Always Busy, But Never Getting Ahead? Here’s the Fix.

Most coaches think productivity is about doing more—but what if the real key is doing less?

If you feel like you're constantly busy yet not making real progress, it’s time to rethink how you work. In this episode, I sit down with Mark Struczewski (aka Mister Productivity) to uncover a simple yet powerful shift that will help you:

By the End of This Episode, You’ll Know:
✅ Cut through distractions and stop spinning your wheels
✅ Get clear on the one thing that moves your business forward
✅ Reach potential clients without feeling spammy
✅ Take back control of your time—without working more

About Mark:
Mark Struczewski (STRU-CHESS-KEY), known as Mister Productivity, is a Houston-based productivity coach and host of The Mister Productivity Podcast with over 1,320 episodes. He helps leaders cut through distractions, conquer overwhelm, and gain clarity using practical, no-nonsense strategies. Drawing from his daily running routine and passion for lifelong learning, Mark simplifies productivity so you can focus on what truly matters.

Connect with Mark:
🔗 Website: misterproductivity.com

Next Episode Teaser:
If tech and automation overwhelm you, you won’t want to miss my next episode with Joe Casabona. He’ll break down how to use simple automations to save time—without needing to be a tech expert. Hit follow so you don’t miss it!

Transcript

Stephen Box: 0:00

What if the secret to being a productive, successful coach wasn't about doing more, but actually about doing less? Well, today's guest, Mark Struszewski, better known as Mister productivity, has helped thousands of professionals cut through the noise, eliminate distractions, and finally get clear on what really moves the needle in your coaching business. So if you've ever felt like you're constantly busy but never making real progress, This episode is going to help you shift how you think about your work, your focus, and even how you connect with the potential clients. So welcome to another episode of Coach Smarter, Health Coaching Simplified, brought to you by Unshakable Habits. I am your host, Stephen Box, and this is the podcast where we help health. Fitness and nutrition coaches sharpen their coaching skills, stand out in a crowded market, and build sustainable businesses without drowning in the details. Let's dive into my conversation with Mister productivity himself, Mark Struczewski mark, thank you so much for joining me today. Appreciate you being here.

Mark Struczewski: 1:04

I am thrilled to be here and honored to share my wisdom with you and your audience.

Stephen Box: 1:11

So, speaking of your wisdom, I have to start with your nickname, Mister productivity. Why do they call you Mister productivity?

Mark Struczewski: 1:19

Well, all good nicknames, come from somebody else. You're not supposed to give yourself, it's kind of narcissistic to give yourself a nickname. So one day I posted something on LinkedIn, which is my biggest platform. And someone said, Hey, nice point, Mister productivity. And I'm like. Huh? I like that. And I didn't know what the etiquette was. I said, can I use that? And they go, well, yeah, sure. So I not only used it, but I spent like a lot of money with legal zoom to get it registered and trademark. And I got my website, my podcast, everything's built around that brand. So it was a gift from somebody else.

Stephen Box: 1:57

Nice. Nice. So tell me a little bit about what you do. Like, who do you help? What do you help them with?

Mark Struczewski: 2:05

I specialize in helping HR professionals, which include HR managers, HR directors, senior VPs of HR, because they are so, they're in a very unique position. One of my clients, HR clients, told me that when you're in the HR field, it's kind of like you're dealing with fiery arrows all day. You and I can plan our days and pretty much we are in control of it. When you're in HR. Somebody could get fired. There could be a conflict on the job. Someone could lose a loved one. Someone's got to be fired. The hiring process, new mandates come down. So it's really challenging to coach someone in the HR field because I can't say, Hey, do step 1, I mean, I do tell them that, but then I also have to realize that, right? The unexpected can happen much more in that industry than, than in ours.

Stephen Box: 3:02

Yeah, I think this is going to be good though, because you know, my audience is primarily coaches and it's coaches who work online. So they're working with people from all over the world, different time zones, different problems, all these things. And so just like those HR professionals that you tend to work with, their days can vary so much because their clients days can change so much and things can come up last minute. Calls get canceled, rescheduled, all kinds of stuff that can happen in a day to day of a coach's life. So I think this is going to be a pretty good match there.

Mark Struczewski: 3:37

Well, let's be honest. 95 percent of what I teach my clients can be applied to everyone, but. Any really good business coach will tell you you had to have a niche. Matter of fact, my current coach has got the same. The niche doesn't matter, but niching matters. Now there's a little asterisk there. You can't have a niche with four people in it, but. The whole point of a niche is to keep you focused. So you're not trying to appeal to everybody. In my case, I chose HR people because they're more challenging because they have a different dynamic and it keeps me sharp.

Stephen Box: 4:16

Yeah. I totally agree with you. It's like, for me, I coach. Other coaches, because I have over a decade of experience as a coach. And I know that there's a lot of things I could bring to the table. And most people, when they coach other coaches, it's all about, Oh, here's how to market your business. Here's here's how to get more leads. Here's how to get more sales. But no one talks to people about how do you actually create the systems to stay organized? How do you actually buy back your time and not just give away all your time? Or how do you stop trading your hours for dollars, right? Like no one talks to people about those things. Instead, it's just, oh, I'm going to show you how to get more Leads and that's it. That's the main focus of most business coaches. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. Like everyone else is already doing that. I want to help people buy back their time.

Mark Struczewski: 5:05

I love that. And I have come, I think I switched about 180 degrees in my approach to coaching. So now before I go buy a book, before I hire a coach, I asked myself, what do I want to learn? Okay. I've gone through. The Jack of all trades coaches. And what I found out is that they're not good at anything. Or they're minimal good at stuff. I wanna, if I wanna learn, for example, how to build my YouTube channel, which I'm not trying to do right now, but let's say it, I wanted to, I would hire a YouTube expert. If I wanted to build my podcast, I would go get a podcasting expert. If I want lead gen, I'm gonna go get someone who's really good at lead gen, not someone who does lead gen and 1400 other different things. What are you really good at? And I think that's really important because everybody's looking for that Swiss army knife, one coach that does everything. If someone says they can do everything for you as a coach, you might want to pause for a moment and do your homework and make sure they're really good at what they do, or maybe they're really good at one thing, but not so good at the other thing. So you hire them for that one thing they're really good at. That's, that's my approach anyways.

Stephen Box: 6:23

Yeah, I love this because we're taking the opposite approach to podcasting here today, right? Most, most podcasts you get into this whole thing and then at the end you go, what's your big takeaway today? We're starting with the takeaway. We're giving, we're giving people the takeaway up front here, right? Is to focus in not just on a niche, because I think so often when we talk about the idea of niching, it's this like, oh, I'm going to help 35 year old moms. Right, who has a child under five who needs to lose ten pounds, right? And it's like Okay, well, first of all, that's not really a niche. That's just, you know, that's part of a niche, but really it's about like, what problems are you solving? And so often when you sit down and ask people, what is the one problem you solve for people, they have no idea.

Mark Struczewski: 7:13

No, I would give you a little pushback on that. If you want to go up to 35 year old moms who want to lose 10 pounds, if that niche is big enough, and I don't know, I've never gone to Google and seen how big that niche is and you can target them. That's the other thing you've got to be able to target them. So if these 35 year old moms who want to lose 10 pounds, if they're not on social media, how are you going to target them? So it, it, it could be a niche, but you got to make sure what people don't understand about knitting is, can you find those people? You just can't. A lot of people will grab a niche. I'm like, okay, is it big enough? It can't be too big. It's kind of like the three bears. It can't be too small. It can't be too big. It's gotta be just right. And I didn't understand this for years. I just randomly picked someone who can you help everyone out? That's not everyone is not a niche. So that's why I focus on HR people. I can, someone goes to my website and gets on a 20 minute discovery call. I'll tell them how to do that at the end of the episode. I can still help you if you're not in the HR field, but I've got to target somebody cause I speak their language. Everything I do is targeted for the HR people. But that doesn't mean I can't help the entrepreneur. I still can. It's just, I got to target somebody.

Stephen Box: 8:33

Yeah. And really where I was kind of going with that was, and I agree with what she said, by the way, where I was kind of going with it was, if you just stopped there, you're not really technically at an issue, right? Because you don't even know what's. Problem you're solving because helping somebody lose 10 pounds, isn't anything unique. There's a billion coaches out there going to help people lose 10 pounds, right? It's what problem is preventing that person from losing 10 pounds that you can solve. I

Mark Struczewski: 8:59

agree with that. It's all about the outcome. That's one thing that not a single coach until my current one explained to me. Why should anyone want to give you their attention unless you can solve their problem and it's all outcome based and that's why one of the things I've done is on my coaching program, one of my top tier levels is you pay once. It's my most expensive plan. You pay once and I work with you until you get that result. One call, one month, one quarter, one year, you don't pay anymore because some people say, look at, I don't want to be dinged every month. I want to pay you once. And if. If I get my outcome, I think it's worth that money. So whether it's one call or one year, it's worth it. What I'm trying to do is I just finished reading a book called get different by Mike Michalowicz. I think I said his name correctly. It's got a book called get different and everybody in every industry, for the most part, not everybody, for the most part, we're all wearing the same gray rain suits and we all look the same. I want to be the guy wearing the red rain suit. So people go, Oh, Oh, that's different, not weird, maybe you could, you could be weird as long as it's not too weird.

Stephen Box: 10:23

I agree with that. And I think that so much of what we've been taught about how to define who our ideal customer are is, is the same reason why so many coaches are unproductive. Because you're trying to run around and you're trying to speak to everyone and you're trying to figure out all these different ways and you're in your own head about your messaging because nothing really makes sense to anybody outside of you and you're wondering why you're having all these struggles. And you're not getting anything done because you're constantly backtracking because you haven't got clear on what the focus is.

Mark Struczewski: 11:05

Let me tell you, when you are clear on your niche, like I am, I spent two hours a day networking on LinkedIn. There's no doubt what I'm doing. When I go search, I'm looking for people, HR managers, HR directors, chief people officers. It makes it really easy when you are. Clear on your net. It makes networking with these people so much easier because you don't have to wonder who this is a good person. So I connect with them. It's really easy. Are they in the HR field? And in my case, are they in the greater Houston area? If they check yes on both of those, I send 'em a LinkedIn Connects request. If they're not, and this is one of the things that annoys me about LinkedIn. I'll have a search of chief, what's the one, chief People Officers Greater Houston, and I'll get it Directors in Sugarland. Well, Sugarland is in Greater Houston, but I didn't say anything about it. People and I look at their, their whole profile. There's not a single mention of chief people Officer, so LinkedIn sometimes serves me up. People I'm like, okay, just why are you doing that? So that's the minor issue for most people.

Stephen Box: 12:14

Yeah. talk to me a little bit about this idea then of, you know, when we're trying to niche down, we're trying to get really specific on it outside of just the obvious of, of knowing where to focus your attention. What is kind of the benefit of it? And if somebody is listening to this and they go, you know what, I'm really not sure who I want to help. What's the first step for them to take?

Mark Struczewski: 12:37

This is going to sound crazy, but one of the things my coach says, just pick a niche, just pick a niche. And he's got some criteria. They've got to be targetable. They've got, there's got to be enough of them. They've got to have money, you know, certain things like that, but don't. stress over what is your target niche? Because I did this and I wasted so much time. What's the right niche? There's no right niche. There's the right niche for you. So when he gave me permission just to pick a niche, I'm like, Oh my gosh, no one's ever said that to me before. He says, cause you're wasting your time. He actually says you're wasting your effing time by worrying about the niche when you should be connecting with people and getting people on calls and making money. And I was wasting time because if you dwell on picking the niche, no one's paying you for that. And it's kind of like people who scroll endlessly on Instagram or TikTok. I'm like, are they paying you for that? Well, no. Why? I don't spend time on social media doing that because they're not paying me.

Stephen Box: 13:43

It's like, can you, can you help this person? Solve the problem that you're going to help them solve. So congratulations. You have a niche, right? It's really, it's really that simple, right? It's

Mark Struczewski: 13:56

we are overthinking so many people overthink things. They just like, well. And then they start second guessing themselves. Listen, my coach says, just pick an effing niche and it serves the criteria. And now I've never had so much joy. I used to be terrified of dm'ing people now because I'm laser focused and really clear on my niche. It's fun. And so now I'm having these conversations because you know, when you first start dm'ing people. You can't send them a link. You can't promote anything. You got to just, you know, do gradually like, Hey, this is Mark, Mister productivity, you know, and, and what's happening is cause I'm doing it right now. I look forward to DMing people. I mean, I DM people on my phone, on the, on the, on the Mac book and everything. I love doing it because I'm really focused for many years. I wasn't. And because I didn't have clarity, this is the thing about productivity. If you're not clear, It's hard to do the work because you're like, I, what am I supposed to be doing? But you know, one of the most focused people I know is like Elon Musk. He is focused on getting the Mars. He is focused on that. He was focused on Tesla. He was focused when he bought X, formerly Twitter, now X, we have to be focused. And if you want to survive in this world, you've got to be focused.

Stephen Box: 15:19

I just want to touch base on this real quick. You, you mentioned how. With the DMs, you're reaching out to people and there's a right and a wrong way to do it. Can you elaborate on that?

Mark Struczewski: 15:28

Yes, we all have those DMs where you connect with someone and either one you get a, what I call an earnest Hemingway DM, which is this long, you know, we've all seen those, right? Ain't nobody reading that, man. Nobody's reading all that, or they'll say, Hey, subscribe to my podcast or subscribe to my email newsletter. And no, I don't even know you. I just met you. So one of the things I do that my coach taught me is the first thing you do when someone connects with you, not right away, because then they think it's automated. Maybe after a day you send them a simple DM. Hey, John, thanks for connecting. I'm getting, you know, I'm looking forward to getting to know you better. That's it. That is really simple to do. It's not, there's no controversy there. Oh, how dare he thank me for connect? You know, it's, it's weird. And then what happens is about two or three days later, I go back to them and I give them a compliment. Now the compliment could be anything. It could be, Hey. Congratulations on your work anniversary. I can tell you the thing that works best for me is the oddball anniversaries. Hey, John, congratulations on two years and four months at your job. Who does that? Everybody does the, like the yearly thing. So I kind of strange, or I found one lady, she had a 4. 0 college GPA. I'm like, Holy crap. Good job on that. And then now the whole magic starts happening when they start replying. If they reply, I do a voice note or a voice memo or a voice message, whatever LinkedIn is calling them these days, because then it allows me to show my personality. We have to understand that it's going to take a lot of touches before someone's going to give you their attention. A lot because they don't know who you are. I've heard 15. I've heard as high as 50 and we just got to stay in the game. Alex Ramosi says it's putting in the reps showing up every day. Not every other day. I show up on Saturdays and Sundays. I will show up on Christmas. Why? Some people don't celebrate Christmas. Some people don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Some people don't celebrate the American new years. So I show up every day. Now I don't show up as long on these other days, but I show up now after I start getting, when I start getting responses, then I will begin the process of advancing them to get on a 20 minute call, which I'll tell you a listeners about later on in the episode, but it's all non threatening. It's all like, Hey, I just want to see if I can help you. That's it. Because people have their BS antennas up and they're like, Oh, here comes a pitch. I try not to make it sound like a pitch, but it is sort of a pitch because I'm not just on LinkedIn DMing people. Cause I've got nothing else to do. So, and people are smart. People know you're on social media because you're hoping to build your business. I would hope, I mean, why are you wasting time on social media? So that's how I approached DMing. It's actually becoming fun.

Stephen Box: 18:44

So if I were to just kind of recap our conversation here, and tell me if I'm leaving anything out, right. But. If, if there's a coach out there, they're just getting started and they're, or they're at a point where they're just completely overwhelmed and they don't have that clarity. The first thing to do is get clarity on what your niche is, who you're serving, the problem that you're helping them solve, and don't try to solve every problem for somebody. Pick a problem. You can always introduce other solutions to people once they're inside of your email list or your funnels or whatever. Start with one thing. Right. Be known for that thing. And then once you've done that, choose work each day that moves you toward that group. Like spend your time finding those people, connecting with those people, building those relationships. That's the most important work that you can do.

Mark Struczewski: 19:37

That's a fair summary. And I just want to, if, if people get nothing else out of this episode, you will, but if you never do remember the power of one. One niche, one offer. When you go to my website, there's no doubt what I want you to do at the end of this podcast episode, I will not tell you, follow me on Instagram Facebook, by the way, I deleted Facebook and tech talks. You can't follow me there or an X and YouTube and LinkedIn and Snapchat and sign up for my email newsletter and subscribe to my podcast. No, because once they hear the second one, they stop listening. So in, in your business, power of one, what is one thing that you want them to do? That's why I hate when I get DMS on LinkedIn, it'll give me six things. I'm not doing six things. What is one thing you want me to do? And that should be the reply to the DM. It could be an emoji. It could be thanks, whatever, but I think people are so excited about they're on all these platforms and I've had it on my podcast. They'll say, Oh, go to Amazon to buy my book, go to my website, set up my email newsletter. No one's going to, they're going to stop listening. So in life, personal and business, please honors the power of one pick one thing. And focus on that. If you want to grow your email list, go all in on that. If you want to grow your YouTube, go all in on that, but stop giving people so many decisions. I don't know if you're old enough to remember this used to go to the cereal aisle when 30 cereals now there's 30 million cereals and there's been the research on it. The more choices people have, they get confused and don't buy. So just remember this listener, the power of one.

Stephen Box: 21:26

I love the fact that not only is that applicable to. Your marketing and the messaging factor, but it's also relevant to your day to day activities. If you're trying to focus on a bunch of different things, then you're not going to get anything done. You know, I, I'm a strong believer in the three big rocks for the day. I choose of those three. I choose one. That's the most important each day. And I go, my goal is to get these three done. If I do nothing but one of them, this has to be the one I do. If I get the other two done and then I still have time left, then I can start working on other stuff. These are the three things that I want to get done today. This is the one that is the most important to do.

Mark Struczewski: 22:16

I struggle when people ask me how many, what, what's my priority list be? Three, five, seven. I don't like giving a number because your number may be one number, maybe two. So I, I don't want people to hear your three rocks and go up three. It is no. Maybe tomorrow it's one, the day after it's four, the day after it's two. So don't, these are not, you and I are not sharing absolute numbers because we don't know the listener. We don't know who's listening to this. You need to focus on what are the needle moving activities for you. For me, the first two hours of the day is spent on LinkedIn. You know, DMing or doing connection requests. That's my number one big rock. Now I also have podcast interviews, both mine and other people's shows and I got content creation, but I just want people to understand. Maybe you only have one rock that day and that's okay. So I don't just don't want them to get focused in. Oh, I can't think of three. Well, maybe you don't have three. That's all I'm saying.

Stephen Box: 23:22

And just in case people missed it, when I said it just to kind of highlight this and make sure that it's nice and clear. I choose three tasks not because I have to do three things, but because I want to make sure that I don't try to do more than three things. But I also give myself that flexibility of choosing one that is the most important, because as I said, that way if I do nothing else that day, right, so I'm not gonna beat myself up and go, I had two things that I didn't get done today. It doesn't matter, I did my most important task. Yeah, I think

Mark Struczewski: 24:01

important task. I got a problem with myself, right? Yeah, 100%. And I encourage people to spend 80 percent of their day on needle moving activities. And we don't have to go into this because you should know what your needle moving activities are. You have a goal is what you're doing, moving you towards your goal. If it's not, it's not a needle moving activity. The reason why I say 80 percent is we all have to do those admin tasks. It's just part of the work. You got to do EM, email and DMS and stuff like that. But have a goal of 80 percent of your day working on needle moving activities.

Stephen Box: 24:41

I love it. So, appreciate you coming on today, sharing some insights with us in terms of helping people gain this clarity on how do you go about making sure that you're being as productive as possible as you go through your day. If someone wants to connect with you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Mark Struczewski: 24:59

Just head on over to my website, mrproductivity. com, M I S T E R, mrproductivity. com. When you go there. There will be no doubt what I want you to do. And that's to get on a 20 minute discovery call with me. It's my gift. There's no cost to it. If you want to sign up for my email list, fine, or anything else, fine. But what I want to do is to get people on a call because I'm a human being. Probably guessing that your audience is human beings. I want to talk to people. I want to help people. So just head on over to mrproductivity. com.

Stephen Box: 25:37

Awesome. Well, thanks again so much for your time today, Mark, and we look forward to talking to you soon. Thanks. And that wraps up my conversation today with Mister productivity, Mark Strucheski. first of all, thank you for listening today, but before you go, I've got two quick things for you. First, a small favor, and second, some key takeaways from today's episode. So if you found today's episode helpful, please consider sharing it with another coach who could use some more clarity in their day. And if you have any questions or topics that you'd love for me to cover on the show or have a guest cover, use the link down in the show notes to send me a text. I'd love to hear from you for our takeaways that I have four. takeaways I wanted to share from today's episode. Number one, clarity creates confidence. When you know exactly who you serve and how you help, everything from marketing to time management becomes easier. Number two, niching isn't about who you exclude, it's about who you serve. Picking a niche helps you refine your message, but it doesn't mean you only work with those people. Number three, the power of one. One clear niche. One strong offer and one focused CTA will always be more effective than trying to do everything at once. And number four, productivity is about intentionality, not just efficiency. The key isn't doing more, it's making sure you're focused on the right things. And speaking of making your business easier, on our next episode we're tackling something that so many coaches struggle with. Automation and Technology. So if tech overwhelms you or you feel like you're wasting too much time on things that should be easier, my conversation with Joe Casabona is one you will not want to miss. He's going to break down how to use automations and systems to free up your time without needing to be a tech expert. So be sure to hit the follow button so you don't miss out. And thanks for listening again. This is Stephen Box reminding you, until next time, that coaching smarter creates a lasting impact for you And, Those You Serve.