Ep. 43. Uncorporatize Yourself: Structure That Actually Works for Founders with Jessica Pizzica

[00:00:49] Hi, Kari. Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to chat today.

[00:00:53] I’m really looking forward to diving in today. We’ve got a really interesting topic where we’re going to talk a lot about structure today for the founder. But before we dive in, how about you share just a little bit about who you are, where you’re from and what your company does. Okay.

[00:01:09] Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Jess and I grew up on the west west coast of the United States in Oregon. I grew up in a small town, big leader in a small town, which was a really exciting experience and really started kind of my lifetime journey of leadership at a very young age. I was class president when I was growing up and then also had the opportunity to lead a group of young people building trails in the wilderness when I was 18 years old. So that kind of secured for me two things. One, my love of teaching and bringing younger people along. And the second thing was empowering women to do things that were outside of gender normal roles for them. So teaching women how to hike and build trails and use chainsaws was just a really empowering moment for me at a very young age. Since then, my life has really been a jungle gym. I’ve spent time across many industries, spent the first decade of my career in corporate and retail leadership, then made a big pivot over to supply chain operations and

[00:02:14] Yeah,

[00:02:37] that I’ve had over the past few decades and turn them into my own consulting business. So I launched grit talent solutions about six months ago. It’s really a small boutique consulting firm that helps companies unlock the power of their people through implementing powerful HR processes. So we help with everything from building strong teams through our team effectiveness processes to helping leadership teams and founders identify what their talent philosophy is and how they can really build the right systems and organizational design to drive their business through their people.

[00:03:13] That’s so fun. I also grew up in a small town, like a big fish in a small pond. We share that I’m like nodding my head like, Oh, I know exactly what that’s like. But you know, I think it’s something that I hear from a lot of founders that they get to have that leadership or at least that influence at a really young age and then I guess they’re used to that. So then when they get into corporate, eventually they’re kind of like, wait a minute, where did my influence go? So we ended up starting our own companies. But why did you finally decide to exit corporate and start your own company?

[00:03:51] Yeah. I think there’s a couple of key reasons. One is just over the course of my career. I’ve seen companies struggling with the same things. I’ve had the opportunity to work at large companies like Amazon that have over a million employees all the way down to very small startups that are 5 to 10 to 500 employees. And I see many of them struggling with the same thing, really industry agnostic and that is being able to see business problems as people problems and really understanding that when you lean in and support your employees, you will also support your bottom line. So as I’ve had these experiences, I realized I wanted to help more companies and really more people in general, being able to reach their career goals and see that your business strategy and your people strategy don’t have to be separate and that if you invest in your people, that doesn’t mean that you are not investing in your business, but you will actually see better business results by leaning into your talent on your team. So I think that was really the professional side. I think on the personal side, was really ready to be my own decision maker. So kind of going back to what you spoke about having.

[00:05:04] Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. [00:05:21] You know, be my own boss. I think it was a hard decision to make. I’m the breadwinner of my family. I have two kids in college, a third going to college next year. So I have a very big burden on my shoulders financially. So it did feel like a big risk. However, I had to step back and say, if not now, when? And if not me, who? It was time to place a bet on myself and really have confidence that this career that I’ve built over the past few decades has given me all of the tools that I need to go and do this. I would say even drawing back to some of those very early leadership opportunities where I stepped into opportunities I had never done before. At that point, it was because I was young It’s because I’m stepping into a new phase of my life. So reaching inside of myself and saying, I can do this, I have the support network, I have the experience. its time to go try. At least if I fail, I will have tried versus wondering if I could have done it for the rest of my life.

[00:06:20] Yeah, yeah, first of all, amen to being your own boss. I think that’s probably why most people become founders. It’s fun to bet on yourself. So how have the first six months been, having all of the, the control and all of the sort of like pressure on your shoulders?

[00:06:40] Yeah. Yeah. [00:06:40] I [00:06:41] will never mince words. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. You know, I think what is most inspiring to me as I wake up every day really excited about my job because I am investing in myself and I’m building something that I hope will have generational impact in my family. But I will say, know, having scaled to a pretty high level in my career, it’s been humbling to kind of have to take a step back and start doing some of. The work that I’ve relied on teams doing for a really long time, such as implementing and processing my own payroll. That’s something that always has happened on my teams, but I haven’t been intimately involved in it. I’ve had to do that. I’ve also had to brush off some old design skills, get very familiar with Canva again, some things that I haven’t done in the past 10 years. So I would say it’s been really humbling. But also I love that I am learning how to. firsthand so that as I scale my team, I will literally have done every job in my company, which I

[00:07:45] [00:07:45] is really rewarding and impactful for the people that join later. I think it’s interesting because part of the reason you become a founder is to improve your way of life and have better work life balance. I wouldn’t say that’s an immediate thing that you get from starting your own company. There are [00:08:04] Mm-hmm

[00:08:05] I locked in my office all day. I show my face for dinner and then I come right back into my office and it’s not even stressful. I really want to be here, but I have to kind of pencil in, like leave your office, go hang out with your family, be a human again. Cause I will get [00:08:21] Mm-hmm [00:08:21] up in my business that I will just forget about the world around me. [00:08:25] Yeah. Yeah. [00:08:26] kind of fun, but at the same time, you know, I, I do have other responsibilities I need to tend to. [00:08:33] Yeah. Absolutely. I think that the, especially, I’m thinking back to the first year of my first company that I started. And it’s so exhilarating and it’s so like you get tunnel vision, you. It’s like you’re chasing the carrot, you know? So it does, I promise it does wear off a bit after a couple of years where you’re able to kind of like, separate it a bit more. But, you know, I want to go back to something you said, because it really piqued my interest. You said there’s never like company problems. There’s just people problems. I find that to be true in all of the companies that I work with and all of the founders that I work with, even solopreneurs and even solo founders. Can you talk just a little bit about how a startup founder, maybe a, in a company of one or a company of two, can think about solving problems through the lens of solving the people or solving the people problem? Mm-hmm [00:09:36] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting. I was just talking to a potential client who is a solopreneur right now, so they’re doing everything on their own. And, you know, sometimes it feels like you’re not ready to bring somebody onto the team. Or you can handle all of these things yourself. But as we kind of looked through her end to end strategy for her business over the next year and cross reference that with her revenue and really thought about what her individual expertise and skillset are and all of the things that she was spreading herself really thin over. The conclusion that we came to at the end of that conversation was: It will actually behoove her company more if she’s able to focus on the three to four things she does really well and bring in some help, whether that be a consultant or whether that be a full time employee. I kind of help my clients make those decisions as well, that have the specific skill sets that will compliment her because that’s what allows you to scale is really identifying those areas where you can outsource and be able to grow your business faster by bringing in the people that can supplement the work that you’re doing. I’ve done that myself at grit bringing on a business partner very early on, whereas potentially people might wait a little bit longer to bring that in, but really realizing that my ability to manage my current clients and build up all of the infrastructure and foundation that I need, I wasn’t going to be able to do both of those things at once. So making that investment early on, actually allow me to scale and really identifying what my personal skillset is and bringing somebody in that’s going to compliment that and really focusing on who are the right people to surround myself with to scale my business. Because the answer isn’t always in the technology that you implement. It’s in the people that help you support that technology on the backend. [00:11:31] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Are there any tools or or systems or structures that help with identifying your own blind spot and weaknesses? I mean, I obviously know that most founders realize that they don’t like to do certain tasks or it’s not in their wheelhouse or in their area of expertise. But a lot of times they, they have a blind spot around their personality or their communication styles. Are there any things that you would recommend for founders to kind of put themselves through in order to find those things? Yeah, right. [00:12:11] in my career. I would say the one that I believe in the most and that I use with all of my clients and for myself is neuro color. It is actually rooted in neuroscience. So the ability to really pull apart your personality into four different subsystems and understand the way that those subsystems interact to form your personality is really an empowering moment. I have done this assessment with thousands of people and the most common thing I hear from people after they take it is I feel seen because they will read these reports and they can see themselves reflected in it. I would say, you know, what you’ll find from most founders who take this is that myself included is that they tend to be really high yellow personalities. A really high yellow personality means that you have a lot of dopamine and it means that you probably have really big ideas which can be a great thing when you’re a founder it can also result in bright shiny ball syndrome where you get distracted by a really big idea and you probably don’t like to do some of the more task oriented parts of the business. Administration, building foundation, core templates, a lot of that work. That is where you can use the personality assessment to say, if I need to bring some people on to help me, what kind of traits am I looking for that can supplement the strengths that I bring? [00:13:40] You can just learn a lot about yourself from this assessment. So I advocate for it a lot. I think it’s a really great tool. It can be used individually, but I also use it a lot for team effect. Because you can go very deep into communication styles and really plot the different communication styles of the people on your team to better understand where you might have breakdowns or what people’s preferences are and how you can start to work within people’s preferences. Because a common barrier that founders face is the ability to scale from running things on your own, to bringing people in around you and having your [00:14:19] Yeah. [00:14:19] continue to come to fruition while allowing other people to take on pieces of that because you can start to feel like you’re not in control anymore and [00:14:27] Yep. [00:14:28] this kind of assessment early on can help you pre identify what some of those barriers or triggers might be as you try to start to delegate things that you feel really passionate about the way that they should be run. [00:14:40] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because you started a business because you kind of want that control. Then you don’t realize that in order to make the ship float, you have to get rid of the exact control that you kind of wanted when you started your company. So I think it’s a kind of a shock to many founders that they have to get into leadership so early. That it’s one of the most challenging parts of their business is the people aspect. So this is kind of, you know, on a tangent, but I think it relates to the topic that I really wanted to dive into today, which is about structure. What do you think is the most important sort of first thing to think about when you’re going to bring on someone onto your team? Like, what’s the first question you should be asking? [00:15:36] Yeah, I would say some of the most important things are values alignments and really making sure that the people that you bring on are aligned to the values that you have for the company but also personal. And that you are establishing boundaries pretty clear and early on. Most of the time if people are going from let’s say a big corporation to a smaller company there’s pretty specific things that they want to get out of that transition and so really making sure that you are aligned from a values perspective because it’s going to be hard to work with a very small team if you have different ideas of what something like integrity means. [00:16:19] Mm hmm. [00:16:19] talking through that. Like I could say integrity is my number one core value and you could say mine too. But if we break that down and talk about what that means to me versus what it means to you. It [00:16:29] Yeah. [00:16:30] mean something different. Your definition might be more like transparency or trust. So really understanding what do we mean by the word that we use to describe our values. I would say really talking through communication as well. I think that there’s a decorporatizing that has to happen when you are founding and starting up and bringing people to a smaller company. And I think that really talking about what that’s going to look like with people is critically important. You know, one of [00:17:02] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. [00:17:05] when you’re in corporate America, your calendar runs your day. You do not run your day. Your day is run by your calendar. A lot of times you’re actually not even in control of what’s on it and that is very different from the first day you wake up as a founder and there’s nothing on your calendar. You have to deprogram and reprogram yourself to think about what that means. Speaking of tangents, I say all of that to to say that especially when somebody hasn’t been in this environment before and you’re bringing them into a founder situation being really clear about what the day to day looks like and making sure that [00:17:42] Yeah. [00:17:42] what that means for their life because if you are used to your calendar running your day and now you have a blank slate that might seem like a positive thing but if you’re a structured person who, is used to that kind of rigor, it can actually be kind of alarming. I have a whole day with nothing scheduled. What am I supposed to do with my time? So working through kind of what is a day look like? How do you measure your success? Your success is no longer measured by how many meetings you can fit into an eight hour day. It’s measured in a very different way. So being [00:18:13] Right. [00:18:14] about how what that looks like. so [00:18:17] Mm hmm. [00:18:18] and they know kind of how to manage their own time because you’ve got to be self managing in a very different way than you’ve ever been before. [00:18:27] Yeah, yeah, that is such good advice. I was actually just talking to one of my clients about that who’s bringing on the core team and getting the core team all situated and getting pretty frustrated about one of the new hires who has lots of experience and who wasn’t just like jumping in you know. And they were from corporate. It’s a completely different animal. You can’t just hire someone and then expect them to just come in into, into a founder situation, right? Which is what you’re doing when you only have three, four or five people. So that’s so wise. I have a feeling you have so much more wisdom when it comes to structures and organization and systems because of your background and what you help teams with. What other structures do you feel like are really important for especially startups? Maybe we use you as an example, since you’re right in that zone, what structures do you think are important that have really helped you? [00:19:31] Yeah. So one thing I would say is for years, I’ve been coaching executives on how to scale through building mechanisms. So particularly helping people that are going from front line leader to a middle manager up through an executive to a C suite and kind of what are the different things you need to build to stay connected to your front line, to stay connected to your business as you scale. So a really interesting journey for me over the past six months has been reflecting on the things I’ve been teaching people how to do for a really long time and implementing them myself. [00:20:05] Okay. [00:20:05] taking my own medicine to some degree. So as I started my business, I would say all of this comes with a caveat of you’re never going to be able to build all of your foundation before you sign a client and start working. Obviously client acquisition is the number one goal of most companies. Part of my goal was to have pretty specific structures put in place before I launched, to make sure that no matter when my scaling started, I would be adequately prepared for it and wouldn’t feel like I was floundering with the backend administration of my business. [00:20:41] Yeah. [00:20:41] things that I’ve done when it was just me, I put processes in place and really used my calendar because to go back to the calendar management of corporate America, I think the translation for me was if I’ve been living by my calendar and I know that I’m conditioned to do that, how do I use that? How do I use that process discipline that I already have to help myself stay accountable. Just because I have a blank calendar doesn’t mean that I’m going to go garden in the middle of the day. I need to build that into my schedule the same way that I would have in corporate America. So carving out time to say, you know, between eight and eight 30 every day, I’m going to put a hold on my calendar to follow up with clients. From eight 30 to nine I’m going to be doing my client funnel review and really putting that structure in place to say: I’m still going to have my calendar somewhat guide my life with knowing I’ve got way more flexibility than I did before. If you me and my husband decide in the middle of the week, we’re going to go snowshoeing, which we did about a month ago and it was glorious. I would say the calendar management is one big piece. I would say a few other things that I’ve put in place are monthly business reviews. So really taking the time every month to actually review each part of my business, look at my finances, make any adjustments I need to make there. Look at my client funnel, think about the key decisions I need to make, look and see if there’s any website updates I need to make. If there’s any followups I haven’t done. What have I done to build my network? Have I been doing my community service as as part of a mission of my company? So putting that structure in place to say, I’m actually going to sit down and write a business review every month. And I think one, it helps with me being reflective and making sure that I’m building out my business in a great way. But also when people join my business, I’m able to say, here’s the file where the business reviews are for every month since I’ve launched. Now you can go and catch up on what we’ve been doing, so it does make you feel like you’re a bigger, more well established company than you might actually be. So I really believe in putting some of those structures in place. I’m a very goal oriented person. So also just creating yearly goals that then can be translated into quarterly goals and having a pretty established tracker and a way to check in on those. And rethink them in terms of was that too aggressive of a goal? Do I need to step back from it or do I need to just keep going? Ramp up my aggressiveness on the other side to make sure that I’m hitting those. Really focusing on some of those things in corporate that are really great and I wanted to be able to take the positive experiences and help them build my business and one of those is, in the businesses I’ve seen run really well, there is a rigor around making sure you’re reviewing your business, thinking about your people on a monthly basis and [00:23:31] Yeah. [00:23:31] as needed so that you don’t get caught off guard. You know, six months down the road, if you haven’t been really deeply looking at your finances, maybe you’re paying for something you’re not using anymore. You know, 16 a month doesn’t seem like a lot unless you’re a new business and you’ve paid it for a year and not use the service. Those are a few of the things that have really helped me kind of feel grounded and have the confidence that my business is being built in a way that’s going to be scalable and sustainable long term. [00:24:01] yeah, everything you’re saying, I’m just like, yep. Yup. Yup. They’re so important from day one. I remember when I first started my first company, I was splattered paint on the wall and just didn’t know it. I mean, it had come from corporate. I was, you know, following my calendar, but there were so many things falling through the cracks because I was just trying to, like you were saying, chasing the cash flow. You know, and how are we going to get this funnel working and what should we try? It can happen really easily, even though the founders were really dedicated and really focused, because there’s so much trial and error that needs to happen. But the evaluations can get so messy. I think that’s what happened with me in that first year, like when I think back. I was like evaluating in the shower and evaluating on a walk and evaluating, like venting to my friend and just, just kind of going like this. I didn’t have that visual North star that I could come back to every couple of weeks and say, okay, like, what’s the vision? What are the values? Where are we going? What have we tried? The other one that I think made a huge difference for me thinking back to the beginning was sticking to an annual vacation schedule. I don’t remember who told me that in the beginning, because I had also been in corporate and I had always had the days that you could take off and how many days were holidays, but I just kind of threw that out the window when I started my business. I think it was about, like, maybe 2 or 3 years in and someone said, you know, unless you actually create a pdf vacation schedule and then put it on the calendar and honor it, you won’t take them. And you also won’t be taking yourself that seriously. That was a really big shift. It was like a symbolic moment where I just made this pdf, you know with my logo on it with my vacation schedule that things just like started to shift. So I think that what you’re saying is so important that even a solo founder who isn’t quite even ready to admit she’s starting a company, maybe she hasn’t told anyone yet. She’s not even fully taking herself seriously in a way, should still put these structures into place because they have a mindset shifting power to them. That leads me to my next question, which is what are some of the mindset shifts that some of your structures have helped you with that you think are so important? [00:26:36] Yeah, I would say a few of my mindset shifts have been one is and I’m not sure if this is a mindset shift or not, but definitely I’ve had to make adjustments even in these first few months in terms of making sure that I am having balance. You know, I would say every week I’m kind of coming in with what are my goals for the week? Every week I kind of map out what are the key deliverables that I have to achieve and then I actually break those down into micro tasks or micro goals because I think that it can be a little bit overwhelming to look, at as a founder, when you are owning every single piece of your business. I would say one of the things that difficult in the first couple of months, and I wouldn’t say that I’ve completely cracked this nut yet, but I’m working on it every day is the balance of working with my current clients and delivering on everything I have to deliver with them, but also continuing to build my business and build and [00:27:50] Yeah. [00:27:50] clients and build foundations. I get bright, shiny ideas about this app I want to create, or this game I want to create. [00:27:58] Yeah. Yeah. [00:28:05] this week? I found that if I kept those goals too lofty, by about Wednesday, I would start to get really exhausted and start to hit a wall because I was just running, running, running after the goal. So one of the things I shifted for myself was saying: I’m going to break these down into really manageable daily goals. A perfect right now example is I got to get all of my tax information to my accountant. When I think about that as one goal, it feels almost too overwhelming to even start for me because I don’t like paperwork. It’s a lot of collecting documents and uploading them. So instead I broke that down to like, what are 10 steps that need to be done for this? I’m going to break it out over 10 days and it’s only going to take me an hour a day if I do it that way and then I [00:28:51] Yeah. Yeah. [00:28:53] and then I can stop my day at a reasonable time and say now I’m going to have dinner with my family and be done for the day versus feeling like I just need to work nonstop until that giant task is done. So I think [00:29:05] Yeah. [00:29:05] bigger tasks into [00:29:06] more manageable micro tasks. [00:29:10] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:29:18] I think that in corporate America and in particular, coming from an HR field where the expectation is to always be on, always be available, never leave your phone at home. That has been honestly challenging for me to break away from and that my relationship with my clients doesn’t need to look the same. That my relationship with my teams used to look and that it’s okay to set boundaries and to not be constantly plugged in. If I’ve been very clear about our contractual terms, like sticking to those is acceptable. And I would say that’s probably one of the biggest mindset shifts I’ve had to make from a working norm perspective is being able to disconnect. One thing I did very early on was make the decision to purchase a separate cell phone for my business so that [00:30:09] Yeah. [00:30:10] can leave that cell phone sitting in my office when I go to do something personal. And then [00:30:16] if I [00:30:16] Yeah. [00:30:17] have something happening with a client that I need to be available for, I can bring that with me, but I [00:30:22] Mm-hmm [00:30:22] my work, my grit email, everything that happens with my business is on a separate phone so that I have a actual physical way to remove myself from the business because I will [00:30:34] Mm-hmm [00:30:34] in all the time and I know that [00:30:36] Yeah. Yeah, [00:30:37] So part of it is what are the things I know about myself? Your personality is innate. It doesn’t change over time. [00:30:43] Yeah. [00:30:43] that is something about me that isn’t going to change, but what I can change is my availability to the device that gives me that access. That is my way of creating boundaries in my life that works for me. But everyone’s got to kind of figure out what does that look like for them? Because your business will suck you in and it’s a really good thing. But your family will feel that impact. Your friends will feel that impact. They will feel like you have disappeared, so you do have to kind of figure out how do you one communicate that up front? I was very clear with people around me, this is what the next year of my life is going to look like but [00:31:18] Mm-hmm [00:31:19] have to recognize some of the triggers that happen where I need to slow down and make sure that i’m time for myself and for my family because burnout happens with founders too. [00:31:29] Mm-hmm [00:31:29] It can happen really fast and you don’t even know it’s coming because you’re so invested in this thing that you’re building that you [00:31:35] Yeah. [00:31:36] You’re not taking your vacations. You’re not getting enough sleep. You’re not doing your exercising. You’re not doing the things that bring you joy and help you with your mental health that you need to face every [00:31:46] Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm . Yeah. Absolutely. I think one of the things that a lot of founders don’t realize that I’m constantly telling them all the time is that when you, for example, knock out all of your tasks for the day, all of your goals for the day, and you just bypass basically the list and you keep going, right? Because like, maybe you end with two more hours or three more hours, right? So you’re like, ooh, you get really excited. You’re like, what else can I get done? When you actually do that, you change the neural circuitry of how you are approaching that to just task orientation. To just knocking things off and you kind of change it to like a dog just like running after a ball and going back and then running after a ball and going back. And it’s not the best cognitive place to do business from. It’s much better to knock out three four results specific results for the day and then not to let yourself dip into anything else and to use that for rest and recovery for your nervous system. Because it keeps everything from going into fight or flight or that freeze shutdown, like you’re talking about. It keeps you in that play zone. It keeps you really fresh. It keeps you so you’ll get new ideas. But you won’t get these like cluttery, anxious ideas that can sometimes come in when you just get into too much ramped up task orientation. So I love what you’re saying about kind of intuitively knowing. Um. I guess the only thing I would add is like for anyone listening pick three, four things for the day that are meaningful to move the needle and then just stop. Even if you’ve only worked five hours. If you do that for several weeks, you’ll actually see yourself moving the needle faster than if you worked 10 hours just knocking more out. Have you found that to be true? [00:34:02] I totally agree. And the other thing that I would say is there are going to be circumstances where you don’t get things done and where [00:34:13] Mm hmm. [00:34:14] the five things on your list for the day. Something came up, maybe you had an unexpected client call. [00:34:20] Yeah. [00:34:20] Something happening with your children. There’s a million reasons why our days get derailed. Maybe, real life example, it took you three hours to figure out your payroll taxes instead of the 30 minutes that you set aside to do it. [00:34:33] Yeah. [00:34:34] But you know, for me, it’s also understanding what fills my cup and there’s a time in the day where I know I need to walk away from my office and go do my workout. I need to [00:34:45] Mm hmm. [00:34:46] take [00:34:46] that time for myself because it gives me the energy back for the second half of my day. It gives me the endorphin rush that I need to be excited. it’s taking care of my health and wellness. And so for me, it’s at that time every day, even if the stuff on my list isn’t done. I stop. I go take [00:35:03] my break. [00:35:03] Mm hmm. [00:35:04] Give myself what I need because I’m old enough to know what my body needs and I listen to it. It’s okay if I push some of those things off. I mean, obviously sometimes there’s business critical things you you can’t. So I always make sure to prioritize those first. [00:35:20] Mm [00:35:20] you [00:35:20] hmm. [00:35:20] take a break and [00:35:21] Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. [00:35:26] you’re doing it because you have to complete your list versus you are bought in on doing it. I think understanding the way that your own brain chemistry works so that you know how to carve out the right creative times me. If I do all of my task things first and then I’m like, I’m going to bucket creative time at the end of the day. My brain isn’t going to be firing on all cylinders anymore and I’m not going to have that momentum and so really understanding that you don’t have to work on a corporate schedule anymore if you are a person that does their best work from 10 p. m. to midnight, you can do your work from 10 p. m. to midnight and and kind of plan your life and business around that. So I really think again, it’s like, how do you decorporatize yourself and really listen to your own rhythms and what works for you and start to. literally rewire your working norms to, [00:36:23] Yep. Mm hmm. [00:36:26] that you operate at your best. It’s actually really hard and really uncomfortable and you have to be really intentional to make it happen. [00:36:33] Mm hmm. Yeah, it’s like you have to destructure yourself and restructure yourself again in a whole new way. Right. [00:36:41] Yeah. [00:36:42] One of the things you just said is the other end of the coin, which is like, sometimes you, you know, get your tasks done for the day and then you just want to keep cramming more in and then other times it’s like, Oh my gosh, this took like five times longer than I thought. I think that is something that is just inevitable for founders at. every stage. I don’t think it goes away. I have not found that this goes away. And with any founder I work with, because you’re just constantly scaling and you’re constantly evolving the business. Right when you get a structure in place, you delegated to someone and you hire someone and then you’re on to the next evolution. And so I think a really helpful thing for founders is to realize that they’re going to guess wrong, how long things take. So if you’re making like targets for the week or goals for the week and you have an idea of like, okay, that’s going to take me this amount of time. One of the best things you can do is just to realize that you’re probably wrong so that you don’t have this second conversation with yourself full of frustration around while you’re behind because you’re not behind, you just don’t know how long things take. So I think that flexibility as well with timelines and goals can really help to reduce a lot of the frustration for the founder. [00:38:04] Frustration is already going to be high at points because you’re trying to learn how to build a new machine from scratch. So you just don’t want to have any of these extra frustration fueling conversations with yourself than needed. I think that that’s one of them. To just let the timelines ebb and flow and kind of pivot as you learn how long things take. Because it will change constantly. Have you ever found that to be true? [00:38:31] Yeah. My advice would be whatever your planned time is for things, especially in the first six months, double it. So if you have a plan and you’ve looked at your day and you’ve done back to back tasks that you estimate are going to take a normal eight hour working day, take half those things off the list and add them to the next day because inevitably it will take you longer. You know, this is actually advice that I gave managers who were working on time management years ago and in training sessions, which was, give yourself more time. Don’t plan for eight hours worth of tasks in an eight hour day plan for four hours worth of tasks in an eight hour day. Because [00:39:14] Yeah. Yep. [00:39:23] impromptu conversations, things that people need help with. Because otherwise, you’re probably constantly having to change your schedule, reschedule meetings because something popped up. We all know the game of every meeting in your day runs over, which has a cascading impact on the meetings after. But if you leave a half an hour between everything on your calendar, you won’t have that problem. Because you’ve now given yourself buffer room for when those things happen. Or a chance to take a break, get some water, eat some food. So I always recommend don’t go so hard on your calendar that you don’t have a break every two hours. And, you know, that’s even a carry over from my corporate days where I would have my executive assistants build that in, you know, every two hours I need a break. It’s just actually doesn’t benefit the people that you’re talking to if you are rapidly shifting from meeting to meeting that fast. Especially if you’re running a dynamic business with clients who all need something a little bit different, you want time to decompress from the previous meeting and really think about your intentions headed into the next meeting. You know, the joy of owning your calendars, you can give yourself that buffer time. For me, I know that I pretty much become useless on Friday afternoons. So I don’t schedule anything on Friday afternoons. Most of the time I walk away and do something for myself. But I almost always work all day Sunday and this is a routine that works for me that I like. Sundays are quiet. I can wake up and do things on my own pace. I feel very creative on Sundays. That’s kind of the schedule that works for me. That might not work for everybody, but sometimes we bound our own creativity and our own productivity by thinking we have to fit into the box of a nine to five Monday through Friday workday when we don’t [00:41:10] Mm hmm. [00:41:12] get those tasks done in that time frame either. If you’re getting frustrated by the tasks that you can’t achieve because they’re taking too long and you need to step away and go take a couple hours and then come back. I just had to do that last night because I was really frustrated over a tax situation. I walked away and then I came back this morning and solved it in five minutes because I came [00:41:31] Mm hmm. [00:41:32] a fresh clear head and I wasn’t at the end of my day trying to solve something really complex. [00:41:37] Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. This conversation has been so eye opening for me. Just to rethink. I mean, I’ve been in business for several years now and just to kind of go back to the drawing board and be like, okay, what structures, what new things could I implement on top of what I’m already doing to help this business to scale even faster with more ease. I love this conversation. I want to ask you, do you have any good books like for the people listening, are there any good books that you would recommend for founders who are thinking about structure that they can get started with, or maybe just like a mindset shift around putting a structure in place that you would recommend. I know I’m putting you on the spot here. [00:42:28] yeah. I’d be happy to send some over if I could have a little time to think through it and I can send you some lists that maybe we [00:42:35] Yeah. [00:42:35] with this. But I would say one thing, the thing that comes to my mind first off is just the power of network. I know that we hear that a lot. But I would share that the thing that has been most empowering to me on this journey is finding out that there is this secret hidden community of founders that are all welcoming you with open arms and want to share their expertise. I can’t even count how many, you know women specifically, have invited me to join groups or to have conversations or to learn about some of the mistakes that they made when they were first starting out so that I didn’t replicate them. I’ve really found this to be powerful. So I would say finding those people reaching out, not being scared to ask people for help because people are very willing to help and then I know for me, like I immediately want to start paying that forward because I’ve got a strong support system that has helped me. Really lean on people who have been there before and have already learned the mistakes cause they will openly share them with you 100%. [00:43:43] Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that. That founders are like an open book when you get into these, into these groups that’ll just start sharing. Don’t do that. I’ve tried that. So I think that’s such good wisdom. We will definitely link up to the show notes, all the book recommendations. So we’ll connect after this. The one I’m thinking of, that I think everybody should read. It’s called 10x is easier than 2x. It’s so, so good. I think it ties into what we’ve been talking about where you’re just shifting your whole model around time and shifting how you schedule your time and block your time and how you also lean on the people around you in order to use your time most effectively. We’ll link up to that one and any other ones. Any last words of wisdom before we wrap up? [00:44:36] You know, I think the, the only thing that I would kind of add in closing is everybody’s journey looks a little bit different, and I think that that is really important to remember if you are starting your transition. I know I just spoke about how wonderful having a network of people that will give you advices, but you will also get information overload, and you kind of have to be able to sort. You will get a lot of recommendations for different platforms, different resources, different groups to join. You have to kind of, at the core of all of it, know what you’re going after, who you are, what you stand for, and know that what worked for 100 other people might not work for you. Most people are becoming founders because they want to be able to chart their own course, make their own rules. Don’t be afraid to do something different and don’t be afraid to do it in a different way than maybe everyone else is telling you to do it because the. The worst case scenario is that you fail and you have to change a different approach, but that’s okay. You already have taken the big step, which is a huge risk and putting a bet on yourself. Don’t be afraid to take those additional risks as you get going. [00:45:50] Yeah, that is so, so good. I think it ties into what we’ve been talking about, which is, you know, there’s so many tools and structures out there that you have so many to pick from. As long as you make them work for you, then that’s sort of how you want to use them, right? You want to use them in a way that follows your values and your visions and your work life balance. But it’s important no matter what to at least get some structure into place to help you to bring that vision to life. So thank you so much, Jess, for joining me. Where can people go to learn more about you and your work? [00:46:24] Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. Jess Pika or Grit Solutions are both on LinkedIn. Also you can visit my website, grit solutions team.com. And you can reach out to me at [email protected]. [00:46:40] That’s great. Thank you so much, Jess. We’ll talk to you soon. [00:46:43] Okay, bye.

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