IAM1671 – Productivity Coach Helps People Do More, Stress Less and Build The Right Balance

Alexis Haselberger Teaser 00:00

It's about learning how to use your time in a way that's consistent with your goals and your values, whatever those are, right? Right. And so that really is gonna be very different for each person. Those 24 hours are gonna be split up in a different way.

Intro 00:13

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:40

Hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast, and I appreciate you listening to this episode. And if you've been listening this year, we're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes under certain categories or topics that we think are gonna be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners.

This month is going to be about not forgetting about the human part of business. Often we forget about the human part of life. We often forget about the human part of business. So look forward to self-care tips, fitness, burnout, purpose, biz and personal, personal branding, motivation, drive, success, understanding your why, and of course, how important customer service is. But at the heart of it, it's all about, remembering the human part of business. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I am CEO podcast.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Alexis Haselberger of alexishaselberger.com. Alexis, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Alexis Haselberger 01:39

Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:41

No problem. Super excited to have you on, and what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Alexis so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Alexis is a time management and productivity coach. She honed these skills during the first 15 years of her career, managing operations in HR at several early stage startups where there was always way more to do than people to do it.

Alexis believes that work-life balance is essential for everyone, and even though the definition is different for everyone, through one-on-one coaching, group coaching corporate workshops, Alexis helps people and teams do more stress less and build the balance that's right for them.

Alexis, are you ready to speak to the I'm CEO community?

Alexis Haselberger 02:20

I am.

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Gresham Harkless 02:21

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Alexis Haselberger 02:27

Sure. Yeah. So as you mentioned in my bio, I spent the first several years of my career, over a decade building startups from the HR and operations perspective. And those are just really fast paced environments where your priorities have to shift all the time and you're never gonna be able to get done everything on your to-do list. Because there's just too much. And so what became evident is we all have some sort of superpower, right? We all have something that we're better at than other people. And the thing that I am better at than other people in general is the ability to get a lot of stuff done, being very productive and not burn out.

And that's the key, the not burning out key. And so I found, Helping a lot of people along the way with this sort of stuff. So I started to do some productivity workshops within the companies. I was working with people one-on-one about how do you build a task list that works for you and so that nothing slips through the cracks that sort of thing. And eventually the last startup as startups go, in the last startup I worked for, we decided to shut it down. I realized that this was the time management and productivity stuff was not only like by far the most interesting part of my job, because I'm a real geek about this sort of stuff, but also it was the most impactful for other people.

And so I decided to codify all of it, build out curriculum and open up a coaching practice so that I could do the part that I find fun and the part that really changes people's lives in this more significant way more often. And leave the rest of the corporate stuff behind.

Gresham Harkless 03:54

Yeah. That makes perfect sense. But I absolutely love that because, I always say time is the most sacred resource. So we're always trying to figure out, we all have the same amount of time and we're always trying to figure out how to maximize as much of that time as we can. So I love, everything that you're doing because you help people to realize sometimes they have more time than they think they have just in how you use it, I guess.

Alexis Haselberger 04:14

Right. Yeah, totally. And also it's about learning how to use your time in a way that's consistent with your goals and your values, whatever those are, right? And so that really is gonna be very different for each person. Those 24 hours are gonna be split up in a different way.

Gresham Harkless 04:28

Right, absolutely. So, could you take us through, what happens when someone, reaches out to you and how you support these clients you work with?

Alexis Haselberger 04:35

Sure. So from a one-on-one coaching perspective, I have built out a curriculum that essentially covers all the finer points of time management and productivity. So each week of my program will be talking about a different topic. So, one week may be diving really deep into the nitty gritty of our tools, right? Like, how do we use our email. How do we use calendaring? What about Slack and all those messaging systems? Like are we using those in a way that supports us or in a way that's distracting to us? And how can we better use those?

We'll have a week on habit building, a week on focus, one on efficiency. In between all of these sessions, we are implementing different strategies and techniques that work for each person based on who they are and what their tendencies are. And then we have a chance to iterate, experiment, because not everything's gonna work for every person, not everything. Almost everything takes more than one iteration to get right. And so then my clients also have access to me, unlimited between sessions to troubleshoot things, get clarity on things, and move forward so that by the end of the program, everyone has a personalized productivity system that works for them.

They also have the underlying skills and sort of the science behind billing habits so that when their life inevitably change, Right. They get a bigger job, they get a promotion, they, their team doubles. They have a baby. They get married. Like who knows? Lots of things can happen, but one thing's for sure is that life changes. They can then reform their process and their system with the skills that they already have to meet their new set up.

Gresham Harkless 06:04

Nice. I absolutely love that. And especially  too because like you said, change is inevitable. It always happens, but do you find that your clients also have a greater awareness of themselves, which kind of helps to make those tweaks or changes if a baby happens or if they double their team or something like that?

Alexis Haselberger 06:19

Yeah, I definitely do, and I actually start out every engagement with a client, with a session that I call know yourself better exactly as you are. And so we address several different components of our personality and circumstances that may affect our productivity and time management. Like, our prototype, what is our body clock? It's not, reasonable to tell a night person that just wake up at 5:00 AM and you know you'll be fine. Right? Like, that's not gonna work. It's a recipe for failure. You know about expectations like internal versus external expectations and whether someone needs external accountability or not. What your learning style is, right? If you're an auditory learner versus a visual learner versus kinetic, like you can use that to your advantage and you may not really be aware that's something that you can actually use to help you do things faster and more.

Gresham Harkless 07:06

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I absolutely love that because you always hear, this is how I was able to be successful. So this person woke up at 4:00 AM so that means I need to wake up at 4:00 AM but sometimes when you do that, then all of a sudden, like you said, you wanna be able to sustain that.

So I can only wake up at 4:00 AM that day, and then the rest of the week I'm just, out of whack. So that doesn't necessarily work for me or for whoever it might be.

Alexis Haselberger 07:27

Right. Yeah. And we wanna create a system that's easy and convenient for us and for who we are because I think we all know that about ourselves, right? If, it's easy and convenient, we'll do it. If it's not, we won't stick with it.

Gresham Harkless 07:39

Absolutely. So, you might've already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call like your secret sauce. What do you feel distinguishes you or sets you apart?

Alexis Haselberger 07:46

Yeah, I mean, I did touch on that, but I do feel like my approach, my sort of personalized approach really makes a difference. Because I think a lot of people, they've read, a lot of the people that I work with are super successful people, they've read all the books, they've downloaded a lot of apps. And for whatever reason, they haven't found what works for them yet. And if they had, then they wouldn't come to me, Right? Like if they could do it on their own, then they wouldn't come to me. And so I approach everyone as a sort of a unique individual, even though we're going through the same set of curriculum.

That doesn't mean that I'm gonna recommend the same techniques for every single person. We need to like work on who you are and then build around who you are instead of trying to shove someone into a system that may or may not work for them.

Gresham Harkless 08:32

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And definitely correct me if I'm wrong, but do you find that people that are very driven and have read all the books, downloaded all the apps to have all the apps on their phone, all that stuff do you find that maybe because they're sometimes too close to it, it's hard to get that perspective of this is probably who you are and maybe you want to tweak this to use it this way or that way. Or maybe not use this, but use that. Do you find that, that's what happens?

Alexis Haselberger 08:54

Yeah. And also I think it can be overwhelming for people, right? Because there are so many different books and apps and all of that. And like I'm someone who's living in this space all the time, so you know, I've done that work for you. Like I can tell you, okay, these are the apps I'm gonna recommend for this reason, let's, start. I always start everything from a place of simplicity as well. So it's like, let's do as few buckets and as few things as possible. Only add complexity where complexity is necessary, right?

And get rid of all the rest. So we can build it back up into a place that works for someone. Instead of that kind of overwhelmed place where it's like, well, I'm trying this strategy over here and I'm waking up at 4:00 AM but also I heard that you're supposed to write from 10:00 PM to midnight and the world of kind of like clashing recommendations.

Gresham Harkless 09:40

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Sometimes if you do all the things that make people quote and quote successful, you try to incorporate all that into your life, you'll never be able to sleep or anything. Like I mentioned in the bio, like work-life balance is something that's important as well.

Alexis Haselberger 09:52

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 09:53

Nice. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack, and I'm sure you have a ton, but I wanted to ask you, do you have like an app, a book, or a habit that you have that makes you more effective and efficient?

Alexis Haselberger 10:05

Yeah. I mean, I would say that for me and my business, the thing that is the most impactful is the use of Calendly and essentially schedulers. I think these saved. So, back in the day when we did not have these, we would send out an email and we'd be like, okay, are you available at these three times? And that's if you're good about it, And then they'd say, no, I'm. But what about these times? And then you'd say, no, no, no. Well maybe this time and then you get overbooked. Because you know you're double booked because somebody did something . And so I feel like Calendly just streamlined all of that.

I probably have 10 different types of events. I have a different one for in person, I have a different one for coaching sessions, I have a different one for consultations and it just streamlines everything on so many level.

Gresham Harkless 10:51

Yeah, absolutely. I swear by my scheduling app as well and the back and forth can get very overwhelming and I too have over-booked myself and been at two different meetings because I didn't do that. So I learned, hey, this is who you are, this is what you need to do, just execute the plan. So I definitely echo that.

Alexis Haselberger 11:06

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 11:07

Nice. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop in to a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Alexis Haselberger 11:16

All right. So, I mean, I think my biggest tack or nugget is gonna sound counterintuitive and it is, don't rely on your memory. Our brains are not designed to just hold all this stuff that we have circling around. If we have stuff in our brains and in our email and in some list that's on the floor somewhere and another one that's shoved underneath our desk. And, we have voicemails and then slack and all of this. It's literally impossible to prioritize,  And so it's really about getting everything out of your head and into a system so that you can focus on the task at hand, especially the pieces of your business that really need focusing. It's Impossible to do that if you're trying to store the to-do items in your brain.

Gresham Harkless 12:01

Yeah, absolutely. And, I've learned the hard way , is that sometimes you try to hold as many things as possible because you think you're superhuman sometimes. We're all human, so there's a limit to the amount of things that you can hold on. So why not, leverage certain systems or processes so that you can take that all over your brain so you can focus on the big picture type thing sometimes.

Alexis Haselberger 12:20

Right, right. And be able to just focus on the task at hand instead of like remembering, oh yeah, I'm supposed to pick up the milk, or whatever it is that interrupts you in the middle of writing your blog post

Gresham Harkless 12:30

Right, exactly. Exactly. That makes sense. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote CEOs on the show. So I wanted to ask you, Alexis, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Alexis Haselberger 12:43

So, I'm gonna actually take this from an old boss that I had, and he used to say being the CEO means Chief Everything Officer. And what I took from that, and I don't know if this is what he meant or not, but what I took from that is that when your company is small and you're the only one, it means you really are the chief everything, you're doing everything.

But it also means that as your company grows and you have other people that work for you and work around you, that you're never better than any task like you as the CEO can still take out the trash when the trash gets full, right? You are still ultimately responsible and you never get better than anything that's happening in your business or any of those people.

Gresham Harkless 13:22

Yeah, and I think people definitely respond as well too, to somebody who is the quote and quote CEO and has a big, huge company, but is willing to take out the trash because that, to me defines a really good leadership. And sometimes the best leadership is servant leadership. So to be part of the team and to connect and do those things definitely go a long way. So I appreciate that.

Alexis Haselberger 13:40

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 13:42

Nice. Well, Alexis, I truly appreciate your time. What I wanted to do was pass you to the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and our listeners know, and then of course, how best they can get a hold of you.

Alexis Haselberger 13:52

Yeah, great. I am always looking to help more people in this regard, I think that's why I started this business so people can reach me on my website. It's alexishaselberger.com. Hopefully you'll put that in the show notes because nobody will be able to spell it.

Gresham Harkless 14:06

I will.

Alexis Haselberger 14:07

And so I do, one-on-one coaching. I'm about to launch group coaching as well this summer. I do corporate workshops, so if your company wants to have me come in and and do a few hours on the basics, that's a great way. And then I also just released a course on Udemy so people can do a self-paced video online course about time management productivity as well.

Gresham Harkless 14:29

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. And we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes as well so that you can make sure that you don't have to spell it wrong as I probably will sometimes do. So you just click down and then you can find everything that Alexis is doing.

But Alexis, I appreciate you. I love the topic, love everything you're doing. Time is precious and I appreciate you. I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Alexis Haselberger 14:45

Thank you so much. You too.

Outro 14:47

Thank you for listening to the I am CEO podcast, powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Subscribe and leave us a five star rating. Grab CEO gear www.ceogear.co. This has been the I am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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