With Charles Alexander, whose mission in life is to help entrepreneurs and busy professionals do more of what they love and less of what they don’t. Having coached over 2,000 entrepreneurs has helped him become a polished storyteller that uses humor and real world experiences to educate others. In addition to coaching entrepreneurs, Charles also owns his own business, creating Explainer Videos for busy professionals. Lastly, and most importantly, he is happily married to his wife Sarah and is the proud father of three lovely children, Ava, Lilly and Lane.

Join us in our conversation as Charles shares powerful insights on time management, productivity, and setting boundaries to reclaim your life as an entrepreneur. He dives into the importance of eliminating distractions, batching tasks, and delegating effectively—offering practical strategies to create a four-day workweek without sacrificing success. Tune in to learn how to work smarter, not harder, and start designing a business that supports your life, not the other way around.

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Takeaways & quotes you don’t want to miss from this episode:

• The myth of multitasking and context switching.
• What is the first step to taking control of your time?
• How to set up boundaries with clients.
• Why is it important to batch tasks?
• How often are we get distracted by our phones and how to break that habit?

“If somebody else can do what you’re doing for 20% of what your hourly rate is, and they can do it just 80% as well, that’s something you should do 100% of the time.”

-Charles Alexander

Check out these highlights:

• 03:27 Charles shares how he transitioned from business coaching to creating explainer videos, and later, group coaching on time management.
• 16:08 Why people struggle to make time for themselves…
• 27:22 The importance of accountability and prioritization for entrepreneurs.
• 36:31 Charles advises what to eliminate from your schedule.
• 49:07 Hear Charles’ final takeaway for the listeners…

How to get in touch with Charles on Social Media:

Imperfect Show Notes

We are happy to offer these imperfect show notes to make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who prefer reading over listening. While we would love to offer more polished show notes, we are currently offering an automated transcription (which likely includes errors, but hopefully will still deliver great value), below:

GGGB Intro  00:00

Here’s what you get on today’s episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®…

Charles Alexander  00:05

So the idea is batching those light tasks together. Think of it like when you clean a house, you don’t go clean a toilet, make up a bed and then load the dishwasher. You do all the things at once, and then the rest. You want to start thinking about delegating. And the rule of thumb I have for delegation is that if somebody else can do what you’re doing for 20% of what your hourly rate is, and they can do it just 80% as well, that’s something you should do 100% of the time.

GGGB Intro  00:33

The adventure of entrepreneurship and building a life and business you love, preferably at the same time is not for the faint of heart. That’s why Heather Pearce Campbell is bringing you a dose of guts, grit and great business stories that will inspire and motivate you to create what you want in your business and life. Welcome to the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast where endurance is required. Now, here’s your host, The Legal Website Warrior®, Heather Pearce Campbell.   

Heather Pearce Campbell  01:00

Alrighty, welcome. I am Heather Pearce Campbell, The Legal Website Warrior®. I’m an attorney and legal coach based here in Seattle, Washington, serving information entrepreneurs throughout the US and around the world. We have a super fun guest today. I’ve been looking forward to this, Charles. And woohoo for those of you that don’t know Charles, I have Charles Alexander with us today, and Charles is on a mission to help entrepreneurs and busy professionals do more of what they love and less of what they don’t. Having coached over 2,000 entrepreneurs has helped him become a polished storyteller that uses humor and real world experiences to educate others. In addition to coaching entrepreneurs, Charles also owns his own business, creating Explainer Videos for busy professionals. Lastly, and most importantly, he is happily married to his wife Sarah and is the proud father of three lovely children, Ava, Lily and Lane. I have to ask you, is Lane a son or a daughter?

Charles Alexander  01:21

That is a boy. It’s a family name. Yes, we’re outnumbered. There’s a lot of time spent playing football and basketball.

Heather Pearce Campbell  02:17

Right? I get it. Well, I like the name. It’s funny, because when my sister, Ashley, who’s right behind me, got named, it was actually a popular male name, right? And then it was the late 70s, and then my parents were like, This sounds like a girl name. So anyways, that’s fun, but I like unique names. I’m trying to remember Charles, because I always like to get give a shoutout to who introduced us. Was it Melanie Benson? 100% yay. Shout out to Melanie, one of my favorite humans in the world, who also has a podcast that we will put a link to in the show notes. Yeah. Fantastic podcast. So you’ll need to pop over and check out that. But Melanie and I have actually become really good friends over the years. We first met in a mastermind. Anyways, well, I’m so grateful that she sent you our way, Charles. I am so looking forward to getting to know you better and being able to share your message and a little bit about what you’re up to with our audience. Fantastic. So I would love to know, because I always love people’s origin stories. How did you get started, right? I think it’s a pretty courageous thing to be in business for yourself.

Charles Alexander  03:27

I’ll give you the Cliff Notes version. I you know, I’ve been a full time business coach for over 17 years, coached over 2000 people 10 years ago, decided to practice what I preach and started creating these little videos that I had just for funsies, and I would throw them out, see if anybody liked them or not. And I started picking up traction with that, which was by dumb luck, because I was writing content at the time. And then told a guy I could create a video for his CPA firm. I didn’t know how to create a video, but he hired me for that, so I had to quickly learn. And made some terrible videos for him, but I figured out those videos could outperform the written stuff I was doing at the time, so I taught myself, and then that grew into a full time gig on the side. And then, not just last year, but last year, I finally got off mission I had and started doing some of my coaching groups that I had always wanted to do, talking about a origin story back during the pandemic, which I know everybody’s tired of talking about, but humor me here. You know, I was working from the house harder than I had ever worked in the office in my life, and in one specific day, all of my kids, Ava, Lily, Lane, were coming in to interrupt me. But I’m trying to help business owners. I bet you were in the same boat. You know, they’re asking you what? What can I do legally? Can I open? What about the PPP line? And I’m all over the place trying to figure it out. And each one of these little beauties come in one at a time, you know, one of them came in, like, Daddy, Daddy, I can’t get on this pet tablet here’s like, Oh, baby, you got to plug it in because you played games on it last night. All right? And get that one out. Then the next one comes. Said, Daddy, what’s Google Classroom? I don’t know. What is that? Let’s log in and find out. So get her logged in. Then the last one was my son, who was in the first grade at the time. He said, Daddy, what is zoom? I said, Why do you need to know what Zoom is? Like I get on Zoom for my teacher? Oh, my God. Funniest thing in the you’ll ever see, Heather is 21st graders getting on Zoom for the first time. All you see is like the tops of heads kids with no shirts. It was bananas. So I get all them logged in, shut the door, and then for the rest of that specific day, I remember going through this massive checklist, and I would get an email from somebody. And then I think, oh, that’s important. Let me go to the website and check it out. And then I go to the website and think, Oh, that reminds me, there’s something on LinkedIn about it. So that jump back to LinkedIn, and oh, I got a notification. Oh, I hadn’t heard from Jake. Look, all day long, I’m self interrupting, and I had like a line in the sand moment. I was reading a Deep Work by Cal Newport, great book for anybody listening. And I read that, we’re at home every day I’m reading it. Every day I’m writing in the margins. And I decide at that point, like I’m not doing it this way anymore. I’m going to do it his way. I’m going to reverse engineer the way. I’ve always been done time management. I’ve always done it wrong, and I’m not going to call it time management, because I don’t want to do more. I want to do more by doing less. And it just stuck. So I hang on to it for like, three years. I know this is a longer story than you guys are asking, but I finally, last year, said, I’m not, we’re I’m going to launch a 90 day group, and I’m going to get people to a better work week, and, you know, later we can talk about, I’m launching a group coaching program to give folks the accountability and the assistance they need to, you know, get out of the check and email at 9pm missing dance recitals, not going out on a date with your spouse because you’re constantly glued to your laptop. There’s entrepreneurs who are making a living who can’t enjoy the freedom that they created. So the origin story was, I’ve had all these different things going on. I have, you know, I wrote a book and published it last year. I’ve got my own podcast. I do full time business coaching. I got this explainer video business, and I’m doing it all in less than 40 hours a week. And by God, I’m wanting to show everybody else how to do it.

Heather Pearce Campbell  07:04

Yeah, I mean, there’s so many gems in there. First of all, your description of trying to work from home during the pandemic. I know all the parents listening right now are like, you know, stomachs turning and it was brutal. I had a one and a half year old and six and a half year old when the pandemic hit, I had just gotten childcare in place for my little tiny one. I had all the supports figured out and in place for my number one who needed some special supports in addition to school. And it all went away and suddenly, right, like so many other people, I’m at home full time. I’ve now got two kids, I’m trying to run two businesses. I’m launching a podcast within a couple months of starting the pandemic. So it was a massively impactful and obviously highly distressing time, and that that what you described, that shifting focus a bazillion times a day, right, called context switching, correct? Oh, I would get to the end of every night. And I actually still think that so many of us are still making those recoveries in our nervous system, in our thinking patterns like it got so many people off track for quite a while because we literally just didn’t have the choice. And I’d get to the end of each day and be like to my sister, your to your brain. Does your brain feel like scrambled eggs? It was like scrambled right? But there are so many parallels to regular entrepreneurship in that story, right? Because even if it’s not at that level, it we still can be very prone to a high level of context switching, demands on our time, demands on our attention within our business. So it’s just always, I think, a really important conversation to be having, because there’s also levels of it, like, okay, you’ve cut out a few of these things, and you’re achieving better focus, but you’re still bleeding time or bleeding energy.

Charles Alexander  09:10

And it’s the energy, and yeah, where I think most of us miss because so often before that point in time, you know? And I was the time management guru, and I had my day time around that was one A and 2 B and, you know, COVID Squadron, all great stuff, but it was just trying to cram more crap into the day. And then I finally looked at it said, my inbox is just it’s like a Kleenex. I can keep emptying and they flipping things keep popping back in there. So obviously this isn’t going to work, because I can’t do enough to get it all done. So we’re just going to have to make some difficult choices and then figure out what to do with the rest of it. But what you’re hitting on that context switching. We think we’re great at multitasking. We are not. We’re not designed for we’re not good at it. And every time you switch a task, it takes you 23 minutes to return to the same level of focus where you left off before that’s not. Me saying that that’s Gloria mark. You see Irvine or California? Doesn’t matter. Google it. Gloria Mark. Brilliant lady does it, does a research case study every five years. And every five years we get a little dumber, so to speak. They used to strap people to desktops, and then they would interrupt them and then go back to see how long it took them to return to their same level of focus. And now they don’t even do that anymore, because we context switch or self interrupt every one minute. So you think about you’re working on something that you know you’re working on some legal paperwork or a case, or, you know, a proposal, content, video, and then your mind says, You know what. You know what you ought to do. You gotta go check that email real quick. Oh, I wonder what’s on Facebook. And then, you know, 25 minutes later, oh, it’s a disaster.

Heather Pearce Campbell  10:48

Well, it’s the goldfish story, right? Having the attention span of goldfish, and unless you’ve lived it, it’s hard to understand how profoundly accurate that is, but there’s a woman that wrote a book, oh my gosh, I’m going to forget her name, how to break up with your phone. Catherine Price, there you go. Catherine Price, also the power of fun, right? Yes, and brilliant. Like, just love her stuff. I actually read the power of fun first, and then I was like, Oh, she has this other book, you know, how to break up with your phone, but even the power of fun, there’s so many lessons in there. And just one simple thing that I did was, what does she call it? A cell phone Sabbath, basically, Shabbat. Friday afternoon, after work, you put your phone away and go all the way through, like Saturday night, it turned into Sunday, and then Sunday night for me, where you just have it away, that one thing even, oh my gosh, I remember, you know that feeling you had as a kid in the summertime, like it’s endless summer, like time is just all around…

Charles Alexander  12:00

Einstein Time. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  12:01

Totally, you’re like, in flow all the time as a kid, right, especially in a summer time like that. 

Charles Alexander  12:08

And we were, we destroyed our poor kids. They don’t stay in a shop. We were in the flow.

Heather Pearce Campbell  12:12

We were right, because we I was born in the late 70s, grew up in the 80s, had, like, very little supervision, you know, blah, blah, blah. I captured the essence of that back the first time I put that phone away and just refused to look at it, and my kids and I spent, like a whole Saturday painting and not even paying attention to time and the like, the interesting lesson in that is like, how quickly we can actually recover if we do the right habits, and so I would be so curious to hear about your journey, and what were some of the things that you started to implement where you felt they really had profound impact for you. 

Charles Alexander  12:55

So here’s what I had to figure out the hard way, and it’s both for myself and for clients that I’ve coached, and I would get people pen to paper, do this during every minute of the day, and then you get more stuff done, and then we freed up time. And then folks would always fall off the wagon. They would, well, I felt like I needed to do this other thing, and I had to go back to check my email, and I had to hire another brand, and I couldn’t, it was baffling to me, because we wanted that free time so bad. And then it finally hit me so like, and I did this for myself. Like, I get out of shape. Once in a while I want to get back into shape, but if I don’t have a reason to get back into shape, it’s a never ending task. Or when I want to save some money, if that money doesn’t have a vision to it, I can never save the money. And it dawned on me one day that people were trying to save this time, but they don’t know what to do with it. So what you just said was a perfect example. Me and the kids painted on a Saturday. And I imagine when you’re painting, you’re painting watercolors. When I’m thinking of painting, we paint the house. So whatever the point is, you have to have an idea of what that’s supposed to look like. And until I solidified that for myself and some of my clients, people could not hang on to it so very in this past year, that’s one of the first things I do when I work with somebody, whether it’s in a workshop or one on one or just on the back porch, having a cocktail, having a conversation. I need to free up what you do, though, hold on, no, just sit on the beach. No, you wouldn’t. So the first thing that you have to do, that I have to do, is figure out two things how what would I want my week to look like? So if you got busy entrepreneurs listening, I know that sounds like a pipe dream, but a common answers I get all the time is like, people want to grind it Monday through Thursday, and a lot of times it’s early morning to early afternoon. Make sure you got plenty of time with the kids, whatever. And then Friday, maybe clean up a couple of tasks in the morning. But Friday through Sunday, I’m done. And if you can solidify that, and you think about that, and then the second thing is, what would you do with that free time? And I get a ton of, you know, it’s always family, friends, travel, because I think we think those are the right things to say. But, you know, get real personal with it. I want to, let’s say I want to paint, or let’s say there’s a specific book I want to read. I want to get back in the gym. I want to go hiking. Surprisingly, a large number of people here in Tennessee say hiking. I don’t think anybody goes hiking, but they like the idea of hiking. They want to buy the Timberlands and the flannel shirt, go to the State Park, whatever. But if you can solidify those two things, then everything else we can talk about has to fall into that. Because every time you say yes to something, you whether you like it or not, there’s no other way around it. You’re going to say no to at least one or two other things. There’s no if ands or buts about it can’t be proven any other way. So when I say yes to being on one more board or a committee or a client I didn’t want, or, God forbid, a pick your brain session, checking my email for the 40th time today, I have said no to painting, hanging out my family, taking my wife on a date. You’ve said no to one of those things there may be in a lot of cases. Well, now you’ve said no to sleep or going to the gym with things we need in order to function as human beings. So that so to answer your question, those are my journey and the client’s journey both. That’s like the first thing we skipped that we never think about.

Heather Pearce Campbell  16:08

All right, let’s pause for a moment and hear from today’s sponsor. Are you an entrepreneur who is on track to make a million or more in revenue this year in your business? If so, your business is likely facing a host of legal issues that are right for support. And if you are like so many of my clients at this level, you are likely tired of taking unnecessary risks and a DIY approach to legal support in your business. You’re ready to tackle the mess of legal documents, six legal gaps that you have. You want to take care of your IP, your clients, your business, and avoid unnecessary conflict and risk in the process. If this is you, and beyond just being an entrepreneur, you are a catalyst and are committed to your mission and your impact in the world. I invite you to get in touch. You could be a fit for my catalyst club, a small business legal support program that I designed for my high level clients. Just like you, you can find out more at legalwebsitewarrior.com. Just click on the Work with Me tab to learn more about the catalyst club and other ways that I support my clients, a fabulous group of world changing entrepreneurs, I might add, you’ve done the initial legwork in your business. And now you want to soar. And you know that you can only go as high and as far as your legal foundation lets you go. So get in touch today, hop over to legalwebsitewarrior.com, click on the Work with Me tab. And if you have any questions, get in touch through the Contact link on my site, I look forward to connecting it would be a joy to support you on your path.

Heather Pearce Campbell  17:51

You know, it sounds so simple like but it’s so profound. I remember having a conversation with an acquaintance some time ago. It’s been a few years, but he’s like, he went through an exercise where he had to get really serious about how much time he was putting into work. And he’s like, Why? Why am I doing this? Like, what is this all for? And then he’s like, I literally had to sit down and remind myself, What do I love doing more than work, right, right? And I think what was the purpose of doing this to begin with? Yes, that’s right. And I think it is just so easy for us to become kind of so all consumed with work and these schedules that take on a life of their own if we let them. Sure, it’s easy for us to get disassociated from our true values, and like, what we’re actually doing this for. And so I remember, after talking to him, being like, oh, I need to do that exercise. Like, what do I love doing more than work? And like, putting it on my fridge, right? So to remind yourself, like, I’m not going to work past 4pm today, or 5pm or whatever the cutoff time is right, and then my laptop gets closed because I developed a very bad habit in the pandemic, because my kids were around all day long. It was like bedtime. They’d go down. And then what did mom have to do, open the laptop and work at late at night, late into the night, to try to get caught up on client work and right? It was just brutal. I mean, the pandemic asked too much of all of us, but it it took me some time to unwind that habit, right?

Charles Alexander  19:31

Yeah, yeah. And so many people now will. They’ve adopted the hustle grind me and the business are one of the same and they bought into so much of their and don’t take me wrong, but people have bought in so much well, this is my calling. This is my why. This is my blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, I guess it could be, but you know, for a lot of us, I’m also a spouse. I’m a dad. Got friends. I got whatever your belief system is you really think you, and when I hear people like, Well, I’ve been put on this earth to be the best mortgage broker I could be to get people in the homes of their dreams. I get it, but look that that can’t be your. That’s not your. I mean, it’s what you do for a living. You’re happy. But let’s, back off calling every flipping thing a calling, because when we call it a calling, then we had the excuse to not ever have to pay attention to the things in life that actually matter. So we don’t have to unplug from the matrix, so to speak. I had somebody recently I was interviewing to try to see if they were a good fit for the 90 day, you know, four day work week program. They were not, well, Charles, they work 95 hours a week. Hey, no, you don’t well. Why do you do that? Well, I just love what to do. Then I can help you. Because if you’re going to live with that, and you’re telling me, you don’t ever see your husband, you don’t ever see your kids, some there’s a disconnect somewhere in there. And I know I’m off on a tangent, but the reason that we don’t unplug like that is because we’ve fallen into those excuses. But your original point of, what do I love more than work? If you can’t identify those, none of the rest of this matters, right?

Heather Pearce Campbell  21:03

Well, and I don’t actually think it was a tangent at all, because it very much is this conversation of, how do we balance both having purpose and a mission related to our work, but also that our work is not our entire identity, our entire self, our entire purpose for the day, right? And I think that’s a really important piece, especially in the the world that I’m guessing probably you work in, and that I work in, what there are a lot of what I call mission driven entrepreneurs. They’re service providers, they’re very much service oriented. They have big hearts. They have a big impact they want to make, and we cannot let that take over our lives. 

Charles Alexander  21:50

We have to have boundaries. In so many cases, people will tell me, if somebody told me this morning about a client that texted them last night at 9pm and I just stayed up thinking about it. Was just so worried. It just loved them so much like I hear you, but loving them that much, is like a smothering mother who whose kids can never leave the house. Because, you know, little Johnny still lives in the basement at 40 because she still chops up his pork chops for him. Don’t be that person. You’re not helping either one of you. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  22:15

No, no, I got just on a personal story yesterday. I got so mad for my sister. I was telling you before we went live a little bit about what’s going on for her. Her kiddo ended up in the ER yesterday, and then last night, and she’s in sales, and she’s phenomenal at what she does, and so at sales, but also a lot of the follow up nurturing, and she’s in, like, women’s health and skin care, and she works with a lot of vendors in that space, but she’s helping them build the back end of their business and their systems, just because she’s such a natural at it. And she had a live event that one of her clients was hosting where she had to show up and deliver product and all of this. Well, when your kid ends up needing emergency services, right? Of course, there’s no other choice that you can make. And she texted this particular client, I think, still got her all the supplies. She just couldn’t be there physically with her. And her client gave her an F bomb and some other words in return. And I was like, Nah, Ashley, like, can you please be done with that person as a client? And Ashley’s like, well, it’s awful. And this person was a mom. And I just when I hear stuff like that, I’m like let’s do a little forgiveness practice to get that rage out of our body. But let’s also have new boundaries around our clients and when we show up for them, and whether we continue to work with them, especially following a really clear message like that. So this issue of boundaries is a big one. Boundaries for ourselves, around our time, boundaries with our clients, and I think a lot of people, this is one of the biggest lessons that they have to learn.

Charles Alexander  24:05

I have a client that is a custom cabinetry maker, and she would tell stories about people that had insomnia, that were clients of hers, that would watch Chip and Joanna Gaines at 3am and then start blowing up her phone with ideas they had, and she felt the need to reply to them. Oh, my God, explained to her in terms of boundaries. And we all know what boundaries are, and we all claim to be great at it, but when it gets down to it, we have two things. A, we’re scared of losing a client, and then B, we like being needed. So we can feel very important when somebody has to call or text or email, they need me, so I’ve got to be there right away. But look in terms of boundaries. The way I explained it to her is, if I went to Dunkin Donuts at midnight, they’re gonna be closed, and I’m not gonna throw a fit because they’re closed. That’s when they’re closed. Well, my client feed me, okay. Well, a brown box shows up on my front porch every freaking day, and Jeff Bezos has delivered 0% of them. That’s an Amazon reference for those of you that don’t. I am keeping them in business personally for you, look for you. Your clients need you. They want you, but they will respect the fact that you put up boundaries. And if they don’t, they’re like this jack wagon that did that, which makes me want to ask who they are and where they live, but whatever, if it’s like that person, good. If I’ve got to Uber for the next two weeks to make up for losing that person, great, because I needed them out of my life. They’re going to make me live a shorter life having that individual around. Now, granted what you just said, I tell people that’s the exception, not the rule. Most of the you tell a client I’m available during these hours. And you can even book me here on Calendly, or whatever it is to talk. They respect that the folks they don’t respect, and it’s your own fault that I say. It’s your own fault. When we’re available 24/7, and we say, we give them a calendar link, and we say it’s got all available times, they devalue what we do immediately, because, well, you must not be that busy or available all the time, and then that trains them to contact us non stop every time they have a fleeting thought through their head. It’s a vicious cycle. I mean, if you have boundaries with your children, you don’t let your Well, most of us don’t let children into the bedroom past a certain hour or into the bathroom where I am ever and I’ve got boundaries with my dad or with my mother on that she violates them quite a bit. Bless her, sweetheart. But you set up those boundaries, do it.

Speaker 1  24:28

We’re so thankful for those people teaching us our boundaries right? And boundaries evolve. Here’s the thing is that even though you might set up new boundaries and feel good about that for a while, eventually you’re probably getting to a new level of boundary, because maybe, right, maybe you want to work even less. Maybe your kid becomes like a phenom in sports, and you need to start traveling with them like whatever. And so it’s an ongoing and evolving conversation, but it’s such an important one. What else do you see in that client journey where people are starting to figure this out? They’re really working towards, let’s just call it that four day work week. They don’t want to be working evenings. They don’t want to be putting kids to bed and then busting out the work. How do you help them assess what to take out of their like the the slimming down, because that, I think, is hard for people. 

Charles Alexander  27:22

So before we get to that point, I give them a couple of other tasks they have to before, and you’re right, there is a slimming down process, but the first couple of things they have to do is, whether it’s with me or anybody else, they got to get in some kind of structure, somebody else who’s in their life that provides some sense of accountability. Because every time we get to a task that’s important but we don’t want to do, we can just claim busy, and we say the dumbest things to each other. Well, Heather, we’ve been, well, I just been so busy, and we wear like this ridiculous badge of honor, and we’re so proud of ourselves. And it’s the equivalent of the examples I made a little while ago about fitness or money. I couldn’t imagine somebody coming to me, Well, how you been dollars and cents was, well, I’m just so broke. That’s saying the same thing. So find other people that don’t think or walk or talk or believe that same message didn’t have to be 1000 of them. But you know, that’s why I started doing groups, or find other people in your life, in the chamber, in your house, in your church or whatever that kind of buy into that. And then the second thing you got to find your priorities. And there’s dozens of books and programs about your values and belief system. I’m talking about the things that you’re going to do in your business that matter so much, it kind of makes everything else fall into place actual activities. So I’ve made the mistake before of asking people their priorities, and they’ll say things like, Well, mine is, it’s integrity. Well, it’s customer service. So that’s great, but I can’t put integrity on my calendar from nine to four on this Friday because it’s not an active task. So what are the four or five things, three or four things that you’re going to do in your business that make everything else fall into place? I always use the analogy. Have you ever seen the mason jar trick where somebody will, you know, they’ll have stones, pebbles and sand. Well, what order do we put them in? I’m gonna go ahead and give you the cheat code. You put the stones in first, those three or four stones, then you pour the pebbles in, and then the sand goes in last, and it all fits in the mason jar. The point being, those stones are your three or four priorities that only you can do, that you do really well that makes everything else fall into place, and the pebbles and the sand, well, that’s the other stuff that you just have to do in order to make the business fly. So for an attorney, let’s say, you know, it, it might, even if they don’t like this, but it might still be prospecting, you know, there still might. Maybe I need to be doing some webinars. Maybe I should be doing a podcast, and so many people will hide, but I’m just going to do great work. I’m like, great that’s awesome. But great work doesn’t always get you a ton of referrals, because clients are busy doing their own thing.

Heather Pearce Campbell  29:54

That’s right, well, and regardless where you fit in the service provider world. And you know, I’ve been in it now for 22-23 years, I really think there is no point that you, you get to where you don’t have to do that if you’re running your own business, right? This is the trade off. I was having a conversation with it about this exact thing, with a friend just the other day, like, if you’re in business for yourself, the upside is, I get to control my own schedule. I’ve got kids. I needed to design it that way. And the downside is there is just no doubt, there’s a certain amount of hustling that happens. Certainly you get amazing referrals, and you always have to be planting those seeds.

Charles Alexander  30:41

That’s what you trade it off for. So many people want the results of an employer, but still have the employee mindset, like I don’t. I shouldn’t have to do that. No, if you want to be an employee, you sure shouldn’t, but if you want to make your own dollars, that’s kind of part. That’s what you signed up for. And that’s what I tell folks, and I get so many people, once you get to a certain level of where you’ve grown the team, and maybe it’s somebody else’s in charge of sales and marketing, maybe your job shifts at that point, and the priorities are finding the right team members and giving them the right training and culture. That’s a different mindset at that point. But if you can find those three or four things that, if I do really well, that make everything else fall into place, boom. Then that’s when we can start looking at all the other things that we have to do. So here’s one of the things that I learned during and I won’t bring it up again, but during the pandemic, I found out I’m doing a terrible job of identifying the things that are priorities that I want to eliminate, batch and delegate, because I don’t really know what I’m doing all day. I’ve got a calendar, and I look at my calendar and I think I didn’t do anything really on that calendar like I thought. So I had to the ugliest work. And this is, I don’t have a cheat code for this yet. God, I can’t wait till it comes. I’m hoping AI just magically will do it for me. But we have to know what we’re doing every moment of every day for at least, let’s say, a week or two I’ve got. When we get done here, I’ll tell your listeners where they can find a spreadsheet that I put together.

Heather Pearce Campbell  32:10

Oh, right, for tracking, just to observe, yes.

Charles Alexander  32:13

And I’m talking about it. It’s tried and true. I’ve tested it with people. It works. It’s not fun, but it works. And there’s other tools you can use clock if I and toggle but so many people still are we think that there’s some magic tool that will just tell us at the end of the day what all the stuff we did. And it’s like we’re not quite there yet. You You have to write it down somehow.

Heather Pearce Campbell  32:33

Well, and even if you just literally have a pad of paper that you take with you, and every 20 or 30 minutes, you just jot down a note about how you spent is what I’m doing? Yeah, that’s right, and this is, I agree with you. There’s no because it’s a little bit like being a scientist in regards to your time, which is the same thing you have to do. Let’s pretend you’re encountering a health problem. You have to become a scientist about what am I putting into my body? How am I sleeping? What’s the weather like? Literally, like, what are all the contributing factors that could be causing this symptom, right? Same with your time without the power of observation, where are you starting from? You cannot make valid decisions. So this part, it’s like, buckle down, drink a little extra coffee. Whatever you need to do, to observe. What are you doing? Where’s your time going?

Charles Alexander  33:24

And once you do that. And the reason I love a spreadsheet, it’s a Google sheet, which is so easy to use, then you can tally it at the end of the week, you can sort it, and you say, and this is where I get people that fall off with, well, it says I was only on email for about an hour each day, and well, if I go look in your browser, it might not be right.

Heather Pearce Campbell  33:44

So that your phone is going to give you a report, right? 

Charles Alexander  33:48

Hey, that’s the second way to do it, and I am glad you brought that up. So look, you track what you’re doing, and then to fill in the gaps, because we’re tracking it. So we kind of, we, you know, we forget, or we fudge, because we’re so embarrassed to type out what we’re doing. But your phone, I’ve got an iPhone. You’ve got an iPhone, yep. Look, folks, I’m telling you right now, if you go to settings and then screen time, I don’t ever want to hear anything about kids these days. Kids these days, I know they’re on the phones way too much. I got three of them. I’ve got I override and a mortgage payment every month for all the stuff we have to do, but Gen Xers, boomers, four and a half hours, five hours a day. It’s ridiculous. And there’s not that much good stuff in there. There’s about hours worth, really. That’s about all it takes, right?

Heather Pearce Campbell  34:34

And the only time that amount of time on my phone ever makes sense is if I’m traveling and I still have to work, or, like, I’m at a Kids event where I don’t have to be paying attention and I’m answering like, whatever, right? So there are certain days where that’s okay, you’re going to meet those thresholds, and there’s a reason for it, but mostly that is not where should we should be putting your eyeballs? 

Charles Alexander  34:56

The biggest thing on mine right now is the camera phone photos and maps primarily because of my kids. You know, they’re playing a sport, or they’re dancing or they’re singing, I’m recording it, and then we go back and watch it, instead of enjoying it live, which is a whole nother podcast, I’m sure. And then the maps. How do I get to all these weird places that we’re suddenly scheduled to go and but we get distracted, and we pick up our phone on average, 144 times a day. Now I’ve already told you that it takes us 25 minutes to return to the same level of focus, and if you’re interrupting yourself, 144 times a day means you are never in focus. And if you’re not in focus, you’re probably listening to this podcast, hopefully not, not like I need to do some of this stuff.

Heather Pearce Campbell  35:39

Yeah, and I’m gonna insert really quick on that 144 times a day, because there’s a lot of people that are going to be like, No, that you like. That can’t possibly be true for me, I’m not that bad. Oh no. Oh yeah. All you need to do to realize it is take a couple days away from your phone, do the digital you know, Shabbat, and stop Friday and go all the way to Saturday or Sunday, if you can, and then start the week and notice how you actually don’t want to get on your phone. It’s like you have your mind back, your presence back. And I remember realizing after I started the digital Shabbat practice, like, oh my gosh, the number of times, instinctually, once you have a phone back in your hand, that you just want to go check something, check that like you don’t catch yourself until you, like, spent time away from it and realize how much it takes up. 

Charles Alexander  36:31

That’s right. So your original question, well, what do we know to eliminate? Get the figure out what you’re doing first. Then once you figure out what what you’re doing, you know, you find out your three or four priorities. Those are the things we focus on, and the rest of it. You got to batch it, automate it, delegate it, or what you just said, my favorite part, quit doing some stuff. And in people always say, well, what should I quit doing? You know, there’s a series of questions you can ask yourself. You know, does this help my business? Does this move the needle? Does this have this major, not intrinsic value? Major intrinsic value. The reason I say that is because we can rationalize every single thing we do. It could pay off later. Okay, for example, people are hit up, and you stop me if I start mansplaining here in the wind and minute. But female entrepreneurs are every kind of group, organization, chamber. They get asked immediately, for some reason, to, you know, join this program and be admin and help.

Heather Pearce Campbell  37:28

Do this, along with the PTSA and the, you know, every other thing at school.

Charles Alexander  37:34

And I’ve talked to my wife homes, her own business bookkeeping stuff, and she’ll say, I became the treasurer at PTF, like, Babe, we just thought we can’t do this. Then she explains to me about something called mom guilt, and I Googled it, and it apparently is real dumb. Dad’s like me. We don’t have it. We just trot around and like cavemen, and we say, you know, we’ll say no to some stuff, unless it’s golf, and then suddenly we have to go. But I’m telling you, there’s a lot of things you’re committed to that it’s outlived its value. You only did it out of guilt if, in you’ve got this whole scenario, if I say no, well then Heather’s going to talk about me, and then I’m going to feel bad, and then I’m going to tell her this, look, take an experiment. Go through chop. Phone time down, chop. You know, internet research down, which is another big wait time suck that we get into if you so I’ve gotten into the habit now if I have questions, I will scribble them down literally on a piece of paper, and at the end of the day, if I still want to know where OJ Simpson’s white Bronco is, I’ll go Google it, instead of interrupting the middle of my day to find out it’s in a museum in Knoxville. I didn’t need to know that. Now I’m off track again. So eliminate the internet research, eliminate the news. And I have no idea when we’re airing with this thing. We’re getting close to a pivotal point. Again, it’s not important that you know every detail. If you’ve already made up your mind about what the future great, you don’t need to post about it. You’re not changing anybody’s mind. You don’t need to do internet research to see if golden doodles are being eaten in somewhere Springfield. It’s not important you it’s probably you’re okay. It you’re fine. Just let some of these things go. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  39:09

And again, if you think that you won’t be fine, test it. I know so many people who kind of mid to post pandemic, and I was one of them so burnt out, so cortisol jacked, right? Like adrenaline and cortisol all over the place, misbehaving where I literally had to be, like, I can’t do news. I can’t even do, like, 10 seconds of news.

Charles Alexander  39:33

It’s not the news anymore. Anyways, Walter Cronkite is not walking through that door. That is nothing but hijacking every it is clickbait.

Heather Pearce Campbell  39:41

It’s clickbait all even the main media, you know, news like, there’s so much just done for clickbait, for time, for for your time and attention. So, yeah, that’s huge. I love that news tip. Take it out.

Charles Alexander  39:55

And you said it right. Experiment for one week. I just had finished up a 90 day rooms. Look, pick out three things. You don’t have to do it forever. Try it for a week. Just see, and oh my gosh, I could see when they popped on the next week. It’s like everybody had reverse age. They were younger and happier. And just, it was great.

Heather Pearce Campbell  40:14

Oh, it’s so good. And that whole testing, like testing something, you should be in the habit of doing that anyways, like, whether it’s once a month, maybe you try green smoothies, maybe you quit the news, or once a quarter, like, because often, one little thing gets you this boost of momentum you never knew was going to be there for you, right, just by running an experiment. So anyways, okay, so eliminate news, eliminate internet research, what are you finding also works for people. 

Charles Alexander  40:43

So the task that you have to keep, and there’s some things that you can eliminate that aren’t the priority, but you know, might still be some of the client work that you’re doing, or some of the content you still need to create. So you got decisions to make at that point. I’m gonna batch some of them, and I’m gonna automate and I’m going to delegate some of them. Batching being a big task, especially if you’re a solopreneur and you’re not quite comfortable with delegation yet, or you don’t have the money to delegate batching, meaning I’m going to do like tasks together during the periods of time when I had the best energy for them. Most of us, not everybody. Most of us, more of our energies in the morning and those creative, thoughtful tasks that I want to do all together can be more in the morning, and the less, you know, fun things, the administrative things, could possibly be pushed into the afternoon. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  41:30

Catching up on email or doing some of that stuff, that just takes a little time. 

Charles Alexander  41:36

Do them at the same time. We like to sprinkle them out throughout the week so we can add variety. And all we’re doing is, what you said earlier, is we’re doing this task switching, which is killing us, and we’re not getting things done. So I do it all the way down to days like today. Today I am on I woke up at 730 this morning. I was teaching a one hour workshop on this exact topic that we are having. I was in my own mastermind group. I just had a podcast host. Come on. I am guesting with you. I have a coaching client. Come on. These are batch like tasks. Yesterday was admin day, head down, ear buds in, and a little weird tip for anybody, don’t listen to like the Serial podcast while you’re trying to work. If you got earbuds in, I swear one thing I do is listen to the same one song over and over and over, and you can just get laser focused.

Heather Pearce Campbell  42:30

Or get one of like the binaural beats, right that actually help with your focus. Like one that I’m using right now is called brain waves. Let me see, yeah, brain waves. And it’s awesome. And it literally has, 10, 20, 30 minute tracks. And so if you’re also into something like the, what is that one timer? It’s like the 20 minute timer, 26 Commodore. Yeah, exactly. Into something like that. Choose a soundtrack that fits with that break schedule. It’s amazing how you can shift your ability to focus.

Charles Alexander  43:05

So the idea is batching those light tasks together. Think of it like when you clean a house, you don’t go clean a toilet, make up a bed and then load the dishwasher. You do all the things at once and then the rest. You want to start thinking about delegating. And the rule of thumb I have for delegation is that if somebody else can do what you’re doing for 20% of what your hourly rate is, and they can do it just 80% as well, that’s something you should do 100% of the time.

Heather Pearce Campbell  43:37

No, I love that. And then the eliminate it. Do you have people struggling with, like, what to eliminate, or once they’re digging into these other things, what are the I know you already went through news, internet, research, any other obvious ones? Probably depends.

Charles Alexander  43:52

Yeah, and I keep coming back to this, and I mentioned this earlier, if you’re on boards or committees that even pick your brain sessions, which I am not anti pick your brain session. Other people need help. But you know what I mean? Like the person you just met on LinkedIn that suddenly wants to have a virtual coffee so they can bomb it all over you for 45 minutes about a new insurance product. Don’t even reply. A ton of those little things like that. But other things to eliminate checking email first thing in the morning. Don’t do that. Check email.

Heather Pearce Campbell  44:21

And don’t do it at night. Don’t do it before bed. Check it.

Charles Alexander  44:24

Check it right after lunch, not even before, right after lunch, and then right before. You shut down for the day. However, you do that, check it twice a day. And I do, and I get people to fight me on this. You know, somebody that’s got a large insurance agency, Charles, I’ve got 200 emails on there, you do, and they require attention, but at some point, that’s where the delegation comes in. Have somebody else that can start filtering these things by that’s right categories.

Heather Pearce Campbell  44:48

That is what my admin does, like you respond to as many as you can handle, and the ones that I need, you flag. Go find the flags.

Charles Alexander  44:56

And then, you know, unsubscribe from some emails. And eliminate work time distractions. Put your phone in silence mode. Put a sign on your door. It says office hours available at whatever other point, and again, it goes back to boundaries. But when you start doing that, holy cow, when people learn to say no, they go, they love it, you know, they they go wild with it, and you’re allowed to do.

Heather Pearce Campbell  45:21

No, right? It is the power of a good clear. No. Is life changing. It’s really true. I agree. Oh, I love it so much. And you know, the thing is, like, it’s really easy to fall out of these systems when we reach a point in life where we’re overwhelmed, we feel like we need to play catch up. Maybe you’ve been sick for a few weeks. Like I was totally out of the office for a couple weeks, and sure, August we all got COVID, right? Getting my family through that, and remembering to come back to some of these basic principles, I think, is just so important. What do you what do you love most about your work? What is it that keeps you going in supporting your clients?

Charles Alexander  46:02

Well, the simple thing, especially when we’re talking about this topic, is that people are I know it’s going to sound over the top, but people start to get their life back a little bit. I just did like a lunch lunch and learn somewhere, and I had one of my clients was there, thank God. And she just went on and on and on about all the things she’s gotten back and things she’s been able to do, and how much happier she is, and sit bags. Yeah, but that, of course, that’s it. I mean, people, people that have mission driven then they’re helping everybody else but themselves. When they figure out, they can start helping themselves, life is good.

Heather Pearce Campbell  46:34

Oh, it’s so good, no. And that, you know, unless you’ve gotten to the point where you feel like you’ve lost your life. You’ve lost control of your schedule in that very intentional way, you know, getting it back just is, like the most powerful thing. And I think that people go through phases where they cycle through that stuff. Charles, where can people find you? For folks that are like, You know what? This has been fun. I want to go check out this Charles’ guide. Find out, because I know you’ve got group programs that you’re running, you’ve got one coming up that you’re going to launch that is like kind of a light version of what you do for many of your clients.

Charles Alexander  47:13

Easy place to find me. Go to your charlesalexander.com super easy, tons of resources on there, if you’ll scroll down to the footer, I’ve got a really neat tool kit that’s got that spreadsheet, and it’s got a list of AI, curated AI things that you should be doing. It’s got a quick start guide to kind of jump starting, freeing up some of your time. But as you said, I’ve got an intensive that I’ve done a couple times now. It’s a 90-day program for entrepreneurs, you know, to help them create a four day work week. And I’ve had a lot of people tell me, Charles, I love everything you’re doing. Ooh, that’s too intense. Do you have a lighter version? So I’m cranking up a group coaching program so you can dip your toes in the water. We can have conversations like this, be around like minded people that give you the structure you need. And if you want to find me on the socials, I’m on LinkedIn, can’t miss me. Charles Alexander, and I’m the bald dude with a beard.

Heather Pearce Campbell  48:10

I love it. Well, and as a reminder, we will pop all these links into the show notes page, which you can always find at legal websitewarrior.com/podcast, find Charles’s episode. I love that, and I’m gonna go check out your research resources myself, Charles. So I already took the link down. You know, I know there’s so much more that you do that we could have talked about. You know, a lot of this is like setting up the foundation, right? And it’s just so important. So I love this conversation. I’m so grateful that people get to hear from you and get to click over and join you in your world. So again, pop over and visit legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast, find Charles’s episode, and you’ll get all the notes and the links over to his socials. Charles, what would you like people to go do right now? What? What is the first like? Do it yourself, step that they can take.

Charles Alexander  49:07

The easiest one, and it’s also the first one. Just write down what do I want my week to look like? And then what do I want to do with my free time? If you do that, you’ll get motivated to do the rest. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  49:19

Love that. All right. Well, that’s awesome. You guys heard it. You’ve got a super easy, very doable step to go do in a couple minutes. What do you want your week to look like? And what do you want to do with all that free time you’re about to create? Charles, I appreciate you. I’m so grateful that our paths crossed. Have an amazing week, and I look forward to some point having a round two conversation back on the podcast. Awesome. All right, thank you.

Charles Alexander  49:45

Bye.

GGGB Outro  49:47

Thank you for joining us today on the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast. We hope that we’ve added a little fuel to your tank, some coffee to your cup and pep in your step to keep you moving forward in your own great adventures. For key takeaways, links to any resources mentioned in today’s show and more, see the show notes which can be found at www.legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoyed today’s conversation, please give us some stars and a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast so others will find us too. Keep up the great work you are doing in the world and we’ll see you next week.