By Story time—late last year, I developed a painful, still-undiagnosed condition in my hands, likely from repetitive stress. Blah blah chronic pain, it’s hard to work, typing and mousework for more than 45 minutes in a row is unbearable, I’ve been to lots of doctors, followed lots of random Internet advice, whatever… I don’t really like complaining about health stuff. But, I do like solving problems.
In June, the pain and became so persistent and intractable that it stopped me from doing basic parts of my job. Casey and Amanda kindly encouraged me to find a Chief of Staff who could help take many keyboard-and-mouse intensive tasks off my plate, and after several weeks of resume review and interviewing, I hired a longtime friend, Kristy Morrison.
Kristy’s not just a good friend, she’s also a digital marketing leader with a storied resume, a leadership role at F5 Networks, and a serious case of overqualification. She’s deeply kind, almost preternaturally thoughtful (anticipating so many needs before anyone ever asks), and exceptional at email (the primary form of communication I/we use).
Interestingly, this job is technically a contractor role for all three firms I run—SparkToro, Snackbar Studio, and Alertmouse. But, given that ~80% of my time goes to SparkToro, that’s where most of hers is directed as well. Kristy’s already had a huge impact on:
- Planning and scheduling tasks (if you email me about events, podcasts, or the like, she’s certain to be assisting)
- Helping me finish the rough draft of my and Amanda’s new book, Zero Click Marketing, more news on that coming soon
- Assisting with some recipe research for Snackbar Studio’s gamedev processes
- Helping to manage the beta test and invite list for Alertmouse and the brand’s pun-based, extra cheesy social media presence 🔔🐭🧀🧀🧀
- Developing Alertmouse’s onboarding email sequence
- Scheduling and managing all three companies’ weekly/bi-weekly team meetings
But, her most powerful contribution to date is certainly her extraordinary work on SparkToro’s new Take Action feature. You might have seen the 16 “actions” available in this new product—all of those are the result of hours of painstaking testing, refinement, and design by Kristy. She took concepts from myself and Amanda, turned them into high quality prompts, tested which data from SparkToro was needed to get the best possible results from the LLM API calls, worked with Casey to implement, and then took multiple rounds of our feedback to produce something exceptional (as you can see from the incredible feedback of savvy marketers who’ve used it 👇).
I literally can’t do it alone. The painful repetitive stress injury that means I cannot work on a mouse and keyboard (or tap with precision on a phone) for more than a few hours a day. I’ve switched much of my work to voice-to-text, take frequent breaks, have lots of specialist medical appointments, tests, injections, medications, etc. but so far the issue persists.
That weakness, however, is slowly becoming a strength. I’m forced to be more intentional with my work, and was forced to seek help I probably should have recruited years prior. Running three companies (even “Chill Work” ones) is a lot. Occasionally, despite the careful designs, needs flare up, my time becomes overwhelmed, and my bandwidth and stress are too much—Kristy’s been an incredible resource here, and a source of deep empathy, kindness, and care, too.
Despite all the common advice out there against it, I love working with friends. Work is a huge part of my life, and I want to work with people I care about who care about me, deeply and personally, far more than I want to maximize topline revenue or investor returns. In this second chapter of my professional career, I’m optimizing for humanity, relationships, and happiness > scale or growth. Funny enough, it’s far more profitable (by both definitions) than chapter one.
So, please, join me in welcoming Kristy to the SparkToro, Snackbar, and Alertmouse teams. If you get a chance to meet or interface with her, I know you’ll experience the same sense of calm, kind, professionalism I get to see every day 💗.