Time is Money: Outdo Both

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Into it. QuickBooks does not have any responsibility for updating or revising any information presented. Listeners should verify statements before relying on them. Hi, everyone, let's kick off another fun episode of Mind the Business Small business success stories of podcasts, brought to you by Intuit, QuickBooks and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia.

Just in case you don't recognize my voice from last episode or the previous three seasons, I'm Austin Hankwitz and I'm the host of another podcast called Rich Habits. I'm also the co founder of wits Ventures, but you may know me from my TikTok videos about personal finance and investing. Here today, co hosting with one of my favorite entrepreneurs. That's me.

Hi, everybody, I'm Jennise Torres and I'm the creator and host of the award winning personal finance podcast jokierro Dinetto and author of financially Lit, The Modern Latino's guide to level up your netto and become financially for Rosa. I'm so excited to be here for another awesome episode, Austin, I. Am too, Janie especially excited to talk today since we're bringing up one of the trickiest things in running a business, time management. It seems like it should be such an easy thing, but I know so many people, including myself, get tripped up by it.

Absolutely, it is deceptively difficult. You get your day scheduled and then you scroll on your phone, maybe answer an email, and then you've been sucked into a rabbit hole and you're suddenly an hour or more. Behind, emphasis on the or more. I feel like sometimes I blink and it's just five pm.

But it happens to everybody. So denis how do we stop it? Well, there are a few ways to maximize time management, and the Pomado technique is actually a pretty popular one. So it comes down to five key steps.

First, you identify your tasks that you need to complete for your work session, set a timer, to twenty five minutes, work on that task until the timer is up, take a quick five minute break to stretch and just refresh your mind, and then after about four cycles of doing that, you take a fifteenth to thirty minute break, and it really helps you keep your focus on a specific task without just having like an open ended scheduled for your day. Yeah. I'm right there with you. I've used this technique in the past, and instead of twenty five minutes, I try and stretch it to thirty or thirty five because I feel like sometimes I don't get enough done in that twenty five minute period of time.

But the technique is full proof, and my humble opinion, something I always need to do is make sure my phone is on do not disturb during this, you know, twenty five to thirty five minute period of time here. You know, I think this works for a lot of people for a couple of reasons. Right. First one, low barrier to entry.

We've all got that timer on our phone and just click it off to the races. The second one is you don't need to have to ignore so much of these text messages and emails and phone calls. You can just kind of put them to the side for call it twenty five, thirty five, forty five minutes. Right, if something's urgent, you're going to be able to get back to it.

And that's not the only way to maximize your time either. Knowing which tasks to delegate is an important skill, and I think it's one that's often easier said than done, especially for those control freak small business owners out there. Yeah, I'm talking to you. And of course, digitizing tools are an important part of streamlining your business to better manage your time.

It absolutely is genius. I am one of those small business owners that's always trying to automate, find the wasted time in my day to day schedule, carve it out, and really you know, focus on what needs to get done. Hey. You know, one of my biggest time management struggles this year specifically has been I am a new mom, and so when I was child free and running my business, I mean I could be working from you know, sunrise to midnight and my schedules completely open.

So now that I'm balancing my calendar with a tiny human, it has forced me to really focus and be way more intentional as an entrepreneur. And like where I'm using my time and also asking for that much needed support so that I don't drown in all the responsibilities. So for all the morepreneurs out there, just know that I feel your pain. Your business might have to evolve right so that you can manage your time differently.

But I like to see it as an evolution versus a slowing down. I love that evolution never slow down. Well, speaking of time, Janie, it is now time to talk about our guest today. This entrepreneur's story is incredible.

She turned a near death experience into a story of survival and success. Anna Cobb was a twenty year old college student when something happened that would change the trajectory of her life forever will. Searching for a good energy supplement to help with the exhaustion that comes up being a student, she ended up unwittingly ingesting a synthetic ingredient in a women's vitamin that caused an allergic reaction. This reaction was so severe she had to be put on life support and was in a coma for a week.

When she finally revived, she didn't just have a long road of recovery ahead of her, she had a mission. Anna was determined to save as many people as possible from going through the same ordeal Shee did. She found That a plant based catering company while still at Tuskegee University, and then eventually created Rejuvenation, a beverage company that provides clean, natural energy solutions. Her company is getting more and more attention every day and recently won the Pharrell Williams Black Ambition Prize.

She also started Okra, a line of all natural Okra sparkling water to revitalize the skin and the soul. From a near fatal allergic reaction to crafting a solution that's all about vitality and wellness. Let's give a big welcome to anacob. Anna.

We're so excited to have you. Welcome to the show, all right, Anna, So let's just dive right in. You took a very scary experience and turned it into something incredibly positive. Walk us through what this experience was, kind of play by play.

I don't understand at all what happened there. That's insane to think about it. Yeah. So, in twenty seventeen, I had a severe allergic reaction to a synthetic energy supplement.

I was on life support and in acoma and I was blessed with a second chance at life. So I used to play volleyball and at the time was just like really in the gym and just training. And so I went into store one night and the lady was like, Oh, there's this new women's gummy. It's supposed to help you retain energy, and it's supposed to help you, you know, be more functional through your workouts and have like better workouts when you're doing different things.

And so I took the gummy and I was like, oh, it tastes great, you know, fantastic. Probably like twenty to thirty minutes later, I got home and my face was extremely so swollen. I called my mom at work and she was just like freaking out, like, no, your face is really swollen, and you need to probably call nine one one. By the time I got downstairs to tell my grandmother to call nine one one, my tongue had swollen up to the entire width of my mouth and I was not actually able to form any real words.

I just remember like I was telling my grandmother, like I was trying to tell her I couldn't breathe. Nine one one. They came. They immediately stuck me with EPI and then it was just like I was out from that point forward.

And it wasn't until probably three months after I had been going through like rehabbing everything, that we finally were able to correlate it was a gummy I had taken, because there were other claims coming out on the market of people that had unfortunately passed away, and then also people who had had the same adverse reaction. We ended up finding out that there were one hundred and forty four ingredients in those gummies and only eighty six than were listed on the actual bottle.

So from that point forward, after I had made a full recovery, which took a long time, I suffered from extreme memory loss. I had all types of just different you know problems like nightmares and just you know things that happened once you've been in a coma. But it was like I just remember thinking like, Okay, I have to do something different, Like there has to be something that can give me energy without you know, one day thinking I'm going to have a heart attack at twenty one years old.

Now walk me through a little bit more of that recovery process, and sort of when throughout that recovery process where you inspired to create your company of Rejuvenation. So my mom and I we went back and forth about me going back to school that semester, and I was like, no, I have to go back, like I want to finish on time. And I was just like, I was like, no, I can't let this stop me. And she was like, I am afraid to let you out of my sight ever again.

Reasons. But I got back to school and I remember I told my professor, he was my plant science professor. I told him what happened, and he was like, oh, my goodness, like that is crazy, but would you be interested in potentially working on a project that finds healthy energy sources. So that semester is when I really dove into what food and beverage formulation looks like.

And he kind of inspired me to just like start finding all of these different fruits and vegetables that could provide energy for your plants and herbs. And so I went and did a study abroad in Costa Rica. While in Costa Rica is where I found wyasa and Wayasa is a herb that they used mostly in Ecuador, but also in Costa Rica for energy. When I got.

A hold of it, I was like Wow, like this gives you a lot of energy. But I didn't feel the jittery and then I crashed and I didn't feel like I'm shaking out of my body or anything. It was just like, wow, like I am still up for the rest of the day. I feel great.

And so that is when I was like, hey, like what if I could create something from this. And at first we were doing our vegan and vegetarian plates. So my first company was called Vegan Queen Cuisine and that started in my dorm room at Tuski, and I was giving out vegan and vegetarian plates. But then we started making juices with it, like just fresh press juice, and I was like, hey, like, do you mind if you try out our energy juice?

And so many people were like yeah, sure. And it wasn't until COVID hit everyone got sent home from school. So I went home and my mom was like, oh, my goodness, like I used to drink almost a pot of coffee a day, and I can drink one of these juices and feel great. And the other thing was a lot of people were saying they didn't have withdraws either, so if they were drinking a lot of coffee, and like caffeine, they didn't get that caffeine ache from drinking our products.

So immediately I was like, let me set up a little website and try to see what I can do here. I want to actually double click on some of that inspiration right around wanting to start this company. Obviously it happened as you were going the sort of recovery process, and your professor was really kind of your biggest cheerleader. But I'd also imagine maybe you had this underlying excitement of really getting people to understand that there's such a thing as clean energy versus you know, these crazy gummies that you might get from these other companies.

One of my biggest goals is trying to take the negative connotation from energy supplements and energy drinks. It still happens today that when I tell people like, hey, yeah, we sell clean energy drinks, They're like, nothing that says energy is clean, And I'm like, yes, there is, Like there is a way that you can get energy without all of the jitters and crashes and all the different things. The one thing I will say, we did take a huge and this was a huge leap of faith, but I reached out to the American Asthma and Allergy Association.

That was like. Probably the first group that I had ever even come in contact with with our product, and I was like, Hey, we're doing this for this awareness. We would love to be able to partner with you all in some type of way, And they gave us a lot of support with reaching out to other people that have had adverse reactions to commercialized products, as well as just being able to kind of get the awareness out there more and get the buzz around that there are clean energy products.

So obviously there's a number of things that you could have done to raise awareness right of these harmful chemicals that are in a lot of these energy products. I mean, you couldn't just started like an Instagram and start sharing things, right, but you took it to another level by actually starting a business. Would you say that you have like a natural entrepreneurial spirit or do you think that you were kind of like in the right environment to foster that. I so I have an entrepreneurial spirit.

I tell people all the time that I am the princess to the King and queen of side jobs and side hustles. My mother and father. I feel like I've literally never seen either one of them have less than four jobs at a time, not because it was like they needed to, but I mean, my dad used to do everything. He was a mechanic, he was a driver, he was restaurant cooked.

Like he could do every and anything possible. And so I think just looking at them, I was like, oh, my goodness, like I have to have a job, have a business. Have this, have that as well. I love that.

I do think that there is a genetic component to entrepreneurship because I think about my own grandmother. She had a third grade education and built her own little like bodega the bottom floor of her home, and like put three kids through college with that, you know. And so it's just like that hustler spirit I think you're kind of born with and then you you know, get into the right environments where you can nurture that. Yes, well, let's talk a little bit more about time management and sort of your experience building this company.

When I first started building sort of my company, it was a lot of time blocking. Right, I'd sit down and figure out, Okay, I'm going to do this for this period of time. I'll try and do some of this, do some of that. But it can get really overwhelming.

What were some of the biggest lessons that you've learned over the last couple of years here now of building your company around time management. I will say you have to kind of prioritize things and figure out what will make the most sense and what can kind of manage itself. Like I know that if I schedule out all of my emails on Sunday to go out Monday, at least Monday they go out, but I can be doing something else. So really using those scheduling tools and just you know, trying to be as proactive as possible.

Like now we're at a point where all of our content is basically done for the month the month before. Of course, if we didn't do that, I would be scrambling the night before or twenty minutes before I'm supposed to be posting and trying to create a post. So I would just say that I really, I heavily rely on scheduling tools, and I heavily rely on just trying to knock out the little things as early as possible, because every day is going to have some type of fire that you're going to have to take time away from and focus on just that.

And then you look up, it's five o'clock. So no kidding. I feel like that's me every single day. I get into it, and then I send a couple of emails.

I blink, and now it's finically pblit. Tell us about the various ventures that you have built beyond Rejuvenation. First off, yes, so Rejuvenation Beverage Company is the holding group, and then we have Rejuvenation the energy drink, and then we have Okra, which is the world's first sparkling Okra water. It is fantastic.

What inspired you to look at Okra specifically? Man? So, My grandmother is a huge like wellness lady. We always had Okra growing up, and I just remember like she would scarf it down my throat and she was like, it's great for you.

And I started doing more research on Okra and the benefits of Okra water. I started drinking. I would drink probably like sixteen to maybe like twenty ounces of it a day. If you know Okra, it is super slimy.

It's very infamous for a specific texture. It is very slimy. But that mucilage that is the slime, the mucilage is what holds all the benefits. So of course when.

We're frying it and we're dying it and we're making it in chips and all these other things, we're losing all that mucilage. But that's where the benefit comes from. And it wasn't until I started really extracting the benefit. I was putting on my skin, I was putting on my hair, I was drinking it, and I was like, oh my gosh, like my skin has completely changed, Like I lost eighty pounds.

I was just feeling fantastic. And I was like, oh, right, light bulb idea, here we go. I told my mom and I told my grandmother, like, oh my goodness, there's not another commercialized Okra product other than pickled Okra on the market. And we did a super deep research in every country, in every state, in every like everywhere to make sure, like, okay, would this really be the first I went through every beverage broker I've talked to and like, was pitching this idea and they're like, this sounds crazy, but sure.

Luckily, at the same time, Okra Water had made this huge, you know, boom on social media, and in six months time formulated, did the packaging design and produced the product and then launched it. Literally all this year. Wow. Oh okay, First off, I feel like we are literally talking to the queen of time management, because when I think about just the logistics of launching a new product, I mean, you have figured out how to really optimize your time in a way that I need to extract the gums.

So let's talk about your specific techniques. Like one that I am aware of that's pretty popular, especially for folks who are neurodivergent. Is this Pomoduro technique, right, So for you, do you have any specific time management techniques that you found that worked for you. I wish I was that organized that I could say, like, I have these techniques I use every day.

I will say, I am blessed that I have been doing this for five years now, and we made so many mistakes in rejuvenation, like the energy juices. We made so many, like millions of mistakes, five hundred thousand dollars worth of mistakes. And if it weren't for those mistakes and learning from them, that was the only reason why OKRA was so seamless, because of the fact that I took every single mistake and like literally learned from it and then I just implemented it. Into the next product we created.

I had to start making a pivot with my time management skills because I was realizing, Okay, yes, I feel comfortable because I have all these jobs, but realistically, am I really putting in my one hundred and ten percent into this and making it happen. That is when I had to make make the decision to rely on my mother. Which I absolutely hate doing. But I had to come home and I was like miserable, But at the same time I was focused.

I was locked in love my mom to death, love her to death, love her house is great, but I will. Say that, you know. I was like, I'm twenty six, Like I want to live on my own. I want to you know, my friends are out here having all this fun, but I couldn't.

At the time I had to make those sacrifices. I was like, I'll have fun when I'm rich. Like that's just it. I love that question.

And you know, it sounds like your strategy is just really focusing in on those highest return on investment activities right. Yes, definitely, because. I know some of y'all that are listening right now think that you know, creating graphics and logos and doing cute little social media posts is actually what's going to move your business forward. But it's not.

It's the action that actually comes down to making money, right, those revenue generating activities. And so I think you've gotten really good at being able to pinpoint where exactly your time needs to be focused. I'm curious with quick books, how are you utilizing that to streamline your workload? Quick books has been an angel looks so.

So we first when we first got on quick books, it was mostly just for our bookkeeper to understand like where the money was going. And my books were crazy because, like I said, we were doing pop up shops. We had random cash from selling on the side of the street. We had just you know, all these random sources of income in the company that didn't make any sense.

But luckily, there were so many great tools on quick books that I was able to use all the different integrations as well as be able to do payroll. So yeah, the. One thing I will say with QuickBooks, though, they had this tool that allowed us to make up fake invoices and pos and my mom is very much like just dream it until you see it, like dreaming until you see it. And so I made a fake purchase order up and I was like, this is gonna be my dream purchase order, Like it's gonna happen one day.

And she printed it out and she hung it up in my room. Literally just last year we had like that ExHAM amount of purchase order and I was like, oh my gosh, now here's the thing. Right at the time, that was my dream. Now that's like not gonna pay anything.

But that's at the time. That was like huge money. But now I'm like, okay, now I'm just gonna I go in there and I'm like I just put in what I believe and I'm like, go straight to my vision board. So quick Books also is a manifestation tool.

If you all didn't know, Okay, all right, I love to hear it. That's incredible. Listen, I'm all about QuickBooks. They've got this team of AI agents and trusted experts that are available that help me track and complete my tasks, keep my books accurate and compliant.

So I've got more time, just like you anna, to focus on the business that matters, the business of creating new beverage lines. Well, listen, let's talk a little bit about AI. You know, AI, I feel like is more on the software side, right, but on you know, you've got this CpG business going on, so I'm sure you're utilizing AI here and there while also not forgetting about the human intelligence. Right, you're the one that comes up with the ideas.

You're the one having the Okra epiphany as you will. So what sort of automation have you created in your business using artificial intelligence? Yes? So literally Oaker would not be here without AI.

So a lot of. Image generation that we do, and so now we're able to upload our cans and create these beautiful backgrounds and you know, have like the hands holding them and create these commercials and things like that that are ways to market the product. So having like those AI models and using some of those images really does help us out a lot. My director of operations, he's the one that really is like deep in the weeds with the AI tools that we use.

But it has helped us out a ton, a ton And of course, you know, chat GBT is everyone's therapist now, so. No, I will say, you know, AI and AI automation has certainly freed up a lot of my own time and it's helped me, to your point, prioritize different parts of the business. That are what Genie was talking about, a better return on time spent there. I'm curious, have you ever audited your own sort of AI automations and say, Okay, because I'm using this, I'm able to save this much time.

And then now that I have this time, I'm now you know, are you designing or you're coming up with Okra stuff? What are you spending this new free time doing? Yeah? Really now like building out the product set?

So h we're working on Well, our newest flavor is already pretty much done. It's going into production the end of this month. It will be pomegranate. So y'all are the first to hear.

Yay, Oh so. Pomegranate Okra water will be available hopefully by the end of January. But because of using these AI tools, I was able to kind of surf the internet with like my AI agents and figure out what are gonna be the newest flavors of the year, and like what other brands are doing, what the market looks like, trying to see what the beverage trends are for flavors and for what people are interested in terms of functionality, and so because you know beverages, they change like every day, like it could be hot today and then gone tomorrow, or you know, vice versa.

And so it has really helped me be able to take out some of that research step that I usually have to go through whenever I'm formulating new products, or you know, when we're just trying to figure out what market trends look like. Now my AI tools can just give me all of that in a spreadsheet and I can go through that, or it can give it to me in like a quick blurb and I can understand and digest it better. Right there with you. I feel like I'm absolutely abusing AI sometimes when it comes to my own business and all these crazy new tools and products.

It's just it's so fun to be able to use this stuff now as a small business owner. Yes, I love it. So along that same vein obviously, there are things that you can decide to outsource and automate, and then there's things that you might want to keep kind of close to the chest. So how do you decide what things you want to do within the business versus what things you want to outsource just to get back more of your time.

So formulation and manufacturing that will always stay family owned only, like I'm sorry, they've read all the books that I feel like are credit worthy, so I'm like it has to stay with us. I have like talked to a ton of formulators, and obviously we still send out everything for bench testing and for you know, FDA approvals and all those things. But I refuse. To budge on formula like that is what, like it came from us, Like it's staying here.

That's it. So Anna, as we wrap up this episode, I want you to really think about this, and you know, maybe it is personal, maybe it's something you know, some outside validation, but like what excites you the most about the sustainable and healthy businesses that you've created. I think seeing how many people are just super excited about the product, And for me, it's really it comes down to like my grandma and my mom, Like just seeing them so excited and super duper supportive, Like hearing my grandmother call all her friends and she's ninety four now and so literally like she'll be on the phone with her friends like Anna's got this business and she's doing this and I'm like, that's what warms my heart every day.

But also just seeing like the amount of comments and the great responses on Oh my goodness, like I've already feel like my gut feeling better, I feel, you know, the glow of my skin, like, oh, I'm ordering another one. It was just amazing to see, especially with just black Black Friday, just like passing. It was amazing to see the response of people that had just got their orders delivered and were. Willing to make videos.

This Black Friday was the cheapest ad spend I have ever had because of the simple fact that we changed the cards that we put in our orders. We said, hey, if you record a video for us and post it on social media, we'll give you a coupon. And so many people have been recording videos and posting them for us for their coupon. That that has been our own organic marketing that we didn't have to spend so much on marketing this year for Black Friday because of the fact that we kind of have our own little UGC content creators.

Now I love it. I have one question, where can we find rejuvenation? Yes, so Rejuvenation is on ww dot drink rejew dot com. And then if you want to purchase okra, Okra is on ww dot drinkokra dot com.

We keep it real. Simple, amazing, and the packaging is giving Instagram feed day. It's so good, so much. I appreciate it.

Got to get in the groove. With the juve here, groove with rejuvenation, no slim, just shine with OKRA. I love it. I do love about Eugenius, but I love a wonderful inspirational story by kind an even better business.

I think my big takeaway from that conversation was how important it is as a small business owner to give yourself grace. Right, you can only control the controllables. I think that's something that my dad taught me growing up, was not to worry about things outside of your sort of domain, outside of your control. And it seems like that's exactly what Anna did.

There's a lot of things that, you know, some setbacks, things that impacted her in her business over the last couple of years here, but that didn't stop her. She's over here doing the Okrah, she's got rejuvenation, she's doing the packaging. I mean, she's absolutely crushing it. So giving yourself grace as a small business owner is incredibly important.

Absolutely, her story was such an important reminder that those setbacks do not have to be the thing that define you, they can actually be the thing that propels you and like really forces you to become who you're meant to be. So super super inspiring guest, and I think it was. It's also a good reminder of how common like the origin story is for entrepreneurs. But it usually just does come down to identifying that thing that you want to help people with, you know, that impact that you want to have in the world.

And I would say she's having a major impact with her work. She absolutely is. All right, Denise, should we now challenge these listeners? Absolutely?

All right, friends and fellow business owners. If you have listened this far, it's time for some homework. Over the next two weeks, challenge yourself to try to take a typical workday and track where most of your time is wasted. So thinking about those waiting periods, downtime and other areas where maybe you just aren't optimizing where you can.

During that same typical work day, I want you to also identify tasks that can be automated either fully or even partially, and utilize the time save for another task. After identifying that lost time, try to rework your schedule to reclaim areas that you can focus on. For business growth, and finally, try implementing the Pomoduro technique or something similar for a week or more see how it affects your work and maybe even get some feedback from other employees about their experience as well.

Well, that's it for today's episode. You can find me on social media at Jocciero Dinetto podcast and. You can find me at Austin Hankwitz. You can follow Into It QuickBooks on all social media at QuickBooks.

To get the tools you need to start, run and grow your business, head to QuickBooks dot com slash mtb today. Thank you, don't forget to follow this show wherever you listen to podcasts so you can stay up to date on future episodes. We also want to hear from you, so be sure to leave a rating and a review. See you next time, See you next time.

This podcast is a production of iHeartRadio's Ruby Studio and Into It QuickBooks. Our executive producers are James Foster and Ryan Martz.