The Most Productive Day 2

0:00I haven't had a day like this in close to a year, which is the most productive day that I've had since April of 2025. And there's a reason that I had a productive day to day. One, it's the first day of the new year where I really had an empty calendar. For the first half of the month of January, really, it's been just crazy catch up month. Where like, or what Steph calls like the circle back time frame, where everyone in the, you know, before the holidays was like, okay, like after the holidays, we'll get back to this after the holidays will circle back. And all of that stuff hit in the first couple weeks. So today was really the first day that I looked at my calendar. And I didn't have some type of meeting, whether that was like, it's mostly like personal meetings or like, I had a, I, I doctor appointment.

1:02I had, you know, I had just, you know, I did meetings with my team and, and whatever. And usually like meeting day is kind of throwing off in terms of like productivity when it, when I'm making stuff. So this was that first day. Also, I've been sick since the beginning of January, which is crazy. And that's not necessarily true. But like the first couple of weeks, I just had this like, I issue just like, just kept hearing. And then I, and then I got a chest cold and it was just like, and I, I still worked and I still got my steps in and I still like, you know, was a functional human being. I wasn't like bed ridden or anything. But I, today was the first day where I felt like, oh, I feel like legitimately better. And I had a empty calendar. And so what did I decide to do today and why was it so productive? Well, I did two big massive tasks that are the absolute core of my business.

2:11And I realized that if I do these two things, then it is a productive day for me. Like, regardless of anything else that gets done in my business, in the business of swim university, if I do these one of these two things, or both, which today was a, I did both of these things, then it's a highly productive day. And it turns out that these two tasks are my highest leverage tasks. So I'll start with the first one. I've been trying to work on this, on updating our email SOPR, standard operating procedures for creating emails within Clavio. And you know, we had, this is like our tightest SOP up until now. And now I made it tighter. Like, did it need to be no, but I decided to make it even tighter.

3:12So what do I mean by that? Like, what does tight mean to me? tight is when you, when I look at the SOP or somebody in my team looks at the SOP, there are no questions. And you can do the task in record time with no questions asked. It's like just bullet proof, okay? Now in order to accomplish this, I basically had to do the emails myself. Now I had handed this task off to my brother. Everything was going fine, but he's not really a graphic designer. And I noticed that that was a flaw in the SOP of graphic design work in Canva. And I was like, well, so I need to figure out a better system. So I said, hey, I'm going to take this back over and work on refining the SOP to make it even more dummy proof, to make it even like tighter, right? He says, okay. Now, staff is in charge of writing our emails.

4:16And she had the entire month of February completely written. So I'm like, okay, I probably had, I don't know, 12 emails that I had to create. I did 12 emails in like an hour, maybe less. I was actually recording myself on loom when I did one email. It took me four minutes to take words and turn it into a formatted email with graphics. Four minutes. And I was like, okay, I am on a roll. So I just started knocking out emails, right? Until I got to one email that required a custom image. And I was like, okay, cool. Out of like eight emails I had to do today, I'm like, all right, I'll do one custom one,

5:17which obviously added more time, but not that much time because the rest of the process was easy. And I thought to myself, you know, I actually made this process so easy that I actually don't know if I really want to outsource it anymore because it is one of the most important parts of our business. In fact, I actually had a call today with Clavio and I had like, when they see our like campaigns and our open rates, it's like, oh yeah, you're crushing it there. And I'm like, all right, I know we can do better, but it was funny because like I had done all this work during the day and then I had a meeting at like 2 p.m. and I'm like, yeah, I'm like, so far ahead today. And I ended up learning all this stuff about Clavio that I didn't know through the call. So I'm like, all right, maybe I just need to stay here a little bit.

6:17Maybe I need to live in the email again. And maybe that maybe the problem wasn't necessarily the SOP, although I did fix it. But maybe this is just something I have to own because it is such an important part of our business and it's such a high leverage activity that I'm like, yeah, I think me being a part of this is probably for the best, which is great because it gives my brother one less thing to do and he can focus on video editing, which leads me to the next thing. So I did all these emails, I had my call with Clavio, it's 3 o'clock, right? And I'm looking at my schedule of video recording because I usually get like one day a week and it's usually Fridays, I get, I have to record all the videos for something diversity.

7:20Now normally in the thick of it, I'm doing about four to five to six shorts, I'm recording those, and then I'm usually doing one to two long-form videos. But that wasn't the case today. So we're not doing long-form videos on YouTube right now, but what we are doing is updating our course. I had eight course videos on my list, on my to-do list for Friday, today is Wednesday by the way, and I had five shorts to record and I had four videos for the app, which are basically like shorts. One of those videos though was freeform, meaning I had to pull out my phone and teach people how to read something in the app or use something in the app, so there was no script for that.

8:23At first, I'm like, okay, that's a lot of videos today, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get to all of them, but let me get a couple of the course videos done. So I sit down and I have to move the Asana scripts, they're in Google Docs actually, we're into my teleprompter app and do a lot of light formatting so that I can read it better. And I usually read through it once. And then a couple of the videos were really short, so I was like, okay, it's not a lot to read, great, okay, some of them are really long. So I'm sitting down in the studio and I start going and I notice that I'm on a, there's, so I'll tell you this. When I record videos in my studio, there are days when I'm a little off, I'm having trouble reading, my flow is a little, my rhythm is just like, it's just off.

9:30Some days, I'm locked in, I feel it, it's hard to explain, but I'm like, all right, let's go. So today was one of those days where I was reading the teleprompter and it just felt effortless. I'm like, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm in. This is it. Let's go. I ended up recording all eight course videos in that sitting, like just knocking them out, right? So I'm like, okay, I'm sitting in the, I'm like, so that's all ahead, I prepared just to do like a few of those course videos, I ended up doing all of them. Now all of these videos are, I just had to record the A-roll, all of these videos still have to be edited, which is insane, but you know, a lot of them are like, pretty short because they're, they're kind of the intro videos to, like, to lessons and we were trying to make it more bite sized as opposed to having these like super long videos.

10:32We're optimizing for time here. So I'm like, all right, I'm on a roll, so what do I do? I go, all right. Now at my studio, I have a computer. So I'm like, all right, let me move over the five shorts that we have. Let me, let me, let me add those scripts to the teleprompter while I'm sitting here, dressed up in my hat in my shirt and get the lights on, the camera's rolling, let's go, right? So I sit there and I knock out the five shorts and I go, damn, all right, that flute, that like went by really, really well again. So I said, okay, well shit, it's like, it's only like, I've only been at this for like a half hour and I have all this energy. So I'm like, and maybe it's just because I just got off of being sick. So I'm like, I feel like I'm back. I still have a light cough, but you know, nothing crazy.

11:34So I go, all right, let's do, let's go, let's do the app videos. So I pull up the app videos. Again, there's only three scripts, even though I'm doing four videos. I get the four scripts, put them in there, read those. The final video was the freeform one, plug my phone in and I let me tell you something. I'm so locked in, usually, when I do these freeform videos, I'm kind of stumbling. Like I'm kind, like I'm like, oh, we're going to have to fix that in post, whatever, whatever. No, this one, I am dialed. I'm nailing it. I'm not fumbling over my words. I'm not tongue tied. I'm not going, I'm like, this is, I'm moving. This day is rare. I don't get, maybe I'm getting better at it. I don't know. This could be possible. Maybe it was the two cups of coffee I had today. Maybe it was the, the high that I got from finishing all those emails and, and having

12:39such a tight email system. Maybe it's because I saved a thousand dollars a month doing something in Clavio, just making one tiny change that I didn't know about. Which was basically, oh, you have to downgrade your own plan. We don't downgrade for you. Oh, wish I would have known. So I'm like, okay, you know, Steph's out, she's not in the house, I have the house to myself. I'm like, let's go. Not only that, not only did I finish, what, four app videos, four, five shorts, that's nine videos, plus eight course videos, filmed, ready to edit in the pipeline. I've recorded three podcasts today, three. I'm a fucking monster today.

13:42And I had a meeting, an hour long meeting. So it means I got my 10,000 steps. I ate healthy today. And you know, yeah, it took the whole day, but it's a Wednesday, it's a Wednesday. I am beyond ahead. And I just, you know, I did an episode in April titled the most productive day. I think I beat that today. And truthfully, it felt effortless. And this is, and it kind of solidified the whole premise of what I'm trying to get to, which is just hit record. Now the email thing is different, but honestly, I kind of need it.

14:44I need that computer work. It's an input like in terms of like the highest leverage activities for sales in our business. It's email and videos. And sometimes they go hand in hand. And I'm like, I just need to make more videos, more, more videos. We have such a good system for videos. We have such a good system for email because I am dialed into those two systems. And yeah, I don't really know if I have much, much else to say besides that. I don't know if this is a brag because it's like, look, the last time I did this was in April. So it's been almost a year. But I think it's just important to recognize days like this to be like what made it so fulfilling

15:50and productive. And it's because for me, it's, it's those, it's that high leverage work. And I was, and it felt effortless. There's days like that when I remember we were doing the hot tub handbook and I was doing all the graphics. There were some days where I'm just knocking out graphics, right? I'm just in the zone. And there's other days where you slog through it where you're like, I can't really get this angle right on this hot tub image and whatever it was, you know, or you just have days where you run up against the wall because you keep doing something over and over and over again. And who knows? Maybe some of these videos, I, I fumbled a few things didn't even realize it. We're going to have to fix it in post fine or I'll have to go and re record that whatever. But I'm like that. Those days are rare and I just want to remember them.

16:53I want to remember them because they're fun days too. Anyway, that's all I got to say about that. Do me a favor if you've been listening this far. Go to jibanesi.com, G-I-O-V-A-N-I-S-C-I or just click the link in the description on this episode. Take your right to the page and or your email address if you're not already subscribed. Shoot me an email. I'm also sending videos and newsletters every week talking about this stuff, sharing stuff that I can't really share on this podcast because it's audio only. I'm sharing in video format or in text format. So go check it out and shoot me email if you have any questions, concerns, whatever. I want to hear from you. That's all I got. I'll see you next time. I'll see you next time. Bye.