Ep 171: How To Run Multiple Figure Companies On 15 Hours A Week
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I run my agency. We have several clients. We run multiple six figures of revenue a year. And I run it on 15 hours a week with these systems.

The power of a podcast extends well beyond plugging in the mic. So if you're ready to learn how it can help you build a big business, then I'm your best friend. Hi, I'm Joanne Bull and I am obsessed with all things podcasting and creating an unapologetically big revenue business with it. From podcast guesting to podcast hosting and everything in between, we're going to dive into it all and show you step by step.

by Awesome Steps, how using a podcast can and will grow your business. So grab a glass of wine and pop your headphones on because girlfriend happy hour has begun here on The B Word. Woo!

Well, hey, Avani, and welcome to The B Word. I am super excited to get into this conversation today. You and I have recently met, and I've just gotten to be fascinated with everything that you do and you say and you put out there online. And so when we chatted about being on The B Word, I was like, oh, that's such a hard yes for me. Yeah. So tell everyone a little bit about yourself, and let's get into this juicy conversation on creating freedom in your business.

Amazing. Thank you so much, first of all, Joanne, for having me here. It's so exciting to be here jamming with you. We didn't even press record and we were starting to touch on some fun topics. So I'm just so thrilled. That's how you know it's going to be a good one, a juicy one. I'll just share a few words about myself. I am a

I'm Evonie Jane. I am the CEO of Matcha Design Labs, which is a UX design agency. That's my first business. And then I'm also the host of the Unsubscribe podcast we launched this January 2024. And it's...

my favorite thing that I get to think about and work on. And the concept of unsubscribe is something I live, breathe and think about how I can share this with the world. And in a few words, it's basically how we take a look at the clutter in our mental inbox, all the stories are the programs, all of the like

chatter about how we should be or how we should think or how we should do. And it's the process of looking at that, taking a really deep look at those stories, those programs and saying, what can I opt out of? What can I clear out that doesn't serve me anymore so that I can make space to be and live in a way I truly want?

And this, to me, can apply to anything, to life, to business. So there's so many ways we can take it. But that's what I'm really, really excited about. And we're going to talk about some other juicy things related to business. All right. First, I want to jump into the unsubscribe podcast concept.

Because your company has nothing really to do with the mental clarity and the, you know, getting past the boundaries of what you're doing inside your own brain. Yet you decided to start a podcast on something completely different from your business. So how are you tying the two together? Or is the podcast really just a love gift to yourself? It's a great question. So they're on the surface, not tied together at all. I...

Having the background been growing and learning in other ways, aside from running an agency and being a business owner, I got certified in NLP, which is neuro-linguistic programming and a bunch of modalities in life and success coaching. 2019, I think it's been a few years now. And so I love thinking about and learning about how I can use my brain to

make my inner reality bring the outer reality I want into existence and I have seen time and time again how our minds can be so powerful and so I'm always thinking about this always learning reading absorbing and as I've been learning and transforming myself and figuring out how I can move through you know hard moments in life or hard moments in business that challenge me to my core and

I was like, wait a second. I'm learning so much here. I have to put it out into the world somehow, somewhere. And that's when Unsubscribe was born. And it is, this is my life's work. This is what I'm meant to do. This is...

without a doubt what I'm supposed to be doing with my days and with my time, because the conversation it's brought to the table with the listeners and everyone who is tuning in is incredible. It's stuff we all need to be talking about. And I don't think we all have a space to talk about it. So that's why I'm so excited about it. And it started off as like, this is what I love to do. Isn't it funny how we sometimes start those little cutesy side hustles?

you know, and people are like, oh, that's cute. What's it really going to do for you? And you're like, oh, it feeds my soul so much that if it doesn't do anything else, it does that for me. Absolutely. And I realized recently I'm into human design and learned I'm a generator and

I'm not an expert in it at all, but there are specifics about who we are and how we operate that are just so unique to us. And one thing I realized was I was really good at being disciplined. I'm so good at doing things I don't want to do, which can serve me really, really well. Like you got to go on a sales call. You got to go pitch and do outreach or go to an event and be on even if you don't want to. I'm great at that. And what I had forgotten was

doing things that I love that light me up, that fuel me and bring that fire back. I hadn't done that in years because I was pouring everything I had into scaling my agency. And then I was like, realizing about my human design and who I am and learning about myself, I need to be doing something that lights me up, that keeps me on fire every day because that

It puts me in alignment. It puts me in flow. And all of these things started to like stack on top of each other. And it made so much sense as I started to share the podcast and the response was like, wait, this is what I meant to do. And so following in on if you're a generator, okay. Love it. Love it. Like doing the things I see you. I, I am you. Yeah.

Doing the things that we love that light us up. That is our life's work. And we need to find that funny story and hold on to it. I love to take a good nap. Like give me a good nap. I need 20, 30 minutes almost daily. And I talked to, um,

Tracy O'Malley one time and she's big on the Enneagram and we were just chit-chatting and I said, Tracy, I don't like, I feel like I am so lazy sometimes because after a lot, you know, I mean, two o'clock in the afternoon, I'm like, oh, 20 minutes. I just need that nap. And she laughed and she's like, have you ever looked into the human design? I said, no, because I was talking to the Enneagram expert. She was like, you really need to look into it. So,

So I took the test, started reading about being a generator. And what I discovered was the reason I had to take a nap every day was because I was so doing the things that didn't light me up that it exhausted me mentally. And as a generator, we've got to infuse into our lives the things that really do light us up. Otherwise, that generator plays.

piece of us is like just so frustrated, it shuts down and needs to nap. And so I will say that when I started putting back into my life, just like you're saying, the stuff that I'm passionate about, I'm fueled about that gives me that generator energy, like I didn't need as many naps anymore. And I was like, Oh, girl, so I didn't have to actually get in shape. I just needed to rearrange my day. Incredible, right? I just every time I'm reminded of that, it

It so clearly now shows me, oh, you were just burning yourself out for the last two and a half, three years. Right. That's why I constantly am like, why am I always napping in the day? And it's because I was doing the stuff I wasn't meant to be doing. And as a generator, when you get off path, it shows. It shows up in a big way. Oh, my gosh. Generator Enneagram 8. I'm like a hurricane waiting to happen at all times. Yeah.

Okay, you're an eight. That's helpful. I'm a three. So also a hurricane, but maybe a different kind of hurricane. All right, so let's dive into the topic that we had originally said that we'd talk about today, which is your freedom framework, your systems. I'm just going to hand the floor over to you and learn from you in the next few minutes. So take it away. All right. So I'm just going to get all the road out to know because I want to make sure that everything that's going on in my brain isn't too crazy.

Yeah, I want to make sure I hit all the good stuff for everybody. So freedom is, it's probably, actually, I know it is another quality that generators really, really have.

value. And honestly, anyone who's listening into this podcast, I'm sure you value freedom very highly. Otherwise, you wouldn't be going out and seeking to learn and to improve yourself and level up in life and work and business. So a lot of us, I left my job seven plus years ago now to create a life of freedom. And I didn't want to work at a desk for

eight, 10 hours a day and have to show up at a place. And as I started diving into running my business, time goes by, I get a lot of clients, I'm super busy.

And I look around and like, wait, where's that freedom thing that I wanted? Because I was sitting at my desk more, more hours than before, because it's our own business, right? 10 hours, 12 hours, and working on the nights, working on the weekend. And I was hustling, which I look, there is so much value in hustle. And then there's also value in stepping back and looking at wait, what's what's working, what's not working.

There's a little bit of balance that can happen. And the thing I really wanted, the thing I really craved was to go take a nap in the afternoon, to go do a midday Pilates class with my friend who also ran a business. And we wanted to be flexible together. And all of those things that I saw people do, digital nomad lifestyle, I wanted that. And then I was like, but where is it? So I started to realize there was something wrong with

maybe wrong is the incorrect word. There was something that needed to change. There's no right way or wrong way of doing things. But for me, that felt out of alignment. Something here wasn't right. I knew I had made the right step, but there was another right step to take. So around, I started my business in 2017, around 2018, 2019 was when I was starting to feel this because we had so much momentum, so many clients, so much growth in my agency. And

I started to bring on team members too. And that's where things get a little crazy. Cause like, okay, wait, you're doing all this stuff and now you have to somehow communicate it to someone else. Like that's start where things just start, start to break down. And so we brought in a project management system. We use ClickUp. Our, our,

Oh, I love them. I don't know if you talk much about that on the podcast. So I'm actually, I'm like, oh, I've used ClickUp. I've used Asana. I've now, I'm deep in Dakota. I don't know if it's that ADD piece of me too. That's like, I can't really figure out the one I love, but I love the concept of them.

Yes. Okay, great. I'm obsessed with ClickUp and you can come talk to me on Instagram about it because I'll talk to you about ClickUp for hours. However, I think any solid project management system is a good one. And everything I want to share with you today kind of hinges on that. And the reason I think it's like, oh,

project management system, blah, it's not that exciting. But actually it is because when I installed and I started out using Asana first, and then I switched to ClickUp, when I installed a project management system just for myself to keep track of team client projects and like mundane things like invoicing tasks, checking on my finances, when I started to put it all in one place, I got to release the mental ticker in my head.

So a lot of you might be able to relate to this. When we are people who do a lot of things, maybe we manage a household, we manage a business, we have things to deliver to clients or to our managers.

We have to plan vacations, whatever it is that we're doing. We have something called a mental ticker. It's like I imagine it as like the New York Stock Exchange ticker. But like right here on top of my head and instead of the like numbers of the stock market, it is all of the monkey brain to do things in each like

area of responsibility in my life. So my household ticker, like, oh, you need to make sure you reach out to the person for the blind. You need to call the car dealership. Like you need to blah, blah, blah. And then the work ticker for me, it would have been like, okay, send invoice and deliverable to client. Make sure you message so-and-so send a loom video and then, and then multiple tickers. So you can imagine this like stack of tickers and just imagining that literally I imagine the New York stock exchange and how insane and crazy they portray that to be. And,

That was my brain, these mental tickers. And when I put a project management system in place, I was able to start offloading that mental ticker to a tool, to a digital tool that could keep track of it. So I didn't need to like constantly think about it. I could just check in here. I mean, I checked in pretty frequently, but it wasn't taking up so much space in my mind. So

If you have many mental tickers going on in your brain and are not using a project management system, I don't care if you run a business or not. You need, I use a click up for my household too. So it can change the game that like, I want you to offload all of your mental tickers and I'll show you like different ways to do that in a moment. I'll talk about some different systems I use, but that itself is,

can release so much pressure, so much tension. And I'm going to ask the question because my brain, I think I have like 12 of those tickers you're talking about at all times. Do you mentally read them out loud though? Because sometimes I think, am I crazy? Do I talk to myself? Because in my head, I can actually hear that ticker going through, you know, like, oh, I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this. Okay. So I'm not the only one. That's good.

I think it depends. You know, you're not the only one. I think it depends on the kind of, for me, I'm so visual. So you like see it in your head. I hear it in my head. I just see it in front of me. I can visualize. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm wondering, like, I'm not an expert in this area specifically, but I'm wondering if it's related to our learning styles and how we remember and retain information. So I can imagine though. Yeah.

So first is I have two types of tasks that I do on a regular basis. One is computer tasks, sitting here in front of a computer, got to be at my desk, my little space station set up. And the second is phone tasks or what I like to call waiting in line tasks.

So computer tasks are kind of straightforward. They're what you expect. And I've actually, I split them up into two. There's potato computer tasks and makeup computer tasks. So right now I'm here in front of you, Joanne, and I am doing a makeup task. I did get ready this morning to put some makeup on and I'm recording. I'm on, I'm talking and I'm creating content with you. So anytime I am

Recording something, I have to be in an important meeting. Maybe I'm doing a talk or a presentation of some sort, recording a podcast, recording for my own podcast. That is a makeup task and I'm in front of the computer. So it requires a little bit more energy and it requires a little bit more prep. That's the makeup task. Then we have the potato task, which is the second type of computer task, which is my favorite, where you get to look like a potato. Yeah.

and you do not have to get ready, look beautiful or anything. You get to sit here, put your little glasses on or blue blockers, blue light blockers on and get stuff done. It's like deep work. We're getting things done. It does need to be in front of the computer. I'm putting my headphones in and I'm in the zone. And so those two types of tasks are things I do need to do in front of the computer. And the reason I like to divide them out that way is not only am I

Thinking about how these tasks show up in our project management system, I'm showing... I'm thinking about how these tasks show up in my week. So I have certain days of the week that are designated as computer task potato days to make computer task makeup days. And so that way, I don't have to wear... For me, I love not wearing makeup just as much as I love wearing makeup. So I will...

try to minimize that as much as possible. So today's my makeup day. I'm going to record with you. I'm going to record for my show. I'm going to record some B-roll. And then tomorrow is going to be a potato day. It's going to be great potato day. And I get to kind of organize in that way. And it also matches energy levels. And I can sync up to energy levels. If you're listening here and you have a cycle, you can sync up to your cycle too and do it on a weekly basis if that feels better to you. That's the computer tasks set up.

Then we have the phone tasks, which I call, like I said earlier, waiting in line tasks. These are these micro tasks. I don't need to be in a specific environment, specific, perfect, beautiful place or set up with my space station, 10 screens in front of me. I just need to have my phone and just need to have internet. What I love doing is

in the phone tasks time is clearing my email inbox, clearing my Slack inbox, Slack messages, text messages that I needed to respond to that I mark as unread so I remember to respond to them and doing other like review tasks, like reviewing a Loom video for my team or reviewing a podcast episode that needs to be published that week. So I don't need to be in front of my computer. I could be downstairs

getting ready for breakfast. I could be waiting in line at the post office. Actually waiting in line at the post office is some of my most productive moments because I'm stuck there for 20 minutes when the line or 30 minutes or who knows how long the line's long. And I could just like get through everything. Like, wow, this is such a productive post office line session. And that's why I...

Let's go pick the phone up, do the things because I can have my phone in my hand because I'm parked in carpool line. And if you don't get there like 20 minutes before school lets out like you carpool is miserable. And so I'd rather just get there and be in line. And so, yeah, I think your post office time is my carpool time.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's such a good point. I haven't yet had that experience of carpool lines or anything yet, but I can imagine how productive they can be. Let's just be efficient and not have to peg everything

work to one place or one thing if we want that flexibility and freedom, because there are dead spots in our day that we're probably not utilizing. Maybe we're probably scrolling on social media. I mean, that's what I would be doing in the post office line if I didn't have my little system set up. So those are the two tasks that

And I talked a little bit about batching for potato tasks and makeup tasks, but that's kind of the first system that I wanted to share here today. Back when I ran the real estate team and I was first getting going in that,

My kids were in like preschool. And so carpool line was really miserable at that point. And I would keep a basket in the front seat next to me because obviously they were in car seats. And, you know, so they were in second row of the car. And I would keep a basket that I would just when I was rotting in carpool line.

I would pick it up and it had thank you, like note cards or blank note cards in it. And I would just start writing out notes to my clients. I didn't even know who I was writing them to half the time. I wrote very generic notes. Thank you so much for meeting with me, or I hope you're enjoying your new home, or just get back in touch ways to keep my clients with me as a real estate agent at the time at the forefront of their brain. And then when I got home,

At home, I would bring those note cards into the house. I would figure out who in my clients they applied most to. I'd fill in the details and then I'd stick a stamp on it. And the next day when I went to carpool, I drop it in the mailbox. That was my little system so that I didn't waste that carpool time. And I found, and I think that this is what you're alluding to,

When we utilize and maximize the stupid time-wasting time, what I found was then in the afternoon when I could have been at my desk mindlessly writing out those thank you notes, I got to spend time with my family or cooking dinner, or I got to just knock off work earlier because I had not wasted the time, you know, doing the menial task in my day. I had made them efficient time.

Absolutely. And I'm so happy you shared that. First of all, that's the coolest thing ever. I love that system. The second system I want to talk about is the idea capture system. I think about it, like I said, I'm a very visual person. So I have this like butterfly emoji in my head and a little net, like this is how I catch the good stuff.

And so what I like to do is in Notion, I have a kind of like a catch all board. I don't even know if they're called boards, but it's a table, a database. That's what they're called. And every time I get one of these ideas, I just write in the few words relating to it. And I have different tables. So for my podcast, I have a table. Like the other day, I had an idea of a podcast episode I want to create called Taking Messy Action.

And I had shared something about it. A friend and I were talking about it. I was like, wait, this is a podcast episode. So I just wrote in messy action. I labeled it in the database as idea. You can do this in almost any project management system. And so that's like the second column is idea. And then the third column is like date. So if that's a podcast recording and I know I want to record it next, I just put the date. So for like February 29th, I'm going to be recording that podcast episode.

And that way I have a system. Anytime I have a podcast idea and you can use this for all types of content, I drop it into this table and I don't forget about it because then I find myself, oh wait, I had two really good podcast ideas this week. I can't remember them for the life of me.

Yeah, they're gone forever. They were so good. So making sure I have this, the moment I get the idea, I'm dropping it in. And I do the same thing for content creation. I'm going to be starting to make a lot of reels coming up, which is going to be so much fun. But every time I get an idea, I'm dropping it into my reel board. And the same thing goes for work.

I actually have an idea capture in ClickUp and I use reminders in ClickUp. I just use the R key and I drop in the quick reminder. Like I need to, I need to like call the insurance agent. I need to update a contract for a team member and I just drop them in there. And then when I come in at my desk later, I can take those and organize it into where it lives in the project management system and delegate it. A lot of times it's not even for me. It's like remind me.

team member X to do these three things. And so I have that go out to them. Those are just three examples of ways to capture ideas and you can have them in different platforms, but creating the space to do that is going to be what makes sure you hold onto the good ideas. Cause not every idea is a good idea, but we, when you have more and more ideas coming in, you can filter them out in the

And this is what we think about in design as well. I have a design background. It's not...

the quality that you're going for. It's the quantity. When you have a lot of ideas, you're able to filter them down to get to the good stuff. And at the end of the day, that's what I want to share. I want to share the good stuff with the world. And if all of this feels overwhelming, the easiest way for you to create an idea capture and start today is open the notes app in your phone, label it at the top. This is my idea capture, put a little butterfly emoji and

And just throw it in. Bullet point, bullet point, bullet point. And then every Friday at 2 p.m. or whatever time of day you want, make a 30-minute task on your calendar, event on your calendar, and do it.

I love that. Have that be the time where you can... I tend to find that I will actually open my Slack app on my phone and I will voice memo myself a Slack app, like memo message, because I'm like you, I want to clear out, you know, my Slack messages. And so I will then on a certain day of the week go in and I will listen to myself rambling a lot about my own ideas. And then I can start taking them and being like, hmm, okay, that...

That can make it to the next phase of our ideation system here at the B Word and podcast her. And then my team takes a look at it and says, yeah, that's kind of crap, Joe. Let's not move forward with that. Or, yeah, like, let's let's flesh this one out. We kind of like that one. So I love that you also have the notes there.

you know, thought process and like giving our listeners just varied ways of doing this. Because a lot of times systems putting in place can't seem like they're not sexy, but oh, they make the business sexy because we then don't forget about all the stuff that runs through our head as CEOs. 100%.

I should have started off the whole conversation with this, but I run my agency. We have several clients. We run multiple six figures of revenue a year. And I run it on 15 hours a week with these systems and some others. I run my whole world on 15 hours a week. Yeah, leave it at that.

Well, just the agency, just one business. And then, you know, working on more and more systems for my new baby project, which is Unsubscribed. You are amazing. So really fast, let's land the plane again and tell me one little juicy tidbit that's coming up on an episode of Unsubscribed. And then I'll have everyone, I'll let you tell everyone, where do you want them to come find you?

We often tell our listeners, oh, I'm on all the socials, but let's be honest, girl, where do you play? What playground are you in? So the juicy episode I'm excited about, oh, there's so many, but the one that's coming out, I think this week actually is, it's a good one. It is all about how I am opting out of the strong independent women narrative. So I am basically in the middle of the millennial generation and we were brought up to be

Be the like women who does it all the career women be like get married and have a have a husband family woman do it all do it all well spin all the plates always and forever and strong independent women doesn't need doesn't need no man doesn't need any help like that is the.

narrative that I bought into and it served me and fueled me incredibly well. And then it didn't. Then it just started falling apart. And so this podcast talks about how I have dealt with that and how I've reframed how I look at that. I'm still strong. I'm still independent. I still can do anything I want, but it looks a little different. So I would love to talk about this. Systems

unsubscribe, anything on Instagram. I'm always on stories at Avani M. Jane. And I cannot wait to meet you all and hear about what you're working on. I want to be friends. I want to know about your life. I want to know about your business. Absolutely beautiful. We will get all of the links, obviously, in the show note. You guys know that by now. My listeners are very trained to go to our show notes. So as always, everyone,

Thanks for tuning in to another fantastic episode of The B Word. You listened. Now it's time to take action, implement so you can make some profitability. I will see you same time, same place next week.

You just finished another episode of the V word podcast. Cheers to you. If I were with you, I would literally pop a big old bottle of Prosecco and pour you a glass. Since I'm not, why don't you do the next best thing and share this episode with one of your besties? Because we all know you've got that one girlfriend that needs to hear it. Thanks.

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