Episode 366: Paul Minors
In this episode, Fiona chats with productivity and business efficiency expert Paul Minors. They talk about the balance between hustling and avoiding burnout and the role of automation in maintaining a personal touch in business. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The importance of clarity in goal-setting
Balancing progress with speed
Learning from Paul’s expertise in productivity
Challenges and benefits of integrating different software
Exploring the Advantages of Asana
Balancing hustle and avoiding burnout
Challenges and benefits of rebranding
Embracing imperfection and getting started in content creation
The importance of proper setup and use of productivity tools
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
“Effectiveness is working on the correct things and it all comes back to your goals and what you’re trying to achieve. In that sense, productivity should mean something different to everyone. We all have different outcomes that we're trying to work towards. Effectiveness is making progress towards where you want to be and efficiency is doing that quickly. One of them is you need to have clarity on your goal. Where are you trying to get to? There's no point starting with efficiency and working quickly if you're working on the wrong thing. That's why the effectiveness component is important but then efficiency is like, “I know where I want to be. I know what steps I need to take to get there. How can I do that efficiently?”
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Welcome to episode 366 of the My Daily Business podcast. This is a small business interview and I’m excited about bringing this one because it's somebody that I have learned so much from and hired as a mentor in my own business. I’m excited to bring you that because I know that it's going to give you lots of tips and insights into his area of expertise.
Before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which I record this podcast and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to quickly mention is that, every so often, around about this time, we get a bunch of DMs saying, “I wanted to get my girlfriend, boyfriend, pet, or whatever, a business coaching session. How do I organize that as a gift for the end of year or Christmas or whatever else that they're looking at?” If you want to do that, you can always email us at Hello@MyDailyBusiness.com and we'll organize that for you.
You can also buy a business coaching session online, get it sent to your email, not the person who's receiving it, and then we will follow up about that, and then you can let us know, “This is for my significant other or somebody else.” We organised that and it’s a surprise for them. It's lovely. We've done it so many times for people where they've bought birthday presents or Christmas presents or Mother’s Day presents for somebody in their life.
It's a business coaching session and people get so much out of it. I wanted to let you know about that. You can find all of the stuff that we sell at MyDailyBusiness.com/shop or you can always email us at Hello@MyDailyBusiness.com. We also sell gift certificates so you can buy them any time of year and they can be used for up to twelve months. Let's get into our small business interview.
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It is my absolute pleasure to bring an interview to you with the wonderful Paul Minors. Paul Minors is a productivity expert and is somebody that I have been watching for years. When I first started my business back in the very end of 2015, I started looking at what programs and tools would I like to use to manage things like content, processes, and systems. I knew that I wanted one spot that had a lot of the internal things that I needed in the business. I also knew that I probably would be hiring somebody for an admin at some point in the business so I started by documenting as much as I could.
I used the tool Asana and I still use Asana. I have talked about moving to Milanote and I'm using Milanote and Asana at the moment. The person who taught me the most about Asana is Paul Minors because I found his Asana videos on YouTube and that is how I got to know how to do certain things in Asana that I wasn't able to find elsewhere.
Since then, Paul has started a podcast, and I listen to that every so often, called The Paul Minors Podcast with so many great bite-sized things. The reason that I listen every so often is that they are bite-sized so you can binge on a bunch and such helpful things. Paul has been in my business in some capacity externally for some time. I was watching one of his videos or maybe I suggested it to somebody and I went through it quickly. I do suggest his stuff to people all the time.
I was going through that video and I saw him talk about how he works with different clients and consults and I was like, “I have been getting free information from this guy for so long. I'm going to reach out and see how we can work with him.” Yricka, my assistant, was using Asana and I thought, “We could use Asana in a better way, I'm sure. I'm not fully utilizing it in the way that we could.” I bought a year with Paul for Yricka to go through his courses, his coaching calls, and all sorts of things. It also included a couple of hours of one-on-one calls.
I did one of those one-on-one calls with Paul and it was fantastic. His instant understanding of, “What if you just did this and this? What if you just did that?” Sometimes you're so close to things that you cannot see where things could be improved as easily as somebody who's a bit further away. Often, in my business coaching, I'll be working with people and I'll be like, “Have you thought about doing that?” They're like, “That is so simple. Why have I not thought of it?” Everyone goes through this.
When Paul and I did the one-on-one, he was able to pinpoint things quickly that are going to help us, particularly as we're planning out 2024, our revenue streams, tracking things, and so much stuff that I'm excited about using Asana again. I asked Paul if he would like to come onto the podcast and talk about why he loves Asana, how he helps people with productivity, how he even got started in productivity, and how he's built his business. That is what I'm doing in this chat.
In our chat, we talk with Paul Minors about all sorts of things like how he got into YouTube, which is where I found him, and how he's built his business. His website alone gets 100,000 people visiting it every month to learn about productivity and tools like Asana, Pipedrive, and Zapier. He's the perfect person to talk to about all things productivity. Here is my chat with the wonderful Paul Minors.
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Welcome, Paul, to the podcast. How are you feeling about life right now?
Thanks for having me. I'm good. I’m in a great spot. I got my business to a point where everything's running smoothly and supporting the family. The goal, in the first place, was to do my own thing and support the family and I'm doing it. I’m happy.
I am going to put you on the spot here. Can you tell us where you're joining us from?
I'm in Auckland, New Zealand, but originally grew up in England in Hampshire down south. When I was about 16, my parents decided to move us to New Zealand where the grass was a little bit greener. Here we are. I moved over with my three other brothers. I'm an identical twin. The whole family and us four boys all made the trip with the dog as well.
I have two boys. I grew up one of 4, 2 girls, and 2 boys. Four boys are a lot. That's good, you went to New Zealand, lots of room to run and play. Can you share your journey so far? You're a business owner, you're a productivity expert, and you help with self-improvement. Has this always been something you were interested in even as a kid or how did you come to run the business that you run right now?
Thinking back to my childhood, I was always a very organized person. I love cleaning my room, going through my drawers, organizing things, and throwing out junk and toys that I wasn't using. I was organized as a kid. I started getting into productivity at university. I loved how, at the start of the semester, they would say, “Right here are all the important dates. These are when your assignments are due. This is when the exams are. This is all the dates you need to know.”
In my calendar, I put in all my timetables but then in the calendar on my computer, I would put in, “I've got that assignment coming up. Let me work backwards from that and time-block how much time I'm going to need to write that essay for the introduction and I'll work on that paragraph on this day between my classes.” It's how my brain works. It made sense to use my calendar as a planning tool.
During university, I started to get into that habit. I started to get interested in self-improvement, in general. It’s like, “How can I have more energy? How can I be more organized, more productive, and more motivated?” I read a lot of the cliche self-help books and things out there. When I got my first job, I was working in marketing and all of that continued and snowballed. I was thinking, “How do I perform well at my job and be organized?”
While I was working, I was in my early 20s, I started my blog at PaulMinors.com and I thought, “What is something I can talk about that I can help people with that may lead to some business someday?” I landed on productivity because I felt like it was something I'm naturally good at. It’s something I feel like I can talk about for a while. It ticked a few boxes.
In my mid-20s, I started doing some consulting on helping people with Asana and Pipedrive and I was doing that on the side of my job. I got to the point where the consulting revenue that I was generating in fifteen hours a week was now starting to surpass my full-time salary. I thought, “I can take this full-time and grow it from here.” That was at the end of 2016 and it was off to the races from there.
How do you describe what you do? When you travel, you have to fill in that little card. You don't have to do it. I went to the US and nobody else does it except Australia it feels like. You have that little travel card that says, “Occupation.” What do you say?
I put consultant. If I was at a social event and somebody said, “What do you do?” I primarily lead with, “I help people with productivity and sales software.” I have my blog and podcast, and I sell some digital courses, eBooks, and other things but most of my time and income comes from consulting so I tell people I'm a productivity consultant.
I have two young boys and one is quite into home improvement shows and everything but his floor in his room is a complete mess. When you were talking about your childhood, growing up, being organized, and even when you were talking about, “This essay is due then, working back.” Most people don't have that way of working, especially when they're young. Is your twin the same or is your twin the opposite?
We're similar. He's organized as well. He listens to my podcast. He listens to a few episodes. We shared a room. We were about 15 or 16 and until we got to New Zealand, we shared a room. We were both naturally tidy. I don't know if it was a nature or nurture thing, it's hard to say where it came from but we enjoyed it. Maybe because we were sharing a room, I'm guessing, you feel like you want to look after your space and keep it yours and organize it. Maybe there's a bit of that after you share a room.
You have helped more than 400 businesses and I know because we have been one. We have come to Paul Minors for help with all sorts of things. Yricka, my assistant, has enjoyed being part of that group with you. When you are working with clients, firstly, what businesses do you work with? Is it everyone? Once you've answered that, I've got a follow-up question.
We specialize in Asana and Pipedrive. Asana, for those who don't know, is a project management tool that all sorts of different businesses use. Solopreneurs use Asana to manage their work and the projects they're working on, in small teams. Asana, the company, is focusing a lot on growing in the enterprise realm. We've worked with big organizations as well.
That's fun because we get to work with all sorts of different types of companies across lots of different industries. Asana and Pipedrive are somewhat generic and they're not specific to marketing agencies or construction companies. Anyone could use Asana. That's fun because we work with small, medium, and large businesses across all sorts of industries. We work with lots of agencies and a lot of B2B-type businesses, especially on the Pipedrive side, that's more of a sales CRM. Usually, a lot of B2B businesses there.
Often, I'll have clients who will say, “I've got different types of audiences,” I'll be like, “So do I.” However, if I'm thinking of a big company that's doing consulting and somebody who's just getting started, there's usually a common theme and a place to begin with each of them, which often is about clarity, direction, and communication channels.
With yours, where do you even begin? Especially if you're going with a solo operator who may have notes and pieces of paper around their office to remind them. Enterprises are these huge companies where they've got 1,000 or 10, 000 people that need to be tuned into something. Where do you even start? Is there one starting point?
It depends on whether they're a brand-new user of Asana. If they're brand new, it's great because then we have a fresh and clean slate and we can then start not by getting into Asana straight away but we can start by going, “Tell me about your business. How many people are on your team? What departments do you have? What type of work do you need to manage?”
A marketing agency might say, “We need projects for all of the clients. We're doing website launches and social media campaigns. Maybe we need to manage our internal human resources. We want to manage accounting and admin.” When we start with someone brand-new, and we almost do it on a mind map often, we plan out, “What are the different types of work that we want to manage in Asana?” That will help us then work out what teams and projects we're going to go and create or templates.
More commonly, we get approached by companies like yours who have been using Asana for a little while. The most common thing I hear when people come to me is they say, “I've been using Asana for a while and I like it but I don't think it's set up in the best way and I don't think I'm getting full use out of the tool.” That's what most people say. We do a bit of a health check or an audit. Let's look at your account. What teams and projects do you have set up?
Let's understand how you’re currently using Asana. What are you doing well and where do we think you could improve? Maybe it's structuring your teams and projects slightly differently. Maybe there are features like templates, dependencies, and rules that you're not using that you could benefit from. It would depend a little bit on whether they're new or existing but people will fit into one of those buckets.
When you said you were interested in productivity at uni or even when you were younger, that is the cornerstone of what you offer now and well into the future. I'm sure even if the platform has changed, that's still the cornerstone, can you recommend some essential productivity tools or apps that you find indispensable outside of Asana?
How long have you got?
You're being succinct and productive so far so go for it.
I'll name as many as I can. One that I use every day is TextExpander. If you go to my YouTube channel as well, I've got videos about TextExpander. It works on PC and Mac. It is a tool that you can use to store text, which is called a snippet which you can then retrieve or you can generate that text by typing a little abbreviation. A great example of how you would use TextExpander is for email templates.
People often email me, “Paul, I'd love to learn more about your services. Can we chat?” I have a snippet, which is for an intro email. I can reply to that email and I type a semicolon and then the word intro. When I type that little abbreviation, TextExpander spits out all my texts for, “Hi, name,” and I can fill in their name. I can be prompted to fill in their name. I can choose different dropdowns as well. If they're asking me about help with Asana, I'll say, “Thanks for reaching out. Here's where you can learn about Asana.” I can pick that option in the template and then it generates all that text for me.
I use it for things like email templates and also for links. I send people my Calendly booking links. I have loads of affiliate links for products that I recommend. TextExpander is a tool that I use probably dozens if not hundreds of times a day. 1Password is a productivity tool in my mind because seeing how slow some people can be logging in when they forget their passwords, I’m just being someone who's organized. We spoke about this, didn't we?
We did because we were using LastPass years ago with a different virtual assistant and we didn't love it. You were like, “You should get onto this.”
Especially, with all the business owners out there, it's crazy how many clients we've worked with and we get passwords to their accounts to go and check things and they have the most basic guessable passwords, it's awful. The best way to protect your business is to have strong and unique passwords for every single service, ideally two-factor authentication as well as a code that you have to put in. 1Password makes all of that easy. All of my passwords are stored there.
It makes logging in quicker than typing in the password because it's going to suggest, “You're logging into Zapier. Here's your login, click it, and done.” It fills in the two-factor code so it makes logging in quick. With my tech stack, I use Zoom for my calls. Calendly, as I've mentioned before, we rely heavily not just on scheduling with me but my team. I can send people links and it will look at all of our calendars and see who's available. I love Calendly. I'm a Mac user and Fantastical on the Mac is very good.
What does that do? That sounds fantastic.
It's a calendar. I used the default Apple calendar for years, which is good, it's nice, simple, and it works. Fantastical has a few nice extra features. It makes scheduling Zoom calls and adding Zoom links to your meetings easy because it integrates and has good time zone support. Like me, if you work with clients in lots of different time zones, on the left is my time but, on the right, I can say, “Change that to American Pacific.” I can see when different things are happening in different time zones. You can also set up event templates for appointments that you do again and again. There are a few features like that which I like.
That sounds like one we need to get onto, honestly.
It is Mac and iPhone specific but if you're in that Apple ecosystem, it works well. Zapier, I do a lot of automation, and connecting services. Zapier is like the glue of my business that connects Pipedrive with Asana, and Stripe to Pipedrive.
We have Zapier. How do you feel about Zapier? Squarespace does not integrate with Kajabi, which is where all our courses are. We moved to Squarespace courses and all of those. With Zapier, we have had a couple of instances in the past where Kajabi has updated something and, for some reason, the Zap hasn't talked to it but it seems to be the biggest one. Do you think it is the biggest one when you're looking at workarounds between two platforms that don't necessarily integrate easily?
It's probably the most well-known. I don’t know if it's been around the longest but it’s certainly one of the ones I'm aware of. It's great if you know you want to make two tools talk to each other but you don't know how to do any code or write code. It's referred to as a no-code platform. For example, people go to my site, they click on my Calendly booking link, they can book an intro call with me, and then I can use Zapier to grab their name, email, their booking details, and create a new contact and a new deal in my CRM, which is Pipedrive.
At the same time, I can add them to my ConvertKit email marketing software and trigger an email to say, “Thanks for your booking and here's some info.” Rather than having to manually copy and paste all of that information and do it myself, Zapier does that for me. There is an alternative called Make. It used to be called Integromat and now it's called Make, which is similar. They each have slight differences in pricing but they work very much the same way. If you go with Zapier or Make, both are going to be good options.
On that, lots of people understand what CRM means but we do sometimes get feedback on this podcast that acronyms are not explained. Can you explain what CRM is for anyone who's reading when you're saying, “It connects to our CRM,” or, “It does this for our CRM.”
CRM, the way I'm using it, stands for Customer Relationship Management system. For me, Pipedrive, first and foremost, is my contact database so it’s all of my leads who are reaching out to me and all of my paying clients. Even people who aren't necessarily ever going to pay to work with me, even just people in my network, I keep everyone in Pipedrive.
I decided early on that was going to be my contact list and address book and then I synced that to my Google Contacts. Some people use Google Contacts as their main address book. Because I'm in Pipedrive every day, that's going to be the one that I update and that syncs to Google and that way, I've got all my contacts on my phone. It's my contact database but it's also the tool I use to track all the different sales opportunities that I am working on and following up on right now.
When somebody says, “Can I get some help with Asana?” I create what's called a deal. A deal represents some kind of sales opportunity. I can then move that deal through the stages of my sales process so I can see who has had a quote and who am I following up on. I can put all my notes and all of the details of the job so we've got all of that in one place. It's where I manage all those projects that I'm trying to win. It's a sales tool.
I found you through YouTube and I devoured your YouTube videos because you explain things easily. I don't know when you started your business but I think it was about the time that I'd started my business because I started using Asana. I was looking for people and I found you on YouTube. One of the things that I like about you is that your productivity without, from the sense that I get, hustle, rise, and grind. When did you start your business?
The blog was in 2013 but I started getting serious probably around 2015.
This would have been the same time. I started my business at the very end of 2015. I started using Asana soon after getting the business. I then started watching you and looking at everything that you were putting out there. Between 2015 and 2018, there was this super cool hustle mentality. Now, everyone's on the anti-hustle side. Gary V and you have documented everything and have an entourage around you at all times. I see that so many people who were super hustle are suddenly on the anti-hustle bandwagon after the pandemic. I feel like you've always been that. How do you define productivity? A lot of times, people mistake productivity with hustle.
There's a time and a place for hustling. At the start of my business, if I think back to those days, I had to adopt a bit more of that hustle culture because I had a full-time job. I would get up pretty, 4:35 AM, and I would work for a few hours before going to my day job. I’d do my day job and I'd come home and then I do some more. Hustling and putting in the extra hours were necessary for me at the time because when else am I going to do it? Hustling is not sustainable.
It also comes back to your why, why are you doing this? My initial goal was to start my own business and earn enough to replace my salary. If I could earn the same as my salary and be working for myself, that would be great. After that, right now I'm full-time, and maybe earn a bit more because I want to support my family and buy a nice house and that kind of thing. As I said at the start, you said, “How are you doing?”
I'm happy because I'm working for myself. I don't answer to anyone else. I answer to my clients, of course. I set my agenda and I'm providing for my family, which is exactly what I want. I don't need to hustle anymore. It's not to say I don't work hard. I work pretty normal hours and I still get up early. I start my day about 6:30 AM but I usually try to finish up about 3:30 to 4:00 PM when my son gets home from school. I do CrossFit classes in the evenings. I don't think I need to hustle anymore because I've got to where I want to be and that's going to be more sustainable.
If you are hustling all the time, you're likely to experience burnout eventually because it's not a sustainable practice. All of that to say, hustling is appropriate depending on context. Ultimately, it isn't sustainable. You shouldn't be hustling over the long term. Maybe it's something you do to sprint now and then. Maybe you've got a product launch coming up. Maybe you need a bit more hustle. Afterwards, take the time to relax and ease up on the gas a little bit.
I've always been against the word hustle. I agree with you but I will often be like, “There are seasons where you need to work hard.” I've written my second book and it was hard to do that on top of everything else. I feel like there will be seasons. How do you define productivity? Is it just working smarter? What is productivity?
The textbook definition that I often cite is about being effective and efficient. I borrowed this initially from The 4-Hour Workweek. I was like, “That makes a lot of sense.” Effectiveness is working on the correct things and it all comes back to your goals and what you’re trying to achieve. In that sense, productivity should mean something different to everyone. We all have different outcomes that we're trying to work towards.
Effectiveness is making progress towards where you want to be and efficiency is doing that quickly. One of them is you need to have clarity on your goal. Where are you trying to get? There's no point starting with efficiency and working quickly if you're working on the wrong thing. That's why the effectiveness component is important. Efficiency is like, “I know where I want to be. I know what steps I need to take to get there. How can I do that efficiently and quickly?” TextExpander, email templates, calendar, or Zapier, that's the efficiency part. You have to start with knowing where you want to get to.
This could apply to your work. If you're trying to start or grow your business, effectiveness is going to mean getting more customers or getting more views on your YouTube or whatever that might be. It also applies a lot to your personal life as well. Your personal life is productive. What am I trying to achieve? Am I trying to lose or gain weight? Am I trying to do this new hobby or enjoy my weekends? I always have a list of jobs on the weekend. You can apply that same thought process to your personal life as well.
Spot on. One of the things that you've mentioned is email templates and that is something we have done early on and it's something that I'll work with clients on quite often. I'll get the same pushback around some sort of, “I want to do more automation,” or, “I should have templates.” That will take the human touch out of it. It's not personal if you automate things. I'm not big enough as a company to have these automated responses. Even when I say to people, “You can still personalize them. They're not coming super out of your brand tone of voice or anything else.”
How do you help people get efficiency and effectiveness without losing what they believe to be the human touch? Let's say you're a ceramicist and it's just you dealing with people and you've got a certain way of talking and everything else and maybe you've never used any of these platforms. Sometimes there can be a thought of, “It's going to sound like a robot. It won't sound like me.” How do you work with people to make sure they still have the human touch with things like automation?
It starts by using automation at the correct time. Going back to people going to my site, they'll book a call through Calendly, and they do get an automated email that says, “Thanks for your booking. Here's a bit more about me.” I had to get a lot of compliments on my booking process and the emails that I sent.
I remember when you said that because I was like, “We should do that.”
People are like, “That's cool. We want to do something like that.” At the end of the day, automation is happening enough in the world now that if you're going to turn your nose up at someone because you're getting an automated email, you're going to find it hard to find anyone to work with or to help you who doesn't use any automation. I do some automation at the start, “Thanks for your booking. Here's some info about me.” I'm thinking about my sales process here.
After I have a conversation with someone and I've met them in person, I don't automate any of that follow-up. Some people want to build clients we work with so we want to build like a follow-up sequence. I ask, like, “Are you sure that's a good idea?” Now you've sent a quote or a proposal, you probably don't want to be following up automatically because everyone's timing is slightly different. “I'm going on holiday. Call me in two weeks.”
Also, from a sales perspective, you're going to be more effective if you pick up the phone and talk to them. People appreciate that. I'll use more of a manual approach during that important part of my sales journey. If they become a customer and they sign up, they get some automated emails, “Here are the next steps. This is what you can do.” Some of my clients sign up for my program in the middle of the night. They don't want to be waiting for me for a response. They get their automated next steps.
If I lose touch with someone, you follow up, and they’re like, “I've decided I'm not going to follow up again.” I'll put them in my newsletter so at least they'll get my next video when it's available. I choose to use automation at the start and end of my sales journey where it's most beneficial. I'm still conscious about providing that personal touch when it's needed and when they're making a decision. When customers come to me with questions, I'll get an email and I'll send a personal response.
Something I love doing and another tool that I want to recommend that I didn't put on the list earlier is another Mac app called CleanShot. You can also use Loom, which is a popular one, screen recording app. I love answering people's questions by recording my screen and showing somebody how to do something in Asana. I say, “Here's a link to a video. I've shown you what to do.” That's a nice example of high-touch support where they're getting an email and it feels good and it's personal. You can balance the automation by having personal moments later on, the customer support being a great example.
You touched on videos. We use Loom. Although I have to say, I’m not loving it at the moment. It keeps going through a lot of glitches. It keeps saying, “You need to update this.”
I used it and I found it quite glitchy as well. I'm on a Mac and CleanShot is the one. I've got a video on it on YouTube as well. That one works well for me.
I will check that out and on your YouTube. I originally found you on YouTube and you'd put out a lot of content and I have recommended you to so many people where I'm like, “Paul Minors on YouTube and you'll find a whole list of how to do everything in these different platforms.” How did you get started on that? How have you grown it? What advice would you give? A lot of people are now saying, “I'm going to start my YouTube in 2024.” What tips do you have for how to get started there?
I've always been a bit interested in video because my brother and I would make home videos, we'd record holidays and stuff we were doing, and then we got a GoPro and recorded sailing and stuff. We enjoyed making things like home movies and stuff. It helped having a little bit of experience and knowing the basics of editing but it's simple and software makes it so easy now as well.
Why I decided to get on YouTube is I thought of putting myself in the shoes of somebody who's brand new to Asana or brand new to Pipedrive, if they need help, what are they going to do? They're going to Google, “How to do something?” For something visual like the services that I provide, helping them with Asana, if there's a video that shows them how to set up a project or how to create automation or whatever it might be, that's going to be the best way to help someone.
If I help them and build trust because they've now watched a few of my videos, they see that I'm the real deal, and then I'm going to have a call to action in the video and say, “If you want more help, come and talk to me.” When I was thinking about how to get leads and get customers, it seemed like the natural thing to do for my business because the work I do is very visual. In terms of getting started, it's going to sound cliche and a boring answer but you've Got to start somewhere.
People try hard or they're almost like perfectionists, they're trying to make the video perfect, and they want it to sound brilliant on day one. If you go back and look at some of my very early videos, I don't have a nice background, the lighting is not good, and the sound is not good. There's not even a picture of me in some of them. I didn't even do picture-in-picture and it was just my screen. I was talking too quickly.
You have to go through a bit of a learning curve with any content that you create. You have to suck for a bit in the beginning. You're not going to be Mr. Beast on day one. If people don't know Mr. Beast, he's one of the big guys. What I would say is I'm permitting you to suck at the beginning because the more you do, the better you'll get. I was writing a blog post about communication. A story I recalled was that comment that people would say, “You're talking too quickly.”
It hurts to get that feedback but then I would watch back and I'd be like, “I am talking quickly.” You can respond to the feedback. It could be feedback that's like, “Could you make a video about this?” Or, “That wasn't clear.” The more that you do it, the better you get at producing good content or speaking clearly. There's no shortcut for that. It comes with experience doing hundreds of videos. You get better and better with each one. That's why I say you just have to start and just put in the work and you'll get better with time.
One of my earliest comments on this podcast was, “Fantastic content if you can deal with how fast she talks.” It was like, “She's giving me a headache with how fast.” I started using an AI tool with my coaching and it gives me, as a coach, feedback. One said, “You went way too high, 235 words a minute.” I should be at 175. I was like, “I did not realize that.” I get passionate. You're excited so you talk faster.
In this part of the world as well, we talk quickly. If you listen to an American podcast, I listen on 1.25 speed, they're a bit slower.
Sometimes I listen on double and then I think, “Am I listening on double?” I slow it down and I'm like, “Are they smoking something?” It’s so slow. Let's talk about Asana because you teach a lot about Asana. I've been on Asana very early on. It was the first platform that I started using to help with our project management. As you saw, it's in a bit of a mess. Thank you for your feedback. I'll have clients because I've been working for years, and they'll be like, “I was using Asana but now I've gone to Notion, Monday, or ClickUp.” There's always a new thing that's coming out.
I have always stuck with Asana and Trello for clients because they work. Why fix it? With all of these new ones coming out, why would people look at Asana as their key option? What do you love about Asana? I'm not sure if you get some sort of kickback, I hope you do. You are like the Asana spokesperson out in the world championing this platform. What is great about Asana? What do you say to people who are like, “That's been around too long. There are all these new ones coming out.” That's the feedback I'll sometimes get.
That's interesting because I look at the opposite. I was about to say Asana has been around for so long, that's why it's so good. They've learned, based on all that customer feedback, what makes a good project management tool, what to put in, and what to leave out. It’s a fine balance making a tool that works well for everyone.
It’s not confusing and overwhelming.
They're always being pulled in this direction of adding more features and giving people the features and functionality that they want while also keeping it simple. It’s this spectrum they have to navigate. The newer tools that are coming out don't have a track record. They haven't gone through over a decade of experimentation. The fact that it's new, to me, is not a selling point. Asana is similar to a lot of tools. Whether it's ClickUp or Monday, they're all pretty similar. The tool doesn't matter that much.
I could run my business on ClickUp or Monday or any number of tools. When people switch around a lot, they'll come to me and they'll say, “I've tried all these tools.” They're switching because they think, “If I go to Monday, that one will work for me. It’s got this feature that I need.” They all have pros and cons, things they do well and they don't do well. What determines your success with the tool is how you're using it. Are you following good best practices? Have you set it up in a clean way? Have you rolled it out and got your team to adopt it?
We see a lot of business owners sign up for Asana, dump it on their team, and be like, “Guys, we're going to use this.” There's nobody really in charge of it. Some people like it and use it and they're good at figuring it out and some people don't like it. They're too busy or they're not good at figuring it out. Now you've got this split in the team. Some people are not using it and that's going to be a challenge.
Rather than dumping it on your team and saying, “Asana didn't work. Let's switch to this one.” Every time you switch, you're going to have to retrain everyone. It's a nightmare. You should take the time to think about, “How do we set this up correctly? What are the best practices?” It’s almost like what we call the conventions around how your team should use it. You should think about things like, who's allowed to create new projects. Is it everyone or is it somebody on the team that's going to set those up? Who's responsible for updating a task or marking it as complete?
Sometimes there's confusion, “I'll assign it back to Paul because he assigned it to me so I'll assign it back to him and he can complete it.” That's not the correct process. You almost need this rule book about, “This is how we use Asana. These are our best practices.” By spending time thinking about that and getting your team on the same page, you're then much more likely to have a successful adoption of the tool.
Even if it might lack some features that Monday has, it doesn't matter because you're getting the most out of that software. Rather than jumping to the next shiny thing, be honest with yourself about, whether are you getting the most out of the tool or are you using it correctly. Is there something you even need to address with your company's culture? Is there a cultural reason why people aren't using it and they're gravitating back to email? The tool doesn't matter.
Such a good answer and so true. With your business, you mentor and help so many people. Who has been your mentor? Any role models in the industry that you're in or any valuable insights that you've ever had from a book, documentary, or anything that has stuck with you?
My mentors or the people I've looked up to have changed along the way. Back in those early days with the hustle, it was people like Gary V, like, “I need to hustle and I'll listen to him.” Now I don't listen to Gary V anymore because it's not appropriate for where I'm at now. I was reading books like The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. I was also watching people who were where I wanted to be like Pat Flynn.
I like Pat Flynn. He did his podcast in 2008 but I also feel, out of that whole click in America of business coaches, he is one of the more down-to-earth. He talks about his family a lot. I don't feel like he's like, “I want to make as much money as possible.” He's like, “I want to do fun things, experiment, make cool tools, and support my family at the same time.”
He was a great inspiration in the beginning because I was trying to work for myself and get off the ground. His advice was appropriate for that stage that I was at. I haven't listened to Pat in years now because he probably does cater more for that beginner.
I remember printing out his How to Write an eBook in 2016 and reading it while I sat at the pool with my mom. He helped me write my first eBook, which, in 2017 or 2018, sold really well. He is in that space. I haven't listened to either but I still rate him.
Another one was Natalie Sisson. She, at the time, had The Suitcase Entrepreneur. She's a Kiwi. She lives down in Wellington. I was fortunate enough to meet her for the first time. It's funny because I've been following her and listening to her podcast for years. She was where I wanted to be, working for myself, and doing the podcasting content and freelancing model. She's been a great role model, especially because she's a Kiwi as well. More on the parenting side, sometimes I gravitate to those people who are talking about raising kids. An Australian example is Hamish Blake who has got a great podcast, How Other Dads Dad, which I enjoy.
The number one podcast. It came out. In the top 100 podcasts in Australia, he is number one.
I'm now at that stage where I've got two boys. That's a new skill that I'm trying to develop and get better at, being a dad. I love that content now.
What are you most proud of in your career so far and in your business so far?
Getting to where I am and executing on that original vision. It sounds a bit cliche but I do sometimes pinch myself. I do this on a bad day. When I'm having a bad day and maybe you had a bad client experience, somebody who wasn't happy for whatever reason, or a project's not going well, it's easy to complain and be like, “This is annoying.” Sometimes there might even be a feeling of resentment in your business because you've built this business around you and now you can't leave.
It’s not that I even want to but it feels a little bit like a cage sometimes because it's like, “Sometimes I want to go and cut grass for a living but I can't because I've got all these clients.” I pinch myself and remind myself, “You're doing what you want. You wanted to work for yourself. You're earning a good income. You’re supporting the family.” We're building a house. I wouldn't be doing that if I wasn't in this position. It reminds me that, on a bad day, you could be back at that job where you were ten years ago. I know people who are still back at the company I worked at. You could still be in that company and you haven't progressed that much, but this is where you are today.
I'm proud of executing on that vision and getting to where I am. I don't care too much about growing from here. I'm much more interested in optimizing and making the business work better. I did bring on a new contractor but I don't do it to earn more revenue, I do it to make my life easier. Hopefully, I've answered your question there. I’m proud of executing that original goal.
That’s such a good one. Often, we get convinced, like, “Everything will be better when I get here and here.” We keep moving the goalposts every time and we often look forward and not looking backward to be like, “Oh my gosh.” One of the client questions I ask when people are finishing up coaching is, “What is something that you from three years ago would be proud of you doing in the last 3 or 6 months?”
Often, we don't look back. We don't go, “My 21-year-old self would have been dying to have this life that I have now.” We're lucky. Anyone who has the privilege of even considering starting a business is in a fortunate position. What is next for you and where can people connect? What's coming up for Paul Minors and where's the best place for them to get in touch?
Aside from optimizing the machine, which is the most fun part of the business for me, I enjoy the projects we do and the clients we get to work with, but I enjoy making the business better. I'm still looking and planning to rebrand a little bit. I am still like a personal brand. My website is PaulMinors.com, which has pros and cons. It’s like you're a smaller organization, people are sometimes drawn to an individual versus more of an agency or a bigger company. There are benefits in that but I'm ready to take that next step and rebrand away from me being the center of the brand and center of attention.
For years, I've had a few contractors working with me doing more of the client interactions. I've focused mainly on sales. The next step is for me to rebrand and take that next step away from being the centre that will allow me to step back maybe in the future. I might bring somebody else in to do sales eventually. That's the next step. In terms of connecting, my website is PaulMinors.com, you can find me there. I'm not big on social media apart from YouTube. I do the videos. I am on Twitter, I don't tweet a lot, but that's the only other social network that I'm on.
X, as it's now known. People say X and then they have to put in brackets, Twitter, so people know what they're talking about.
I completely overlooked that it's called X. You're right.
I was trying to find the Twitter logo for something in a presentation and I was searching X and then I was like, “Twitter,” and then the X logo came up.
It's a terrible branding decision. Why did you do it?
If you have to keep saying the previous name. Also, the change of name was interesting. You could do a whole other podcast on that. Neil Patel, he changed to NP Digital. Everything used to be NeilPatel.com, which you can still go to. His whole business now is NP Digital. Even when you say Neil Patel, when it changes the URL, it goes to NP Digital. It's an interesting question and one that comes up a bit for me as well, especially if people have started a service-based business like PR or marketing and then want to branch out. Good luck with that. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy but well-planned day to talk to us.
Thank you so much for having me.
One last thing, what is your podcast called so people can find it?
It's The Paul Minors Podcast. I'm doing bi-weekly. I used to be weekly. It's a solo show. Occasionally, a couple of times a year, I'll do an interview but it's a solo of me talking about a productivity idea or a concept or some behind-the-scenes learning in my business that I want to share. It’s a pretty short form, 5, 10, or 15-minute episodes, quite bite-sized and easy to consume.
It is great. I listen to it. Everyone who’s reading this, go and check that out as well. Thank you again, Paul.
Thanks, Fiona.
Bye.
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Far out, I feel like getting off that chat and going straight over to my computer and being like, “This and this is going to change.” What I would love you to do is to think about what particularly stood out to you from that chat with Paul. I'm going to highlight two things as I always do, but there's so much that came out of that. The guy on a podcast, when I did the one-on-one and when he was specifically looking at my business, it was incredible. I have to say that as somebody who helps people with this stuff myself, it's lovely to let somebody else have the reins and get their insight and their input. Thank you, Paul, for that, but also for coming onto this podcast and sharing so many tips.
I'm going to talk about the two things that stood out but there were lots in there. The first is when Paul talked about effectiveness and efficiency and having both of those. When he mentioned there is no point in being efficient if you're working on the wrong things, it’s such a big light bulb because I see it all the time and I see it firsthand where people, and I know I use Instagram a lot as an example, are focusing so much on, “So and so told me that I need to post this many times on my grid and this many times on my Reels.” Sometimes I think, “For what?” I get it being on Instagram, for sure. I'm on Instagram, @MyDailyBusiness_.
Often, people are focusing on that as opposed to say another marketing channel that is game-changing for them and has a huge return on investment but they haven't been doing much with it. For example, an easy one to think of is I've worked with a client and I remember them coming to me and saying, “We have 9,000 people on our email list but we never send emails.” It was a product-based business.
I was like, “What? Here you are busting your gut to try and get your Instagram up from 1,200 followers to 1,300 when you have 9, 000 people who have given you their email who want to know more about your product and you're never talking to them.” That's massive permission marketing as Seth Godin would say and you're instead focusing on this vanity metric of followers on Instagram. This is a huge example of efficiency and effectiveness. Yes, you could be working faster but like Paul says, “Where are you running to? What are you trying to work on?” That's where that effectiveness comes in.
I love that he talked about those two things that need to go hand in hand. You need to be understanding, “How am I working effectively and then how can I work efficiently?” I'm doing that. Also, how do I make it even easier and more efficient to do? I love that point of effectiveness and efficiency and using that almost as a filter or a checklist when you're going through the work that you're doing each day and being like, “Is this effective and is there a more efficient way that we could be doing this?” I love that point.
The second point that I wanted to bring up is when he was talking about YouTube and getting started. For any content platform or any new thing that you're doing in business, you can wait and try and be perfect from the get-go, or you can just start and learn. He was saying, “I've had the same thing about talking too fast.” The thing is if you only start something in your mind and not in reality, you will never find those nuggets of wisdom from other people, like, “You're talking too fast,” or, “Can you do a video on this? Can you do a podcast on this?” You don't get that feedback if you don't start.
I love that he said, “Just start. You're going to suck and embrace that you're going to suck for a while.” I have never listened back to the first few episodes of this podcast because, one, I was nervous. I was probably speed-reading through it. Two, a friend had told me at the time to always write your script for your podcast so that's what I did. I was reading out emails that I'd sent and I didn't feel like it sat well with me. I felt like you could tell I was reading. It didn't feel natural.
Now, I just riff. Yes, I probably make a bunch of mistakes or I say silly things or laugh at my jokes when they're probably not that funny but I started. Once you start, you get more and more used to it and more practice. For example, with this, podcast where you are talking, that has helped me so much more in speaking gigs, being able to answer questions on the fly, going on other people's podcasts, and in my coaching. Because I'm constantly talking and sharing, I'm getting more and more practice at it.
Yes, the first few episodes probably sucked. I'm never going to listen to them probably ever again but without getting started and without embracing, “I'm not going to be perfect,” I wouldn't be where I am. I wouldn't have 366 episodes. For all of those, we've had lots of downloads. We've got people all over the world who listen to this podcast and subscribe to this podcast. I agree with Paul about just getting started. If he hadn't started that YouTube, I would never have found him. I would never have recommended him to so many people that I've worked with and then eventually connected, paid him for his services, and now have him on my podcast so that my community can learn from Paul as well.
Just start somewhere. All it takes is a little bit of courage that first time or maybe the first couple of times and then you get used to it. Yes, every single person who puts content out consistently on some sort of public space like YouTube, a podcast, writing a book, or whatever it is, yes, you are going to get some negative feedback, it's natural. More than that, you're going to get so much great feedback that is encouraging and allows you to connect with people. Find out what is going to help them and produce that content. I agree with that.
As Paul said, you can find him at PaulMinors.com. I found him on YouTube. You can google, “Paul Minor's YouTube,” and you'll find him. There are so many great videos and tutorials. I often recommend him to people, especially if they're getting started with certain programs like Pipedrive, Zapier, or Asana. That is it for this podcast. If you found this useful, I would love it so much if you could leave a review on Apple, Spotify, Audible, or any of the platforms that we are on. It makes it easier for other small business owners to find this and, potentially, they need some wisdom from people like Paul as well. Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
