Wil Reynolds

Category: Uncategorized

  • If you want help with work life balance, define it.

    We’ve all heard this from friends.

    I feel XYZ way about my work / life balance.

    I’ve realized for me work life balance or whatever its called, is less about how much I work, its about flexibility, I’d rather work 50–60 hours a week and be able to work from Rio for 3–4 hours a day and spend the rest chilling with the fam then to have a 40 hour a week job where I “run out of vacation days” or can’t work remotely for 2–6 hours a day for 2 weeks if that is how I achieve balance.

    I find that running a company, can suck hours out of your life in ways you’ll never realize until its too late.

    Was working an hour before this was taken on a weekend, for some people this is NOT balance for others it is. And that is OK.

    3 reasons why talking about work life balance with team members is difficult

    1 — It’s very individualized. One person's work life balance is another persons BORING job, and vice versa. So as a manger, make people define work life balance in detail, is it about the # of hours? It is about the type of projects? Is someone OK working a 50 hour week, as long as 10 of those hours are work from home? Some people need 8 small vacations, others need 1 long stretch for 3 weeks to recharge.

    2 — It’s a moving target. When I was in my early 20’s working a 55 to 65 hour week (on occasion) was fine. I enjoyed moving up in my career fast. I saw marketing as a contact sport, the more I worked the more I learned, the more learned, the more tests I ran, I would have a larger library to pull from. When I finally landed a job that didn’t reward me for working over 40 hours, I sought out volunteering to fill the space. I didn’t know how to just work 40 hours a week, that was boring. People’s life stages change, if you asked me what balance was in my 20’s it was different than today. If you asked me 2 weeks before my first son was born my definition of balance would be different.

    3 — It’s mushy and rarely data driven. One of the biggest issues I have, is like any life goal, you need to know when you’ve achieved your “enough”. That is one reason alone to track your hours like a hawk, it helps you to look back with a clearer head, it helps you avoid recency bias. How do you know when you have achieved work life balance? What early warning signals will tell you you are falling out of balance? Do you have an early burn out warning signal?

    I challenged myself…if I had to only have 2 metrics one to determine work balance one to determine life balance, what would they be?

    In that way I can see if I am fulfilling my work effort in harmony or at the expense of my life side of the equation.

    So my metrics are Revenue & the # of Months where I have spent more than 5 nights away from the family. Its an early warning signal that I might not be getting the life part of the work life equation.

    Let’s take revenue (and revenue where we make a profit revenue, not we’re growing revenue, but aren’t making profit crap! I hate making that the number, but if I only have 1 metric, then if revenue is right a lot of other things in the business just work. Now I recognize that it’s wholly possible to hit revenue in an Enron, Wells Fargo, or Uber kind of way — I’m going to assume that we’re not doing that.

    If revenue is trending in the right direction (especially if that revenue growth is coming mostly from referrals), So many other thing are possible:

    We can have office space that we can leave unused for community events (fulfills my desire to impact our community).

    We can take more risks / innovate — this helps us grow, but also gives people new opps to grow in their careers at Seer.

    We can become more competitive w/ the kinds of raises and bonuses that hopefully help people feel valued by distributing more of our profits.

    The other metric, time away from the family…

    How many days in a month is too many away from my family? Well that # for me is 5, here is about how that came to be. But ultimately you can see that in almost 3 years I’ve only had 2 months where I went to 6 days in a month, 1 month where I was at 5. (Note this was done before my last 2 months, which I was at 5 & 6, prompting me to write this post on trimming back to only 5–6 international conferences next year vs going through 7 in Q4 alone). See its my early warning signal before life gets out of balance.

    What metrics make you proud. Don’t answer just think. Is it $, rev, profit, streams, views, followers? This is why I try hard to not get wrapped up in vanity metrics…

    They won’t know I worked a few hours before we got “Agua De Coco” which for me is the best of both worlds, work I love, being able to spend time with the fam in a place I love.

    Work life balance is hard to discuss as long as we can’t define it and put metrics on it. These metrics are far from perfect (aren’t they all)… but they do serve as an early warning signal that maybe something is out of whack, if you had to have only 2 metrics what would yours be?

  • Why I speak at so many conferences / travel the way I do and why I’m slowing down.

    That is the question I got in the speaker room, as I walked in, sick.as.shit.

    I had taken the 10PM flight out of Philly, landed in Dublin and went right to my hotel to take a 3–4 hour nap, so I could be refreshed for the presentation I had to give in a few hours, and I was flying out the next morning.

    Then I woke up, stuff coming out of all the orafaces. WTF, I was effed. The organizers of the conference said, Wil, you don’t have to show up today, we understand.

    That was not gonna happen, I was gonna get there early scope out the closest bathroom, use it right before I went on stage and then I would know where the closest one was in case I had to exit, handle my business and jump back on stage. (Marcus Tandler did that once and I was like damn this dude is my spirit animal).

    The speakers in the speaker lounge were like what are you doing? Why do you do this? Then they went, wait…get away from me. Some (Thank you Aleyda, Ian and Lexi, etc) who offered everything from giving my preso to pepto.

    So I stopped and thought why do I do this? It was good reflection point…

    First I do not shirk on my responsibilities, I just don’t I don’t know how to live that life. Where someone pays to fly you all the way somewhere and you don’t show up without at least trying to power through. So staying in the hotel was NOT an option.

    As I reflected here are my other thoughts on why the heck I do this to myself (in no order):

    Financial

    Flying lets me gain maximum points, so having those points helps me cringe less when I end up flying my wife, 2 sons, and nanny to some of our far off adventures, like our upcoming family trip to Brazil. I’m a points whore these days.

    Somewhere in Lisbon

    Then Amex gives me back 30% of points I used when I book through them!

    Huge for family travel.

    I like flying

    A330, A350, A380, A321, I am an AV Geek, the wonder I have of how airplanes work continues to amaze me. I love getting on a plane, I think I also like the ability to put my headphones on and zone out, with NO meetings too. Somewhere up 38,000 feet is where I get certain types of work done.

    Facing Fears

    I was really afraid to fly, like I wouldn’t stand up on the plane, scared. You know how much that sucks when you drink a bunch of beers to calm your nerves and you are afraid to stand up on the plane, much less walk ALL THE WAY to the bathroom?

    Every time I get on a plane, it reminds me that I got over that fear, that I looked at something that petrified me in the eye and powered through and said, you won’t keep me from doing this. My next fear is to learn to swim, after having been rescued once from the bottom of a pool at 6, and once in a riptide at 24, and then losing a friend to a drowning at 14, the water has scared me, but I’m coming for you next!!

    There is something about looking back at your old self, and realizing how far you’ve come. Every time I fly and my palms don’t sweat all up, and I don’t think I’m going to die! It helps me remember that I’m not afraid, that I can get over anything I put my mind to.

    Helping People

    I’d like to think my presentations actually help a lot of people, so I like getting out and sharing that with real people. I’m definitely over the ego parts — people telling me I crushed a preso was great for my confidence 3–4 years ago, but now its about that feeling deep in my gut that I might be able to help someone that kees me going.

    I went to school to be a teacher, so deep down that has always been a massive motivator for me…how can people come into my “class” and I teach them something that helps them level up, and be ready for the next grade?

    Ego

    As I reflect on my time presenting and hitting the road so hard, I can’t help but think, there’s got to be a part that loves going somewhere and speaking / being asked to speak.

    I came from pretty humble beginnings and the fact that other people see enough value in what I have to say to fly me all over the world feels good. Now at this juncture of my career, I don’t think my best years are ahead of me when it comes to speaking, that isn’t to say I don’t have things that could add value, but …

    At What Cost?

    I was in Amsterdam 8 months or so ago, and this time Nora was like, no need to bring the kids, just fly in and get home. NBD. The 1 day I had in Amsterdam, I walked around to some of our favorite places from last time we were there and would text Nora a picture.

    Ultimately I realized that being in these places solo feel different than when I am in them with the family, I was kinda lonely. As my son gets ready to go to school next year its the perfect time to start saying no. I’ve seen enough, I feel good about it, time to enter a new phase, lets see what it has in store.

  • B2C brands…well Warby Parker & Venmo were started here, that is a start right?

    B2C brands…well Warby Parker & Venmo were started here, that is a start right? Maybe we can do something to get entrepreneurs who started here to come back for an event of some kind…

  • Entrepreneurship Reality, what its really like day in day out

    I’ve been hooked on the TV show “The Profit” for a few seasons now. The show records a driven entrepreneur’s journey as she continues to invest her life and money into her struggling business to make it work – no matter what the costs. This isn’t another get rich fast, enlightening path to self-discovery through a start-up business type of reality show. Like Shark Tank, which basically is a show built around celebrating people “raising money” which does not mean “running a successful business”. What I love about The Profit is that you can see the real PAIN on the business owners’  faces, hear it their voices, and feel the hurt, disappointment, confusion, and fear.  To me, THIS is entrepreneurship: the never ending cycle of self doubt, the constant comparison of your startup to others, and the hope of being handed the “I’m proud of you” torch.

    From the time they wake up, until the time they go to sleep, entrepreneurs’ minds pound with the never tiring, always drilling questions:

    • Am I working too much? Or too little?
    • Am I too greedy? Or too generous?
    • Is the company outgrowing me, or am I outgrowing the company?
    • Is there too little in the bank? Or too much?
    • (Yes there is a such thing as too much, if you are under-investing in growth)
    • Should I sell, should I ride it out?
    • Is so-and-so on my team happy? Or are they looking for a new gig?
    • Should I staff in advance assuming they’ll leave? Or wait until they leave and be strapped?
    • Should I let person Y go? Or keep them, even though they are good for the business but not for the company culture?

    These are the thoughts that pulse in an entrepreneur’s’ mind, every year of EVERY. SINGLE. DAY

    I recently read the post, Why I left my $254,895 PM Role at Microsoft. It gave the vibe of every other “break-away from the corporate grind” to find self-discovery posts that I’ve read before. But I feel like for every 100 self-discovery posts, there is maybe one, true self-discovery. In all honesty – that’s a reminder  that entrepreneurship sucks. It’s tough. Its posts like, “how quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up” that depict the more raw, turbulent challenges an entrepreneur faces every day his business is running.

    The common belief that running your own business gives you time to do things on your own time was a farce for me. Back when I had my corporate gig, every Friday in the summer I’d take half of a vacation day and drive down early to the Jersey Shore, the good one, not the MTV one. I’d avoid all of the traffic and arrive at the beach before it was crowded. I’d make it to my “shore house” before my 15 roommates showed up.  It was great!  The following year, I started SEER; I can confidently say that my relaxing, care-free beach weekends never happened again. Starting my own business meant I missed a lot of Fridays with my friends down the beach,I was often the LAST guy down,and  scrambled to find a bed. It meant I took a tablet or laptop to the beach instead of a book.

    It was then that I had an “oh shit moment.” Yes, working for someone else has a whole crapton of negatives – but there was also a large positive: vacation days, the ability to get to see my friends, chances to let my guard down, and opportunities to fully relax.

    The biggest casualty of entrepreneurship is time and open “headspace”. With all of the pros of what this company has provided for me and wife, it comes with an additional heavy weight – lack of free time on weekends or a clear head most days. It’s not that I spend less time with my wife, Nora, my dog Coltrane, or my new son Rio. The change is that now I have placed such a high priority on our time together – I’ve had to become ridiculously stingy with the other people in my life who want my time outside of work. People at this point must be confused, thinking I’m the most social, anti-social guy they’ve ever met. There are so few days where I am not needed or wanted – that every time there is a weekend event, family gathering, wedding, or cocktail party –  I kind of hate going because it takes time away from my wife, son and dog. The free time I have on weekends I spend, learning, laughing, or trying to find a sliver of time with my GOOD friends.

    That is sad, but it’s part of my first casualty of entrepreneurship. More casualties will come; they have a habit of rearing their heads slowly. My wife now drags when she has to book a wedding, because  she knows if that weekend is available, I’d much rather sit around and do nothing or kick it with her and my pooch, instead of spending my weekend at a very joyous affair. Its another mandate on my time, which if I had my druthers, would only be spent with VERY close friends and family. Every entrepreneur will have their first casualty. For me, because it’s a high priority to keep time with my wife (which I have kept), but in return, I basically look at every other non-work request as a burden on the little bit of free time I have in which I have headspace to play, read, run, learn something new, and enjoy.

    Solving it..

    I could make the company more autonomous, but that puts you right back into the cycle.

    I could hire more people to get more time back into my life, but this could ding margins big time, maybe even put the company in a long term bad place. Or worse, maybe not get to know the people I work with. Am I too far gone where now every request on a weekend is a burden?

    Do I have the $$ in the bank to afford someone who can fill in for me?

    Then will I trust them, how long will that take, and what if they don’t work out?

    Oh yeah, there it is again, the voices of

    fear

    self doubt

    confusion

    worry.

    Push

    Pull.

    Get used to it, entrepreneur. This is what you signed up for and it is awesome, you’ll avoid burnout (I have) by just saying no more and more, and when people give you a hard time about that, ask yourself…am I spending time with the people who matter? If that answer is yes, you are doing the right thing.

    ok, one more….if i had to offer any advice, its get in tune with where you get energy, its critical to helping you know what to say yes and no to w/o feeling overwhelmed. For me its spending time with my family, learning new things, doing work I enjoy, and watching people grow.  For others, like Nora, time with friends is a big part of how she gets hers, on top of time wirh family, doing meaningful work, etc.

    PS my son is literally crying right now (and has been for 5 minutes), so I’m gonna cut this short, where’s my wife to help while I write?  Out to dinner with friends, solo. I think I’ll feed him, and take him and the dog for a walk, ahhh that’s a GREAT sunday, time with Just Rio and Coltrane.  Nora, hope you come home soon.

  • Speaking with our wallet, in a world of options, what your CEO says & your company does matters

    Look around us, we all like supporting the “good guys” – there is a resurgence in Farmers Markets, Eat Local, Supporting Artisans (who wouldn’t want to buy a bike from this guy or a knife from this guy).  There is something about watching those videos that makes you say, hey if all things are equal, and prices close why would I NOT buy a motorcycle or a knife from those lovely gents.

    We are all commodities

    Every business benefits on client service when you think of yourself as an easily replaced commodity, you’ll have to differentiate on caring about your customer.

    Now think, in markets where all things aren’t always equal, many of us will pay a little more for going with someone / or something we believe in. Again,  all things being equal, wouldn’t we like to fly the airline with this awesome pre-flight video or this one (I’ve flown with this guy once from PHL-LAS Vegas) versus this company’s Video? I’ll support Zappos over Footlocker, regardless of the difference in price, and I know some others reading this do too. 

    The inspiration for this post came from reading this about dropbox’s founder. As I read it I must say Drew Houston started feeling like a normal regular guy, in a world of CEOs who think they are awesome, Its great seeing some humility. To check that sentiment I went to twitter. I really like his tweet stream, the way he talks about new people, newly acquired companies, etc. 

    I feel like he’s a human.  For a long time I’ve been watching his competitor Box and their CEO the highly successful Aaron Levie, whom I have been a customer of for probably 6-7 years.  Drew seems so much more like a guy who fits my beliefs, one of my big things are “normal” CEOs that no matter how many people say they are great, they continue being, well … NORMAL.

    Just watching the first few minutes of this video, I just go yeah his guy feels normal – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUxBdBexmFI

    So today after spending hours researching him I decided it might be time to switch from Box, file storage is something I see as mostly a commodity, box, dropbox, etc they are all just a place to put my files, but they are critical to creating the type of company I want to work in.

    I’ve always admired Box’s consistent innovation getting me features before I even thought I’d need them, but for the most part they aren’t much different than the others. All things being equal, guess what?  I’m going to go with the CEO who seems to be building a company that reflects my values most, for the same reason why I feel better buying from my local farmers.

    I’m going to have to put together a team to re-evaluate that I’m not crazy here, but I can say that I expect to be a Dropbox customer in 2014, purely because I think he’s my kind of guy.  For some reason I feel that following Drew will help me become a better manager, founder, and company-leading guy, following Aaron won’t.  So why not put my money with the guy who can solve my needs as well as the incumbent and help me become a better CEO.

    So lastly this whole thing got me thinking about SEER, and I thought all things being equal, when a client selects SEER over several other great firms out there, our clients should know that the money they invest and trust in SEER goes to not only us, but it enables us to do great things in our community for various non profits, it enables us to share what we learn in the marketing community, it enables us to build a company that can employ great people, who get together and kick ass.

    image

    Dropbox, we will see you next year!

  • Getting Emotional

    So, there I stood, in front of my whole team – it was 8am, and people strolled in for our monthly team meeting.  The projectors were fired up to bring in Aleyda and other folks from around the country/globe from the SEER team.  It felt like any other day, any other team meeting, people yawned a bit, you’d hear the frantic feet as they hit the old wooden steps from the few people who showed up late, peeked into the auditorium, and quietly took seats.

    Our leadership team, we were prepared, and we started talking about our business lines, how they were doing, what we were doing to grow, hire, etc. We updated the team on how we did last quarter, we shared the numbers with the team, and talked about upcoming projects. Nothing out of the ordinary. We discussed new team members coming, where we could improve, again nothing out of the ordinary.   

    As I looked at my screen with my notes on what I wanted to cover in my evernote, there was a reminder to shout out Crystal for her 6 year anniversary. Nothing new.

    So I look over at Crystal, who is the quiet spine of SEER Interactive, she’s been my rock since her first day. Here she was 7 months or so pregnant, moving into motherhood. 

    So I quickly said to my team, a few things I had written, but this was different, something felt weird…my stomach started feeling all weird and I could feel it.

    Mentally I’m like…are you fucking serious Wil?


    But I guess that is the beauty of emotion, even the toughest of us, with the most pride sometimes can’t keep em down. My nose was wet, I started sniffling as I spoke about how Crystal is a big reason why I grew SEER (I would have stopped long ago, because without leadership to help handle it, it wouldn’t have been fun). Sniffles kept coming but no one noticed.  I thought I could wrap it up and get off the stage, but I had another point to make.

    I started listing out some people by name and saying, hey without Crystal being here I don’t know if I would have met “you, and you, and you, and you”.

    Then something started creeping up in my voice, which is often stern, direct, and has an intonation that is pretty sharp, not now. My voice was all muddled.

    Then there was the last straw, I had a flashback of my recent trip to Europe with my wife and thought, that might not have happened without the comfort of my leadership team, and my most tenured member of the team, Crystal.

    And then I felt the warmth of a tear roll down my cheek (Crystal was stoic, no visible emotion). Here I was unable to hold my emotions in when speaking of the impact that a person had on my life personally and on SEER and so many SEER people.  

    I felt kinda naked, not that my exterior is some kind of persona, even my DISC profile nails me at a person who is tough but has deep care for people, I was standing in front to 50 or so people and it was obvious that I had a bout of deeply felt emotions coming out of my nose, eye and voice.

    After it was all over I joked about how no one better tweet about it before I do damn it! But that night I started wondering…was that a good thing, nothing, or a bad thing.  I think that was the wrong lens to look at it.  It was the right thing. It was hard to hold my head up for a few minutes after that, but it is what I felt.

    I learned that this business is EXTREMELY personal to me. Crystal and many others have made major sacrifices to join me on this journey and to me that makes me thankful, DEEPLY thankful. When reading this article about the CEO of Sriracha over on Mark Suster’s blog, the thing that stood out is how the CEO looks at his business. 

    This quote especially stood out to me:

    “This company, she is like a loved one to me, like family. Why would I share my loved one with someone else?”

    So I guess that is where I am too, this company, SEER that is, is so much more to me than an enterprise that makes money, and does marketing, it took standing in front of my team and in the process of thanking someone for their contribution to remind me that yup, that feeling is still there 10 years later. It was also my gut check that, showed me and the team that this business is a lot more than a business to me.

  • Wow, Entrepreneurship has become really self-congratulatory

    https://youtu.be/GTDRgzuW_No?t=701

    That quote is from Bram Cohen, founder of BitTorrent, see it in the video above. I loved hearing him say that it is so succinct because it is something I have written thousands of words trying to convey.

    This quote from Yvon Chouinard the founder of Patagonia has always resonated with me:

    “I had always avoided thinking of myself as a businessman. I was a climber, a surfer, a kayaker, a skier and a blacksmith. We simply enjoyed making good tools and functional clothes that we, and our friends, wanted”

    Reading let my people go surfing has really given me the ability to say it too.

    I have been reluctant for a long time to tag myself an “entrepreneur” or “CEO”, b/c I believe the shit is over hyped. Its like nails on a chalkboard when someone says it along side my name. CEO of SEER Interactive….yelch!

    I don’t like talking about entrepreneurship, which people ask me to talk about all the time. I decline it in most instances or change it to what I like talking about…doing what you love in a way that lets you live the life you want to live with the people you want to live it out with. I prefer to talk about failure, maybe its because I am insanely hard on myself.

    I hang out with company founders all the time, so I don’t have a problem with it, it just doesn’t fit me. I don’t wanna sell, I don’t wanna go IPO, I don’t have an exit plan, I don’t have a get to 20 million by X date goal, I just wanna wake up and love what I do and the people I do it for and with.

    My business cards have showed my reluctance from day 1, they just say associate.  I once had cards printed up, and someone allowed them to be printed with CEO, I threw them out and ordered new ones.  That is how much I detest it. 

    I guess I am trying to avoid the things that let people start down that slippery slope of thinking they’re awesome. Big dreams for instance, everyone talks about dreaming big.  You know what…I dream small. I dream in taking care of one client at a time. I believe with ever fiber of my being that if we do what’s right by our clients, the growth will take care of itself.  It has so far.

    Who are the other CEO’s/founders/associates that you know that have a contrarian view on entrepreneurship?  I’d like to meet more of them.

  • Picking Mentors who help you be the best YOU

    So, Brad Aronson (my CEO-BFF) – wrote this amazing piece on 42 ways to just inject happiness in people’s lives randomly.

    I am so lucky to have met Brad, and thank my lucky stars that he takes time for me from time to time.  He is who I aspire to be in so many ways.  Brad cares about people, and as an ex-CEO of a multi-office, 150 person, multi million dollar search company back in the late 90’s – you would think that when we get together, we would talk about growth and expansion.  He’s been there, he’s done that, so he is a wealth of knowledge. But what many people don’t know is that he worked in a group home as a counselor to kids before starting this business. So he has that volunteer and business side. I bet at some point he spent time in Oregon Truffle Hunting, ha!

    Yet so often our conversations go from Revenue to Relationships.  What people don’t know about Brad is that he started off 

    Where am I volunteering my TIME, how he can support my charities, how am I making Nora feel special, am I taking the time out I should be for my team, my wife, etc.

    Brad has grown a business, sold a business, hired, and fired, he’s made tough decisions that people may not have liked, so he’s no sap, he is tough on me on firing quickly.

    I wanted to write this little quick piece to remind people of this…

    For anyone out there who has a mentor or is seeking out mentors, my advice for you is find balance.  Keep in mind mentors also give bad advice sometimes, and don’t follow it blindly.

    Surrounding yourself with people who only talk about revenue growth is fine, if growth equals happiness for you.  For me it does not, so while Brad drills me on revenue growth, he’s equally as interested in my relationship growth.

    He knows how to probe on the revenue side and he knows how to probe deep on the relationship side too. For me happiness is about balance, its not becoming a 10 Million dollar company if that gets in the way of my happiness. Happiness is about helping people and if my mentors were focused on revenue growth only, I think I’d need new mentors.

    While Brad is the “super mentor” because he:

    • built and sold a business that is in my industry
    • lives 10 minutes away
    • makes himself available often
    • big on family
    • big on volunteering, community impact

    I would recommend that you don’t look for super mentors, instead find the things you need advice on, the things you need to be kept honest on, and find mentors who fill those gaps for you.

    Now I gotta figure out how to take the 42 little things and implement them, for my clients, my team, my wife, and my family.  Nora and I just has a conversation last night about traveling, and I think I might be able to take 1-2 of his ideas and turn them into something that can bridge that gap when we are apart. 

  • Biting off more than you can chew is a GREAT idea

    If you don’t bite off more than you can chew sometimes, how will you ever know how much to bite next time?

    So, I was looking at my travel schedule last night, and Nora could just tell I was exhausted just thinking about it. Its NYC -> Philly -> London -> Amsterdam -> Phily -> Munich -> Croatia -> Instanbul -> Philly -> San Diego (Driving to open our new office) -> Philly -> Boston -> San Diego. That is over a course of 8 weeks. Its exhausting, but Nora and I are “Hitting it Hard” before she won’t be able to travel with me as much due to her work.

    So I sit thinking, OMG did I just bite off more than even I can chew, AGAIN?  Answer is probably.  Will I get through all of this?  DEFINITELY!

    In looking at this crazy schedule I got to thinking…its good to bite off more than you can chew sometimes. You learn a LOT about yourself.  So go for it (once in a while).

    The key when you bite off more than you can chew is you MUST continue to get everything done or else you risk breaking trust.

    So go for it. Here are just a few things you will learn.

    1 – You will learn your breaking point.

    Its good to know that as early as possible.  For instance I know I can work off of 4 hours of sleep, 2 nights in a row, but never more than that, how did I learn it?  Its critical to know your breaking point, we all have it, go find it. 

    2 – You will learn to delegate.

     There is something about looking and saying “This is too much, but I don’t want to change course” that causes you to look around at your team, identify the people for whom you can share your load with, who care as much as you do, and will be rock solid.  People who don’t 

    delegate well don’t have enough work!  Load them up until they say “UNCLE” then have their back to show them that when they ask for help, they’ll always get it.

    3 – Your team mates will develop new skills & grow professionally.

    See that is the beauty of delegation! By sharing your load with others who are often eager to help, you get to see them grow professionally and personally and being a part of someone’s path, even if they leave is very fulfilling. I learned a whole new way to manage my inbox, by this method, and it helps me feel less stressed every day.

    4 – You will place a MUCH greater premium on your time.

    Which means those whom you share it with realize that they matter to you.

    5 – Leaders in your company will emerge.

    Good people want to help, you just gotta let them.

    Leaders see you holding on to too much, and if they have a long term track record of performance will see you struggling and they will help.  It never ceases to amaze me at how hard people will work to help  me out before I even need to ask.  I think this happens for several reasons, but I think its important that you  have broad shoulders, no leader wants to help someone who poorly prioritizes their time, who isn’t willing to go the extra mile, and doesn’t consistently goes the extra mile.

    6 – You will learn that you are better & stronger than you think you are

    Once you decide to stretch yourself thin and stop playing it safe, you see that you got through something super difficult just fine.  You might decide to never do it again, but you gain confidence in YOURSELF! Knowing that you “did it" regardless of what that challenge to yourself it.

    Once you get through biting off more than you can chew, take a break.  The goal is to get some level of light at the end of your tunnel even on the way into the tunnel.  So for me, its mid may.  Up until then, its MAD hustle. Its super important when you have bitten off too much, to be able to look objectively at your situation and say I gotta put something in place to bring light to the end of the tunnel.

    After a little bit, go bite off more, each time you do you’ll learn more about yourself, I have found that I’ve learned the most about myself when I have gotten in over my head.

    All the while never lose sight of what really matters, if my wife wasn’t able to travel with me on much of these trips, I wouldn’t do them, or I’d be home a HECK of a lot quicker 🙂

  • Learning to focus

    So I was in Nicaragua a few weeks ago as many of you know.  While most people said, it will be good to have a week of extremely limited Internet, when I asked “why” no one had a good reason, it was all about recharging and being immersed in the experience (which I did)  But I actually did learn several things by being unplugged, it wasn’t about recharging it was a lesson in how I could increase my focus.

    #1 – Inbox Zero w/o filters is suicide
    Knowing that there was a GOOD chance that I would not have Internet I did something I was shown a while ago by Will Critchlow, the inbox delegation feature in Gmail.
    It worked like a charm, while down there, I knew that most days I might get between 30-90 minutes of Internet on a 2g connection, doing that for 7 days I knew an “out of office” wouldn’t be enough. So not only was I off of email (critical) I was also off of twitter (not critical but important, and darn it, fun).  I couldn’t delegate my twitter, so I just let it sit for a week.
    Kristen was able to manage the crazy flow, meaning when I logged in most days I only actually had 20-30 emails (10% of my typical flow) that were really important for me to answer in a 1-2 day turnaround.

    That was eye opening, so much so that I kept my inbox delegated when I got back, but I wanted to first try just using filters before having Kristen working on it.
    As someone who enjoys SEO and loves working directly with clients, I used to get cc’ed on a LOT of project emails, which I would check immediately, this would constantly break my concentration and have me off on new tangents, breaking my concentration on what I was currently working on.

    Upon coming back I decided to filter all basecamp messages out to a different “inbox” and now I have decided to block out 2-3 times every day to go through basecamp, but its more structured and on a schedule, I also now am finding time to just call clients and check in, seeing how we are doing and where their businesses are headed.

    #2 – Twitter, do I REALLY need you??
    About 50% of the people I follow on twitter are probably SEOs. Its not a secret that I have been struggling with my “role” on social media .  I’ve struggled with it since the beginning (this post is 5 years old). I’ve always seen it as something that can go from helpful to narcissistic, ego-filling drivel in a heartbeat, and I am constantly afraid of crossing that line.

    I also have a hard time focusing on one thing, I am easily distracted, and that is exactly what social media is great for, distracting you in the middle of trying to do other more important shit. Having a week off from social media, was easier than I thought, because I missed thousands of BS tweets, but I KNEW I also missed some important industry news.  So how would I keep up / catch up?
    Well since SEO is a major echo chamber, I have a twitter list specifically titled out of the echo chamber, where I don’t have any SEO folks, so I can get new perspectives (just made it public) – https://twitter.com/wilreynolds/out-of-the-echo-chamber – always taking recommendations to add to this list.

    The problem is that Twitters use of lists BLOWS, so it means that these lists are “3-4 clicks away” from twitter.com, and I find myself spending a LOT of time on twitter.com
    Inbound.org to the rescue!

    When I was finally able to reconnect I couldn’t go through thousands of twitter messages just to find the good ones, so what did I do?  I went to Inbound.org, and SEOmoz (especially youmoz).  I figured that all those SEO people I follow likely tweeted and RT’ed and RT’ed and RT’ed the good stuff from there already, Inbound.org showed me that I could avoid following a lot of the echo chamber or heavy tweeters since most of what they tweet is SEO news or @’s back and forth.  
    Now for SEOs like Will Critchlow and Rand (yeah you guys are still SEOs to me) who share about wide ranges of topics, INCLUDING SEO, so I knew I wanted to follow them still.

    But the hardcore SEO, whom I learn a lot from and LOVE deeply, they do tend to RT the same stuff, so I can unfollow and add them to my list instead.
    It’s the people like Ardath Albee, Mike Gadsby, watch out during he phillies season he gets a little crazy, Patrick McKenzie, Cole Nussbaumer, or our own Steph Beadell, who I think are GEMS to follow, they get me thinking differently, but I miss their stuff sometimes when I am on twitter.com, because of the RT machine that goes on in the SEO echo chamber of the same articles buries their tweets.

    I had already done this in a more private way. About 3 months ago I unsubscribed to tons of SEO blogs in my feed reader because I was getting the good stuff via twitter, and my Google Reader became useless, I just see this experiment as a tactic in that vein. Today my Google reader is used to get the info from the people who are not well known or haven’t gotten on the radar of the echo chamber, they may blog 1-2 times a month at most, so their stuff easily gets lost. But I don’t need SEOmoz or SEL in my reader anymore, right? Twitter is now able to do that sorting for me, and now I think I can put that in a separate list.
    So I am going to try something new, I am going to “unfollow” a lot of SEO people, but add them to a list instead. I will still see their stuff, but just when I block out time for reviewing that list allowing me to stay more focused.

    I hope this helps me focus better.
    Oh one more thing, Pocket.  Ahh Pocket you are a lifesaver, I used to allow myself to get all into reading articles (an important part of my job) becoming yet another distraction, now every time I see something good I pocket it, and then I schedule time to read what is in my pocket.  

    If you are interested in finding new content that gets you thinking differently, I have found that Zite is also pretty decent for that.
    #3 – The last realization I had was that my team is comprised of more managers of one than at any time in SEER’s history, that always lets you maintain focus, so it sharpened my desire to help them continue to make decisions on their own and with the support of their colleagues and me when needed. Nothing like going away for a week, and realizing everything ran great to show you how much people at your company care about delivering for clients and having each others back.

    I have always struggled with 2 things, focus and listening. I work on them all the time, I’m wondering how this test will play out.  Also guys if I unfollow you, you are ON my SEOs list, its just something new I am trying.