Unlock your full potential and achieve your goals as a leader! Join us on the People Strategy Forum as we welcome Julie Miller Davis, productivity expert and founder of JMD Productivity Training.

Julie shares powerful strategies to:

• Set clear goals and prioritize effectively.
• Break down large tasks and manage your time efficiently.
• Recharge and avoid burnout for sustained success.

Discover practical tips and actionable insights to boost your productivity and unlock your leadership potential. Don’t miss this inspiring episode!

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Julie Miller Davis – Results Unleashed: Achieving Goals And Dreams

We’re a show that guides leaders in how to elevate the workforce overall. We believe that people are at the heart of successful organizations and their team members’ well-being, rewards, and career development are all essential to a happy, healthy, and highly productive workforce. This show discusses the practical and effective leadership strategies for top executives, senior professionals, and talent managers overall.

First, I’d like to introduce everyone to our hosts in this episode. We have Howard Nizewitz who is a Senior People Strategist. He’s got a lot of expertise in the industry and I had the pleasure of working with Howard for quite some time. Also, Sumit, who is an International People Strategist, and Char who is a serial entrepreneur and people strategist here for CompTeam. It is always a pleasure having her on the show.

In this discussion, we’re going to be talking about results unleashed, and achieving the goals and dreams of all of you leaders out there. This discussion promises to transform the way we think about productivity and success overall. We’re thrilled to have Julie Miller Davis, the pioneering force behind JMD Productivity Training. Julie dedicated her career to empowering leaders to step out of mediocrity and reshape their work habits and patterns overall for greater success.

Her focus on productivity helps clients not just meet, but exceed their professional and personal aspirations. If you’re struggling with being perpetually busy and not productive, Julie’s insights will provide you with the tools to unlock your full potential and achieve sustained success overall. Let’s dive into it. Welcome, Julie.

Thank you, Sam. I’m so happy to be back here. It’s been a while.

Background

For those of our readers who don’t know you, and I know that you are on our show. You’ve been a great guest. Can you walk through a little bit of how you have got to where you are now and why you do the things you do?

I stepped into this business after having been a teacher for twenty years. When my son was born, I stepped into another business that I was an independent contractor for. All the backend, all those fun things were set up for me already. I had a team and I had other leaders around me. I found that I was working differently than a lot of them and getting a lot of questions about how was I building what I was building working three days a week.

I started realizing, “I may be tapping into something here.” After six years of that, I missed teaching, but I didn’t miss school. I tapped into what women were asking me. Women are mostly who I would network with but it is not the only people I serve. I found that I operate differently when I prioritize the way that I strategize and the way that I work.

I started creating this business around how you proactively plan, how you prioritize, and how you strategically set yourself up in your business and your life so that they are a beautiful marriage, and I created this business. It came out of some innate things that I do and then wanting other women to be able to live and work that way also.

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Transformation Wins

As you’ve been working with your clients and so forth, what are some of the wins that you’ve seen overall? Did you see some of your leaders transform to become highly effective?

It’s a transformation from being a worker into being a CEO or the boss of themselves, or the boss of their team if they’re hiring team members. Some of the biggest success stories are during COVID, I had a few clients. It was interesting because I don’t always have in-person. I have all kinds of businesses that work with me but I had a photographer, a salon owner, a massage therapist, and a travel agent in my program when COVID hit.

Three of the four of those women, because of the transitions and the shifts we made, the way that they stepped into new ways of looking at their business, all of them broke into the six-figure range for the very first time in their businesses. It was amazing. What I would like to talk about is the massage therapist, when she first came to me, I think it was 2019. It was just her. She had a space that she was starting to transition with multiple places to have other massage therapists work with her or for her.

It was a huge leap and she was able to bring in a couple of part-time people here and there. Over the last 3 or 4 years, she has transitioned into a huge space with seven treatment rooms. She is running an almost $1 million business of massage therapy serving veterans because her husband is an injured vet. She’s serving injured vets and has truly become not just a massage therapist. She is running a business.

Because of the strategies, setting up systems, and stepping in faith over fear, she has been able to build this amazing place for people to come and be healed. It’s a huge success story and it’s not just me who’s been her coach. She’s had a few of us, but I’ve been consistently with her since 2019 and it’s been beautiful to watch.

As you’re talking to leaders who want the same type of success, what are the first things that they should be focusing on as far as getting organized, goals, and so forth? What are the top things that they should be first looking at?

Task-Oriented Vs Goal-Oriented

I think what happens to a lot of us in business is we become stuck in this pattern of being task-oriented. It’s like, “I’m just going to check off as many things. I got these things on my list.” We’re task-oriented and we’re not goal-oriented. Our whole day becomes task-centered whereas if you can shift into being goal-oriented, and goal-centered, it changes what tasks you are engaging in.

 

It changes the question you’re asking yourself. It changes the trajectory of your day, of your week, of your month, and all of that. I think if you want to truly step into CEO, if you truly want to scale to another level or change that trajectory and make it go faster than you might be going, the very first thing you have to do is switch to being goal-centered and goal-oriented rather than task-oriented. It’s not easy, but it’s a simple thing.

It’s starting with a mind shift. We’re all buried in what we need to do on a daily basis, but to do a little bit more of a strategic mindset, is that the juncture that needs to happen?

If you can have those goals in front of you. Sam and I were talking about how you can have a revenue goal for the end of the year. You can have a client goal for the end of the year. You can have a launch or whatever you want to do by the end of the year. I believe in the power of three. Three big goals for the end of the year for your business. Three is doable. Five is stretching it. If you have a list of ten goals, you are spread too thin. There’s no way. It’s too many places for you to try to be.

It’s possible though that if you have ten, three of those might fit under one goal. Also, it’s breaking them down. I believe in the 90-day goals and 90-day rule. What we put in place now is going to come to fruition and affect things 90 days from now. In those 90 days, what do you want to do that’s related to the higher goal? Everything breaks backward.

When people work more closely with me, we do a lot of what I call the JMD Reverse Chunking Method. We’re reverse engineering and making space on the calendar for all those things to happen. A lot of people reverse engineer, but they don’t make space and they don’t make a plan of when they’re going to work on this stuff. They just know what the steps are. There’s that piece of the integration with the calendar that doesn’t happen.

Sam, to answer that question specifically now that you have that background, when you’re engaging in a task during your workday, it’s that question of, “Is this related? Is it moving my needle? Is it moving me closer to my goal? Is it related to my goal? What happens if I do this? What happens if I don’t do this,” kind of questions. It changes what you do and when you do it.

I know there are a bunch of little things for you guys to mark off that have to be done because they’re part of the daily business but what if you did those later in the day when you have less energy? You don’t need as much brain power and you’re just checking off as many things as possible. What if throughout the rest of the day, the things that you’re engaging in, you’re asking yourself those questions and you’re becoming super intentional about the action that you’re taking every single day? It changes your story.

I imagine, Char, if you’re thinking back on what you do on a day-to-day basis. Do you find some of the junk in your calendar that says, “Maybe I’ll just do this for fun? Maybe it’s a distracting moment.” What do you think?

I have enjoyed working with Julie. I’ve had the joy of taking her workshop several years ago when I was more in a corporate role. Fast forward, now as more of an entrepreneur and working with CompTeam and the Strategic Thinking Institute, I have honed in how I’m managing my daily tasks. I can hear you, Julie, talking in my mind about those three solid rocks a day or things to accomplish because I have a tendency to solve world hunger.

As we say, bump around like a bumper car and squirrel, squirrel, and squirrel. The simple task of cleaning up your email box, how many hours do we spend cleaning our emails out and then blocking undivided time a day for real serious focus work? Also, being able to get some sunshine and get a little activity in during the day.

You need to have the discipline to be able to align your day. Right, Julie? You have a free tool I know you’re going to talk about later because I asked for it on your LinkedIn page and your website. It’s your free Daily Productivity Planner. I’m already talking about it. I can’t remember what year that was. That was definitely in 2015 or something when you did that workshop in Denver or the Highlands Ranch area.

I remember that you had that form and at the time, I didn’t have a daily planner or something. I had the work Outlook, but I didn’t have it as a personal one. I do think it’s about your strategy, your life, and how you’re managing. I could go on and on because I know you quite well. You have those free resources, but you also have workshops and that type of thing too to help people with these things.

Recharging Your Battery

There are all kinds of free resources and workshops that I offer all year long on my website. You can find all that stuff there. What I like that Char is saying right now is that I think that you have to make sure that you’re not all work and no play. It makes Johnny a dull boy. I’m not about all the work. I am about to recharge your battery. It’s funny because I was talking about this at a summit that I was on.

One of the greatest things about being a business owner and an entrepreneur, and maybe even those of you who are working from home now or have a little bit more flexibility with how COVID has changed the way that we work. You have the ability to recharge your battery. What does that look like for you? Schedule it. I’ll give you an example. When I tell you that I work three days a week, I’m not lying. Sometimes I work more. Right now, I’m working more because I’ve got a huge event coming up and it’s that season for me.

 

In the summertime, I play golf on Tuesdays. I play tennis on Wednesday mornings. I play tennis on Friday mornings. I’ll tell you that those are the first things to go on my calendar and everything else gets scheduled around it. If something comes up that has to interfere with that, I will schedule into that but it’s very rare. You have to put your recharging in there first or it will be an afterthought and then we’re fried. We’re so exhausted. We’re so fried.

I have to say our dear colleague Sumit is here on the other side of the world. Sumit, I’m putting you on the spot because you’re Mr. Night Owl, or at least you’re forced to be with all these meetings across the other side of the planet. What are your thoughts about productivity, time management, and getting unstuck as Julie talks about? What are your thoughts about that?

I think the idea of what Julie was talking about appeals to me. I’m one of the most undisciplined people I know of and that hampers my productivity. I’ve been trying to follow the advice from Cal Newport in his book, A World Without Email, where he talks about doing fewer things and not being sucked into a constant stream of digital communications. I consciously switch off my email for a while when I need to be productive and do not respond to Slack, WhatsApp, or other things.

My phone is upside down at my desk on silent mode with the critical family numbers having access. For those couple of hours, I’m completely focused on the task at hand. All social media and everything else can go take a hike. So far, the world hasn’t crashed and burned. I think the earth will carry on spinning even if I carry on doing this in the future. I’m all for trying to squeeze in fewer things but doing them better instead of fitting every possible thing into one’s workday.

I think we get so work-focused that we forget about the me time, as you said. It’s just as important to have that downtime. Also, just to clear your head and the end result makes you more productive because the other way just leads to burnout.

How many great ideas even come to you when you’ve released your brain? I had a five-minute talk for a sponsorship I was doing, and I had no idea what I was going to say. I was stressing about it. I couldn’t figure it out because I sponsored the same event every year, and I wanted to say something different than I usually say. In the shower that morning, I was like, “I got it,” because I wasn’t thinking about it.

I have a friend, Betsy Clark. She’s a mindset and confidence coach. She talks about telling your brain what you want it to work on while you sleep. She’s like, “When I wake up in the morning, I’d like to know about this.” She lets it work on an answer and then wakes up with sometimes some clarity. We all do that. We wake up sometimes with clarity or we think of it in the middle of the night.

We think it’s a brilliant idea and then we can’t remember in the morning, but she’s getting much more intentional about that. She’s going to direct her subconscious on what she wants it to work on. However, Howard, if we go for a walk. If we go do something that takes our attention another way, it frees us up to have so many thoughts about our business or our lives or solve problems and all of that. Sometimes we’re in our own way because we’re thinking too hard about stuff.

Julie, you got me thinking about that because when you talk about your brain and the health of your brain, you talk about sleep. Believe me, in a previous forum, I talked about this as far as the science of your brain. When you sleep, you are restoring, but it’s also about diet because you’re very much into fitness, diet, wellness, and taking care of yourself so that your brain can fire in the best way to be more productive, to problem-solve and to be more strategic in your life and career. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s also about your health and wellness so it helps support what you suggest to your clients?

One hundred percent. If you’re working a ton and you’re not taking care of your body if you’re not moving, you’re sleeping a lot worse, and you’re not letting your brain ever turn off. You’re in bed trying to go to sleep and your brain won’t turn off. You’re waking up at 3:00 AM and your brain won’t turn off. It’s because we’re not training it to disengage.

If I’ve been active, I am a lot better sleeper. It’s true for babies and it’s true for us too but really and truly, it’s all about prioritizing yourselves, prioritizing your goals, and getting super intentional around what you’re doing for all of it. Also, not hoping and wishing that stuff gets done. Not hoping and wishing that you would eat better, that you would get outside this weekend, or whatever it is.

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It’s because I’ll tell you right now, I have not put cleaning up my garden on my calendar and there it sits. I keep thinking, “Maybe I could do that at 4:30 today,” but I don’t put it on the calendar. I’m like, “Maybe I could do that at 10:00 on Saturday,” and then I look out the window, I’m like, “I didn’t do the garden again.” We do that personal stuff and we do that work stuff. Do you guys find it? It’s on your list for days and days, weeks and weeks, months and months and you’re like, “I didn’t do that thing.” “Darn it. I still haven’t gotten to that.”

It keeps moving pages because I have my little to-dos that are about twenty items long and then I cross them off. I flip the page and I’m always adding them to the next page. After a while, it’s pretty frustrating. Everyone has heard that eat the frog. Is that the word you used? If you could get the biggest issue or rock or whatever done first, then the rest of your day is a little bit more tolerable with getting things done. Would you agree, Julie?

I would agree 100%. Sometimes it’s not the whole thing. We’re going to go to, “How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time.” It’s like the big things aren’t going to happen all at once and that’s why we procrastinate because it’s like, “It’s going to take too long. I can’t get started on that.” “Why not do the first step and the second?” That’s reverse chunking again.

We’re going to figure out the steps. We’re going to do the first step and then the second step. We’re going to create time on the calendar to work on each step. Sometimes it takes longer and sometimes it takes usually shorter than we think. Usually, something we thought would take 90 minutes takes us 17.5 minutes because we’re focused. It comes back to what Sumit was saying. How much do we lose focus?

Turn Off Your Notifications

That’s the number one thing that I tell my clients to do is to turn off their notifications. I know it sounds scary and it’s probably making some of you sweat, but turn them off. I have people who have turned them off. 6, 7, or 8 years ago, I told them to turn them off and they’ve never turned them back on. Sumit, I love that you have notifications off and your phone is upside down on your desk. There’s research out there. You could look it up. The further away this is from you, the more productive you are.

If it’s across the room. out of the room, or across the house, you’re more and more productive. They did a study with high school kids where their phones were on their desks, their phones were in their backpacks, and then their phones were in their lockers. It changed how they were focused during class. I think it was over 75% more focused. It was probably I would say in the 90s is my guess. I can’t remember the study, but they did a whole thing on it. These are crazy. They make us crazy. We check it 97 times an hour.

I find what makes it worse is these so you can keep your phone away.

My next crusade is to unattach your phone from your watch. It’s hard. How did we ever live when we had a corded phone that only rang when we were home?

I learned how to stretch that thing long but it’s so right. It’s funny. I saw a video where a younger person was like, “How do you answer your phone?” Now they go, “It’s not like this. It’s like this.” Technology has been shifting so crazy. It’s insane.

It’s funny when you see kids and you give them a phone with a dial and they have no idea how to dial a phone number.

“What’s this?” Now, we’re aging ourselves. Since we are on the People Strategy Forum, Julie, you and I have talked about this in the past. I talk about how an executive team could perhaps have what I call a competitive advantage. Also, to differentiate themselves not only for the business but also for the efficiency of the executive team, which ultimately will cascade throughout the organization if we set the role model. If we see our senior team being able to manage time well and see our senior team not fire-drilling us on Sunday morning on Easter, which has happened to me.

I’m still a little bitter about that and not expecting last-minute PowerPoints. I don’t think we even call them that anymore. If we see our executive team having that life balance, I remember one time in one of my healthcare systems, I was working past 6:00 PM because I was fairly new in my position. Bless my VP who walked in and said, “Char, I know you just started here.” I was in my 30s. She’s like, “But you have two young children at home. It concerns me that you’re here past 6:00. You need to work smarter and harder.”

Here I thought I was impressing my boss, but ultimately, she did not see that as an asset. It changed my thinking about my time management. Also, when the Blackberrys came out, that’s when it got nuts because I was constantly responding to managers all day long. Do you remember the pictures of me with my Blackberry on my hip all the time?

You were tied in it.

Being That Role Model

I was. What do you think about executives setting that role model for companies and organizations and how it cascades through the workforce?

Your people are only as good as you as a leader. It is so important that you and your team are number one, on the same page. Number two, that you are setting parameters around your team. I’m battling this right now but she’s texting me at 9:00 on Saturday night. I’ll wake up to stuff that was sent at 7:00 Sunday morning. I text her. I’m like, “Why are you working right now? I am not going to respond to this.” I understand. Thoughts happen, but you can push and hold the send arrow and schedule it to go out when you want it to go out.

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You can still have the thought. On Slack, you can push and hold the arrow and you can schedule it. You can still have the thought, record it, and schedule it so that you’re not interrupting someone else’s Easter, someone else’s Mother’s Day, or someone else’s Saturday. I understand that we have thoughts, but you as a leader can tell your team what your expectations are, when your expectations are, and also get everyone on the same page.

It’s like, “What are the goals,” so that they’re not all working on all the things all the time. It’s so that you are all clear like, “What is it right now? What is it for the next 90 days?” Meetings are a whole other subject of mine that makes me crazy. Unnecessary and too long meetings but have those five-minute standup meetings on Monday morning. “What are you working on? Here’s what I need. Does anybody have any questions? What’s up? See you.” Everybody is on the same page and nobody is wondering what they’re supposed to be doing, if they’re doing enough, if they’re working on the right thing, and what the expectation is. There’s so much around that, Char.

I would love to get Sumit, Howard, and even Sam’s input on this because they’re the technical guys around AI. Sam has a comment, but I want to say there are brainstorming tools that I’ve been utilizing recently through Teams and we pull sticky notes. Those little ideas that come in at 2:00 in the morning or whenever, you just pop your sticky note and then my colleagues are all putting their sticky notes back so we’re not constantly emailing each other back and forth. It’s a live platform on Google Docs. What do you think, Sam?

I think there are a lot of those great tools out there but as you said, Char, one of those tools that work for you is the paper-based. You write things down and you go to the next day and then the next day. Sometimes, electronic tools are so efficient that we forget what’s written on them. When you go down and say, “I didn’t get that today. How should that be prioritized to tomorrow?” I think that the extra step of writing it in a book brands it into our minds. Also, it makes us reevaluate it on a regular basis to see why didn’t achieve that. If this was a priority, why didn’t I get to it?

Setting Realistic Goals

I think that there’s a right tool for everyone out there overall. One thing I would like to revisit though is the goal-setting process. I know Julie when you were saying that there’s the power of three, having those three goals and so forth, but making sure that those goals are set appropriately so that they’re attainable within that period with the right amount of effort. Some leaders are fans of that stretch goal mentality but half the time they don’t ever get there to meet those goals. What do you propose for setting goals to be making sure that it’s realistic?

When we set the end-of-the-year goals when my team does that and even their 90-day goals that we do for my clients and my team, right now we have an event coming up. I call it the realistic goal, which is a little higher than what I think we can do, or what my brain thinks we can do is more like it. I also have what I would call a stretch goal. I call it the uncomfortable goal. It’s not comfortable, but maybe we could do it. I also have what I call the pie-in-the-sky goal.

I have three tiers of the goal, but they’re all related to the same goal. It’s just that I have three tiers and it’s pretty amazing. If you do the stretch goal that most people aren’t meeting, the one that they’re calling a stretch goal, you feel so unaccomplished. That’s the other piece, Sam. I think this is a good question because we have to engage with those goals throughout the year and a lot of people set those goals when they’re in a job and their businesses. They set these goals and they never look at them again.

When I had a job in education, I had to set these goals every year and I’m like, “Here you go. Whatever. I never looked at them again.” I’m like, “I’m doing my job.” Now, my view on that has changed as far as how I am in a business sense and it probably would change if I ever went back into education the way that I dealt with that but that was a leader problem. They were doing what they had to do by asking us for goals but there wasn’t an overall goal for the department or an overall goal for the building or whatever.

That goes back to that Sam. I think that we can’t just slap these goals up there in December or January. Hopefully, you guys are trying to set goals in December and not January because in January, you are a month behind already. There have to be check-ins and whether that’s quarterly, monthly, or three times a year, I don’t care how often you do it, but you have to decide if you’re on track.

You also have to decide, “Things have shifted so we need to shift and tweak this goal,” or, “I still think this is the goal. We need to look at what we need to do. How does our focus need to change in order to get where we want to go?” Remember that your goals are not written in blood or chiseled in stone. They can be dynamic. They can be flexible, but we have to keep them in front of us and we have to check in.

 

I have a question for you because many of us do this. What are your thoughts about the New Year’s resolutions and what are your thoughts about those resolutions when usually by the end of January we’re like, “I didn’t do that.” What do you think?

I don’t subscribe to New Year’s resolutions because most of our resolutions are around habits and that takes time. It’s hard. There’s generally a plan that people can stick to or a behavior that people might stick to for a couple of weeks and that’s because it’s a habit they’re trying to change and they’re not engaged in those habit-changing behaviors. They have to change their routine.

There are all kinds of things. A lot of you know that I’m a student of habit and that’s a big thing that we do is we work on shifting or creating new habits when you work with me. That’s a whole thing, Char because New Year’s resolutions are around habit and that takes time. A habit takes 28 days to form, but it takes 65 days to stick.

I like what you said about those check-ins because to help us achieve, we need that accountability partner. Sometimes that’s our manager when we’re doing that we check in with them and go through what needs to be accomplished and so forth. What I also find is if we don’t have them at a regular interval, then fear starts to build through as time passes.

Sometimes, I’ll set up a financial goal and I’ll get busy with life. I’m going, “I don’t want to look at my bank account.” You said you’re scared to look at it. It’s like, “I’m just going to put it off. I’ll look at it tomorrow,” or what the credit card balance is. I think that making sure that somebody’s holding you accountable and you have those regular check-ins so that you sit down together and you assess before it gets too far off track.

Also, you’re not surprised in a good way or a bad way. Sam, that credit card bill, you put off looking at that, and then you get in there, you’re like, “What? Something’s wrong here.” You’re like, “How did that happen?”

You take five hours digging into the history. It’s like, “Where did this charge come from?” If you just stayed up on it and watched your goal as you were going, you would be much better off for sure.

Some people are afraid to set goals because they’re afraid of failure but if you can remember, the goals can be dynamic. They can be flexible. The goals drive behavior. The goals drive what you are deciding to engage in and what you’re taking intentional action on. They want to move you from thinking about activities that you’re doing or being in motion. I wrote my newsletter on this to be in action. We’re taking action. You’re either in motion or you’re taking action. It’s two different things. Let’s move from being in motion to taking intentional action that is related to the goals.

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If you keep the goals in front of you and you can drive, you can do something related to it every day. I heard Jeff Hoffman who is the founder of Priceline.com. He doesn’t it own anymore, but he’s owned several businesses. He talks about how he used to put, early on before Priceline and all of that, a 3×5 card on his mirror. He had to look at himself in the mirror every day and say, “What am I doing today to reach my goal?” At the end of the day, he had to look at himself in the mirror and say, “What did I do today to work towards my goal?”

That’s super powerful. Thanks for that. That is a great tip. One thing I do is I put my goals on a board and I keep it in my office but putting it in that mirror is that self-accountability piece. You’re looking at yourself, you’re looking at your goal, and you’re reflecting, as you mentioned. Having that reflection at the end of the day, “What did I do to move the needle in this direction?” That’s a great tip.

It was really powerful when I heard him speak.

Sumit, I’d love to hear from you. How do you set goals and keep yourself accountable to them overall? Do you feel like this is something that you’ve worked on quite much?

First, I write down the goals physically on paper and keep them taped to my desk where I see them every day. Second, there are a few friends and folks that I look up to. I discuss the goals with them and it’s like making a public commitment that this is what I’m setting out to do. They act as my accountability partners. That’s on a long-term basis.

On a daily basis, I’m not a huge fan of the eat that frog kind of philosophy so I started in the reverse order. I try and pick whatever’s the easiest and the quickest thing to get off the list. Once you’ve got your shoulders a little loose and you’re in the groove, I find it becomes easier. It’s like when you go to the gym, you don’t start off with the heaviest weight first. You warm yourself up, get the blood circulating, and then decide on what you’d like to tackle as a bigger problem.

Wrap-Up

Thanks, Sumit. As we’re reflecting on what our conversation was in this episode, Julie, when we’re thinking about what we want our readers to take away from the conversation, how would you sum things up?

I think number one is you need to get super clear on what it is that you want. Even if you can’t go as far out as a year, go as far out as 90 days. “What do you want to have happen in the next 90 days,” and break that down. Secondly, is that if you can take intentional action, you’re moving from stuck to strategic. You’re making yourself strategic even if you don’t like that word. Intentional action is all about getting strategic about how you are and keeping that goal in front of you.

The third thing is to truly have patience because we live in this instant gratification world. Everything is at our fingertips right now. Everything is on our doorstep tomorrow. We in business have to have some patience. It takes a while to warm people up. It takes a while for us to warm up. It takes a while for things that we’re putting into place to take root. If you can have that patience, be consistent, and be intentional about your actions, I think that you’re right on track.

Thank you so much, Julie. One thing I know is that you have to speak at a lot of events and have a large online presence. Can you tell us what’s coming up in your world?

I’m so excited. I have a virtual event. You can come from anywhere in the world and attend May 15th, 16th, and 17th. We’ll be broadcasting live on Zoom and you have all kinds of interaction with other people. It’s not just me speaking to you. I teach it, you practice it, you share, you learn and you walk away with a plan. It’s called Results Unleashed. What would happen if we unleashed some results or if we unleashed the path to how you’re going to get to where you want to go? That’s what we’re doing. Also, if you want the free gift that Char talked about which is my Daily Productivity Planner, that’s on my website, which is JulieMillerDavis.com.

Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure going through this conversation with you and getting these pointers to becoming more productive and effective in the workplace as a leader. Thank you so much, Julie.

I appreciate all of you having me back. It’s good to see all your faces again. It’s been a while.

It is been a great journey. Thank you everyone for tuning into the show and we will see you next time.

Thanks, everyone.

 

Important Links

• Howard Nizewitz – LinkedIn
• Sumit Singla – LinkedIn
• Char Miller – LinkedIn
• JMD Productivity Training
• A World Without Email
• Priceline
• Daily Productivity Planner
• Julie Miller Davis

 

About Julie Miller Davis

Julie Miller Davis is a productivity trainer and coach who began her journey at a leadership ranch in Colorado, where she taught high school athletes essential leadership skills. Utilizing Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens,” Julie learned how to help others manage pressure, peer support, self-help, and negotiation. She transferred these skills to her work with women entrepreneurs, guiding them to achieve their business goals.

Julie’s diverse background includes experiences as a high school teacher, competitive pianist, ski racer, volleyball player, and theatrical director. These roles, combined with her master’s degree in Human Speech Communication, equipped her with the persistence, focus, and self-discipline needed for effective leadership.