Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Dealing with Overwhelm: A Founder's Guide to Time Management

Transcript

Dealing with Overwhelm: A Founder's Guide to Time Management · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:09
  Hi. Hello. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Good morning. How are you doing? Oh, you know, just stressed, but great. Entrepreneur life. Entrepreneur life. How are you? I'm good. I think also a little busy, a little stressed. I think it's this pre-Christmas period that just somehow always feels a bit overwhelming.
• 0:34
  Yeah, I feel like getting to the end of the year, like you just start feeling that whole like, I just need the end of the year to be here.
• 0:42
  Mm-hmm. And there's so many things in your head like, oh, we'll do this before the end of the year. We'll do this before the end of the year. And then suddenly they will build up. Oh, my God. Yeah. A hundred percent. But how was your week? You had a busy one. Talk me through it. Oh, my gosh. Last week was so wild. So we, as you know, but maybe anyone listening doesn't know, we've been developing a new series of, or we've started developing a new series of courses, sessions.
• 1:11
  specifically designed for early stage bootstrapped founders who have an e-commerce product, are stressed about marketing, want to understand where they should be focusing their time and prioritizing their efforts, but are just overwhelmed as hell and don't know what to do. So last week, we were kind of getting some of those
• 1:35
  in action, recording, editing, uploading, all that kind of thing. It's still a little bit a while away, but we launched into pre-order this week. So I'm really excited. And then I also just had like a bunch of fun things last week. We did a photo shoot with this cool company for a project in 2024. It feels like everything's kind of falling at the same time, but yeah, this course, I'm excited for course number one to come out very, very soon. Well, I mean, it's out,
• 2:06
  The rest of it will be dropping early December or very late, like next week or the week after basically. Oh, it's super exciting. I'm so looking forward to it. I'm so looking forward to it. We got this trailer back, which it's not super relevant to the whole course overall. It's only relevant to one part of it, but I uploaded it on the pre-order page because it's so fun. Anyway, I don't know if you watched it. Did you see it? I watched it. I loved it. Yeah.
• 2:30
  It's so groovy. Oh my God, I really like it. I'm like, oh yeah, this is fun. Super fun. I actually, I wanted to chat about something today that has a lot to do with this because it has been a hot topic in our Facebook group. We ask everyone that enters the group to...
• 2:50
  ask a question that they feel is relevant to their life or their business at the moment to see if we can you know cover topics that are relevant for people and there has just been a stream of people asking about time management how do you handle it all are there some tricks to managing this and simultaneously it's been a topic in magic so I feel like everyone's feeling the same at this time of year
• 3:14
  and I just want to touch on kind of how that works for you if that looks different in a super busy period like this if you have some standard things that you really rely on and fall back on to stay sane yes
• 3:31
  Yes. I feel like this is a topic that comes up all the time. And the truth is I'm personally not very good at it. I'm a highly creative person and it means that I'm very like scatterbrains kind of person. As you know, that's why we work so well together because you are ultra organized and I am ultra all over the place and have a million things going on at once.
• 3:54
  But I think that for me, because I am that way, I have to work extra hard to keep highly focused and highly kind of like goal orientated. So I'm someone that's very action orientated and I'm very focused on just doing basically the things that move me forward and forget about the rest. And so I think when you're a solo bootstrap founder, you know,
• 4:21
  The reality of it is that, you know, time management and balance can be so difficult. I feel like especially for someone like me who, you know, we are a small team. It's you and I and the contractors that we work with every month. And I'm still really early on in the journey. So I feel like I have to put a lot of my energy and time in.
• 4:44
  into trying to get the business to flourish, I guess you would say. And I want to put in a lot of time because I want it to be successful. But obviously you need to be putting in kind of, it's like that saying of like it's quality time.
• 5:00
  not quantity. It's not that I should be putting in more time. I should be working smarter versus working harder, but it is really hard, especially, you know, it's something that consumes your thoughts. It's something that like, it's so always on with social media and things like that. But the things that I do use that all these kind of
• 5:20
  I guess, tips or hacks or frameworks, whatever you want to call them, I do use a few different things that kind of help me big picture and then on like a daily basis. So the first one, and I think we might've touched on this either last week, or I've touched on this with you before, or I've even had you do it before. I think it's this simple framework and I forget what it was called. I found it on Ali Abdaal's YouTube channel. Was it the perfect week?
• 5:48
  Yes, it was the perfect week. I call it the dream week template. And it's kind of like this concept where...
• 5:56
  It's about time blocking so that you can manage your week and reduce overwhelm. But it's also about kind of creating what a dream week looks like for you. And this is something that can apply for anyone who is, you know, working nine to five and managing a side hustle or is managing two different businesses at once or is just managing one business at once. But you want to manage that combined with your personal life. So this is something that I use regularly.
• 6:19
  you know, to track my week, both when it comes to personal and my work life. And why I love it is because once you do it, once you do this, and I'm going to step you through exactly what it means. Well, I know you know what it means, but for our listeners who might not have heard about it before, I'm going to step you through exactly what it is. But why I love it is because it's something that once you do it every day, when you then open your computer, I could assume that like...
• 6:48
  on occasion or even perhaps every single day, you've had that same sense of overwhelm that I'm experiencing at the moment in my life. Like that kind of feeling of like, oh my God, there are thousands of tasks on my to-do list plus emails. I don't know where to start. And that feeling of being crippled by being in reaction mode instead of being proactive.
• 7:11
  And so one of the easiest things that you can do when you're going through those feelings is to structure your week and your days so that you know what to focus on when you open your computer and when you open your diary. So rather than sitting down and having to figure it out every day by writing your to-do list, you've kind of already created a plan and a structure that you are following when you sit down daily.
• 7:34
  at your desk. And it's really, really simple, but I feel like when you find a small hack that works for you, kind of like this one, it can make all the difference. So the way that it kind of works and
• 7:48
  I haven't really explained this before, so bear with me. But the way that it works is it's not about scheduling your tasks every week. So it's not about being like, cool, on Monday, I'm going to send out pitch emails to PR journalists or something like that. It's about identifying broader buckets of tasks that you do over and over again and blocking out specific time for those
• 8:16
  The goal here is that you want to group your kind of tasks together into these broader buckets and then schedule them so that you're doing them in the same, you know, like one go. And basically, so if you were to look at your diary now, and even if I looked at my diary now, actually, because I haven't done this for a while, you would probably see that there's no kind of like coherent flow or structure to your time and every day looks different.
• 8:44
  And for me, I'm someone that it takes a lot of time to get into a good flow. So if you have this kind of messy calendar or this messy diary and it takes you a while to get into a flow, but then you finally get there and then you're interrupted because you've got a weird call scheduled schedule.
• 9:03
  on a Monday afternoon, you know, that doesn't really make sense. Like it's not scheduled calls back to back. You kind of interrupt that flow and you get distracted. Then you kind of like look into other things and you've got a lot of, I don't know, mess basically. And I
• 9:20
  Breaking your flow, especially as an entrepreneur, and breaking that deep sense of work, it's really damaging to your day. And so what you want to do is create this kind of week that groups together these buckets of tasks so that you operate in harmony.
• 9:38
  And of course, this doesn't happen every day because every day there's a fire that comes up that actually has to come to the top of your list and that needs to be prioritized. But if you can always kind of go back to this dream week template, you can kind of like keep on track. And so...
• 9:54
  What I like to do is think about the different kinds of specific tasks that I have. So for example, I might have things like deep work, content, like recording content, and that could be TikTok videos, podcasts, like whatever it might be. There might be writing, there might be like set time for calls, and then things like business admin and personal admin.
• 10:18
  And then I also like to schedule in my morning routine. So a morning routine that looks the same every day, my lunchtime routine and my evening routine. So I have a very clear overview of what a dream week looks like for me, even if I don't stick with it every day or every week. I've kind of got this thing to fall back to.
• 10:37
  And this can be obviously really helpful if you're also managing like a nine to five and, or you're trying to like improve your dating life or, or whatever it might be. But again, it just allows you to be able to open your computer and go back to these certain tasks. And so
• 10:53
  What you need to do is figure out what those tasks are for you, those kind of broader buckets, and then schedule them in based on when your creative energy or when your creative mind is at its best. So for me, I know that if I'm going to be recording content like the podcast or TikTok, I need to have those things scheduled in for like a three hour block in the mornings. And then I know that for me, emails should actually be left until the afternoon when my
• 11:22
  And the main thing that I need to do is schedule calls back to back on certain days and certain times. And I actually do that for the podcast as well. It's not like you can just book into my diary at any time and I don't schedule calls at any time. I have very specific windows so that I just knock them out back to back to back and I'm in a flow with like calls and using that kind of brain.
• 11:44
  And the morning, you know, it's a cool day. You can focus on that. Yeah, exactly. And so I kind of block things together in like a few hour type period and map out my week like that. And I think that the only thing that I'm more specific on is at the start of the week, having more of like a planning moment for the week ahead.
• 12:05
  So that's basically it. We should figure out where the link is to this and we should drop it in the show notes. So that's the first one. Yeah, this one has helped me tremendously as well. I think especially I'm someone that is quite hyper organized and I can really break down things to the smallest tasks. And they always used to live on my calendar. Yeah.
• 12:30
  And what I have now is more of these, you know, these blocks of time. And what especially helped me is to have every morning, I have something called what I call morning scour, which is an hour and a half, which groups together a lot of tasks, a lot of reactionary things. So when you wake up in the morning and it's certain emails that come up, DMs, replying to Instagram comments.
• 12:51
  Things that are otherwise going to take up brain space during the day. I get that all out in that first hour and a half, get some stories up. I have a list, a list that I just take through and I go through. And then after that period, I can allow myself to go into this deep work, turn the phone off on airplane mode and have these big blocks of, say, three hours working on the newsletter, three hours working on assets.
• 13:17
  And having that deep work, which is so important. You get into a flow. Get into a flow. I think it's either Amazon or Apple or one of the big tech companies. They have these deep work rooms that you can go into, which have zero sensory overload. You don't have your phone in there. You don't have internet connection. And you're set up to just work on that one task.
• 13:41
  in these really intense bursts. I love that. Yeah. Oh, that's so great. I need that. My phone is just the absolute pits. Yeah.
• 13:54
  Absolutely. What's your second one? Second one. Okay. The second thing I use, and a lot of people have probably heard of this or some variation of it, it's called the Eisenhower Box Framework. And so it's a method that you can use daily to get really clear on what you should be doing and what you should not be doing.
• 14:14
  And especially if you've got kind of like maybe you do have a bit of a day where there's so many things on your to-do list and you're like, I don't know where to start. I've got lots of things in reaction mode. I've got lots of things going on. There's some drama with something. What do I do here? And so basically, I guess we should also link to this in the show notes. But if you imagine four boxes, like two on the top and two on the bottom.
• 14:39
  If you imagine your daily and your weekly tasks falling into one of these four boxes. In the top left, you have urgent and important tasks that demand immediate attention. And these are often things that are critical to your business, like addressing a new customer issue or handling time-sensitive opportunities.
• 14:59
  Now, the top right box holds tasks that are not urgent, but they are really important. And this is where we should be playing in the most because this is where the magic happens. It's all about strategy. It's about planning and it's about growth. And it's things that contribute to the long-term success of your business.
• 15:20
  Then on the bottom left, you have tasks that can seem urgent but actually are not important. And these often create a false sense of productivity where they are keeping you busy, but they're not shifting the needle. And I can get really lost in this square specifically. And this is where you really need to think about delegation or finding more efficient ways to handle those tasks.
• 15:43
  So, for example, you might be getting swept up in minor adjustments to a website or to your website and you think that it's urgent. But actually, if you just zoom out on your overarching goals, they're probably not. And so for me, that's something that comes up all the time where I'm like, oh, I could spend an hour like fiddling around. Oh, my God, I hate that word fiddling around. Finicking.
• 16:06
  finicking with the website. But like, does it really matter? No. Like, am I driving hundreds of thousands of people to my website? No. Like, for me, it doesn't. And that's obviously different for everyone else. Yeah. But in that moment, it can feel like a big thing. Yeah. Exactly. And so I can waste a lot of time doing that kind of thing.
• 16:23
  It might be something like non-critical customer service emails. So, you know, for anyone listening with an e-com brand, you might be starting every day, putting your best energy towards customer service across social media and emails. But really, maybe that could be either delegated to someone else or that could be actioned every few days when it's scheduled into your dream week, rather than as a top priority that you're reacting to first thing.
• 16:49
  Because, of course, you know, if you've got your automated email that says, cool, we'll get back to you in 48 hours, that's normal. We expect that as consumers. And so if you've got it set up in the right way, then you don't need to be kind of like racing to reply to this email. And I'm not talking about an urgent email. Something's going crazy with a customer. That's not what I'm talking about. But those kind of.
• 17:11
  you know, just general queries. And then lastly, in the bottom right, this houses tasks that are not urgent and not important. And these are... Oh, we like those. Yeah. These are the time wasters. These are activities that offer minimum value to your business. And this box actually requires you to spend a really meaningful moment seriously looking at the things that you do every day to fill up your time and,
• 17:38
  and be ruthless in minimizing them or completely eliminating them from your list altogether. And something, an example for me here is something I've had to get really good at is saying no to calls. Because everyone wants to get on a call. Everyone wants to get on like a half an hour, hour call. And now I protect my time as much as possible. And I really only hop on calls that directly link into my current goals.
• 18:04
  And are the things that are shifting the needle forward? Because I can very easily get swept up in like meeting lots of people for potential things that are going to happen in six months time or like at a later date. And I'm like, okay, I have to be really clear about where I'm putting time into calls at the moment. And that's something that I was really having to change for myself. But it's one of those kind of tasks that...
• 18:27
  You know, you can just like have a simple kind of drawing and either sit it on your desk so that you see it all the time. So you can get really familiar when a task comes up, which bucket it should fall into. Or you can obviously just keep it in mind. But for anyone listening, I would say like you should become extremely observant of every single task you're doing throughout, you know, the course of a week.
• 18:50
  You could do something like, depending on how you like to work, but you could list them all in a spreadsheet or, you know, you could even just write a list, but maybe a spreadsheet's a bit easier. And literally list every single task you do, whether it's a very small task that takes five minutes or whether it's a significant task that's going to take you a lot of time. This task.
• 19:12
  kind of framework, the Eisenhower box framework and creating and observing what you do and how you spend your time every day is truly going to help you understand what you should be doing and what you should not be doing and make sure that you're spending the majority of your time in the top right because that's where the strategic growth of your business is happening and kind of like
• 19:37
  That's where the work happens that leads you towards your goals. And one that's easy to forget. I think it's very easy. We mentioned this earlier to be in this blowing out fires phase. And I think as an entrepreneur, those things are always going to be there. Like those to-dos and those things that feel urgent are always going to be there. You can fill your entire day with those tasks and you're left at the end of a week with a bad feeling because you haven't had any chance to think about strategy.
• 20:07
  And to get really conscious about boxing these things into the different categories is just so important. Also, for how you feel yourself in your business, right? And how you see the vision of your business in the future and that it doesn't feel like this continuous stress factor. You want to keep enjoying this as well. This is your 95. This is where you're spending the most time and energy.
• 20:30
  Totally, totally. And I think like, you know, I'm talking about these exercises now. I certainly haven't perfected it. This is something that I have to like keep working on over time because I can get lost in doing things that...
• 20:43
  you know, I'll look back and be like, shit, that probably wasn't worth the 15 hours that I put into it. You know, the ROI wasn't there on that specific thing. And you probably feel it working for me. Like I'm probably, I'm probably getting you to do things from time to time that you're like, this makes no sense doing like, why am I doing this? But I'm trying to be better and better at being, you know, clear on priorities and, and what aligns with our goals. Um,
• 21:08
  Yeah. So it's a work in progress. And that's a good reminder, I think, for everyone is like, you can have these frameworks and they can work for you. But like, it's a work in progress and you get better at things over time through practice and repetition. And figuring out what works for you as well in different periods of life. I find it the most fascinating thing to check out other people's schedules.
• 21:30
  I don't know if you've seen this, but Laura Henshaw from Keep It Cleaner has been posting her daily schedule at the end of every day. She writes down hour by hour exactly how her day looked. And it's just amazing to get this insight. Oh, I haven't seen that. Yeah, I really look forward to it at the end of the day because you don't get that insight into someone else's life, A. And B, we don't get taught these things. It's not like there is a standard framework that everyone uses for how to get things done.
• 22:00
  I think there is just a bit of a fascination with how this looks. It's also Leila Homozi posted her full schedule on tweets once. I think it was at the end of last year. And to this day, it's her second most popular tweet ever. And it's just a screenshot of her Google calendar. And it's
• 22:17
  fascinating to just look in there and see how someone's putting their day together, what works for someone, kind of what things you can take from that. And most of all, just how shocked people are because everyone's day looks so different.
• 22:32
  That is so interesting. Please send me Laura's. I want to start looking at hers. Please send me Layla's. I want to start looking at hers too. That is so cool. I love that. I actually feel like this is actually such a great end of day activity because I
• 22:49
  I'm sure other people feel like this, but I can get to the end of the day. And even though I've done so many different things in so many different directions, I can be like, oh, like, what did I achieve today? I don't know. But if you're to like really list down all these things and you have a very clear record of what you're doing every day, kind of outside of your calendar and your diary, because things pop up and like, you know, things evolve and change like based outside of your diary. If you kept a very clear list and then you looked back on that list over like a year's time.
• 23:18
  about all the different things that you got done that you would just forget if you didn't note it down. I think that would be so cool. And you'd have that real sense of achievement in all the different activities that you do. Because I think when we're entrepreneurs,
• 23:34
  Like for me especially, like it is hard to stop and celebrate. You know, like when we joined Acast a couple weeks ago, someone asked me like yesterday, one of my girlfriends was like, oh, so how did you celebrate? And I was like, oh, oh, I don't know. Like we didn't celebrate. Like what?
• 23:51
  I'm on to the next thing. Like, that just feels like so long ago already. Like, I'm still having to try and, like, get everything working for that. It's like nothing to celebrate yet. We're still, like, in the weeds. But, of course, from the outside perspective, like, that's such a cool moment. And I haven't stopped to really...
• 24:10
  Take that in because I've been trying to figure out this course and I've been trying to figure out, you know, the photo shoot last week and like all these other little things. And so it's really critical that we like take a moment to be, you know, patting ourselves on the back and be like, this was epic. Like, how cool. Let's celebrate this really cool achievement.
• 24:29
  But it's hard as entrepreneurs because you're just constantly moving forward. Yeah. Just to allow that moment of reflection. I think when you're constantly moving, you don't really process any of these moments. Yeah. And I think in order to process them, then you really experience them, then you really feel them and you have less of the sense of five years down the line, you look back and you're like, whoa, what's actually happened these five years? Because you've just constantly been on the go.
• 24:57
  100% and I think besides that it's also just a nice ritual at the end of the day I was thinking recently about kind of end of day and start of days rituals which I think are very important when you're an entrepreneur or you're working for yourself to build in something that closes that work day so you can switch into another mode
• 25:17
  that leaves that all behind. And something like this is quite a nice way to do it. You reflect on your day. You know, you prove to yourself what you've done. That's a good feeling. And it signals to yourself like, hey, done with workday now. Let's go do something else. Oh, yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. During the week, I blend into the evening. I mean, what time is it? Eight o'clock?
• 25:40
  Yeah. And I'm like, absolutely not done. Yeah. And those days will be there, but. I need a definite switcher. Yeah. How are you managing your time? Tell us yours.
• 25:53
  So I am big on my Google calendar. So I would say I have four things which keep me sane. And I can't imagine kind of getting by without any of those four. And those are my physical calendar, my Google calendar, my notes tab on the laptop, and also writing physical notes.
• 26:14
  I keep up with all of these religiously. So my Google calendar, I touched upon this a little bit earlier, that I have this morning scour every morning. And from there on, I time block all of my different tasks for the day and I color coordinate them. So anything to do with the newsletter will be yellow. Anything content creation and assets will be yellow.
• 26:34
  Purple, meetings are orange, anything to do with the grants doc or currently the cyber sale doc lives in pink. And this just really helps me have a very clear overview of what I'm doing, what I'm working on.
• 26:49
  and what I've done looking back. And an absolute game changer for me with this one has been to also note down my to-dos in there. So if I have something that I know I have to do that's time sensitive, instead of writing it down on a note, I will immediately put it in my Google Calendar.
• 27:09
  before the date that that needs to be done by. So it lives in there and it has its own place and that time is already put apart. So if I look at next week right now, for example, I have lots of random little blocks. And when I get to the end of the day on Friday, I will reorganize those and make them make sense for the week of the head. And that's really helped me just reduce that brain scatter of, you know, 10 to do's in your head that you know are time sensitive that need to get done.
• 27:37
  Yeah, I love that. This is why I love working with you. Yeah. You're very older. I mean, it goes back to that idea that you kind of fill in each other's weaknesses, right? Like I'm in no way this visionary thinker or entrepreneur, but I. Oh, that's not true. I can really help with this side of things.
• 27:56
  That's not true. Don't sell yourself short. I think I sent it to you. I was listening to this episode on the diary of a CEO the other day and I was talking with this guy who's an ADHD doctor and he scans brains and things like that. And he was just making this quick point about, you know, there are a lot of like entrepreneurs or founders or CEOs and you know,
• 28:14
  where those people thrive is when they do hire the opposite of them. And I was thinking about, you know, for the two of us, I know we're so different and we're so different in our work style, but because I am so scattered and very creative and very like a million thoughts and a million miles at once, and you are so ultra organized, I am just able to be like, oh, thank God, because I don't think I could work with someone that is like me.
• 28:40
  Like, because I then wouldn't have like stability in that. I listened to the episode and I thought this. Oh, you listened to it? Yeah. Yeah. I had the exact same moment, which is funny. I literally have, this brings me on to my next point I was going to make. I literally have within my notes app.
• 28:58
  One of the notes is called like, I think it's doing brain dump or something like this, where sometimes when these things come up that are not necessarily things that we can actually straight away, but they're more kind of big picture ideas for the future. I'm like, okay, this is going to live on here. So it lives somewhere and we can come back to it.
• 29:17
  Oh, I love that because I feel like you do always have like, I can like tell you my thoughts and I know that at some point you'll circle back with my thoughts. And I'm like, yeah, I loved that. Great. Yeah, you're a weapon. Thank you. As are you. No, she's not for hire. Anyone listening? Yeah.
• 29:36
  what's your what's your third did we get up to three or four oh no we didn't get up my my third one uh it's just such a quick one and it's called the two minute rule and I'm sure everyone uses this so
• 29:51
  I feel like a lot of things come into your kind of like zone every day that are just very kind of like quick, actionable things. And it could be like on an email or on a text, like a friend could be like, hey, could you introduce me to blah? Or it might be a really quick email that requires literally...
• 30:07
  30 seconds of time. And if it's going to take me less than two minutes and I see it, I'll just action it then. So it never even goes on my to-do list. It's never on any list because it's already actioned and it's done. And that I think is something that also keeps me moving fast on just those small little things that they're definitely not urgent, but it's
• 30:29
  Where I have to be careful is I have to be in positions where I don't let those things come to me. So I should have my phone off or I should not be looking at my email. And something that I've recently started doing is like just not looking at my email anymore until –
• 30:44
  like I'll briefly check it in the morning, but then I'll close out of it altogether and not check it religiously because I found that I used to work out of my email. I would have my email, I would action from my email. And it meant that I was doing a lot of busy work that actually wasn't like shifting the needlework because I was focusing more on that reaction mode. And so now I
• 31:06
  I'm like less in that position. But if something comes onto my like into my zone, that's like a small, quick task that just shouldn't even be on the list, then I'll just action it and get it off the list. But it's been a bit of a game changer, just kind of being like, I'm not going to prioritize emails. And especially as like, you know, a lean, small bootstrapped.
• 31:27
  company, I think what's key for me is like just being like, you know what, I'm not able to answer every email. I'm not able to like do everything and that's okay. I'm just going to have to focus on the emails that need to be actioned and nothing else. No, absolutely. I think there's something to be said for
• 31:49
  All of these tasks can easily become a full-time job. And where you have 10 of those, it's about delegating and, you know, learning to manage your time, which we're doing. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, and actually, I did have a really quick fourth one, but this isn't like a – this isn't a framework. This isn't anything. It's just how I manage myself is like –
• 32:09
  Especially at times like this where I'm where I've got multiple big projects on the go. So we've got sponsored deals on the go at the moment, we're launching new courses, then we're doing these other kind of time sensitive things that have come into my inbox, like opportunities, I mean. And so when things are really busy.
• 32:28
  and I'm kind of a bit scattered, I just have like a post-it note and on that post-it note, and I do a post-it note because then there's no chance of it being long. It has to be like a really small box. And I write just the very key things that I need to get through that day that are the...
• 32:44
  not the urgent things, but the things that shift the needle forward. And I keep them on a post-it note only and I cross them off and then I scrunch up the post-it note once it's done so that I'm just very focused on this tiny little list of the utmost important things to do that day.
• 33:01
  Yes. And do you stick that on your laptop or somewhere where you can see it? Yeah. So I have my keyboard in front of me and I have the post-it note that just sits like directly above it. And then I cross off the list. Oh, that's so good. I love it. Here's mine for today. Scrunched up. Bye-bye. And I was like, hell yes. Love that for me. It's also a good end of day ritual. Yeah. Yeah. Good end of day ritual. Finish the list.
• 33:30
  Yeah, I wanted to, at the end of this episode, go through another round of six quick questions. Obviously, we touched on some of these last week, particularly the ones that you always ask guests on the show. But I thought it might be a nice way for people to get to know you a bit better as well.
• 33:48
  Great. Are you ready? Yes, I'm ready. So question number one, you often ask this on the show, what the guest's number one piece of advice would be for women in business. And I'm wondering what's yours? What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received?
• 34:04
  I feel like I go through so many stages of different advice and different things, but the thing that's in my mind at the moment is that notion of stop stopping. So if you can just find a way to keep going one day after the other, ticking off the things that matter, keeping the ball rolling, you know, fast.
• 34:24
  focusing on the 1% compounded over time and you just stop stopping, you will get there. And I think it's a good reminder because my husband the other day was like, we're talking about something, I can't remember what it was, but he was like, you know, you often do these things and you get it to a really great position, but then you see it as not doing as well as it should be or whatever it might be. So you stop doing that thing and then move on to the next thing, like shift your focus. And he's like, but how do you have just like stuck with that thing for the last year?
• 34:52
  An example is we had a course that came out in 2020. It was our first course and he was being like, if you had just kept with that course the whole time and it evolved over time, imagine where you would be now with it. But because you kind of stopped it and now you're bringing courses back,
• 35:08
  you've lost like three years. And I was like, damn, yeah, like that's true. And that's just one example, but you can kind of, I think, get lost in thinking that something doesn't work and you haven't measured it properly or you haven't tracked it properly. So you stop and switch kind of tactics, but you might've stopped prematurely. And so now my, and especially because we're gearing up to launch these new courses for early stage e-commerce owners, I'm operating under the notion of stop stopping.
• 35:39
  I love it. I think that counts for a lot of things in life. When I think about anything kind of health and wellness related or a period of time where
• 35:49
  I'm not feeling well, or things are running a bit rustily. And then you ask yourself, you know, am I meditating? Am I exercising? Am I eating well? Am I sleeping well? And you're never doing all four of those things, even though you have been at some point in time. And it's almost like we tick that box off. Like, yes, I've done that. Yes, I'm doing that. And then somehow it just gets forgotten. Yes, you can stop the habit. And we stop doing it. And then we need it again. Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:16
  Oh my God. I totally agree. Yeah. I'm with you. Question number two. If you had to pick one go-to power snack on a busy workday, what would it be? Oh, a power snack.
• 36:31
  Oh, you know what I'm really into at the moment? Because I'm someone who I realized, so I was pescatarian for three years, but while we were at home, we would try and be plant-based only. And I don't know how I didn't realize this, but I just didn't know. This is so weird to say it. I just didn't know that you were meant to replace meat
• 36:54
  with other things to get protein into your diet. So I became very deficient in so many different things and really sick at the end of last year. And so now I started eating meat again, and that's not the snack, but I'm getting there. But meat. So I'm...
• 37:11
  Yeah, meat. No, but I really try to now incorporate more protein into my day because once I realized how much protein I'm meant to be eating and how much I am not ever eating that amount of protein, I was like, holy damn. So a snack that I love and also just so weird at the start of the year, I've never eaten smoked salmon before. It's just never been something. It's been one of those foods that I just could never get on board with. But somehow at the start of this year, I started craving smoked salmon and now I eat it.
• 37:39
  Anyway, so there's a store in Australia called Harris Farm and they have like a Harris Farm branded smoked salmon pack and it's like 100 grams of smoked salmon. And I just love putting that on a plate and like smothering it in salt, lemon, lime, and then whatever else I have in the fridge. So like coriander, capers, what else could be on it? Like those kinds of things and just eating it like really quickly on the go as a snack. But it's just like...
• 38:05
  Like yesterday I had it and I had it with grated ginger on top. Oh my God, it was so good. And it's just a snack that takes like less than two minutes to prepare. Like I just cut the lemon, put whatever is on top from the fridge, like the coriander or whatever herbs I have. And it's really zingy, but it's like, you know, an immediate dose of protein. And I love it. Taking a note of that one.
• 38:31
  Love that. It's good. It's very good. Yeah, it is. Question number three, what's your Spotify 2023 wrapped going to reveal this year?
• 38:42
  Oh, gosh. Any guilty pleasures? Oh, my gosh. I don't know. What's yours going to reveal? How does it work? I think there's going to be a lot of Taylor Swift on there. So it gives you the top five artists that you've listened to this year. And it's something that you can't really, you know, alter or shortcut because it's just. Oh, yeah.
• 39:03
  your listening behavior? Oh, I actually know what it will be. So I reconnected with a friend who I hadn't spoken to in so many years and we grew up together. We've known each other for, since, you know, we were kids basically from this small town where I grew up and we reconnected this year and he's a musician and his stage name is Bud Rokeski.
• 39:27
  and like B-U-D. Actually, I'm going to spell it out because if you want to listen to it, this is just unbelievable music. Yeah. We'll put it in the show notes as well. Yeah. So Bud Rukeski. So B-U-D and then Rukeski is R-O-K-E-S-K-Y. And so he's a musician and he came to Sydney for a gig. He was playing. He's like signed to the same label as Matt Corby and he was playing this gig with Matt Corby and he's,
• 39:55
  I hadn't really listened to his music before because we had lost touch for like a number of years. And my husband and I, he kind of plays this like relaxed, acoustic, like country kind of music. And when I say it is so beautiful, my husband and I listen to it every single night. We listen to it all the time. He just has this amazing album that is so beautiful. And he's a singer songwriter. So all of the lyrics he's written himself and...
• 40:22
  Oh, it's just the best like end of day music. It's really calm. It's really beautiful. It's like very, it's a real vibe. You should listen. So nice. Adding that to my list. It's good to have these, these ones that you can switch off to, right? Kind of evening, chill background. Yes. Love it. It's very like for the soul. Yeah. Question number four, what female founded brand are you loving at the moment and why?
• 40:49
  So I had already pre-thought about this one specifically, and there are two that I want to mention. Number one is this brand called Cozy, and they kind of have this like period heating device for your stomach. And because I'm someone who's gone through such a journey with my period and like all this kind of stuff.
• 41:13
  I am just like such a fan of brands playing in this space. So love that brand. I'm so excited to be using them every month. And then the other brand that I just love is Zara and Lou from Contour Cube.
• 41:29
  Contour Cube is the ice facial tool that everyone sees all over TikTok and was part of Kendall Jenner's go-to Christmas list. Or like if you had to choose one item, it was part of that list this year. And I use mine all the time. I'm someone who overheats.
• 41:46
  So if I am like overheating or even when I had my freckles removed, I used it a lot during that time. And then as I've had friends come over, you know, if someone's been hung over or someone's had a reaction to something, like I've just got them on the contour cube, pulled it out of my fridge, out of my freezer. We've always got a couple in there. Yeah.
• 42:06
  Yeah, it's just a real vibe, basically. Especially coming into summer. Oh, I love it. I'm looking forward to trying one. And you can make different ones, right? You can add cucumber and lemon and... Yeah, there's a rose water one. Yeah. Yeah. Question number five, a controversial one. What has been your all-time favorite female startup club episodes or record?
• 42:30
  Oh my God, this is so hard, especially, I think we have like 600 episodes live now. So like my memory just doesn't have the ability to immediately think of all of those 600 episodes. But I recently, there were two episodes that I really liked. One was with Ju Ru, the founder of Hero Cosmetics. And I had interviewed Ju a couple of years ago about her, you know, early startup story and,
• 42:54
  And this episode specifically a couple months ago was her coming back on to talk about the acquisition of her brand because she basically, you know, she's had the brand for four years or five years and she sold it for $630 million last year in 2022. Or maybe it was finalized this year in 2023. But anyway, it was kind of going through that acquisition process and just, you know, what that looked like. And so that was a really fascinating episode and just so
• 43:24
  someone like Jew on the show. And then the second was an episode with a bootstrapped founder who was in the earlier stages of building her business, Monica Groney. And she has this amazing like supplement company that's also dealing with, you know, your hormones and your period and the things that women are going through with their bodies and the endocrine system. And
• 43:48
  and it's called Maria Wellness. And she kind of at the start of the year had this just insane growth from she had 3,000 followers on Instagram and she decided, she just decided she was going to celebritize herself. And now she has like 250,000 followers. She just went hard with content and she absolutely crushed it. And so it was such a practical episode and I loved it.
• 44:14
  Big fan of both of those as well. And so did our audience. Yeah. Yeah. We had a good response on both of those. Absolutely. Question number six, last but not least, name your one go-to pick-me-up method that's fail-proof for turning a bad day around.
• 44:32
  Well, let's see. I have an easy answer and I guess I'll have to think of another one because it's such an easy answer, but my like pick me up at any time is anything to do with sweetie. I'm just like so addicted to my dog that I just have a little sweetie cuddle and I'm like, yes, amazing. I think that's a great one. Is it? Yeah. Everyone should have a sweetie.
• 44:55
  It's such an obvious one. If you have a dog. I know. I knew exactly what you were going to say. If you're a dog person, it's just like absolute bliss. But I actually really like –
• 45:08
  At the end of the day, I try and do things that like switch my mind away from work. And so I'm like an obsessive, obsessive, obsessive watcher of Friends and Modern Family on repeat. Friends has been a little harder recently because I'm just so sad about Matthew Perry that it's actually difficult for me to watch. I just watched it yesterday for the first time since and I was like...
• 45:30
  a little less emotional, but I am still just so sad about it that I'm like, oh no. But those two shows I'm like addicted to watching and that just kind of like switches my brain to another kind of
• 45:42
  track at the end of the day. And then the other thing, I don't do this all the time, but I love to have a bath with lavender oil in it. I'm such a big lavender oil person. I'll even just carry it in my bag and smell it when I just need to take some deep breaths and lavender oil really calms me down. Oh, it's amazing. I put some on my pillow and on my eye mask and it's, it's just such a nice calming effect. I love it as well.
• 46:10
  Yeah, it really gives me like a relaxed state. It changes my, I don't know, it changes my thinking or my mind somehow. So, yeah, love it.
• 46:24
  Super. Amazing. Loved this. This was so fun. Yeah, back at you. Oh, my gosh. For anyone listening, if you have topics that you want covered in these episodes, Josephine and I, every Friday we're going to be in your ears kind of talking about topics that are coming up in Facebook groups. So come and drop your comments, drop your topics, be specific, be vague, whatever you want. We are watching and we are listening and...
• 46:53
  I love this. This was so fun. Absolutely. Thank you for listening, everyone.
• 47:01
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 47:26
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 47:48
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show, and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.