Woohoo, you heard our exciting news that we have renamed the Path to Profit Podcast to Structure & Flow – same fun hosts but more focused and specific content on productivity.Why are we so passionate about this topic?Our own strugglesOur client’s strugglesOver the next 4 episodes, we want to share with you our dynamic new framework for understanding your Unique productivity style. No two people are the same – in fact, while you might have one dominant style, most of us are a blend of styles. We all have an innate natural way that we prefer to approach time and tasks – and that’s what we cover in our Unique Productivity Style quiz and framework.What you can expect in these 4 episodes:A short intro to each styleAn example of a person who is dominant in that styleSpecific recommendations for how to increase your productivityOur goal is to give you the building blocks for designing a productivity system that works for you.Introducing the Commander:The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing – Walt DisneyGiftsaction takergoal and task-orientedgood at seeing the big picture and getting things donevisionaryChallengesadrenaline junkieyour need for speed can frustrate you and others on your team who can’t keep upyou tend to work long hours and forget to take breaks which can impact your physical and mental health Take the Unique Productivity Style QuizOnce You Know Your Productivity Style You Can Learn The Best Way To Become More Productive In Your Creative Business.Take the Quiz today and get your results!Example: MinetteTo increase productivity, Commanders need todo less, not more – take planned breaks, manage your energyAsk for helpManage expectationsPay attention to unique productivity style of others on your timeWe have a contest running until the end of April – sign up, give us an honest review on iTunes, and you’ll be entered to win some cool prizes! IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:the unique gifts that a Commander has for productivitythe specific challenges that Commanders encounterhow Commanders can take charge of their productivity and make it work for themLINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:We’re having a Contest and you could WIN! Sign up and give us a review, you could enter some great prizes!The Unique Productivity Style quiz https://youtu.be/02r5jnf8GjMYou can also subscribe to this podcast on our Youtube channel.  TranscriptShow Transcript (2,522 More Words)Minette Riordan: The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. And this is the nature of the Commander in a nutshell.Have you ever said to yourself, “I don’t have enough time.”Brad Dobson: I am so overwhelmed.Minette Riordan: I need more clarity.Brad Dobson: I don’t know how to do this.Minette Riordan: My To-Do list is miles long.Brad Dobson: I’m exhausted.Minette Riordan: There’s got to be a better way.Brad Dobson: Hi there, I’m Brad.Minette Riordan: And, I’m Minette. Not only have we said all these things ourselves, but we’ve heard our community of creative entrepreneurs say them over and over again.Brad Dobson: That’s why we’ve created the Structure and Flow podcast. I’m Structure.Minette Riordan: And I’m Flow. And this is the Productivity Podcast for Creative Entrepreneurs.Brad Dobson: We believe that doing more and working harder are not the solution to your productivity challenges.Minette Riordan: We believe in more play, more fun and more profit. Join us we explore the interplay between structure and flow so that we can bring more grace and ease to your creative business.Hey everyone, welcome back to the Structure and Flow podcast, this is Episode 95, where we’re going to be talking about how to discover your unique productivity style [inaudible Brad Dobson: Yup.Minette Riordan: -unique productivity style out.Brad Dobson: We’re putting those into the outtakes, straight to Facebook with that.Minette Riordan: Straight to Facebook. Hey everybody, I’m Doctor Minette Riordan along with my husband, Brad Dobson. The founders of the Path to Profit Academy and super excited to be sharing some amazing new content that we created just for you.Brad Dobson: You bet. Unique productivity styles, we’ve got a quiz around this. It’s a really killer way to dig deep into more about who you are and how you work and what your most effective work patterns are. And some of the challenges that you have. And today, we’re going to talk about the Commander. One of the four unique productivity styles.Minette Riordan: But, before we do that do you want to share our quote?Brad Dobson: Definitely.Minette Riordan: We got a … We’re pulling back from the Path to Profit podcast. Some of the fun things that we loved about that podcast.Brad Dobson: Oh yeah. Gotta have the quote.Minette Riordan: Gotta have the quote.Brad Dobson: I’m thinking Walt Disney might have been a Commander himself.Minette Riordan: Yup.Brad Dobson: We should read up on that. Anyways, the quote from Walt is. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”Minette Riordan: And I love this quote. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” And, this is the nature of the Commander in a nutshell. So if I were to describe the Commander to you. I would say that they are absolutely, action takers. Goal and task oriented. They’re good at seeing the big picture. They’re great at getting things done. They can be very visionary, and they’re very … They’re so goal oriented, they often forget about people though. Right?Brad Dobson: Kinda just bulldoze right through them.Minette Riordan: Kinda just bulldoze right through them. I am a Commander. In fact, over this episode and the next episode …Brad Dobson: Bulldoze right through them.Minette Riordan: We’re going to be sharing about … There’s four different productivity styles and we’re going to be sharing over … All of them over the next four episodes. And, in the next two you’re going to hear about what Brad and I … Especially, tend to be challenged with as well as what our gifts are.Brad Dobson: Yup, yeah. And, there’s … I guess, the challenges in and of themselves are gifts. They’re just ways of looking at yourself and understanding yourself in ways other people can understand you.Minette Riordan: So, what’s interesting to me about the Commander and this particular productivity style is, even though the Commander excels at getting things done. They are adrenalin junkies. They tend to be workaholics. They actually, work too hard. In fact, I noticed this happened in myself last week where I was working until eight, nine o’clock every night. And I’m not a night owl. My days usually start at 6 PM at the computer.Brad Dobson: Yeah. Makes her work partner feel guilty when she takes the whole Sunday to work.Minette Riordan: Yeah, but it was fun. He asked me yesterday, he said. “Are you just going to work all day?” And I’m like. “I’m just puttering, right?” And so, it was actually probably the Creator part of me that was out yesterday more than the Commander part.But what I want to say about the Commander if this your particular productivity style, there’s a couple of things to focus on if you’re struggling, feeling like you’re not getting enough done. First of all, give yourself a break. This is a show about grace and ease as much as it is about getting things done. And what the Commander needs to do is to, ask for help. Which, I suck at. Should I say that louder? I suck at asking for help. I’m learning.Brad Dobson: I’m not saying anything.Minette Riordan: The Commander should focus on building your dream team, who can you ask for support? Who do you need to hire first to make sure that you’re outsourcing some of the tasks that really you don’t need to be doing that pretty much, anybody can be doing? And, the Commander can get really focused on moving forward at such a fast pace, that they are like a rocket ship that is going to burn out, right? And they’re going to fall back to sea in a not very pretty way. And that can show up for the Commander sometimes in, health. For me it certainly, showed up in the fact that I’m not getting enough exercise. Not always eating right. Drinking way too much coffee … Commanders love coffee.Brad Dobson: I think you had a lot coffee this morning.Minette Riordan: I didn’t actually. I didn’t have that extra cup yet.What do you want to say about the Commander?Brad Dobson: I think it’s important to reiterate the one challenge about taking breaks.Minette Riordan: Yup.Brad Dobson: And actually, giving yourself space to, I don’t know, you could say, heal. But, just have that mental space and physical space that’s non-work time to actually, allow other things to happen in your life. Otherwise, you’re …Minette Riordan: Like date night with your spouse. Or, quality time with your kids. Yeah, you do have kids. I do.Brad Dobson: Otherwise, it just turns into a burn, the whole time, right? And work the whole time. And it’s not effective for any of us. It doesn’t represent a life of grace and ease.Minette Riordan: Yeah, and I think also, Commanders are … It’s important to us to not only get things done but to get them done well. And, that’s even more true for the Contemplator, who we’re going to talk about in the next episode. But, you have to learn to manage your expectations. In fact, Brad and I took this amazing class last year and one of the women that was one of the co-leaders of the class is definitely a Commander. And, learning to manage expectations and to realize that not everyone is one, willing to work as hard as you are. Two, is as smart as you are. Or three, willing to work as fast as you are capable of working.Commanders are all about speed. I often like to use the example of Micheal Jordan as being a great example of an athlete who is the Commanders’ super driven to win. And I can’t remember what the statistics are off the top of my head about how many times he practiced his free throws in order to get as good as he was, right? It’s a huge statistic but it’s that driven personality that’s very, very typical of the Commander. But, we have to remember that we’re part of a team. And that, we have to lavish a little love and attention and patience when it comes to building that team and I know patience as a Commander, is not one of my gifts.Brad Dobson: Which brings us to the last productivity type of thing that you can increase as a Commander. And, that’s to understand the productivity styles of the people around you. And it’s critical because, as a Commander you’re by nature, in a leadership position. And, you’re not going to be very effective growing your business, if you don’t know how to lavish praise on those people and how to work with them.For anybody that has taken other personality type assessments and that type of stuff. Whether it’s Myers-Briggs or other ones. You understand a big reason … Well, one big reason for having them is so that you understand more about yourself. But, companies use these for their teams so that, the team members and especially the manager, can understand how he’s working with … Or, how she is working with the people under them. And, that’s critical for a Commander, rather than just, blinders on, working like crazy. And, expecting everybody to get everything done and not wanting to interact with them. It’s critical that you find out your team members’ productivity styles and work with those.Minette Riordan: And one of the reasons that we created this concept of the unique productivity styles is, to help you build an effective team so that you have a team that has players in all four of the different roles because, as the Commander your tendency is to wear all the hats. And, you like having control of all the hats. A great example would be maybe, you’re the owner of a creative agency, and you’re trying so hard to maintain creative control. And, have your hand in every piece of design work that comes out of your agency or copywriting that comes out of your agency or photography, whatever the asset may be. That you’re slowing down the process. You’re actually, in your desire to go fast, and your desire to be in charge and have your stamp of approval on everything. You’re slowing the process down. And when productivity slows down because of you, then profits slow down. And as you guys know, we’re passionate about profit in our business and, productivity can both increase profit and decrease it if it’s not approached in the right way.So, as Brad said, one of the reasons for understanding your unique productivity style, is to understand how to play better with other as well as, how to understand yourself. And, what we know after five years of doing our work with all these different creative entrepreneurs in a variety of different industries is that, no two people are the same. This assessment is not intended to be black and white. As you listen to these four episodes, you’ll notice yourself perhaps, in all four of the unique productivity styles or, two of them tend to usually be primary. And what you want to do is, take the best of all of them and combine them into a productivity style and methodology that works for you, personally.Like, Brad and I are both creators, which is one of the styles that you’re going to hear about. We have a lot of creator in us for the good, the bad and the ugly, of that as well, right? And so, just noticing where can you combine productivity styles to make yourself a little bit more effective and to get out of your own way? I find so often when it comes to running your business, that the only real problem with your business, is you.Brad Dobson: So, I just want to recap so everybody is clear what a Commander’s main gifts are. So, that they can either relate to them or say. “No, I’m not that.” So, Commander’s gifts are, an action taker. You’re goal and task oriented. You’re good at seeing the big picture. You’re good at getting things done. And, you’re the visionary.Minette Riordan: And, your challenges are … Maybe, I should just say, my challenges are. The Commander’s challenges. You’re an adrenalin junkie. Your need for speed, can frustrate you, yourself and others on your team who can’t keep up with you. You tend to work long hours and forget to take breaks, which can impact your physical and mental health.So, if we can leave you with one powerful takeaway from this, manage your energy as well as your time. And, take planned breaks. And that means, take breaks throughout the day even if it’s just two minutes to do a little deep breathing or stand up and do some jumping jacks. But also, take long planned breaks. Maybe that’s one long weekend a month or a vacation every summer. But, one two week vacation a summer, every summer. Is really not enough recovery time, right? We’ll talk more about recovery time and the importance of that in some of our upcoming episodes as well.So, Commander, you’re doing great and you’re probably doing too much. We told you that this podcast was not going to be about how to get more done. Sometimes, it’s how to take care of yourself better, which will actually, increase your productivity and your creativity.Brad Dobson: Good stuff.And if you’re interested in taking the quiz today. You can jump over to pathtoprofitacademy/upsquiz, and we’ll have that in the show notes. Just a quick quiz. Take you two minutes. And, you’ll get some cool results.Minette Riordan: Maybe five to 10 minutes.Brad Dobson: Well, not too many questions anyways.Minette Riordan: Yeah. No, it was pathtoprofitacademy.com/upsquiz.Brad Dobson: And for our next episode, we’ll be heading over to talk about the Contemplator, which-Minette Riordan: Which is Brad.Brad Dobson: -I kind of identify as.Minette Riordan: Yeah, Kinda, sorta, maybe.Brad Dobson: Anyways, if you’re listening to this in April 2018, we would also love some iTunes reviews. We have a contest running. You can pickup some cool swag maybe, a planner. Maybe a coloring book. We would love to have an honest review over at iTunes. If you can jump to pathtoprofitacademy.com/contest, you’ll see all the details there. And just, enter. Easy stuff. Enter to win. We’d love your reviews.Minette Riordan: Yup.Brad Dobson: It helps this podcast go.Minette Riordan: And our artful profit … I’m having troubles with my “P’s” today. The Artful Profit Planner, printed edition is absolutely gorgeous. We may have shared before that our son created this along with our beautiful Money, Mediation and Mondale coloring book. And we’re giving away actual, printed copies. Not digital copies, of these two gorgeous planners and coloring books.So, come on over to pathtoprofitacademy.com/contest for all the rules on how to enter.Brad Dobson: Cool stuff.Minette Riordan: We’ll see you on the next episode.Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to Structure and Flow, the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneurs. To find out more about this episode and others, go to pathtoprofitacademy.com and click on the podcast link. The post Episode 95: Discover Your Unique Productivity Style Part 1 – The Commander appeared first on Path to Profit Academy.