January 14, 2026 • 25 mins
CEO of Here Comes the Guide and co-host of the Currently Reading podcast Meredith Monday Schwartz talks management and routines
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:23):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome Meredith Monday Schwartz to Before Breakfast.
Meredith is the CEO of Here Comes the Guide, a
wedding website, and is one of the brains behind the
Currently Reading podcast. So Meredith, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh, thank you. I've been reading your books forever and
I love talking to you.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Oh I'm so excited that we can have this conversation.
So tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, as you said, I wear a couple of different hats.
So I am the CEO of Here Comes the Guide.
We are forty four all women, and so we are
creating a company that we want to see more of
in the world, and we happened to be in the
wedding space, so I'm very very busy there. And then
also I do Currently Reading, which is a podcast about
books and reading. My partner Katie Cobb, and I have
(01:10):
been doing that for eight eight seasons now. I had
to stop and double check myself. We've been doing it
for eight seasons now, and we just it's the most
fun to be able to talk about the books that
were currently reading, whether we like them, didn't like them,
spicy opinions welcome, We just have a good time. So
it's a lot to balance, but it's all things that
(01:30):
are really meaningful to me.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I love that. I love that. It's good to be
busy in life with things that we enjoy. So I
wanted to start with Here Comes the Guide because you
guys kind of came on my radar many years ago,
as I know that you had transitioned to being a
mostly remote company prior to the pandemic. Now, a lot
of people discovered that as a situation and they had
(01:53):
to in twenty twenty, but you guys had done that
before that. So what led to that and how did
that come up?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So I have been at Here Comes the Guide actually
since I was twenty four years old, so back in
like literally pre internet day, so I've been at Here
Comes the Guide forever. But it started out which there
were just three of us. Now they're forty four of us.
I look at Here Comes the Guide as being a
massive experiment about creating a company that allows women to
have as much of it all as they can have,
(02:23):
so a career that's meaningful to them, where they can
see that they are doing really important work, and also
the ability to have a life. So this balance is
a really important thing to me. So we actually bought
out our founder in twenty seventeen, and at that point
I immediately said, we are becoming a fully distributed company
(02:43):
because it was clear to me we'd done a lot
of remote before then, mostly because we had some people
who worked for Here Comes the Guide. We were in Berkeley, California,
move away one of them, her husband was deployed. I
didn't want to lose this fantastic teammate, so I was like,
you know what, move to Maryland and you're going to
keep working for Here Comes the Guide. We had that
(03:05):
happen a couple of different times where I was able
to retain fantastic talent if I was just okay with
them being where they needed to live. And then I
really really enjoyed working from home myself, really works with
kind of my very introverted self. I love being a
part of a team, but I also like having space
to decompress when I need to. So when we took
(03:28):
over from our founder, we went fully distributed. We let
go of our Berkeley office and all of the overhead
associated with that, and we have never looked back, and
so we have grown so much since then. We've gotten
really really good at hiring for remote positions, which is,
you know, that's a really intentional project in and of itself,
(03:52):
because you have to hire a very specific kind of person.
But we have found our sweet spot and we are
so glad that we that we are fully distributed. We're
also a very connected team. So even though we are,
one of our core values is we can be together
even if we're not all together.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well, the pandemic was rough for weddings, but
at least you guys had figured out how to work
as a remote team before that. But as you observed
this then, like from you know, twenty twenty to twenty
twenty one, twenty twenty two, and you saw other organizations
experimenting with this, what do you think most people got wrong?
I mean, I know you were hiring very specifically for
(04:32):
people who could do this, and you had figured out
managing distributed teams. What were people What mistakes were people
making with this?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
There's a lot of layers to that. I think the
biggest mistake that people can make is to not be
hiring with that mindset. But when companies found themselves in
that position, I think a lot of companies approached it
from the mindset that their employees were going to try
(05:02):
to rip them off, that they were going to not
work on purpose. They didn't trust in the intention of
their employee, and the employee feels that when you're putting
things on people's computers to see how often are they
moving their mouths, when you're demanding that they log in
and lock out at really specific time, it just all
(05:25):
really messes with the ability for the employee to feel
that they are being trusted. I always tell everyone that
I hire, I am so not interested in micromanaging anybody.
If I can't trust you to do the work because
you care about doing it for your own self, then
I have no desire to do business with you. So
I hire from the mindset of people, if they care
(05:48):
about the company that they're working for, are going to
do the best work that they can do. So to me,
that like going all the way to the other end
where you mistrust your staff automatically makes people people When
they feel mistrusted, they automatically don't have the same level
of loyalty to the person who's mistrusting them. They're being
(06:10):
treated like children. So that's the biggest mistake that I
saw employees me employers.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, And with that though, I mean, you have to
manage a little bit differently. I'm sure you are managing
largely about certain results outcomes, and then you also have
to have systems like if people have a quick question,
like you can't stop by people's desk when you're fully remote,
and if you're in different time zones, that introduces its
own complications. So what are some of your best practices there?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Right, So there's again there's a lot of different elements
of this. From a work product perspective. I operate on
a trust, put verify way of doing things right, so
I know the role that each person is fulfilling. I
know what that role needs to produce over the course
of a week or a month, or a quarter or
(06:58):
a year. And so we have a a lot of
systems in place that we've built into our own bespoke
CRM that allows us to get a sense of what
people are producing over the course of the week. Now,
first of all, I'm not judging it day by day
because I don't think that that's a fair judgment. But
(07:18):
we do have a sense overall of the work. So
I'm not The result I'm looking for is to have
this specific role, this work product done. The result I
don't care if you're moving your mouth every thirty seconds,
That to me is tracking the wrong thing. I do
care that you're getting the work done that I hired
(07:39):
you to do in the best way possible, the way
that fits you and your personality in the best way.
So we absolutely have built in multiple layers of trust,
but verify where we can look at work product.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well, let's talk a little bit about virtual
meetings because I know that this is something that a
lot of people have struggled with and you know, zoom
fatigue over the years. What do you do to make
these more engaging and build that sort of level of
trust and interaction in a virtual way.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
So from a meeting, we're just talking about meetings. Let
me start by saying I hate most meetings right, So
we meet as little as possible so that people can
do the work that they need to do. Like I
feel like me and my leadership team, our job is
to give air cover to our people and then stay
(08:37):
out of their way. And so we manage everything. I mean,
teams meet. We you know, we absolutely meet and connect regularly,
but we're really careful to say, does this meeting actually
have to happen? Are the exact right people there? I
saw something on TikTok the other day where someone was saying, literally,
the only time I turned my mic on through that
whole meeting was when I said goodbye at the end
(08:59):
of it, and I thought, then, why are you even
in that meeting? And I just so I don't love meetings.
Most meetings done wrong make me absolutely crazy. And from
a connection standpoint, we are really real. We are obsessed
with our culture and our ways that we connect, and
we do a lot of different things that increase that connection.
(09:22):
One of the things that we do is we do
a quarterly connection event where we all get together. Yes,
it's on Google Meet. Yes, we have a company wide
cameras on policy. Again, if your camera is off, I
have to ask, why are you even in that meeting.
If I don't need to see you and interact with you,
then why are you in the meeting? And so we
(09:43):
have a cameras on policy. And also we do these
connection events where we actually have a team that plans them,
where we spend time together every quarter doing something that
has nothing to do with work. So we've done like
a murder mystery we did, like you know, we've done
some like crafting, different you know, craft related things we did,
(10:04):
like watercolor painting. As I'm saying all of this, I
hear everyone's eyes rolling back in their head. I understand
how cheesy it sounds. Our group of women loves to
hang out with each other, like honestly, we could. We
could do almost nothing in our annually. We do annual
retreats where we all get together, and yes we do
(10:26):
quite a bit of work, but we also just hang
out and cook together and get up early and have
coffee together. And we hire for culture. We hire girls girls.
We don't hire mean girls. Ever. I will fire a
mean girl immediately, like so fast it would make her
head spin, and it has. And so we hire for
(10:49):
culture in addition to hiring for the ability to do
the work. So we enjoy spending time together. Whether it's virtually,
there's a lot of connection that can happen virtually. Some
of my best friends I've never met in real life.
I challenge the notion that you can't connect virtually.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Absolutely. Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then I'll be back with more from Meredith Monday Schwartz. Well,
I am back talking with Meredith Monday Schwartz, who is
the CEO of Here Comes the Guide, a wedding website,
and is also one of the brains behind the Currently
(11:24):
Reading podcast. So, Meredith, listening to you and knowings we
your work over the years, I know you like to
get things done, So I want to pivot to talking
about your own personal productivity. Do you have any you
know we talk a lot about morning routines on this show.
Do you have any sort of morning routine in your
life right now?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I absolutely do, And my morning routine has changed over
the course of my career. Right it's different when we
have little ones. My kid, my youngest is fourteen, he's
in high school. My older three are off and launched
and doing their thing, and so my mornings look more
the way that I want them to look now I'm not.
I'm a super early riser. I really like to sleep
(12:02):
until seven. The older I get. I'm fifty two, I
now like like about nine hours of sleep. Ten years
ago I probably only wanted seven. So that's been an
interesting thing. So I sleep until seven, seven thirty sometimes,
and then I get up and I always make a
cup of coffee. I love to do morning read I'm
(12:23):
always reading something nonfiction in the morning, and then I
I do morning pages. Do you do morning.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Pages, Laura, I don't, but tell us about them.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Okay, morning pages is from It's from a very famous book.
I'm sure everyone listening to this has heard about this
by Julia Cameron, called The Artist's Way. The idea of
morning pages is basically, it's just a brain dump. You
get a notebook. I try not to use a precious notebook.
I try to use a very like, a very workman
like notebook, and then you just brain dump anything that
(12:57):
is in your head. It doesn't have to make sense,
it doesn't have to be pros. Lots of times I'll
do listing, you know, I'll make lists and it's just
you know, she says, three full pages. I do one
full page because that's a big notebook, and it fits
in my time, and I'm the boss of my own
morning routine. And it has helped so much from an
(13:18):
emotional perspective because it's daily journaling, right whatever, but also
from a business perspective. I will often have some business
idea that is on the periphery of my brain, and somehow,
when I do that brain dump in the morning, in
the beginning of my day, what was on the periphery
comes to the forefront. So I do that and then
(13:42):
I go I work out with a trainer multiple days
a week to do some heavy lifting, and then get
into my workday when I come home.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Absolutely, And do you have any sort of structure for
your workday that makes the most sense for you. I do.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
I do time blocking, and so I do different things
during different time blocks on different days. So for example,
company wide, we have no meetings on Wednesdays. You literally
aren't allowed to make, you know, a non emergency meeting
on a Wednesday, So everyone knows we don't have any
meetings on Wednesdays. Mondays, I do leadership stuff, you know, Friday,
(14:19):
we actually have a four day work week, so we
don't work on Fridays and so Fridays is my currently
reading day, So my week definitely has a rhythm to it.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
And do you have a particular time of day that
you do best with sort of heads down kind of
focused work versus more of the like I mean sending
messages to team members or emails or things like that.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, my morning is when I am the clearest to
do focused work, writing, creative work, any of that. So
I try not to put any meetings on my schedule
until noon and really give myself from like nine to
noon each day to have in whatever time block that is,
to have that that really focused work, because that's when
(15:02):
my brain is firing. By the time I get to
the afternoon, I need to be less creative And can
I do a lot better with emails and meetings and
those kinds of things. But again, we're really trying to
limit meetings, so if I'm in a meeting, I have
to be on for it.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah. Well, let's pivot to talking about reading here. You
mentioned you read it nonfiction in the morning, and then
the fiction, which I know a lot of currently reading,
is about when does that happen in your schedule?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Oh gosh, so right, So we Katie and I each
every week bring three books a week to talk about.
So that means that I have to read at least
twelve books a month to keep up with the podcast schedule,
which actually is not a problem because that's kind of
my normal lifelong reading habit. But I like to read
before I get up in the morning, fiction, especially on
(15:52):
the weekends. This is I'm going to tell you, and
I know a lot of people are going to have
They're going to think I'm nuts. I wake up seven
to seven thirty on the weekends. Again, I don't have
littles anymore. When my grandkids aren't there and I wake
up at seven, I don't. I try not to get
out of bed until eleven o'clock on the weekday mornings.
(16:14):
I will read for a lot of that time so
that you know, I will have a couple of cups
of coffee. Reading in bed is my favorite place to read.
I have a full set up with my kindle and
my Kindle stand and my Kindle remote literally where I
can just be laying like I'm laying in a coffin
and just be turning the pages on my kindle and
I will just crush. I will just crush for several hours.
(16:39):
So I love I've done that my whole life. I
love to read in the morning.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Well, I would say, you have to get up out
of bed to get your coffee. I assume that there's a.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
My husband does that, that's his does it for you?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Oh? How lovely?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That is his? That is his main job. Like you know,
like you had one job, Johnny.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Job, go make your coffee and bring it over to you. Right, Oh,
I love it. Well, then you don't have to get
up at all. I mean, you know, maybe a bathroom
trip exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
It's my favorite thing. It is so indulgent. And there
were so many years if having four kids, where obviously
that schedule just was not on the table. So I
lean into it like crazy now.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yes, absolutely, Well maybe that's my goals for as soon
as mine are as old as yours. Well we'll get
there eventually. All right, Well, we're gonna take one more
quick ad break and then I will be back with
more from Meredith Monday Shorts. Well, I am back talking
with Meredith Monday. Schwartz is the CEO of Here Comes
(17:38):
the Guide also one are the hosts of the Currently
Reading podcast. So how do you figure out what to
read next? Since I mean, you're reading at least one
hundred and forty four books a year, it sounds like
you've got to keep the uh, keep the train moving.
How are you figuring that out right?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Well, this is not a small thing, even for someone
who reads for a living like I do. I'm a
mood reader. There are planned readers and mood readers. And
I don't understand people who say, here are the books
that I'm going to read in December. I love that
for them. It's fantastic. I could never read like that.
So I'm a mood reader. I always have a book
(18:14):
going in every format. So I'm always reading four books.
So my morning read one of my kindle, an audiobook,
and then a print book. So I always have four
going at a time and every time I get so
that gives me the ability to switch around a lot
based on my moods. And so I mean, I'm super
(18:35):
plugged into the book world. I'm very very lucky that way,
and so I have lots of different sources. Instagram is
a really really big one. I'm very big on Bookstagram,
and so I take pictures of books that are interesting
to me, and I caption them in a very specific
way in the actual photo app on my iPhone, and
(18:57):
then when I'm in the mood for something, I will
kind of flip through that. I also put a lot
of holds in the library, so at any point I'll
have fifteen twenty thirty books home from the library and
I'll do a book flight. So I'll pick five books.
I'll read the first paragraph chapter of those five books
in which everyone grabs me that's what I'm reading next.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
And with that, then will you not read a book?
I mean, after you've started it, you gotten a ways
into it, if you decide, yeah, this isn't this isn't happening, right.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
So if I do a book flight and I'm just testing,
then I then all of those other four that I
didn't choose, they could come up again in the future.
The question of dnf ing or did not finish is
one that comes up so much for us in the
book world. I am a pretty profligate DNF for if
I can't afford to get stuck behind a book, and
(19:48):
there are too many books in the world for me
to do that. And also it's not fair to the
author for me to push through when a book's not
working for me, because inevitably I won't have any great
to say about it when I'm having to push that hard.
So I read about ten percent or fifty pages. If
it's not flowing very easily, I'll set it down. Sometimes
(20:10):
I'll say i'm in our inning it not right now
instead of DNFING, because DNF is kind of like I
might never return to that in our end means there
was something I liked about it, but it just wasn't
fitting what I needed right now. So I have two
separate kind of categories of not finishing a book.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, well, because you said you're a mood reader, and
so something that's not for you right now, I mean
maybe you'll feel more like you like a cozy kind
of book in winter versus the summer, or something like that.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah. I've had books that I have started two or
three different times because I'll think this book is made
in a lab for me, but for some reason it's
not working, and then the fourth time it's absolutely perfect.
I believe in bookish serendipity. I think if a book,
if you need a book, it is going to find you,
and it is going to find you at the right time.
(20:59):
But we have to help that happen. By trusting when
it's not the right time and letting it go.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Yeah. Well, I do like the advice to abandon a
book that isn't working for you, because to maintain any
sort of swift reading schedule, you can't get stuck because
then your pace falls off. Then you're only reading, you know,
six books a month or two because you stopped in
the middle of one, and you don't turn reading time
potential leisure time into reading time, right.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
And there's no question that that's something that Katie and
I have to be very mindful of. But this issue
for normal day to day readers comes up a lot,
and I will talk so often with people who are
like I bet, I just feel guilty. I feel guilty
setting down a book. The author worked so hard on it,
and they did, and that's true, and they did. But again,
if you want to respect that work, save it for
(21:49):
a time that it's working for you better. Just because
it's not you're not the reader for it now doesn't
mean that ten years from now it might not be
your favorite book of all time. And I've heard that story,
which is why I say that that's happened many times.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, absolutely well, Meredith, I always ask my guests a question,
which is, what is something you have done recently to
take a day from great to awesome? All right?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
I have a very specific practice that I put into
practice once my therapist told me to do it. It
sounds really simple, but it has changed a very difficult
part of each day for me. So when I finish
my work day, like a lot of moms, I have
to then go into dinner, practice taking, you know, get
boy to practice, you know, all of those things. I
(22:33):
found that that transition had been difficult for me. So
the idea is that at the end of each work day,
take five minutes. I take five minutes to ask myself
what do I need right now? So it's checking in
with my mind, how busy a day was it, how
much energy did it take from me? It's checking in
(22:54):
with my body. Do I need to just take some
deep breaths, Do I need to stretch? Do I need
to sit quietly for a little bit, and then acting
on what it is that that check in has brought
to me. It sounds really simple, but I realized I
was never asking myself that question at the end of
the day. When I started doing that and started taking
(23:14):
five ten minutes, to give myself what I actually needed.
Right then the whole rest of the evening went more smoothly.
So that's really changed that really rough transition period into
something that's working a lot better.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I love that. And what's something you're looking forward to
right now?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I am looking forward to my annual reading retreat in March.
Every year, me and three fantastic readers. We go for
four days and we literally have a highly scheduled reading retreats,
like it's sort of tongue in cheek scheduling, but darned
if we don't stick to the schedule, which we put
on bookmarks and we read and then we get together
(23:56):
and talk about what we're reading, and then we read,
and then we have lunch, and then we read and
go for a walk and then we read. We have
dinner in It is my favorite trip of the year.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Well.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Reading with friends is a great way to boost the
enjoyment of reading. So, Meredith, where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
So you can find our show at currently Reading podcast
and you can find me at Meredith Monday Schwartz on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Excellent. Well, Meredith, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and in
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
(24:44):
to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(25:07):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:23):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome Meredith Monday Schwartz to Before Breakfast.
Meredith is the CEO of Here Comes the Guide, a
wedding website, and is one of the brains behind the
Currently Reading podcast. So Meredith, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh, thank you. I've been reading your books forever and
I love talking to you.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Oh I'm so excited that we can have this conversation.
So tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, as you said, I wear a couple of different hats.
So I am the CEO of Here Comes the Guide.
We are forty four all women, and so we are
creating a company that we want to see more of
in the world, and we happened to be in the
wedding space, so I'm very very busy there. And then
also I do Currently Reading, which is a podcast about
books and reading. My partner Katie Cobb, and I have
(01:10):
been doing that for eight eight seasons now. I had
to stop and double check myself. We've been doing it
for eight seasons now, and we just it's the most
fun to be able to talk about the books that
were currently reading, whether we like them, didn't like them,
spicy opinions welcome, We just have a good time. So
it's a lot to balance, but it's all things that
(01:30):
are really meaningful to me.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I love that. I love that. It's good to be
busy in life with things that we enjoy. So I
wanted to start with Here Comes the Guide because you
guys kind of came on my radar many years ago,
as I know that you had transitioned to being a
mostly remote company prior to the pandemic. Now, a lot
of people discovered that as a situation and they had
(01:53):
to in twenty twenty, but you guys had done that
before that. So what led to that and how did
that come up?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So I have been at Here Comes the Guide actually
since I was twenty four years old, so back in
like literally pre internet day, so I've been at Here
Comes the Guide forever. But it started out which there
were just three of us. Now they're forty four of us.
I look at Here Comes the Guide as being a
massive experiment about creating a company that allows women to
have as much of it all as they can have,
(02:23):
so a career that's meaningful to them, where they can
see that they are doing really important work, and also
the ability to have a life. So this balance is
a really important thing to me. So we actually bought
out our founder in twenty seventeen, and at that point
I immediately said, we are becoming a fully distributed company
(02:43):
because it was clear to me we'd done a lot
of remote before then, mostly because we had some people
who worked for Here Comes the Guide. We were in Berkeley, California,
move away one of them, her husband was deployed. I
didn't want to lose this fantastic teammate, so I was like,
you know what, move to Maryland and you're going to
keep working for Here Comes the Guide. We had that
(03:05):
happen a couple of different times where I was able
to retain fantastic talent if I was just okay with
them being where they needed to live. And then I
really really enjoyed working from home myself, really works with
kind of my very introverted self. I love being a
part of a team, but I also like having space
to decompress when I need to. So when we took
(03:28):
over from our founder, we went fully distributed. We let
go of our Berkeley office and all of the overhead
associated with that, and we have never looked back, and
so we have grown so much since then. We've gotten
really really good at hiring for remote positions, which is,
you know, that's a really intentional project in and of itself,
(03:52):
because you have to hire a very specific kind of person.
But we have found our sweet spot and we are
so glad that we that we are fully distributed. We're
also a very connected team. So even though we are,
one of our core values is we can be together
even if we're not all together.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well, the pandemic was rough for weddings, but
at least you guys had figured out how to work
as a remote team before that. But as you observed
this then, like from you know, twenty twenty to twenty
twenty one, twenty twenty two, and you saw other organizations
experimenting with this, what do you think most people got wrong?
I mean, I know you were hiring very specifically for
(04:32):
people who could do this, and you had figured out
managing distributed teams. What were people What mistakes were people
making with this?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
There's a lot of layers to that. I think the
biggest mistake that people can make is to not be
hiring with that mindset. But when companies found themselves in
that position, I think a lot of companies approached it
from the mindset that their employees were going to try
(05:02):
to rip them off, that they were going to not
work on purpose. They didn't trust in the intention of
their employee, and the employee feels that when you're putting
things on people's computers to see how often are they
moving their mouths, when you're demanding that they log in
and lock out at really specific time, it just all
(05:25):
really messes with the ability for the employee to feel
that they are being trusted. I always tell everyone that
I hire, I am so not interested in micromanaging anybody.
If I can't trust you to do the work because
you care about doing it for your own self, then
I have no desire to do business with you. So
I hire from the mindset of people, if they care
(05:48):
about the company that they're working for, are going to
do the best work that they can do. So to me,
that like going all the way to the other end
where you mistrust your staff automatically makes people people When
they feel mistrusted, they automatically don't have the same level
of loyalty to the person who's mistrusting them. They're being
(06:10):
treated like children. So that's the biggest mistake that I
saw employees me employers.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, And with that though, I mean, you have to
manage a little bit differently. I'm sure you are managing
largely about certain results outcomes, and then you also have
to have systems like if people have a quick question,
like you can't stop by people's desk when you're fully remote,
and if you're in different time zones, that introduces its
own complications. So what are some of your best practices there?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Right, So there's again there's a lot of different elements
of this. From a work product perspective. I operate on
a trust, put verify way of doing things right, so
I know the role that each person is fulfilling. I
know what that role needs to produce over the course
of a week or a month, or a quarter or
(06:58):
a year. And so we have a a lot of
systems in place that we've built into our own bespoke
CRM that allows us to get a sense of what
people are producing over the course of the week. Now,
first of all, I'm not judging it day by day
because I don't think that that's a fair judgment. But
(07:18):
we do have a sense overall of the work. So
I'm not The result I'm looking for is to have
this specific role, this work product done. The result I
don't care if you're moving your mouth every thirty seconds,
That to me is tracking the wrong thing. I do
care that you're getting the work done that I hired
(07:39):
you to do in the best way possible, the way
that fits you and your personality in the best way.
So we absolutely have built in multiple layers of trust,
but verify where we can look at work product.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well, let's talk a little bit about virtual
meetings because I know that this is something that a
lot of people have struggled with and you know, zoom
fatigue over the years. What do you do to make
these more engaging and build that sort of level of
trust and interaction in a virtual way.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
So from a meeting, we're just talking about meetings. Let
me start by saying I hate most meetings right, So
we meet as little as possible so that people can
do the work that they need to do. Like I
feel like me and my leadership team, our job is
to give air cover to our people and then stay
(08:37):
out of their way. And so we manage everything. I mean,
teams meet. We you know, we absolutely meet and connect regularly,
but we're really careful to say, does this meeting actually
have to happen? Are the exact right people there? I
saw something on TikTok the other day where someone was saying, literally,
the only time I turned my mic on through that
whole meeting was when I said goodbye at the end
(08:59):
of it, and I thought, then, why are you even
in that meeting? And I just so I don't love meetings.
Most meetings done wrong make me absolutely crazy. And from
a connection standpoint, we are really real. We are obsessed
with our culture and our ways that we connect, and
we do a lot of different things that increase that connection.
(09:22):
One of the things that we do is we do
a quarterly connection event where we all get together. Yes,
it's on Google Meet. Yes, we have a company wide
cameras on policy. Again, if your camera is off, I
have to ask, why are you even in that meeting.
If I don't need to see you and interact with you,
then why are you in the meeting? And so we
(09:43):
have a cameras on policy. And also we do these
connection events where we actually have a team that plans them,
where we spend time together every quarter doing something that
has nothing to do with work. So we've done like
a murder mystery we did, like you know, we've done
some like crafting, different you know, craft related things we did,
(10:04):
like watercolor painting. As I'm saying all of this, I
hear everyone's eyes rolling back in their head. I understand
how cheesy it sounds. Our group of women loves to
hang out with each other, like honestly, we could. We
could do almost nothing in our annually. We do annual
retreats where we all get together, and yes we do
(10:26):
quite a bit of work, but we also just hang
out and cook together and get up early and have
coffee together. And we hire for culture. We hire girls girls.
We don't hire mean girls. Ever. I will fire a
mean girl immediately, like so fast it would make her
head spin, and it has. And so we hire for
(10:49):
culture in addition to hiring for the ability to do
the work. So we enjoy spending time together. Whether it's virtually,
there's a lot of connection that can happen virtually. Some
of my best friends I've never met in real life.
I challenge the notion that you can't connect virtually.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Absolutely. Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then I'll be back with more from Meredith Monday Schwartz. Well,
I am back talking with Meredith Monday Schwartz, who is
the CEO of Here Comes the Guide, a wedding website,
and is also one of the brains behind the Currently
(11:24):
Reading podcast. So, Meredith, listening to you and knowings we
your work over the years, I know you like to
get things done, So I want to pivot to talking
about your own personal productivity. Do you have any you
know we talk a lot about morning routines on this show.
Do you have any sort of morning routine in your
life right now?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I absolutely do, And my morning routine has changed over
the course of my career. Right it's different when we
have little ones. My kid, my youngest is fourteen, he's
in high school. My older three are off and launched
and doing their thing, and so my mornings look more
the way that I want them to look now I'm not.
I'm a super early riser. I really like to sleep
(12:02):
until seven. The older I get. I'm fifty two, I
now like like about nine hours of sleep. Ten years
ago I probably only wanted seven. So that's been an
interesting thing. So I sleep until seven, seven thirty sometimes,
and then I get up and I always make a
cup of coffee. I love to do morning read I'm
(12:23):
always reading something nonfiction in the morning, and then I
I do morning pages. Do you do morning.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Pages, Laura, I don't, but tell us about them.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Okay, morning pages is from It's from a very famous book.
I'm sure everyone listening to this has heard about this
by Julia Cameron, called The Artist's Way. The idea of
morning pages is basically, it's just a brain dump. You
get a notebook. I try not to use a precious notebook.
I try to use a very like, a very workman
like notebook, and then you just brain dump anything that
(12:57):
is in your head. It doesn't have to make sense,
it doesn't have to be pros. Lots of times I'll
do listing, you know, I'll make lists and it's just
you know, she says, three full pages. I do one
full page because that's a big notebook, and it fits
in my time, and I'm the boss of my own
morning routine. And it has helped so much from an
(13:18):
emotional perspective because it's daily journaling, right whatever, but also
from a business perspective. I will often have some business
idea that is on the periphery of my brain, and somehow,
when I do that brain dump in the morning, in
the beginning of my day, what was on the periphery
comes to the forefront. So I do that and then
(13:42):
I go I work out with a trainer multiple days
a week to do some heavy lifting, and then get
into my workday when I come home.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Absolutely, And do you have any sort of structure for
your workday that makes the most sense for you. I do.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
I do time blocking, and so I do different things
during different time blocks on different days. So for example,
company wide, we have no meetings on Wednesdays. You literally
aren't allowed to make, you know, a non emergency meeting
on a Wednesday, So everyone knows we don't have any
meetings on Wednesdays. Mondays, I do leadership stuff, you know, Friday,
(14:19):
we actually have a four day work week, so we
don't work on Fridays and so Fridays is my currently
reading day, So my week definitely has a rhythm to it.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
And do you have a particular time of day that
you do best with sort of heads down kind of
focused work versus more of the like I mean sending
messages to team members or emails or things like that.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, my morning is when I am the clearest to
do focused work, writing, creative work, any of that. So
I try not to put any meetings on my schedule
until noon and really give myself from like nine to
noon each day to have in whatever time block that is,
to have that that really focused work, because that's when
(15:02):
my brain is firing. By the time I get to
the afternoon, I need to be less creative And can
I do a lot better with emails and meetings and
those kinds of things. But again, we're really trying to
limit meetings, so if I'm in a meeting, I have
to be on for it.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah. Well, let's pivot to talking about reading here. You
mentioned you read it nonfiction in the morning, and then
the fiction, which I know a lot of currently reading,
is about when does that happen in your schedule?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Oh gosh, so right, So we Katie and I each
every week bring three books a week to talk about.
So that means that I have to read at least
twelve books a month to keep up with the podcast schedule,
which actually is not a problem because that's kind of
my normal lifelong reading habit. But I like to read
before I get up in the morning, fiction, especially on
(15:52):
the weekends. This is I'm going to tell you, and
I know a lot of people are going to have
They're going to think I'm nuts. I wake up seven
to seven thirty on the weekends. Again, I don't have
littles anymore. When my grandkids aren't there and I wake
up at seven, I don't. I try not to get
out of bed until eleven o'clock on the weekday mornings.
(16:14):
I will read for a lot of that time so
that you know, I will have a couple of cups
of coffee. Reading in bed is my favorite place to read.
I have a full set up with my kindle and
my Kindle stand and my Kindle remote literally where I
can just be laying like I'm laying in a coffin
and just be turning the pages on my kindle and
I will just crush. I will just crush for several hours.
(16:39):
So I love I've done that my whole life. I
love to read in the morning.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Well, I would say, you have to get up out
of bed to get your coffee. I assume that there's a.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
My husband does that, that's his does it for you?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Oh? How lovely?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That is his? That is his main job. Like you know,
like you had one job, Johnny.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Job, go make your coffee and bring it over to you. Right, Oh,
I love it. Well, then you don't have to get
up at all. I mean, you know, maybe a bathroom
trip exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
It's my favorite thing. It is so indulgent. And there
were so many years if having four kids, where obviously
that schedule just was not on the table. So I
lean into it like crazy now.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yes, absolutely, Well maybe that's my goals for as soon
as mine are as old as yours. Well we'll get
there eventually. All right, Well, we're gonna take one more
quick ad break and then I will be back with
more from Meredith Monday Shorts. Well, I am back talking
with Meredith Monday. Schwartz is the CEO of Here Comes
(17:38):
the Guide also one are the hosts of the Currently
Reading podcast. So how do you figure out what to
read next? Since I mean, you're reading at least one
hundred and forty four books a year, it sounds like
you've got to keep the uh, keep the train moving.
How are you figuring that out right?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Well, this is not a small thing, even for someone
who reads for a living like I do. I'm a
mood reader. There are planned readers and mood readers. And
I don't understand people who say, here are the books
that I'm going to read in December. I love that
for them. It's fantastic. I could never read like that.
So I'm a mood reader. I always have a book
(18:14):
going in every format. So I'm always reading four books.
So my morning read one of my kindle, an audiobook,
and then a print book. So I always have four
going at a time and every time I get so
that gives me the ability to switch around a lot
based on my moods. And so I mean, I'm super
(18:35):
plugged into the book world. I'm very very lucky that way,
and so I have lots of different sources. Instagram is
a really really big one. I'm very big on Bookstagram,
and so I take pictures of books that are interesting
to me, and I caption them in a very specific
way in the actual photo app on my iPhone, and
(18:57):
then when I'm in the mood for something, I will
kind of flip through that. I also put a lot
of holds in the library, so at any point I'll
have fifteen twenty thirty books home from the library and
I'll do a book flight. So I'll pick five books.
I'll read the first paragraph chapter of those five books
in which everyone grabs me that's what I'm reading next.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
And with that, then will you not read a book?
I mean, after you've started it, you gotten a ways
into it, if you decide, yeah, this isn't this isn't happening, right.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
So if I do a book flight and I'm just testing,
then I then all of those other four that I
didn't choose, they could come up again in the future.
The question of dnf ing or did not finish is
one that comes up so much for us in the
book world. I am a pretty profligate DNF for if
I can't afford to get stuck behind a book, and
(19:48):
there are too many books in the world for me
to do that. And also it's not fair to the
author for me to push through when a book's not
working for me, because inevitably I won't have any great
to say about it when I'm having to push that hard.
So I read about ten percent or fifty pages. If
it's not flowing very easily, I'll set it down. Sometimes
(20:10):
I'll say i'm in our inning it not right now
instead of DNFING, because DNF is kind of like I
might never return to that in our end means there
was something I liked about it, but it just wasn't
fitting what I needed right now. So I have two
separate kind of categories of not finishing a book.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, well, because you said you're a mood reader, and
so something that's not for you right now, I mean
maybe you'll feel more like you like a cozy kind
of book in winter versus the summer, or something like that.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah. I've had books that I have started two or
three different times because I'll think this book is made
in a lab for me, but for some reason it's
not working, and then the fourth time it's absolutely perfect.
I believe in bookish serendipity. I think if a book,
if you need a book, it is going to find you,
and it is going to find you at the right time.
(20:59):
But we have to help that happen. By trusting when
it's not the right time and letting it go.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Yeah. Well, I do like the advice to abandon a
book that isn't working for you, because to maintain any
sort of swift reading schedule, you can't get stuck because
then your pace falls off. Then you're only reading, you know,
six books a month or two because you stopped in
the middle of one, and you don't turn reading time
potential leisure time into reading time, right.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
And there's no question that that's something that Katie and
I have to be very mindful of. But this issue
for normal day to day readers comes up a lot,
and I will talk so often with people who are
like I bet, I just feel guilty. I feel guilty
setting down a book. The author worked so hard on it,
and they did, and that's true, and they did. But again,
if you want to respect that work, save it for
(21:49):
a time that it's working for you better. Just because
it's not you're not the reader for it now doesn't
mean that ten years from now it might not be
your favorite book of all time. And I've heard that story,
which is why I say that that's happened many times.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, absolutely well, Meredith, I always ask my guests a question,
which is, what is something you have done recently to
take a day from great to awesome? All right?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
I have a very specific practice that I put into
practice once my therapist told me to do it. It
sounds really simple, but it has changed a very difficult
part of each day for me. So when I finish
my work day, like a lot of moms, I have
to then go into dinner, practice taking, you know, get
boy to practice, you know, all of those things. I
(22:33):
found that that transition had been difficult for me. So
the idea is that at the end of each work day,
take five minutes. I take five minutes to ask myself
what do I need right now? So it's checking in
with my mind, how busy a day was it, how
much energy did it take from me? It's checking in
(22:54):
with my body. Do I need to just take some
deep breaths, Do I need to stretch? Do I need
to sit quietly for a little bit, and then acting
on what it is that that check in has brought
to me. It sounds really simple, but I realized I
was never asking myself that question at the end of
the day. When I started doing that and started taking
(23:14):
five ten minutes, to give myself what I actually needed.
Right then the whole rest of the evening went more smoothly.
So that's really changed that really rough transition period into
something that's working a lot better.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I love that. And what's something you're looking forward to
right now?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I am looking forward to my annual reading retreat in March.
Every year, me and three fantastic readers. We go for
four days and we literally have a highly scheduled reading retreats,
like it's sort of tongue in cheek scheduling, but darned
if we don't stick to the schedule, which we put
on bookmarks and we read and then we get together
(23:56):
and talk about what we're reading, and then we read,
and then we have lunch, and then we read and
go for a walk and then we read. We have
dinner in It is my favorite trip of the year.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Well.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Reading with friends is a great way to boost the
enjoyment of reading. So, Meredith, where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
So you can find our show at currently Reading podcast
and you can find me at Meredith Monday Schwartz on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Excellent. Well, Meredith, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and in
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
(24:44):
to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(25:07):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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