Soleil: [00:00:00] Hey there, my name is Soleil Rain, and this is the first episode of Sweat Strategy and Success. Welcome. 

In this episode, we're talking to the incredible Marisa Brassfield. Marisa, since 2008, has been a guiding force for mission driven founders, helping them navigate the future with ease, efficiency, and effectiveness. 

Marisa's dynamic leadership has produced over 250 million dollars in attributable revenue,

including ghostwriting multiple best selling books and launching multi million dollar businesses and venture funds.

Leading eight figure masterminds in digital platforms and maintaining cultural integrity during dozens of high stake team pivots.

I truly think that the highlight of this episode is Marisa talking to us about how she cut her full six day workweek down to just three and a half days and still managed to stay productive With ruthless prioritization as she says she'll talk to us about how this allowed Values and wellness to [00:01:00] take the lead in her life rather than the stress that she was experiencing at the time.

And I promise you, you're going to walk away with some super insightful tips on how to allocate your time and energy towards the things that really matter to you. We'll explore unconventional productivity hacks and how to include artificial intelligence into your workflow to optimize your day. 

and lastly, if you enjoy this podcast, please like, save, or subscribe on your favorite platforms. It allows me to bring on really cool guests so we can continue to talk about wellness and business. Thank you, and enjoy.

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Soleil: Hi, 

Marissa. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

How are you doing?

Marissa: It's my pleasure. I'm so excited that we get to be here together in my backyard. 

Soleil: It feels so special to be here.

So thank you for, for coming onto this podcast and for being here with me. So Marisa, you have managed to reduce your work week down to three and a half days and get more done than most people do in [00:02:00] seven. So what's your secret? Is it.

Time travel or just really good coffee. 

Marissa: All of the above. Um, and delegation. Uh, you know, it really comes down to figuring out the things that I really need to be working on. The best things that I can be doing with my time. And all of the other things that are best left to either technology or teamwork or maybe not even done at all.

Soleil: Mm hmm. So Give me a snapshot of your life leading up to this moment. 

Marissa: Yeah, so I did not always have these three and a half day workweeks. In fact, even up until the end of 2022, right before ChatGPT came out, I was still working six days a week and just cranking it. The last 15 years or so I've been orbiting around visionary entrepreneurs and I've got a degree in journalism.

So content writing and thought leadership have always been a part of my game. And along the way I picked up operations and book launch strategy and all these other projects kind of [00:03:00] opportunistically, But along the way, just built these really great, deep, trust based relationships with entrepreneurs where I would work in their personal S Corp, not as part of their company, but I was always a consultant, which allowed me to renegotiate relationships as they, grew or didn't grow, and as I grew, and, um, yeah, so that's been, that's been the crux of it.

I founded Ridiculously Efficient, which is my S Corp, back in 2011, basically to consolidate all of my freelance work, and that has included 20, 000 articles that I've written, , either under my own name or someone else's, a couple of best selling books under other people's names, and several different business units, including Abundance 360, which is how we got together, which was acquired by Singularity University back in 2018.

It's an amazing community that brings together entrepreneurs and investors, teaches them about technologies and where they're going in the future, and then how to [00:04:00] adapt their business strategy today to make the most of them. And so along the way, if I draw The through line, it's like figuring out how I can use technology, figuring out how to double down on my own best skills, and leveraging teamwork and building really strong relationships along the way so that I'm building high performance teams, including, the collective of friends that I work with now.

Soleil: So I particularly enjoy your work, especially in today's world because of this idea of hustle culture, a lot of people feel like they need to be working 24 7, 14 hours of their 24 hour day to get The next position to make more money and Nick Srnicek. SRNICEK.

I always mess up on the name. It's it's actually had to look it up beforehand. It's a Czech name. It's very hard to pronounce. Nick Srnicek, a lecturer in digital economy at king's College London and co author of the upcoming book, After Work, [00:05:00] says the culture of 24 7 work and hustling to win became an aspirational business model for many.

It all legitimized the idea that to be successful and to get anything meaningful done, you have to be doing long hours. What are your thoughts around hustle culture in today's work environment and work life How that relates to the work that you do. 

Marissa: Yeah. So, in short, it's a strategy. It is not a strategy for everyone.

It's not a strategy for every season. I look back at my 20s, I was definitely part of that. Um, I, I accepted what others told me, which was, Oh, this is the part of your career where you really need to put your head down. And it's true that the relationships and the work that I did in those early years, 

and I think, especially November 2022, when chat GPT came into the game and conversational AI started to get better, all of a sudden, these same [00:06:00] tools and techniques that I would use back in my early days of writing when I was paid by the article. So it was very like widget based, almost like, um, the industrial revolution making widgets in a factory where the more I did, the more money I would make.

Now, it's not that way. There are so many different ways to make money. So when I talk to young people and really people at different phases of their career, because there are a lot of folks right now in their mid 30s to mid 40s who are just totally burned out of corporate culture. They have. done their whole careers thus far in that hustle environment where you've there's so many tradeoffs and for me, a lot of tradeoffs came in the form of, um, Just like numbing behaviors, a shopping addiction, just like, just feeling the need to compulsively scroll Instagram and Amazon and buy things that I didn't need.

And there are so many interesting ways that we react to stress. And I noticed that if I just reduced the stress, which in my case was [00:07:00] reducing the type of work that I did, minimizing exposure to energy draining situations and people, you know, And maximizing my exposure to energy giving experiences and people that naturally started to realign my workload.

I was able to find different ways to make money. I call it like your own business model because we all have a different business model. Some of us go and show up for a business and we're paid hourly. That's a business model. Some of us go and we, uh, create events and it's, it's episodic kind of revenue.

One of the best things I did was take a look at my business model and explore how that was supporting my nervous system and my goals. And I realized, unfortunately, that a lot of the ways that I was working in the past didn't support my nervous system and also didn't support my values and my goals.

So that was, uh, the start of my own reckoning. And honestly, I'm still in a stage of experimentation. I'm always playing around with different ways to, use my skills to create value in the world. [00:08:00] And I think that, that, um, rhythm of constant experimentation and adaptation, that to me feels so much more playful and fun and easeful than the old days, which was basically follow the old playbook and try and become a better robot instead of what I'm doing now, which was try and become an even better human.

Soleil: Yeah. And so, Tell me what you're doing now with your company, Ridiculously Efficient, and we've talked about, you know, how your past, you were stressed, it was affecting your body, affecting your relationships, and I'm sure it does for many people who are on similar paths nowadays, so how does your company, Ridiculously Efficient, address those problems, and what is 

Marissa: it?

Yeah, so Ridiculously Efficient is my S Corp and it's a play space. Uh, really, I partner up with entrepreneurs who are doing really big things in the world and it takes form in [00:09:00] different ways. Um, so we've got some courses at Ridiculously Efficient that help people fight burnout, lean into their best skills, and also, I partner up with other entrepreneurs to launch new business initiatives.

In 2024, I've been really excited about partnership and what different collaborations look like where you have your business in your initiatives. I have my business in my initiatives, but there's someplace in the middle where we can create something new that didn't exist before and share in the success, of that business.

So, that's my new flavor is collaboration, co elevation, And it's been a blast.

Soleil: So with Ridiculously Efficient, you have a blog and a newsletter, that's correct, right? Okay. And so can you tell me a little bit about how you get people to sign up for your newsletter and how you get people to be active in your community? 

Marissa: Yeah. So, uh, head to ridiculouslyefficient.

com. You'll see a banner across the top and I've got a little checklist [00:10:00] up there, to help you audit and save some time. And along the way, you know, we've got different courses and things that happen throughout the year, but really we're trying to meet people where they are and for anyone who is building a business and thought leadership is, you know, something that, you know, you've got to do.'

 I always think about, something that someone told me, which was like you're two chapters ahead in the textbook. And so you're just teaching something that you've, you've gone through and you've experienced it. And so, so much of what we do at Ridiculously Efficient is focused on, fighting burnout, using technology, leaning into your best skills.

So that may take all kinds of forms, different courses. Sometimes they're, little challenges that we do. And another thing that I love doing is working with folks one on one, and a lot of times people will come to me when they're in a transition. They know that they have outgrown the situation they're in now, but they don't know where they want to grow into next, and I love just counseling people through that.

Soleil: And who's your target [00:11:00] audience? Who's the main people who are coming to Ridiculously Efficient who are having these issues in the first place? 

Marissa: Yeah. So it's funny because I've got folks from all over the world, literally all over the world, almost every continent. And the thing we have in common is more values based, you know, we're ambitious.

We want more and we want better. And we're always building a bigger and better future. And we don't necessarily want to compromise along the way. So it's doing your best work and living your best life. So often I hear the narrative about, well, you can have a great family and a great personal life and make a ton of money and have impact and have a healthy, relationship with your body.

But like, you can only choose some of those things. I'm like, no, I want them all. Don't make me choose. Don't tell me that that's a false choice to me. I'll just find a different way to do it so that I can have it all. 

Soleil: That is very special because I think A lot of people think that they can only have [00:12:00] certain things. Have you ever seen that triangle where it's like, you can only have a really nice body, a really good career and an amazing relationship, you know, like, and you can only pick two of the three.

 It's, it's kind of absurd to think like that, you know, if I wanted all three, why couldn't I get all three,

Marissa: yeah, and it's all about what you value and prioritize and how you define success.

Because if I am playing the game of life according to someone else's rules, I'm almost certainly not going to do it. You know, I'm not going to achieve on some level, and I think that's the trap a lot of us high performers fall into is we forget we've got the talent to create our own game and the tools and skills are out there.

Yes, you're going to have a weird time at parties because you're never going to be able to explain what you do. In a like short sentence, your parents, your family may not understand what you do. But to me, those are the trade offs for [00:13:00] living a life that is completely mine. That is of my design and importantly, one where I'm getting to define the rules so that I can win.

Because if I'm playing a game where I know every single day I can win, I'm having more fun. I'm bringing my best self to whatever I'm doing. And I'm also recognizing when. the situations that I set up for myself, whether it's a wrong fit client or doing the wrong kind of work or, um, an engagement that's gone on way too long that needs to be cut off.

You start to get to listen to your intuition a little bit more because all that external noise is silenced or at least quieted down significantly. And Even that was so different from how I grew up, where it was very much just like a people pleasing environment and everybody else, all the successful people operate and move in this way, so you've got to do it that way too.

And I think my whole professional life has been a big journey in proving that that isn't the way it has to be. [00:14:00] 

Soleil: So then I have to ask, do you consider yourself an expert in work life balance? For 

Marissa: me, yes. I figured out for me all the things that don't work, all the things that do work, and you know, I've helped hundreds of people discover that for themselves.

It's tricky because, you know, expert and master, like there's, it's like when I started to learn about wine and I thought I had a a lot of knowledge about wine and I could name a lot of facts and recite a lot of things in a really good palette. It's like, the more you learn about something, the more you realize there is to learn and know.

So, it's always a trap of like saying expert and master, but like for me, absolutely. Like I know what situations are, are really good for me and which ones aren't. I know what it feels like in my body when I'm cranking it a little too hard and I need to pull back. I've developed really deep self awareness.

In terms of when I'm at my best, what that looks and sounds [00:15:00] and feels like, as well as when I'm not at my best. And, and it is time for a break or a pause or, Ooh, I didn't like how that sounded coming out of my mouth. Like I didn't like how I showed up in that meeting. What's going on? What can I double click into?

So, you know, perfection is not a thing. However, constant continuous progress and evolution, like that's, that's the only way that's how humankind has survived, you know. 

Soleil: On your website, you have this description about yourself that I like and you talking right now about how you've managed to perfect your own work life balance . I wanted to bring this up. It says, never again would work come before her values, the quality of her marriage, or her own wellness.

 As you were saying, I wasn't Doing well during this meeting or you know, something's not right, how did you decide like, okay? I'm gonna make this decision to move past this old version of myself So I [00:16:00] can have a better life and how could other people also join you on this journey to do that in their own lives?

Marissa: Yeah, yes So for me, it started as a whisper, that I needed to make a really significant change in my work life. I had been, working with the same person and organization for eight and a half years at that point, and developed a lot of, external success. Um, but internally I felt like my soul was dying and I just, those whispers kept getting louder and louder.

At that time, I'd been married for 11 years and still married, and so I, it was really a commitment to my husband about like, okay, never again will the phone ring and no matter where we are or what we're doing, you know, I would stop and I would look and I would take it. I would take the call. If we were cuddling on the couch watching a movie and a text came in, I could get super stressed out.

But yeah, Just from that text message because of all the things that [00:17:00] were around it and it was just not healthy for anybody. It wasn't fair to him. And, you know, to, to have someone who is so supportive of my career has been, that's the biggest, you know, unfair advantage is to have a partner who supports you and won't judge, won't criticize.

And so, you know, the fact that this kind man was letting me, um, behave that way in our relationship, you know, okay, like we had, we had to, we had to heal that, you know, so symbolically, my last day was on our anniversary. We were in Boston, we had an amazing day, and we ate oysters, we love oysters, like at a billion places.

But it was very much like, okay, from this day forward, our priorities are our priorities. And what our, and so we, we did this, uh, family values exercise. We did it as a couple and then we did it again when we had my son. Because to have your values as a family, Then [00:18:00] you've got something to look at and go okay, am I acting in alignment with those values?

Or are the decisions I'm making actually counter to what I'm saying that I value most in life? One of our family values is pilots, not passengers. So what that means to us is like we are piloting our life. We are, we are setting the direction and the trajectory.

So in my case, and to break it down, I noticed in my body that something didn't feel good. This happens differently and in different places for everyone. For some people, it's in your heart. For some people, it's in your gut. But it didn't feel right. I didn't want to be where I was. I didn't want to be in the meeting.

I didn't want to go, and, and I'm somebody who's very motivated, very driven. So anytime you notice a behavior that's counter to how you naturally act, that's, that's a red flag. So I look for it as a leader. I look for it in my teams. It's like, hey, you've been down, the last [00:19:00] few days. Is everything all right?

Can I, you know, and, and that's, it's an opportunity to have a conversation if someone is usually very cheery and positive and always smiling and then they're really down for a few days, dig in, figure out why. And, and also notice in yourself like, Ooh, gosh, I've been, I've been really short tempered or, you know, it shows up differently for everybody.

 So, behavior that's atypical from your norm. And then, I try and locate it in the body. For us, it might be a shoulder. It might be your legs or something that's acting up. But, there's um, there's a great book called The Body Keeps the Score. And it talks about how stress shows up in your body someplace.

And for me, it, it absolutely showed up, in my heart and my gut. And it's interesting because, So like side note, two and a half months after I left that role. I became pregnant, and with no other lifestyle or behavioral changes other than leaving my job. So for me, I, I've [00:20:00] had now this experience of, yes, they tell you to hustle.

They tell you to work hard. They tell you to do all these things. But what they don't tell you is what that might do to your body. And for me, I was infertile for 12 years. of our marriage because of that, because I was choosing stress. So in our relationship and the unwinding, it was like, okay, let's, let's now make choices that align with our values.

So, you know, on an individual front, it's like, what do you value most in life? What makes life worth living? What, what qualities would you want someone to notice and remember in you? You can come at these prompts in all, all kinds of different ways, but you'll probably uncover six, seven or eight things that are uniquely yours that when you look at them, it's almost like a scorecard.

Like if I did all of those things, I'm being my best self. I am living a well lived life and I'm living my life. And that to me became [00:21:00] the scorecard. that created all the rules. So now, internally when I'm filtering for clients, no jerks, no egos, no egos. Like I need to feel that I'm becoming a better person by being exposed to this person.

That's, that's a criteria for working with someone. So, you know, it's, it's an evolution because I say all this now, like it's the easiest thing to do, but all along the way you run up with all the criticisms or all the fears. If I walk away from this job, am I going to have another opportunity, or is this going to be my only?

No, there's infinite opportunities, but our head will play games with us to try to keep us playing small, to try to keep us, alive. So there's part of this that is self awareness, it's growth, it's a little bit of, um, audacity, but to me, I would rather try and fail. , a hundred times living my [00:22:00] life than to cop out for me.

This is a cop out and, and go and work a corporate job. Like, since 2007 I've worked from, from home remotely. Fully. As a contractor. I've never had a W 2 job. Before it was famous to work from home. Before it was famous. It was so weird. I to have to like convince people why I was so much more effective if they didn't have me go into the office now, you know, they just, they're happy to do it, but like it was so weird for all those years.

What's great about that though, is I learned how to manage myself and how I work but it does come down to self awareness and figuring out, how badly you want. The thing that you want, whether, and for me it was freedom of time and to control my schedule and to control my calendar and I want that more than anything.

I want that more than money because to me I can always make more money, find a different way to make money, but I cannot make more time and I can't get it back once it's gone.

Soleil: Yeah, I think recently I've, I've learned the power [00:23:00] of being able to spend time on things that you want. For me personally, it's being able to have the time to enjoy the outdoors, spend time with my boyfriend and with my family and be able to do stuff like this.

You know, this isn't my full time job. I have a different full time job, but my full time job and my work life balance allows me to come and sit here with you and do things that I really enjoy. And so on that note, how did you How did you get to three and a half day work week? How did you reduce your six day work week as you were doing before down to three and a half days?

Marissa: Yeah, yeah. So there's a really interesting thing, they call it Parkinson's law, which is, , basically the amount of time it takes to do something is the same amount of time that you have allotted for it. I'm paraphrasing. But a silly example is, you know, if I, if I were to say, on [00:24:00] Sunday, I'm going to clean the house, it'll take me all day to clean the house.

But if you say, Hey, I'm going to be there in 20 minutes. Now I start cleaning the house and I get most of it done. Maybe not all of it. But I would get just about as much of it done in that 20 minutes as I might have done the whole day. So for me, I wanted to have the flexibility, so starting from the end in mind, the flexibility to have a four day weekend whenever I pleased, to take a Friday off, to take a Monday off, oh, to take a Monday and a Friday off, you know, like, wouldn't that be lovely?

But then to have the flexibility to say, all right, I'll work a half day today. and then there was the three and a half days. So I started from there. And then I was like, what would, so this is a classic framework, VOTA, vision, obstacles, transformation, action. So vision, three, three day work week, three and a half day work week.

[00:25:00] Obstacles. What's in the way of that? Okay. Client meetings are in the way of that. I need to restructure my client meetings so that they only appear, , Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Well, if you have Calendly and you remove Monday and Friday, that was my first step. I removed Monday and Friday and then I was like, okay.

 Here guys, book on my calendar. This is my real time calendar. It just only happens to show Tuesday through Thursday. Then I started restricting those hours so that I had more time for focus time. So now the calendar only shows 10 to 2 or 2 to 4 and, uh, Tuesday through Thursday. And the funny thing is, with hustle culture, People just assume that everyone else is busy.

So they're like, wow, it took me three weeks to book with you. You must be slammed and I would go, yeah, wow, I know. It's so crazy right now. Oh my goodness, that's insane. And, uh, and I'll go, yeah, you know, if something frees up, I'll try and see [00:26:00] if I can reschedule. And then sometimes I'd go, you know what, let's, why don't we do Friday?

Could you meet Friday morning? I can make something work. Even though that wasn't on my schedule. Depending on the relationship or whatever. So, uh, forced constraints, forced constraints work really well from a time management perspective. It's why time blocking works. , all that good stuff. Pomodoro technique.

It's why that stuff works. You, you compress things in a certain window. All right. Now I had to get really strategic about the time remaining. , so I used a tool called reclaim. ai and basically allows you to automate time boxing. , so So, uh, I, I love and have recommended time boxing for 15 years because, you know, just setting, specific windows to do specific tasks helps you prioritize and make sure that you have enough time to do everything you need to do.

What I love about Reclaim is I'll say, all right, I want to work out for, between 30 and 90 minutes, Monday through Friday. between the [00:27:00] hours of 730 and 930. Now, depending on what's on my schedule for that day, Reclaim will make that window shorter or longer, but it will always make sure that that activity happens, depending on your settings.

So I would just set that for a bunch of things, 15 minutes after every call, to refresh, refresh, I would reflect, write down my notes, send my follow up emails, and I would try and optimize things that way so that there was no homework. There was nothing that I had to do later on to finish up the activity from that day.

I use tools like otter. ai to automatically transcribe meetings so that I can highlight things that are important to me as I go. And then I export that transcript And I'll usually use Claude or ChatGPT to take the raw transcript, look for the highlighted portions, and edit, you know, whatever I need to do, prompt the email or whatever.

So, I did use AI pretty extensively, and still do, for simple follow up items, [00:28:00] notes, consolidating things. So I think about the activities of, and categories of work, and where can AI help me accelerate that thing. And then, so I would have a prompting period, an hour a day, you know, where that's my session and I'm, I'm cranking out as much work as I can in that time.

And sometimes it's building a strategy that I won't look at until the next day. Sometimes it's actually completing work that I need to write and it's a bunch of rough notes and it needs to be a polished, draft. So, timeboxing, ruthless prioritization. Ruthless. There's no way you finish everything on your to do list in a, in a three and a half day workweek.

It just doesn't happen. So you're choosing what you will not do, just as much as you're choosing what you will do. And it's interesting because if you start looking at what you naturally choose not to do, Then I come back and go, okay, how can I adjust my business model? So I'm only working on the things that I [00:29:00] really want to do.

And, I have some either teamwork or it's not in my scope to do the other stuff. That's where the teamwork part comes in. I've got a great project manager, Cass, who works part time and then a VA based in the Philippines. And she's got a team of four, including a graphic designer. And. It's interesting because, you know, I've got a team of two to six and, everybody's working part time.

They're working on the things that they're excited about. They've got other clients. So in, in that way, it's more like a collective than a traditional company, but we're coming together to create things that we really care about. And right now we really care about how many people are feeling burned out and uninspired by work.

And we're seeing all of these opportunities where you can take what you're passionate about and I mean, there's this, uh, there's this girl who sells Excel. She sells Excel spreadsheets and templates. And she's got a six, seven I've seen stuff like [00:30:00] that before. She's got a six, seven figure business just on that.

And it's funny because, you know, we have this assumption that the one business activity. needs to make up our whole annual income that we would work at a job. But no, you can have this little income stream. You know that the IRS analyzed the tax returns of wealthy people, and they found that the average wealthy person has seven different streams of income, seven different types of income.

There's dividends. There's, I mean, there's all these different ways that they make money. And that blew my mind because then I'm like, okay, why, why do I have to have one source for my income? Why can't I have four? Why can't I have six? And that way you're, you've got all these, I think about it as like lines in the water while you're fishing.

The more lines you have out, something will bite, something will work. And I'm also experimenting with what I like to do. And where that meets up with what others need and how I can be of service [00:31:00] using my skills. Anyway, it's a fabulous exploration. And I think about the time we're in now where there's so many things changing in terms of business models and how people are making money.

The job market is changing. So all of this is changing anyway. Why not? Lean into it and see if there's different ways that you can use your skills to make money and string a lifestyle out of it, not necessarily a job. 

Soleil: You've talked so much about different AI products that you use in order to cut your work week down to three and a half work days. So what are your favorite products to use right now? I know you, you said quite a few, um, but if you had to pick like, let's say three three products that were your favorite to use that you would recommend to other people who were trying to either reduce their work week or just use AI to, , manage their time a little bit better.

What would be three tools that you would recommend to them? 

Marissa: Yeah. So, uh, Claude.AI. So Claude by Anthropic is my daily [00:32:00] driver, I use Claude for everything, uh, creative writing, a lot, anything that needs to sound human like. And the way that I use it is I usually, because there's a file upload function on this and chat GPT.

Um, And so I upload a really detailed document with all the things that are important. So for example, we use it for the newsletter and, we've got a five page document that has my bio, my values, what I believe, , my astrology, my human design, and all of these instructions that are really specific to how I like to live.

to communicate and how I like to make people feel when they read something I've written. So I prompt that, and I have that as a Google doc, I export it, I upload it, and then I'm like, okay, we're going to work on this newsletter on this topic. And then I usually have Otter. So that's it. Claude Otter, uh, ai.

There are lots of really good [00:33:00] AI augmented transcription tools. It's just that I've been using Otter since like 2019. So we have a relationship and I don't want to like start another relationship. So, I've got the Otter app on my phone and I'll just walk around and while I'm unloading the dishes or making coffee or walking around playing with my son, I'll get an idea.

That's when, where our ideas happen. They don't happen when we're sitting at a workstation. station, you know, it's when you're out and about. So I have it open and I'll just start dictating rough notes. And then when I go back to my prompting session, then I can export those raw notes and, include that in my prompt for Claude.

So Claude, Otter, now I will say. Uh, Poe. com, which is a product by Quora, brings together a bunch of different chatbots. So Claude also chat GPT under one subscription. So if, uh, cause these things, it's like death by [00:34:00] paper cuts and the paper cuts are twenty to forty dollars subscriptions for all the things you need to pull together.

No joke. 

Soleil: They have like services now to. Check for you how many subscriptions you have and it gets insane with AI. I'm sure. It's 

Marissa: outrageous And so Poe. com is another way that you can get access to multiple tools Including Claude including chat chat GPT without paying all the individual fees But I still do it so that I have my different chat windows Anyway, uh, so Claude, Otter, and the third one, my goodness, Descript.

ai. So this is a video editing tool, um, but it makes it as easy to use as, um, editing a Google Doc. So you upload your video, it transcribes on the left side, and then you can just delete out pauses, And then you can create a synthetic [00:35:00] voice. So if sometimes I'll say the wrong word, I can just highlight, type it in, and then my synthetic voice will say that word, which is wild.

They also have an eye contact feature. It's a little weird. I actually kind of prefer the old way where natural human eyes look and wander around, because it's even creepier when there's perfect, Eye contact to the camera. But they've got that and, you know, a bunch of, of tools. And then, okay, so that's like my three that I, I totally recommend.

One that I've been having fun with lately is HeyGen. And this is a tool that allows you to take five minutes of, video where you're talking into the, and, and making perfect eye contact with the camera. And then it creates an AI version of you that you can then use. And I've been using it for like slides and screen share presentations.

And I record a real clip of my [00:36:00] voice and I upload it. But then I have my HeyGen avatar doing the thing and it, it uses hand gestures and it's really creepy, but it's also really fun to play with. And, uh, when I think about the old days. Like when I record courses, it's me and the screen share, and if I mess up, we do it again, or it's somebody's edit.

Uh, this just lets me upload the file, and it's done. 

Soleil: I feel like a lot of people are a little hesitant to use AI. What would you say to those people who are kind of scared about using it? 

Marissa: Yeah, and I, uh, I really empathize because, there's a tremendous lack of accountability. Um, and I'm, I point my fingers right at big tech.

Because they're rolling these, these technologies out, knowing full well that the government has no idea what to do with them. And so our legislators that are creating policies that could protect us and regulation, they're not, they're not in this generation. They're not in this [00:37:00] technological world. A lot of them have been in office since the PC came out, you know?

So there's no, how could you possibly stay, You know,, abreast of what's going on, that said, it's not going away and it's not slowing down. And one of the reasons I encourage non technical people to dabble with AI is precisely because we need more people around the table who represent humanity, not just the tech savvy folks who love AI and want to see it.

proliferate. But you know, it's, it's funny because if everyone who was nervous about AI didn't participate, it wouldn't make AI go away. And then the only people that are developing it are folks in Silicon Valley and China and all over the place where they may not [00:38:00] have everyday people's best interests at heart.

So, you know, I talked to, I talk a lot to parents and moms who have young kids knowing that, you know, our, our kids are going to grow up in this world where AI is ubiquitous. And I, I want them. As I do with myself, I want to have a lived experience with it so that I can have a different conversation with him.

 With my son than one of pure prohibition, you know, it's like, this is similar to drugs and, and similar to alcohol because it's just as addictive in some ways. In 2023, I took over 200 people through their first 20 minutes. Of conversational AI, like took them by the hand, let's open it up and, and, and I usually do it by, something that's not work related at all.

I'll go, okay, what would, uh, an amazing morning routine look like for you? And a lot of parents are really rushed in the morning. There's so much to do. You got to get ready for work. Then there's the kids and [00:39:00] drop off and everybody's got to eat and get dressed and do their thing in the bathroom. And it's just so much logistics.

So they don't have time to reflect, to read. To have any kind of meditation or spiritual practice, or, you know, some of the other things that we know are nourishing and that give us energy as the day goes on. So I just have like a conversation about their ideal morning. I construct that into a prompt. We send it off and then they get a, an hour by hour, you know, wake up at this time, do this, do this.

Very often they'll get an aha about how they're sequencing their morning. And they really do have time to do some of the things that they didn't think they had time to do before. But what happens next is we also have all kinds of interesting discussions, like, Where does that information go? Where did all the information come to build this algorithm?

How much is this? You know, like, what? And so all of those [00:40:00] conversations are important to have. So. Yeah, I mean, I share some concerns and I share some fears about AI and how it's socialized, but the biggest is that, you know, we're not paying attention while this enormously powerful technology keeps getting better and more proliferating.

And, and only a handful of people know how to use it well, because I've seen how it can, tremendously accelerate some of the things that I do in my workplace that aren't particularly special. You know, sending emails is not a special thing. Preparing agendas for meetings is not a very special thing. So, you know, there's lots that we do in the average workday that doesn't necessarily need to be done by hand manually from start to finish. 

Soleil: I pulled a really interesting statistic from Deloitte's most recent Gen Z and Millennial survey in 2024, and I'm going to read it to you real quick. It says, both Gen Z and [00:41:00] Millennials report the number one feeling they have about generative AI is uncertainty. with excitement and fascination being close behind.

They believe the feeling of uncertainty is driven, at least in part, by the fact that many are not using Gen AI at work. 27 percent of Gen Zs percent of millennials say they never use Gen AI at work, while another 42 percent of Gen Zs and 38 percent of millennials say they rarely or sometimes do.

How can someone who is working a corporate job begin to utilize Gen AI at work and begin evolutionizing AI almost together instead of allowing big tech to do it. 

Marissa: Yeah. So, you know. What's interesting is I've also seen some studies and some of this is anecdotal about a lot of folks are not confessing their use of AI to their employer and to their boss now, you know, external polling fine, but like, we don't know.

We don't really [00:42:00] know, but here's what we do know, and, and how folks can use it. So a lot of big companies, well, companies of all sizes are putting out like acceptable use policies, and I'm advising them to put out expected use policies because there is this, assumption that if a human does it, it has to be better.

And I think that's true for a lot of things. It may not be true for spreadsheets. You know, it may not be true for some of the things that we do. So, I, I always look for low risk ways to use AI. And I say low risk meaning, um, it's not going to cause reputation risk. There's no data exposure. There's no, confidential, sensitive information, proprietary information being shared.

 That said, you know, I don't know how many times a day I look at a call that I'm leading and I'm going, okay, I need an, I need a 30 minute agenda for, there's going to be six people. There's a CEO, three project managers, and two department heads. We need [00:43:00] an update from each side and we need to make. The three these three decisions and I get that agenda instead of me manually trying to calculate like oh We spend five minutes here and then we go 10 minutes here.

It's such a waste of time It's 30 seconds. And then now that i've got that prompt and that conversation set now the next time I go to into that meeting or into that, chat window for another meeting, I can go, okay, this one's going to be 90 minutes. Here are the decisions. And, and because it's conversational, it remembers the history and how I've prompted it in the past to get the results that I want formatted in the exact way that I want it.

So, you know, it takes a little bit of practice. Start with the really lightweight stuff. I love, an activity audit. Take a look at all the things you do in a workday. And I mean all the things. And which are the ones where you're really putting your unique thumbprint on the work? You're building a really great relationship or it's, [00:44:00] it's a sales moment and, you know, or a trust building moment and, you know, maybe those are the things that you don't want to Outsource to AI.

Those are the things you want to keep to yourself. But look for those things that take up 5, 10, 15 minutes of the day that you'll do 5 to 20 times a day. And just see, you know, a lot of, uh, if you use Salesforce, there's Einstein. So a lot of these tools have built in AI. So take a look at the tools that you're already using and see, and take a little tutorial.

See what you can. Learn how to do an automate start with like the basic emails. You don't have to use the use it for the gnarly emails, but like the little basic quick replies.

Soleil: If you had to give advice to just like generally you wanted to start working Smarter, not harder. Where would you tell someone to start? 

Marissa: Yeah, um, take a look at your day. Take that activity audit. Think about all the [00:45:00] things you do, or you could just have a little spreadsheet open or a physical notepad next to you and just write down the things that you do over the course of a day.

And reflect at the end on which of those activities You loved. Which ones lit you up? Which ones gave you energy? Which ones made you feel like, okay, I, nobody else could do what I just did. Like that, I, I used and, and demonstrated such skill and nuance that Nobody in, on my team, nobody in my company, nobody in the world could do that thing.

You might have one thing, you might have five things, depending on, you know, what you're doing. So just know what those things are. That's just good to know because when you have an opportunity, to do those skills. Now, you know, okay, now it's time to bring my a game. Like now I have a fun day. This is a fun meeting.

Now look at the other end of it, [00:46:00] which of those activities were soul sucking, draining, just totally zap you, you know, which people, which situations. And it's tricky because a lot of times people do this audit and they realize, Ooh, everyone I talk to at my job drains my energy. Well, that's an interesting thing to know.

And how wonderful to know it now versus five years, 10 years from now, because there's all these other things that can happen to your body and your brain in that time. And we just don't get this time back. So. You know, there's an activity audit, you identify the things that you love, the things that really drain your energy, and just start making small changes.

Every three months, try and take a look at the things that drain your energy and the things that increase your energy and do some, see if you can do more of the thing that gives you more energy and a little bit less. So it's like, I try and look and it's [00:47:00] like I trade one stuff for one energy. , giving activity.

So you can start to, you can start auditing your workload that way. , you can also do the 80 20 rule, which I love. So the Pareto Principle, , which is , 20 percent of your inputs lead to 80 percent of your outputs. So, , usually with me, I could have five clients, but one of them will have 80 percent of my revenue.

So that's the 80 20 percent in action. And you just do an 80 20 on all your relationships, how you make money, like which of these activities that I'm doing in a day produces 80 percent of my income, produces 80 percent of my, career growth. And then you focus on those activities more than anything else.

Doesn't mean you can just drop everything, but if you give your extra special attention to those activities, boy, things start to naturally fall into place. 

Soleil: That's amazing. Thank you so much, Marisa, for for talking with me today and for joining [00:48:00] us. It has truly been a pleasure to learn about what you do and how other people can begin to work smarter, not harder.

Marissa: Thank you for the opportunity and thank you for doing this podcast. We need to hear more stories about people living their own lives. So brava. 

Soleil: Well, to anybody watching or listening, you can head to ridiculously efficient.com. If you want to begin working smarter, not harder. I personally am on her newsletter and I think everybody should join it as well. Because you'll receive weekly newsletters about how you can 

manage your time better. And how do you use AI effectively and so many other incredible things that are actionable for you to start doing today, such as AI prompts. 

So I would recommend going to, again, that's ridiculously efficient.com and joining Marissa on her amazing journey towards a three and a half day workweek.