A lot of folks in the WordPress economy, whether employed with a side hustle or self-employed, manage multiple things. Also, many of us work with partners, or are interested in partnerships.
Cory has long worked with partners, and we're now running Post Status as partners. Also, we are both working on several projects.
In this episode of Draft, we talk about how to balance multiple things, how we try and structure our weeks, and some things to consider when working with partners.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Brian Krogsgard 0:05
This episode of Post Status Draft is brought to you by Pagely's best in class WordPress managed hosting. They help big brands scale. And it's really the place you want to be. If your website is a mission-critical site, they have an extremely flexible tech stack to help you accomplish your goals with your website. And they have the three things that they really like to focus on: Number one, flexibility. Number two, scalability. And number three, reliability. What I think occasionally in the years that I've hosted my main website PostStatus.com on Pagely, that's what I keep in mind myself — I know I can do the things I want to do. It's not overly opinionated. It's highly scalable, and it's reliable. I never worry about my WordPress going down because it's on Pagely. Go to pagely.com to check it out. Thanks so much to Pagely for being a Post Status partner, and welcome to Post Status Draft. My name is Brian Krogsgard. I'm here with my partner for Post Status, Cory Miller. Hey, Cory.
Cory Miller 1:07
Hey, Brian.
Brian Krogsgard 1:09
Alright, official podcast.
It's our second podcast. Every, every trend starts with two, right? Yep. So we have a couple of topics that are highly relevant to us that we want to discuss today. And number one is juggling multiple things. We're both doing so so we're going to talk about the process of it and some of the things we've tried to instill in our own habits and otherwise. And then the second thing is the process of working with a partner because when juggling several things, often the choice would be to have a partner in crime as you do. So obviously, this is highly relative to our, our own situations, with post status and then each of us are, you know, Post Status as our common plate but we each have other plates that were spinning So that's what we want to discuss and iron out today. You know, I'm thinking of who's our listener who's, who's listening to this and thinking, I'm interested. And you know, one type of person sticks out to me in particular, which is a, like a plugin or product developer, someone that's got a WordPress product and maybe it's not their full-time gig yet or maybe they're balancing the product side with doing some freelance work. Why don't we jump back to the first time you had to start balancing something and go from there so like, what have you learned since you you know since you started doing full-time WordPress back in 2008 or so? Was I themes paying the bills right out of the gate, or how did that work?
Cory Miller 2:49
Yeah, I think it was paying the bills right out the gate, but I've kind of notorious mine. People that have worked with me to be a plate spinner anyway, I kind of relish In the place multiple things keep me engaged. And so, but I woke up you know, couple weeks ago post that this is one of five projects I've got going right now and back into being a plate spinner again but and iThemes Yeah, I spend a lot of plates in the first year, of course, we had full time, you know, I had money to be able to kind of get started and then we try to get revenue in the first month as best we could and be self-sustainable. But uh, for that year, I tried to only spend one plate and that was just I themes, but on the project plate for products, it was just trying to iterate on themes and stuff, but the year, a year or two prior, I was doing the same thing we're doing now which is balancing a full-time gig with stuff on the side, in my freelance business just happened to be, you know, it worked out but I was also I don't know, 13-14 years younger and I can power through until midnight or one now it's like I'm going to bed at night.
Brian Krogsgard 4:07
Yeah, definitely makes a difference I've said on this podcast and elsewhere many times that my I used to call it my tended to time. So 10 pm to 2 am was my window where typically my wife was in bed before I had kids. And I was a night owl, so I would get stuff done. And that was how I maintained my side hustles while I had full-time jobs, and I can't do that anymore, like just physically, my I can't do that now. And, you know, if I have to get some stuff done late at night, I might be able to put in an hour or so. But I run out of steam like if I'm going to do something else. It has to be something replenishing or balancing my work efforts, like reading a book or something that's not by, you know, fingers to keyboard type of activity.
Cory Miller 4:59
I know a lot I know most probably of our community can relate to all this as burning the midnight oil, so to speak. And then now as I've gotten older it's like, it's just not going to work. And you and I both have young kids. So when I get home, it's hard to like, I can't pull up my computer one, I've got a kid sitting in my lap. And, you know, wanting to know what I'm dead. I'm like, I'm trying to get something done.
Brian Krogsgard 5:25
If I'm, if my two-year-old is here, he will literally just make every effort to just slam the spacebar. He's like, that's the biggest thing that's on that board that you, you know, put your fingers on and he's just like, I gotta get on that, you know. I can't, I can't really work with them awake. What that means for us is that we're juggling things and we're not like inventing new hours in the day where we're figuring out how do we juggle within our standard, our standard day. So how do you physically process this and terms of playing And execution?
Cory Miller 6:03
Gosh, you know, I put the five projects like in December, I thought I have four, this is all one and then something happened and I was like, okay, there's a fifth can't turn down. And I realized real quickly like, okay, I don't want to get into old bad ruts. I knew I had to get organized new posters is a priority for me, for us, for our family, too. And I've got a lot of other projects kind of spinning, but I had to get really organized and go, okay, you know, I'm going to need help at some point. So I actually hired a virtual assistant. A couple of weeks ago, I don't even know if I told you that run. But yeah, you mentioned to me Yeah. How to virtual assistant because I had a longtime executive assistant at it. Named Patty color, Painkiller, excuse kill. And I was like, I've got to find figure that out. So I hired a virtual assistant and starting to delegate trying to delegate things to her to help me chase down some things but there's so much like, she can't go to the bank and sign, you know, a bank account for me. So I'm trying to be strategic about it. And then now you know you and I both said we're in a different stage now. So we got young kids, work, work-life balance, if that's even a thing work-life alignment is a thing for me. But I don't know if I want to be working. After six o'clock, I need to devote that time to my kiddos, and I know you do too. So I've got to really prioritize I think Jason freed said it best is in one of his books or podcasts or something a long time ago that constraints particularly time constraints are such a good thing. I'm like, Yes, absolutely. You know, when I saw those names and people, you know, have their opinions about where they think my financial future is. But honestly, when everything is an option, everything sucks. And I think constraints. I can't believe I'm saying this, but constraints are good. In certain situations, everything is an option. And I've kind of taken the mindset from Jason freed that, you know, having kids is good because it gives me some boundaries, or at least that need to be setting boundaries to not repeat bad habits that I did over 10 years. And I think,
Brian Krogsgard 8:19
yeah, so you're saying constraints in terms of what you choose to work on. And that's interesting. For me, I kind of know what I'm working on now. Like, I made those decisions. And, you know, I'm contracting a significant chunk of my week with sky verge, working the majority of the rest of that with post status, and then I have this one thing, and this is where I really had to make my biggest decision, which is on the like, crypto side of things where I had huge community following and stuff. I had to say, I'm going to establish scope on what's achievable within that project, and really limit myself self to, to what I know I can do well and efficiently. So for that, it really meant narrowing it all the way down to just like a podcast. So I do a podcast in that space. And now I know like, I'm not going to spend more than, you know, x hours in the week on that because I've established scope for that project. And then it's deciding, okay, well, where, where's the differentiator between, you know, being productive with my time and relying on teammates, like in our scenario, that was one of the big things selling half a post at us. It's not just Oh, great. There's a little bit of money now that I get to bring in which I'm obviously thankful for. But it's also to say, Okay, if I treat this as part-time and you treat this as part-time, we have two part-time contractors, will you put all four of us together we're combining multiple people's skills, and the end result is better than me as a full time or upon myself could have ever done in the first place. So I feel like That's a really effective use of part-time efforts and allows me to juggle multiple things and in my opinion, put out a better product on the thing that I was trying to do alone. So that was a big part of it for me is defining the scope and identifying how can I make something better while spending less time on it?
Cory Miller 10:22
Yeah, I think what has been for me is prioritization of like, I can't, I can't goof off. I've been here in my little office from, you know, 830 to five roughly and it's straight through and it's good. It's engaging senior wanted to level off at some point. But there is a focusing power, like I've got to be very good about prioritizing what my time is, particularly with juggling some projects like you do. I'm thankful that our partnership we're in the same time zone and roughly on the same hours, work hours. So that's really good. My partner, Rebecca Gill, another project. She's in Eastern Time Zone. I always have to kind of convert a little bit on that. So,
Brian Krogsgard 11:04
and then really hard for our friends who have partners or whatnot that are six hours or 10 hours apart, that the offset that you create in your communication cycle forces your projects to go slower.
Cory Miller 11:16
We were very deliberate about when we took on our Portugal team and iThemes and because they were six hours ahead of us, and knowing there's going to be a lag and man that just slows things down when you're trying to ship product. So it's, it's, you know, I'm definitely thankful we're in the same time zone and even Rebecca and I are just an hour apart, but still, it's like she's already started her day, you know, I might get an email at 630 in the morning, and I'm just kind of getting around and it's like, oh, man, her days getting going now.
Brian Krogsgard 11:47
Yeah, she's full force. I'm ready.
Cory Miller 11:48
Yeah. So but again, I think it is the constraint is the prioritization. Like today I just thought, Okay, well, you know, one thing I've done is have specific For the first time, probably in my career in about 12 years, I am blocking time out of my, my calendar for recurring meetings to that never done before, but I have to do it and I have to get better at time prioritization to and so even getting the newsletter out today, for instance, I was like, Okay, I got to think about this better because I need to block it out a time, reverse engineer, whatever, we're going to get the newsletter out, and then block out time when you guys aren't waiting on me for something. So we make sure you get out a good product.
Brian Krogsgard 12:31
Yeah. Discipline it. Yeah, it certainly is. And the first person that I saw doing this really effectively They showed me their calendar, they talked to me about how they balance was actually cited baki and, you know, a lot of our listeners will know through awesome motive. He's got his hands in five different products at any given time, and incredible amounts of other businesses as well like he does it to an extremely He's a robot. He's a yes. But he is a time blocking master like I, he showed me his calendar and it's colour-coordinated, it's day by day. And it's broken into, you know, a two hour or four-hour block, 30-minute block. And he's got every day of every week assigned to a thing. And it's like, here's a half-day that goes towards working with Jared on WP forums or a half-day working towards OptinMonster. You know, it may change depending on week by week but he knows before he starts this week, essentially where he's spending the every like work hour of that week, he's designed his workouts and he's designed his, you know, it's like, if there's family time or travel during the normal workweek like it's built-in there too. And I was inspired by that I could not mimic it like I tried it for a little bit and it was too structured for my discipline like his discipline level is just beyond mine. Yeah. But it did give me a framework for saying, Okay, well I have my focus, like Mondays we have a lot of meetings with sky verge. And that's like, basically a sky verge only day aside, aside from, if something that really needs urgency from post status comes along. And then it just allows me to structure my days and say, This is my big thing today. It's my big thing this other day, this is where I want the majority of my time in my hour spent and I've actually started tracking my hours. And I've been evolving that I've always hated time tracking any job where they like, you know, focused on that. I was always like, Look, I don't want to this, you know, like, negotiated my way out of it. And now, I'm embracing it, but it's more for my personal accountability than anything else because I want to know, like, Okay, well, it was I actually spending these hours of these days. On the things that I planned, of course, it helps me like for, you know, for a contract job that helps if you're paid hourly. But even for something like what we're doing, I had a partnership line item on my time tracker. And I was tracking generally, like, if we got sidetracked, you know, or like, we had a meeting, I would track it. And then if we had, you know, something, especially where it was in a zone that was supposed to be geared towards something else, I wanted to know, like, how far off of my routine Am I getting? And it's this intro week, accountability process. So you kind of have an idea of like, oh, man, I've spent more hours over here and I need to be over there. And it's been really good accountability for me to better audit my time so that I can then more effectively move forward and be knowledgeable about the way I'm approaching it. And I'm not succeeding, like if I say, Okay, well, I want to spend 25 hours over here. 15 over here and two over there like it doesn't always work that way. But it allows me to have a target and audit my effectiveness against that target and you really learn a lot when you start doing that.
Cory Miller 16:15
Yeah, I go back to the side comment and I'm joking when I say robot kit but his worth it work ethic i is unparalleled and never seen anything like it maybe my dad who's now should be retired for the second time and working 60 hours a week-long gas industry but said is a maniac. But he's also I think it the thought about that was like it's how we're all kind of wired, like, I've had so many people over the years they know I juggle things, spin plates and go Why would you do that? Like tell them wired I mean, and I used to go Why do you only have one project that sounds boring. And so we had this telephone realize to each his own like wired in different ways and have a lot to do that, having said that, you said the word discipline, it's some it's a word I've been trying to kind of reintroduce into my life. Consistency is another big word. So I've gotten more organized and, and want to line things up where I'm not dropping balls for sure. And I'm mixing metaphors here. But, you know, I play doesn't drop. But they're all important to me. They're engaging and I think that makes me me, you know, if we were all carbon copy of each other, it'd be a bland world and, and all that. So I think to each his own for sure. But I think you're talking about something we're talking about something that a lot of people go through, they want to strike out on the entrepreneurial adventure, and but they're balancing a day job and then I can potentially family. I have a couple of business friends here in Oklahoma City that their entrepreneur story started with. I started my business when my child was six months old. Like, I can't imagine that you know, I kind of say, I think it was in kindergarten when we had our first kids had our kids so like, it was to the point where that one that little baby had kind of graduated and was under adult supervision. And then I could kind of turn my time. Now on this season to toe, it's just very drastically different. And so, man, I just admire the stories of people that juggle so much, particularly with family while starting this crazy job. This crazy gig we have come entrepreneurship. I, you know, if entrepreneurship was easy, by the way, everybody would do it. Because think about the freedom, the lifestyle you're having to live as an entrepreneur, but it comes with a heavy cost. Just talking to a dear friend of mine that I've known for a long time entrepreneur and comparing stories and him saying he's had a rough couple of years and going in my part was to say to encourage to go I'm going to be in your seat at some point. Mukherjee that like this thing, this thing we do called entrepreneurship is just not meant for everybody. And it's just a tough thing, but it's really thrilling for me to come would say, join you in something that's already started, by the way. So that makes this project. They're all exciting to me. But this is different in that I can help take something really, really good and make it even better. Where starting new projects. Oh, that's that's a ton of work, man.
There's a different kind of grind. And they're like, what did two years of post as before the club, you know? Yeah, well, that grind of getting the thing off the ground like business takes time.
Brian Krogsgard 19:45
One of the things that I think plays into this idea of structure and being able to juggle different things, a lot of it does come down to personality. And for me, you know, I've always achieved a lot So it's not it's there's a difference to me between what I'm about to describe and like if it's laziness or something for me, it's not laziness. I have no threat of saying, Oh, I work from home or I don't have a, you know, nine to five job. So I'm going to sit on the couch at my house. That's never my personality. But I do procrastinate in my own way, and wait, but why.com is a great website that it's called, has a long series from 2013 called how procrastinators procrastinate, and it's like the brain of a procrastinator. And what he really breaks it down to is this intimidation of long tasks that makes a procrastinator put that off, and how you can kind of beat that and how to beat procrastination or the way he describes it is he says effective planning turns a daunting item, say like writing a book or launching a website or something big and turning it into a series of small clear, manageable tasks. When you do that, you're making something that sounds big he calls he says a remarkable glorious achievement is just what a long series of unremarkable and glorious tasks looks like from far away. So if you break things down, if you have this type of mentality where you can see the short, short term finish line, and turn it into a to-do list or you know a task, then that's no big deal. It's like, okay, boom, knock out that test, boom, knocked down that task. And then all of a sudden, you've done lots of things that add up to be this really big, more glorious thing of accomplishing your goal. And I've found that I have got to structure my day to day that way. And I've really embraced note-taking but it's kind of a hybrid between notetaking and to-do list stuff, where I take notes of like, okay, what's my, what's my main jam, like what I have to capture today? Sometimes it's an idea and some times it's deliverable, and then turning it into these to-do lists that I accomplish inside that week. And then you add that in weekend and week out and hitting those to-do items. That's when the real changes and effects start to take place for me.
Cory Miller 22:14
Yeah, well, no, I completed my master's degree. When I was in my late 20s. I went back to school, and the staff there at that college in the adult program said, How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And, you know, I've used that a lot with teams, helping coach teams that I've led, and others is this big task that you have breaking it up into small parts. And then I think there's something to be said of, I think it's James clear. The author, prolific blogger that talks about, you know, consistency, like if you're going to write a best selling book, it's, you know, break it down if it's 50,000 words is 500 words a day. For X amount of months kind of thing. Now, I don't know what to believe I have that discipline in me to show up every day and just write 500 words a day. And but I believe that if you do that you will show up, you know, an X amount of months with something. And this is the harder pill for me to swallow sometimes, just again, how I'm wired. I'm not trying to make excuses, but just saying it's, it's not an easy task. Some people make it look easy, but the reality is, you're probably wired in a different way.
Brian Krogsgard 23:30
One of the things I learned from Pagely was that the price of hosting or the expensive hosting is really a relative thing. What Pagely might be able to do for $1,000 might end up costing three to 5000. At hosts that don't do these large setups all the time. I called our chatted rather with the CEO of Pagely, Joshua Strebel, several years ago and said, Hey, we're comparing options between Pagely and some of the other options in the market for really high scale websites. And what I realized was that on an apples-to-apples comparison, I was getting more with Pagely for less money. Now granted, we're talking about hosting for $1,000 a month, but so it's expensive for a website. But when a website was being quoted from other providers for $3,000 Plus, I was really getting excellent service from Pagely, for the price. If you have websites where you really rely on your website provider, being reliable, have excellent human support. I can't remember the last time it took longer than I don't know an hour for like a real answer to a support question, not an auto-answer, but someone that was, you know, taking a technical look at my issue. And getting back to me for about some question. I have almost always a question of my own fault. Not to do with my actual hosting plan, but where I just needed help. Pagely has plans for everybody. Whether it's that thousand dollar type of VPS or $200 for five sites, that's what their small VPS instance sets up for you. It's all built on AWS, they've really fine-tuned it really, really well over the years. It's an excellent service go to Pagely.com to try Pagely today, let a little post that essentially. And they've been a longtime partner, good friends of the show, and Post Status, and I can't recommend them enough. I trust my own websites to Pagely, go to Pagely.com. Thanks to Pagely for being a Post Status partner.
One of the things you had me do when we were just trying to figure out would we make good partners was an assessment through Colby, calm kayo LP calm, and that was stuck with me. You had me do a couple of them which I thought was fun across the board. And just the fact that you wanted me to do that told me a lot about the type of partner you could be you know, like the way your mind works first. is mine. The Colby one I thought was interesting because it gave me an understanding of how I work. You have an understanding of how you work based on your assessment profile. And then it tells you Okay, well because you have this and you have this, you YouTube may have conflict in this way. Or you may have a really nice jelling in this way, and why you talk about how that kind of fits into this. So if I'm talking about my, I need these, you know, big pictures fine. But then if you just say, take the big picture, go write a book, I'm in trouble. But if you say take the big picture and go write some like thousand-word articles on like, okay, I can accomplish this. So, take this assessment, how you blend that and turn it into an effective partnership.
Cory Miller 26:46
So my belief is whether it's a team or a partner is to leverage your their unique strengths and experiences that I probably don't have or if we overlap, there's unique this in there and so it's Specifically with our partnership, and we did these discovery tools, and I think was two years strengthsfinder from Gallup was the one, we can put these in the show notes. It gives you your top five strengths. And then so let me unpack that. So Strengths Finder is one that I had to do because I kind of wanted to see verify probably what I already thought about what your unique strengths were and what you believe that they are. And real quickly with that, I can go there's overlap, but there are differences. And that's why I like one of yours, I think is analytical. And that shines brightly, everything post at us. Like I told you years ago, what I always found value was your insight and analysis of everything that was breaking. Like I wanted. I might not agree with you every single time but I was like, No, I want a different perspective. And that's something I knew ahead of time, but it helped me just kind of really identify that. So the street corner does that with teams with partnerships, whatever. And by the way, that joke was I thought you're gonna say this But when my wife and I first met I had to do these two and she was like what the heck you're you have to take a test today you to see if I'm, you know, married. Now she's a big fan. But Colby is really interesting because it's how you instinctively take action. And we started with Strengths Finder and then we evolved into Colby because I wanted to see how you instinctively took action. So this four modes factfinder, which is, you know, a high fat fighter which you happen to be is very I mean, it lends to everything you've done, which is analytical research, I mean, dive deep into an area of a middle road factor under which is I want the essential truth. And the three other areas are quickstart. Most entrepreneurs, many entrepreneurs, I should say are quickstarts Hi, quickstarts. I'm a high quickstart The other one is the blue one, which is follow through and it's not like you can't ever fall through but it's step by step. mode of action. If you have a problem, I'm going to figure out step one, step two, step three, step four, the yellow is implementation. People behind that are the ones like mad Danner who are amazing with their hands and like woodworking and different things or whatever, like very high implementers, are. And then we also want to focus found from you is that we had, we had compatible things where I knew we could work really well together, but I knew there was also willing sounds like you're a medium quickstart which you and I could ideate all day and not get anything done. So that was the thing we talked about, you already recognized it. factfinder is great because we're kind of in that mode, where we're not in what Colby calls conflict, but we're low in the blue, which is step-by-step plan. We're kind of find the shortcuts, bandaid it together, put it together and do that. So we talked about that actively. You already recognize that but I helped us talk through, okay, our similarities can also be our weaknesses. We need someone to kind of help us. And I know David and Dan really help us with some of those things that we might go, man, let us we'll do it at the last minute.
Brian Krogsgard 30:10
And just being cognizant of that, as we go about our day to day in partnership, you know, it allows me to say, Okay, I need to think I need to be sure and know, like, here's our plan, we came up with our plan, we've got these ideas and the follow-through component or the, you know, the take it to execution side of things. It's like, I have to make sure that we both understand what to do, where to go and bring people along to help us accomplish that. And so far, I think that's been effective. And sometimes that's tooling you know like it's one thing if we have our all our conversations and slack and we have these pages of notes, in our note keeping apps and we, you know, collect our thoughts, but then it's another to say, Okay, well, let's put it on a schedule and let's set a date for When we're going to launch this thing, and let's have our plan of action for, you know, who's responsible for what, and put deadlines on that across the way. And to me that tooling side of things, which could be as simple as base camp or whatever, is my way of introducing accountability to an area where we both identified kind of on the same side of the spectrum, which is, in that in that particular instance, it's kind of the kind where it's like, ours has its own benefits, like the way we sit. But you really need that person that's like, the big long spreadsheet, project manager, very type a type of person to help rein us in, when we could end up down a whole bunch of different rabbit holes. You know, Id aiding the next two years of what post status is going to be and it's like, well, someone's got to do what we're going to do in the next two weeks or the next two months and yeah, so that gives us that accountability there.
Cory Miller 31:57
Well, we're supposed to record this podcast six hours. ago, I think. And we had, you know, part of that was we had thought we still were so new in our partnership and trying to get some things done at post that is that we need to have the time. But we had deliberately two weeks ago, set this date to record and then now we're six hours later recording it. But I know we'll get to those types of things. But it's that, you know, we could wear that. I think you and I are kind of wired to be the squirrel. You know, movie idea. Okay, let's face it. We've talked about that. And we both have, I think helped each other rein it in on that, like, hold on. This is first that second, this third, right? Yep, yep. Yep. Let's go back to that because it's really fun to dream. It's really fun to ideate and think about cool stuff, especially as quickstarts and the Colby kind of mantra. So, but there needs to be somebody that also says, Okay, let's stop dreaming now. Let's go do
Brian Krogsgard 32:58
Yeah, and I think been proud of how we've so far been able to do that. And we realize it's important. And I think maybe one of the things that has allowed us to do it is, when we first started the partnership, we, and you really helped me outline this. And it's like, what are our goals? For the business for the partnership, where we want to be a year, two years and three years? And therefore we say, Okay, if this thing is effective in January next January, what have we accomplished? And we said, okay, we want you know, certain things, it's a number of subscribers or it's a number of page views or a number of members or a degree of like member satisfaction, like things that you want to strike and then it's how do you plan to accomplish that and keep that as your goal, how many dollars you need to make a day if your dollar goal for the year is this? And that was really helpful for me to put all that in context.
Cory Miller 34:00
So one other thing I did, I think I told you this either as I've had a coach for a year and a half now a personal coach. Fantastic. name is Kelly. We came into this and she was like, Okay, got five projects, what do you need for me? And I was like, here's what I think I need me to go weekly. And what I don't want to do, my virtual assistant helps me take certain tasks that I need to just create my time, you know, to do other things. My coach is okay, here's the deal. I'm highly invested in my time, my money, my energy and all these projects, and they've got to make progress. I've got to move the needle. That is the most impactful things. So what we do now is each week we do a 30-minute laser call. And I talked to the big issues, I think through the projects, and I go, can we post those this week? We need this. And what and she helps me get clarity on that before by the way. I have my partner calls like with you. We knew our calls on Friday to do my call with Rebecca on Wednesday. My partner Jeff on Monday. So I'm like, man, there's too much stuff going on, I've got to have that kind of clarity. And she's helped me rehearse and get ready for because like, for instance, I try hard not to ping you. Because I know there's a bucket of time, there's a bucket of energy that probably is owned mostly by Erica and your two kiddos. And I want to be really careful what I withdraw from that. So. So she's helped me go in, I looked over the last 30 days. So every week is a 30-minute call to kind of get ready and make sure I'm on task for all the projects. The last meeting, which I just had this week, is a one hour kind of look back over the last 30 days, and then they look forward to next Thursday. So make sure I'm keeping progress with all the critical projects going on. And that's just another level of optimizing for. There's a lot on the line for me. There's a lot of love for you and my other partners and so I want to make sure we're focused and making the most progress, we can For all of these so that we can say, high five and go, this is this, these were the best times. What resonated with me for you, Brian is you said for years, you know, Kevin did it by yourself, I Exodus ran into your burnout that post like it was the first sentence burned out. And I was like me and I can resonate with that. And one of the compelling things that he said to me as I said, I don't want to do this alone. Again, I could, I could sell this, I could do this and just leave. But I just really don't want to do it alone. And that I told you then resonates with a lot of social entrepreneurs. It's tough doing it by yourself. I had aside amazing psychic command, enter and I think to help me not do it alone. And then a group of us were friends, WordPress, none of WordPress helped me over the years. But man, that's something that you can mention too, is how a partner or a team or somebody that can come alongside you is so powerful.
Brian Krogsgard 36:55
Yeah, there's two things there applies to both of these. I guess. A lot of people, you know, they dream when they're in a normal nine to five job. They're like, Okay, well, I have so much more upside potential or so much more opportunity for freedom and all these things if I go out on my, on my own, and work on this thing and turn my hobby into my business or turn my side gig into a full-time gig, and I think it takes several years potentially, of doing that before you oftentimes for and maybe it's for certain personality types that then they say, Okay, this has some real benefits, but there are some real drawdowns to that I need to consider and for me, okay, I love the freedom. I love the upside potential. But at the same time, I liked working with people and I liked bouncing things off teammates, and that was an important thing for me to figure out how can I recapture and I think a lot of people that might be listening to this talking about juggling multiple things, working with a partner, maybe they've all kind of landed on that. So now, there's this kind of fundamental balance there, where when you're juggling multiple things, none of them is necessarily such a security blanket or a safety that is the same as a full-time job. So this balance is how do you spend time in the places where you can make money, yet none of them are probably sufficient relative to what you could make it a full-time job. Like, say, if you were making $100,000 and a full-time job while your main side hustle, it, maybe it's making $50,000 and your other side hustles making, you know, another $50,000? Well, you're making $100,000 total, but it requires this balance between the two of them. In our situation, you have partners so like my needs from the business, do they align well with your needs from the business from a revenue standpoint, there's so much balance and inertia. So you have to balance like, okay, I want to work with people. I want to have this freedom. But there's all this balance. that's required there and I would be curious if you have any kind of final tips to find the sweet spot while you're doing that.
Cory Miller 39:09
Yeah, so you know for years I said it's a sidekick it's it's the Matt Danner, it's someone that just is doesn't have as has compatible strings to you. And but you're not strong in the same area where you can kind of divide and conquer. And so I've honestly thought about it as a work spouse, you know, to Bandy that. That phrase around a little bit, but I mean, there's an element to that work spouse, like having someone you can confide in. And I bet you there are entrepreneurs and founders solopreneurs listening to this today. That is like, in the spot you were and by the way, when I struck out, it's been a year ago this week, I'm back on my own. I didn't want to do it alone. I wanted to do with other people, and I found some great people. One of them being you and Do it together and collaborate. So, but I think, you know, somebody goes, why don't we give away equity I get that then finally struggle psychic, a workout spouse that feels ownership that you could give some rewards if they need it. But find that person that is the end to your Yang. We missed that. And then secondarily, I'll tell you, I know the work psychic work spouse type thing is hard. And the partnership conversation is hard. But I'll tell you and this is something you're not been talking about. Small groups of like-minded people on the same path with the same values have been life-saving and changing for me. So I've been in one group for nine years now. 10 years almost. I've helped start to more. We're talking about trying to get that kind of group. people in the room to rub elbows that get it they understand the story. So I always get the joke. Most of us don't know. Your parents don't know what they we do. Living Dead still thinks I just upgrade the computer somehow. But you know, having a group of people that just get you, know you, not talk you've got some dear friends you lean on, you meet with weekly even as the same can be those kinds of compatriots that like, you can let your guard down and, and share like today sucks. And I've tried to be that for people and also clean to those that are like vulnerable and genuine and authentic and are willing to let the guard down the shields down, take the mask off all that kind of stuff and go Hey, not everything is rosy. So, you know the two things is one is finding someone in the business that can work with it, that just gets it. That's a hard one I know. Second is to find a group of people that are on the same path as you then share life and go deep and it doesn't always have to be personal or a business. It can be personal, some of the most endearing moments I've had with my friends. That I count as brothers and sisters. I mean, like they are family to me. If something were to happen to me, they'd be the first people at my house scene if Lindsay and the kids were okay. But finding that group of people and you and I've been talking about this, how do we do that through post tennis community to pull in our amazing community of founders, entrepreneurs, and give that type of like, being in the room together and sharing that stuff that it's the high fives, and it's the hugs that you need when things are just bad. So that'd be my two takeaways.
Brian Krogsgard 42:35
How about yourself? That's really good on and I think that's, I'll leave it there from a partner perspective. I'll jump back to the juggling things and just get my final. My final comparison maybe so I'm thinking, Okay, well for you know, somebody that's somewhat technical or works in the web industry at minimum. All right. So if I gave you the challenge to say, hey, this website's slow, we need to speed it up. Well, if the first thing you would want to know is, where is it slow? Why's that slow and cut audit that process. And I think that that was the biggest thing that I had to come to the terms with, which was if I'm going to juggle multiple things I need to know, where's my time going? I don't know how many times I had these weeks where the week goes by much less the day and it's like, okay, I had stuff I wanted to accomplish. I know I didn't accomplish everything on my list. But when I look back, I felt busy. But the results weren't there. What happened? And that is dangerous. Because you're not auditing. You're not knowing where your energy actually went. So that you can iterate and improve. It doesn't mean you have to be perfect. It doesn't mean you have to have like every hour tracked. But I think if you're going to make your website faster and more efficient, the first thing to do is to identify what are the processes that are slowing it down right now what is like what are the pivot points The what are the bottlenecks? Where's my time being consumed? And where, when I look at that, if I say I'm spending 10 hours a week on phone calls, or if I'm spending 10 hours a week, you know, in support, okay, what's the value of the time that I'm spending there? And the best thing to do in juggling those multiple things is to try to find the difference makers in that time and spend more time on the difference makers and find out how to bring someone else in a contract or the or offload it to your partner if they're really good at it, and getting them to do those things. You've told me I don't even know how many times since, you know, we started talking about talks about you know, managing support, which is pretty light with post status, but you were like, I don't want you in support, like get out of there. And I'm like, okay, that's okay, that makes sense. But we still need to take care of support, but it starts by identifying how much time am I spending in that type of communication and Therefore, how can I effectively bring someone else on to take that task or put it in a certain bucket like I'm going to do support every Monday and every Thursday or something like that. And that way, it's not kind of floating along with me the whole time. And that's what I found most effective in terms of auditing, and improving my personal processes to be able to juggle multiple things, which is an ongoing battle and ongoing struggle, but one that I've certainly seen progress on, especially since I started self-auditing where I was spending my time
Cory Miller 45:38
Yeah, that's really good. In my calendar if it's on my calendar, so I can get done. I don't do the time blocking like said this, but for mostly, but man I live by that calendar and I've had to start trying to bracket time for certain things. But I think the audit is so good. Always be optimizing. You know, because again, We, you know, in this project have very limited time and energy. And so we put our best into it, but I want to prioritize that time and then optimize for bugs like, Okay, are we spend too much time here too. We, you know, and I think that kind of review helps us make good decisions to and going, Okay, this is the new here. This is the morning side, like the dashboard says, overheat or something, you know, we can go in and go Okay, well, how do we collaboratively figure this out?
Brian Krogsgard 46:31
Yeah. Well, let's optimize this podcast a bit and leave it there. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. Thanks, Corey, for chatting with me. This was obviously relevant for us and these are always self-reflective, we'll be able to think back on what we said here and how we can do better from here. I hope that it helps you as well. I hope everybody has a great week and we go to post that comm slash club and sign up if you haven't already. Corey and I spent the majority of our time figuring out how to make the club better and more appealing to people that are already members and would consider being members. So if you're not opposed to as club member, you're going to miss out. So go to PostStatus.com/Club and sign up and we'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Kori Ashton
Kori and her two sons
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Robert Cheleuka
