Last week, Jason and I were on a train to New York City for a two-night midweek getaway. The team was cheering us on. I even reported that I wasn’t bringing my laptop (more cheers).
Jason did bring his. Because he knows. About an hour into the ride, something came up.
On Monday we’d run a user cleanup on our site. Anyone who hadn’t logged in for six months and had no history of a paid order was deleted. Why? Because:
- huge WordPress databases bog down admin searches
- inactive accounts are security risks
- people deserve privacy (mostly this one)
We ran the script to tag users, spot checked the result, hit delete, and moved on.
Midday Tuesday, a few emails trickle in. “Hey, I can’t access my account…”. I’m on my phone playing Wordle and see the Slack notification.
So after a few commands in Terminal, Jason compares logs to backups, quickly realizing what happened:
An attempted cleanup from a year ago had left user_meta flags behind. About 100 people had since upgraded but still carried the old “delete me” tag.
After allowing ourselves a moment of simmering frustration, we get to work. Jason builds an isolated list of users to reinstate. He writes the custom SQL script we need to run. I coordinate with our sales team to write an empathetic explanation for anyone that reaches out that was impacted.
For the handful of people who noticed, it was a small, annoying hiccup the we resolved quickly. For everyone else… they didn’t notice.
The whole time I kept thinking:
<< This is why we are the exact right people to be leading this platform right now. >>
Between the two of us, we have:
- deep engineering expertise
- product instincts
- customer empathy
- operations experience
- the ability to stay calm in the storm
What we don’t know, we learn. Or we ask. Or we bring in people with the right values and the right energy.
Everyone on our team reflects that, too:
- People who deeply understand our product.
- Who feel our customers’ fears and frustrations.
- Who care about each creator building something with PMPro.
- Developers who problem solve instead of panicking.
When something happens outside our control, our mindset is always:
“Okay. This sucks. What can we do?” (There is always something you can do.)
If you’ve made it this far (thanks), here’s the point:
Don’t build a business in a state of constant friction.
These little fires are almost effortless now. Not because they’re fun, but because we’re seasoned enough to not get emotional about the problem. Fix it fast, take notes, and write a bulletproof SOP for next time.
Whatever you’re building, I hope it greets you at the perfect place between effort and ease.
I hope you’re not waking up every day feeling under-skilled and permanently behind, operating at the 101 level when your problems require advanced skills.
A little stretch is good. A lot of stretch? You break.
