Building Mobrium, Part 5: A company office and work-life balance lessons

Episode 60

In the ongoing journey of Matt and Crista’s building a tech start up, they share some key growth moments- opening the first Mobrium company office and hiring a talented Head of Sales leader. They also dive deep into personal stories of balancing life with 5 kids and growing their bootstrapped business.

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Summary

In this 60th episode of their podcast, Mobrium co-founders, a husband and wife team, Matt and Crista Vance, offered a personal peek into their lives, discussing the universal challenge of balancing work and family life while building a business. They revealed significant company and personal updates since episode 50. On the business front, Mobrium has secured a dedicated office space at a local technical college’s new Center for Entrepreneurship in Cache Valley, Utah, which is conveniently located near their development team. Additionally, they’ve expanded their team by hiring an incredibly talented head of sales, Zac Crane, a veteran whose journey was highlighted in a previous episode. These moves mark a notable period of growth and expansion for the startup.

Beyond company growth, Crista Vance shared a significant personal achievement driven by a creative urge to write. She has authored and released two children’s books focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI), a subject central to their work. The first book, Flint’s Secret Treasure, uses a dragon story and metaphor to introduce the concept of AI, while the second, ArtiFISHial Intelligence: A Kids Guide to the Technology of Artificial Intelligence, offers a more direct, informative approach. Notably, Crista utilized an AI platform called Midjourney to create the beautiful illustrations for her books. She hopes these resources help children understand how to use AI safely and effectively, in tandem with their own thoughts, as they grow up in an increasingly technological world.

Crista and Matt share how they manage to run a growing business while raising five children. Matt shared a profound analogy given to him by his former church leader: the concept of “spinning plates.” This refers to the idea that you can’t do multiple things exceptionally at the same time; instead, you must be present and give your full attention to the “plate” you are currently spinning—whether it’s work, church, or family—to give it enough momentum before moving to the next. The Vance’s stress that neglecting a plate entirely will cause it to fall, emphasizing the need for consistent rotation and mindfulness as a strategy to reduce anxiety and maintain balance.

Crista further elaborated on her strategy, which involves prioritizing her children’s needs first and then focusing on work during dedicated times, often after the kids are asleep. She highlighted the importance of modeling hard work for their children, noting that her oldest daughter was inspired to write her own book after seeing Crista complete hers. Crista also shared her personal framework for defining a successful day, which she calls “Win the Day.” This involves ensuring she touches on four main priorities: Spiritual (connecting with God), Social (strengthening relationships, including serving a neighbor), Knowledge (learning one new thing), and Physical (maintaining a healthy body). Checking off these key areas helps her feel accomplished, regardless of whether every item on her daily to-do list is complete.

The crucial role of boundaries and self-discovery in achieving a sustainable work-life integration. Family traditions, such as a non-negotiable family dinner and German pancakes every Saturday morning, are essential boundaries. Matt confessed to needing to “unlearn” the unhealthy stereotype of only being productive between 8 to 5, now prioritizing results-focused work that often means working late when mentally undisturbed.

Define what balance looks like to you—whether it’s managing stress, ensuring sleep, or prioritizing quality time—and then establish boundaries to support that definition” (-Crista Vance). This can then allow you to work backward from your desired life outcomes.

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Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Today, we’re diving into what is a challenge for I think everyone, and that’s balancing work and family life. So, we’re going to give you a little peek into our world and how we do it as co-founders of Mobrium. And before we get into it, we want to give you a little update on personal note. Yeah, these episodes are kind of fun. Every 10th episode, we go a little bit more personal on what it’s like building our business as a husband and wife team. And yeah, so excited to talk about that. A couple updates since episode 50, our last update. We got an office. So, Moim now has an address that addresses a little other office at our house that you see in all the recordings. And uh what do you think of the uh the office? I think it’s great.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s been. It’s not too bad of a commute. 10 minutes. Yeah. About a 10 to 12 minute drive for me. And it’s right next to our dev team. That’s been really cool. Yep. Yeah. and we get to attend a Christmas party in the office building. So, it’ll be great. Yeah. So, it’s actually over at the BTE or Bridgilent Technology Institute or um college. Yeah. It’s a technical college here in Cash Valley, Utah. And they just opened a new center for entrepreneurship. And they have units for rent for startups. and we were lucky enough to qualify along with some other pretty cool startups that are in different units over at the office. And so it includes the internet and the utilities. It’s just a nice easy flat rate u for us to get things moving and it’s been really cool to have that dedicated space. We’ve got a couple incredible part-time team members so they can go over there and work sometimes.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And then another big piece of the growth since episode 50 was when we hired an incredibly talented head of sales, Zack Crane. And uh if you listen to the previous episode number 59, he joined us and talked about what it was like being in the military and now re-entering the civilian workforce as a veteran. And so we’re really pumped to have him. Yeah, we’re so lucky. He’s incredible. He’s awesome. And uh so those are probably two of the biggest updates. A couple things we’re working on. Uh we’re working on relaunching the mob.com website. Um huge additions there. We’ve got some pretty cool free tools planned. Um, some other resources. We’ve got a pretty cool webinar series that we’ve been developing and continuing to build upon with some great guests. Um, so yeah, lots of cool things in the works, including some new features that we’ll be excited to tell you um, uh, pretty soon. But those are a few updates, but Crista has a big personal update since last um, check-in.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. So, I I think it was about a year, a little over a year ago, I just had this idea that I wanted to do some I I was feeling that creative urge, I guess, and I’m definitely not a a great like illustrator, author, but I I love to write and I love putting projects together and and so I decided to write children’s books that I could read to my own kids on artificial intelligence because I feel like that’s such I mean, yeah, it’s such a big thing in in our world these days and to help kids get to like understand that concept better um as they’re like growing and and we were are just kind of thrown into that world but they can kind of learn it learn about it and learn how to use it safely effectively um you know and just have it actually help them down the road and in addition to what they have to offer hopefully that they’re not just relying solely on AI Right. So, I released a Flint Secret Treasure. So, if you can see the video, if you’re watching on YouTube, you can see it if you’re on audio.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): This, go look it up. Look it up on Amazon. Lots of beautiful pictures. If your kids love dragons like mine do, um it’s great. It’s more of just a story and then at the end it has a discussion about AI. It’s like a metaphor or analogy that you can compare to artificial intelligence. Um, but the story can stand alone and it’s fun and has awesome pictures. So, of course I used AI to make these pictures. I used a platform called Mid Journey and uh that’s been really good to work with that platform. And then the second book that I launched is artificial intelligence. Artificial artificial intelligence a kids guide to the technology of artificial intelligence. Um it’s a little bit of a fishy book, but yeah. And this one is much more informative with just supporting pictures and really dives into the concepts of artificial intelligence. So yeah, if you’re interested or your kids might like it, check it out on Amazon. And on a personal note, we’ve had a great summer.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Fall has been amazing. Um and now we’re headed into the colder season. It’s looking a little bit stormy out there today, but Matt was able to do lots of mountain bike rides this summer. Yep. And rides with the kids. We love getting out as a family and riding our bikes. It’s one of our favorite family activities. And uh yeah, it’s been great. So, we’ve got every bike size. We’ve got 29 in, 27.5, 24, 20, 16, and 12. We now own every bike size for our whole family all the way down the list. And that’s the wheel size. Yeah, that’s the wheel size. Yeah. Not the frame size. Yeah. And man, our kids have really improved in their biking. And they can get up big hills without stopping. And uh our youngest daughter, she now has a bike that has gears and so she can conquer any hill. It’s awesome. Mhm. Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s pretty great to see and it’s great to push through the challenge. Um, we definitely believe in working hard and having age appropriate challenges and um, being able to cheer on our kids through something difficult because we there’s a really big hill in our neighborhood and that each of our kids when they first got to that hill, they weren’t able to do it and then eventually multiple times through now they can all conquer the hill including our four-year-old and it’s it’s probably a quarter of a mile long Hill. Um, so it’s Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Yeah, super proud of them and just and I think that ties perfectly into what we’re going to talk about today. Uh, you know, it has been a challenge starting this business and simultaneously raising five kids. So, um, sorry. Yeah. So, I actually wanted to start off by telling a little story about work life balance. um in a I volunteer for my church in a calling and previously I had a a congregation leader or a bishop that’s what we call him in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I asked him how does he balance everything because as a bishop there’s a lot of responsibilities and it’s completely volunteer there’s no compensation or anything like that um his roles are everything around leading the congregation and supporting individuals and families.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And he told me this analogy of spinning plates. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, but um like the like a street performer that has this big stick and they take this plate and they literally twist this stick and then they’re spinning that plate up in the air and then they let it spin and then they go to another stick and another plate and they put it up on that stick and they spin that one and then they’re going around seeing how many plates they can have spinning simultaneous simultaneously. And the bishop at this time said you know spin the plate where you are and then go to the next one. Uh basically he was saying like be present where you are right then whether that’s at church or at work or with your family. Spin that plate and then it’s got a little momentum to keep going and then go to the next one because you can’t truly do two exceptional things at the same time. Um, so he was saying like give everything you have to that one thing and then move to the next thing and move to the next thing and keep your circle spinning all of your plates to keep all of them up.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And if you neglect one completely, then it will fall. And so you have to keep that rotation of spinning your plates. So spin the plate where you are and then go to the next one. Be present. So yeah, such a good analogy. And mindfulness is a big topic these days because a lot of people experience anxiety and other mental health challenges, me included. And having that just like present mindful mindfulness around everything you do can really reduce that anxiety and so that is honestly a really good strategy to have when you’re trying to balance work and family. You obviously don’t want any of those plates to drop and so it’s important to make sure that each of them is getting spun when they need to. It’s okay if some of them slow down a little bit though. You still want them to fall. I have a question for you, Crista. So, you’re a mom of five kids. You’ve got to make sure they’re off to school, you know, like all these different things.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I mean, we support each other, but you’re the mom. You’re the primary caregiver of these five kids. How is it for you um like being a mom and contributing to the business? like for other you know moms out there and and women who are doing exceptional things but also want to be there for their kids like what would you say to that like how’s it been and what have been some downfalls some good things just yeah I mean I think being the mindfulness is and being present when your kids are there when they’re around you that is super important because I I can tell you like prior to us starting Mobam I worked at Utah State and they actually let me bring my kids to work with me which was amazing. Uh but one thing I did is I always checked in with myself like is this working? Is this working? And you know eventually it got to the point where it wasn’t working anymore and that was after I had four kids and so I quit at that time and then it was just like 5 months later that we started Moberham.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So, um, but yeah, how do I keep it all going? I focus on one thing at a time. Um, when my kids need me, I’m there for them. And I understand that not every mom has the same kind of work situation since I was able to quit my job that was, you know, at Utah State University. Now, I can work from home and I can work pretty much any time of day or night that I want to. There are times when, you know, more urgent things come up or I have meetings. Um, so I understand not every mom has the flexibility that I have. So hopefully my thoughts can be applied to any situation, but being present is super important. I can’t tell you how many mistakes I’ve made when I’ve been trying to be there for my kids, like focus on them and work. You know, you make mistakes and sometimes that might just be what you have to do and you and you just do it. But when you can just focus on your kids and take care of them, give them the attention that they need and then when it’s time to work, just communicate with them.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): They’re pretty understanding and they model your behaviors. And so if they see that you’re working hard and you’re putting in the work, they tend to do that, too. one. In fact, when I wrote these children’s books, uh my oldest daughter started writing her own book and she obviously was a very different kind of book and shorter and whatever, but she wrote a book cuz she saw me do that and so she so cool modeled that. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I hope I can be a good example to my kids, but ultimately that I can give them the time that they need each day. I know there’s studies out there that suggest you give 9 minutes of attention per kid like where it’s like you completely are focused on that child. You’re just only doing that and being honest. And some days I get more than that. Hopefully not less than that, but they are my number one. I always want to make sure their needs are met first and then and then when the business demands or when they’re asleep then I can work and it’s super peaceful when you work when your kids are asleep.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So yeah, and a couple things I would add to that is, you know, seeing our kids make little books, like a lot of them have done this, even if it’s just like an open cover and on the back they make a barcode and they leave a review and a visit a website. It’s just so cool to see them thinking like little marketers and they make their own QR code like with little dots and stuff. Yeah. Oh, it cracks me up. And then they’re talking about reviews. Like literally, we went and got a cookie at Crumble the other day. And this is total tangent, but our four four-year-old son, he was like, “Dad, they’re doing pretty good. Aren’t they? They won the trophy, right?” Yep. I’m like, “Five stars. Yep. They got a good review.” And uh yeah, it’s pretty funny. But I want to add a couple thoughts from my perspective about you as the mom. I would first say like in the daytime where you’re kind of double duty, I see you like squeezing in some messages, work messages as needed on the phone and then doing your like hyperfocused work on the, you know, the desktop or laptop in the evening like you said or the morning or when the kids are gone when you know you have a time and a space to really focus, but you typically aren’t trying to do that

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): time when you know your kids need you and push them off. So, it’s like understanding the kind of sunrise, sunset of the day and where the needs live. Um, another thing that I think would be really cool if you tell everyone about is your win the day thing. I think that’s really cool because yeah, it’s impacted me. So, yeah. Yeah. I I think I just this came about just because of that reflection that I I try to continually have like are things balanced and I just kind of realized well how do I define balance and for me it’s that I’m spinning all those plates but for there are four main plates that I like to make sure that I’m always spinning and keeping up and that is my relationship with God. So that spiritual matters make sure that I do one thing every day that’s connecting me to God and then family is super and I call that social. So like taking care of my family relationships and then hopefully a little bit beyond that whether it’s a neighbor or a more extended relative doing one thing each day that’s touching on those relationships.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Obviously my kids it’s a lot more than one thing but um and mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom might be 18 in a minute I guess my my immediate family plate that’s just a given like I have to take care of that one but if I can do one thing to somebody outside of my family just to strengthen relationship with a sister or brother parent a grandparent um or a neighbor and doing something to serve them that’s awesome and then I like to learn one thing new every day. So that’s the knowledge plate and it can be something as simple as uh reading, you know, reading a book or um practicing the piano or that piano. Yeah. And then lastly is physical. Yeah. And that’s a super important one for mental health struggles, but I really care about having a body that’s healthy that can care for my kids because it is a very physical job.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s surprising how physical it is. Um, and to hopefully be there in the long years when they’re grown and and have kids of their own. So, I try to do one of those things each day. And when I do, I just feel so accomplished by the end of the day, even if I didn’t get all my checklists done or whatever, you know, I just feel like, hey, I I touched those things that I needed to do and and I’m I’m a better person at the end of the day. and you can tell yourself you won the day. You did those four things that were priorities to you and you know it’s the aggregation of marginal gains. You do these little things consistently day over day. I mean we’ve kind of tackled some pretty big ambitious goals like the book the review cycle that I wrote that took four and a half years and I got discouraged. I had times where I wanted to give up, but I came back to it’s okay that it’s not done today, but I need to keep chipping away at it.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And eventually my future self will thank me for all of those, you know, little additions that, you know, one page at a time it became a book. And you know, I think sometimes that’s hard to see. We’re pretty hard on ourselves. A couple things for me about balancing work. Like I would say, I’m first invested in the business time-wise, second in the family. Not to say that I don’t care about the kids and everything, but we’re obviously his number one priority, but he has to spend the plate of the business for more hours than he can be exactly focused on the kids. A little bit more the other way. So Exactly. Crista’s first on the family, second on the business, and between the two, we overlap really well. Everything that we’ve done as a couple has tried to be to um specialize, but with a unified goal. Like we don’t view ourselves as competing. Like I have my career and she has her career. Like we’ve tried to be very unified that we work together for the biggest success that we can accomplish together.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And even though, you know, like the review cycle has my name on the cover, like Crista was there doing so much for that. She offered to put my name, but I did not want my name on there. I wanted to do my own thing and get my I’m just kidding. Which she did great at, but she was the executive editor, and I couldn’t have done that without her. And it’s the same with Moim. And now our team is expanding. And so, you know, Mob is becoming this bigger thing where we’re all working together, but we’re trying to be good examples of balancing and leading. We definitely don’t want to make our team work crazy hours and we try to um encourage them to be there for moments that matter and to be flexible. But I’ve just a couple quick things for my personal journey about balancing work. Before Moramar, for over eight years, I literally tracked every minute that I ever worked, even though I was on salary at two different companies.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I did it in a spreadsheet because I’m a little OCD. And I did that because I wanted to be able to answer to myself that I’d fulfilled or was fulfilling my commitment to my employer. So, when I wasn’t at work on PTO or holiday, I could tell myself it was okay to stop thinking about work and to check out. And for me that worked then and I kept doing that for I don’t know 6 or 10 months after within you know the mobbering journey and Crista finally told me like why are you doing this? Like I felt guilty going on a bike ride at 10:00 a.m. Even if that was the best time that fit into my schedule that day because that’s not normal. That’s not what you do. You work 8 to 5 or whatever. that’s the work time and then the other time is when you can choose to do what you want but I was also working in the evening sometimes and so I’ve had to learn I guess unlearn maybe some unhealthy um stereotypes in my own head about when work gets done and what’s the definition of productivity and now it’s more results focused which still ends up being a lot of hours like like Crista sometimes I’m in the zone the best at night when mentally I know my email’s not getting blasted and so I don’t need to have that kind of customer service mindset of I need to be responsive when our clients are emailing.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. I can just think about my project and just really pound through whatever it is like a website revamp that we’re working on right now. And that’s been really good. And so just to adapt this kind of integration of work and family at a different uh cadence and schedule, it’s been practice for me and I don’t. I’m still not perfect at it, but um I’m getting better. Yeah. And I think that brings us to the other topic that we wanted to cover, which is boundaries. It’s important to have boundaries that help you stay balanced. And I think that was kind of a self-discovery that led him to being like, okay, this is actually a boundary I need to create where I’m not uh tracking every minute. And I was always like, why are you why are you doing that? Because you’re spending actual time on the time tracking. So, it just didn’t make sense to me. But I think we always help each other kind of get to that self-discovery.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s good to have a set of eyes on your own situation that’s not your own ice, right? And um but setting other boundaries like uh not answering texts or emails during dinner. Um yeah, at the dinner that’s something we’ve both occasionally broken that rule, but try not to. Yeah, there are some things that are a little more urgent and then we can be understanding. But just not making that a normal thing. And um yeah, cuz dinner I would just say dinner is really important for us. Like me it’s a non-negotiable at our house. Yeah. I very very rarely will miss dinner or vice versa. Um it’s one of those kinds of traditions in our family that we really prioritize. And on Saturday mornings we always have breakfast together. We make German pancakes every Saturday. And our kids know they ask if we’re if we’re not doing if we’re rushed, which is, you know, happens sometimes, but Yeah, do the Sunday instead or something. But yeah, what other boundaries have we created though? We tried to say no talking about work after it was 11 or 10 or something like that.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. But I definitely am the culprit for breaking it like late at night. I’ll be like, “Hey, what about this?” And you’re like tomorrow we’re in a bad habit of checking our phones right before we go to sleep. I highly recommend it. So, it’s like it brings to the forefront your mind of something with work or or we’ll look at our schedule for the next day, which that one I do like to do. But sometimes that brings to the front of your mind like what work needs to be accomplished and touching base with each other and discussing things. But any deeper conversations I like to save for tomorrow when we’re done. But we do spend. I would say how often do I mean we work at night when we need to. It’s certainly not every night, but we kind of enjoy being next to each other and both cracking down on some things without having a lot of inter-uh outside interruptions or the email like he mentioned.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And sometimes maybe he’s in the middle of something right before dinner, but he turns it off and then he comes back to it after the kids are in bed. And yeah, I say I never I always tell Crista, she’ll say, “Are you done it?” And I just say, “I’m never done. I’m just stopping.” So it’s just, you know, you pause and then you go spend the other plate and then you come back. Yeah. Yeah. and you’re focused on dinner and that and then you know that you’re coming back later and you can focus on that when you get back to it. So I think the one piece of advice I would give everyone listening is, you know, there’s so many different frameworks out there for balance and boundaries and all these different things. So you have to find what works for you, but just give yourself permission to explore what works and what doesn’t. Like have the conversation with yourself of what you want out of life, what you want out of your career, what you want out of your family relationships, and then work backwards and don’t be a slave to your schedule, but allow yourself to work towards those things that are most important to you and and fit it in the other way around.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um like one of the things that we’ve sacrificed um to be where we are is you know financial stability because we put everything into the business instead of you know if I would have been working that higher paying salary career job the 401k would have been bigger and you know different things like that but that was a calculated and timed risk that we took and and we’re doing it and we’re pushing forward focus focused on the goal and you can do the same thing. You can have that conversation with yourself and with your spouse of what do you want and then work backwards and and I think work life balance is a key piece of that because you know time is is a currency of value just like money and and you can define what you want now versus what you want later and and making that plan to prioritize your short-term needs and your future desires. Yeah. And I’ll add to that. Um well, first of all, we’ve now been doing MOAM for over three years. And so it was a risk, but we’re still in it.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): We’re still plugging away. And uh the other thing I would say is just to narrow in on that, um define what balance looks like to you. Maybe it’s staying below a certain stress level. Maybe it’s making sure you get a certain number of hours of sleep at night. making sure your relationships have a certain amount of time or or quality. Um, so you just need to define for yourself what that balance looks like and then establish those boundaries that support how you define it. I like that. I think that’s a great note to end on and thank you everyone for tuning in, for following along in our journey. We’d love to hear from you if you’ve had any feedback or requests on topics for us to cover in future episodes around prioritizing people and putting people first and why it’s good for business. And um thanks for following along and as our kids would say, leave us a review, like and subscribe. Did we win the trophy? Thanks, guys. See you.