His wife noticed before he did.
His inbox was catching invoices meant for payroll. Now someone else runs his calendar, and his wife noticed the difference before he did.
Nic Parish is CEO of Burns Dirt and co-founder of three operating businesses he runs alongside his brother, including an 18-acre mixed-use development currently under construction. Five to six EOS leadership teams across the organization. A schedule that keeps him traveling most weeks - speaking at conferences, attending YPO events, managing partnerships across the country.
By his own description, he tries to “cram a million things into the box every single day.” The problem was never ambition. It was that no one was there to manage the box.
What was landing on his desk that shouldn't have been.
When Catalina joined in September 2025, Nic's inbox was doing a lot of heavy lifting it shouldn't have been. Invoices meant for the payroll department were landing there. Candidate submissions from the hiring team were routing to him. Work that had nothing to do with being CEO piled up - and he didn't have time to deal with any of it. It took Catalina nearly a full month just to clean, sort and reroute everything down to what he actually needed to see.
The calendar was the same story. People were booking Nic without coordination, and he was the worst offender - he'd schedule over his own deep work blocks rather than protect them. “He would just schedule over it and pretend it never existed,” Catalina said. He knew it wasn't working. He just hadn't had anyone to fix it with.
What FreedUp offered was more than a hire - it was a framework. The delegation meeting, structured onboarding, and ongoing check-ins with Aaron gave Nic and Catalina a system to build on together from day one.
Catalina got to work immediately - not on big-picture strategy, but on the fundamentals. Inbox cleanup. Calendar triage. Daily syncs. The early weeks were about building the foundation and earning the trust that would later let her take on so much more.
Nic introduced her to his wife early on, recognizing that if Catalina was going to own logistics, she'd need a direct line for decisions he didn't have time to make. The connection stuck - they now collaborate on every family trip and YPO event together.
The shift didn't happen overnight - it compounded. Catalina described it well: “At first I felt like I was puppeteering him. But he literally told me, ‘That's what I need - I cannot handle that anymore.’”
By the start of 2026, Nic handed her the calendar almost completely. If someone wants time with Nic, they go through Catalina. She guards his deep work hours, keeping his day clear by 4pm whenever possible.
- The inbox is clean.Invoices, candidate submissions and operational noise no longer reach Nic. The right things get to the right people, and he sees only what he needs.
- His calendar is protected.He takes longer weekends with his family. He leaves earlier. His daily mood check-ins - something he and Catalina do together - are consistently 4s and 5s in a way they weren't when she started.
- Travel is fully delegated.The December family trip to Europe. His wife's birthday - three countries in five days. An eleven-day run through Madrid, San Sebastián, Bordeaux, Paris, London and Las Vegas.
- The work he hated is gone.Business licensing across Georgia, Tennessee and Arkansas - the kind of administrative task Nic would drag his feet on for weeks - is now Catalina's. “He said: I prefer creative work, thinking, having ideas,” she noted. “That's definitely something he would have loathed.”
- She's become his executor.SharePoint restructuring. Talent Culture team support - scheduling leadership sessions, coordinating interviews for open roles, ordering materials for company-wide EOS events. “He thinks, sets up the plan, talks with his people - and then he tells me: execute. He's the dreamer. I carry out his plans.”
Eleven days, six cities, one keynote - and he arrived rested.
Catalina orchestrated the whole eleven-day run: Madrid, San Sebastián, Bordeaux, Paris, London and Las Vegas. She coordinated the leadership team's hotel block in Vegas and made sure Nic arrived with enough time to be fully present on stage, fresh off jet lag.
In Prague she found a medieval restaurant his wife and daughter still talk about.
“My wife told me about a week ago that she had noticed that I had been more present at home and had been spending more time with her and my daughter. That's probably the biggest win over the last 90 days. Certainly would have never heard that out of her mouth a year ago.”
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