Denise Duffield...: Hey, gorgeous, it's Denise here and welcome to another episode of Chill and Prosper. We are talking about millionaire productivity lessons today. And it's not going to go the way you think it's going to go though. All right? I'm just going to warn you. Because people are often very curious about my schedule, and how I organize things, and how I go about my day, and how I organize my day, my week, my month, my quarter, my year.
And it might disappoint you to hear that I do not consider myself an organized person at all. I am not a super productive person. I am a massive procrastinator and I will not give you very many tools and tips in this episode. You might be thinking, "Oh, okay, Denise has got a system. Denise has got a bullet journal." Or whatever it's called. "Oh, Denise can recommend productivity books." And no, I'm not going to recommend any of that because it does not work for me.
And the lesson, if you don't have time to listen to this whole podcast episode, the lesson is you've always got to set things up to work for you and your personality and it does not have to be perfect. And I did the same thing that so many entrepreneurs do, I went crazy on productivity for a couple of years. I read books about it, I bought journals, I bought systems, I did all the things, and it didn't necessarily work for me. And it didn't make me more productive. And so these days I'm really chill about that kind of stuff. And yet I still make a ton of money, I achieve a lot, but I just don't get hung up on any particular system. So hopefully that's helpful to you to hear that you can just do it however you want to do it.
But I still want to share some stuff because yeah, I've got some stuff to tell you, I've got some tips, I'm sure. But here's the first distinction that I want to make. Personal productivity and business productivity are completely separate for me. So my business, as in my business Lucky B, that's what my business is named, Lucky B Proprietary Limited, super fancy. As a company, we get a lot of shit done. As a company we're pretty organized, we're very consistent, we're very productive, we're prolific. We run as a company and we run very efficiently. Me as a person, not at all. I do everything whenever I feel like it. I just have a couple of little things in place that feed that business. Okay. So they can be two separate things. You, as a person can be as disorganized as you like, but as a company, you can still get a lot of things done. Okay. So I'm going to explain how that works.
So people often ask me, "Okay, Denise, run me through a typical day." I'm happy to do this, but it might disappoint you, as I said. So Mark and I take turns getting up with the kids because at the moment our kids still wake up at like 4:30 in the morning, 5:00 sometimes. So whoever's turn it is, the kids are yours from 9:00 PM to 7:00 AM. So whatever happens in the night, if a kid throws up, if a kid wakes up, it's your responsibility. And we had to do that because sleep fucks up your life, no sleep absolutely screws with everything. And I couldn't be the one who was getting up in the night all the time with the kids, especially when Mark came into my business too and when income started being such a big part of our family income.
When we first had our first baby Mark was like, "I need to sleep, you need to get up with the baby." And it was like, he was in marketing, no offense, Mark, if you're listening, but he was in marketing, it wasn't like he was a firefighter, but I still took that on of like, "Oh, I have to do everything myself." And I was so burnt out and tired. So nowadays I'm like, "Yeah, well, we split that." Both of us should be freaking tired.
Okay. So depending if it's my turn to sleep in, I'll sleep in until 7:00 AM. If it's not my turn to sleep in, I'll be up at 4:30 with the kids and I'm like, "You want to watch Peppa Pig, go for it. You want to watch Ryan's Toy World, go for it. And I sit there and I'm super grumpy and I have a cup of tea and I take my ADHD meds and I'm just like, take the dogs out for their wee, feed the dogs, all the things, and I'm just super grumpy. If it's my turn to sleep til 7:00 AM I'm like, "Oh, hello." I have a stretch. I look at my phone, on Twitter. Mark brings me a cup of tea, it's a totally different experience.
So our housekeeper, she comes at 7:00 AM. So our housekeeper comes, she puts on some laundry, she makes us all breakfast. So we have breakfast. Between 7:00 and 8:30 is chaos because we are getting the kids ready for school, the dog walker might be coming to pick up the dogs, or the doggy daycare bus comes to pick up the dogs, or everyone's pooing themselves and it's just chaos until 8:30. 8:30 is when my nanny arrives. So she's usually just got one kid, one's at daycare, one's at school, and I don't schedule anything until 9:00 AM. So we're already five minutes in.
And then I go to my office. So Mondays I tend to not do much business-y stuff, I'm always catching up. I'll go get my hair blow dried, I recover from the weekend of being with the kids, and just all the noise. I'm an introvert so I need a lot of alone time. Tuesdays and Wednesdays is generally when I do camera facing stuff. So that's when I schedule all my interviews. If I'm on a podcast, I do any videos, whatever, because I've got nice hair. By Thursday I do not have nice hair anymore, and so Thursdays is when I go to the movies with my friend Marisa, who's also in business, Marisa Roberts. And we talk business, we chat, we have lunch, we see a movie.
Fridays I might have a Bootcamp call, which is once a month. I usually do yoga, I have a yoga person come to my house. I catch up on admin-y stuff and that's it. So that's my week and you might think, "You don't do anything." So my job roles in the business is I have to show up and show my face on videos and video. Sorry, videos as in videos for other people, if it's interviews, podcast interviews, whatever, and I show up and I do podcasts and video content and create content.
But I batch the crap out of those. So once or twice a month I'll batch as much stuff as possible. So all of that stuff is just going out without me even thinking about it. So you know how there's consistency for me and there's consistency for the business? Every day something goes out on social media, every week a newsletter goes out, every week the podcast goes out, but I am so far removed from those because I've sat and batched them. I've done my 20 videos and then I hand it over to the team.
So during the week, unless I've got a really big deadline, my biggest thing is I'll be in my Money Bootcamp group answering questions. I'll be on social media answering questions, or commenting to people. They're my two jobs really is to show up on camera and to nurture that customer group. And then it depends on what I've got on. I might have a quarterly priority. A big quarterly priority might be batching my podcast, batching videos, writing a book, and finishing a book. So I like working in that big deadline thing. And then the other part of it is boundaries, having to say no to things because Mark will be like, "I need this." And I go, "No, you don't. You've already got 50 videos that I've already batched so you do not need that." So my job is to dodge other people's expectations as much as possible.
So I don't know if that's interesting to you, right? I don't know if that's interesting about... That's how I run my day. I try and avoid stressful things. I try not to launch new things and I batch everything so I'm not doing it week by week. Because when my husband, Mark, came into the business, he'd be like, "I need you to approve this. I need you to approve this. I need to approve this." And I was like, "Oh my God." I felt like I had a boss all of a sudden, and that's not why I went into business. I went into business for freedom. I want as much freedom as possible. That's why I batch. I batch so I have freedom.
So now I say, "Okay, instead of getting my approved every single day, every time you write an email, go write every single email for the launch and then I'll sit and I'll approve 30 of them in one go." And so I had to set those boundaries to say, "No, I don't do that. No, I don't do that now. Nope, I don't do that."
So when I say millionaire productivity lessons, I'm just talking about me as a millionaire, I'm not talking about every millionaire. But after the break I do have some philosophies, I think, on productivity that have worked really, really well for me and I'd love to share them with you. So I'm sorry that my day is not sexier, but it's the truth, and I don't use a diary, but I'll tell you some of the tools and the things that I use. All right, I'll see you straight after the break. Bye.
Dr. Jennifer Ha...: Hi, I'm Dr. Jennifer Harrison. I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and I'm a stress and body mind, health expert, certified Canfield success trainer, success mindset coach, and EFT practitioner. I help heart centered entrepreneurs relieve stress and optimize brain power and create a success mindset so they can manifest the results they want in both their life and their business.
I read Denise's amazing book Chillpreneur in November of 2019. And then in early 2020 I signed up for Money Bootcamp as part of an affiliate program she was promoting. One part of Money Bootcamp deals with money memories and forgiveness. There was one issue from childhood that I had already cleared parts out of using EFT. However Denise's program helped me to uncover another aspect of this issue that I was able to work on and clear out. This resulted in me creating some new coaching packages with pricing more in alignment with my expertise and experience.
One month later, I had a new client who purchased the package at full price. One of the things I love about Denise is that she's really transparent about her business and her own money mindset blocks that she's continually releasing as she grows new parts of her business. In Money Bootcamp she's created a really safe space for her students so we can share both our money stresses and successes. Denise, thanks so much for your work helping women with their money mindset. I'm really excited about your new podcast. All the best.
Denise Duffield...: All righty. Welcome back. So the last thing I said just before the break is I don't have a diary and some of you might have just really clutched your pearls at that, like, "How do you know what you're doing? Oh my God! What's happening?" So remember I said that the business structure is different from my structure. So we know in my business something goes out every day, something goes out every week, which is the podcast and the newsletters. We know that once a month we've got Money Bootcamp calls, and we know that once a quarter we've generally got either a mini launch or something so that's all in there. And so I just know, "Okay, I have to fill up that bucket of content." I create all my own content, all my own social media content, but I only do it once or twice a month and I just batch it ahead of time and I preschedule it. So it's just there.
Same with the video, same with podcasts, I'll hire a podcast studio for two days. I'll batch all of that and then my team never talks to me about it again. I've done my bit, they know they have to transcribe it, they know they have to put it on their website, they know they have to upload it to iTunes and all the things, they know they have to create graphics for it. Never talk to me about it again. Okay. But that could certainly go out every single week. We know that every month we have Money Bootcamp calls, it's always at the same time.
So when I say I don't have a diary, I know what I need to do so it's very, very simple what my role in the business is. That doesn't mean I don't like... I use Google Tasks for example, and it's just a very, very simple to-do list and I'll just go, "Oh yeah, that might be good." And I put it in there. And so when I say millionaire productivity lessons, that's what's really helped me make millions of dollars is lots of free time, lots of bandwidth, lots of consistency in the business, not from me, and knowing what my role is, and saying no.
So I've got four things that I always talk about, eliminate, delegate, batch, outsource. And so before we do anything, I go, I eliminate stuff, "Does anyone need to do this? Do I need to do it?" And so that's why I'm always pushing back on my team and esp Mark, I just go, "No, I don't need to do that. You can figure that out. No, I don't need to do that. No, I've written five articles about that you guys can repurpose that. Nope." And so I'm just like the no queen. "No, no one needs to do that."
And that's the same with my team, I do not create busy work for my team. And sometimes Mark does because he's got a different personality than me and my trick is I always find the quickest, easiest, laziest way to do things and that often is usually the most efficient too. So eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. What does nobody need to do in your company? What do you not need to do anymore? Get rid of it.
Then I delegate to someone else. Right? So it's like, once I've done my podcast in the studio and I've done my 20 or so podcasts, none of that needs to be done by me anymore. I don't need to be the one spell checking it and doing the transcription or creating the graphics, that can all be outsourced to somebody else, that can be delegated to my team. So think about things in your world that can be done by somebody else, or done by you and then passed on to someone else without it ever coming back to you.
Then as I said, I batch, I've got heaps of resources that I've talked about with batching so go and have a look at those batching resources, or just search batching on my website or in the podcast because then once again, once I've done my job, that's it, everyone else can do all the other things. And then I look at how can I find someone outside the company to outsource it.
I'll tell you what else is really cool for me these days is buying templates. Have you noticed there's a lot of people selling templates at the moment. So I go, "Oh man, how do I do this thing?" I go, "Oh, someone's probably already created a template for it." And they have, and sometimes it's a course that you can buy, or sometimes it's someone else's checklist. I even, when I'm stuck for social media content, there's heaps of people who share a hundred prompts to share on social media, or a hundred ideas to write articles about on social media.
So whenever there's something that comes back to me, I always look about like, "How can I get a head start on this? How can I get a hack? How can I buy... How can someone else do all the work for me?" Because I'm, as I said, smart and lazy, I'm smazy. And also I have ADHD so I don't want to get bored with things. I just want to touch things once and that's it. Even though sometimes that's not always the most efficient way to do it.
And let me give you an example on that. So every single person who joins Money Bootcamp gets a welcome card. Okay. And so at the start of the year we have hundreds of people join and then we might have 50 to 100 people join every month. And so what happened at the start is that someone would join and Mark would be like, "I need you to write a postcard." And I'd go... And then he'd go, "I need you to write these 10 postcards." And he would just put them around the house and he'd be like, "I need you to write these postcards." And I'd go...
So now what I do, and this is what I did for my last launch, my goal was 500 people. So before the launch even started, I started pre-writing those postcards. And I always write the same thing because it's easier when you're writing 500, I write, "I'm so happy you joined Money Bootcamp. Love, Denise." Okay. So I sat and wrote 500 of those. I did it in one day because I just hyper focused and I was like, "I never want to touch these again." But of course I have to because I have to write people's names on them.
So then what happens, it goes back... I pay my daughter 20 cents to stuff each one into an envelope. But what we do is we put the postcards face up so there's enough space to write someone's name when they join. And I do it that way because I just want to get into the groove of doing one thing at a time, that really works for my brain is one thing at a time. And then as people join, they put the stickers on them of the address stickers and then they come back to me in big batches and then I can just go, "Okay. Oh, Hey Alana." And it's just enough space from the envelope to do it. And then they're not mine anymore. And then they see all them and then it goes to the post office.
So I think that's my biggest millionaire productivity lesson is just to batch things and do them in a way that works for you. And that's what works for me. Even building in that accountability of it's actually more motivating for me to write the postcards before the launch than after because then after I feel like, "Oh man, I have to do this thing." But beforehand I was writing them going, "Wow, this is $2,000. Wow, this is changing someone's life." And then when there's an actual person's name on it, then I'm thinking about that person. "Oh wow, Alana, I'm so happy you joined. But I've done the hard work, I've done boring bit that my brain doesn't like, and then it's super easy for me to do. And we had 407 people join in that launch so then I was like, "Yay, I've got 93 postcards already pre-written for the next people." And it felt so much more motivating for me to do it like that.
Okay. So back over to you, I've obviously probably given you some things to think about and you might think I'm crazy with some of the things that I do, but what's one ah-ha that you have around your productivity in your business? It might be that you realize you still need the tools and you need the to do lists and you need the bullet journals and all that kind of stuff, or that you need, I don't know, you need all your productivity stuff. I can't even remember some of the productivity lessons I've learned in the last couple of years. Or you might realize that you are doing things that nobody needs to do, or you could be outsourcing, or delegating. It might be that you want to batch up some of those repetitive tasks to make it more motivating and easy for you. Or you might realize, like me, you need a ton of freedom in your life.
So I would love to hear your ah-has from this episode. It might have triggered some stuff for you that you are not allowed to have what you want. It could be some money minds issues around, "No, I have to muck in. I have to do everything like everyone else. I have to help." And that's totally fine, but I want you to really explore that and give yourself permission to step into that CEO role, like, "Would Oprah do this? How would Oprah do this?" Or, "How would Denise do this?" Or, "How would Sara Blakely do this?" And just make those little and changes. It might not happen overnight but the idea is to create more space and enjoyment and profitability for you, it's not about perfection, it's not about finding the perfect system, it's usually about permission.
Okay. So let me know, I'm on @denisedt on all the social handles, tag me in this episode, share this episode, tag me, tell me you're ah-has, I would love to hear them. And then I have one final thought for you. I can never say final thought, I always say final fought. I have one... See, I did it again. Final thought. I have one final thought for you straight after this last break. See you in a sec.
Denise Michelle: Hi, I'm Denise Michelle located in Los Angeles, California, and I am a life purpose coach, RTT hypnotherapist, and self-love expert. And I have read two of Denise's books, Chillpreneur and Get Rich, Lucky Bitch! And I have the app and I will say all three of those have really helped me up level in my business in observing my limiting beliefs, in removing blocks, and learning how to keep track of money. And it has been amazing. My business is now thriving and I am so grateful because this year, this is a year that I am going to have a quantum leap in my business and these tools have truly helped me change my money mindset and become and feel more secure with money. And Denise really taught me that money can be easy. It can be fun. And I would say that I have really adopted the less is more totally chillaxing, relaxed entrepreneur lifestyle, I want to do what I want to do, how I want to do it, and Denise really help give me permission to do that. Thanks Denise.
Denise Duffield...: Hi, everybody, welcome back. My final thought today is about a D word that scares us so much. Oh my gosh. Debt. Let's talk about debt for a second. You might be in debt. You might not be in debt, right? But there's something there about the debt word that can be so scary for people, especially when you think of you used to get sent to debtors as prison. Australia was colonized by England's criminals who got sent on a ship all the way across the world. And so there's a lot of horrible feelings around debt. So I want you to ponder on what your relationship is with debt at the moment. Are you one of those people who has an avoidance personality, you don't even want to look at how much you owe, you don't even want to look at the interest rate you're paying, or maybe you pay late fees all the time?
Maybe you're on the flip side though that there's opportunities for you right now, but you're scared to even put a little bit, go a little bit into debt for them because maybe you've got some trauma around that, or it just is not safe for you. So debt can be a tool that we can use. It's safe for us to look at it. It's safe for us to organize it. It's safe for us to pay it off. So I don't have any consumer debt, but I have quite a big mortgage because I have a big, amazing abundant beach house and I want to pay some of that off. So it could be that you choose smart debt that you have to tell yourself that you can handle it, that you can look at it. It could be that it's safe for you to be debt free, or have zero debt. Or maybe for you it's realizing that you can make more new money instead of going into debt for something.
And Seth Godin said this so well, he said instead of raising money from investors, raise money from customers, and by selling them something that they need, what you do and how you can help them. So it could be that you have to release some debt shame so you allow yourself to really look at it and use it as a tool without being stressed about it. So I would love to hear what your relationship is with debt and how I can help you change your mindset around it. And maybe we'll do a whole episode upcoming about that because I think it's a really juicy topic. But just ponder on that, ponder about how it might be holding you back right now. And I would love to hear from you about that and I will see you on next week's episode of Chill and Prosper. Bye.