Richard and Jillian Corbett have built their life around growth, curiosity, and a willingness to try something new. Their story began in different parts of the country. Richard grew up in Denver, while Jillian was raised in Sacramento.
Richard developed an early interest in computers and business. He later studied Business Administration and Information Systems at Colorado State University. Jillian was drawn to communication, creative projects, and organizing events. She studied marketing at San Diego State University.
Their paths crossed through mutual friends in 2020. They began dating the following year while finishing school and starting their careers. Distance meant traveling between Colorado and California, but they continued building their relationship while also pursuing their own goals.
Richard entered business technology, where he learned how better systems can make everyday work easier. His interest soon expanded to automation and artificial intelligence. Jillian built her career in marketing and events. She found a natural fit in work that combines creativity, planning, communication, and bringing people together.
The couple married in October 2023. In August 2024, they made another big decision together and moved to Phoenix.
Today, Phoenix represents a fresh chapter. Richard and Jillian remain focused on their careers, but they also make room for life outside work. They enjoy fitness, hiking, restaurants, coffee shops, concerts, road trips, and travel.
Their life is not about being flashy. It is about moving forward together, staying curious, and enjoying the experiences that come along the way.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
Our weekdays start pretty simply. We get up, have coffee, and try to move before work, whether that means the gym or a short walk. Richard spends his day working with business systems, software, and process improvements. Jillian’s schedule involves marketing projects, vendors, event planning, and plenty of moving pieces.
We stay productive by deciding what actually needs to happen that day. We would rather finish three important things than create a list of 20 tasks that keeps growing.
How do you bring ideas to life?
We both start by making an idea smaller. Richard tends to think in systems. If he sees a process that could work better, he maps the current steps before changing anything. Jillian approaches ideas through the final experience. For an event, she thinks about what someone should see, feel, and remember.
Then we test something small. An imperfect first version usually teaches more than another week of planning.
What’s one trend that excites you?
Artificial intelligence becoming useful in ordinary work. Richard is especially interested in AI and automation that eliminate repetitive administrative tasks.
What interests both of us is not replacing people. It is giving people fewer boring things to do so they have more time for judgment, creativity, and relationships.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
We reset our space every evening. It takes about ten minutes. Laptops get plugged in, dishes get put away, calendars get checked, and anything needed tomorrow gets placed where we will see it.
A calm morning usually starts the night before.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Richard would say to stop thinking you need to know exactly where your career is going. Jillian would say to become comfortable changing plans.
We met while still figuring out school and work, managed a Colorado-California relationship, got married, and then moved to Phoenix. Some of our best decisions required leaving a familiar plan behind.
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?
Not every hobby needs to become a side hustle.
We like hiking, photography, finding restaurants, traveling, and exploring Arizona because they are enjoyable. Turning everything you enjoy into another source of income can remove the reason you liked it in the first place.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Take small trips.
Since moving to Phoenix, weekend drives have become one of our favorite routines. You do not always need a major vacation. Pick somewhere within a few hours, leave Saturday morning, explore, and come home Sunday.
Changing your surroundings can change your thinking.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
We get away from screens. Usually that means working out, walking, or driving somewhere.
We also ask, “What actually has to be solved today?” That question separates a real problem from something we are simply worrying about early.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
Learn the work around your job, not only your job.
Richard became more valuable in technology by understanding business operations and how employees actually use systems. Jillian learned that successful events require more than creative ideas. Vendors, schedules, communication, budgets, and small logistical details matter.
Understanding the full process makes it easier to solve useful problems.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
Richard once helped roll out an internal workflow improvement that made sense technically but created extra steps for employees. The mistake was designing around the system instead of the people using it.
He went back, watched how employees actually completed the task, asked where they were getting stuck, and simplified the workflow.
The lesson was simple: efficiency on paper is not always efficiency in real life.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
A “weekend concierge” for people who recently moved to a city.
Instead of generic tourism recommendations, customers complete a short profile about food, fitness, outdoor activities, budget, and how far they want to drive. They receive a personalized Friday-to-Sunday itinerary featuring local businesses and less obvious experiences.
We would have used something like that after moving to Phoenix.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
Google Calendar. It is not exciting, but we use calendars for more than meetings. We block time for workouts, appointments, events, trips, and personal plans.
If something matters, giving it actual space on the calendar makes it much more likely to happen.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
One book we both enjoyed is Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. The title comes from the idea that an average human life is only about four thousand weeks, which puts time into perspective pretty quickly.
What stayed with us was the argument that you will never get everything done. The answer is not always becoming more efficient. Sometimes you have to decide what deserves your time and accept that other things will remain unfinished.
That has become more relevant as our careers have gotten busier. We still want time for the gym, weekend trips, restaurants, friends, family, and exploring Arizona. The book reinforced something we have been learning since moving to Phoenix: a full life and a productive life do not have to mean the same thing.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
We recently enjoyed Shrinking. We started watching it because we wanted something funny and easy to watch after work, but it ended up having more depth than we expected.
What we like is that the characters are adults who still do not have everything figured out. They make questionable decisions, deal with changes in relationships and careers, and try to become better without suddenly becoming completely different people.
We are in a much different stage of life than most of the characters, but that idea feels familiar. Getting married, moving to Phoenix, starting new jobs, and building a life somewhere new has taught us that adulthood is mostly a series of adjustments. Sometimes you have to laugh at that.
Key learnings
- Understand the people using a system before trying to make the system more efficient.
- Learn how the work around a role functions. Broader context often creates better opportunities and better decisions.
- Test ideas on a small scale instead of waiting for a perfect plan.
- Protect hobbies and experiences that have no financial purpose. Not everything valuable needs to become productive.
- When everything feels urgent, identify what truly needs to be solved today and start there.