Mastering Time Management and Project Coordination with Modern Productivity Tools | Interview with Peter Guirguis

Hello, and welcome to the Digital Workspace Works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host, supported by our producer, Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field, stories from the front lines, the problems they face and how they solve them, the areas they're focused on from technology, people, and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the scripts for the Digital Workspace inner workings.

Ryan Purvis: Welcome Peter to the Digital Workspace Works podcast. Do you want to introduce yourself, please?

Peter Guirguis: Yes, absolutely. Well, hello, everyone. My name is Peter and I am the owner and founder of a SwiftPest support, where we build websites and apps for small business owners. I've been doing that for a while now, and I'm super excited to be here on the show with you, Ryan.

Ryan Purvis: Fantastic. Thanks for joining me. Do you want to give us your answer to what does the digital workspace mean to you?

Peter Guirguis: Yes. So for me, the digital workspace, for me means just, you know, how to create the best, most ideal workspace for you to produce the best output and the best work for you. And, you know, I think it's a really important time for us to discuss, the digital workspace because it has changed a lot, especially after COVID.

With so many people working remote, and even Ryan, as I was speaking with you before, you know, we're having our podcast episode today is that you were talking about how you and your wife, you know, working from home and how things have also changed in your household. And I feel like a lot of families, a lot of people I've had lots of changes.

So it's really important to talk about how can we use the latest and greatest, digital workspace and tools to be able to enhance our productivity and create the best outpost for our work and in all other areas.

Ryan Purvis: Fantastic. Fantastic. So, I mean, give me an idea that your business, how do you guys work?

Are you an office bound or remote or hybrid?

Peter Guirguis: We are remote. So, absolutely a hundred percent remote. And so we have, and we're also global. So, I'm in Los Angeles, California. So that's where I'm working at from and then my team, some of them are in different countries between India and the Philippines, and other places as well.

So, it's wonderful to be able to leverage, that kind of environment to be able to get the best talent. For what you need to be to have in your business, because you know, you're no longer need to report to an office anymore. So, for us, that model works really, really well. And we're more of a tech based company.

So that's very helpful.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. And do you find that your, your style of working with, your team is much more results oriented, less about, you know, presenteeism nine to five working and that sort of thing.

Peter Guirguis: Yes, and I love that. I love that that you picked up on that, Ryan. So yes, it is very results-based work and I really enjoy that, you know, so it's just like, hey, you know what, you can just delegate a task to your team and just tell them, hey, get this done or get the specific test done and they come back and just get it done.

And that's it. You know, there's no emotional drama or trauma, you know, that sometimes can result of inner office politics that sometimes does happen when you're going to an office. So in that sense, I, find it to be quite wonderful. And I think it's one of the perks that comes from remote work that sometimes is overlooked and sometimes people don't even think about.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, mean, I hear what you're saying. I mean, I believe in hybrid working as much as possible in the sense that I think you've got to see people face to face, sometimes physically, just to have a connection, but then you can work remotely the rest of time. So I don't believe in office every day or every, you know, once a week, whatever it is, this thing, you need some, face to face time.

But I also think that by being remote workers, I mean, results orientated, you're empowering your staff to be adults, which means they're motivated, which means they're proud of what they do. So I think you get a, a better product that comes out, whatever that may be. But I think the caveat, which I don't think we talk about very often is the loneliness factor that some people get.

I mean, I'm, you know, I can tell you now there's days where I feel really lonely sitting in my office all day long and not seeing any people and, not talking to anybody. So I'm curious if you guys look at that at all. And in the sense of keeping people socially stimulated or encouraged, like going to play sport or.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, that's a great point that you bring up and it can get definitely lonely and for us, you know, like, for example, some of our teams, that in some of our offices, like they do meet together and they do have an office workspace remote and so they're connected remotely. But in some of our offices, we have some people that do work from home. And like, for example, one of our assistants that works in the Philippines, who is remote, she does actually mention that, you know, she feels lonely sometimes.

But so what she does is that she travels quite a bit. And that's one of the perks of her job is that she enjoys being kind of a digital nomad and going and working out of like different cafes and sometimes going to visit like, you know, some other friend's house and doing her work remote.

And so, I think that some of the ways that you can overcome, that loneliness is by doing things differently and maybe changing scenery and going to different places. And like you said, Hey, if you're into sports, you know, go ahead, do some sports. If you want to connect with people, there's also lots of like different groups that you can join.

Yeah. Like the business groups, you know, that you can join to make connections and work with people. And I do think that you hit it on a very important, thing that you said, Ryan, which is, maybe working hybrid is really ideal. Because sometimes having that physical connection is really important. And you're 100 percent right, that's how the way that we're wired is for physical intimacy through relationships.

So, you can never get around that, but as long as you're getting it somewhere, I think it's really important. And I think it's also, you know, interesting that you said that sometimes, you know, you can feel lonely just working from home all by yourself, you know. And I think, I don't know if you do anything to overcome that, you know, to, to get out of the house and to actually connect with people.

What have you found works for you?

Ryan Purvis: I do a lot of walking. So, so I, I get out, I mean, my loneliness is, you know, I've got my kids and stuff, take to school. So I walk into school, I talk to the other parents and stuff like that, and then I come home and then I. But when you get to sort of three or four hours of being by yourself, that's when I'll go for a walk and I'll see who's around and

I'm very fortunate that I live about, 10, 15 minutes walk from my high street. So I can go there and grab a cup of coffee and, you know, being South African, we talk to everybody. So, I can run into somebody who I don't even know and just say, Hey, how are you? What's going on? And make a friend.

Which I know in this play in the UK can be seen a bit stalkerish. But they've gotten used to me, I think, in the neighborhood. But that's, that's how I solve it. Then I go to gym or something like that. And even, even the simple thing of as much as we all live in our headphones on going to gym with the same people and kind of giving them the nod, how's it going?

Yeah. I don't even know your name, but we had to jump together. So we, we kind of, you know, have the same goal kind of makes you feel a little bit better. And I've noticed cause I train at two different gyms because of timing, just having those two different circles of gyms, they've, I've meet different, types of people.

And I'm very curious. So, you end up having different conversations because you're dealing with different people in different zones. I find that quite stimulating, which gives me my, you know, my little kick, which is what I need. You know, but I'm, but I'm happy to be on my own sometimes too. I mean, I should probably say that I'm quite happy to sit in my head down at work for four hours and not be disturbed.

So, I think we all have that.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, that makes sense. And I think it's interesting that you also mentioned the gym. I think the gym is actually a wonderful place to sometimes create relationships. I have one of my clients that I support that they actually formed a business partnership because they met in the gym and they just started talking about, you know, Hey, can I, can I use this, machine after you, you know, and they said yes.

And then you start a conversation. Oh, what do you do? And what are you doing? And you know they formed a friendship and then they started actually at their own company and it's on their way to being quite successful, actually. So, the gym could be a perfect place for, for those relationships.

Ryan Purvis: So, I'm curious, was that in LA or was that somewhere else?

Peter Guirguis: It is in LA. Yes.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. So, so here's my theory about LA. Cause I call LA Joburg by the sea. Cause it got the same climate. It's hot all year round. There's like five bad days of weather. The only thing you have there, which we don't have in Joburg is you've got an ocean. But you have traffic and all the other stuff, but it's a very outdoors based way of living, which when my wife and I were there probably 10 years ago now, we said, this is exactly what we want to live in.

But what I find, and I've just been back in Joburg now for a couple of days is that because the weather's so good. And everyone's so, you know, outdoorsy and, and I don't want to say healthy because there are people that are not healthy, but I found that people are far friendlier and willing to talk to other people.

And I actually said to someone like on the Thursday, I said, I'm actually, I've got friendliness fatigue because I've spoken to so many people and ironically in the gym, not so much doing the workout, but in the sauna and the steaming afterwards. I because I'm so used to being left alone in the steam room that I have my kindle with me to read but every person wanted to talk to me which because I was obviously a new face they hadn't seen me so everyone wanted to have a chat and why don't you kindle and then at least these conversations. And I must have made three or four connections to follow up with after that, because we were just in this, you know, you're sweating in the heat.

So everyone's talking to be distracted from, because that's often what happens. We say like, yeah, it's so hot, let's, you know, we'll chat. And they are, there are business opportunities that come out of that because you're now, you're almost vulnerable in this heated environment. And you've got this ability to connect. But then also the next day they see you again, and they remember the conversation.

So, you instantly start building repetition. And it's not that I'm critiquing sort of the British society, but I find that being in those sort of environments, like, I mean, the steam room here at my other gym, we definitely chat to people. And I find that it creates a very trusting relationship when you see someone in the, in a swimming gear, in the steam room, to have a follow up conversation and all that. I don't know if it's something you would have seen, but it was just curious thing I've been thinking through about this, this whole week.

Peter Guirguis: No, I think, you're right on the money. I think that there's something very interesting to pick up there. And I think what you're also picking up on is, is the rapport that builds. It's kind of like building blocks, you know, at the, Yeah, like at the very first day that you meet somebody, you know, you're building the very first building block.

Then you meet them again, you know, in the sauna room or somewhere else. And then it's the second building block. And over time, you know, you have these great conversations and then, you know, knowing, liking and trusting occurs. And that's exactly a great time to do business. And sometimes that's why those places are the great, the best places to be able to, you know, foster relationships, whether friendships for life or business or something else.

Ryan Purvis: Well, I'm just thinking about it now because someone's because you've met someone in the gym, you've automatically created a, almost a base level to say, well, this person comes to the gym. So, they must be the same as me. They're committed. They want to be healthy. It almost doesn't matter what they look like or whatever, but you've almost got this common thing already.

And then you've also, you sort of got a trust going on that because you're saying, well, if they come to this gym, they must be accepted in this tribe that I'm in. And therefore we can do, we're almost one step further ahead than if you just met them randomly walking down on the pavement, you know, you'd have nothing in common except that you're walking on the same road, which has no basis in it.

So tell me a bit about Swiftpress, how did they come about?

Peter Guirguis: Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. So, you know, earlier on when you and I were talking, we're talking about our kids and you know, the way that my business came about was actually because of my kids. So, living in Los Angeles, it's actually, or in California in general, it's probably the second most expensive place to live in the United States, number one being New York.

So, I've lived here most of my life and I got married in 2010. And I had my daughter in 2011, but it wasn't until 2014 when I had my son, that the expenses were just piling up and I just wasn't making enough money for my job, to make ends meet. And so I began to think, okay, what can I do? And I said, okay, let me start a side hustle to build a website, to build a business actually.

And so my very first business was, you know, selling, like, creating like an online business, trying to sell like productivity, you know, courses and stuff like that. And, it took me like three or four months to launch and I launched it and it was an absolute failure. It made like, I was trying to make like, you know, just a few thousand dollars, $3,000 per month.

And I think I made $17, uh, . Yeah, I know this one. Yeah. That, that, that's how much of an epic failure it was. so. You know, I hired a business coach who I asked him, Hey, you know, what did I do wrong? And he looked at my business. He's like, Oh, you know, you're charging too little. So your credibility, factor is very low.

So you need to go high end and start, you know, doing training for CEOs and CMOs to train them on, you know, timeliness and, productivity and stuff like that. And so I, worked another three or four months and took a course on how to do that. And it was still an Epic failure. My second round and I paid 10, 000 out of my own pocket just to take this course on how to sell high end, you know, productivity stuff. And it didn't work for me. So then finally, I was just had my head in a rut, kind of just like, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? I had these two business failures back to back and out of the blue, I had one of my friends who owns a marketing company. And he called me up and he says, Hey, listen, you know, I know that you're good at building websites.

And I have a lot of business, a lot of clients. What do you think about, you know, you building these websites, for my business and you know, you act as if you're a part of my staff, but really you're not, you know, it's called white labeling. And so I said, yeah, sure. That sounds like a great idea.

And I built, I started doing it. And that's how my business take off. And then more people began to refer to me after I, I built websites, for different clients and stuff. And that's how, Swiftpress was born.

Ryan Purvis: It's funny, your path, because when you said you spent 10, 000 on this, on the second training, it's all, I hope you didn't get the training from the business coach.

Peter Guirguis: That's very smart of you. Very wise. Uh, so yeah, thankfully he didn't, he, it was somebody else that I found, but it just didn't work for me.

Ryan Purvis: But, it's so, so part of my Valuu business, which is my digital transformation thing is to do training courses. And it's not because I'm, you know, It's just that I find is common sense is not common. And certain knowledge should not common either.

So it, the whole reason behind the courses was to get people to the same base knowledge that I wanted 'em to have. And I did them at about a hundred, a hundred pounds a piece, I think so called it $120 a piece. And we've actually taken them offline for a bit to redo them. And they haven't sold, they didn't sell very well.

And someone said to me, it's 'cause you're making them too cheap. I said, yeah, but it's, you know, it's not, it's not obvious. It's not, it's not like really intensive knowledge. And they said, no, but the perception is that if you go, and this is why universities charge what they charge, because the more expensive it is, the more value someone puts on it.

And because you've made it so cheap, you know, it hasn't got the value. And I was like, well, okay. So, so when we relaunched them, we're going to put them up and see if that makes any difference. But also make them as a, like you to target them at more senior people. Because that tends to be the person that's willing to learn the more junior person is kind of expecting their job to teach them.

And it's that sort of age maturity thing where people start reflecting that they didn't realise their gaps. So I'm good. Yeah. It was just a curious thing to, line up with.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah. I'm very interested, Ryan, in how your experiment is going to work, you know, to see if it's actually going to, if it's going to make a difference. I think it's interesting too, is that what I found also working in this space is that, in addition to seniority, also personality matters.

So. Yeah, so I found one of the personality systems that I like to use is the DISC personality system, D I S C, have you heard of

it?

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, I've heard of it, I've never done it.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, so the reason why I like it is just because it basically boils down, you know, the personalities, all personalities basically into the 4 basic personalities, you know, and so it's very easy to learn.

There's other ones, you know, 16 personality tests, you know, megs, or whatever it's called. There's so several different ones, but that one's very simple and easy to follow. And so I found that, you know, people who are very. You know, one personality, one or two of the personalities are more prone to buy courses and to be interested in doing such things as opposed to some of the other personalities.

And I think that actually it's funny because you might find people in the gym who are disciplined, who are interested in growth. That that also transfers over to self growth and wanting to grow in those areas. And so it would be very interesting to see what kind of people you attract and you're probably going to attract birds of a feather flock together So you're most likely going to hopefully be attracting people like you and people like you are interested in self growth. So hopefully that will give you yeah.

Ryan Purvis: I hear what you're saying and it is it is a curious thing because If you read like Kevin Kelly or Tim Ferriss, they'll always talk about building it for yourself.

And then you'll find people like you who will be interested in it as well. And you know, a lot of these courses are the things that I've found personally to be my gaps. And wanting to sort that out, you know, as I've gone through my things in life. So you mentioned, you know, building the websites and stuff how do you engage with your clients?

I mean, is everything, built on say WordPress and then you're delivering off your own framework that you guys have developed? Or is everything bespoke to the customer almost and you're writing code each time to build whether assume websites, web apps, you know, mobile apps, et cetera?

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, no, great question.

So for us, what we do is that we build on top of WordPress, and we do use a, a framework that's common to everybody, and we just create, you know, custom designs for our clients. So, you know, if you're familiar with, WordPress, you know, there's definitely, some very famous frameworks or themes that are used.

Mm-Hmm. , um, one of them, like, Elementor, another one being Divvy. Yeah. So we use Divvy as a framework, to create, you know, all of our client's designs and then. Based on what industry they're in, then we'll build them their website, you know, and we have people from all walks of life, you know, some in the health and fitness industry, some in finance, some in, you know, logistics.

So you name it, we'll design it for them. And then because just of where, where we're at out, like we're finding a lot of no code tools are coming online and that's really been revolutionising the things. And I, even now with, AI, like, you know, you don't really need to use coding very much, you know. Everything can be done using no code tools.

And if there is code, you just go and tell the AI that you're using, Hey, you know, I need a little code snippet for this or a little code snippet for that. It gives it out to you in a few seconds. You put it in there and 99 percent of the time it's spot on and it works perfectly. So definitely it's, helped in our development time to get our clients the results that they want a lot faster than what it used to be a few years ago.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. I'm very curious about your, take on the low code, no code for delivery to customers. I mean, one of my other ventures We call it AI for FinTech now, but it is a low code, no code platform as well. And I mean, what do you, what do you class as, as low code, no code, I guess?

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, absolutely.

I think low code, no code is definitely here to stay. And it's definitely the wave of the future. And it's, if you have a business venture doing that, I think you're right on the money. And it's very imperative that, you basically, you launched that business venture. I dunno if it's launched already yet, but launched It's, yeah, it is launched.

Okay, perfect. So, because right now you we're at the very cusp, you know, and everybody's rushing to market to launch their low-code, no-code tool. So, you know, being one of the first to market, it's gonna be a huge advantage, to you. And I think it that low-code, no code is very important because, you know, low-code, no-code,

for people who aren't familiar. It's just basically where you can do everything via drag and drop via a nice graphical interface. And you know, you can build apps, you can build websites, you can build whatever it is that you want to build. Usually it's a SAS product. SAS stands for software as a service.

And you can build those kind of products just using a tool, just drag and drop. You build the components and they're already built for you. And you just with some minimal touches, you're able to build it. Now, here's what, here's my take. Is that there's a fallacy that says anybody can build a low code, no code app.

Not true. All right. definitely not. And even in the future, I don't see that because working with clients, even with myself, with my own business clients, I know that there are people that no matter how easy it becomes, they will always need help. And they always need somebody in their corner to add additional features, to do the updates and do all that.

So as you're thinking about these business models, think about, you know, how you can, you know, position yourself in a way to be able to target those clients who need your help to leverage their time, to leverage their productivity, and to leverage your knowledge as an expert, to build these tools for them using low code and no code platforms.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, it's interesting. So I've got two products. Finxone is the platform and Valuu is a SAS product. And we're building the SAS platform in bubble, which is a low code, no code platform, probably one of the better ones. Yes. We used some people to begin with who were not development developers, although, you know, one probably was, but the person in the building wasn't.

And it's very clear to me that if you don't have a developer's mindset, and I'm talking about an experienced developer, someone who understands how data models should work, understands how reusability should work, how do you structure your application, all that kind of stuff. A low code platform, whilst it'll be easy to build something, and we've had to redo a lot of it, in fact, almost all of it, It hasn't taken as long to redo it.

You can go down the wrong way very quickly, and create a big mess. And, and because the UI looks okay, the plumbing, all the bad stuff is hidden behind the good looking UI. And what, what I found with that is if you, you know, having someone who understands who's written code or how to structure things, there is, there's almost a different kind, there's almost an abstract way of thinking when you use low code, no code that you have to have.

And I think you can only have that if you've ever, if you've come from a technical background. Now, what we're doing with, The Finxone is we're kind of taking away that need for a technical person. So we're generating all the pages and all the database stuff is happening in the background. So you don't have to worry about that stuff.

And I think that's the kind of gap that I think is being closed is we're taking away that, develop a mindset that you need. And that, but I still think you need to have something, some sort of design. I can't see it being any other way to be honest. I don't know. What do you think?

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, I think so too. and I think, you're absolutely right. It's, it's extremely helpful to have like some kind of developers mindset or something. And I've, I've used bubble in the past as well. And also my team has used bubble and, you know, we definitely, it's, not an easy, you know, Tool to use or to create something, you know, just because of all the features, but it's very feature rich and you can build so many wonderful things with it.

And I, think it's important to be able to offer those kinds of products, you know, where you can help the people to be able to create, you know, whatever it is that they need to create. And it'll be interesting also to add is to think about in the business model is that, is there somebody who wants to pay maybe some, more money for a higher plan to have everything done for them? You know, where, Hey, instead of them, you know, wanting to do it and digital half of the time or the knowledge, to be able to figure out the platform to assess that you're building the, Hey, maybe you offer a plan where it's like, Hey, everything is done for you and we'll, you know, get it done.

And here it is. And I found that actually, yeah. Some of my clients have wanted that in some other areas with their marketing or their business and they're willing to pay a top dollar actually good amount of money for somebody to just hey you know what I don't have the time I'm a serial entrepreneur or I have so many things going on just do this for me get me there the results that I want and here's the money no problem.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, no, and I think there is that to it.

I mean, I've definitely so I subscribed to in the case of bubble, there's a marketplace and I get an email almost every day. You know probably five or six opportunities of people looking for someone to go build the app for them. So I think there is a, market for those. I mean, it's no different to the WordPress thing.

You know, if you want to build a website, you probably put on WordPress and you need to find someone to build on WordPress for you. But I do think with generative AI, You could get to a route where you as a business person who wants to build a prototype could write down what you're thinking and the generative AI could generate the app for you.

And it may not be all the bells and whistles, but it would be a construct or 60 percent structure to what you're, looking for. And then you can have a developer go and finish it. And the developer could probably work with an AI to complete the code that they need for the mundane stuff to just make that rapid application development experience there, you know.

Peter Guirguis: Yes. And I think you're absolutely right. So here's the thing. This is what worked for me, Ryan. And is that I actually left the bubble, for a couple of reasons. Is that, one reason was that they still didn't have a way at the time that I was developing software for clients is that they didn't have a way to get into the app store natively.

So, if you wanted to build a Google play or in an app store and you wanted to develop it, the only, the only choice that you had was to take your, final product and put it in what's called a wrapper and then deployed into the app store. And then there would be features that you wouldn't be able to develop.

Because of that model. And that was a no go for me just for, what I need to get from my clients. So we don't build on bubble. We build on a company called flutter flow and maybe you've heard about it.

Yeah.

Yep. So we use floater flow as a no code, a low code tool to build apps, for our clients.

And it's been fantastic. And they do have a way to be able to get natively into the app store and you can build the full feature set. And it's been fantastic. And I think because of that feature set that they are also do have an ai, a generative ai, where you can put in a prompt and say, Hey, I want to build an app for you know, my dog grooming business.

you know, build me an app where people can schedule, you know, for them to bring in their dogs and we can room them for them. And it builds the ui. It looks fantastic. It looks amazing. And we use another tool called, UI Izzard, where we do a prototyping, there's several, there's another called Galileo, I think that's come out and both of them use AI and you can just put in a prompt and then it'll actually create the different interfaces for you.

And it's Pretty. It looks great. Fantastic. And you can actually, it's a great way to show your clients and be like, Hey, would you like me to build an app for you? This is what it would look like. And they see it and they're impressed. They don't know that it took you, you know, about a minute, to create that for them.

That's nice.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. I mean, I think that that's the thing is, I mean, you still, I mean, even though the AI is generating the app for you, there's still expertise that's relevant to what you're doing. And I think that's often the value that has to be, articulated to a customer. Is it's all good and well to generate the stuff with an AI.

I mean, you look at, the hallucinations that come with, chat GDP that sort of thing. There still needs to be that critical eye going, you know, this app's okay. But if we look at the UI, the UX, it's not great. We need to fix this. But here's what your, throughput is greater because we can, we can generate seven or eight versions of the app potentially.

But you still need to have someone put it together for you in one of these tools. And anyway to speed that process up, I think is great. But I think you still have to put some of the slug in, unfortunately.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, and I think that's exactly it. And that's what I'm saying is that, like, you know, trying to market a no code low code tool so that anybody can just build an app whenever they want.

I don't think that that's feasible, at least not at the moment. You're like you said, you know, and it was what I was trying to also say before is that you always need somebody with some kind of technical expertise to build it for you and to use those app, tools for you. If you're a business owner or a marketer or something and you're trying to get something built, because really you're going to end up, you know, running into some roadblocks.

And when you do, what are you going to do? You're going to go Google something, or you're going to go chat, GBT, something, and then it takes you, You know, down this road where you're spending hours of time trying to fix a bug, trying to get some kind of feature enabled or, you know, done on your app or on your website.

And it's just, it's a time suck. And it's really not a very good way for you to use your time and to leverage your time, especially with a podcast like this, where we talk about the digital workspace, it's important that you're using your time wisely. You know, doing what you do best and leaving the rest to a team that you surround yourself with of experts who can do those things where, you know, you're, you're not the best in.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, I think, and that's the point. I think as much as we have the, AI tools to us, it still comes back to having expertise and being productive. You mentioned doing productivity courses and that in your beginnings, you still do some of that. Is that still part of what you do?

Yeah. Absolutely.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, I wish I did, but I stopped when my business failed and nobody bought any of my courses, I but I'm still very much a big productivity guy. I love productivity tools, I love task management tools, project management tools. I, you know, time myself also and everything, so I have a timer.

I do. I do. I do. I do. And then I love to take a look at the charts and graphs at the end of every single week and I take a look at hey, where did I spend my time and where do I need to realign myself so that I'm hitting my objectives and my goals every single week. So, this is the kind of personality that I am.

So that's why I was saying, Hey, you know what? A big part of it is also personality because I think that those are the kinds of people that would want to invest in courses and, you know, enhancing themselves as opposed to somebody that's more of a free spirited person. And it's just like. Oh, they go with the flow, you know, those kinds of people don't necessarily value.

Ryan Purvis: So talk me through the whole timing thing. So what do you use? Like how do you do it? And then, and what do you, what is your process? When you do it.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, absolutely. So for me, the kind of where I'm at right now, and maybe this is where a lot of the people in the audience are at right now is that I find myself that I'm big in like project management.

So, I have a team. I have several teams actually around me that work on different things at different times. So, every day I'm delegating. Hey, get this done, get this done, get this done. And then my team comes back to me and brings me what they've completed and it's my job to inspect it. And if it's good, I tell them, Hey, it's good.

You're done with this task. If it's not, I give them feedback and I need to give them corrective feedback. Hey, you missed this. You forgot this, change this around. And so that's very much project management based. Yeah. So based on that, I was using, I used two different project management apps and then I use one app to consolidate everything together.

So, let me tell you about the tools that I use. Yeah, sure. So, for one team, I use Asana, and in there, we know we put, we create different projects for different clients in there and then we collaborate and I add, delegate that to different people that need to get the stuff done and Asana get the work done.

Okay. On another team I use ClickUp. And I found actually that I enjoy using two different tools because sometimes if I just use one tool, the two different tools are for like two different businesses, if you speak, you know. So that's why it's helpful to use, not put everything in one tool.

I know a lot of people are like, no, put everything in one tool, put everything in one tool. I'm like, no. Use different tools. So for me, I use two different tools, Asana and ClickUp are the two different project management tools and they're for two different teams that do two different things. And so I'm able to do do those things.

And then the holy grail of everything is Sansama. All right. And Sansama is this amazing tool that basically integrates with both Asana, ClickUp, and many other things, Notion, all the other, you know, big productivity tools out there. And the way, what it does is it does time boxing. So basically off of your calendar, it says, Hey, you know what?

The whole premise behind it is that you're not going to be really be very productive unless you use time boxing technique in which you schedule everything that needs to get done for the day. So what this tool does is that because of its integrations with third party tools, it's able to see all of your tasks that you need to get done in Asana, ClickUp, Notion, and any of the other tools and on your calendar.

And it says, Hey, what do you want to get done today? And then you drag and drop and you put things in order of what, when you schedule it, when do you want to work on this particular task and how much time are you going to allocate to it? And then it has a timer. And so you work on every single thing that you need to get done.

You time yourself. And then after that, you put the, do things in the order of priority of your most important things that get done and you complete them for the day. Um, and if there's anything that didn't get done, you, you know, move it over to the next day. And there's these amazing, like, reminders and workflows, in Sansalmon to help you with your daily routine, to plan out your day, and to do a daily shutdown, and to do a weekly review.

So, and it's an incredible, incredible tool. I, I love this tool. So, that's kind of some of my tools that I use, to help me plan my week and my tasks and my projects.

Ryan Purvis: I love it. So, so Valuu is as we use OKRs as our work management piece. So you have your objectives, you have key results, you have tasks.

And I think the timeboxing point is really relevant. In fact, I've just told my developer Ranjit, he needs to look at this now because we need to do something similar. Because what we're trying to do with Valuu is, articulate the value to the work you're doing. So why do this project? Why achieve this objective?

What is it? Is it a cost save? Is it a productivity gain? Is it a risk reduction? And then we articulate that in a financial sense. So what is the dollar value, the pound value, the Euro value of doing this work? And then we help to prioritise it. But the thing that I was struggling with, which I think you've just solved for me is how do you make the tasks real?

And time blocking, it makes sense to me that's how you make it real. Cause now you've got to actually allocate time in your diary to do the work. So I'm going to give Sansama a try. Thank you for bringing this up because I think it's because I use notion a lot, but notion you can get very lost in.

Yeah. And, and the reason why I ended up building my own product management tool is I really didn't like a signer or control or click up in the way they did things, whether they're bad products. I just struggled with it, but maybe some signer is the solution.

Peter Guirguis: Yes. Yes. I think you're really gonna enjoy just based on our time together today, just, you know, learning more about your personality.

I think, you know, as somebody that's quite disciplined and values your time and, you know, values your output and the quality of your output, Sansama is a great tool. And actually left Notion. Just so you know, I just use it as a database now, but I did used to use it for project management and task.

I left it, over a year ago because it just wasn't working for me. Just like you said, and also Asana and ClickUp also were not working for me. Or at least I always felt like there was, there was more that I could be doing. And Sansama was that, that one thing. Sansama does not replace any of your other projects also, it's not going to replace Notion, it's not going to replace Asana or ClickUp or Trello or ;whatever else you're using, but it's, the whole point is that it's a layer on top of it and it brings in your tasks from those and or from your teams.

And that's when you time box it. And I think, I'm so glad that time boxing was, you know, the magic bullet, so to speak, for you that could bring that you were looking for. Because man, it's the most effective tool for you to create amazing output every single day and to make sure that you're hitting your target.

Ryan Purvis: No, this is I love it. And I'm clicking through the tabs as we're talking and I'm seeing how they've done it. And it's so clever because it is that aggregation that I think we struggle with, especially like we deal with a lot of clients and every client has their own project management tool.

Now my ideal was that everyone would use Valuu, but actually this is a much better way to do it because you can have a client who uses, we use notion that we can have a client that uses, Asana, we can have a client that uses whatever and we just plug it on, top and we get it out. So I think I'm going to, I'm going to enjoy playing with this.

Yeah. So thank you.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah. You're welcome. Check it out, Ryan. And then also check out some of their competitors. So Sansama is not the only, player in the field. So if you type in, go to YouTube and type in Sansama and then type in space and type in VS, which is versus, and then it'll give you all the competitors.

And when I was in that, one of the ones that was competing with him was motion. That's motion, not notion, but motion with an M. And their take on it was basically also time boxing, but they were saying, Hey, we will create your schedule for you using AI. And like, Hey, you don't know what you need to work on.

Just put in all your tasks, everything, tell it, give us some information. And every day using AI, we will tell you what to work on in what order. And it was very appealing to me. And I was like, okay, let me go, let me go check it out. And I did. And for me personally, I found that, I didn't like it telling me what to do.

I liked Sansama's version, which was, here's everything, and here's the times that you need, and here's You get to choose, you know what I mean?

Ryan Purvis: You order

Peter Guirguis: it.

Ryan Purvis: It's so funny, because I signed up for motion. I spent one hour looking at it and someone else had recommended, in fact, it was Luke and another guest and I, and I canceled the subscription literally an hour later or waited to ask.

I was like, no, I'll look at this later. Then it got, it got to renewal and then it went through and I was like, no, no, I don't want this because of exactly that issue. It just felt like I lost all control. And it was just, and also I don't like what Sansana does, which I think, well, at least from what I've seen, the thing is because I have so many different things going on.

Something like motion actually gets because it aggregating. It was trying to blend it all together. And I think what, this will do is it'll, it'll aggregate and then allow me to blend it together. Cause I think it needs me to blend it together. Cause I understand the priorities of things and maybe this will, and yeah, and that's probably where AI will, will always lack context, to know what's more important.

And something else. So yes.

Peter Guirguis: And I know that you work remote. So, and you also have a team. So, you know, have you ever had it where, you know, somebody, you know, messages you on slack or Skype or whatever, and says like, Hey, do you have a minute, you know, or do you need something, you know, so how do you allocate for those, you know, so that that's all part of your time.

Right. So then that's an additional five minutes, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. Somebody needs your attention. And then also maybe your kids, you know, Hey dad, you know, can you come in, you know, kick the ball with me for a little bit, you know, can we do something? And sometimes, you know, you want to be able make time for that, then to do that.

You know, you don't want to miss out also on your kids growing up. So how do those project management tools and productivity tools, allocate for that? and that's what was always the missing piece. And sometimes it's get stressed over it, you know, cause I was finding myself like, Oh, I have so much to do and I don't know what to do.

And, you know, in what order and I don't want to drop any balls and stuff. And so using tool like Sansama as the top layer piece to bring everything together, like an aggregating tool, like you said, was the missing piece for me and I've been loving it and it's been amazing.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. And this is the, I mean, you, you actually hit on a very good point there, because I mean, the way I do it is I obviously block things out in my diary anyway.

So like pick up the kids from schools this period and, and it's blocked out, but what doesn't happen very well. And this is the notion problem is notion does not synchronize with your calendar. So you can't, and then even, the Apple ecosystem with reminders and stuff, reminders is good, but again, it doesn't get time blocked.

It just becomes another task list. And that is the challenge is it all becomes another place to look and another thing to do and you and you just never get to it. So I'm excited to try this out now. In fact, I'm just looking at my diary to see if I've got time today to play with it. But it's also funny, but it's also for my clients, you know, want to provide a way that we can be keep track of everything without changing the how the clients work.

Because then you add another tool and another system and, we can become quite painful.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, I think it's going to be fantastic. I think you'll probably like it a lot. I think sign up. There's a 14 day trial. I think no credit card required. So definitely give it a shot, you know, the full 14 days.

And then you just, you know, integrate with Notion wherever you could put your tasks or whatever, and your calendar is here

Ryan Purvis: as well. And slack. Yeah, this is a really clever idea.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, and so one of the things that I've done that has also been really helpful to me that I wanted to share with the audience today is that in google calendar, which is the one that I use the most Is that you can create multiple calendars.

So, I've created a separate calendar called time blocking and every day, you know the days that I work I've created you know different blocks I've said hey, you know what from you know you This time to this time, I'm going to work on these types of tasks. And from this time to this time I'm going to work on these different tasks and from this time to this time I'm going to have my meetings.

So then when you that time blocking Calendar gets pulled into sansama. You're supposed to drag and drop Your tasks in Sansama onto your calendar, which is also in Sansama, but it's pulling in from your Google calendar. And so you already know where those things fit in. You're like, hey, this is this type of task, you know with this kind of category, it's supposed to go in this time of time block between these areas.

And I have different, sometimes time blocks on different dates. So it's kind of like theming your days, you know, and theming your time. And this has been incredibly, you know, productive and helpful for me because then it just tells me, Hey, this is exactly the route that you need to go.

Ryan Purvis: It's so, I'm loving this.

And remember I said to you, you get to point in a conversation where it starts to go down and then it's going to start going up, you have the new topic and we're at that part again. So, cause like, if I look at my things that are important to me, one being fit is very important to me. So working out every day is part of my thing.

So I want to time block that for sure. Then there's the sort of business admin that you've got to do. You know, you've got to do your taxes. You've got to do your recons. You've got to, you know, all that kind of stuff, which, you know, always gets left to last or to the time pressure time when, you know, it's time to submit. But if you just break it down into an hour each week, it's fine.

It's not a problem. So I was debating this weekend about putting in the time blocking, but I hadn't really figured out how I was going to do it. Because if you start putting it into your calendar, then people can't book meetings with you because now your calendar is full of all these things. But then you also need a way to shift things around.

So I was curious to know how you handled that. I mean, do you have like things you do every day at the same time? Because from a, from a brain point of view, if you work out every day, your body gets used to working out every day at the same time. Do you do the same thing? Like you have every day things you do

that's important to your, your workday.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, I do. And since someone calls those routines or rituals, so, and they help you to, to block those out. Now there is a workaround, for, you know, you putting, creating time blocks on your calendar. So that people can still book you. Okay, and that's exactly the solution that I was just talking to you about, which is creating a brand new Google calendar and call it time blocks.

All right. And so what this does that if you create, you can create unlimited number of calendars in Google calendar. So I created a brand new counter called time blocks. And in there, I just scheduled the time blocks. Now, this one does not interfere with people scheduling me on my Google calendar. Because

the Google calendar, the one that it goes with, it's like you have like this primary one, usually it's named after you. So for you to be Ryan Purvis. So, then as long as those time slots are free, people will be able to schedule you. So that's why I say, Hey, create a brand new calendar and put your time blocks on it.

It's not your main calendar, your primary calendar. And that way, you know, your time blocks and people can still schedule you because it doesn't interfere, with your regular, your main calendar.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, that's the thing. I hadn't even, I hadn't thought about that. And I was going to just use my personal calendar as a time blocking calendar.

But because I use all these, calendar booking tools, I was worried that it was going to create this scenario where, I would have no one able to book anything because the time would be taken out. do you, do you measure how often you are doing the work that you plan to do in those time blocks?

So if you, every morning at nine o'clock was right, your status reports or whatever it is. Do you check how often you complete what you're supposed to complete in that time block or that's not, it doesn't really matter.

Peter Guirguis: Yeah. You know, I, for me, I only do it on a weekly basis. So, in Sansama, you're also supposed to write your objectives.

So you have a weekly plan. So it tells you, Hey, what do you want to accomplish this week? And so you think about, you know, your one to three goals. That's what I think about, what are the big three things that I want to accomplish this week. And then it wants you to do. Take the tasks that you have and, align it with your objectives.

So that way, you know, Hey, are you, on path to complete your objectives this week? Because if none of your tasks are aligned with your objectives, then definitely you're going to miss, you're going to miss the target. So for me, you know, I, and this is, I think, something that it's very interesting, Ryan, because if you remember before our call, we were talking about, you know, being more senior or like, you know, as you age. When I was younger, it was very important to me for me to do the things that I said that I would do in the time that I did them.

And I was just like, if I missed, I would get frustrated with myself. I'll get frustrated with the people who made me. Not talk or not be able to do those things because you know they were just too long winded and they wanted to talk, you know for a long time about you know frivolous things. And I was just like man, I don't have time to talk to you I want to go and go work on my time blocking thing that I've done. And really I've missed out on building relationships with people.

I didn't find that was a good way to go. So I've now that I'm in my 40s, you know, I've kind of I think I feel like I value relationships a little bit more, you know, and it's like, hey, it's okay if the thing that, I said I was going to do in this time block doesn't get done because I got a chance to spend some time with somebody building a relationship that's meaningful.

And that's become more and more important to me. Especially that, you know, thing that was missed is not like deadline related. It's not a big deal. It's not like something that a client is like, Oh, you must do it on this time. It was just something for me, my own personal goals. So for me now at the age that I'm in, in my forties, I am a lot more relaxed.

And so I find that just a weekly review, which is found in sun Salma, as long as you're using the timer feature, it tells you, it gives you a nice graph and chart and shows you. Hey, here's the different, categories that you worked on you spent, you know, 14 hours in your business category you spent four hours in your fit category, you spent three hours in your this category and you're able to see like, oh, you know, this is pretty solid So that's the way I've been doing it

Ryan Purvis: fantastic Fantastic.

we're gonna have to end it there because we're running out of time what would be the best way for people to get in contact with you?

Peter Guirguis: Yeah, sure. I'd love for people to come to my website, that's the best place to, you know, learn more about what we offer and what we do and also to connect with me.

So that would be swiftpresssupport. com and you can go to swiftpresssupport. com and if you're interested in getting in touch, you can, either use the contact tab and send me a message. you can also book a time to get on my calendar, and you know, I'd love to chat if you, have any questions.

Ryan Purvis: Fantastic. This has been great chatting with you and I appreciate your time.

Peter Guirguis: thanks so much

Ryan Purvis: Ryan. All

Peter Guirguis: the best today.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Heather Bicknell is our producer editor. Thank you, Heather, for your hard work on this episode, please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes at the Google Play Store.

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