TAMSEFIKATION S2EP01: Why My Travel Mug Is an Employee

This season started on a veranda on the Disney Dream, in Mickey Mouse pajamas, before my 10-year-old was awake. The ocean was doing its thing. I was doing mine, which is noticing things and not being able to stop thinking about them.

A month ago, on a different ship, I lost an employee.

It was my favorite Disney travel mug. Insulated, the right shape, keeps my coffee exactly the temperature I like it. Thirty minutes after boarding, in all the excitement, I set it down in a bathroom and walked away. It took me an hour to notice, a lot of retracing steps, and two days before guest services handed it back.

That mug isn't a thing to me. It has a job. It shows up every morning and does it well. And what I learned on that ship was that the human in charge of it, me, gets distracted when life gets exciting.

So before this cruise, I made a hire. I pulled a giant stroller carabiner out of retirement and gave it one responsibility: keep the mug clipped to my bag. If it breaks, we fix it or we fire it. That's the whole job description.

That's how I see everything. A tool with a role, a responsibility and a way to tell if it's working is an employee. My chargers are color coded, orange for me and blue for Tad, so nobody ever argues about whose cord is whose. My little microphone wears a fuzzy "dead cat" cover so I can record over the wind and the waves. Small hires. Real jobs.

Then Tad one-upped me. The chest strap on his CamelBak broke, and while we were looking at it he found a whistle built into the buckle. Six years we've had that backpack. He looked at me and said, "I didn't know I had this employee, Mom."

My heart just about burst.

Because he gets it. Your team is bigger than the people on your payroll. It's the humans you lean on and the tech and tools you trust, and the magic happens when you're intentional about both.

The picture that keeps coming to me is a farmer and his horse. Someone asks him, "I know you love your horse, but would you try the tractor?" He shrugs and says sure. And suddenly the tractor plows the fields, and the horse gets to be what it was always meant to be: something he loves.

The point of hiring the tractor is getting to love the horse again.

That's what I've done with my law degree, with tools like ChatGPT and Claude, and with the humans I bring in where they belong. I call it a Vujà Dé perspective: instead of "this is how it's always been done," you ask, "what am I trying to do, and what's available to me?"

There's one rule. Your ideal team only has to work for you, but it can never work by squashing someone else. People, places and things all get respect. That's the foundation.

So that's Season 2 of Tamsefikation. Practical, everyday team building, from a cruise ship and a carabiner to your business and your home, so you can feel seen, supported and celebrated in a way you can actually sustain.

In this episode, recorded at sunrise on a day at sea, I share how Season 2 found me, the farmer and the tractor, and the employees hiding in plain sight in our travel bag. It's a private podcast, so it's just you and me.

Keep Exploring

• Why Your Business Needs Two Teams: Team Tech and Team Humans
• The Best & Cheapest Assistant You MUST Hire Today
• Hiring at Home: Timers
• Tamsefikation Season 1, Episode 1: The $4,380,000 Question

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