It's a sales CRM. So for manager, we have a new lead. We need to track them through a sales process and then hopefully sell to them. Now, most people get inquiries through their website through some kind of contact form. So they want to make sure that when somebody uses that form, all the information goes into pipedrive. It sets up a contact, assigns the deal to someone, that kind of thing. So that's a very common one, is connecting a form on your website to a CRM like pipedrive.

Yeah. Okay. And what's the craziest? All right, let's call it the most, most impressive automation you've done with Zapier. Is there one that stands out?

Oh, man, I'd have to rack my brain. I can't. Nothing. I've done some pretty cool stuff.

Like, I can't believe I did that.

Yeah, there are some moments like that where you have to say to someone like, I don't know if this is going to work. Give me a couple of hours and I'll come back to you and I'll let you know. I've done some pretty cool stuff, but nothing specifically.

I love Zapier and ifttt. I mean, I, I nerd out about both those tools and try to make stuff play with each other all the time.

Well, I'm curious, like when you're, when you were going with Zapier or ifttt, do you, so Paul, do you, do you like map it out prior to. Or do you just have a pretty good logic just in your mind? You're like, okay, well I want this to happen and this kind of just all hook up to each other.

Yeah, I mean, I've got, got plenty of experience using it now, so I'm usually I can kind of just get in and start putting it together. I mean, it usually goes through a couple of rounds of testing and iterations where, you know, you set up your trigger. You might set up a couple of action steps like, okay, put it in pipedrive and put it into a Google Doc or whatever it might need, whatever you want to do. And you kind of do a test and you go, oh, okay, that didn't quite work or that data didn't look, doesn't look quite clean enough. So maybe I'll add a format step and you can just slot new steps in. And the formatter, the Zapier format is quite good if you need to like clean up data or do things like that. So yeah, often I'll go back, add a step or tweak something, test it again, and maybe go through a few iterations like that when I'm testing and tweaking. And then eventually I get it to a state where I'm like, yep, this looks pretty good. Let's just run it now. Let's just have it run live for a few days or a few weeks and I'll usually, you know, check in on it. I'll set a reminder like, check it after a week, see if that spreadsheet, you know, that's being populated, is it all looking correct, that kind of thing. So usually I'll just kind of get it in and start. Start figuring it out.

Yeah, yeah.

You mentioned some automation so that when you get receipts, the receipts automatically go over to Hazel and get filed away. Do you have any other tips or tricks for managing your email inbox and kind of keeping that cleaned up all the time?

Yeah, well, first one is unsubscribing from a lot of the junk that we often get. So we all just, through our natural Internet lives, we end up subscribed to a lot of stuff and our emails get shared around as well. So I'm very active about unsubscribing, subscribing from newsletters and kind of junk that I'm getting in. Either I'll put it into my junk folder or if I'm confident that, oh, I do recognize this is something I've signed up for, I will unsubscribe. Because whenever you sign up to a new service, they always put you on their mail list and they. It's like your insurance company sending you corporate updates and things. I don't need that. That's the first thing is just kind of minimizing, minimizing the volume. And then on a daily basis I kind of follow. I can't remember. I think this might be a David A. Allen thing. I really can't remember. But he has this concept of the four Ds and this, this relates not just to email, but kind of any. Anything that enters your, your life's inbox or your tasks. So the Ds are like, you can either do it, delegate it, drop it, or defer it. So you can do something if it's like, if it's important and it's urgent and you can kind of do it within like, say two minutes. Like if it's an email, maybe I'll just quickly reply to. And just once I've replied, I'll archive my message because I don't leave it in my inbox. That's what a lot of people do is they leave email in their inbox. I actually prefer to archive so that hopefully I can get to inbox zero. There's nothing left. It means that everything's been dealt with. I will occasionally leave things in my inbox if I'm still thinking about it. I want to get back to someone later. But generally I archive as I go to kind of signify that I've dealt with this now. So do it. Yeah, quickly respond, archive it. If. And I'm just going to trust that the person's going to respond to me and it'll obviously pop back into my inbox later. If it's really important that I follow up, maybe it's a client client, I will set a reminder. Or that's when you can use things like snoozing. A lot of email clients now come with snoozing. So I'll send my reply and snooze the message. So if I don't hear back in three days, it'll pop back up. You can defer it. So this is stuff that's important work but generally not urgent and maybe it takes a bit longer as well. I know. Okay, I'm going to need like half an hour to sit down and do this or respond, do something before I can respond to this email. So that stuff that will go onto your task list and for me, it'll then go onto my calendar as a block of time as well. Do it, defer it. Then we have delegate it. I don't get to do much of this because I'm just working with my wife and hopefully with a VA soon I'll get to delegate a little bit more. Yeah, if you do, you do have a team or some people that you work with, maybe there's somebody who's more suited to, who would be better suited to answer this email or that it's something they're responsible for. So you can kind of forward the email and delegate it to them. If you, if you are working in a tool like Asana, you can actually create a task for them instead of just sending them an email, which is. Is nice. And then finally it's drop it. So this is stuff that's like, it's just junk in your inbox or even just like, you know, you probably get it as well. Loads of people just use my contact form to try and sell me SEO services and get links on website and all that kind of stuff. So just delete them. That's the final thing you can do.

Yeah, and I like that. Yeah. With the Inbox zero thing, it's like a quick response and it's almost trusting. I like the archive thing and I know we use Boomerang a lot, but now a lot of this stuff is built in, you know, like the snoozing or. Yeah. If you don't, if you don't hear by. By a certain date and then have it pop back up in your inbox.

What's even built into Gmail now where you send later where you can actually go in and say like in three days, send this email or send this email at 8:00pm tonight or whatever.

Yeah, good point.

I think it was. I think it was Mike Vardy as well, actually at Productivityist, who said he used a great analogy as well. So when you leave email in your inbox, it's a bit like when you. You get physical mail in your mailbox at the end of your driveway. I don't know how you have it, but we have A mailbox driveway. And so, you know, maybe at the bottom of your apartment building, you've got your mailbox, and you're getting all that. You're getting all that mail. There's going to be some junk in there and stuff and some actual bills and letters and things, and you're going to then pick the ones you want to read and then put it all back in your mailbox. That's kind of like what we're doing with our digital inboxes. But we don't. We don't do that in the real world. When we go to our mailbox, we collect everything, we clear the inbox completely, and then we sift through and we sort the mail. So the junk. Oh, this is advertising that goes in the bin. You can delete that. This is a bill I need to pay. Okay, let's put that in my. On my desk. I'll do that later. And you kind of sift through and sort the email. You don't go putting it back in the inbox. And so that's kind of how we. How we should be treating our digital mailboxes as well.

Or if you're a complete nerd like me, you take all your mail and you load it up into omnifocus and then delete and delegate and resort what you want.

Oh, is that how you. You do it?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I didn't do that for both.

Print mail and digital mail.

Yeah, that's true. You have an elaborate. See, that's. This is where Matt and I totally differ. It's like, oh, man. Like, it's. I look at that. I'm like, I'm so impressed with how organized everything is. I'm like, oh, my God. I just. Yeah, I have a whole different way of thinking. But like you said, we have our own unique systems and then the tools that fit with our own unique systems. That's what's really cool. And I think that freedom feeling, you know, it's like, it's. It's. It fit it for what works for you. Don't overthink it.

My legitimate, like, snail mail process is my wife, she usually checks the mail, and she'll come in and just throw the stack on my desk, and I'll sit there and sort through the mail, throw some stuff away. The stuff I don't throw away, I literally enter it into Omnifocus.

Yeah, well, I know you. You won't forget it if it's in Omnifocus.

Yeah. I mean, if that's what you need to do. Yeah.

Do It So yeah, it's interesting.

I dig it. Now let's see, are there any other tools I know you were talking about Zapier use pipedrive for the CRM. Is that for just prospects and clients, you know, through that sales process?

Yeah. Essentially when someone contacts me to inquire about getting some consulting, I'm managing that sales process in pipedrive. When they said yep, I want to work with you, they pay. That's when kind of pipedrive has done its job and I actually manage working with the client in Asana. But I mentioned loads of tools like so another great kind of automation tool that I love is textexpander.

Great tool.

Yeah. So great for like, you know, we all have the same email that we need to send again and again, like follow up emails or when somebody books a call with me, I send a quick thank you. I've got like dozens of email templates that I've programmed in. So it's really nice. If I get an email I can quickly type what's called a little snippet. So it's usually like a semicolon. Then like the word booking and that will fill out, you know, hi Matt, thanks for your booking and I'll talk to you on this day, blah blah, blah. And you can customize it. There's fill in, you can fill in names and you can fill in paragraphs or you can turn paragraphs on and off. It can be really kind of dynamic if you need it to be as well. So like email templates is a great use for text expander but I use it for all sorts of things like links. I always need to be sending people links to like maybe pages of my website or creating a payment link for paying for something on like a consulting payment on my website or affiliate links. I need to send those around. So rather than having them stored in a not or just going and finding them online, I have them all programmed into textexpander. So if someone's like hey Paul, what's that tool you mentioned? I can quickly send somebody an affiliate link. So links even, even I don't know about you. I have, when I'm typing my. In my muscle memory I sometimes there are certain words I will mistype and it's just, it's too late now. My fingers just always type it wrong. I can't fix it. And so I've programmed it so for certain words like I think it's with like the word don't. Sometimes the semi, the colon will go into. Not the colon, the apostrophe Sorry, the apostrophe will go in the wrong place, and it's just my fingers moving too fast. And I've just. I always mistype it with the apostrophe. So then textexpander sees that, and it can correct it for me. So little. Little things like that. But, yeah, I'm a big fan of textexpander. I actually got my email report from them today. They send a report every. Every month. And I think last month I saved about three and a half hours just on time typing. Holy. That's like nearly half a day just on typing. Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

I actually bought textexpander probably four years ago, and I never used it. I think I set it up the first day I got it, and I used it for, like, 10 minutes and went, eh, this is kind of cool, and then forgot about it. And then, like, I think three years later, somebody was on the podcast talking about textexpander, and I was like, oh.

Yeah, I have that.

I should try to use that. And ever since I've been, like, hooked on it, I've been programming, like, everything into it.

Like.

Like, for my name. My name is literally two syllables. If you say my first and last name.

Yeah.

And I still program that into textexpander, so it's like, if I hit semicolon M, it'll put my name out there. You know, like, stuff like that.

That's good.

Sorry. Sorry. I was gonna say I got. I got a new MacBook last year after I spilled tea on my old one. And it was. It had to be one of the first things I downloaded, because otherwise I still start typing things and I'm doing little snippets and nothing's happening. I feel like my computer's broken. So it was. It had to be one of the first things that I downloaded when I got the new computer.

Do you back up all of your snippets, like, to the cloud now so that if that happens again, you have all your snippets saved?

Yeah, I do. I haven't. I think it's all on the cloud with them. And it's good because, like, Haley, my wife, she helps with some emails, so we have some email templates set up that she uses, but I can go and edit them, and if I can change them if I want, and I can edit, edit them, she can then keep using them. She may not even know that I've edited them. But I've. But because we have the shared snippets. Yeah, she just gets those changes. So it's great.

Oh, that's amazing. All right. And here I am over here, the one doing mostly correspondence in the back and forth, and I've been hearing textexpander forever, and I haven't taken the plunge yet. So today's the day. Damn it, it's happening.

Well, did you have more on this topic?

No, I was thinking we'd go to podcasting a little bit.

Yeah, I think, I think with the last few minutes here that, that we have, like, I wanted to kind of chat about your podcast and what you're doing there and why you decided on podcasting. And so let's, let's just go there. What's the rundown? Why did you decide on podcasting as. As your, you know, one of your content mediums? And how has that worked out for you so far?

Yeah, it's. It's been interesting, like, so I started it, Gosh, I think maybe 2015, if I'm remembering correctly. And the reason for starting it was partly just I was thinking about my own consumption of, you know, content. And podcast is one of my favorite ways that I learn new things. You know, there are lots of blogs out there, but I would say it's not that often during the week that I'll see. I know some people are obviously very different, but I won't, you know, if I see a blog post on Twitter or something, or I come across it, maybe I'll go and have a quick read and skim it. And it's very rare that I'll sit down and read like a. A good, good long blog post. I kind of skim and almost like search for the post that I need on demand if I want to go and learn something. And so, I mean, I really enjoy writing for my blog and I know some people enjoy reading. So I have my blog and then I was thinking, well, I enjoy podcasts and I've done all this work to create a blog post anyway. I'm going to do that anyway. So I've put the post is ready to go. It really doesn't take much extra work to record a podcast. So if I've spent an hour and a half, half writing a blog post, I can turn on my microphone and in 15 minutes I can have a blog post ready to go, ready to upload when, when I'm publishing. So it's. I've done all the heavy lifting in coming up with the idea, fleshing out my ideas, writing it. And so when I record, it's. It's solo show, I do the occasional interview, but I'll literally read the post that I've written, not word for word, Like, I'll ad lib as I go. And it. I'd like to think that it sounds pretty natural, like I'm just talking, but actually it's nice having the blog post there because. Because it's. I've already organized my thoughts so that I'm not rambling. Like, it's actually a really concise way of talking. And so I can just flick on my microphone, I can kind of just go through the blog post that I've written. And yeah, I know that some people are going to read it, but other people who are just at the gym or in the car or on their commute, they're going to. They have 10 or 15 minutes so they can just go and listen to the podcast. So it's just giving people another way that they can kind of consume the content that I've already put effort into producing. So, yeah, it started back in 2015 and I do about a. Yeah, like a podcast a week, the occasional interview as well. Yeah, I really enjoy it. Like, it's something I really enjoy doing. And.

Yeah, do you know which one gets you more traction as far as, like eyeballs on your brand between the podcast and the written content?

God, I have no idea. I'm useless when it comes to looking at those numbers. I know there's. I mean, I have Google Analytics and everything set up, but it's just not something I probably need to spend more time or I need a VA to go and. And do some reports on me on numbers and things. So I really couldn't give you an answer.

I think you're pretty normal in that respect. Most people don't know. We try our best to try to kind of have it all sync up and try to track as best we can, but with podcasting, it's still kind of the wild, wild west when it comes to that stuff.

I had a call this morning and somebody said, oh, you've got a million views on your YouTube videos. And I was like, really? I had no idea.

That's awesome, though. Congrats, man. That's really cool.

Thank you. Yeah, I've seen subscribers because when I log in, you see the subscribers. I think it's about 7,000, which compared to some people is nothing. I mean, it's just slowly ticks up. But somebody said, yeah, you have a million views. I was like, wow, that's so cool. I have no idea.

Yeah, YouTube now is a really good analytics backend that's pretty easy to Read. So you might want to pop in there just to see your overall stats. But yeah, you could see, I mean, that's what's the beautiful thing with YouTube. YouTube compared to podcasting is you can sort all sorts of data and then make better decisions on what topics resonating the most and where they're coming from, and yada, yada, yada, keywords. Podcasts are getting there, starting to. Yeah, yeah. It's a slow grind. So I like the approach you take from the blog first and then go to the podcast and kind of repurpose more or less. We're hearing a lot of other podcasters do that.

Yeah. Like I said, it's like I've already done all this work to create this content. I may as well just like put in an extra, extra 15 to 30 minutes. And like at the start, it's definitely not going to be that quick if you are starting a podcast. Like, you need to ride that learning curve for a bit to learn your process and how to edit and get a podcast ready and uploaded. But now, because I've done 133 episodes, I've got it, like to be a pretty efficient process now, so I can record very quick to edit and have it ready to upload very quickly. So it's not a lot of extra work for a lot of extra value. Like all these people can now go and listen to the podcast. It's a huge amount of extra value, but for like an extra 15, 30 minutes of work. So it's. In terms of bang for buck. It's awesome. Yeah.

Have you had any. So when it came to actually growing your podcast and getting people listening, has there been anything that has been a sort of big driver for the podcast?

I think just consistency. I've been doing it, like I said, every, every week for like a few years now. And that's. I mean, I'm always taking on board people's ideas and feedback for the show and trying to lear what people like and what they don't like. But honestly, just consistency, it's one of those things. It does take time, like I said, to kind of learn your process, find your voice as well, get into that zone and get into a groove where you're, you know, you've kind of differentiated yourself from other people.

So.

But I think just with, with more experience, with more practice, with consistency, that's when you can hopefully create something really unique for yourself and kind of carve yourself out a little, you know, as being different from other people. Yeah. So just, just make it a consistent Habit. Commit to turning up every week or every two weeks, however often you want to do it. And making it a regular part of your routine is getting out podcasts. And it won't take long. And after six months, you'll be surprised at how far you've come and how much you've learned.

It's so true, man. And even if it's just like you said, I love your approach. I'm looking at your blog actually actively, because I see that you're embedding the podcast right there in your blog post, and you have all sorts of different ways for people to interact with, interact with your content, and you're kind of covering all your bases. He said YouTube's growing as well. So at a minimum, folks listening, because we talk about podcasting all the time on here. Big proponents of the medium, but a lot of folks overthink it. So I love how simple the approach you've taken is. And those are honestly, this simple approach has been some of the most successful podcasts that we know of in our circle or have done this. So it's really.

And you want to. I always think about as well, what is the best way to deliver value through the channel that you're using. So, like, I did a post a few weeks ago, I think it was seven often overlooked ways that you could be more productive on your computer. And I was talking about keyboard shortcuts and using a monitor and all these things. And so in the podcast, I kind of talk through. These are the seven ways. And I just kind of talk through it. And anyone can listen to that. And then the blog post, I think, serves this really nice recap. So anyone who's like, oh, let me, let me, you know, I listen to the podcast. Paul mentioned something about this tool. They can go to the blog. The blog serves as a really nice summary. And then there's some links in there to things they might want to go and try. But then I actually did a video as well. I don't do this for every blog and podcast, but it made sense for that particular one. I was like, I may as well do a video because then I can demonstrate some of these things in the video. It wasn't like I was repeating the blog post. It was actually more. Let me show you, you these seven ways that I've talked about. And so, yeah, again, maybe you've listened to the podcast or you've read the blog, but you can then go and quickly look at that video and see, oh, let me see. He talked about text expanded. Let me just See how he set that up, for example. And so the video kind of serves a different purpose to the blog, which serves a different purpose to the podcast. So for that particular one, yeah, I really did cover all my bases. I don't do that every time. But, you know, each channel, there's benefits. No matter what channel you use.

Video, you can communicate things in video that you can't in blog or podcast. And with podcasts, you can't share links that easily. So that's why our blog is useful.

Yeah, yeah, it's great. I love what you're doing there because you're hitting them where the customer lives, or maybe not customer, but the viewers listening or reading or viewing. It's all the modalities. Everybody has a different way of learning.

Well, that's something that I don't think a lot of people quite grasp about podcasts, is that by creating a podcast, you're essentially putting yourself in, you know, 20 more search engines, right? You're putting yourself into Apple search engines, you're putting more content into Google search engines, you're putting more content into Spotify search engines. You know, the list goes on and on of all the different players. You know, iheartradio and TuneIn, and there's so many different player apps that by having a podcast element, you are able to get into all of these other potential platforms where you can get discovered. And I think what you're doing is brilliant. If you're already writing written content, convert that into an audio as well. Just read it and turn that into a podcast. And that it opens you up to people who may not have otherwise discovered you.

Totally.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's funny because podcasts, I think historically, people have thought, I can't start a podcast. It. It's somewhat of an intimidating thing to start because there's a little bit of a technical aspect to it. It's getting a lot easier. But there's this. I think there's a bit of a fear at the beginning, like, oh, my gosh, I have to start a podcast. What's this thing? An RSS feed. And I have to submit that to itunes. How does that work? Like, oh, this seems way too hard. It's actually easier than you think. And with other services now, like Anchor, which wasn't even around when I. Which wasn't around when I started, you can now upload straight to Anchor. They will distribute it to all the different channels. So it makes it really easy. So I think it's definitely getting easier because definitely, like, even just like a Few years ago, it's almost easier to edit a video and put it on YouTube than it was to create a podcast. Which kind of sounds like a video should be harder, surely. But no, I think podcast, because they've kind of come from a slightly more technical background. Some people have been put off. But the good news is it's getting easier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the data is coming around too. We are. There are more technologies coming out where you can collect the data. Data and have more of a direct response from podcasting. And there's exciting stuff happening in that world.

Yeah, it's fun. And like we were saying, yeah. Google and all these other places are starting to index. Apple just released today as of this recording, or maybe it was yesterday, that they're going to start having a text search option for all podcasts. So you could look up keywords and it'll source one of many podcasts with those keyword strings.

Apple's answering Spotify is what. Totally answering Spotify. And Google is. What's happening is. Yeah, because Google, they just released a. An update fairly recently that indexes audio as well and can actually start to read audio files and index based on the discussions that you had. And I think Apple saw that Google was doing that and now Apple's like, we do it too.

So that's a race. Yeah, yeah. To kind of wrap stuff up here because I know you time blocked an hour. In about two and a half minutes, you're going to just run away and disappear on us. We always like to ask what's like a go to book that you recommend, maybe to clients or just people you know, it could be business or life. But you're an interesting one because you actually do a bunch of book summaries and I don't know how you're going to select one because it seems like you've. I don't know, how many summaries have you done on your website?

I cheat a little bit. My wife helps me with them. I don't read them all, so. But we have done. I think there's around 80 to 90 at this point in time.

Wow, they're amazing, man. I mean, I looked through a handful of them and that was a question I was going to ask is who writes them? But I don't want to put you on the spot like that. Do you actually read all these? But yeah, you guys do an amazing job. So I guess are there maybe a couple that stand out maybe for different reasons that you recommend?

Yeah, I'll try and pick some ones that. That Maybe are less well known but I'm going to have to mention some anyway like so the Four Hour Workweek was like still is kind of my bible. When I was first starting my business it was very much kind of tried to have a lot of those principles and followed that mindset of creating an efficient business and automation, that kind of thing. So the Four Hour Four Hour Workweek has definitely been very important book for me that I've reread a number of times over the years. I probably read it four or five times by now. So that was good. Start with why that I mentioned earlier was really important for me helping find my sense of direction, that kind of purpose. So for anyone kind of struggling with what should I be doing like what what how would I. What kind of job or business would I enjoy doing. Start with why is a good one to get you thinking about that. Other books that I've really enjoyed that have had an impact. The Obstacle Is the Way Ryan Holiday is actually one of my favorite authors. I really enjoy his writing. He just has a really good knack for taking questions quite can be somewhat intimidating topics like stoicism, like philosophy that is now becoming very popular and I would say Ryan is a big. He's a big reason of why I think stoicism is becoming popular. He now runs the Daily Stoic as well which is a great newsletter and just his writing. I really enjoy his writings. The Obstacle Is the Way which actually introduced me to stoic philosophy as well was great. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a good one. Yeah. And I didn't even know there was a daily newsletter or a newsletter from Ryan on the Daily Stoic. I have the book and I read that almost daily.

Awesome. That's a great use of that. I don't sign up to a lot of newsletters. I get a very few but Daily Stoic is one of them and just really good. Nice little. Very different. Just gets you thinking about something philosophical and just how to be better or more mindful on a daily basis. That nice little bit of wisdom in your inbox.

That's a stamp of approval for a newsletter.

Yeah.

If you're a professional. Proven it. Awesome. Cool. Well let's. Yeah, let's. Where.

Where.

Where should folks go? Check you out. I know you do a lot. What's the best place they can go? Check it all out.

Yeah, just. You can google me or my website is Paul Miners says Paul. The normal way, the only way Miners M I n o r s.com and yeah you'll. You can check out my blog the podcast. There's some resources and things, and you can learn everything about me on there.

Right on, man. Well, thank you very much for your time. It's been a fun time. Yeah, yeah.

Been awesome.

All right, man. We'll talk soon.

Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address, and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

Go get it.