Time Management Expert Helps Individuals Build Sustainable Habits and Boost Productivity

In this episode, we have Alexis Hasselberger, a time management and productivity coach who shares her expertise in enhancing personal and professional productivity.

She highlights the importance of understanding oneself and building habits around one's own identity to attain sustainability.

Hasselberger details her journey and the strategies she used to grow her business, including her experience with creating online courses, corporate workshops, and trainings. The conversation then touches on her approach to coaching, covering task management, prioritization, planning and efficiency.

Website: www.alexishaselberger.com

Previous Episode: time-management-coach

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Full Interview:

Transcription:

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Alexis Haselberger 00:00

I really start with a position, with everyone, of knowing yourself better exactly as you are because I find that for all doing things is hard, right? Building habits is hard. And the more that we can build habits and strategies around who we actually are versus trying to do what somebody else says is right, or maybe worked for them.

Then I think it's a lot easier to build sustainable habits.

Intro 00:24

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of.

This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:50

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast. I have a very special guest back on the show today. I have Alexis Hasselberger. Alexis, excited to have you back on the show.

Alexis Haselberger 01:02

Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 01:03

Yes. Super excited to hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. We were just reminiscing a little bit about, your previous episode, all the awesome things that you're doing.

Before we jump into talking a little bit more about that, I want to read a little bit more about Alexis. So you can hear about some of those awesome things.

And Alexis is a time management and productivity coach who helps people do more and stress less through coaching workshops and online courses. Her pragmatic yet fun approach helps people easily integrate practical, realistic strategies into their lives so that they can do more of what they want and less of what they don't.

Alexis has taught thousands of individuals to take control of their lives. And her clients include Google Lift Workday, Capital One, Upwork and many, many more. And like I mentioned, Alexis has been on the show. So make sure you check out episode number 279 when she first jumped on our show. And I was just doing a little bit of homework and research.

And she has taught over 142, 000 people in her course on, on how to take care and take control of time. And I read, which is what I absolutely love. I think as a kid, you were very much. So a very organized person. I think you could call yourself a teacher in your own right. So I love how we have those small seeds when we're kids and it grows into the, all the awesome work that you're doing.

So Alexis, excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?

Alexis Haselberger 02:22

Yeah, I'm really excited to be here as well.

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Gresham Harkless 02:24

Awesome. Let's get it started then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind that clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what you've been working on since the last time we spoke.

Alexis Haselberger 02:32

Yeah. Last time we spoke, I was like in the baby stages of my business. And I'm maybe now in the toddler stages. I don't know. But it's been a few years for sure. And so, I think when we spoke last, my main offering was one-on-one coaching. And that's what that I had been doing. And that is that was a fantastic place for me to start.

And I still do a lot of one-on-one coaching, but I also have a group coaching program that I run a couple of times a year. I have. For online courses that are available. And I also have a lot. I do a lot of corporate workshops and trainings and work with corporate clients as well. And so, it's one of those things looking back.

It's you always wonder when you look at other people's businesses. Wow they have so many pieces and like, how do they do that? And then you start doing that and you realize, oh, They did it just a teeny, tiny bit at a time.

Gresham Harkless 03:19

Yeah, I love that you said that. And that's one of the things I absolutely love about having guests back on the show to see what would those teeny tiny steps that end up being really big things that you're doing.

Cause we don't see all that. We see the snapshots. We say, Oh, Alexis is doing, she's taught courses. So all these different people, like we don't realize that it doesn't happen overnight or at a snap of a finger.

Alexis Haselberger 03:39

Definitely does not. And many of the things I don't know about you and other guests that you have that many of the things are not things you could have planned for.

It's like with online courses, someone from Udemy reached out to me and said, Hey, we don't have a great time management course for our business product. Would you be open to creating one? And at that point I had never even taken an online course. Like I had no business. I was like, Sure.

Why not? Somebody presents you with an opportunity. And then little did I know that would actually become quite a significant portion of my business and something that I really enjoy doing.

Gresham Harkless 04:14

Yeah, absolutely. And you get to, I imagine, reach and connect with so many more people because you're able to take that knowledge, genius, expertise, you've been able to grow and then have that now in online course form.

Alexis Haselberger 04:24

Yeah, exactly. And I think that, that's exactly right. Is that not only with those, am I able to reach people all across the world? Like I have, people reaching out to me from India and from, like all these places that are taking my courses, but also that having options in at a variety of price points for a variety of levels, I think has really been important for me as well, because, I want to provide services to as many people as I can.

And also, one-on-one coaching isn't always something that is accessible to everybody, right? Group coaching isn't always something that's accessible. And so having, being able to have something at a variety of price points that still serves a common need I found to be really helpful.

Gresham Harkless 05:03

Yeah. And so I know the session on the different ways that you serve with work with your client. I wanted to drill down a little bit more to hear if there's anything more about like, how that process works or what's like a good 1st step is like listening to this.

Alexis Haselberger 05:15

Yeah I'll give you the overview of all of my time management, productivity, basically, how do I use my time in a way that feels good. I follow a similar arc in most of my products. So in my one-on-one coaching, my group coaching and, the online courses, they might be a little more specialized because people like bite-size pieces of it.

But I really start with a position, with everyone, of knowing yourself better exactly as you are, because I find that, for all Doing things is hard, right? Building habits is hard. And the more that we can build habits and strategies around who we actually are versus trying to do what somebody else says is right, or maybe worked for them.

Then I think it's a lot easier to build sustainable habits because I think you, me, and everyone else, we can make ourselves do something for some amount of time.

But eventually, we snap back to who we are. And so we want to have practices that actually support who we are. So we start there. Then I move into task management with folks, which really is, task management may sound like not that sexy of a topic, but really it's just how we do and when we do the things we want to do and what we say no to.

And how do we set boundaries around these things? And so having for a lot of people, this is very disjointed. And what I help people with is how do we. Figure out a single trusted system so that we have one place to offload your mental load to learn to prioritize so that you're not having, post-it notes and Asana and your email as a to-do list, Slack,16 paper notebooks around and then it becomes really difficult to prioritize.

We move into prioritization. Which is like, how do we feel good at the end of every day? About the things that we did, because we're not going to be able to do everything. There's no way to Tetris all of the things we want to do all of the time.

That's just not it. You, me and everyone else. We're all going to die with a big long list of things we didn't do, and that's okay. That's life. But what we do want to do is know that every day, the things we did were more important than the things we didn't do. And so I teach people to prioritize.

In that way, we move into planning because planning is also I really believe in separating the planning from the doing because oftentimes when we are just doing what comes our way, we're not thinking about it from a strategic level. We're just batting the balls away as they come. And that's how we end up feeling wow, I worked all day, but what did I actually accomplish?

Right. we move into our tools. We get really tactical. We get inbox zero, slack zero working with our documents. Like, where do we keep them? How do we find them, easily? What technology tools are we using? We move into habit building because I think habits, we like to think that, if I just have the willpower and the motivation, I would make this habit and those are fleeting resources.

So I use a lot of science-fact strategies to help people with habits almost done. We move into efficiency. So how do we say, okay, I have a certain amount of hours that I want to devote to work, right? How do I make those as efficient as possible so that I don't find work bleeding into all the other elements of my life or even efficiency at home?

We all have life work that needs to be done, but I'm sure we'd rather be doing something else. And so how do we make that more efficient? And then finally, we end on focus. And so, sometimes people think that's a silly like, why would you end on focus? Wouldn't you start there? But a lot of times you don't know what to focus on until we've done these other steps.

And so I think of focus as both removing as many distractions as we can. And also, how do we find focus in a scenario where. We don't have any distractions, right? Have you ever been alone in a room? Your phone's not even in the room. Nobody's there but you still have trouble.

Gresham Harkless 08:51

Yeah, what am I supposed to do now? I've been working for this. Now, what do I do?

Alexis Haselberger 08:56

Exactly. And so we have practices that we work on around. How do we create focus out of thin air when we need to and that's. That's the deep way that I work with folks in a variety of different modalities.

Gresham Harkless 09:06

Nice. I truly appreciate you for breaking all of this down. So do you feel like that's part of your secret sauce of the organization or a combination of both?

Is it your ability to obviously understand the habits and how important changes? But I feel like you also have a really great pulse on the human part of business, which I say we often forget about and how those things interplay and everything that comes out or sometimes doesn't come out in our actions.

Do you feel like having that pulse is something that sets you apart and makes you unique?

Alexis Haselberger 09:34

I think for me, it's necessary actually for the work that I do, because I think that with skills around organization, time management, productivity, et cetera. It's not like people are not having trouble with this because they don't know what to do.

Sometimes they are, but oftentimes it's like they have read all the books. They have tried all the things and there's still reasons that it's not working for them. And so maybe they need, sometimes it's that, as we talk about this journey, I have reordered things over time.

To have kind of maximal effect for people like I found that, I used to have some things we would do after before. And I'm like, oh, no, this has to come before because if you don't have this in place, then it's really much harder to do this other thing. So sometimes people just need you to take them on that journey.

And then also, there's often like emotional blockers for why we're not doing things like when we're procrastinating, it's not usually for some technical reason, it's often because there's fear involved, right? Or there's anxiety, or imposter syndrome, or there's a lot of things having to do with why we don't do the things that we quote, know are right?

And so, yeah, I think that. If we don't address the human side, then we're probably not going to make a lot of progress.

Gresham Harkless 10:46

Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I love that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And we might have already mentioned this a little bit, but it could be like an app, a book, or even a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Alexis Haselberger 10:58

Okay, so I think that the number one thing that I would say is having a task management system, right? Having an app that works for you. I can certainly share what my favorite I've reviewed probably 50 different task apps and my favorite task app that I recommend to almost everyone, unless they have something they really love instead.

It's called TickTick or so. It's not TikTok. We know that, as much as we love TikTok, that doesn't really help with our productivity.

Gresham Harkless 11:24

Not necessarily,

Alexis Haselberger 11:26

but TickTick. And what I love about this app is that. It is really easy to use. So you don't have to spend a lot of time like learning and taking tutorials, like pretty much out of the gate.

You can just use it, but it has a lot of functionality. So if you want to go deeper, you can do all the things that like all the fancy things have. It also is, it also is cross-platform. So you can be an apple phone and then the Android tablet and like your Mac computer, like all of this stuff, it's just going to sink everywhere.

And it also has a lot of great integration so that it becomes really simple and frictionless to get tasks from email or Slack or voice entry, or even your Amazon Alexa or your Google code. You can really easily integrate those so that it's not, it feels more frictionless, and so just getting everything out of your head as a CEO I think is or as any human being, it's really important.

Gresham Harkless 12:23

Nice. I love that. And I appreciate you giving us that software. I have to check it out. So now I want to ask you a little bit more of a CEO nugget. This could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. We might have our attention on this as well, too, but it's something that you might tell your favorite client.

Or if you happen to a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Alexis Haselberger 12:40

Okay. I think telling my younger business stuff I'm going to go with and I think that this is not a new takeaway for probably most people, but it was something that's definitely been, confirmed for me many times over the past several years, and that is just listen to your gut, right?

There have been a number of times where, you know, I would say 2 times where say, I've taken on a client and I just knew in the first intake call that it was just not gonna be the right fit. I felt it but you know what, like they wanted to work with me. And of course, you're trying to grow a business.

Super hard to say no to money. And so you're like, we'll do it. And then it's not like anything terrible ever happened, but it's just like you, you end up realizing, ah, like I should have listened to my gut. I should have said, no, it would have been better for both of us. Or, maybe programs I've signed up for before to something similar where it's like, I just moving ahead.

I think on paper. This all looks right. And then you knew it wasn't and you go through it and you're like, yep, I didn't get as much out of that as I thought I was going to. And I knew it from the get-go. And so that's what I would say is our gut is actually real. I read an article this morning actually about how about the connection between our gut and our brain.

We think of that as like a woo woo thing, but it's actually real and so listen to it.

Gresham Harkless 14:02

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Alexis, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Alexis Haselberger 14:13

So to me, being a CEO means that I get to spend every single day waking up and working on things that are moving my goals forward versus moving other people's goals forward. And so I think that's the thing that I didn't quite realize would be so impactful when I moved from being an employee of someone else to, to working for myself, because it's not as though you have less work when you work for yourself, right?

You're still incredibly busy, maybe even more so because you have more kind of drive and more interest in what you're doing. But I have found that there is just such an ultimate.

I don't know, like pleasure in knowing that as a CEO, you get to solve your own problems, work on your own goals, move things in the direction of your own future in a way that it's just not the same, even when you really love your job and you love the company you're working for and all of that.

And so I think that kind of. Freedom of pursuit, I guess is the way I would put it.

Gresham Harkless 15:11

I love it. I truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more.

So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best they can get a hold of you, find out about your courses, and all the awesome things that you're working on.

Alexis Haselberger 15:27

Perfect. If people want to reach out to me, learn more about this stuff. There are a number of ways that they can do that. Of course, my website, Alexis Hasselberger dot com, which I hope you'll put in the show notes because it's impossible to spell for people is a great way to reach me.

I also have there a downloadable Distraction action plan that can help you identify your primary distractions and remove those so that you can gain back hours of time every week for things that you actually want to focus on.

So go ahead and download that for free. I also have a YouTube channel. Do more stress less. You can reach out to me there. I post videos every single week. So you can subscribe and then I'm on most of the socials. @Do More Stress Less.

Gresham Harkless 16:07

Awesome. Thank you so much again. Alexis for coming back on the show.

Of course, to make that even easier for everybody. You don't have to enter a spelling bee or anything like that. You'll have the link. We'll have the links and information in the show notes as well, too, but truly appreciate all the awesome work that you're doing.

So thank you so much for paving the way and making that possible for so many different people, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Alexis Haselberger 16:26

You too. Thanks so much for having me on.

Intro 16:28

Thank you for listening to the I Am CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and 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 don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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