easier business

Today's episode is a special treat for you from our new interview series.

If you're not on Spotify, you can watch the video on YouTube if you feel like you're missing out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdgwQVsG6Lk

Host Patrick Pitman interviews guest expert Jason Snider about the "profit first" mentality.

You'll learn how shifting your thinking to prioritize profit first, rather than growth first, yields a more sustainable business for you and your team.

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You'll hear about the wisdom of prioritizing incremental progress, finding a better path than hustle culture, and "following the feeling" to help yourself make choices with integrity.

Today's episode is a special treat for you from our new interview series, featuring Robbie Swale.

Better work relationships within your team and management mean your organization becomes more adaptive, and more resilient despite whatever challenges may come.

Today's episode is a special treat for you, the first of our new interview series.

Let us know how you feel about videos!

Growing in responsibilities is an exciting part of your career. It means your skills are progressing and you can perform at higher levels. However, as you eventually move into leadership or managerial positions, you're no longer doing the work that got you promoted in the first place.

You're now in charge of the people doing the work that got you promoted.

This shift in responsibilities can be challenging as the skills you've developed over the years, while still important, are no longer directly applicable to your day to day.

So how do you adjust? How do you approach making decisions as the scope of those impacted expands?

In this episode, Patrick and Abigail talk about developing skills, and the confidence that comes from knowing you can do something. Even if it feels challenging at first. And from there, how that process translates to decision-making.

We've all done quizzes or questionnaires that give us insights about ourselves. From the humorous "What kind of pizza are you?" kind to the more serious personality tests there's a desire to understand people better. Yourself and those around you.

When you're in leadership positions, both in your personal and professional life, you're a tone-setter. People look to you for guidance. For direction. For a sense of right and wrong.

The tone you set will ripple out to those around you and expand, particularly as things scale. Self-awareness allows you to bring a level of intention and presence to your leadership.

What is your level of recognition to what your tendencies are? Are you aware of your first reactivity to situations? Finding the spaciousness for this kind of reflection improves your ability to connect and work with others.

A crucial part of growing your business involves delegation as you scale. It's what moves it from just you in your bedroom to a thriving company out in the world. Social media is full of motivational posts romanticizing the grind that can come along this process, but they can have a tone of treating delegation as a way to just "get more done". Like it's a way to extract more out of your day or team.

Delegation is the beginnings of the support system for your business that ripples out to solidify into a strong structure as your team grows. However, if things don't ever get fully handed off, delegation can lead to bottlenecks in the business. So how do you delegate effectively? What underlying needs have to be met or dynamics in place for that to occur? Join us as we walk our way around these ideas.

Your team is collaborating with each other in ways that make them more productive, creative, and insightful than they've ever been. Can you imagine the impact that kind of transformation would have on your business?

It's absolutely possible for you to build a team like this within your business. Today's episode describes several examples of how teams across a variety of industries have found the trust, balance in power dynamics, and a few more ingredients in the secret sauce that gives you a team empowered by collaboration.

When a DTC startup asks for a CX recipe, it turns out the ingredients are simple, kinda hard, and the opposite of what you'd learn from a classic business book. An elder Texas horseman gives us a clue.

We get it, letting go of the reins and trusting the judgment of your team can be a frightening prospect. But at some point, you do need to delegate the work, and that includes making decisions about what's a priority, or not. Trust goes a long way.

Patrick and Abigail break down a weekly reflection ritual that we use to keep our remote team in sync with each other, monitor our employee's development, and maintain oversight of our priorities.

• Trends in employee engagement
• How a supervisor/ founder (Patrick, in our case) can recognize clues his employees are disengaging or having an otherwise challenging moment
• The weekly check-in routine we've developed to help our team stay on the same page with our personal and work priorities
• Kairos and Kronos = two ways to view time (yes we're back with the Greek wisdom)
• Evaluating high-performing employees - maybe we're using the wrong metrics?

Looking for more?

Today's episode shares how a hack dramatically changed the direction of Patrick's business and the value that came out of the lessons learned while navigating the aftermath. We discuss how metis and "trusting your gut" can help you navigate a challenge when it's not clear what the best thing to do is.

Storytime topics for today:

• The voicemail that started it all - Patrick's server administrator alerting him to the hack.
• Patrick's decision of whether or not to report the hack. Did the hackers even know what they'd gotten into?
• How the practical knowledge of Metis can help you navigate a challenge where it's not clear what's the best thing to do.
• Who and what is Metis?
• How techne differs from Metis.
• Do you take your pain early or defer it to later?
• Patrick's approach that got Wells Fargo's Vice President to come alongside and help him, instead of fighting him.
• Risk of millions upon millions of dollars of fines potentially cascading down onto Patrick's company.
• A security bulletin that helped convey how Patrick's company was the best possible source of information to discovering the truth of what happened. To VISA, Wells Fargo, Discover, Patrick's customers, etc.

Welcome to the easier business podcast! As we launch this show our co-hosts, Abigail and Patrick, share some of the business experiences and strategy perspectives you can expect to explore with them in future episodes.

As a multi-generational, father-daughter, co-worker duo, they'll bring Gen-X and Gen-Z perspectives to the conversation.

Storytime topics for today: