Creativity Management with Claire Giovino

Creativity through the lens of the Co-Founder and CEO of 50hrs.com

"Creativity is turning thought into reality."

Claire Giovino is the Co-Founder and CEO of 50hrs.com, built around a simple belief: most leaders don’t need better productivity tools — they need to design their perfect day and remove the work that doesn’t belong in it.
Early in her career, Claire noticed that email and administrative work weren’t simply time-consuming. They were low-energy, reactive tasks that fractured attention and quietly crowded out deeper work. Email felt necessary and productive, yet it often ended up setting priorities by default. Curious about what would change, Claire began experimenting with delegation and systems, first in her own work and then alongside other entrepreneurs, to see what happened when leaders stepped out of constant inbox triage.
A pivotal moment came while working with online entrepreneur Yaro Starak. By redesigning how his inbox was filtered, handled, and responded to, Claire reduced his direct involvement with email to checking it just once a month. The shift wasn’t about efficiency alone; it changed how his days were structured and where his attention went. Claire saw the same pattern emerge again and again: as people become more successful, email multiplies, and without deliberate systems, it quietly reshapes how their days unfold.
In 2017, Claire co-founded 50hrs.com to address this problem at scale. Instead of offering surface-level organization or software tools, 50hrs.com provides human executive assistants who manage inboxes and calendars end-to-end — replying to emails, handling follow-ups, and learning each client’s voice, priorities, and decision-making over time by becoming an integral part of their business. The model is built on trust, context, and redundancy, with AI used as a support layer rather than a substitute for human judgment.
Today, Claire works with leaders across entrepreneurship, law, academia, real estate, and beyond who want their days to reflect how they think and work at their best. Her focus is helping them protect the limited hours when their attention is sharpest by removing low-leverage work that quietly drains energy and focus.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairegiovino/
https://inboxdone.com/

https://www.50hrs.com/

https://playbook.50hrs.com/

Transcript

Mari 0:20

Welcome to the Sustaining Creativity Podcast. I'm your host, Mari Reisberg. Over the past several years, I've combined my degrees in acting and somatic psychology to share my sustaining creativity techniques with performers. And now I've decided to share it with a bigger audience that includes you. I believe we are all creative, and this podcast is all about that. I'll be interviewing people from all backgrounds, ages, and creativity experiences to share just how creative we all are. Today I'll be chatting with Claire Giovino, co-founder and CEO of 50hours.com. Please enjoy Claire Giovino.com. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to get the opportunity to chat with you about creativity and how it shows up in the work that you do and in life in general. But before we get there, why don't you take a couple of moments and let our listeners know a little bit more about who you are and what it is you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Yeah, I'm the co-founder and CEO of 50hours.com, with our goal being for all our clients to find 50 hours worth of time that we can take back from them, take off their to-do list, off of their busy plate so they get 50 hours back in their month at a minimum. That's always the starting point, which then begs the question once you get all that time back, what are you going to do with it? And so I'm very excited that we get to talk about creativity today because that's what a lot of our clients are looking for. How do I get the email, the calendar, the admin, all of these things that are very much not often creative off my plate so I can refocus on what matters most to me, create the things I want to create. And that's ultimately the heart of 50 hours.

Mari 2:26

I love that. I can't tell you how often I hear from people, I would do more creative things if I had more time. And so hearing that there are people like you out in the world creating things to support individuals to get back sometime. What an amazing gift to be able to do that. And can you tell us a little bit about like how did this come about? How did 50hours.com start? Were you struggling with your own lack of time? Or what was where did it all begin?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

I actually began in academia. I was an English teacher. So I the university I was teaching at was about an hour away. So I had this long two-hour round trip commute every day. And on this commute, I began listening to entrepreneurial podcasts. And this was around the time, this was like 10, 11 years ago, um, around the time of Tim Ferris coming on the scene with four-hour work week. And so this idea was introduced to me of not necessarily trading time for money anymore. Like this was a it blew my mind at the time. And so I started pitching myself to these podcast hosts, to blog uh authors that I was reading. I was just trying to consume as much of this information as I could as a teacher, very much not with an entrepreneurial background, and began as a ghostwriter. So just started taking on whatever clients I could in whatever capacity. And then one of the clients I pitched to was the host of a podcast called Entrepreneur's Journey. He brought me in and I started doing several things in his business. As you know, as trust is built, it's very easy to grow that client uh relationship. Sure. And I kept uh looking at different parts of his business, and we delegated all the parts of his business up to the point of email. And he said, this is still the sticking point where the more successful I get, the more emails I get. This catch 22. And so I got in there, created some systems, ended up bringing on an assistant to take over those systems. And we got him to the point of only checking his email once a month, and then eventually not at all. And that was the final piece that just freed him up completely, where he had this business that now ran completely without his involvement, other than the parts he wanted to step in on, which was coaching or designing new new curriculum or the creative parts. Uh, so we then rolled that out as a beta um a beta option to some of the entrepreneurs in his network. They loved it, and then it very organically grew into 50hours.com. Next year will be our 10th year in business. Uh, and it's just been a joy to work with such a variety of clients, all different industries, but who are all looking to regain their time so they can give their time to what they actually want to be doing. That is amazing.

Mari 5:35

And do you do the same in your own life? Or is is have you regained your time?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Very much so. I have my own assistance. So 50hours.com is uh learning all about you and your business and then assigning assistance to you with our proprietary matching process, um, North American. So it's all Canadian and US-based assistants who then slowly take over more and more parts of your life. So, yes, I do have assistants. They're incredible. And what it's allowed me to do is um just show up on exactly calls like these, which I love to do. Uh, just show up for coaching, for consulting on webinars. And then everything else behind me is taken care of by these amazing assistants who truly I communicate more with at this point than like other people in my life.

Mari 6:35

Sure. Well, I'm glad to hear that you two are benefiting from having the extra support. I'm curious, with all of the things that you do and where your background is and where you're headed in the future, what does it mean to you to be creative?

SPEAKER_00 6:56

I love this question because my definition has definitely shifted with time, depending on the phase of life I'm in. So as of now, it's very much for me creativity is turning thought into reality and into a reality that can be experienced by other people. And so if I have an idea, one of my favorite examples being in the early days of this business, when a client would ask if we had something, we I would very often say, we will buy tomorrow. Like it doesn't exist yet, but give me a minute. And you know, very many business owners operate similarly. But that idea of having the thought and then turning it into a lived reality, whether that's in a book, in a song, in a piece of art, uh, in a conversation like you and I are having right now, um, you're like speaking something into existence. And I think the the more quickly you can turn the thought into a reality, the more successful you become because you're able to then test very quickly is this profitable? Does it resonate with others who are experiencing it? Is there something here? And then you can build off of it, or you can pivot and try to create something else. So true. A lot, I'm sure you know a lot of creators get stuck in that space between thought and reality. And so the quicker you can move through that space, I find, the more prolific of a creator you become.

Mari 8:34

What happens for you when there are some hiccups in between the idea and the action or the manifestation or the physical whatever it is? Um you know, I think so many people have different ways of getting stuck. What are some of the pieces for you and how do you move around them or through them?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

I think my resistance early on was fear of being seen. Uh a very private person naturally. And so I think uh putting your art out into the world is inherently vulnerable because you're saying, you know, this is an expression of me, an extension of me, and it means this much to me that I want to share it, but it's still it can be scary to be seen. I think uh advice I love is doing something so many times to the point where it almost becomes boring because you've just done it over and over and over again. Um, I've experienced that with public speaking. I do a lot of talks, which of course involves a lot of creativity and crafting talk and just noticing how much easier it gets to get on stage, obviously, the more you do it. Uh, but resistance also in time. You know, others I see a lot of resistance around will this be a waste of time? People really don't want to waste their time. Uh, or it can mean so much to so many, their their creativity and what they want to create, that it's often the last thing that they'll tend to or devote time and energy to because it means so much to them. Um, and so again, this is where I've seen 50 hours be really beneficial, is we remove a lot of the excuses to now go do that you actually want to be doing, like writing the book or building the new business or pursuing the passion project, whatever it might be.

Mari 10:38

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

That that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, this concept too, I've seen of sneaky productivity, which is actually like a form of sneaky procrastination where you can look really productive, but you're actually just procrastinating, doing the thing that feels very important. Like uh, you know, as a business owner, maybe it's jumping on those sales calls and just selling your products, then maybe you're going to do the lower stake things of admin work or calendar management because it's not the thing you know will actually affect your bottom line and move the needle in your business. Um, and and say, you know, separate from business in a creative sphere, uh, my my house gets very clean when I'm putting off writing because writing is the thing I love to do most. But it it's a yeah, a little sneaky procrastination to look out for.

Mari 11:31

Yeah, I can so appreciate the sneaky procrastination. It comes in many shapes and forms. Oh, the laundry pile that I haven't looked at in weeks now needs my full attention. Yeah. Absolutely. When, you know, designing, you know, you talk about kind of a perfect day. Could you walk us through a little bit of that with how you talk to people about what that looks like or how you go about creating that?

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah, this is a process we go through with our clients and then also uh with the amazing assistants that we hire as well, because they get to take on as many or as few hours as they want with us and design their perfect days. So it works on both sides. But it really, when you think about perfect day, you want whatever your starting point is, whether you're a business owner or employee or freelancer, think about what are the three to five things that would make your day perfect to you. And often it's not as far away as many people think it is. So I would love to know yours. For me, it's spending time with people I love, spending time with my animals, uh, writing, reading, and then coaching my leadership team, um, you know, and some form of activity. Those five to six things, truly, if I get them done in a day, I've had an amazing day. And so, first identifying what those are, um, color coding is very helpful for seeing the different realms of your life represented. So if you're color coding your calendar, that can be a really cool visual representation of am I truly dedicating time to the social, the business, the health, the exercise, or is the business all dominating here? Um, themed days are really helpful, especially if you have multiple projects you're working on. Uh, so Mondays, which is the day we're recording this on, is uh very much a uh creative conversation day for me. So it's the day I'll take podcasts, do webinars. Um Fridays, I have a no message policy day. So I'm not doing any virtual communication, it's just all deep creative work. So themed days can be really helpful. Um, so that those are always the starting points, and then also looking at how your energy ebbs and flows throughout the day. So there's a lot of focus on time management. There's not as much focus on energy management. And so doing an energy audit and seeing when does your energy really peak in the day, when does it dip, and then slotting in tasks accordingly as best as you're able to for utilizing and optimizing your energy. Uh that yes, to all of that.

Mari 14:29

The the energy management piece, you know, I I look at often when I work with people in creativity, because there is for sure certain parts of the day where we have more energy, where daydreaming, you know, different aspects of creativity may feel a little more alive. So I can absolutely relate to to that energy management piece as well, and you know, really solidifying those parts of our day, but also seasonally too, because I think for many of us, creativity can ebb and flow with with the seasons as well.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Absolutely, and not ideally wasting energy beating yourself up for the slow seasons because you know the the plant doesn't produce flowers all year long. It is just a specific time that you need all the dormant periods too to produce that fruit. Exactly.

Mari 15:33

Yeah, to to align with that, I think can be really helpful. Um well having gone from one industry to another, what was that transition like for you? Being in academia to then going into this kind of founder CEO world, co-founder CEO world of um what was that like and how did you kind of maintain your own creative life through through that transition?

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yeah, this goes back to your question earlier of what does creativity mean? And I think a lot of the answer also has to do with problem solving. So that's all when I was working with my students. It's how do we get them to a specific grade in this class, or how do we improve this part of their writing, or how do we help them achieve their goals for further into their degree? And so just transferring problem solving, you know, there's I'm really into word swapping, and so you can call it stepping stones or goal setting, whatever's helpful for you. But I know there can be sometimes connotations around specific words. So find the words that help you most. And for me, it happens to be problem solving, where the more problems I solve, the more equip, more equipped I feel to move through life, believing that everything is figure outable. So that was the through line between two very different industries was now I have these new problems, um, you know, both in the business itself and my clients' problems that I was taking on. How do I help solve their problems? And the thing that kept me moving forward was always experiments and looking at it like an experiment. So, in the beginning, when we were in that beta phase, it was just me. I was managing the inboxes and calendars and internal operations of our first four or five clients and staying up till 3 a.m. every night and just, you know, what have I done? I went from my class courses to this. And I just kept giving myself, okay, give it three more months and see where you're at. If you hate it in three months, we'll pivot. And but at the end of each of those three months, at those check-in points, there I could always see progress and always see growth. And that kept me going. And next year will be 10 years.

Mari 18:15

That's amazing that 10 years has already elapsed, and the amount of individuals that you and your organization company are supporting is wonderful. What are some of the pieces, like what are some of the things that your clients are wanting to get back, aside from time? Like once they get that time back, it are you also there to support them to kind of enhance other parts of their life, or is this just once they have the time, you've taken that, you've given that back to them. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah. Most of our clients will start in the business realm. So we'll start with the obvious, like email. And we do start in the inbox because, as I'm sure you know, it's such a hub and such a uh a pot of resources and context. So you can just searching, find so much about their role, their business, their relationships, their customers, their tech stock, all filters back into the inbox usually. So we start there, and because it's the last area that people will often let go of, we've found uh it then it builds trust really quickly too. If they see that this can be taken over successfully and often better than they can, then they're more likely to trust us with more in their businesses and in their lives to answer that question. Um, and so once we've helped with the business, it very often organically moves out into their personal life as well, or we can start booking appointments for them. We can start scheduling dates for them, we can start scheduling vacations for them. And it's really the the sky's the limit for how it just depends how much you want to delegate, how much of your time you want to buy back and are able to afford to buy back. And yeah, it we do we with through this perfect day coaching, that's where we really start looking at too, okay, great. I have these wide open days now, what do I do with it? Because as you said, time alone isn't the goal, it's how we fill our time. Um, and so that's some of the questions we do in the onboarding process is if you got those 50 hours back each month as a starting point, what would you do with them in your in your ideal outcome?

Mari 20:41

Yeah, I I love that how it's expanding into the rest of life, not just the inbox or the business side of things too. I think that's so important. For you in your own life, what are the pieces that you really are looking forward to creatively or kind of the next things that you have on your horizon?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

I'm writing a book right now. I'm writing a novel and I'm writing a nonfiction book about designing your perfect day. And so that's been quite the undertaking in outlining and then also pitching it. You know, with nonfiction, you craft a book proposal to pitch it. And with the novel, you have to have the finished manuscript before you start pitching to agents. So that's been very fun, and it's exactly I use my own service. And that's why, you know, I'm very anti-pushy sales. You know, if it's useful for you, great. If not, great. But because it it's so easy, I want everyone to experience this level of freedom because once you trust an assistant enough to delegate parts of your life out, it does open up all of these hours for me to do the exact thing I want to do, which is right. So I'm right now, I'm writing constantly. Um, but I will say part of this process is not only delegation. You're also your assistants are gonna walk through with you. What should we actually just eliminate? Because you don't want to just delegate everything. Maybe there's stuff on here that doesn't even need to be here. You know, we want to achieve excellence with as few details as possible, but get every detail right. Um, so we look, you know, at delegation, we look at elimination, and then we look at automation. So that's where AI can come in, um, where your assistant can help you set that up, optimize for it if you choose to use it. There's definitely a mix of clients who want to adopt it, clients who don't want to touch it. Sure. Um, and you can take that part off your plate as well.

Mari 22:48

Do you have examples of like eliminate, like, what are those things people are eliminating that others may not be thinking of?

SPEAKER_00 22:59

The inbox specifically being this never-ending, unsolicited, here's more things to put on your plate. And it's not every message needs a response. And that sounds quite, you know, obvious, but isn't for many clients. And that does this necessarily warrant a response just because it found its way into my inbox, you know, which is your personal property, um, or can this be an archive? Uh, and then, you know, just because everyone asks for a call and ask for time on your calendar, again, with your time being your most precious currency, does everyone are is everyone able to make it into your calendar? And so the your assistants will work with you on making those decisions. Um, and you can still, you know, send polite no's and all of those gentle rejections, of course. Um, but looking at things like that of and and cleaning up your tech stack, you know, do we actually need every software platform here? Can we eliminate a few and tighten things up and streamline your workflows more? Uh, little eliminations like that can make a big difference.

Mari 24:12

Absolutely. I thank you for kind of that example. I think that can be helpful. Um, in kind of your writing uh fiction and nonfiction, and the other creative pieces you have in your life that you said playing with your animals, spending time connecting with people. I'm curious for you, who or what is sparking inspiration in your life these days.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Oh, at the risk of this sounding, how it may sound, it has been myself because I love that. Because there's that external accountability built in, um, which as an aside is why bringing on assistance can be so helpful because you have that immediate built-in external accountability. Um, and it's not just you alone anymore, but that and every time I make a promise to myself and follow through on it, it creates this portfolio of proof that I am someone that I can rely on and I am someone who follows through on things. And I don't think anything builds confidence more effectively than that, because you're just creating example after example of you can figure things out, you can do hard things, and you can keep your promises to yourself. Um, separate from that, um, my parents are amazing because they're they're they debunk the idea that you get set in your ways as you get older. They're just continually growing and expanding and very much inspire me.

Mari 26:03

I love that. And I really appreciate the keeping promises to yourself or that you inspire yourself because I think we often breeze past ourselves and have a more external. I have to find it outside of me, but I I truly believe that inspiration gets to come from within us just as much as outside of us. So I fully support the keeping promises to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

I'm curious too what your perfect day would be, what would it include?

Mari 26:39

Oh, for me, my perfect day. Definitely moving my body in some way, getting outside, deep connection with other humans and creativity in any form, whether it's getting dressed, cooking, or having conversations about creativity with other people. Um those are the pieces that really fuel me. And I feel very satisfied when all of that gets to a line.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Love that.

Mari 27:18

Yeah. And I feel very privileged that everything I just listed are things that I get to do every day and incorporate in some way in my life, and that that's really special. And yeah, I feel like I I I get to live my perfect day quite often. So amazing. Yeah. Well, for people who might be struggling to identify their perfect day or figure out or maybe have a lot of financial or time constraints or other things going on in their life. How would you encourage them to take one step towards creating this perfect day idea?

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Yeah, the first best step is to time track for even if it's just a week. We do this with calories, we do this with our budgets, we much less often do it with our time. So there's an app I have called hours tracker. I'm not affiliated anyway, but it's free and simple. And you can just clock in, clock out of tasks throughout the day and just label what you're doing because it's very easy, just like money, to think that your money is going to certain places. But then when you really open it up and look at your statements, it reveals what's true. And so, in the same way, clocking your time, it's a bit tedious, but you only have to do it for a week to truly get a representation, a very clear representation of where your time's actually going. And we can get more money, we can't get back more time. And so I would argue it's the more valuable currency. Um, and then when you're ready, pull in help because you you want to get yourself as far as you can on your own. And then your the benefits compound once you bring in help, like bringing on assistance. And I know there can be a tipping point with creatives and entrepreneurs of getting to the point where they're able to afford to buy back their time. Um, but going back to a question you said earlier, you're not only getting back your time. Very often the assistants you'll work with at 50 hours find ways to make the plan either pay for itself or make you more money in the in the long run because they're spotting opportunities and capitalizing or uh optimizing those opportunities and following up with opportunities and contacts that you might have missed or not have timed for, had time for on your own. So uh easy first step and then bigger long-term step to work toward as well.

Mari 30:04

Love that and and love the opportunity to, you know, get that extra support and time and sounds like opportunities for financial support as well. So love all of those pieces. Claire, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I have learned quite a bit about everything that you do and how I can look at time in a different way in my own life. I have one last question. What does it feel like in your body to be creative?

SPEAKER_00 30:44

I feel very awake and I get a bit of time blindness. We all know the idea of flow. And so just entering that state where I know we've talked about time a lot in this episode, but where time actually ceases to exist. And I think it's you know, as I get older, time is moving much more quickly just because I've lived more of it. And so, you know, one year in the span of my life is a lot shorter than when you're a child. And so I think creativity is a really beautiful way to elongate time as well, because you're entering that flow state. And it instead of, you know, days and routines just zipping by where you know you almost forget, like, what did I even do this week? And when you're entering creativity, you it's that that quote writers love to have written or you know, apply it anywhere. Painters love to have painted, or or musicians love to have created music, you get to look back and see the fruits of where your time went and this uh uh just beautiful trail behind you of what you've created along the way.

Mari 31:56

Absolutely. Well, thank you again for taking the time to join us today and share all of these tips and pieces about yourself and the work that you do. If people want to learn more about your company and the pieces you have out in the world, how could they go about doing that?

SPEAKER_00 32:17

They can go to 50hours.com. It's 50HRS.com. Uh, you can book a free call there and see if uh hiring an assistant with us is a good fit. We do do two assistants per account of very intentionally, because that way there's never a lapse in your service. So if they ever one never needs to take a vacation or they have an emergency, or for some reason they get pulled away and to a different opportunity, your service never stops. And it's this beautiful way of getting a team working for you overnight for the same price. Um, or if you want to do more of the DIY option, you can go to 50hours.com50hrs.com slash playbook and download the very extensive playbook on how to hire and delegate to an assistant on your own. Beautiful.

Mari 33:06

Well, I will put links in show notes so people have very easy access. And thank you so much for taking the time to join me. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Thank you.

Mari 33:28

Thanks for listening to the Sustaining Creativity Podcast. We'd love to keep in touch, so follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We are at Sustaining Creativity. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Check your friends and family so they can listen to you. We love to hear from you. So leave your reviews, comments, and questions. Check out our website, sustainingcreativity.com, for upcoming offerings and creativity coaching. Tune in Tuesdays for our next episode. And remember, with creativity anything, you can't do it.