← Creator Science with Jay Clouse![#244: I've been avoiding this for too long [Voice Memo] — Creator Science with Jay Clouse cover](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/7036d60e-4b83-11ea-8ddd-d3061c708b65/image/b242810ea7c9eb33771126b9c7cd936c.jpg?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress)
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Once you have a kid, the way that you work just fundamentally probably forever changes, at least for a long time, or at least until they go to school changes. Yesterday there was a point where our daughter was sitting on my lap and I was trying to do a little bit of work and I was doing it with one hand. And I thought to myself, well, if this isn't a perfect metaphor for running a business while parenting, basically have one hand tied behind your back all the time. The reality is time just becomes so much more valuable, so much more scarce. And where you really feel that is you don't have the ability to waste time, you don't have the ability to have as much solo time. At least I don't, as I once had, I don't have as much time to do deep work time. And if I am wasting time or procrastinating, the cost of that procrastination is just so much higher. And so the anxiety I feel around procrastinating is so much worse than it used to be. So what do we do? What do I do about this? Because I'm not going to get a ton of time back. We've made the decision that it's our priority not to do daycare. We could potentially hire like a, a nanny to come into the house and help a couple days a week, we might explore that. But at some level, you know, my time is just more scarce than it ever has been and I'm more or less trying to do the same amount of work in less time. That's not sustainable, it's not plausible. And if you follow me on different social media platforms, you've probably noticed that I don't post as much on social media anymore because that's just one of the things that I've kind of cut out. It's less of a non negotiable. I have to do this every day and more of a luxury because the things that I value and I'm going to continue to deliver on consistently are fulfilling. How I show up in the lab, sending emails, creating podcasts, making YouTube videos, the long form stuff that is a little bit higher value than the social media stuff. But even though I personally want to spend less time in the business, I don't actually have lower ambition for what I want the business to be. And so really the only way forward is hiring. I've got to do a better job hiring, delegating. And it's just been such a hard thing for me to do because I only hire excellent people. Excellent people are more expensive unless you find Someone who does not yet realize they are excellent or the market doesn't realize that they're excellent yet. But I hire excellent people because work is a joy when you give things over to someone excellent and they make something better than you could have done anyway. But the hang up that I often have is right now I have time stress, but not financial stress. If I hire more, I will trade financial stress for time stress. You know, I may unlock some more time, at least in the medium and long term, but I will create new financial stress. Or at least that's the story I tell myself. And what I've realized is I shouldn't think about it that way. I should actually get better at thinking about basic math when it comes to hiring. If I were to hire somebody for, let's just even pretend that I wanted to hire somebody full time or close to full time, and I thought that would be a $60,000 per year investment. That's not actually the right way to think about it. The better way to think about it is if I wanted to hire somebody who needed $60,000 per year to commit all of their time to this business, that's actually a $5,000 per month investment. And that feels a lot more attainable because that's more of a cash flow question. Can I allocate $5,000 incrementally to a new employee for the first or the next several months to get them trained up, to get them going? And if I'm hiring them, the assumption should be they create more value in the business than the cost to the business. So I would want to think, let's just imagine this is a $5,000 per month investment for three months and three months from now they should be earning more into the business than the cost to the business. Now it's a $15,000 per month investment, but again. Or sorry, $15,000 total investment in my mind. But again, it's just cash flow. So I'm trying to change my thinking around this because there are some functions in the business that I do want to hire for. And I think I can hire in and cash flow now. And if I hire right, it should have a immediate payoff effect. And so that is the journey I am about to embark on is better hiring, choosing who to hire and in what order, outsourcing more, getting myself out of some of the day to day. And I think that should continue to grow the business and brand overall. I mean, this is a proven way people build businesses, right? And being a creator is no different. So I just need to be a little bit more courageous and do that. I'm going to be documenting this journey. Of course, everything that I learn will get shared first in the lab. It'll be messy as we go, you know, and I share the the messiest bits in the lab and then tend to wait for an experiment to run its entire course and share it on the podcast or in the newsletter and everywhere else. So if you want to follow along with this as I go through it, this is a great time to join the lab. We just had our town hall this month. We're making some big changes in the community and based on the feedback that I'm seeing, it looks like I'm going to be figuring out how to put together and run masterminds for members here in the community. So it's a good time to join if you have that interest. You can learn more@creatorscience.com lab but otherwise I'll be sharing here on the feed my experiments in hiring as we go Part of the reason that I'm recording this is because I know well. I share something publicly, I hold myself to it, and when I'm in my bravest, rightest of mind, I know this is the right thing to do. So this is my public declaration. I hope to show you what balance looks like in growing a business without putting more time into it and taking more time away from my family. So thanks for listening. If you have any thoughts, comment here on Spotify or tag me at jclaus, Let me know. I hope you have a great weekend and I'll talk to you on Tuesday.