#10 the no excuses! episode

Podcast – The No Excuses! Episode Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

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Andrew McCauley: Hello everybody, this is Andrew McCauley with episode no. 10 of

our podcast and, of course, as always we have the lovely Heather Porter. Hello,

Heather!

Heather Porter: Hello Andrew! Hello everybody! Welcome, welcome back and we

thought this would be a really fun time since we are on episode no. 10 and we have

cut it down to few episodes already. We are now going to cover, what are we calling

this one, the „no excuse‟ episode.

Andrew McCauley: „No excuse‟ episode. We have no excuses about anything and

neither should you.

Heather Porter: They say that people that grow their businesses are good at

growing their business, get ahead in life, get what they want and build towards

whatever they want in their dreams, they all share something in common and that is

they don‟t justify, nor make excuses. They take full responsibility for they are doing

and what they are going in their life. So, to illustrate that, right now as we record

this, I am sitting in the passenger seat, I have a laptop on my lap, Andrew is next to

me driving the car, he has just picked me up from the airport and we are in Melbourne

and I am here from Sydney because we will be doing a four-day business meeting and

we are recording a podcast „No Excuses‟ from the car. And why are doing that?

Andrew McCauley: Well, we hear a lot of people talking about “I don‟t have time to

do this” and “I don‟t have time to do that” and “this takes too much time for me to

finish that and finish this”. So, I thought “Well, you know what, we are going to be in

peak-hour traffic”; it‟s peak hour in Melbourne, afternoon traffic, it‟s raining, it‟s cold

in Melbourne, nothing worse than sitting in traffic. We have got a lot to talk about but

I thought “Why don‟t we do a podcast to show people that we can do this sort of stuff

even while we are stuck in traffic.” We hear people listening to radio or listening to

podcast and I thought “Why don‟t we do one?”

http://autopilotyourbusiness.com/podcasts/10-the-no-excuses-episode/

http://www.autopilotyourbusiness.com/








Heather Porter: And, Andrew, just the other day I was having a Facebook

conversation with a group of people and they were asking our podcasts and they are

saying “Oh, look, I don‟t have time, it‟s too hard” and they started making the excuses

“I have always wanted to but…” and I just said “Look…”

Andrew McCauley: One of the other things that people say is “I don‟t have the tools

to do a podcast. So, I am still waiting for my microphone” or “I am waiting for my

special soundproof office in my next house” sort of thing. You may hear the rain on

the car, you may hear the beeps going through the free way e-Tag thing going on. It

doesn‟t matter. It‟s part of our podcast; we are happy to have it in there.

Let me talk about stuff today. Make sure you think about how you can use the time

you have got because we have all got 24 hours a day and that‟s all we have got –

even the rich people don‟t have more than us – how can you use that time to get the

things that you want to get done in your busy schedule. So, that‟s what this is about.

Heather Porter: It is and there is a favorite, favorite quote of mine, I love it and it

goes like this – “How can you tell something‟s a priority? It‟s done.”

Andrew McCauley: I love it.

Heather Porter: So, basically on that note, here we sit with a laptop, we don‟t have

any fancy microphones, we have a free program called audacity and we are just

literally talking into the microphone that comes with the computer. So…

Andrew McCauley: Nothing special; not even a USB headset on our heads. It‟s just

raw, straight into the computer. We are using a MacBook Pro. It‟s picking us up

pretty clearly. I don‟t think you can hear the rain which is a good thing as I can

certainly see it.








Heather Porter: No, no, it‟s crazy. Since we have now been in business, I suppose,

for about a year and a half almost, at least with this agency that we are doing

together, we have worked with a lot of clients. I would say like nearing a hundred if

we think about everybody who worked with every aspect of what we have done.

There is something at least I think and I know you agree that there are a few key

traits or characteristics that the business owners, they get ahead also; and today, we

are going to actually discuss three of them. We found three themes that all of our

most successful clients have used in their business and in their lives. So, that‟s what

we want to cover today.

Andrew McCauley: Great, I am looking forward to it.

Heather Porter: Alright.

Andrew McCauley: Just for those people that are concerned, I have both hands on

the wheel, watching the road. I am not looking at the computer and I need to attend

this job.

Heather Porter: And speaking of which, here is point no. 1, Andrew. Alright, so

what we have found is that…

Andrew McCauley: I didn‟t mean that.

Heather Porter: It‟s quite funny, good transition there. So, what we have found

with people that get ahead in their lives and in their business is that if you don‟t like

something and if you are not good at it, don‟t pretend that you like or that you are

good at it. Outsource it; get somebody else to do it for you that‟s either prequalified

or trained to do that or good at it or loves it.








Andrew McCauley: Yeah, one of the things that I would like to say is strengthen

your strengths and outsource your weaknesses. Don‟t try and strengthen your

weaknesses because you will spend all your time, wasting your time doing that sort of

stuff and often when we are talking about outsourcing and people ask “what should I

outsource? What sort of things should I outsource?”, get rid of the stuff you hate and

I think we spoke about this in one of our previous podcasts about outsourcing itself. I

hate things like graphics, I can‟t do them. I mean, I can do them but it will take me

forever. I hate writing articles. I would rather outsource that sort of stuff so that I

can go and do the things I like doing; that‟s the fun things that really juice me up.

Heather Porter: And you know what, a good point about outsourcing is, well, I know

that a lot of people get stuck in that whole concept of outsourcing because they don‟t

really actually understand what it is and also they think “Oh god! How am I going to

find somebody? How do I interview them? How do I train them? Do I have to give

them systems or do I have to give them tools? How does that work?” The smart

businesses that we worked with, they look for somebody that‟s pre-trained,

prequalified, has the results on the table and they don‟t have to worry about the

training or the systems or anything; they literally just ring them into their business

and they are ready to go. It‟s almost like out of the box, really.

Andrew McCauley: So, Heather, what‟s the best way to find these sort of people? I

mean, there is not a lot of places out there that will have pre-trained people.

Heather Porter: No.

Andrew McCauley: And one of the biggest misconceptions before you answer my

question is the fact that we hear about these 3 dollar an hour outsourcing or 5 dollar

an hour outsourcing people from India or Philippines and that‟s really cool, I will go

and get someone to do that and the biggest problem is that many people think that

they can go and find a 5 dollar an hour outsourcer which will assist in the VA who will

do everything you want them to do and be trained in them fully. Now, this is just not

going to happen because there is nobody who knows everything about internet

marketing or marketing for your business on the internet and that‟s one of the things

that people think “Well, if I spend 5 dollars an hour on a VA that can do this, this, this,








this, this and this”, that‟s not going to happen. You may need a couple of different

Vas with different skill sets.

Heather Porter: Yeah. And, look, you can find good people like that but you have to

be willing to spend quite a bit of time and actually have quite a bit of knowledge in the

exact thing that you want them to do for you because you are going to have to train

them.

Andrew McCauley: That‟s a really good point too. I don‟t even know if we have got

time to enter that kind of question.

Heather Porter: Yeah, you have. No, you haven‟t actually, Andrew. Actually, you

go first and then I have another point.

Andrew McCauley: Okay. So, my point is if you don‟t know what you don‟t know,

then you can‟t ask for that sort of stuff. So, one of the things that we teach newbies

is we need to teach them what is out there so that then once they understand what is

out there, then they can go and get it outsourced. They need to have done that item

one or two times just that they know a) what it is and b) how long does it take

someone to do that because let‟s face it, outsourcers out there, they can be cunning

sort of people and they might think, well, if you don‟t know how long it takes to go

and socially bookmark a URL to 40 sites, they might take advantage of that.

Heather Porter: Exactly. And another thing too is I am going to flip that on its head

as well. I mean, a lot of people think outsourcing and they automatically think elance,

oDesk and these popular websites that exist. There is a whole side of outsourcing like

you can go and get virtual IT team, you can get like what we do in online internet

marketing or digital agency. So, you can look for companies that actually have teams

of people pre-trained. So, when we say „outsourcing‟, don‟t necessarily think I have to

go to India or oDesk or something like that. You can actually find businesses that

have a specialty or specialized in certain areas.








Andrew McCauley: Totally. We have got an outsourcing team as part of what we

are offering and we have things like article writers. One of the things that was

important for me was to make sure that I had articles that were written English

speaking people as their first language. I am not a big fan of some of these English as

Second Language articles because you can quickly spot one of those articles and I

didn‟t want that to be ruining my reputation. So, we went and made sure we have got

people on our team from the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Canada so we

have native English speaking people that can write article the way we want them to

sound.

Heather Porter: They love writing, they love researching as well.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. And that‟s part of what we had to because that‟s a

request that we had not only from me but from a lot of our customers a well. So,

there are teams out there who are not just solely from the Philippines and India but

there are teams out there who are very cheap, very cost effective particularly if you

don‟t like doing that sort of article.

Heather Porter: Another point too about outsourcing is like there is a site that I

love, we used to call „Rabbit‟, isn‟t it?

Andrew McCauley: Rabbit.

Heather Porter: Yeah, Rabbit, http://www.taskrabbit.com I think. It‟s in the states,

currently in the bay area of San Francisco and California and they specialize in

outsourcing for errands. I mean, there are these companies all over the world. So,

you can literally have somebody that comes cleans your house and goes and shops for

you and gets groceries and things like that. What is that? – Mr. Handyman or Hire…



http://www.taskrabbit.com/






Andrew McCauley: Hire A Hubby.

Heather Porter: Hire A Hubby here in Australia – you can hire a guy that come in to

your house and fixes things that are broken in your house.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. I mean, that‟s why I am fond of outsourcing. I hate

doing gardening. I was at my parents‟ place and my dad was cutting the grass and so

I am like “I don‟t do this, I hate it.” I said I would rather get someone to do it. So, I

did get somebody to do it. I enjoy the grass when I am on it but I don‟t want to be

spending my time cutting it because I have better things to do. So, I outsource that

sort of stuff. Now, yes, that costs money but then you have got to weigh up; you got

to weigh up what‟s more important – the time that you take to cut the grass or the

money that you spend so you have got that valuable time for whatever you want to

do.

Heather Porter: Your family…

Andrew McCauley: Family, things that I do…

Heather Porter: Things that you do want to do. Life‟s short, we all know that. So,

why sit around and waste your time and actually this is kind of a good segway into the

next point. I am thinking of the 80-20 rule right about now.

Andrew McCauley: Okay. What‟s the 80-20 rule? 80-20 rule, what is it? Give us a

rundown.

Heather Porter: Okay. My way of describing it is basically a lot of us will spin our

wheels on 80% of things we do in our day, constantly focusing on 80% of things…

80% of our time is spend on things that don‟t get results, isn‟t it?








Andrew McCauley: Yeah. I think it‟s Pareto Principle it‟s called and 80% of the

results you get comes from 20% of your efforts. So, you want to concentrate on

doing the things that can get you best results.

Heather Porter: And, I guess, this brings us to the second point – the thing that we

have noticed that a lot of our successful clients do and just people that we hang

around with that really are constantly improving their businesses and their lifestyles,

they focus on systems, getting better systems. And don‟t let us scare you when we

say systems like as in software and crazy stuff like that. We are talking more of a big

picture about systems.

Andrew McCauley: Just things to get organized and get things done in your

business. You just said something now that I hadn‟t thought and talking about the

80-20 rule and the people we hang out with. We have changed the sort of people that

we have hung out within the last three or four years and the people that we are

hanging out with – don‟t get us wrong because people we used to hang out with are

still friends – but the time now that we spend with other people and these are people

that have even sometimes got a grander vision that ours that can bring us up to the

next level we want to go. You have to think about who do you spend 80% of your

time with because even that can be a great little piece of information for your business

– are you spending the right time with the right people who are brining you up or you

are spending too much time with the people who are going to bring you down and cut

you down.

Heather Porter: Yeah, there is a lot of successful people like Tony Robbins, namely

one of them, that says that you are collective average of the people that you spend

your most time with.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah and I think he even goes further. I think he talks about

not only that but also you are worth about the average amount of the people you are

hanging out with too.








Heather Porter: That‟s right.

Andrew McCauley: So, if your friends are making 50 grand a year each, then you

are likely to be making about the same sort of money.

Heather Porter: Exactly. And the reason why… I mean, it‟s pretty much common

sense – people you hang around with, you sort of exhibit the same sort of priorities

and characteristics and you like to do the same things but often times the most

powerful thing is that you make excuses for each other as well. Like, for instance, if

you are hanging out with a certain amount of friends or a certain level of friends and

you say “Oh, look, l just can‟t get out of bed. I want to sleep in that extra hour” and

they go “Oh, that‟s okay. I understand because we are also busy.” You don‟t really

want somebody at that level as you start to play high level you like. If you want

somebody that says “But this is how I get out of bed in the morning and you should

try that” and they come from a different angle.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah it‟s funny you say that because I had recently taken on a

fitness campaign, again, my 57th one this year… no, but I have got some friends who

have been on internet marketing, they are just really big figures as far as health

products and fitness products go in the internet space but they also live it; they are

always training and they are all pretty fit and recently, three of us all got together as

an accountability team and every day… I mean, one lives in Michigan, one lives in

California, and me and we have an accountability through Skype. Every day we have

to write down what sort of exercise program we did for that that and that‟s holding me

accountable to a bigger level because other friends who aren‟t into fitness wouldn‟t

care if I did my exercise that day or not. They would probably say “Oh, you should

just sleep in.” That‟s that result that I don‟t want. So, I had to change my mindset

and hang out with the people that are going to hold me accountable. So, now I have

got this accountability team on Skype. So, it doesn‟t matter where we are or even like

I am currently in Melbourne, at times we are completely opposite ends of the clock

right now but the little accountability on Skype gives me motivation every day to think

“Wow! I am going to get every into…”








Heather Porter: And Skype is a good point. Think of it like this – when you are

looking at having better systems, you want to have systems that allow you to take

action. So, if you think of it from a commonality across the board of “What systems

do I have or can I put in place to help me take more action in my life to get what I

want?” That brings you on the right track. So, one of those, for instance, might be

de-cluttering your workspace.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. Okay, let‟s start with de-cluttering. What are some ways

to de-clutter? How do you even know that you have got a cluttered workspace?

Heather Porter: See, for me, a good example of that since I am so online and digital

nowadays, a cluttered workspace for me is actually cluttered inbox of e-mails because

that‟s constantly where I am living and a couple of points on that. I am working to

get better at not living on my e-mails and having them control me but also…

Andrew McCauley: That‟s a big point though.

Heather Porter: Yeah.

Andrew McCauley: That‟s only people have the issue like… I was reading a report

recently about people are on their e-mails now even to the point where Saturday

nights or Sunday, Sunday afternoons, whether they are in the office or not because e-

mail is now so versatile – It‟s on your mobile phone, it‟s on your iPads, it‟s on your

laptop – It‟s everywhere you go and your e-mail‟s there and people just want to

check, just want to see if someone wrote in to me messages. So, people are checking

now more than they ever were. There is no real weekend time.

Heather Porter: And e-mails are known to actually break your focus and your

concentration as well and it happens to me all the time. If I am not watching what I

am doing, I will be working on something, I will be doing a new project or writing

content or whatever we are doing or working or working with a client and then an e-








mail pops in and I drop everything, it‟s so stupid, I am so unconscious that I

completely drop it…

Andrew McCauley: And I know it‟s mine, that‟s okay.

Heather Porter: Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly or when you write in your comments.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, tell me do you have pop-ups so as soon

as an e-mail comes in something pops up and says “new e-mail”?

Heather Porter: I don‟t anymore and I turned off my sounds so I can‟t hear when

they come in. So, I have done a couple of things. I don‟t get alert with sound and I

also have set rules like big part of what I do is copywriting, so I have a little box called

“copy gurus” and I have all these rules set of all these newsletters and things I

subscribe to which I think of good copywriters and I automatically go in there and I

maybe only look at that box or that inbox or folder, maybe once every couple of

weeks when I am writing copy.

Andrew McCauley: Right, okay.

Heather Porter: So, I categorize my inbox like that and it works really well. I am

still getting better and I still need help but…

Andrew McCauley: I got one really cool tip but firstly before I give you that…

Heather Porter: Okay.








Andrew McCauley: The rules, how hard is it to make a rule? What are these rules?

Heather Porter: Well, I am still little behind at times because I am not using Gmail

for e-mails, I use MacMail which is like Outlook or one of those…

Andrew McCauley: I think all of the e-mail programs have rules settings because I

know Outlook has rules…

Heather Porter: I know Outlook does because Mac is the one I work…

Andrew McCauley: Entourage has it and then Gmail and Hotmail has rules.

Heather Porter: Just in your settings basically you say if an e-mail comes in from e-

mail address or using this subject or has these words in it, you then automatically

have it go into this folder and you just create a folder.

Andrew McCauley: I think I can feel a video coming up for this, correct?

Heather Porter: Yeah, little bit of an extra training bonus.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, maybe you can do the video so you can learn your rules

better. I wonder if the listeners would like to see a little video on how to set rules our

properly.

Heather Porter: I think they will, yeah. Okay, alright.








Andrew McCauley: Watch out for a rule-based video coming from one of us.

So, those are important. The other thing that I learnt probably six to eight months

ago is most e-mails by default will go out and look for e-mails on the server. So,

basically how it works is someone sends you an e-mail from their e-mail address, it

goes out into the big internet, it sits on your e-mail provider server and then your e-

mail account goes and pulls it down and most of them are set pretty much by default

to go and get them every couple of minutes.

Heather Porter: Two to five minutes, yeah.

Andrew McCauley: Every five minutes your program goes out, looks for any e-mail

on the server and says “Okay, come with me” and then it brings them into your inbox.

So, what I did was I stopped my computer doing that I would get the same – pop-ups

and noises and drop everything and see what‟s going on. So, now I do it every hour.

So, every single hour…

Heather Porter: That‟s smart.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. So, I don‟t get any e-mail pop-ups for at least an hour.

Heather Porter: Love that.

Andrew McCauley: If I was talking to you and you said “I have just sent you an e-

mail”, I can hit „send and receive‟ and manually make it go out and look for my e-

mails on the server but if I don‟t want it to do that and I am trying to keep focus on

doing what I am doing, I will set it so that there‟s an hour between automated going

and getting it from the server. So, that way I don‟t get pop-ups, I don‟t get any

information. I use and Mac I use Entourage. On the Entourage there is a button that








tells me how long until it‟s about to go out and look for mails. So, I can see it‟s got 15

minutes before it goes and gets mails. So, I can go and hit „send and receive‟ now

and get it or I have got 15 minutes before I am going to get interrupted again.

Heather Porter: Yeah, what I love about these two tips, Andrew, is that they are

actually really easy; they are not too scary. You know we are not saying “stop doing

e-mail” but they are going to give you some good results, they really will help and will

cut down on your clutters of your inbox.

Andrew McCauley: Totally, and I think rules are an extremely important part of

your productivity because I have got boxes of rules, I love those little rules. They are

really cool and puts all things in all sorts of folders and categories and it just means I

don‟t have to read some of this stuff; I know I subscribe to those newsletters and I

love the information. I get a lot of junk too. So, I want to make sure that I am not

getting sidetracked by junk and I am only getting the important message. Google

Gmail is really ramping up the quality of deliverability of what‟s important to you and

what‟s not.

Heather Porter: On that point too, let‟s go back to paper, the paper pushing stuff.

Speaking of categories and rules, I have almost done a similar sort of thing to my

actual paper work and in my desk drawer I have three little folders and one of them is

for accounting. So, if I have any paperwork that has to do with accounting – receipts

or statements or bills or whatever – I stick it straight in there. Sometimes I am so

busy I don‟t even open the envelope but at least I know it‟s all in one place and takes

me no time whatsoever. I have one for ideas so that I am out networking and

meeting people and getting business cards or whatever, I put it in there. Something

like that as well and it‟s not on my desk, it‟s in a drawer; it‟s out of mind, out of sight

and I have these stacks of strange papers in front of me like I can only address it

when I want to address it.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, yeah. What about productivity tips during the day? Any

tips to stay focused throughout the day? I know it for a fact that you have got a

hundred thousand things going on…








Heather Porter: Really? Nah…

Andrew McCauley: And I am pretty sure every other listener has to. I mean, we all

have so much going on.

Heather Porter: We all do nowadays.

Andrew McCauley: How do you keep you focus on a track? What are your

strategies for keeping focus on track of what you need to do?

Heather Porter: Well, I am getting better and better I think at delegation.

Andrew McCauley: Who do you delegate to?

Heather Porter: We have wonderful project managers on our team and when they

listen to this, hopefully they will agree when I say I am getting better. What I mean

by getting better at delegating is I am making more of a conscious effort if something

comes in my inbox or a phone call or whatever it is, I stop and I say “Is this

something I need to do?” and if I say “No”, then I make sure I find the right person to

do it. It can be a really quick e-mail or whatever it is to just get the message out to

the person to do it. If I say “yes, it is something I need to do”, then I say “Okay,

great, I am going to do it” and I ask a second question to myself “Will I need to do

this again?” and if I say “yes” to that, then I look at how I can make it into a system

and literally to the point where it might be just starting a Word document where I just

type some bullet points on the Word document and grow from there but the idea is

that you don‟t want to have to keep doing the same thing over and over and over

again and if you have done it a few times, then you should be able to hand it over to

somebody on your team.








Andrew McCauley: Yeah, and I think it‟s almost worth saying again because the

whole system idea of systematizing yourself and this is what we are talking about in

this whole program – this whole podcast is about no excuses in getting things in a

system. How hard is it to realize… because when you haven‟t done this before, it‟s

sometimes difficult to think “I don‟t know if I am going to do this again or not”, like

“do I need to do this again?”… at what point do you realize that “this could be

repetitive task that I should document”. How do you make it into a system, what are

the steps?

Heather Porter: Well, what I have been doing because this is a learning thing for

myself as well because in order for us to grow and help more people it is very much a

conscious thing in my life right now, what I do is I think “Okay, here we go again; I

am doing the same thing again” – this is literally how I work; not necessarily I am

recommending them for you guys – but in my e-mail program I just have an e-mail

that just sits there and I actually add bullet points to it, I will just add little kind of

crazy written points about this particular system and then I will actually e-mail that off

to our project manager and I will say “Can you please turn this into a checklist?” and

we use Base Camp as our project management tool because it‟s amazing and we also

are building up something called Backpack which is where we are going to have our

trainings and systems and our templates for our team as we grow. So, what all I do is

I just write it down in the e-mail and I keep adding to that, save to my drafts and then

I flick it off when I feel like it‟s got to a certain level where it can be delegated or put

out.

Andrew McCauley: So, the project manager gets the e-mail, they look and it and

they turn it into more of a solid…

Heather Porter: They read it and make sure it makes sense. If they have any

questions, then they get on the phone or Skype; we have our little weekly calls with

our team as well and that‟s when they can raise those questions to us.

Andrew McCauley: So, the next time that particular task comes across the desk…










Heather Porter: Then I can actually say “Oh, team, you have a checklist. This is the

task that corresponds with this checklist. Let‟s see how you could do it at this time”

and also part of that too is a supplement of those task list with something… there is a

great tool called Jing but there is a lot of these little video tools but I literally will do a

quick little training video on some of the points that are a little bit more complicated.

Andrew McCauley: www.Jing.com put out by Screencast?

Heather Porter: Yes, brilliant life-saving tool.

Andrew McCauley: Do you know that Jing‟s actually stopping next year?

Heather Porter: No, we cannot.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, don‟t get discouraged though. They are

actually going to roll that into Camtasia.

Heather Porter: Screenflow, Screencast… yeah, Camtasia…

Andrew McCauley: Camtasia. So, they are going to have a free version as far as I

know. You can do the same sort of stuff but Jing is an awesome tool and it‟s a great

tool for training people.

Heather Porter: Yes.



http://www.jing.com/






Andrew McCauley: Particularly VA‟s and outsourcing too. If you need to train them

on a specific task, Jing is a screen capture program, it looks at your screen and then

records what you are doing on your screen at the time so that you can send it off to

people and say “Here is what I am looking for. This is what I want achieved. Here are

the results that I should get” and that way there is no confusion because often a text

document of instructions can be confusing for a lot of people.

Heather Porter: Yes, exactly.

Andrew McCauley: Particularly with second language English.

Heather Porter: It‟s a brilliant tool and I got another reminder to myself of “Okay, I

should not be doing this” is when I am sitting there and I am looking outside at the

ocean or I am thinking “Well, the sun is setting, how beautiful. Oh my God! I have

too much stuff to do, I can‟t go enjoy this.” I am starting to get a little better mindset

around just cluttering work, noise really. So, I think what my reward is I can go have

a glass of wine overlooking the ocean and if I take that extra 20 minutes and go do a

system around it, then I am certainly not having to do it anymore. So, there are

constantly these little reminders that “Okay, if I can fill my time now with this because

I am making a conscious effort to get rid of this.”

Andrew McCauley: So, let me ask you a question – how do you know that you have

done all of the things that you wanted to do for the day? Like, do you have a way to

account for like sometimes, for me, at the end of the day I am like “Wow! I was so

busy today I don‟t even know what I did. What the hell did I do? Did I actually

achieve anything? Where did all my time go because from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I was

busy but what was I busy doing?” Do you have days like that?

Heather Porter: All the time and I can tell you because I have been to the coaches

before and mentors, all around time management because there is always… I think

that any of our busy, self-driven crazy entrepreneurial spirit people, we all share it like

“So, how do I have stuff enough in my day to get done?”, right?








Andrew McCauley: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Heather Porter: So, for me, I could not stand the thought of doing to-do list, it

didn‟t work with me and I think for me I have kind of come up with, I guess, what

works for you. You have to ask that question. For me, it is a combination of a

whiteboard where I jot down notes and I can move them around and up and down and

I don‟t even use numbers because the whole idea of using numbers makes my mind

think “that‟s a to-do list” and too structured or Base Camp – again, Base Camp is a

project management tool and I love that because we have a list of all of our clients

and projects and I can easily go into the dashboard and at a snapshot see everything

that‟s happened that day because of the highlighted different color, know what I have

done, know what our team has done. When I look at it like that, I think “Oh my God!

We have done a lot today.” It‟s starting to become a nice reward actually, that tool.

Andrew McCauley: That‟s good, that‟s good. I do use to-do list. I use them a little

differently. My to-do list is actually written at the end of the day. So, what I do is

once I am about to finish for the day, I will write down the pressing topics that I need

to have done the next day. So, I may need to say “Well, I am going to enter these e-

mails, I need to go and create this product or this introduction or this training session

or a video on this. I need to go and ring this person or communicate with that

particular company” and I will write it all down so that I don‟t go to bed thinking about

it.

Heather Porter: That‟s a great idea.

Andrew McCauley: I don‟t know if it‟s just me… I mean, I would go to bed and I

would be thinking about “what do I need to do? What do I need to do? Oh!

Tomorrow, I need to remember to do this.” I get that all out of my head before I get

to bed, before I even have dinner actually. So, I write it all down so that it‟s a list on

my desk. I clean up my desk and the only thing on my desk is my laptop computer,

one pen and this notepad of the things that are on this to-do list. And when I get in

there in the morning, I don‟t need to sit there for an hour or half an hour to write








down all the things that I try to remember from the night before I went to bed. It‟s

like “Okay, what do I need to do today?” So, it‟s there in clear plain black and white

sort of thing. So, I go through those and as I do them I scrub them out.

Now, let‟s say I get to the end of the day and there are still a couple of things that I

haven‟t done. I don‟t stress about that because I know I have packed a lot into the

day. I can look back over and say “Well, I have done a lot today because I remember

now that back in the morning I actually did this, this, this, and this.” So, what I do is

I rip a piece of paper off the top pad and I write down the first thing that come on the

new piece of paper or the things that I haven‟t done.


Andrew McCauley: So, they are fresh. It‟s like “Okay, they need to happen again

the next day.” And I throw the to-do list in the bin. Many people keep it because

they want to keep a reminder what they had to do that day or last week or whatever it

was. I throw it out because that day is done now.

Heather Porter: It‟s done.

Andrew McCauley: I don‟t need to record it anymore.

Heather Porter: That‟s a good point actually. I do use those index quotes, those 3

by 5 quotes and that‟s actually what I do at the end of the day too. I write down what

I need to focus on first thing in the morning and I just chuck the quote. When I done,

I just throw it out. This is a similar kind of…

Andrew McCauley: I found it‟s been really effective because then I can concentrate

on it, I can enjoy my dinner without needing to know “Well, what do I need to do








today?” I have got a clear indication of what I did. Some days I go “Wow! I must

have wasted some time” because that took longer than I thought or I didn‟t allow

enough time for it in the first place.

Heather Porter: Here is another really powerful thing I wanted to talk about which I

found when I stopped doing, it completely changed my life and our business and

everything that we are doing and that is meetings, meetings in person. Now, look, I

love people, I love to be around people. It‟s kind of like…

Andrew McCauley: Actually, Heather is about to go to a four-day meeting.

Heather Porter: Yeah, exactly but that‟s different. What I mean by that is for so

long because the entrepreneurial headspace is just constantly driven by ideas and we

want to talk about those ideas and we want to network and meet people and get out

and what I found that I did publicly for two years was having about 50 million ideas –

it‟s not quite that much, probably only 10 – but I was trying 10 ideas and I had

constantly run around in circles meeting with people, talking about the ideas and I

never really had much to show for it and now when someone says “Hey, can we have

a meeting about it?”, I say “Look, why don‟t we first e-mail each other with the points

that we want to cover. Second, we will have a phone call to go over it. And then from

there if it starts to have legs, like it actually starts to go somewhere, then let‟s sit

down and have a meeting and actually make sure we are on the same page.”

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, that‟s a great point.

Heather Porter: It completely transformed my life because now I have my social

time for my friends and with my family and the meetings are literally laid out in that

way.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah and I think the important thing that it does for you or for

everybody is it actually puts guidelines and expectations as well on what people are








expecting to get done. We had meeting where… it wasn‟t in the end a meeting and I

would say yes to meetings because I thought I was doing the right thing and all it was

was they wanted something free, they wanted me to give them advice and spend an

hour or two with them for free and it wasn‟t just the hour or two that I spend with

them, it‟s the hour or two getting there and getting back, speaking about it,

contemplating on it, spending money over lunch or whatever it was and what did I get

out of it. I was sick of getting…

Heather Porter: Feeling taken advantage of…

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, totally, totally.

Heather Porter: Also, actually one doesn‟t find much value in it because it‟s for free.

Andrew McCauley: And you are not giving your full 100% because you are like

“Well, I am giving all this information but what am I…?” I mean, you still give 98%

but you are still 100% not there.

Heather Porter: And don‟t get us wrong because we both very much love to give

and help in a way where it makes sense for everybody involved.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. And if you are running a business, it wasn‟t making your

business any money. It was being nice but that wasn‟t bringing home the bacon.

Heather Porter: Yeah. So, I guess, as you are de-cluttering and you are getting

better systems and de-cluttering your life, part of that is also looking at how you

spend your time in meetings and in communications with potential clients and your

current clients, how can you streamline that, can you do it on an e-mail, can you do it

on the Skype, can you do it on a Skype conference call, a webinar; we have so many








of those nowadays. Actually, the other day I was supposed to fly out to Queensland,

it was going to be the entire day out of my life. Now, I was actually not feeling very

well which was kind of a fortunate thing because it helped remind me of this whole

concept and the meeting thing. I ended up having a one-hour webinar or Skype call

with the entire executive team. They were in the boardroom, I was in my home

office. One hour is all it took to cut the chase and get straight in there, talk exactly

what we wanted to talk about rather than flying all the way there, driving, having a

day, flying all the way back and then waffling on and on and probably having a light

conversation. It was the most incredibly quick, concise and more powerful meeting

actually I probably ever had with this client.

Andrew McCauley: Okay. So, let me ask you about this thing. You were talking

about meetings as a solopreneur or very small business you have to deal with. What

about companies… I know we have a few listeners who have a number of employees

and they have meetings inside their office. So, the travel time is not an issue. Going

and meeting in a room is not an issue. It‟s all part of their work day. What sort of

tips can you give or you have about that sort of thing?

Heather Porter: Good piece of advice actually. One of our contractors, he worked in

a advertising agency for 14 years and he ran the whole entire team of creatives and

artists within that company and I love what they did and basically they have a once-a-

week – well, actually it happened twice a week, I think, he said; Monday morning and

Friday morning – they would have a check-in on the Monday morning to discuss and

they had 30 minutes to sit and they literally would go boom, boom, boom through the

projects and just get on the same page on what they are working on for the week and

at end of the week on Friday, they would review the projects and that‟s when the

team can actually bring up any ideas for improvement and also any challenges that

they face through the week. So, two separate meetings, two very separate topics.

Andrew McCauley: Okay. And the agendas were set for the meetings.

Heather Porter: It was always a set timeframe of 30 minutes and the head of the

meeting or the manager would go “These are the projects we have on for the week; 3

minutes” and they have a stopwatch and they time it, they literally go “Project no. 1,








where are we with this?”. “Okay, stopwatch, it‟s done.” And literally it would train

people to be really quick and concise and they know “What would Donald Trump

think? What does he say when you are coming in, you have five minutes and he kicks

you out of his office?” Lot of powerful professional people do that.

Andrew McCauley: I have heard it worked really, really effectively and the thing is it

was driven properly, it is really effective and stops the fluff, the waffle…

Heather Porter: Do the waffle at lunch.

Andrew McCauley: A lot of people feel waffle‟s important because it gives them…

they think the more time that they take in a meeting, the more important they look,

which is completely opposite to what really…

Heather Porter: Well, so if you do it like this, if you structure it like this, then they

don‟t have to feel like they are more important. It‟s really, really breakthrough, that

fast.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, awesome.

Heather Porter: So, we have covered meetings. It‟s about better systems. We

have covered de-cluttering your space, the 8-20 rule briefly, talking about anything

that you can create within your daily systems and routine to allow you to take action

and to stop making excuses.

Andrew McCauley: And we are still driving, by the way.

Heather Porter: And we are still driving.








Andrew McCauley: We are nearly at the destination.

Heather Porter: One more quick point on that better systems, point no. 2, is you

were saying about transcription. So, tell me a little bit more about that. So, if you

have an idea like when you are driving or whatever, what do you do?

Andrew McCauley: One of the things that I like doing is writing articles. So, I will

often take… these days, mobile phones, cell phones are becoming so awesome, such

an awesome, don‟t-leave-home-without-it gadget and there are recording devices in

all the cell phones, even cell phones of five years ago, my old Nokia has one of those

and if you are driving or you need to write an article or you need to write a report, you

want to even get some notes down so that you can send them off to a client or

whatever it is, use the recording devices on your phones so that you can quickly

record something and I do this for my blog posts. I mean, I either outsource the

writing of the blog posts entirely or I give them a summary of what I want them to

write about. So, I record it on my cell phone, I put it into a Dropbox on my phone, I

got a little Dropbox – if you haven‟t used Dropbox, you get on to it, it‟s awesome – a

little application, I drop that file into my Dropbox, my transcriptionist who I have got

on the team, he looks at his updated Dropbox every day and sees if there is any new

files and he will transcribe that file and he sends it to me in a Word doc. I have the

document already there. It can be an e-mail. So, if I am driving, I can punch out 20

e-mails to different people just by recording them in my voice and sending it to him.

Heather Porter: And he gets it transcribed and on Dropbox. By the way, when we

mentioned tools like Dropbox or Jing or whatever, we will list these tools on our

website for this particular podcast.

Andrew McCauley: What‟s the website in case they don‟t know?








Heather Porter: It‟s www.AutopilotYourBusiness.com/podcast and we will list the

resources underneath the podcast episode no. 10, this one, and also we have a special

little menu item called „resources‟ and we will put the information there; but on the

case of Dropbox, because I know a lot of people still aren‟t using it and they don‟t

know what it is, it‟s basically a shared place that lives in the cloud or up in the server

where you can stick files, any file type you want, and anybody else that shares that

particular folder has access to the file. So, if you drag or load a file into a folder, then

they can go into that folder and access that particular file.

Andrew McCauley: Let me give you a quick example. I was with a client today and

we were talking about his lack of content on his website and how easy it is to put

content update and he is like “Well, I don‟t have the time, I am busy, busy, busy” and

we broke for lunch, we had gone to shops for lunch and it was an 8-minute drive and I

said “While we are driving we will do our next article” and he goes “What do you mean

you are going to write it?” I am like “On no, I am not going to write it. I am simply

going to record it on this little phone and I will show you how easy it is to do content”

because even I didn‟t know what to say. I said “You will find out.” So, basically, in

the car I turned it on and I started him some questions about his business and he

started answering them and I couldn‟t shut him up actually. When we got to the

shops, I said “That‟s it” and he said “Well, I haven‟t even started yet” and I said “I am

glad that you haven‟t started; you have just done two different articles right there

because you were talking so much.” So, it was so quick for him to do an article and

this is, I think, get it out of your headspace that it‟s hard to do. Get rid of the excuses

that you have about how hard this stuff is. It‟s not hard.

Heather Porter: It‟s not hard. Like, the other day I was driving, I had my iPhone on

my lap and I came up with this whole idea for an info product and I was driving and I

didn‟t want to lose this information pouring into my head. So, I just turned on the

little record tool and I just talked my way through the product right there on the

recording. So, when I got home, I quickly, in my case, ended up typing it up because

I wanted to listen what I said. Yeah, it‟s so easy…

Andrew McCauley: One of the best uses of our time, I think, when we were on a

trip to Texas and we created an entire… this is huge; in fact, we got photos, we should

stick these photos up somewhere…



http://www.autopilotyourbusiness.com/podcast






Heather Porter: We will on this post, actually.

Andrew McCauley: We sat on the plane, the plane trip was about two hours, it was

about a two-hour plane trip and we sat on the plane and we come up with a brand

new product with Post-It notes and we had Post-It notes over the plane windows, over

the seats in front of us, on the walls, bright pink Post-It notes, it was hilarious and

people looking at us were going “What the hell are these people doing?” And we took

photos because we loved it so much. So, we should release that product pretty soon,

actually.

Heather Porter: Yeah.

Andrew McCauley: I won‟t tell you what the product is just yet but that was just the

use of time. We had two hours to kill, we couldn‟t sit there and moved around and I

wasn‟t falling asleep, we could utilize the time that we had and we did that.

I guess this podcast is coming to an end pretty soon.

Heather Porter: Pretty soon. We have one more point.

Andrew McCauley: One more point, okay.

Heather Porter: Okay. So, we have covered the „No Excuse‟ episode. We have

talked about the power of outsourcing and specific thing to pre-train people that no

one else is doing. We have also talked about better systems and what we mean by

better systems is how you use your day so you can take action and stop making

excuses.








And no. 3 and I love this. I am going to get on this one actually over to you, Andrew,

because you are really good at talking about what this actual item is and how powerful

it is because you have been doing it for the last year or two – well, not really – but tell

me about it. What‟s point no. 3?

Andrew McCauley: Point no. 3 is mastermind.


Andrew McCauley: The last couple of years I have been seeing some amazing

results from different masterminds. Essentially, mastermind can take a number of

forms. You can have a group of people around you who are all conspiring to your

success. We spoke about who are the people you hang out with. They can all be part

of your team or part of your strategic team so that you have got some really cool

people, thought leaders in your industry who are all helping you get to where you

want to go. So, everything that you want to talk about is all focused back towards

you. So, that‟s one form of masterminding.

The other form of masterminding… there are sort of three forms. The second form is

the form where you all come from the same industry. So, let‟s say a whole bunch of

real estate, all get together, and they talk about the things that are important in your

industry that can help you get ahead. So, what happens in your industry, how can

you have some best practices, what sort of things can you do to grow your business.

So, let‟s say mastermind of the people from the same industry type.

And then the other mastermind that I really like and I have been involved with them

most is a mastermind that is from all different people from different walks of life and

different industries, all sharing their experiences from their industries about their

business and thinking outside the box. So, when you go there, you might be in

industry A and you are listening to C, D, and E and industry B talking about their








problems and issues and how do they get over it and how can you use those issues

and those solutions for your industry because sometimes in your industry you are so

ingrained in it that you can‟t even remember or can‟t even see out of that box, if you

like.

So, masterminding is definitely one of those things that I would highly recommend

any business to do. It‟s pretty easy to start your own. You can go on things like

Meet-Ups which are a form of mastermind, you can go and look for some meet-up

groups that are slightly masterminding groups – they are not exactly masterminding

but they are the basis and they start up masterminding groups. So, get out there and

think about how you can share that knowledge with people and how you can use other

people‟s knowledge to enhance your business as well.

Heather Porter: And masterminds are structured, right?

Andrew McCauley: Totally.

Heather Porter: Yeah because it‟s different than actually going out and networking,

going to networking events and trying to sit down and do it that way. They are

structured.

Andrew McCauley: Totally. So, there is a number of different ways to do that. One

way is to have spotlights. So, you may stand up in front of a group – and this group

can be 5 people or it can be 50 people – stand up and say “Here is my business, this

is what I do. My biggest challenge in my business is…” and you talk about your

challenge and then the people from the group whether you go round-robin or they are

just yelling out as they go and they say “Hey, I think you should do this” or “Have you

ever considered doing this for your business?” or “I had an experience similar to that,

we had this problem and here is the solution that we had for that problem” and you

are getting answers to problems that have already happened. Don‟t re-invent the

wheel in trying to find solutions.








Heather Porter: You know what‟s cool about masterminds too is like if you go to a

networking gig, you are constantly trying to sort of sell yourself and who you are and

everyone‟s spending so much time saying “Oh, this is who I am and this is what I do”.

Masterminds are stripped that all the way, you are in there trying to help each other.

There is an organization, EO or Entrepreneurs‟ Organization or Young Entrepreneurs‟

Organization where you wouldn‟t even know that sometimes they have multi-multi-

million dollar company that‟s sitting next to you giving you advice and that‟s the

beauty of these things is that you know they are successful people but you are

genuinely in there for good of the group and helping each other.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. And the more people you help, then the more help you

are going to get.

Heather Porter: Yeah, exactly right.

Andrew McCauley: That‟s one of the things I have learned way back in personal

development world – the more people you can help, then the more help you are going

to get from that help. So, definitely, if you have got a chance to go mastermind, if

you have got an opportunity, go and check out masterminding groups, do a Google

search on masterminding groups and find out who is running them.

Heather Porter: Often times people that you like that are teachers or mentors or

speakers, they will often time have a private group that they work with, it‟s a

mastermind group. So, if you have a teacher or mentor that you really like, just ask

them; they might actually have a group already that exists that you don‟t know about.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, totally.

Heather Porter: So, anything else on this?








Andrew McCauley: Wow! What a big podcast! I can‟t believe we have gone this

long already. We are just about home, end of our journey is here and I think the end

of the podcast is here.

Heather Porter: Yay! What a fund drive from the airport to the house, huh?!

Andrew McCauley: That was good. That was a very useful use of our time.

Heather Porter: So, guys, if we can do it, you can do it. We have done this on a

laptop with a free audio program and no fancy equipment.

Andrew McCauley: We are running out of battery too. So, it‟s probably a good time

to wrap it up. Leave your comments. Make sure you come and visit and check out

the website, check out www.AutopilotYourBusiness.com/podcast.


Andrew McCauley: Leave your comments. Tell your friends, tell everyone we would

love to have more listeners.


Andrew McCauley: If you are going to request for us to do anything specific on a

show then, by all means, let us know in the comments at the bottom of our page.



http://www.autopilotyourbusiness.com/podcast






Heather Porter: Yes, guys, thank you. Thanks, Andrew, for a very safe drive in the

rain as well.

Andrew McCauley: I know, it was fun, it was fun.

Heather Porter: Thanks, guys, for listening very much and until next time…

Andrew McCauley: Goodbye.

Heather Porter: Bye, bye.

**End of Audio**



#10 the no excuses! episode

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