 happy to be here with Peter Varnay. So Peter is a member of my group coaching program and he is super helpful to so many people, myself included with his tech skills, but not just tech skills, but just his wonderful personality to work with and also his understanding of authentic marketing and everything else, joyful productivity, et cetera. So Peter, I'm happy to have you here. Thank you for doing this. Well, I'm really happy to be here. Yeah. So why don't you start with an introduction of your work at the stage and then have you share some insights from what you were learning? All right. So I'm Peter Varnay and I help service providing solopreneurs with their business related tech challenges. And that covers a wide range, but it's typically websites, a lot of things with different accounts on different services, like login problems and setting problems and connecting those different services with each other like automations. Yeah, actually, I do help a lot of things and when I hear the word like to me's down, I go like... Well, I think of you as a digital handyman. Yeah, actually, yeah, that's correct. Some of my clients call me something that I'm not comfortable with, but they are trying to force me lovingly to use that that I'm a tech wizard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think because you are kind of a go-to person for like, okay, I'm having this tech challenge in my business, et cetera. And you also help people with their joyful productivity stuff as well, including sort of information knowledge management, information management, that kind of stuff too, right? Oh, yeah, it's a huge thing for me because I'm a father of two. Young kids. A lot of young kids with very little age difference between them. Wow. And I also count myself as multi-potentialites. So I have my main business, which is this, but next to that I have four other projects that I'm running and launching. Great. So I really have to be productive and I found, so I'm really learning a lot in that intentionally and I love sharing that forward and paying that forward. And it started combining from actual, like digital decluttering, which is a technical stuff. And then it started combining with my productivity knowledge. And so this is kind of a new area for me in my business, which I'm excited about. Yeah, it is. Well, let's get into some insights for the audience that I think they'll benefit from quite a bit. So it's interesting, like we can talk about your progress and insights, but it's like, since you help so many solopreneurs, it's like there's also progress and insights from your observation of their journey as well. But I'll let you start and share and then I'll maybe ask you some questions. So anything you wanna start with? That second question was actually really interesting and let's get back to that in a second. I would love you to clarify this a bit even more because you really touched on something there. So many things suddenly came to my mind and let's create some temporary constraints together. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. But on my side and on my business side, the progress is I'm really happy about two things. One, and they are combined or they go hand in hand that I have a really full business now. I started this only a few years ago. And I have a full practice. And of course there is always fluctuation. Some people come and go, projects come and go, but I have a full business. And so that's also why I had to amp up my productivity. And so the other progress is that I was able to and I'm so, so, so happy about it. I was going crazy under the workload, but the things I learned from you really, really helped me with that. Yes, I would say that's the progress reports on my own business. Yeah, any particular concept or process that, yeah. The one thing that helped me the most when the biggest chaos was about in my head was what are my projects? How am I categorizing? What are my priorities? And your two concepts, one is the eight practices. Do you call them practices of joint productivity? Yeah. Or principles? Yeah. Well, it's the eight practices of authentic business and then joint productivity has like 20 different things. I'm always mixing those up, but the eight practices of authentic business is what I mean. It just quickly and easily clarified and keeps clarifying what I want to spend time on in my business. And in connection with that, the 111 formula that you shared, those two in combination, now everything I do in my business are now tied to either a project in 111 or a category in the eight practices. Now everything is just so clear. It's so easy to prioritize. It's so easy to file things to categorize to-dos. So that was huge. That's really good. Well, I will be sure to link below the 111 formula and the eight practices. I have a YouTube video about each one, so I'll link it below. For some reason, if you don't see it below, please remind me to link it. Those who are watching. Okay, that's really good. And so give us a sense that you've got these two young kids, you've got your family like basically, and then you have these four or five different projects. So then how do you, for those who are also so busy, I mean, all of us are busy in different ways. How, what, like, if you were to share just a couple of things that are essential for you. So you shared the eight practices, 111 formula, but any other details you wanna say about that or how do you manage the chaos? Oh, yeah. The first thing, I think if I share how it evolved for me, those are the actual steps that helped me the most. Yeah. First, I was always trying to categorize by deliverables, as you suggest. And I was still creating chaos somehow. I was not completely following your directions, I believe. Yeah. And then I learned these eight practices and started organizing all my workflow knowledge, which you call hat manuals, under those. Right, yep. And suddenly it was just so intuitive to know where to reach for when I need to know what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. And it was so easy to store my knowledge in these categories. It's, since I started categorizing them in those, it's like, oh, sure, it goes into that category, of course. The next time I would do it that way. Yes. It was a huge shift. It started saving me a lot of time. So that was the first. And then I started categorizing my to-do list to those categories. Right. And up to that point, actually, I think I was a bit mixing up like the knowledge and workflow and to-do lists in almost like the same documents. Said that I realized that's not healthy. So I started separating them, but now what connects them are these eight categories. They are completely separated, but they are in these eight categories. Yeah. And the same thing happened with the to-dos. It's just so intuitive to know which category to reach out for, which category to put the to-do in. Yeah. So that's how the eight practices really clarified a lot of things. Yeah. I think the takeaway for those who are watching this is if you don't have a framework of how your work, sort of holistic framework about your work, you have to do that first before you can create these categories that makes sense. And yeah, I've been working on those eight categories for a long time. And it's like, okay, these eight are, at least they haven't changed for several years now. And it's like, just for those who are like, okay, George, can you just say what the eight are? I'll just say what the eight are real quick. I won't put you on the spot, but I'll join for productivity, healthy money, content creation, content distribution. And then this part, the next four I always get a little murky because of the ordering of them. I'm still coming up with a new order, I'm confirming a new order of it, but there is net caring and collabs, aligned offers, gentle launches or authentic outreach and mastery of your craft. So it's like those eight, to me, form the holistic view of, at least a small business, a solopreneur business. And so having those areas means, okay, these are the eight areas to work on. And if I'm working on something and I can't fit it into one of these eight, I have to ask why? Is there a ninth category or maybe I should get rid of it or let's put it into those categories. And then once you are working on one category, you're working on net caring or something, you can open it and then more easily prioritize. Okay, for net caring, for collaborations, what's the highest priority here, right? So how do you, yeah, so tell us a bit about like on a day-to-day basis then, now with all the stuff you're doing, how do you prioritize even with these eight categories? Wait, sorry, just a sentence for the previous topic, that exactly this is why they are so useful because on one hand, I know if something doesn't fit in any, it's probably not important and useful. And the other thing you mentioned that I can prioritize within each category is, oh my God, such a relief. And through that, what I learned is like, I would say 90% of my ideas, like this should be done, this should be learned, I should watch that. It's just not possible to do, like, it's so much. And there is a 10% that's actually the useful and doable. And it's just, it's almost like, as if it's automatically surfacing this way. And the rest just gets pulled lower, lower, like it's not priority one, it's not scheduled for any date. And it's been created a long time ago and bam, there you go. I don't even see them. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. I'm not sure if I answered your question, but those feelings come up in me. Right, right, right. Okay, that's really helpful. And any other insights you have had about joyful productivity that you want to share with people because, well, we could say joyful productivity or we could say generally moving your business forward in a kind of a consistent manner, I guess. Yeah. On the joyful productivity part, I learned two huge lessons. One is the one that I mentioned before, just now the 90% of the stuff that comes up is not doable and I don't even have to do it. Yes. The other stuff was, and oh my God, I'm so bad on memory, I just had it on the top of my mind. No, that's okay. It'll come back to you. It'll come back to you. Can you rephrase the end of your question? Yeah, well, so yeah, any other joyful productivity insights, but also what do you do to keep moving your business forward on a consistent basis? Because now the reason I specifically asked that is because you're in a fortunate place to have a full practice. And so it's like the common situation of someone with a full practice is they just get really busy with clients and then that's all they do them all the time. Mm-hmm. So chaos starts to get created in other areas or just sort of like the longer term things don't get touched at all because they're just client work all the time. So yeah, I'm curious about that. How do you... Thanks, now the previous thing came back and there's another insight. So just still half a sentence which is going to be of course free on joyful productivity. What I realized is it's not enough to design a system. It's at least with my speed that I'm speeding ahead in life, I need to redesign those systems or review those systems almost weekly. Because my family life is haptic. My business changes so much. My clients have different priorities. I have different priorities. New projects come in, old projects go on. Yeah. Just designing one system for like a weekly schedule or something like that was not working and I was so frustrated. Like I created the perfect system and it's not working for me. Of course, I have to reiterate it continuously, ongoingly. Well, it's because you are evolving. You're evolving quite quickly at this time. It's like maybe in a couple of years when things are more, I don't know, if and when things become more stable then it's like then the stable system can work but you are evolving. And so when you say adjust your systems, let's get more specific, what do you mean by that? I mean the hat manuals for sure. Like how I do things and ongoingly like making them easier as my workload rises. And also one heavy point in this was weekly schedule for me. Yes. My weekly schedule is like one week I decided I'm going to spend, I don't know, on content creation half an hour each day and it works and two weeks later I need a different kind of setup. Maybe I need to batch create them in one day and then. Yes, yes, yes. Right, yeah. And you're still finding maybe what works best for you like for content creation for example. Like that's also part of it. It's like you have to experiment with different ways. Right? Yeah, a lot of experimentation as you always say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. It's true. It's like we can't really experience our potential until we try these different ways. Okay, that's really good. And okay, well, I want to also address the people who are watching who says, oh, I wish I had a full practice. Yeah. What, I mean, talk about your progress in that area. Like what helped to get you there? I think you might have recently made a video about how, or maybe you made a post about how it's like you don't need millions of people following you to have a full practice. Yeah. I think I've posted about that on the forum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, right, okay. Yeah, and yeah, I went, I think most people only notice your social media and content creation path of business building, but you always say there is the net carrying path as well. Yes, yes. And I love creating content, but somehow when the kids were born, it slowed down. Yeah. And unknowingly to myself, I started the net carrying path, I wasn't even aware of that first until the point that I started that I started following people, yeah, unknowingly getting in touch with them, like just like commenting on their stuff that I genuinely enjoyed. So it was not like a forced thing, not like networking. Yes. But I just found some inspiring people and I wanted to get in touch with them, I had virtual coffees like on the Zoom and somehow many of these people ended up asking me oh wait, you're helping with tech, right? Like I have these issues or my friend had these issues. Could you help? And so net carrying was the key for, in my case. Yeah, absolutely. And it's really worth. Yeah. Thank you for those sharing those details. That's really helpful. And when you say you did the virtual coffees, like how did you reach out? What was the framing of the invitation? Anything you wanna say there? You know, funny thing is since it was not a forced process, it came out just so naturally after a while with each person that I don't even, didn't even notice. Most, if I try to think back to the last few, it was like, oh yeah, I agreed with you on that post and then we just shared a couple of thoughts and after a few back and forth chat lines, you were like, we should totally have virtual coffee and discuss this life. Yes, yes, yes. That's great. That's actually, but that's a really nice organic way of creating a live connection with someone, a real-time connection. It's like, yeah, just like what you said, like you've gone back and forth a little bit in comments and then it's like, well, like, why don't we talk about this on Zoom or talk talk? That's great. That's really helpful actually. So, well, we are already winding down this conversation and so I wanna ask you, since this is a series, we're gonna be checking in with you a couple of times during this year, what would you like to commit to or dedicate? What is your aim for progress so that next time we talk with you, you'll be able to celebrate something with us? There is two things that are probably, there are two things probably related to each other and funnily enough, you already mentioned that, that how when a business is growing, you get easily overwhelmed and that maybe at one point, you just kinda do more hours in a day. So the two things I started working on in my own life and business is one is, I don't like that word, but like upscaling my business to have not just one-on-one work, but courses probably and so gentle lunches and course creation is one of the huge thing that I want to do monthly and the other thing is, this is kind of funny for me is it comes from probably my perfectionism or I don't know, maybe empathy and caring, I don't know, is that I spend too much time on communication, like responding emails, responding to chat messages and you already helped me a lot with that when you said, treat them as like even long emails, treat them as instant messaging, just messages, like text messages and replying that manner that already helped a lot, but I want to take communication, written communication more lightly. Mm, yes. Yes. That's going to be a key to avoiding overwhelm for me. Very good, okay. So more passive income and more light communication out of two things, I'm committing to building. Good, good. Well, looking forward to checking in on those things and that's exciting. I will of course put, yeah, where should people follow you? I'll put those links below, but what would you like or would you like them to go? Somehow I started loving these days YouTube and LinkedIn. Oh, okay, great. So those are the places where I'm most active at. I still post to Facebook as well, but if someone new wants to follow me, then I would suggest LinkedIn or YouTube. Yeah, okay, sounds great, sounds great. Anything else, Peter, you want to share before we complete? Mm, I think we covered everything. Okay, yeah, great. Well, if anybody has questions for Peter or comments, of course, put it below and I'll be sure Peter sees it. So thank you so much, Peter, for your work and caring for your clients. Grateful for your presence and in the community as well. So thank you. Thank you for creating that community in the first place. And your knowledge, thank you so much, George. Yeah, thanks, Peter.