Time is our most valuable commodity. It is the new currancy of business. Smart entrepreneurs are always looking for ways to protect their time and maximise their productivity. In episode two Paul is joined by one of Australia's leading productivity specialists, Donna Hanson, who shares the secrets to greater productivity. If you're always wishing for more hours in the day, this episode provides practical strategies that you can apply to save time and get more done. 

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:23:10

Don: Over time what happens is people are frightened to say something because who wants to appear stupid in your workplace. All you kids know more than you do and inside you know you put this persona on. Maybe you know more than you do. Being inside you actually thinking How the hell am I going to get all these things done that I need to get done. I don't know the things that I need.

00:00:23:12 - 00:00:57:10

Pau: So that was the voice of Donna Hanson One of Australia's leading productivity specialists and the author of the book control alt delete how to reboot your productivity. Now we've all been there. We've all had the experience where we've invested into a piece of technology with the aim for it to improve our lives to save us time to make life easier only to find ourselves becoming incredibly frustrated by trying to figure this thing out and that we feel like we're burning more time than we originally did before we even had this technology that was meant to help us.

00:00:57:11 - 00:01:29:11

Pau: Now if we recognize that time is the new currency it's our most important asset as entrepreneurs. Our goal is to try and make the most out of every day that we've got. So we need to look at ways of how we can become more productive. How can we achieve more in less time. So I've invited Donna to come and share with us some of the strategies she uses and teaches to companies all around the world about how to be more productive with our time. How to make the most of the technology that we have at our fingertips.

00:01:29:13 - 00:01:32:10

Pau: So before we dive in let's first cue the intro

00:01:43:05 - 00:01:57:20

War: Welcome to the Marketers Club podcast the show all about helping you work smarter earn more and accelerate your success and now here's your host Paul McCarthy.

00:01:57:22 - 00:02:45:00

Pau: So imagine being able to achieve twice as much in half the time. Well my next guest Donna Hansen says with the right mindset skills and knowhow it's definitely possible to do now Donna's also been very generous and is going to be sharing four power 10 templates that she uses to help companies drive their productivity. And she's making them available for you for free at the end of this episode. So stay tuned for that and I'll tell you exactly how you can get your hands on these must have templates that will really help you take the next step with increasing the productivity of your business you're going to love getting your hands on those. But I don't want to keep you waiting any longer. Let's dive into our conversation with Donna Hey Donna, thanks for making some time to chat to us today.

00:02:45:01 - 00:02:50:12

Don: You're more than welcome. It's great to chat. Great to share some ideas with your listeners.

00:02:50:12 - 00:03:27:24

Pau: Well you've written a fantastic book on how we can reboot our productivity and obviously it's something that is a massive challenge for small business owners figuring out how to maximize the time in their day and get more done. Fortunately we all at the same 168 hours. We're just gonna make the most of them. So before we kind of dive into that conversation just keen to give you chances to let people know who you are. How you ended up in this world. Also we've been good friends for a long time but keen for you to share how you've ended up doing the work that you do helping companies and organizations to become more productive.

00:03:28:24 - 00:04:51:10

Don: Thanks so it all started out I was working as a personal assistant to the managing director of a company and I got asked to join a computer hardware company as a training manager and set up a training division. Now it was actually quite amazing because at the time I was seven months pregnant with my son and I thought what do you do. I'll go in and start a new job. So I went to work for this organization I set up a training division that was very successful within this company. We set up a training facility for the Master Builders Association in Victoria and we won a couple of council tenders that were quite significant at the time because technology was just sort of starting to really really move. And that company went into liquidation. Of course not through my division Paul. it was through the hardware division and I guess it at the point when I joined that organization. I was really an entrepreneur that didn't realize I was at the time because when I first joined the organization because I was starting this element of the business from scratch I made sure my contract said that should anything happen to the company that the client base belonged to me. So little did I know that that was going to be a very smart move further down the track because it meant when the company went into receivership and I pretty much lost all of my entitlements I at least walked away with the client database.

00:04:51:15 - 00:06:14:19

Don: And from that I started to to develop that database and do contract training so I I used to work for a lot of those classroom training providers and that was I guess where I really noticed a gap in the market. What I noticed was organizations were sending their staff across to these one day training courses and you know I lost track of the amount of smoked salmon I ate at all those lunches at these five star restaurants. People would have this great lunch that weren't hot topics but reality was when I went back to work there was no connection. There was no relevance because you couldn't provide it because you had twelve people in a class and you had to get through a certain range of topics. So I recognized it was a gap there and I recognized that the generic providers weren't meeting that need. So after a while I started to apply a different approach with my clients. And then that started to gain some traction. One thing leads to another and here some 15 20 years later I now professionally speak around the world on productivity not only with the Microsoft suite of products and email management but around the the ideas and concepts behind why we're not as productive as we think we should be and also what we can do about it.

00:06:15:16 - 00:06:51:08

Pau: Well as we said right from the outset you've written a great book called control alt delete reboot your productivity will tell people how they can get their hands on that because I'm sure a lot of listeners will want to know where they can get this so they can really get hold of their productivity but I'm interested that on the back cover it says you know technology was supposed to make our lives easier, but in fact it's increased workloads, increased stress, increased risk, decreased productivity and created unwritten expectations and assumptions. So tell us a little bit about what you mean when you say look I think everybody is looking for the ab cruncher.

00:06:51:09 - 00:08:11:09

Don: I'm sure you've seen those ads you know those late night ads that you know you can't sleep they're selling you an ab cruncher and promising you a six pack abs or the body of whoever it is in insert insert body of admiration here. The reality is you know we were sold into what I believe is a misnomer that the technology is going to do the work for us and make our lives easier. But in actual fact it's been thrust upon us but we've never been provided with any framework or tools and by that I mean you know I'm sure everybody listening has probably been in a scenario where maybe they've gone to a store to buy a new piece of technology or perhaps they were working in an organization. And when they arrive they get handed a laptop. I user name and password and they just go off you go do your thing. We're expected to sort of innately know I guess it's a little bit like parenting. Paul you know how nobody gives you a rulebook about parenting. You just make it up as you go along. Absolutely. Often that's what happens with technology and over time what happens is people are frightened to say something because who wants to appear stupid in your workplace, or your kids know more than you do.

00:08:11:16 - 00:09:16:19

Don: And inside you you know you put this persona on that maybe you know more than you do but inside you actually thinking How the hell am I going to get all these things done that I need to get done. I don't know the things that I need and I'll give you an example just recently I was working with them at an executive I've been working with a team of executives in an international company and this this executive she said to me Donna I know how to do any of this with Excel was the example we working with. And on said to her you know you were never employed for that expertise you were employed see industry skill Excel can be taught when people understand how it's going to make your life easier. So that would be the same for many of your listeners very good at your business and what you do and this is just a part of your business today and that it can be quite overwhelming if you allow it to be that it can also be quite powerful if you give in and work out one of the things that you need to know rather than trying to be across everything. Does that make sense?

00:09:17:13 - 00:10:12:02

Pau: I think you're right. I mean the reality is that I mean I've certainly been guilty of an unknown in a lot of the entrepreneurs I've worked with over the years that they've run out and grabbed a piece of technology to make their life easier and then come back and being bogged down in trying to figure out how to use it and apply it. And stuck in the tech of it and get lost and kind of stick it in a in a drawer and never look at it again. So I think we've you know we've all been guilty of of doing that. So I think the challenge for us is that often we need the advice or the support when we're doing something at that moment. And it's not always easy get that when we need it. So let's talk a little bit about I guess some of the roadblocks some of the challenges that you encounter because you're working with people in this space all of the time. So what are some of the roadblocks that you see to becoming more productive.

00:10:12:03 - 00:11:21:09

Don: What I think the first thing is the expectation that we need to be able to manage this. If we take a step back and I just expand on that. If we go back to cave people dates we will process or we were worldwide fight or flight fight or flight. So if you were threatened by something you either fought it off. And overpowered it or you ran away. So that's the prehistoric primitive part of the human condition. And the problem is in today's world it isn't as simple as do I see a polar bear coming towards me or a brown bear coming towards me to I run or do I fight it. You know you're asailed with all these pieces of information and your brain can't differentiate between what's important and what's not. So if you think of your brain as being like a computer which we obviously know except it can't process stuff as quickly as the computer chip would hence every day we're driving along you know we're on a freeway.

00:11:21:10 - 00:12:42:16

Don: We see flashing signs with the speed limit. You know we're expected to look here we are expected to look there there's so much stuff and we're processing data and I think what we don't do is give ourselves credit for the fact that it's okay to feel overwhelmed by all this data because there's so much in our brain can't keep up with it. And we look for the ab cruncher or the easy solution and often the easy solution is sold to us in fantastic marketing copy which we say on all the late night TV shows and what it actually does is it is it gives the promise of a solution but it doesn't show you about the application. And I actually think what we need to do is just go take a couple of deep breaths. What is it that is the primary thing for us right now. You know what are we feeling overwhelmed with with regard to our technology. By that I mean it could be that you know you're hearing stories that you need to be on social media and you know one person tells you all you need to be on Facebook should be marketing on Facebook all you need to be on Instagram you should be doing snapchat. You should be on Twitter all of these things. But there is a far more strategic question that you need to ask rather than just being on things for the sake of being on things like you mentioned before stuffing the drawer.

00:12:43:14 - 00:13:55:07

Pau: Yeah. And we have. We can easily get seduced by the promise and then not think about the work that sits behind it. But we need to. So we have busy entrepreneurs listening to the program people who are working long and hard trying to get as much done as they can in a day but they would as I have certainly felt that frustration of getting stuck on something that feels like it's taking a lot longer than it should. Now I know from lots of conversations that we've had over the years and working with you that that the people fall into this you know habit this trap of kind of doing things the long hard way and that you've been able to come in often with your sessions and work with people and you know you mentioned execs in Excel for example where you show them a few simple strategies that save people literally hours and weeks sometimes so give us an example of sort of the things that you run into where people can be doing things so long handed but simply not aware of a better way to do it and what that potentially is costing them.

00:13:55:10 - 00:14:59:28

Don: Absolutely. Look a couple of examples the executives that I one of the executives that I worked with I said to her she was getting data from her team and she would send an Excel spreadsheet out to her team say fill this in. And people were changing things moving things about etc. And I sat with her and spoke with her for I would say 15 minutes about the process. She was a smart woman. She just needed a fresh set of eyes to sit down and say okay. How do we get from here to here and save me from wasting five to 10 hours of my time having to redo work because as an executive her terms can be far more valuable than a sales team. So what we did was we sat down we created a process. I showed her what to do. And now she thinks a couple hours every time she does that there's other circumstances where you know I had a couple of people who were in administrative roles in an accounting firm and they constantly had to provide graphs to their clients.

00:15:00:00 - 00:16:21:05

Don: And the problem was somebody created graph and Paul I hear this all the time they go. We used to have somebody in our organization that knew how to do that but I left. So when somebody leaves an organization they're not just leaving the organization they're taking unconsciously everything they know about their organization with them and the warning I give to every business is how you can protect yourself against that. So you know it doesn't have to be a matter of you need to spend megabucks to get somebody like me to come in and show people how to do stuff but it might be as simple as encouraging your team if you have a team of people to talk to each other and share their knowledge about what they know and what they don't know and shift them from being in that siloed sort of mentality to more collaborative and wanting to work together to get results. So from that perspectives there's som many little time savings it is a matter of working out where is the greatest pain and what I find with my clients is the greatest pain at the moment is sitting in a Excel because when you get a numbers wrong and you underestimate something or you underestimate the amount of time something's going to take all the cost it's going to make that you know that that has catastrophic impacts on business.

00:16:21:08 - 00:17:18:06

Pau: Absolutely. So let's talk about you know some specific tips and ideas things that can help a small business owner with some of the I guess productivity challenges. Now obviously one that would be really common to pretty much everyone that would be listening to this program would be their email and entrepreneurs trying to figure out strategies for how to manage the flow of e-mail and how to respond to things had to empty the inbox. You mean you write another great book on on how to reclaim the inbox and giving people lots of strategies, simple strategies, that can make a huge difference to that one area which is obviously a big time sucker for a lot of us if we're not careful. So let's talk for a minute about the whole world of email and what we can do in relation to improving our productivity in that space.

00:17:18:11 - 00:18:42:00

Don: Some simple things that you can do Paul and they don't require a lot of hard work. They do require a little bit of discipline. So the first thing I would suggest is that you shut down your email when you're not working on it. Pretty much every organization I go into I will go with somebody who's desk for their office and their outlook email program they're using will be open. It may be running in the background and they constantly distracted or it may be minimised. So the best thing you can do to increase your productivity shut down your email especially when you're focusing on something that needs your complete undivided attention you'll find finally get it done so much faster. The second thing would be when you open up your email never ever ever did I say never. Open it up in your inbox because what you're doing is allowing other people's priorities to become yours. Best thing you can possibly do is either open it up so that it displays your calendar. So you're reminded of what your core activities or tasks are for the day or to open it up in a summary page in outlook that have outlook today and it's a summary of your emails your calendar tasks for the day etc. So we're being a bit more strategic. These are simple things that you can do that will help immediately increase your productivity with email.

00:18:44:29 - 00:19:46:06

Pau: They are I mean sometimes this is why I think we we often looking for complex solutions to easy problems and think that these little things won't make a big difference. But if we I think when I've done surveys tests in terms of productive time I've certainly done this in the sales world where they've looked at the productive selling time of a sales professional and people have been a astounded to come back and find that in terms of kind of their product you know sort of productive face to face selling time in an eight hour day that many people don't even make it to an hour of productive selling that they have spent most of their time in inefficient or unproductive ways. So I think it is about us becoming first kind of aware that where we can save little pockets little things that are going to make a big difference to the way we use our technology and interface with it.

00:19:47:04 - 00:21:22:01

Don: Absolutely. I think. Yes. 1 percent of stuff here really adds up over time. And it really really does make a big difference. That awareness is the key. You know you can stick your head in the sand for only so long before it becomes really overwhelming. I don't know if you know this poor but quite recently the World Health Organization recognized workplace stress or burnout as a global epidemic. So people are suffering from burnout due to stress in the workplace and that's. That is from the expectations of work demands and pressures of responsiveness that don't match up to what people know and what their abilities are. And in the past you know in the in the old days when I was a contract trainer the way organizations dealt with this issue was they sent staff off on training and by sending them off on training they could be seen to be doing something. And if the person came back and they weren't the Guru in excel or whatever program they went and did it wasn't the organization's fault it was that person's fault because they had the training right. That reality is we're trying to get adults to learn in the same way as we try to teach children and we all know that the style of schooling today has been under hot debate about the fact that it's it's quiet lecture driven and outdated delivery model. You know kids these days are learning on their iPads and online videos and so forth.

00:21:22:03 - 00:22:30:15

Don: You know we've got all these different models of learning yet we're still trying to push it out back into a classroom environment to get them to teach generic stuff and then making them feel like idiots when they can't work out how can how how does this apply to what I'm doing back at my office and what if I could just ask this one questions you know I'm not surprised by the number of clients I go to and we have you know 20 or 30 people in a boardroom where we start talking about different things people grab and ideas that you know might have come from what would have been a generic intro intermediate or advanced course and all of a sudden when the pieces fit together it's like you've given them the key to productivity they go great if I put this with this well then I'll get that result and then I'll start to talk to each other. And then once I have left they'll start talking to each other again and they'll talk about the things that they've learned the things that they're doing and now start to become more collaborative. So gone are the days where you you know you send somebody off on a training course and expect them to remember everything. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now.

00:22:30:18 - 00:24:30:01

Pau: And I think that's a really important thing for all of us to think about what we're doing in terms of for ourselves taking on information. And I think you know really. Let's have the whole conversation around the whole idea of people being overwhelmed by choices and too much information. And how that overwhelms us and really immobilize us rather than helps us to productively move forward. We get sort of stunned and stopped in our tracks because we get totally consumed by all of the options and I know that they did a test where they with the jam test in the US where one of the universities did a research piece where they offered access to 30 different types of jam and then did another group where they offered only six types of jams and where they offered only six. They outsold the 30 by some way. And it's because people were just so overwhelmed by all of the information all of the options that they made no decision at all. So I think it works the same here in terms of our ability to take on information that we're often trying to firehose and give too much and you can see this in kind of every area of life you know we know whether it's kids at sports where there's a coach trying to cram in you know three weeks worth of information into a halftime talk it's like just understanding how much a person can take in. So in terms of I mean and I know that you've made lots of changes to the way you deliver information so that people can consume so it's in little pieces. And as you said in encouraging and providing a framework for people to start to collaborate to share with each other to not feel like they're supposed to have all the answers but to share just one insight with each other and in your basic knowledge grows. 

00:24:30:01 - 00:25:01:07

Don: Absolutely. And if I come back to what you always talk about having been in your world for quite some time Paul you know you say a confused mind never buys. So it's the same here when we've got so much stuff we don't know what to do so we end up doing whatever is the easiest thing for us rather than what's the right thing. So. So for me I think we need to be aware that there is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with any of us. It's the volume of information that we are now exposed to that's the issue.

00:25:01:12 - 00:26:14:15

Don: And in order for us to feel less overwhelmed or more in control we just need to be more strategic in much the same way as you would when you're selling when you try to attract everyone you end up attracting no one. So if you pick out the things that are going to make the biggest impact for you is your inner space where a lot of your work with your customers is done by e-mail. Maybe that's the area where you have the most opportunity to make gains. Maybe it's changing in processes in the in that realm. Maybe if you're doing costings and analyzing data etc. maybe your focus should be on Excel. But don't try to do everything at once. Because when you do everything at once nothing gets done properly. And if I go back to what Seth Godin in his latest book says this is marketing is his book. He says something that is just so poignant in our world today. There's stuff that sometimes it's just not for you. And that's okay.

00:26:14:15 - 00:27:37:04

Pau: And I think this is one of the things that we have to learn is is also where this line sits for us. Like how much of this stuff do I need to be doing and how much of it do I need to be outsourcing and that is particularly important obviously as entrepreneurs that we are spending the vast amount of our time and energy on the things that we are uniquely skilled to do the things that are our primary moneymakers the things that are going to drive our success and letting go of some of these other things that we can focus on those things more instead of being bogged down in lots of activity that doesn't actually drive the economic engine of our business. So this is why I was so keen to have a conversation with you to be my first guest in my new podcast because I think that time and the lack of it and and also the productivity of our staff and that's what I wanted to talk to you next is you know what. As a as a business owner who has staff what are the best ways for me to help them to maximize their productivity for me to get the most out of them. So what are some of the strategies that you're using or seeing in the organizations that you're working with that are doing it well that are getting the best everyday people. What's the secret to cracking that number.

00:27:37:14 - 00:28:45:02

Don: I think the secret is providing space or a framework for people to develop their skills so we can learn. If I give an example of that organization I worked with recently where we had about 20 of their staff in a room. What I do is I immersed in some topics that are relevant to them it's very fluid. We talk about what are the things that they're trying to achieve and we develop a program around that on the fly. And we we sit down and we encourage them to share ideas with each other but peppered it in with all of that is the fact that it can't end here and it doesn't end here. When you walk out the door this is you know this is like a gym. You need to be working on this on an ongoing basis. You cannot afford to get get behind in any of this stuff. Pat Riley the the former coach of the NBA basketball team the L.A. Lakers once said If you're not getting better you're getting worse so you need to focus on one of the one or two things that our team could be doing.

00:28:45:02 - 00:30:17:29

Don: And it's as simple as providing them with an opportunity for them to sit down and share where it is not sort of like oh we're got to get together for this team meeting once a week. It has to have specific structure so I encourage all the clients I work with to have three simple questions. What's working, what's not working, and what do you need help with now. What's working might be somebody comes into the meeting where you're all getting together and you decide you going to talk about Excel and how you're using Excel in a finance team for example see model come in what's working well one person's using a shortcut for graphs nobody else knows about that shortcuts the graphs they share that shortcut with everybody else. Now everybody else knows about the graphs. And then there might be somebody else who said I tried to do a look up formula. I've never done one before and I couldn't get it to work and then somebody else says I've done that. I couldn't get it to work and here's what I did. And then the third step might be you know what do I need help with. Well I've got this big spreadsheet and I'm totally consumed by it and I can't see how I can process improve it and by having the conversation you actually fast track through a lot of those things that are irrelevant that you don't need to know about and you just focus on the outcome and you've got three or four different Brian. So in a way it becomes like an internal mastermind.

00:30:17:29 - 00:31:57:26

Pau: Well I think it also taps onto the point you know going back to the old Stephen Covey sort of stuff of you know sharpen the saw that often we fall into the trap of thinking all that we're also busy we don't have time to stop and everyone then just keeps blundering their way through the best I can say without that that connection that communication people don't get better. Mean working with Craig who had a commercial dishwashing company and one of the things that I found when I first started working with Craig was that he was the font of all knowledge. He was the expert that all these technicians called so he would be in an office sitting with me having a meeting about his business his phone would be going off like crazy. And it was his text calling him from on the road you know at a at a venue or you know fixing a dishwasher somewhere in a hotel and they're calling him to ask him what they should do. So one of the things we implemented was sort of a staff meeting where it was he formed a habit of getting the staff to take responsibility for sharing how to do things and also getting them to come to him with answers rather than just questions to think about some solutions. But as a businessman we got to create that space. We've got to create the opportunity for our people to collaborate to share and to do that and that's what you do so well with your clients is getting them into the habit now of having these conversations figuring out the quickest way to do some sharing with each other. Everyone's smarter leaves the room and we make it a habit to do that routinely.

00:31:58:01 - 00:33:07:23

Don: Plus what it also does Paul is it it minimizes the risks should somebody leave. You know though you know I often work with clients so I used to more often in the past used to work with clients where they had one person who was a central hub and they were the  font of all knowledge like he said. The challenge would be that would load that over the owner of the business and the owner of the business would go I really want to get rid of that person because they so negative the customers hate that person but I can't because they know so much about the business. So it's unwrapping the business IP traditionally take the IP to mean information that is very specific to our process or our business but we don't think about the IP that relates to how we use our technologies in our things like emails to. If you're dealing with currency you know what's your service level agreement. Do you have a service level agreement with your clients. How quickly do they expect you to respond or have you created this thing where they're expecting an instantaneous response you know I get people saying to me.

00:33:07:23 - 00:34:24:24

Don: Well I couldn't close down my e-mail because I'm in customer service and it's my job to deal with those sorts of things. And I go Well you know how easy is that to deal with if you know you you can't do the things that you need to do to find the information. People don't expect immediate responses they expect responsiveness. And responsiveness is implied and if you don't to imply or don't apply and you know an output to that people will make up their own so one of the things that happens is you know if any of this sort of stuff. We have this expectation that other people know as much as we do and that can be a positive or a negative. So you know a lot that can be really hard on people who don't know a lot and you will get really frustrated. But likewise if if you don't know much and you assume other people don't know much either well then all of a sudden people are looking at you and going you know what is going on here. So it's really important that you communicate. I think communication is the key to productivity not an app, not a tool, not a piece of software. It's all around how we communicate with one another.

00:34:24:25 - 00:35:08:24

Don: We have to come back to the base skills and if you don't provide your team with a framework. And most organizations will go. Okay. So this is how we respond to a customer inquiry and I'll have a process or a sales process that they go through. But with a lot of this sort of stuff you know what we do in Excel how we respond to emails. There often is no framework and when there's no framework people make up their own framework. And my framework is probably different to your framework Paul and your framework is probably different to each one of your listeners. So the key there is if you want people to be more productive make sure the framework that you're setting up is something that everybody understands.

00:35:08:25 - 00:36:22:09

Pau: Great advice. I think that we need to be really mindful as entrepreneurs about this whole idea of bottle necking and you know often the business owner becomes the bottleneck to their own success because too much flows through them. But as you say sometimes we can have charged one of our staff with such levels of responsibility that they become the bottleneck. Now everything has to flow through them and I know that your journey into this is you know when you're the executive assistant to a manager when people would come to you for all the answers for all this sort of tech stuff and that's kind of where the journey begins. Then you become the font of all knowledge. But it also can slow you down from doing the job you're primarily meant to be doing because you're so busy helping other people they become like a default helpdesk to people so we just got to be mindful of what we're doing with our people and with ourselves so that we don't become that bottleneck. So we're kind of getting to time just before we close up. Any other thoughts or tips or strategies in terms of best practice for people to become a little bit more productive in the way they are going about running their businesses. Some of the ideas and things that you help people implement.

00:36:22:11 - 00:37:33:02

Don: Sure you want small bites of things you want relevance. And I think the greatest opportunity to gain proactivity lies within your business. If you've got a team of people it lies in between the ears of those people and it relies on you creating a framework for them to start having conversations. And that is the cheapest, easiest way for you to increase your productivity. Is it just you in your organization. It might be thinking about what are the things that I can outsource to somebody else to get them to do.Now you mentioned outsourcing before. And one of the things that I suggest and I know you'd be exactly the same is there's a very big difference between delegating and abdicating. Just you need to be across what whatever it is that you're getting someone else to do said it in the event that you're caught short. You can pick up the pieces and run with it because otherwise again you're creating a bottleneck somewhere else. So look at look at the things that you can do in the key area where there is low hanging fruit.

00:37:33:02 - 00:38:24:21

Don: Is it your email that's sucking up most of your time. Is it the fact that you know you're trying to be all things to all people on social media. Is it the fact that your struggling with you excel spreadsheets because they're not efficient enough and that's stopping you from getting out and selling more. So what is it when you identify where the low hanging fruit is. That makes it so much easier because it's easier to focus on improving one thing one percent than trying to focus on moving 100 things with 1 percent better off being better at one thing in my book I talk a lot about that that framework for knowledge sharing and how we need to focus on you know what's the one thing that could change our productivity that could press control alt delete and reveal it straight away.

00:38:24:21 - 00:39:19:20

Pau: And we've had huge success and huge impacts on companies when they've applied these strategies and when we're talking when people really put some measurement to this and you start to become aware of just how many little pockets of leakage you have that are unnecessary that you could just sharpen up tighten up and get more of your time spent on the things that matter most. We can be talking about saving thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands and for some organizations millions of dollars. When companies have a broad number of people who are having these sort of leakages happening it's it's a big opportunity to tighten up on some things that don't need to be taking as long as they do but just getting a little focus on this area. So Donna, if people want to reach out to you connect with you they want to get themselves a copy of your book. What's the best place for them to go and find out more about Donna Hanson.

00:39:19:25 - 00:40:05:07

Don: The best place for the book is to go to my website. Donna Hanson. That's www.donnahanson.com.au  An there's the store there and you can purchase the book if you're into e-books like Kindle version rather than a physical copy. You can also buy it on Amazon. And I think there is a sale on on Amazon where the e-book version is quite inexpensive. So worth that. Worth a look. And I'd love to see all your members and people in your world to reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn just make sure that you send me a message saying that you listen to the podcast and I'll be sure I'll let you into my world. I'm very guarded about who are let in and who I don't let in.

00:40:07:27 - 00:41:48:18

Pau: If you want access you've just got to let Donna know at the gate who you are and that you're connected to the markets club and listener to the podcast and you'll be you'll be thrown, now Donna you've very generously provided some really powerful templates that we're going to make available to any of the listeners in these templates are usually part of Donna's programs but she's generously providing four different templates to help you drive your productivity so we'll have a sheet available that will be available for you to download it in a freebie section for this podcast so if you go to MarketersClubAcademy.com/podcast2 then you'll be able to download an email best practice worksheet, a knowledge sharing sheet, so you can help your team if you have a team to really start collaborating as Donna's been sharing with us today really how to identify what the areas are that you can get the biggest bang for your buck the lowest hanging fruit that you can start accessing straight away to drive your own personal productivity and a spreadsheet planning document as well. So if you want to be working more efficiently in spreadsheets she'll show you exactly how to do that. So these four downloadable templates there for you that Donna's generously just providing for free so you can go to the marketersclubacademy.com/podcast2 and you'll be able to get all of those there and we'll also ensure you have links to Donna's sites and so forth in the show notes. So Donna thanks so much for sharing some of your wisdom with the listeners today.

00:41:48:26 - 00:41:50:09

Don: No worries Paul Thanks for having me and good luck everyone.

00:41:51:00 - 00:43:01:23

Pau: So I hope you enjoyed that session with Donna Hanson and got lots of practical ideas about the way that you and your team can improve your productivity and of course be sure to grab those templates they will be invaluable to helping accelerate your progress at improving the productivity of your business and making the most of the time that you have so that you can work less and earn more. Now I'll be back next week with another special guest. I'm going to be joined by Bill Cates one of the world's leading referral specialists and he's going to be sharing with you ideas about how you can drive the referral generation of your business. So the best way to make sure you don't miss that is of course to press the SUBSCRIBE button. And by doing so you become part of the marketers club podcast family in that way you'll be sure to hear about every episode not miss a thing that we're doing here and be able to keep up with all the great guests that are going to be joined by over the coming weeks and months. So I really appreciate you joining me. I hope that you will subscribe to the program and of course I would really value it if you would leave your comments your thoughts and share with me your ideas any questions you have please let me know I'd love to just keep serving you better and making sure that I'm covering the things that matter most to you.

00:43:02:07 - 00:43:13:24

Pau: So until we speak again next week I wish you all the very best of luck with your business. But much more importantly with your lives. Take care. Keep rocking. Bye for now.