Time is money...and it adds up with Pieter K de Villiers

Pieter K de Villiers joins me on the podcast today to talk about the importance of getting rid of your 2-minute tasks! He’s the Co-Founder of Macanta CRM and loves to chat about automation and efficiencies that give you (and your team) your time back!

Here’s a glance at what you’ll learn from our discussion in this episode:

• What types of tasks can you automate?
• How you can get 110 days back a year for your business?
• Why a pen and paper will get you on the right track to automation
• What to automate and what to eliminate.
• The importance of prioritizing task management

If you’re ready to transform your entrepreneurial frustrations into freedoms by cutting through the chaos and using frameworks that help you run an even better business and enjoy an even better life, simply go to:   www.Mohr.Coach

Take the free assessment on the top right-hand side of my website and we’ll set up a time to chat!

I'd love to connect with you on my social channels

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Are you looking to make some changes in your business and your life in 2024?  Head over to speaktopete.com and book a chat with me to see if we're the right fit!

Transcript

Christi  00:00

I find that balance with my husband and I, he is the engineer, right? I'm in sales and consulting and the idea person, and he's always that, you surely want to do that. It's kind of a crazy idea. And I'm like, oh, my goodness, but we balanced each other off quite nicely in the end of things, because it keeps me from doing crazy things. And I also kind of get him to do some things he probably wouldn't. So between us and I think in decision making with teams, that's such an important piece is to assertive leaders are the ones that can capture the attention of the group. And if they and if you're that kind of person, it's a matter of kind of going, wait a second, I need to make sure I'm hearing from everybody in the room, I'm giving time to reflect and ideally, I'm getting perspectives individually, that we bring together and I hear out and understand it and don't dismiss anything that maybe doesn't sound like the best idea or doesn't sound like what I was thinking, because that's where you get the real richness, right? If I'm like, I don't understand at all what they're thinking, you're better to go well, why is that versus going that can't work.

Pete Mohr  01:02

Hey, it's Pete, and welcome to another edition of the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast. It's the series designed to provide the tips and tools that will help you cut through the chaos and create the clarity that will transform your business and life as a leader. Always remember, clarity creates confidence and confidence ignites momentum. And today, I had the opportunity to speak again with Christie scarrow, best selling author of the book, truth warriors. And we caught into talking a little bit about if you joined us on our first podcast earlier on entitled truth warriors, we went through a whole bunch of great stuff. And I encourage you to go back and listen to that one. And this is sort of taking it a step further into being a truth Warrior Within your teams, and getting some great tools and all sorts of different things around team building, and what that means. So I'm going to let Christie take it from here. Hi, Christy, it's great to have you back here on the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast today.

Christi  02:05

Thanks, Pete. I'm so happy to be back.

Pete Mohr  02:07

It's been a while now since your book was released. But even back then, when we did our first episode, it was already a best selling book. And so proud of you for that with the book truth warriors.

Christi  02:19

Thank you up. Yeah, it was definitely an exciting journey. And of course, the journey continues. And the goal is always to try to have an impact and reach out to leaders and support them. Yeah,

Pete Mohr  02:28

I love that. It's such a great book, really enjoyed reading it. And so many good stories and takeaways there. And today, we want to take the discussion into the idea that, you know, what should entrepreneurs be thinking about when building and developing their teams? And how some of the stuff that you talked about in your book co relates to that, and how we build better teams as leaders for our businesses?

Christi  02:50

Yeah, no, great question. Pete. I think for me, and the concept of truth warriors, is about recognizing the need for diversity, right? diversity of thought, obviously, actual diversity. And I think as leaders, it's something there was this idea sort of perpetuated by a lot of organizations that you have to create this culture where everybody kind of fits in. And I'm glad to see that shifting and, and what's really important for leaders is to actually make sure that when they're bringing people into their team, or whether even thinking about how to interact with their team, they're doing it with the lens of they're going to think different, I want that thinking differently. That's actually a benefit to my team. If I'm, if everyone on the team thinks the same. I'm probably not making the best decisions. And we're probably not leveraging the team as best we can. Can you

Pete Mohr  03:35

kind of go through that process of how you would determine if people are thinking I mean, from a leadership standpoint, how do I know that somebody is thinking like me, versus how they aren't thinking like me? And also sort of, what do I do when we have too much of a certain thought or too little of a certain thought? How do we incorporate and bring that in?

Christi  03:56

Yeah, and it's sometimes you know, the same thoughts are for a couple of reasons. One, you've built a team, with everyone like you as a leader, and maybe you inherited maybe didn't have a choice. And maybe that's culturally how it's worked out. The other that sometimes happens as a leader is this natural tendency to want to validate your perspective with your team. So as a leader, I think you have a role to play in how you position and how you engage the team, so you're not coming to them with some preconceived ideas, you're not setting the scene that you know, I'm the leader, and the buck stops with me, although in some ways, that's a little bit true. You want to very much walk into a scenario, any decision making scenario, very open to new perspectives. And I've seen leaders who don't do that very well, who you know, are maybe thinking, you know, my team doesn't actually come to me with new ideas. And then And then, in watching them, I recognize it some way in which they actually don't encourage new ideas. So I think the leader has a role to play in role modeling that in being very humble and how they ask for feedback, how they encourage others to share their voice, how they actually ask For alternative perspectives, sometimes we're going into meetings and we're looking for consensus. Well, you shouldn't be looking for consensus, you're sure we're looking for alternatives or potentially risks or things to think about that guy. Hey, guys, is there anything here that we haven't considered? What could happen? Can we bring somebody in from the outside to maybe think about our thinking and open it up. So those are different ways leaders can do that. I think a lot

Pete Mohr  05:23

of people overlook the idea of bringing people in from the outside to do that sort of thing. You know, they think they've got it all under control. They think that they just know, because maybe they've been there 25 years, whatever the case is, even if they've been there 25 minutes, but how do you set something up? When you're bringing somebody in from the outside? How do you know what to look for?

Christi  05:41

Yeah, I think it's such an important thing. And you're right, it is overlooked. And I think it's a little bit about how do you systemize decision making. So if you think about what are we trying to accomplish as a team, I think you need to put those things in place to say, we know at this stage in our decision process, we're going to open it up to a broader group. And we're going to bring in this person who hasn't even been involved. And that way you're able to, you're specifically making the choice. And it's been declared that that's how we're going to make the decisions, or we're going to consider multiple alternatives could what happens a lot of times as we're moving forward with one key decision, or one thing or one mandate, and everyone kind of jumps on board. And and something I read about in my book that I'm sure everyone's well aware of is the situation with the Challenger disaster, and the idea of groupthink. And what was fascinating to me about that is, is a lot of that pain from the fact that people actually, you know, had respect for the program wanted it to be successful. So people go into this groupthink Follow the Leader mode, oftentimes, because they actually respect the leader, and they want the team to be successful. And usually there's external pressures for timing. And I think it's recognizing that sometimes we need to slow down to make the right decision, and having a leader be, you know, confident enough to say, if we move forward without, you know, pressure testing this a little bit, we're not going to get the best information at the same time balancing off the recognition that we can't have all the information. If we feel like we have all the information, then we're actually probably making a bad decision.

Pete Mohr  07:07

Everybody's all heard this sort of comment before that one plus one equals three. And when you have the power of group, but it's interesting, I've just kind of thinking of this, as we're talking that if everybody's thinking in the same way, one plus one is really one and a half. It's only when you get those extra sort of outlooks and all those different ideas and the extra things coming at that it becomes a multiplier, it really doesn't give you that one plus one equals three, it kind of gives you one plus one equals one and a half. What's your thought on that?

Christi  07:36

Yeah, no, I think that's really interesting. And I've been always and I'm in consulting, and I've been consulting for 10 years. And this idea of group brainstorming has always felt like the right thing to do. And I'm just literally starting to question that existence. I'm reading the book quiet. I've listened to webinars lately, that talk about brainstorming is actually the opposite of innovation and creativity, because it generates this idea of of groupthink, and especially if you do it vocally and together as a group, but if you have individual collection of ideas that become separate and independent, and then you find ways to bring them together and have discussions about understanding each of the perspectives, it can actually be more successful. So I think that idea of one plus one equals three can still exist, but the way in which it's facilitated, we need to think carefully about because if you start to assimilate too quickly, and jump on board the same ideas because you're a very, you know, cohesive team that actually maybe thinks alike, the risk becomes one plus one could even equal point seven, five. So I think it's a really

Pete Mohr  08:40

great thought, you know, some people are just they're quicker thinkers off the top of their head, and other people need that time to distill stuff and, and so when we're talking about groupthink, it's often the people that are the quickstarts basically from Colby is another assessment type in your assessment, the passion, Proclaimers tend to be a little bit quicker with coming up with the ideas and all this sort of stuff and may sort of lead the charge in some of the breakout sessions and what have you there and I am one of those By the way, but some of the other people don't necessarily have time to process and bring out their ideas. So I like this what you're talking about of kind of going away assessing stuff all to yourself and then coming back for the overall meeting of bringing everybody's ideas and not having to make them all on the fly because not everybody is great and making decisions and making coming up with ideas on the fly in fact, I don't know that that's the majority of people to be honest

Christi  09:34

Yeah, no, I don't even think it You said your type that passion Proclaimers sometimes for that process. You might have the idea quickly, but not the validation. So might be this kind of really cool idea but have I really thought it through and, and maybe I just need somebody in the team who's really good at doing some checkpoints to go well, this could be the potential risk with this. This is just something you want to consider. I find that balance with my husband and I he is the engineer Right, I'm in sales and consulting and the idea person, and he's always that, you sure want to do that. That's kind of a crazy idea. And I'm like, Oh my goodness, but we balanced each other off quite nicely in the end of things, because it keeps me from doing crazy things. And I also kind of get him to do some things he probably wouldn't. So between us and I think in decision making with teams, that's such an important piece is to assertive leaders are the ones that can capture the attention of the group. And if they and if you're that kind of person, it's a matter of kind of going, wait a second need to make sure I'm hearing from everybody in the room, I'm giving time to reflect and ideally, I'm getting perspectives individually, that we bring together and I hear out and understand it and don't dismiss anything that maybe doesn't sound like the best idea or doesn't sound like what I was thinking, because that's where you get the real richness, right? If I'm like, I don't understand at all, what they're thinking they're better to go, Well, why is that versus going, that can't work?

Pete Mohr  10:55

Exactly. You know, I love that I think this has brought a new concept to me as well, too. So I'm learning here today, too. And thank you, Christy, appreciate that.

Christi  11:03

Good. Well, I'm happy, I'm happy to help. So I'm learning I said these things, this idea of brainstorming is something that I've always thought I do that in groups of people I consult with, like, that's all come together and co create, but I'm not sure it's the right way to do it. So

Pete Mohr  11:16

I think there's probably good times for it to happen. And other times it's not, you know, and but that's all good. And I don't think there ever is a perfect way, right? That's the whole deal here is that we're giving each other these concepts and rolling through different things. And ultimately, the leaders that listen to this podcast will be able to make their own decisions for their business and their entrepreneurial lives. Right?

Christi  11:38

Absolutely. Because we're just we're all on this imperfect journey. Gotcha. And want to continue it and, and recognize that, that maybe the way we're doing it now isn't the right way to do it. And if people and leaders see that with their teams, and then that I think I take that as a win,

Pete Mohr  11:53

you know, change is never ending with businesses and the people that refuse to change, just quit and diet. So it's, it's a really interesting thing. I've really enjoyed our conversation here today, Christy, and what I want to do is give people the opportunity, you can let them know where to find your best selling book, truth warriors, and how to get ahold of you if they want to learn a little bit more about what you do. share that with us.

Christi  12:17

Yeah, so I mean, the best place is probably my website, www.truthwarriors.ca. Also, I have a pretty strong presence on Instagram, where I share a lot of sort of tips and tricks and, and you can also link to opportunities to connect with me directly. If you do the assessment, which is also there, then I actually offer even a debrief session after that, because I think it's really important to work with leaders, one on one to focus on their individual opportunities.

Pete Mohr  12:42

That's wonderful. And I've taken the assessment, I just got it back yesterday. So I've read through it, it's great. And I strongly suggest that anybody here takes the opportunity to to do that, too. It just, there's a wealth of great information in there as well.

Christi  12:55

And something to add to that Pete just so I check, because we're talking about leaders with teams, I often see offer the individual assessment, but I think it's also really powerful, I can provide a team report so that you can get a sense, just like we talked about, if everyone in your team is in the same bucket, you probably want to think about how do you bring in others who maybe are in alternative buckets. So I would also if anyone has an interest in that, please reach out to me through my website. And I'd be happy to talk to you about that.

Pete Mohr  13:21

Such a great amount of information and really wisdom. To be honest, the book is all about stories and wisdom around this topic. So really appreciate that. So thanks again, Christy. And I'm really glad you were here to take part in our second interview. And hopefully, we'll be able to have you back sometime down the road as well.

Christi  13:38

That would be great. Thanks, P.

Pete Mohr  13:43

Well, thanks so much for spending some time with Christy and I here today think about how you can apply all of the things that Christy talked about, and you know, the tools to create a better team, what can you do to put those into action right after this podcast, so that you can have an even better business and entrepreneurial life. You know, we talked about how people look at things in different ways. And it's important to understand all points of view, and that you know, you as the leader, there's going to be other people around you that are going to support your ideas and other people that are going to be against them. But you need to take it all in and understand the different areas of all of those complexities. As a leader, you have the duty to be open to new perspectives. And sometimes those perspectives as Christie was saying, come from outside. Sometimes we're sort of in our own team. And we have this groupthink coming around that it's often exciting and interesting to bring somebody in to help us through some of those things and look at things in a different point of view sometimes, and we need to be conscious about some of the drawbacks of that groupthink side of things. So lots of stuff here about decision making, and clarity and I think that's really the key here to making good decisions is getting clarity. So if you enjoyed the podcast today and if you liked it Please tell your friends invite them to listen and most of all, subscribe to the podcast so you can hear future episodes. For more information on what I do as a coach and my leadership programs visit www.mohr.coach or you can email me directly at Pete at more coach and until next time, make it a great day.

15:30

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