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KP Unpacked
Join serial entrepreneur KP Reddy for conversations and discussions around innovation, technology trends, and AI for startup founders, innovation catalysts & investors focused on the built environment (and beyond!)
KP Unpacked
Chasing Balance
What if your Sunday Scaries could fuel your entrepreneurial journey instead of holding you back? KP juggles travel, writing newsletters, advising startups, and a recent relocation—all while sharing poignant life lessons from his son. Through the delightful metaphor of stacking pancakes, KP reveals the delicate act of balancing work and personal life.
By embracing challenges as part of the journey, KP inspires founders to cherish the process of building their dream careers. With real-world examples and personal reflections, this chat is a reminder to savor every step of your entrepreneurial path.
To read the original post on LinkedIn and connect with KP, go here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chasing-balance-time-re-stack-pancakes-kp-reddy-oqnge/
To download the 2024 collection of KP's "Sunday Scaries" for free, go here: https://kpreddy.co/books/sunday-scaries-e-book
Feeling this Sunday Scaries. It's time to turn them into a source of inspiration. Introducing Sunday Scaries Weekly Reflections for Startup Founders, an e-book featuring KP Reddy's most impactful newsletters from 2024. This isn't your average advice book. It's a raw, honest exploration of the entrepreneurial journey, packed with candid stories and hard-earned lessons from KP's own career. From scaling your business to navigating tough decisions, this guide offers relatable, actionable insights to keep you inspired and focused. Whether you're looking to lead with purpose or tackle challenges head-on, sunday Scaries is your roadmap to resilience. Grab your free copy now and kickstart your week with the advice you need to thrive. Visit kpreadyco slash books and scroll down to Sunday Scaries to get your free ebook. Today. You are listening to KP Unpacked with KP Ready a weekly dose of insights for innovators and startups from the built environment and beyond. Want more discussions like this? Join KP's exclusive online community, the Catalyst Network. To learn more, visit kpreadyco slash Catalyst Network.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome back to KP Unpacked. This is my opportunity to ask KP Ready, the CEO and founder of both Shadow Ventures and KP Ready Company. Hey, what were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn? My name is Jeff Eccles, I'm a senior advisor and the head of our mastermind and incubator programs at KP Ready Company and, as always, I am joined by KP Reddy himself. Kp welcome.
Speaker 3:Hey, jeff, how's it going?
Speaker 2:It's going really well. For those of you maybe this is your first time finding a KP Unpacked. What we do here is go to LinkedIn. If you're not following KP on LinkedIn, just go to KP Reddy R-E-D-D-Y. Follow him on LinkedIn and find his posts about his travels, about his conversation with startup founders, with investors, with the leaders of ENR top 100 architecture engineering firms, et cetera. And these are his reflections, these are his thoughts, these are his vision of what the AEC industry is and where it's going. And once a week we come here and we unpack one of those posts. And today, kp, I was reading your Sunday Scaries. So every Sunday, as you can imagine, kp posts a. I guess it's a series right called sunday scaries and in this particular one, which was last sunday's sunday scary, you titled it chasing balance, time to restack the pancakes, and it's got a, a photograph. I'll let you describe it a little bit more, but it's got a photograph of a little boy and a really big stack of pancakes.
Speaker 3:That would be my two-and-a-half-year-old making pancakes for him and him turning pancakes into a stacking game. And it's pretty high, pretty substantial.
Speaker 2:It is substantial. I mean we can't really tell from the perspective, but your son at two-and and a half is not really very tall. I can't tell from this perspective, but it looks like the stack may be close to the same height as he is, he's ambitious. He is ambitious. I want to know did he eat them all?
Speaker 3:No, he ate a lot of them, not a chance, not a chance, not a chance um so you, you start out um I'll just read the very beginning of the actual article.
Speaker 2:It says I think most people that follow me and read my content know that I'm very busy, traveling at least three weeks a month, writing a few newsletters. Uh, sunday scurries is a weekly Doing speaking gigs, advising corporates, investing in startups and, of course, more broadly supporting a thriving ecosystem that encompasses all of the above, and then you throw in all the usual family and friend obligations in there. It's a mad chaos. You talk about the last several months, et cetera, and you and I were talking offline about optimizing time. In fact, our last episode we really sort of touched on optimizing time a little bit, but I think this, the um, the image of the stacking the pancakes fits, fits really well here. So how, how do you expand on on that image and that thought? What's important to you here?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So part of it was, you know, as we wrap up the year, like reflecting on things, and I think, for me, uh, I'm a high time optimizer, a calendar optimizer, all those things Right, and the one thing that happened with me is, you know, I sold my house in Atlanta and actually kind of moved twice, right, moved from Atlanta to Asheville. Asheville has its own set of problems, so now we're moving from, I guess, theoretically Asheville to Silicon Valley, right. So that's kind of what's happening.
Speaker 3:And that workload was an unplanned workload that has thrown you know X number of hours of work from closing on the old, you know, selling the house and all the. I mean just, you know, when you stay somewhere for 13 years, I have two storage facilities and changing the addresses on all my credit card statement, like all the stuff. Right, it's just like it's this added workload that was unplanned, so to speak, because we already did it when we moved to Asheville, quote unquote. So so it was interesting. So I've been super, just like tired, like just exhausted and my 24 year old son kind of how 24 year olds behave he's like dad, it seems like you should take some advice from your own book, and he's referring to what you know about startups is wrong, which is my entire founder journey, including almost dying and all that good stuff, right, it's quite the epic tale, something like Homer.
Speaker 3:I've always seen you as homer simpson, not the odyssey I think that makes your 24 year old, bart yeah, exactly, or lisa, uh, but so, so he's not wrong, right? So the the dumb thing about kids is that they're it's not that they're wrong. They're wrong a good amount of time, but when they're right, you just need to admit it. So, anyway, so he's not wrong, right? So I was like, okay, how did I end up here? I am like seven days a week, 20 hours a day. I'm just constantly, constantly working, and it's this external force of this big move, added with travel, added with some new projects, all the above, and so you know, I was sitting there making pancakes for my two and a half year old. I'm like, okay, like time to time to restack how I'm thinking about things, and so I'm a huge fan of time, time blocks, right, using time blocks to manage time, um, whether it's availability for internal teams, for external teams, like fridays, a lot of time my, my time is blocked out. I have no external meetings is usually my friday, so I have a system. The problem is, when you have a system and you start adding new things to it, you never. You have to reassess the system, and so in the post, what I talk about is like rethinking your time blocks, trying to find ways to stack. Much like pancakes. Get you know, take them all down to stack. Much like pancakes. Get you know, take them all down, put them all on the table, start sizing them up. The ones that are irregular shaped, you know you take away. So when I say take away, maybe you know in my case you probably ate them, but in in a time block perspective, just don't do it anymore. If it doesn't fit into what your objectives and mission are, just get rid of it. And then also make sure you have space for other things, and so, whether it's family time, workout time, quiet time, it's kind of funny.
Speaker 3:My father-in-law, who I'm currently living with, asked to have access to my calendar so he has a better idea of my travel schedule, and of course, he opens up my calendar. He's like oh my god, like I've never seen so many colors and things and like I've never seen a calendar like this. Um, he's like, no, no, no wonder you're tired all the time. But he also started to notice things like you know blocking out lunch, blocking out time with my two and a half year old, like. So there is a method to say let me block out my time and also insert time for rest and all those things.
Speaker 3:So I think my point in my post was whatever your 2024 objective and I'd like to think I should probably be more fluid I shouldn't have to wait a year for things to go off the rails. But I think that's just how sometimes it works out. So my suggestion to founders especially is whatever your objectives were this time last year, my guess is that they're not the same. You've either added employees, you've added new products, you've taken some things away, employees, you've added new products, you've taken some things away and really it's a good time to reformat your time blocks and how you spend your time.
Speaker 3:The one thing I love about time blocks is you get to predefined how you're spending your time.
Speaker 3:So, if you're a consulting person, here's how I'm going to spend time on business development. Here's how I'm going to spend my time working with customers, like whatever it is right in your world. Jeff, it's hey, you know how do I? What time do I spend booking podcast guests and working with posts or whatever it is right, and so I'm a big fan of time blocks and the point is assess what you've been doing and see if you need to make some changes to it. I'm also not a fan of multitasking, but I am a fan of dual tasking. I will take my son on a walk quote unquote spending time with him in a stroller and I will listen to my necessary podcast. Most of the podcasts I listen to are necessary through economic stuff, whatever. So I'm listening to a podcast quote unquote spending time with my son, which kind of doesn't count, and I'm also getting about 30 minutes of walking in and I'm drinking my athletic greens, so like I'm getting a lot of things done right, but it's very deliberate.
Speaker 2:Is this episode sponsored by Athletic Greens?
Speaker 3:Athletic Greens. I also drink Element and I sleep on a Casper mattress. So there's that.
Speaker 2:All right. My next Slack message to Jesse is about pitching all of those. We need to send them this episode. This is influencer marketing right here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and use the Calm app for your mental health.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I don't know. Insight Timer is my favorite over Calm right now.
Speaker 1:So maybe we can get them both.
Speaker 2:I don't know great pitches, um, you know, as we were recording the previous episodes, we're talking about startup founders and um being rebel leaders, and we talked a lot about you know, as a founder, you you have to app, you have to optimize all the hours in your day and so, in a way, this is sort of an extension of that conversation, I suppose. But you're, you know, in this world where we are now, and I was having a conversation with somebody, uh, at the end of the day yesterday um, we're talking about business models for engineering firms and and you know, this is this is someone that is a real leads are small and relatively new firm and they're saying you know, I hear KP talking about this and I'm reading KP's posts about about this, that and the other on LinkedIn and listening to KP Impact and, and I'm wondering, right, you know he says all these things, how does you know? How does that apply to me? Because you know we say this all the time, right, the, the, the firms that we reference, and the, the people that are in our mastermind groups. You know our innovation leaders, our construction technology mastermind groups, et groups, etc. They're from larger firms. We talk about enr, enr lists and things like that. So you've got this person that's basically a sole proprietor and they've got a little bit of a partnership going on with somebody else. But, um, they're going.
Speaker 2:Okay, how does how does all that you know technology and, uh, ai and innovation? How's that? You know all that technology and AI and innovation? How does all that stuff that's happening at the big firm level, how does that apply to the small firms?
Speaker 2:And I think what's really interesting is that, for everything we talk about in terms of innovation, everything that we talk about in terms of technology, really the game-changing piece of it that we talk about is how to the human, the human factor of it? Right, and call map insight, timer, time blocking. You know all all these different things. You know, our grandparents might've called them all these newfangled things. Right, we're talking about how all of this could be high tech, or it could simply be a paper calendar. It's a little hard to share, maybe, your paper calendar with your father-in-law, but we're talking about how these things impact human beings, which I think also ties back to the photograph of your your youngest son and a giant stack of pancakes. Right, very, very human? Right, we can get caught up in this all the technology things, but we're talking about human beings and how human beings can live and and and work maybe more artfully and intentionally is one way to to say it.
Speaker 3:But but live live and work better no, I think, and in the post I talk about, like you know, you start with. You know, once you've sorted all your pancakes out by size and thrown out some things, then you got to find the right plate right, and for me that foundational plate is my family, like they're the ones that on any given day get me. On any other day Sometimes they don't get like, what are you doing, but that's like my family. And they start stacking them up, right. You start stacking the biggest pancakes first, all up, all the way up to the tiny pancakes Right, pancakes, right.
Speaker 3:And the tiny pancakes at the top tend to be funny enough. Your most important ones right, it's the ones at the bottom are ones that have kind of been solved for. And then when I say it's like, once you have it all stacked up and it's ready to go, then you got to pour syrup over the entire thing. And my reference to the syrup is fun, like, if you're going to do all this stuff, my wife does this thing to me used to drive me absolutely insane. Now I get it. I'd be going into an important meeting, like literally like meeting with sovereign wealth, funds, whatever, and I'll just like call her, hey, I'm getting ready to go into this thing, and you know what she tells me. She's like don't forget to have fun.
Speaker 2:So you were talking just now about having fun, and it seems to me that you know when, when we're having fun, we have to be the closest, or or at least very close, to our true, authentic selves. It's really hard to to fake having fun, and it reminds me that I was having a conversation with my therapist once and she said that the human laugh is a very revealing, it's the most true human expression. That's. That's really fascinating, so that that advice from your wife, I think, is it's it's really good advice, it's it's if you don't forget to have fun. That means, I think that means you're showing up as you, as your authentic self, and you're, you're present in that moment and you're, um, yeah, you, you have the enjoyability of, of what you're doing, but, um, there's some truth in that somewhere a hundred percent, a hundred percent.
Speaker 3:And I think you know she, I think that she did that um, kind of give me a hard time.
Speaker 3:But um, it turns out, like you know, in in the heat of things, we get kind of I don't know tightened up around the seriousness of what we do. But when you're, her reminder to me is like you could be doing anything you want, like you're very fortunate, you get to literally create the career You've created, the career you've always wanted, and like, just remember that, like you're doing it because this is what you want to do, this is what you enjoy, and so I think we all need that friendly reminder, right, like this is what you enjoy, and if not, you should be doing something different, quite honestly. But, um, but I do think for founders especially right for family, I think this applies to everyone, but for founders you've taken a big risk, a big leap, because this is what you wanted and I don't think you wanted something that creates pain and misery. I mean, it might create some pain and misery, but that's not why you chose it yeah, yeah, I mean, there was.
Speaker 2:I come back to this. I want to talk to students and you know I come back to this example a lot. Samuel mockby was an architect that I've got a lot of respect for. He became known as the citizen architect Fascinating story about Samuel and his work, etc. But he was a guest lecturer at Ball State years ago after I graduated, but before I went back there and started teaching. But before I went back there and started teaching and it was one of the few guest lectures that I actually drove from Indianapolis to Muncie it was a little over an hour drive to go listen to him and one of the things he said is a very simple thing, absolutely true, but a very simple thing. He said nothing worth doing is ever easy and I think that is a truth and I think if we embrace that and understood that, we chose this thing, whatever this thing is.
Speaker 2:We chose it for a reason and to enjoy the pursuit of that. I think that's really important as well. So, if you're listening to this and maybe you jumped in at the middle, I'm not sure exactly how that happens, but what we've been talking about is KP's post, his Sunday Scaries post, from November 24th 2024. Just in case it's 2028 when you're listening to this, but the title of the post is Chasing Balance Time to Restack the Pancakes. And if you missed this at the very beginning, there's a photograph there of his youngest son with an impressively tall I mean I think it's really impressive impressively tall stack of pancakes. And you know, great, great, little bit of little bit of levity there, a little bit of tongue in cheek there, a little bit of fun there, but a really good lesson about the need to occasionally and the reason for restacking those pancakes. So, kp, thanks for showing up today and unpacking this LinkedIn post for us today.
Speaker 3:Yeah and Jeff. One other note is you know my Sunday series come out every week. We'll be actually publishing kind of a physical or ebook copy of Sunday's scary 2024 year in review. I've got my publisher working on formatting that and that's going to be available for free on our website. So take a look out for that. We'll also have it available via Amazon. I think Amazon requires you charge 99 cents or something, but for a lot of people that want the physical, I don't think we're going to sit here and print out physical copies and mail them to people.
Speaker 3:so we'll we'll let amazon's uh third-party logistics handle that for us. But I'm pretty excited about it because, uh, I will tell you, I do write that on sundays, every sunday. It's been almost a year since I've been doing it and if you you know it's not trivial to consistently do something, and I think one is. It's been consistent because I get so much fuel both in doing it like the feedback I get from people is fantastic but because I'm out and about and just I try to be very observational that there's always like a lot of good content to write about. At least I think it's good. You may think it's sad, but but definitely keep an eye out for that. Uh, that'll come out by year end, I believe yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So so look out for that. The sunday scares 2024 year in review. Um, some of the other things that we talked about. Uh, the incubator if you want to find out more about our startup incubator, you can go to kpreadyco kpreadyco incubator. There's a page there. You can apply to be a part of it. We we generally have openings for startups that want to participate there. We always have openings for more mentors and advisors, et cetera. If you want to get involved in a different sort of way and I think we also touched on mastermind groups a little bit so go to our website and look under programs for mastermind groups. Of course, you can reach out to KP, reach out to me. There may be a more direct line to me than to KP, especially on Incubator and Mastermind, because those are my areas here at KP Ready Co. So happy to share more information, help you get involved in those.
Speaker 2:And we've been unpacking a post by Reddy on LinkedIn. If you aren't following KP, look him up KP R-E-D-D-Y on LinkedIn. As he said, many of his posts come from observations that he's made as he travels, as he talks to startups, as he talks to investors, as he talks to leaders in the AEC world and those turn into posts. And then that turns into my opportunity to ask KP hey, what were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn? What was the impetus for that? What's behind that particular post? We'll be back again next week with another KP Unpacked. Thanks for joining us today and we look forward to having you back here next week. Thanks, kp, thanks everybody, thanks Jeff, yep. See you next week.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to another episode of KP Unpacked. You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Yco and additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Until next time.