Filip Pesek Discusses How Founders And CEOs Can Reclaim 60+ Hours Per Month With Top 1% Executive Assistants

Success Profiles Radio

Filip Pesek, founder and CEO of DonnaPro, shares how top-tier executive assistants from the EU help founders and CEOs reclaim over 60 hours

Key takeaways

• Entrepreneurial success often emerges from unexpected paths, not rigid plans.
• Sacrificing personal time and hobbies is inevitable in early-stage business growth.

Main topics

• Time reclamation for CEOs
• Hiring elite executive assistants

Notable quotes

"You can't expect greatness to flow from you if you don't allow greatness to flow into you."

Conclusion

Filip Pesek's journey from basketball dreams to building a high-impact

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) It's time for Success Profiles Radio with your host, Brian K. Wright. Have you ever wondered if there's more to life than you're currently living? Then Success Profiles Radio is the program for you. Every week, we'll explore different aspects of success and how to apply them to your life. Guests will come from many different backgrounds, including expertise in leadership, business, relationships, careers, networking, health, overcoming adversity, and much more. Every show is a dose of inspiration. This is Success Profiles Radio. And now, here's your host, Brian K. Wright. Speaker 2 (0:38) Welcome to Success Profiles Radio. I'm your host, Brian K. Wright, and it's an absolute pleasure to be with you here today. I'm honored that you chose to spend part of your day with me here. This is going to be a fantastic and amazing show. I will introduce my guest in a moment. I promise we're going to learn a lot, and we're going to have some fun along the way. I also do want to take a minute or two to share some things I've been learning and thinking about lately, and I typically do this every single week. I had the opportunity to interview Tom Ziegler twice on the show and they were both really amazing episodes. In one of the interviews, I asked him what is the greatest success habit that has impacted his life? And his answer was that he is always aware of what input he allows into his mind. You can't expect greatness to flow from you if you don't allow greatness to flow into you. For me, I like to read and listen to positive books and audios. Essentially, I evaluate what will help my life and my career, and I try to minimize my exposure to the news and other sources of constant negativity. If you listen to negativity long enough, you will eventually believe it's true. But if you listen to positive messages long enough, you will also begin to believe those as well. So just ask yourself what you are allowing into your life. It affects you more than you think it does. And if you've not downloaded and subscribed, to Success Profiles Radio on Apple Podcasts or iTunes, please do that. Leave a five-star review. That would mean a lot. Currently, the show is ranked number 80 in business on iTunes and number six in careers on iTunes. And so the show is growing even after all these years, 14 and a half years strong. And we would really appreciate if you keep listening and send your friends to us. And we would love to have them listen to us as well. My very special guest this week is Philip Pesick. Let me tell you about him. He's the founder and CEO of Donapro, a company that helps founders and CEOs reclaim their time and focus with the support of top 1 % executive assistants from the EU. He is also author of the best-selling Slovenian book, Pisma Zleona, and sought-after speaker on leadership, remote. work and sustainable productivity. Philip's career started in door-to-door sales where he quickly became one of the top performers. His success led him to begin teaching sales, running courses and speaking at events, experiences that sharpened both his communication and entrepreneurial drive. He went on to found Spark Marketing Agency where he's worked directly with companies across 110 industries or more and it was during this time that he recognized the bottleneck of busy leaders drowning in tasks that should be delegated. And this helped him move to create a fully remote executive assistant agency, Donna Pro. And he helps leaders who don't want to just complete tasks, but actually reclaim 60 hours a month through smarter systems. We have so much to unwrap and unravel here. So here we are with my very special guest, Philip Hizik. Philip, how are you? Speaker 1 (3:17) I'm doing great, Brian. Thanks for having me. Speaker 2 (3:20) You're very welcome. So the first question that I want to ask is, did you envision early on that you'd be where you are right now? Speaker 1 (3:28) That's a good question. And the answer is no, I definitely didn't. My dream was always to be an NBA professional basketball player. I was working on that since I was six years old. I didn't go to a lot of parties when I was young. You know, Saturdays, Sundays, it was games, you know, early mornings, it was practice late, late in the evening, it was practice. So I was basically just working towards that. And then at some stage. when I figured out this is most likely not going to be you know my path I I remember that my mom asked me like hey Philip uh like what do you want to do like what's going to happen and I vividly remember that I told her like mom I have no idea but I just feel that I'm somehow confident in myself and that whatever life is gonna throw at me I'm going to figure it out And at that stage, I thought I'm going to become some sort of a CIA agent who's going to be a human lie detector. And I'm going to like unwrap all of those beautiful cases that you see on the TV. But yeah, eventually that didn't go through and I started doing some entrepreneurial things. And then here we are today. So I had no idea this is how the journey is going to unfold. Speaker 2 (4:45) wow so so how did you decide that entrepreneurship was your path uh Speaker 1 (4:51) well i i don't know if i really did it was like when i was in the first year of of college i was attending a junior college at that time in the united states in california a beautiful country by the way and beautiful state and i was i was playing basketball still at the time but i was actually benched for a whole season so i didn't play much and i have a reactive mind like a lot of entrepreneurs and i was like okay like okay if i cannot express my myself for basketball because i'm benched and if i can train but i'm simply not gonna play because of the xyz circumstances like what am i going to do with this energy like i wanna move it towards something that makes sense. And then for whatever reason, I was like, okay, I'm in the United States at the moment. I have friends back home in Slovenia. What if I would simply send some shoes to them because everybody would love to have shoes from the United States because you cannot get the same shoes in Europe or in Slovenia. And I was like, huh, that's a cool idea. And I started with that on the side. uh obviously it was illegal or i like it was not like really like an official business but there i started to you know learn how to kind of market my own business how to figure out the what to do when the customer says i have i have to think about it and then you know i went from there to eventually other normal ventures um and yeah it's simply like it it happened because i was bored and at the same time like the the salary they offered at junior college which was paid like six dollars per hour i was not really intrigued by that and uh this is how it started yeah Speaker 2 (6:30) for sure was your family supportive of your entrepreneurial path Speaker 1 (6:35) Yes and no. I mean, they were not unsupportive, but my mom is still asking me right now when I'm 31 years old, like when I'm going to finish the college because I never did. So I guess she didn't quit on my education yet. But yeah, I mean, they were fine because I saw that whatever I was doing, I had focus, I had passion and I was not slacking. It was not like I was partying the whole day and pretending to be this business person. Like I was really learning the craft, trying to figure out how to somehow make it. So they were there, they were observing. Later on, they actually quite, I mean, they actually helped quite a lot at the early stages with some admin things. you know, finances. So yeah, they actually helped a lot. It was just very hard for them to swallow the idea that this guy is not going to have a normal job because obviously that would make them feel safer. Speaker 2 (7:28) Yeah, for sure. And I think that's just how parents are. I went a little bit through that with mine too. So I can certainly relate. What are some of the biggest sacrifices you had to make in order to make your big dream come true? Speaker 1 (7:42) Well, they are still happening. Like, you know, everybody who is in business and telling you they are not making sacrifices. I think they are because there is always this idea that, you know, you could live a balanced life. And of course you can and you should strive towards that. But the fact is, like, if I have a passion that I have for skiing or for tennis or for something else like. There is no way I play tennis for six hours per day and ski for the same six hours per day. And I simply have to sacrifice those ideas for maybe later on, because I know that right now Donna Pro needs a little bit of my time. And then, of course, whenever I'm not working, I have a family at home. I have a young son who is turning five right now. And then, you know, you're playing that balance. And OK, like, what am I going to do today? Am I going to spend the afternoon with my son or am I going to chase something business related? And you're constantly playing that balance. And then what I'm trying to focus right now is have like three pillars in my life. One is my family. One is my sports condition and just staying healthy. And the third one is my business. But then if you have those three pillars, then a lot of the things have to be cut off. So like I don't go to a lot of social events. I would love to reconnect, reconnect maybe a bit more with my friends, but I don't because those are the three pillars I'm protecting. So you're always making those sacrifices. And, you know, everybody basically chooses their own. sacrifices they're going to make. And as long as you're aware of what you're choosing and why you're choosing, I think it's okay. The problem is if you're not aware and then, you know, you spend, you know, your whole life building a business and then, you know, your family doesn't recognize you. That's not really a good idea, I think, long term. Speaker 2 (9:29) No, absolutely. What do you think is the most expensive mistake you've ever made? It doesn't have to be financial. It could be something you gave up on too soon or something you didn't hang on to long enough. But what is your biggest? expensive mistake? Speaker 1 (9:42) Yeah, well, my mind is still spinning on basketball and it's really hard for me to swallow the idea that when I was 20, I mean, I was not great enough to go pro, but I could at least stick around and maybe stay in shape and play one more season. And now like every year, like for the past few years, I'm still rethinking it. Like I know this is not going to be a career, but I'm still thinking, well, it would be so nice to maybe play two more seasons just for my heart, for my joy, not for the money, not for the fame, but simply for me. And this is something that I'm pondering a lot in my head. And then maybe some other things. I mean, I don't have a specific case in mind besides obviously skipping on the Bitcoin and Ethereum when they were very low when my friends approached me and I was like, no, this is a stupid investment. But what I figured out at You know, whatever happens or happened, like, I just try to move past it because at the end of the day, you cannot fix the past. I mean, we're living in the now. So, you know, I mean, yes, I could probably count a lot of mistakes, but at the same time. You know, I'm also grateful for them because, you know, sometimes you can only learn if you make a mistake. Like you can read a book about something, but until you do a mistake, you're not going to get it. So, you know, everything that happened, happened with a reason. And, you know, today we are here. Speaker 2 (11:11) Absolutely. Less than two minutes to our first break. What would you say your big mission is? Speaker 2 (11:16) I Speaker 1 (11:16) mean, at the moment, what any changes because as a person, if you're evolving, it will obviously change. But if we look at my life right now, what I'm thinking at the moment is I want to build. the biggest, not the biggest, but the baddest and the most admired service company on the planet, not even in this virtual assistant agency space and executive assistant agency space, but simply do something that people will look at and will study as an example of, oh, this is how a company should build. This is how service should look like. And if I can reach that, I mean, that would fulfill me. And then obviously doing that while still preserving my health, still preserving my family. and you know doing fun things along along the way so that would be my answer brian Speaker 2 (12:04) absolutely we are coming up against our our first break it's going to be a great great great show i am so excited to talk about delegation and using executive assistants and multiplying your time this is going to be absolutely fantastic and when we come back we're going to talk about how to work well with an executive assistant. We're going to talk about why delegation is important and why founders should work with executive assistants. We'll talk about how CEOs protect their time. And we'll also talk about designing the kind of lifestyle that Tim Ferriss talked about in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. I've read that and there's a lot of great wisdom and a lot of great nuggets. And not only that, but Philip has also done a lot of door-to-door sales and he knocked over. on over 10,000 doors in a year. We'll talk about what that was like and all so much more. When we come back, this is success profiles radio. Speaker 3 (13:01) The mission is to motivate and inspire others to discover their unique talents and follow their dreams in life. This is success profiles radio. Speaker 4 (13:18) have probably heard about the Ring Video Doorbell app. It has a motion sensor that alerts your cell phone if someone is on your porch or rings a doorbell. All you have to do is tap your phone and you can see who is at your door and talk to them through a remote mounted camera and speaker. My husband thought this would be a good idea to have for our home. However, I had no