Maria Mustapha | Project & Ops Consultant

@hey_mindi I say try and cook a curry with that parsley and report back

Went to pick up my grocery order tonight. It had substitutions. They’re basically the same thing, right?

@rossiadam And also it usually smells bad - like dirty socks. Why is that?

Girls are out of the house for two days and the place looks like a frat house. Men were not meant to live alone.

@TechSalesGuy Because they are broke or tight

Shower thought: Why don't more companies use Reddit for B2B outbound? Here's what the playbook could look like:

@RMHildebrandt What you’re talking about is a project management tool without looking at how the business runs and uses holistically. Software tools are typically chosen based on recommendations from others who have different requirements then don’t understand why it’s not working for them.

I've said no to a LOT of business by refusing to build on ClickUp. If you love ClickUp and want to keep it, go elsewhere. Spend 50 grand. Waste it. Come back after that doesn't work. That's genuinely how I feel about it, and I'll tell you why. ClickUp, Monday, Asana, Basecamp... these are project management tools. They're designed to be flexible. And flexibility is GREAT when you're experimenting, running one-off initiatives, or figuring out your offer. But flexibility is a liability for repeatable client work. When you take a flexible tool and try to make it rigid by piling on rules, statuses, custom fields, and automations... you end up with a really bad version of a database. You're creating a poor copy of something else, and it's more expensive and more difficult to maintain. The core problem is trust. Flexible tools store information in a way where nobody on your team is 100% sure they're looking at the right version of the right data. There's a subtle anxiety around every task. People second-guess whether they have the latest information. Context switching between views and tools adds 15-20 minutes of friction per person per day that never shows up on a timesheet. What we build instead is a single source of truth. One database where contacts belong to clients, clients have projects, projects have deliverables, and updating one record cascades everywhere relevant. Your sales team sees one view, your fulfillment team sees another, you see the bottlenecks. Same data, different lenses. When I tell clients this and they push back, I usually ask: "Can you take a month off? Fully off the grid, no Slack, no checking in? Would everything still function?" If the answer is no, your process tool is probably the first thing I'd replace. I'd actually keep ClickUp, though. Use it for the one-off stuff. Building a new website, opening an office, hiring a role. That's what project management tools are designed for. But your repeatable client delivery process needs something rigid, purpose-built, and centralized. Two tools, two purposes.

@build_boost Did you do the proposal, or bow out?

Thinking about the proposal I couldn't win because a customer wanted it "cheap" and then wrote a SOW requiring > 100 PM hours just managing meetings and schedule updates and 10 different information matrices and mandatory travel 2x a year to customer sites for more meetings and updates

@JMGregorchuk Agree!

I think we should all DM Jameson with invoices 🤣

@KrissBergTweets @JaredDHardin What ideas do you need executing?

Experienced a notable decrease in anxiety when I stop listening to business podcasts. The constant flow of new ideas and to do’s was making me anxious. I don’t need new ideas. I need execution on the ideas we already have.

@MarketingMax Yes - there are such things as coworking spaces

Hired a new marketing director for my startup Everyone already works remote One of our benefits is unlimited ride share (most employees only use it 2-3x a month) But his bill came in at $5,400 his first month Wtf?? I asked him what he was doing Turns out, he doesn’t have a home office, so he just rides around in a Waymo all day while working Told me that seeing new parts of the city helps him feel inspired Should I take the $5,400 out of his pay?

@totallyymika mariamm13_33135

@seanbaint Sent a question

HIRING We’re looking for experienced managers/operators. Previous prop firm experience is required. If interested, please DM me with your background and experience.

@jack_watson_hfw What’s the work that you do? What do you manufacture?

Manufacturing is awesome. I love the work I do. I’m tired, rarely get enough sleep (not bragging, I’m trying to improve that!), and I couldn’t be more fired up on a Monday morning to attack this week. Let’s get it!

@lukepierceops I would say before you even sign clients you should be looking at the type of contractor you may need, fees availability etc. You should know the types of work you do and want to do, and when you are putting together costs you can put the costs in for the contractors.

I ran a one-man automation agency for 2 years before I hired anyone. That decision almost killed the business. You hit a ceiling fast doing that. Because you're doing ALL the fulfillment, ALL the sales, ALL the admin. And there's only one of you. The fix IS NOT hiring full-time employees. I also made that mistake.. The correct way to do it is building a bench of contractors you can deploy the second a project lands. But most agency owners screw this up: → They hire before they have cash in the bank → They skip test projects and commit too early → They pay hourly instead of fixed fee → They don't have people ready in Slack BEFORE they need them The right sequence: 1. Sign clients and collect payment 2. Do great work yourself first (learn the systems) 3. Document what you did 4. Keep cash in the bank 5. THEN hire contractors from that cash 6. Prove the model before scaling Where to find them: Upwork, X, Discord communities, referrals from other agency owners. How to vet them: Small paid test project. Evaluate communication as much as output. If they can't respond fast and think through problems on their own... NEXT. The goal is simple: Your job becomes getting clients and managing the work. Not doing all the work yourself. This is the exact system I'm going to break down in detail tomorrow. Bookmark this post and turn notifications on. The AI Agency Playbook - Ep 3 drops right here on X tomorrow. You won't want to miss it.

@leacabrini Lol - practice makes perfect. what are you recording?

After 3 hours of trying to record a video talking to the camera, I can confirm I SUCK at this.

@FilArons In other words be youthful and wise?

It takes a youthful man to wake up every morning and say “we are going to win.” It takes a wise man to lay his head to rest every night and say “we are going to win.”

@YourPrimePath This is just called doing normal stuff

Slowmaxxing is my new favorite thing to think about - Read a physical book - Go for a walk w/o listening to a podcast - Eat food w/o watching a tv show - Write using a pen and paper - Get a pot plant or 10; tend to a garden - Work hard on a single task - Watch a movie w/o looking at your phone 2026 is the year of being slow

@jamesonhaslam So you can get paid for replying? I've been doing it for free! where are these paid opportunities?

I got paid to be a reply guy for a little bit. More than 5,000 replies actually! Got weird tho, sort of developed a parasocial relationship with my client and then he got pissed when I asked him to fly on his PJ (just once, ok!) and fired me

@PEoperator Or any thought

@CaseyMericle Its been fine - its just when you need to get hold of them for whatever reason, its email support, so about 24hour response - that's annoying.

Thinking about opening up an account at Mercury Anyone have thoughts?

@andrewdfeldman But what made you hire him then?

One of the most painful interviews of my career produced one of our best hires. He barely spoke and gave one-word answers. It was an uncomfortable 40 minutes. I walked out thinking, “No way.” My team pushed back and we hired him. I listened. They knew. Sixteen years later, he’s still with us and he is a superstar. He still doesn’t talk much. That moment changed how I thought about hiring. We spend an extraordinary amount of time doing interviews. And yet they are often a terrible predictor of performance. In fact, the more senior the candidate, the better they are at faking it. After 60 minutes we pretend we can predict: 👍 How they write code 👍 How they work with others when tired 👍 Whether they give up when it gets hard 👍 Whether they make the people around them better That is a fantasy. The best predictor of performance is having worked with someone before. Or working on a real problem together before you hire them. Once we admit how bad we are at predicting performance from interviews, we can start designing better hiring processes.

@Paxlaid Sent a message

I'm looking for a project manager to hire video editors and handle one video editing project. This will be a long-term project with multiple videos. If someone has experience managing and hiring multiple editors, let me know. Combined budget is $500–$1,000 USD.