The Morning Upgrade Podcast Featuring Julie Traxler and Corey Harris

Welcome to episode #99 of the Morning Upgrade Podcast. In this week’s episode I spoke with Julie Traxler and Corey Harris, owners of SB Pace and Certivium.

Top Talking Points

• Tips for balancing a large number of personal projects.
• Advice for improving your business by narrowing the scope of your work.
• Strategies for winding down and turning off your work mode.

Resources & Links

Connect With Julie and Corey at SBPace.com.

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Thank you for listening to this episode of The Morning Upgrade Podcast. If you enjoyed my conversation with Julie and Corey, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and please leave a review.

Episode Transcript

Announcer

Hey, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.

Unknown Speaker  

Hey, Julie and Corey, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you guys?

Julie 

Great. Thanks for having us.

Corey 

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Ryan 

I’m excited. You know, this is new territory for me. I have not interviewed two people at once yet. So I’m excited. I’m excited to speak to you both.

Julie 

Now we’re gonna make this real easy for you.

Corey  

Most of the talking anyway, so

Ryan 

Well, Julie, then why don’t you kick us off by telling everyone who you guys are, what you guys do for a living? And then give us a win happening in your life right now.

Julie  

Okay, well, listen, who we are. Cory Harris and Julie Traxler. And well we got a lot going on. So together, we have two businesses; we have SB Pace, which is dedicated to small business owners, typically 20 employees or less, and we focus on we do coaching and consulting. And we’re really helping small business owners to become more efficient and to be able to scale their business with stability. And our number one core value is we don’t sell stuff you don’t need. So we are always trying to fire ourselves. And our second business is called Sirtibeium. And that focused on social media management and customer engagement. And we went to market with that business because we had clients who needed solutions, and there was nothing in the market that actually worked for their price points. So we created that business out of a need for our clients. And we’re really proud of; we’re really proud of both businesses. Cory is in the process of opening a restaurant. So he needed one more thing to add to his plate. And we have podcast Biz Quick. And we have a weekly live national radio show. So we have a few things going on.

Ryan  

I actually feel stressed and anxious just listening to you describe all that. Man, that’s great. The restaurants are interesting why the restaurant is just a dream of yours. Or

Corey  

You can say that it’s just in my blood; I had 14 years of restaurant experience prior to leaving the industry and getting into consulting and working for larger companies. And I was probably out of the industry for a couple of years and just got that itch, I wanted to go back as nice as it was to have weekends off and, you know, work the so-called nine to five, I just I really just missed it and decided that I didn’t want to have a day off ever again.

Ryan

Work every day long hours. Perfect. So this is gonna get away from my normal flow because I like to talk about morning routines at the start. But now that we’re on this topic, I just have a question I think will be important for my audience of morning upgraders around like time management and delegation, like now that you have all these businesses, the podcast shows that you’re gonna have the restaurant, what’s going to how are you going to pull that off? What’s going to enable you to carve off all that time to work on the restaurant? I think there are some business lessons in there.

Corey

Well, so for myself and Julie, I mean, we have – this is obviously not a surprise, it’s not something that you just jump into, it’s there’s a lot of work that goes into it. And so we, for us, it was all about just communication and staying on the same page. And just getting to the point where, you know, we even just had a conversation right before this where we were going through the schedule, and I was like, Look, I can’t do this anymore. And I can’t do that. And, you know, so we’re cutting things out of our daily routines that things that okay, well, we just don’t need to do that anymore. Julie’s taking on additional responsibilities. And then, for me, I’m just trying to figure out how to make it work. So knowing the restaurant industry, as I do, the hardest part is committing to times of the days to be available for stuff. So you know, if we have a client that says, We need a 4 pm meeting every day, I simply can’t do that. Because I know, not every day, but like every Thursday, I can’t do that because I never know what’s going to happen on a Thursday. So we’re shifting a lot of that kind of work to Julie who has a more flexible schedule. And then I’m sticking to kind of the back-end stuff that I can do at odd hours of the day when I have time. But I think communication and it is being transparent and upfront is going to make this successful.

Julie  

I want just to jump in and add one other thing, too. When we started SBP’s we really, you know, we made that critical mistake that a lot of new businesses make where we thought everyone was our customer and we wanted to do everything for everybody. And Cory opening the restaurant has really forced us to be very, very intentional about not only the clients we want to work with but the type of work that we’re going to do, so we started probably July of last year already looking at what are the changes we’re going to have to start to make in order to scale quarry back still We’ll be able to run SB pace, support our clients, but make sure that we’re supporting our clients in the best way possible. And that we’re doing work that we can continue to do, even if Cory had zero availability for SP pays. So an exercise that I think all businesses should get to eventually is are we really focusing on the things that matter? We were, we were forced into it because the restaurant is a priority. And so looking at our business, from that perspective, I think has been very beneficial for us, because now we’re only doing things that we really, really love, and that we’re really good at and that we know, we’ll bring value to the marketplace. And we’re not pretending anymore, that we’re all things to everybody

Ryan 

Makes total sense a lot; a lot of left a lot of lessons in there in the last few minutes. I love the idea of getting crystal clear on what you should be spending your time on. It’s something that I’m focused on this year with my businesses, like, am I working on things that really matter? And they’re tied to, you know, my goals and the vision the of the businesses. And so I think that’s, that’s a really huge takeaway, Julie. So let’s go to personal development a little bit off, I come back to business. But let’s talk about your morning routines. What does that look like for you guys?

Julie  

I’ll go first on this one, I am I, so my morning is this is gonna sound probably a little hokey to some some of your listeners. But the first thing that I do every morning when I wake up I have a very solid routine in the morning. And it is I set a timer on my phone for 13 minutes and 47 seconds. And I spend that 13 minutes and 47 seconds divided between gratitude, prayer, and visualization. And then when that’s done, every morning, I listen to the Morning Wire podcast, 15 minutes, give me a bit of news. I drink coffee and do my big social media posts in the morning. And then I go to the gym. And it is when that routine gets messed up, which it does every Thursday for our radio show. It throws me off for the entire day. But that’s my morning routine. And it works really well for me and sets me up for a good successful day.

Ryan  

Why 13 minutes and 47 seconds? I’ve got to ask that.

Julie  

I don’t like even numbers. And I have found that I need that extra 47 seconds to get situated to make sure I get all 13 minutes in. I started with like seven minutes. It wasn’t enough that I went to nine than 11. And now I’m at 13, and 13 is perfect. Usually, I wrap up with about seven seconds left.

Ryan  

Super interesting. My morning routine is about 20 to 25 minutes, but I like that it’s a Morning Wire. I haven’t heard that before. So I’m gonna I have an email newsletter that I read every morning to get my news, but I like the idea of a podcast too. So thanks for sharing that. 

Julie

Yeah, it’s a great podcast.

Ryan 

Cory, what about you?

Cory 

So I’m more of a night owl, so mornings for me, I’m probably the worst, not the worst, but not the best guest to have on for this for the longest time. You know I was working nights I was managing a bar, and I was going to bed usually when most people were getting up to start their morning routines. But for me, like for the most part and with just everything kind of being chaotic and across the board. The only thing that’s consistent in my daily routine and it throws my day off completely if I don’t get it is I have to ease into the day I have to ease into my morning and that’s usually about 20 to 30 minutes of like just laying in bed I’m not going back to sleep but like I can’t just get up and get going, and if I do it, it ruins my days like when I wake up, and I’m late for something, and I have to hop out of bed and just jump right at it. It really screws me up, so that’s for me it’s different every morning, but it’s I don’t like to get that first 20 minutes of my day feeling rushed so even if it’s just reading the news for a couple of minutes and then slowly make my way downstairs, make some coffee or whatever it is. I just have to ease into my day otherwise, I’m ruined.

Ryan  

I like the fact you have the nighttime routine knows you guys have, like the book ends the morning in the night. What do you do at night?

Corey 

For me, I’m usually still working, so before we had the restaurant it was, you know, as I go to the gym, make dinner, and finish up whatever work I’m doing. You know most nights I’m still on my computer and the granite because that’s pretty much where I do everything I’m 99% of my meals are eaten at my computer when I’m home. You know, finishing up everything for the day, catching up on everything that I need to catch up on for the weekend or for that week or the following morning. And then you know spend some time relaxing so you know I always try to get something in at the end of the day whether it’s sit down to watch you know some TV or you know just catch up on sports that happened for the day. Whatever it is just, you know, those hours from midnight until I make it into bed are usually just relaxing time before I start my next day.

Ryan 

I don’t usually ask this question, but because you guys, it sounds like you have like a very full schedule, obviously, with all the businesses, how do you turn off? I know this is a common problem for most business owners. But how do you turn off? How do you relax? And you mentioned watching TV and whatnot. But is there anything that you guys do that really just turns your brain off so you can relax and get rejuvenated?

Julie 

For me? No, not really. I will, you know, try and I read every day, but they’re all business books, most podcasts that I listened to are business related podcasts. My rule is, I don’t work on I try not to ever work on a Saturday I’ll take the whole day. Because as Corey can attest, if I, if Julie works seven days in a row, by the time you hit like day, 11, or 12, I’m just really difficult to be around. So I can manage it that way. And a lot of times, you know, if you it’s not uncommon for people to wake up in the middle of the night and be feeling all sorts of stress, or like, Oh, I forgot to do something or being anxious. And I have just recently, within like, the last probably six months found a way to deal with that is when I wake up, and I’m feeling super anxious or stressed that I immediately go to gratitude. And that will calm my brain down enough that I can fall back asleep. I try not to spend too much time stressed or worried, especially in the evening, but I’m not great at it. I don’t have the most exciting personal life haven’t for like the last two years. But it’s you know, it’s a sacrifice that I think a lot of entrepreneur entrepreneurs willingly make.

Ryan 

Yeah, I mean, there are seasons to life, right? You guys just in the busy season trying to build the businesses and working longer hours, and you might want to or might have to in the future or do earlier. So I think there’s a season in life, right? As that’s the way, it goes.

Julie 

Yeah, definitely. For me,

Corey  

I’ve found that there’s a significant difference in the amount of stress and the type of stress I have when I’m doing physical work versus like desk work, basically. And I caught like desk work being meetings, like a lot of like just communications type stuff, emails, text messages, phone calls, all that type of stuff that drains me significantly more than physical work, I could go work out in my yard for 12 hours, or go into the restaurant and prep food for you know, six hours in the morning, and I might be sore might be a little bit physically tired. But mentally, like I’m, I’m still ready to go. But if I had to sit through six hours of phone calls and meetings and all of that, like I’m just done for the day, so for me, as crazy as it sounds like doing physical work is the best way for me actually to unwind because I can’t be on my phone. I can’t be answering emails; I can’t be doing all of those things that really just, like, stress me out and just drain me mentally.

Ryan  

Do you feel like physical work feeds your energy and feeds your happiness?

Corey  

I mean, I say yes, it does. I mean, everything like if you were to ask me what my hobbies are, they all involve doing something physical, you know, like, whether it’s working in the yard or hiking or just doing something moving, that do like, relax, everybody likes to relax at the end of the day, but it’s not like I’m gonna go mow my lawn at one in the morning. That physical stuff definitely does. Even though it drains me physically, it recharges me mentally.

Ryan  

I like to ask about the meaning of life. It’s personal question meaning like your view, and it’s gonna be different than my view. What about you guys? Are you on the same page with the meaning of life? Or if not, maybe we take turns and talk about that topic for a minute.

Julie  

I’m gonna guess we’re probably not on the same page. Corey is very logical and more, you know, you know, sort of on the I don’t know, I believe in something bigger. So I, for me the meaning of life. I honestly never contemplated it before. But I would say this; I’ll keep it really simple. I think the point is to have fun, and help others. That, to me, is the meaning of life. 

Ryan

Corey, what do you think?

Corey 

Yeah, not kind of on the same page there because, you know, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know if there is a meaning. And it’s not something that I’d ever really contemplated. Because it’s, for me, it’s just about controlling the chaos, surviving and just doing something fulfilling as you’ve, there’s a ton of stuff in the world you can’t control. So there’s no reason to stress over that. For me, I need to get better at not stressing over the little things that I can control as much as I do. But I mean, just in general, it’s, it’s just improving, continuing and moving forward. It’s, you know, never settling for the status quo.

Ryan  

Yeah, great answers, guys. I appreciate that. So I’ve got one last question for both of you. I want, and then we’ll wrap up with you telling everyone how they can learn more about about you both. You mentioned before scaling businesses. That’s one of the things you help your clients with. And so I know that can be a topic we talk for 30 minutes about, but in the next one or two minutes, just whatever comes to mind like your So advice for, for small businesses in general? No, it depends. But in general, some scaling advice, what would you say to someone?

Julie 

All right, I will go first on this one. And my advice for small business owners who are looking to scale is to not be in too big of a hurry and to make sure that they are well positioned to do so. So frequently, we hear, you know, somebody’s trying to sell to a small business owner, like, hey, I can help you 10x or 5x, or whatever your revenue. And most small businesses aren’t set up to be able to absorb that type of growth because they don’t have the right foundation in place and the right systems and processes in place. So I would say, be very intentional. And it’s okay to take your time scaling and growing, because that growth will come. But it’s always going to bring challenges with it.

Ryan 

That’s a really good point. People want to grow, but they don’t; they don’t think about do they have the infrastructure in place to handle the growth. So that was a great answer Julie. I really appreciate that. What about you Corey?

Corey 

Julie stole all of the answers. I’m just going to expand upon one. And it’s one of the topics that I love to talk about most. And it’s just the processes in your business. And you’re never too small, whether in terms of revenue, employees or even if it’s just yourself, to document your processes. Because it gives you easily repeatable steps, it gives you training materials, it gives you all of the different things that you need to find out when you start growing, where your bottlenecks are, or where they’re going to be, you don’t have to solve for them now, but just being aware of the fact that this is going to be a problem at a point. Get too, you know, so far ahead of the game that you’re not surprised when it becomes one. So documenting your processes, reviewing them, understanding them, and then just updating them, because a lot of times we like just kind of to set it and forget it. And then you realize that you haven’t looked at this thing in five years. So why did you even bother doing the work in the first place? So that constant improvement and just this, is going to help you be prepared for when you start to grow? And to deal with those growing pains?

Julie  

Yeah, it’s honestly growing. And making that transition from being owner driven to process driven is the hardest transition for small business owners to make excruciating ly difficult for most people, because it’s a lot of upfront work. And then it’s the ability to let go and let other people make decisions and be in control. And it’s a challenge for people.

Ryan

Yeah, I can imagine that’s where your services come in. So I appreciate all the time, guys. The time flew by. You made me laugh a bunch of times. So this was fun. If someone wants to connect with you both, where should we send them? 

Julie

SBpace.com 

Ryan

Easy enough, and it’ll be in the show notes. Thank you both. 

Julie

Thanks, Ryan.

Announcer 

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