NPC Interview with Penny Zenker
Hugh Ballou: Welcome to the Nonprofit Chat tonight. We have a really, really, really good topic tonight. My co-host on these has been Russell David Dennis. I’m Hugh McPherson Ballou. We have a good time on these, and we introduce great things to the world by introducing great people who have great products and services. We have a long time friend of ours tonight, Penny Zenker. Russ is carrying the heavy weight tonight. I am waiting in an airport to board a plane, so I will be a passive participant in this. We are recording on the cloud. This is going to be part of our Nonprofit Exchange podcast, Penny. This nonprofit chat is something we broadcast out to folks every Tuesday at 7. Russell, would you cue up the introduction and let Penny talk a little bit about herself as well?
Russell Dennis: Thank you, Hugh, and welcome, Penny. It’s always a pleasure to see you. It’s been a good while. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we have Penny Zenker. Penny is a strategic business coach and trainer. She coaches business leaders and entrepreneurs. She is the author of the best-selling book The Productivity Zone: Stop the Tug of War with Time. Penny leverages her personal experiences building up and later selling a multi-million-dollar business, as a senior executive at one of the world’s largest market research companies, and working with business leaders all over the world as a Tony Robbins business coach. Penny’s proven and practical approaches to help people get results quickly. Time is something that is just difficult to get more of. It’s the one thing we can’t get more of. Penny, tell everybody about yourself today. Good to see ya.
Penny Zenker: Good to see you, too, Russell and Hugh. Always good to be here with you guys. Thank you for having me here. As you cued it up, where some of my experience and background is, Hugh earlier said, “How are you qualified? What makes you the time management expert or productivity expert?” Maybe it’s because I have more challenges than most people, I don’t know. No.
As you heard in the introduction, I started my own technology business back when I was 25. Nobody knows better about time management challenges than an entrepreneur starting off in their business, wearing all the different hats and playing all the different roles. I have seen it from an entrepreneur’s perspective. Then I went to work for a big company, organized very differently. At the same time, when I left my company and I sold it, I thought, Now I am going to go work 9-5. It’s going to be so easy. I am going to take over this role. That’s not what it was at all. Instead of being the CTO of the organization, I took my boss’s job in a reorganization, and then I was responsible for multiple countries, speaking a foreign language, and reorganizing the organization. I have never experienced such a challenge, which isn’t time. At that moment, I thought it was a time management challenge. How can I do all this?
What I’d love to briefly share is a story that shifted the way I thought about time management forever. And hopefully some of our discussion will really be around that. When I took over this position at the market research company, and I was overwhelmed and I was questioning myself if I even had the skills and what was needed to do this job because it was so much different and bigger than what I had ever had before.
It’s when we get overwhelmed, we think we get overloaded, but we are really just overwhelmed. There is a difference between that. One has to do with mental capacity, where the other one is more of a time capacity issue or a physical capacity issue.
I went into my boss’s office and said, “Peter, I can’t do this. I don’t think I am the right person for this position.” I shared with him what my challenges were. He sat there patiently, like a cool leader, listening. Then he said, “Listen. I hired you to make decisions. What you do with the rest of your time is up to you.”
Think about that.
Hugh: T