[Top Resources Series] The Ultimate Guide to Productivity Hacks

Corey Ganim is the Founder of Return My Time, a company helping small business owners identify operational bottlenecks and reclaim time through practical AI tools and workflow-intelligence solutions.

Paul Feith is the President of Paul Gregory Media, an award-winning digital marketing agency serving nonprofits, specializing in branding, campaigns, and social media that drive impact.

Phil Herrington is the Owner of The Connector Community, a business networking platform focused on connecting professionals and facilitating relationship-driven introductions and collaborations to help entrepreneurs grow their network and referrals.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:20] Corey Ganim on helping a realtor cut $10,000 in photo expenses with an AI solution
• [5:38] The interview process that uncovers hidden business bottlenecks
• [8:32] Boosting productivity with Wispr Flow and voice-to-text tools
• [13:41] How AI-powered Thumbnail Maker doubles YouTube engagement
• [21:37] Paul Feith on building a nonprofit-focused digital marketing agency
• [25:22] Streamlining workflows with Google Suite and Gemini integration
• [38:27] Phil Herrington on eliminating meetings to reinvent networking
• [41:22] Top sales and mindset books, including Who Not How and Super Connector
• [53:38] Leveraging text history and CRM habits for hidden sales opportunities

In this episode…

Looking to reclaim hours in your week, reduce stress, and unlock new opportunities without expensive courses or complicated setups? What if you could leverage AI and smart tools to automate tedious tasks, cut costs, and work more efficiently than ever before? How do top entrepreneurs make this happen while still building strong relationships?

Corey Ganim, Paul Feith, and Phil Herrington reveal how they’re transforming productivity, operations, and business growth using AI and innovative strategies. Corey highlights real-world examples like slashing photo staging costs and using AI to pinpoint bottlenecks for instant results. Paul explains how integrating AI with workflow systems can automate repetitive tasks, optimize team efficiency, and track key metrics. Phil emphasizes done-for-you networking systems and strategic tools that help entrepreneurs grow relationships and scale without wasting time. Together, they demonstrate how smart technology and strategies enable business owners to focus on high-value work and unlock new opportunities.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Corey Ganim, Paul Feith, and Phil Herrington to discuss how to boost productivity and reclaim time with AI. They cover streamlining workflows, automating repetitive tasks, and optimizing team efficiency. They also share practical tools, content strategies, and tips for building better business relationships.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Corey Ganim on LinkedIn
• Return My Time
• Paul Feith on LinkedIn
• Paul Gregory Media
• Mission Matters Podcast
• Phil Herrington on LinkedIn
• The Connector Community
• The Goal: 40th Anniversary Edition: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M Goldratt and Jeff Cox
• Snagit
• Fathom
• OneTab
• Nolodex
• LastPass
• Keeper Security
• Camtasia
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall and Richard Koch
• Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy
• 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy
• The Science of Scaling: Grow Your Business Bigger and Faster Than You Think Possible by Dr. Benjamin Hardy, Blake Erickson and Tony Robbins
• Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler
• SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham
• Superconnector: Stop Networking and Start Building Business Relationships that Matter by Scott Gerber, Ryan Paugh
• Grant Cardone Books
• Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz

Special mention(s):

• Eric Berman on LinkedIn

Related episodes:

• “[AI Series] AI Tools That Transform Your Business With Nicole Donnelly” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Revolutionizing Online Forms and Productivity With Aytekin Tank of Jotform” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] The SaaSpreneur Model Explained With Shaun Clark” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] The SaaSpreneur Model Explained With Shaun Clark” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “We find business bottlenecks and use AI to give you 5–10 extra hours a week.”
• “One tool helped a realtor cut $10,000 in photo costs down to $50.”
• “Not automating with AI? You’re slowing your business and missing productivity gains.”
• “Use what works — don’t switch tech just to switch.”
• “We build your network so you can focus on real relationships, not wasted meetings.”

Action steps:

1. Identify and automate workflow bottlenecks: Assess daily routines to spot repetitive tasks and use AI tools to streamline them, saving hours each week.
2. Boost productivity with voice-to-text and writing assistants: Convert speech to text, draft emails, and format documents faster using tools like WhisperFlow or Google Gemini.
3. Organize and prioritize communications with smart inbox tools: Use AI-powered platforms to declutter your inbox, sort messages, and draft replies automatically.
4. Leverage AI for content creation and design: Produce professional visuals and presentations quickly with tools like Thumbnail Maker AI or Gamma, reducing reliance on outsourcing.
5. Continuously explore new productivity and management tools: Test emerging solutions — from project management to Chrome extensions — to optimize workflows and stay ahead of tech changes.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here. Host of InspiredInsider.com. This is a special episode where I have some amazing leaders and entrepreneurs share some of their favorite resources, so stay tuned. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help B2B businesses give to and connect to their Dream 200 relationships and partnerships. We do this in two ways. Number one, we are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast for ROI. We do the strategy, accountability, and full execution and production. Number two, we are also an easy button for your company’s corporate gifting. We make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients, partners, and prospects simple, seamless, and affordable. Some companies even send gifts to staff from a cultural perspective. All you have to do is give us the list of people you want to follow up with and keep in touch with, and we do everything else from there. 

From gift selection to the card to your branding on the box, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it as stress-free as possible for companies so they can build relationships and run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I am always looking at how to give to my best relationships, and I’ve found no better way. Over the past decade than having them on my podcast, featuring what they are working on and sharing it with the world, and also sending delicious treats in the mail every few months for years. If you have thought about starting a podcast or gifting, do it. If you have questions, email us at [email protected] or go to Rise25.com to learn more.

All right, Jeremy Weisz here. This is a Top Resources Series. I’m here with Corey Ganim. We’re going to check him out at returnmytime.com, and we’re going to geek out on Corey’s favorite tools, tech software, apps, whatever it is. And obviously, you’ll see he’s really into AI. So we’ll hear what he uses. But Corey, before we get into that, just tell people about Return My Time. And what you do is you do that. I’m going to pull up your website so we can check it out.

Corey Ganim: 02:29

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks so much for the opportunity. So at Return My Time, we specialize in working with non-technical entrepreneurs, whether they’re solopreneurs or small business owners. And we mainly do that through what we call our AI tools assessment. So that’s a 45-minute interview where we interview you to uncover the bottlenecks in your business. 

And then based on that interview, we then give you a report that prescribes 3 to 7 off-the-shelf AI tools that you can implement immediately to reclaim 5 to 10 hours or more per week, right? And these are tools that don’t require any coding expertise. They don’t require you to hire anybody new. These are just out-of-the-box software tools. So again, thank you for the opportunity. And I’m looking forward to kind of geeking out on some of my favorite tools here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:14

Maybe just chat about a few use cases to start off with, and then that will get into the tools.

Corey Ganim: 03:20

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m even pulling one up here on my other monitor. So we did a tools assessment recently for a realtor, one actually, here in Charlotte to me. And what we found out through that interview process is that she is spending $50 per photo for virtually staged photos. Right? So, you know, she’s a realtor, she gets a listing, she’s got to go into a house and, you know, there’s no furniture because they’ve already moved out. 

So she’s got a stage, that photo, either manually by hand, by renting the furniture, or by paying someone to virtually stage it. And so we found we prescribed a tool to her called Virtual Staging AI. If you check out that website, what that is, is it’s an it’s basically an AI tool that stages properties for realtors. So she can just take a picture of a room, a completely empty room. And in 10s it’ll be fully staged based on the style that she chooses, whether she wants it to be modern or luxury, etc., and it can also remove furniture.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:25

Isn’t it, though? Right. Corey, is this it? No, that’s a different one. Oh, I gotcha, okay.

Corey Ganim: 04:30

Yep. So it’s a Virtual Staging AI app.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:33

Okay.

Corey Ganim: 04:34

And so it can also remove furniture from photos. So you know, think about these realtors that get a listing for a hoarder house. They can take a picture of a room that’s completely filled with hoarder junk. And the AI will remove it and just give you the original room. So that’s an example I love, that example because she’s a high-volume realtor. She’s doing 20 to 30 listings per year. 

And if she’s having to pay for, say, 10 to 12 virtually staged photos per listing, right? I mean, that’s $500 per listing times 20 listings. That’s $10,000 a year. So this tool comes out to about a dollar per photo. So she’s going from $10,000 a year to, you know, $50 per year in cost for those virtually staged photos. And so those are the types of tools that we find for people who don’t even know they exist.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:26

I love it. Yeah. And it’s like, talk about your process a little bit. So you go in, and you basically find out kind of where their bottlenecks are, or maybe things that they don’t even realize are bottlenecks or that can save them time.

Corey Ganim: 05:38

Exactly. Yeah. So it started off, actually, a friend of mine was like, you know, Corey, I wish you could just like, wish you could just follow me around for a day and just kind of like, look over my shoulder and see, see the way that I run my business. And then based on what I’m doing, you could kind of plug AI into those gaps or tell me where I could be using AI. And I was like, you know, that’s a really good idea. But obviously, it doesn’t scale for me to just go in person, everybody’s business.

So that’s when we created this virtual process where, as you said, it’s pretty simple. We just get on Zoom and interview you for 45 minutes with a very specific question bank designed to pull out those bottlenecks. Right. And what’s pretty exciting is that as of this week, we’ve actually created and trained a voice agent to be able to do those interviews on our behalf. So that really removes me as the bottleneck. And now customers get an even better experience by talking and having these conversations on demand with a voice agent whenever they’re ready.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:37

That’s awesome. Yeah. So go into some of the tools tech. I will mention. Corey, there’s a book I don’t know if you’ve listened to called The Goal. Is that by? Yeah, Gold like Goldratt. So it sounds like a lot of the same principles and things you’re applying to these businesses, which is valuable.

Corey Ganim: 06:59

100%. Exactly. Very good comparison there.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:03

So yeah, just talk about some of the tech tools, software, and apps. I’m sure you have a million running around in your head.

Corey Ganim: 07:08

I do. Yeah. So the first one I want to touch on is Claude. So that’s c l a d e ai. And so, for the folks out there, if you’ve never heard of Claude, Claude is a competitor of ChatGPT. So think of it as just like a different version of ChatGPT. But what I love about Claude and why I prefer it over ChatGPT is that Claude, in my opinion, is a much clearer thinker and a much clearer writer. So, you know, if you ask ChatGPT to draft you an email or draft you a post, for example, it’s going to be pretty generic, and it sounds like an AI wrote it. And Claude, in my opinion, is just much clearer. So I’ve switched my, you know, my chatbot of choice used to be ChatGPT, but now it’s Claude.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:49

That’s interesting. So does Claude have an audio feature? I know, like, what I like about ChatGPT is you can actually click and just speak into it, and then, you know, does Claude have that same function?

Corey Ganim: 08:01

So, that’s a great question. Claude does not have a voice function as ChatGPT does. And so that’s actually a big reason why a lot of people prefer to stay with ChatGPT. They like to physically talk to their AI, which ChatGPT lets you do. But Claude does not let you do that as of now.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:18

Yeah. I mean, there are tools like, I mean, I use Wispr Flow and things like that. So I guess I could use Wispr Flow for something like that. But yeah, that’s good to know. It does make it easy if you just, like, click a button and voice it right in.

Corey Ganim: 08:32

So it’s funny that you mentioned Wispr Flow because that’s exactly where I was going next. So you know, when I do these like Top Tools episodes, usually Claude and Wispr Flow are the top ones and two. You know, they’re interchangeable at one and two. So once you, you know, once you’re switched over to Claude, that’s where I tell people. Download Wispr Flow, which is an incredibly powerful voice-to-text tool. Right? So think of Whisper Flow, kind of like if Siri was actually good, right? Wispr Flow is everything that Siri was supposed to be. Because with Wispr Flow, when I’m talking to text, right, I hold down two buttons on my keyboard and I can just talk, but it actually formats my speech in a way that’s appropriate, right? 

So you know how when you talk to Siri, it’s like it’s capitalizing random things and there’s periods here. There are commas there that don’t make sense. But with whisper flow, when it dictates my speech, it actually formats it intelligently. So if I’m giving it, let’s say, a list of things, it will go in and number that list for me, or it’ll bullet point that list for me automatically. And it’s very accurate. So Wispr Flow is just it took my typing speed from about 40 words per minute up to. I think I’m now at 130 words per minute. And when you spend all day typing like me and probably like you, then that’s the time saving that ends up being exponential.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:55

Yeah, totally. And there are hotkeys on your computer for everyone out there. So, like, you don’t even need to use the mouse. You could just like, hold keys in your, you know, keyboard and make it happen.

Corey Ganim: 10:07

Exactly. And there’s a little bit of a, you know, it takes maybe like a week or so to, to get used to that process. But once you’ve kind of trained yourself to like when you go to type like a prompt into ChatGPT or cloud, or you go to write an email, you kind of just get in that habit of like, I don’t need to type it. I can just hold it like on my keyboard, I have the shortcut, which is Ctrl+Windows key. So if I just hold those two buttons and just talk, the text appears perfectly on screen, and it’s way faster than typing.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:36

Let’s go. Let’s I know you have a bunch on there. I’m just curious, I mean, a lot of people spend a lot of time in email, right? And so I’m curious about other productivity hacks with email. I’ve been using Wispr Flow, and like I use Gmail, you know, we use Google Suite. So Gemini, what? What do you do for or have you helped people with? Or are you personally doing for productivity and the abyss of email?

Corey Ganim: 11:02

Yeah. So and great question. So you know, obviously, I mentioned at the start of this episode our AI tools assessment. So I’d say every single, like no exaggeration, every single assessment we’ve done thus far, email has come up as one of the biggest bottlenecks. And we found a really solid tool that we recommend pretty much unanimously in every assessment that we do. And that is called sanebox.com, and SaneBox. It’s like the best.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:31

A huge fan of SaneBox. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Corey Ganim: 11:35

Yeah. So it’s and.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:36

It’s really inexpensive, right?

Corey Ganim: 11:38

That’s what I was going to say, it’s the best value on the planet. It’s seven bucks a month. And what it does is kind of just an overlay to your email, so it just sits on top of your email, whether you’re in Gmail or Outlook or wherever your email sits, and it starts to learn your inbox. So what it will do is it’ll even out over time. It starts filtering out automatically spam, sales pitches, or anything you wouldn’t normally open or read. And it starts prioritizing your top priority emails, and then any email that it’s like, well, hey, you know, Jeremy, he needs to attend to this, but it’s not urgent. It’ll be put in its own dedicated inbox, which it calls sane later. So that way, whenever you need to sit down and just like process and batch all your emails, it’s way more efficient because you’re like, I’m going to knock out the priority emails first, then I’m going to knock out sane later. And then anything that I would have probably deleted anyway has already gotten filtered out. So, SaneBox is a game changer. Yeah, and it’s only seven bucks a month. It’s crazy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:34

Yeah, I think I, I forgot I paid $99 a year or something like that. Yeah.

Corey Ganim: 12:39

Yeah, it’s great.

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