Steve Could Do This All Day. I Couldn't.
Welcome to another Toolkit Tuesday! Every week, our goal is to give you a practical leadership tool to put in your toolkit.
So There I (Matt) Was . . .
When Khaki Consulting was just getting off the ground, growing the business meant getting out in front of people, and Steve was built for it. He could work a networking event, a community breakfast and a business lunch all in the same day and walk out of the last one still fully in it, already thinking about who he'd talk to next. Watching him, I figured that was just what this business needed from both of us, so I decided I needed to be right there next to him, doing the same.
I started stacking my own calendar the same way. Three or four meetings a day, sometimes more, one right after another, all in the name of pulling my weight. By midday I was running on fumes. I'd walk into the third or fourth thing of the day going through the motions, shaking hands, making small talk, handing out business cards, but the version of me that showed up had already checked out somewhere around lunch. Meanwhile Steve looked like he'd just gotten started.
I never said anything about it. I just kept pushing, because if Steve could do this all day and come out the other side wanting more, I figured I should be able to as well. Falling behind him felt like falling short of him as a partner, so I never let on how much it was costing me.
Then I'd sit down with an actual client, the two of us working through a real problem together, and something in me would shift completely. I'd walk out of that meeting wanting more instead of needing to disappear for the rest of the afternoon. Same day, same business, two entirely different versions of me depending on which room I was standing in, and for a long time I had no idea what to do with that.
The Challenge
Here's the thing about partnerships, or teams, or any group of people trying to build something together: you're rarely built the same way. Steve was wired for those rooms. I wasn't, and no amount of pushing through the exhaustion was ever going to change that. But I didn't know that yet. All I knew was that he could do something I couldn't, and I assumed that made me the weak link.
That's an easy trap to fall into, especially early in a partnership when everybody is watching everybody else, trying to figure out who's carrying what. You look at what someone else does effortlessly and assume that's the standard, the thing you're supposed to be able to do too if you're really pulling your weight. So you copy their calendar instead of building your own, and you spend a lot of energy trying to become a version of your partner instead of figuring out who you actually are in the business.
The problem wasn't that I couldn't handle a full day of meetings. Plenty of people can't, and that's fine. The problem was that I never stopped to ask whether that was even supposed to be my job.
The Tool: 70:30 Principal
We've written about the 70:30 principle before: the idea that we do our best work, and stay in it longest, when about 70 percent of our time lives in what comes naturally to us and only 30 percent lives in what we have to work at. If you want the full breakdown of both sides of that split, you can find it here: 70:30 Principle. What I want to zoom in on today is the piece I got wrong for the better part of a year.
I assumed the split was the same for everyone. It's not. Those networking events and community lunches that left me running on fumes were sitting squarely in Steve's 70. For him, that was the strength side, the natural side, the part of the business that came without a fight. For me, the exact same rooms were sitting in my 30. Same activity, same calendar, completely different column depending on whose chart you were looking at.
That's the piece nobody tells you about a partnership. You don't inherit someone else's 70 just because you admire it or because it would make life easier if you did. Once Steve and I figured that out, the whole conversation between us changed. Instead of me feeling like I was falling short and him wondering why I looked wiped out after a normal day, we had language for it. That's his 70. This is my 30. No guilt required, just two different charts.
Why This Matters Now
If you never make that distinction, you'll keep measuring yourself against the wrong ruler. You'll watch someone else move effortlessly through something that costs you real energy, and you'll quietly conclude that the problem is your work ethic, your stamina or your fit for the role. None of that is true.
What's actually happening is a mismatch between where your time is going and where your strengths actually are, and if you don't catch it, it doesn't just cost you a rough Tuesday. It costs you burnout, resentment toward the very partner or team you're trying to serve, and eventually the parts of the business that only you can bring.
The Result
Once I understood my own 70:30, I didn't quit doing outreach entirely, some of it still had to get done. But I stopped trying to match Steve's calendar and started building mine around what actually let me contribute at full strength: strategy conversations, client work, the kind of thinking that comes easily to me and hard to almost everyone else. Steve kept doing what he does best too. The business didn't lose anything. It gained a version of both of us that showed up rested instead of running on fumes.
Leaders and partners who figure this out stop measuring their people, or themselves, against a single standard of hustle. They start asking a better question: what's actually in this person's 70, and how do we build around it instead of against it?
Take Action
Pull out your calendar from the last two weeks and sort everything on it into two columns, what genuinely comes easily to you and what you have to grind through. Be honest about the ratio. If your 30 is closer to 70, that's not a discipline problem, that's a design problem, and it's worth sitting down with someone who can help you see it clearly.
If you want to work through your own 70:30 together, let's grab time on the calendar and dig into it.
Closing the Loop
I still think about those early days, watching Steve walk into his fifth event of the day looking like he was just getting warmed up. I used to see that and feel like I was losing. Now I see a guy operating in his 70, doing exactly what he was built to do, while I go build in mine. We're not running the same race anymore. Turns out we never were.
