Listen Now:

Oprah does it – so why shouldn’t WE? In this episode, we’re breaking down our favorite things in a bunch of categories, including tech, mindset mantra, productivity tip, and more.

And while we can’t give away a car… we did come up with something on the fly that you’ll be able to snag for free at the end of the episode. 🙂

Jennie’s favorite tech:
ActiveCampaign
Clickfunnels

Alyson’s favorite tech:
Evernote

Alyson’s favorite productivity tip:
The Time Timer

Jennie’s favorite productivity tip:
Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni

Jennie’s favorite investment:
Her new webcam – The Logitech Brio

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Alyson Lex 0:03
She does it every year, this huge episode that people really clamor to get tickets for because they know, they're going to get some really cool free stuff. Yeah, Oprah's Favorite Things. And I don't really know how she sets up her show. I don't know if they're really her favorite things or sponsors that she's gotten. But I don't really care because Jenny and I are taking the idea without the giveaways, because as much as we would love to be able to give you one of everything that we're going to talk about today, that's really just not the most feasible. So what we've done is we've put together a list of nine categories, with our favorite things that can help you in your business. They can help you grow, they can help you organize yourself. And now some of them are going to have free trials or, you know, that kind of thing. And we will give you all of those links in the resources section of the notes page for this episode. Some of them might be affiliate links, because that's what you should be doing. But if you're interested in any of them, you can check them out. The first thing that we're going to talk about is your favorite tech.

Jennie Wright 1:21
Jenny, yes.

Alyson Lex 1:23
What is your favorite tech?

Jennie Wright 1:25
Are you really going to ask me this my favorite tech, in the spirit of and by the way, I literally have, you know, the song in my head, from Sound of Music can't help it. But my favorite tech is ActiveCampaign. And I had a hard choice of choosing that over Click Funnels, because you know, it's normally my favorite tech. But Active Campaign is my is my favorite tech right now. Because of the versatility that it creates for your business and everything that you can do for it, everything that you can do with it, and just how it helps you grow. Like if, if you're just on the cusp of scaling, and you're stuck in like AWeber, or MailChimp or something like that. Active Campaign is really that piece of software that just tips you over the edge and helps you scale just by what's built into it. And therefore, it's my favorite thing. Ever. Yeah, so

Alyson Lex 2:30
my favorite piece of tech, aside from those guys, because you still my answer is believe it or not Evernote. And we haven't talked about Evernote a lot in all of our things where we mentioned tech, because it's one of those things, that's just a part of what I do all the time. And I don't even think about it anymore. So I use Evernote, too. Create and grow my swipe file. Believe Yeah.

Jennie Wright 3:08
And it's and it's freaking awesome to be it's such

Alyson Lex 3:11
a good swipe file. And what I do is I have the Evernote Web Clipper, and that is an extension for my my Chrome. And when I find a landing page, or a sales page, or a Facebook ad, or a blog post, or anything that's interesting, and something that I want to remember the idea of later, I ever know that and I tagged it appropriately. So it's, you know, swipe, landing page, swipe event, swipe, mastermind, whatever. But I'm able to now then have an entire library of ideas and thoughts and points of view. And I've even begun extending it to when there are people who serve the same audience as me who have a summit. I will ever note the landing page and put a tag for summit experts because I know those people appear on summits and it's a good place to start researching for potential experts for my upcoming summits.

Jennie Wright 4:14
It's such a different way than most people use Evernote. Like my partner uses Evernote to write his podcast episodes right in there. And originally back in the day, it's gonna be about five years or so. I used Evernote as an organizational tool, but I can't anymore. I just it doesn't work for me in that space anymore. So I find it really interesting that you've taken Evernote and you're using it for something that it wasn't originally created for.

Alyson Lex 4:44
I've built a library and frankly what I did is I went through my computer because we all have those folders that are okay. I just learned about something in the ADHD world called Doom boxes and it stands for didn't organize only moved, okay. And basically when you clean up, you don't put things where they go, you put them into a box or a bag to deal with later because you're overwhelmed by it. My computer had some Doom folders, guys. And it was they were under innocuous names, and I have one on my desktop called business, miscellaneous business, and it's a doom folder. If I don't know where it goes, it goes in there. It's the worst organizational system. So I had all these PDFs of lead magnets or guides or things that I didn't want to get rid of, but I didn't know where they went. They have a home in Evernote.

Jennie Wright 5:34
Okay, I like that. I happen to love being able to share your swipe file with you and notorious for not tagging, so I'm sorry. Okay, I go through it. She comes back and fixes my mistakes. The reason I love you, Okay, how about your favorite organizational tool, or your favorite organizational hack? Alright, so,

Alyson Lex 5:57
I'm not a big fan of the word hack, because I don't feel that it's like, I don't know the word hack. Man, just soapbox for a second is so overused, right? This, this marketing hack this life hack, whatever. But as we just discussed, I am not the best at organizing everything in my life, that I have some things that I can be very organized with. And some things that I'm not. The one thing that you and I actually have recently started to do, that I'm kind of in love with is a table of contents spreadsheet for those unwieldy folders where multiple people need to be able to find and access things. And this works really well in Google, Google Docs or Google Drive. You create a spreadsheet, you have the name, you have whatever notes you need, and then a link to it. And so you just kind of list everything. It's basically a list of what is in all of the folders, because we use folders and subfolders and things like that. And you might not remember where things are. But now if you remember the name, or if you have notes, like what it's used for, you can search that and find what you're looking for. The linking of files in Google is the biggest Lifesaver of because I can link from one file to another and say go reference, let's go reference that,

Jennie Wright 7:25
especially since you're able to search in Google and guess who can't for some whatever reason. Yeah, I know, some sort of a, my Google hates me in or something and I can't search like I could, I mean Allison types in podcast episode outline. And the dog that we write in for our podcasts comes up, I type it, and I get a mishmash of crap. So having the table of contents and the links is great. My organizational tool or hack is really old school. It is a really lovely, cheap dollar store, journal or workbook, especially if it has a ring, like the rings because I'm left handed you guys. So just a regular journal or something when you open it up, it's really hard for lefties to write in it super hard. So arrow bound only baby, thank you spiral bound. spiral bound is the only way you can go when you're left handed. If not, well, maybe some can do it. But if you're not like you're always writing on some sort of a ledge, trust me, it's really not comfy. But I, I have to use my paper lists. And that's one of my biggest organizational hacks, because it's where my brain processes I process from written. And I remember from written versus typing, and I'm not sure that there's got to be some sort of proper terminology for that. And I'm sure somebody could provide that for us. But that's how I comprehend information.

Alyson Lex 8:57
I am the same way. I'm the same way. I have notebooks and legal pads and post it notes everywhere. And then, you know, that's how I remember stuff. All right, Jenny. What is your favorite time saving tip?

Jennie Wright 9:19
You know, I've been trolled. Man. I knew you were going to I don't know. So probably my favorite time saving. Oh, yeah. A really great time saving tip that I use is really trying to reduce the amount of time spent on repetitive tasks. So a time saving tip from me and I know it's not like my you know, it's not like a product or software I can give you but it's time on repetitive tasks. So it's automation, anything that can be automated, anything that can the steps where we can reduce the amount of steps anything where if it's it has to be done five times and you know you're gonna do About five times that I want a template or I want something, something that's going to reduce the repetitiveness because that repetitiveness makes me bonkers. So that's my, I hope that I hope that qualifies as a time saving tool. It does

Alyson Lex 10:13
automation is a huge time saving tip. And there are automations that you don't even think of. In fact, we just implemented one today where I used Zapier, which is an automation helper connect your software, to email us when we get new guest requests for the podcast. So we don't have to open the document and check we can kind of review right from our inbox. And that sounds like a really simple time saving tip. But think about, especially with Jenny who can't search, she's got to navigate to the folder, she got to open it, she's got to remember that that tab is open, she's got to create the time to sit down and go through the guests. instead. Now an email comes to both of us, whoever sees it first can say yes or no for it to the other one and say yes or no. And now we can begin to organize our guests in that way. Rather than having to remember and set aside time and do it all at once. It can now be one of those five second situations touch at once type of thing. So yes, automation, big deal.

Jennie Wright 11:29
My

Alyson Lex 11:30
favorite time saving tip is, and I have talked about this a lot this year, is my VA. She's amazing.

Jennie Wright 11:40
I just love her.

Alyson Lex 11:42
She has tasks that she does automatically. She has tasks that I would never have gotten to because I just didn't have time. And if it's something that you can afford in your business, even if it's five hours a week, guys, really consider what that could do for you to have that outside help come in. Because she's not full time for me not yet. I have her for about 15 hours a week. But even that part time has completely reduced the mental load on me. I don't have to think about a lot. And it allows me to think big, because I'm like, what else can I have her do I'm anxious to increase her hours I want to. So I've got to build things in my business to give her work. Cool. That's my biggest time saving tip.

Jennie Wright 12:39
It's also really helped you get more done. Instead of you having a list with 35 things, you have a list with 35 things and then you go, Well, I can send this to my VA and then 15 of those tax tasks get taken off your list. And I've noticed that you get less overwhelmed. I do. So that's a huge thing. And I think that's been a massive opportunity for you and 2021. So, yeah, and she's awesome. She's She's awesome. She's awesome. She's fantastic. I even love her. Right? So talk to me about your favorite mindset and motivation quote or concept, something that really spurned like really gets to you and really motivates you.

Alyson Lex 13:22
This one's actually really hard. I have a lot of little throwaway things, and I know that everybody seems to really like the don't compare your bloopers to someone else's highlight reel. And I just I don't I don't have the connection to that one that a lot of other people that I say

Jennie Wright 13:41
I

Alyson Lex 13:44
when I was younger, I had a friend and this friend, we're no longer friends. But she always used to say it's not that serious. And it was one of those things that people you know, it was just that how you have that you ism, right? It's something you always say, and people then start to pick up on it and make fun of you for it. And then they start saying it. Well, that's what happened with that. I started kind of picking on her about it. And I started sending it all the time. And then I really sat and thought about it. It's not that serious. So when it comes to my business, if I don't get the response on a Facebook post that I want, is it that serious?

Jennie Wright 14:31
If I don't

Alyson Lex 14:32
make it to a clubhouse for an Instagram Live today, is it that serious? And helps me put things into perspective that I might otherwise spiral over. It's not that

Jennie Wright 14:45
serious. That's a big deal.

Alyson Lex 14:47
It's a huge deal. So really just look at this perspective. Yes. And I've heard it elsewhere. Like is this gonna matter in five minutes? Is it gonna matter in five hours have Five days, five weeks, five months, five years. When is it gonna stop mattering? And most of the things that we get all worked up over are in the minutes, hours or days aspect of things. And then it's like, okay, maybe let's not

Jennie Wright 15:22
maybe let's not as a good one,

Alyson Lex 15:24
maybe let's not.

Jennie Wright 15:26
Yeah, hey, let's now I like that, let me that's not what you got. Ah, you're gonna mela you're gonna you already know what it is because I say it often enough. And I don't mean it in a derogatory way I never do. But it's definitely suck it up buttercup, like. And it's not to be little anybody's pain or discomfort. It's not to be little anybody's overwhelm, or lack of being able to adjust or be any of that stuff. It's not to make or belittle anybody, but it is at the end of the day. So my process is, if you feel overwhelmed, if it feels like too much, understood, have your moment. Bitch whine, complain, cry, whatever your expression is, probably all of mine are all of the above. And then you have to move through it, you have to, you still have to get to the end goal, the end goal still has to be reached. And the only way as Allison says, and I have taken this into stride is the only way out is through, right. So you have to suck it up. At some point, it just becomes about problem solving. Here's a really good example. Right before we went right before we did this podcast seconds before, Allison's snowball mic that she uses just didn't work. The sound quality was ridiculous. It was like she was in a hallway. And it was just really bad audio. And instead of, you know, freaking out and all the different things, it was just okay, this really sucks. Let's just start problem solving. And it was let's problem solving from the easiest possible solution and also the cheapest, and work our way up to see what it is right. So we're like, okay, maybe we need to reboot, the computer also rebooted the computer because that's the easiest thing to do. It's also the cheapest Nope, didn't fix the problem, right? Then what's the next thing and the next thing we Alson figured out? It was like a, you know, a smashed up cable. By instead of going, well, this sucks. Well, I can't do this. And oh my god, I can't do the podcast and it's over and everything. It's just, you know what? Take the drama out. If you're able to, and find a solution and move through. And I know that's rough. And I'm sorry, but I'm also not.

Alyson Lex 17:48
Well, and it's funny, because one of the ways that I deal with extreme overwhelm, and some of the spiral is I call it my big girl breakdown. Okay, so you have to sometimes just have your big girl break down. And then when it's done, you have to put on your big girl panties, and make it happen. It's okay to have a freakout. As long as you don't let that paralyze you, as long as at some point you suck it up. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm

Jennie Wright 18:16
all about, I'm all about the moment of letting out the stress and letting out the crap. And I've done that for you. And you've done that for and to me and vice versa. But then it's like, okay, you know what, this, this sucks, big, hairy chestnuts. What do we do about it? And then just get to the solution.

Alyson Lex 18:38
Exactly. I love that. I think I like yours better than mine. But that's why we're here on favorite things. Yep. Onwards, your favorite productivity tip.

Jennie Wright 18:51
Ah, okay. My favorite productivity tip is if it can be done in 10 minutes, versus a 30 minute meeting. So if you get if you have to have a meeting with somebody about something, if you can have a meeting, and it can be done in 10 minutes, do it in 10 minutes and don't waste the other 20. Having, you know, other conversations that are off topic or whatnot. I think we spent a lot of too much time on Zoom. I think we spend too much time on on on meetings. So just touch on it. Come up with the solution, figure it out, and then just go and produce or go and get the thing done is where I'd like to go. I think there are some there are some clients and there are some people who are transitioning from a corporate environment. And as they transition, they're still very much in the we have to have a meeting about the meeting about the meeting, and really want to encourage people to really look at things that streamline this take a look at the book by Patrick Lencioni I believe it's called the 10 minute meeting. I can't remember the exact name, but it would be worth reading. He's got some great books, and they're all about productivity.

Alyson Lex 20:07
I first want to say that my husband has been working from home for the duration, the number of meetings to prepare for meetings boggles my mind. So that, and it's kind of related to what I think of as the one touch rule. And I've been trying to implement this more, maybe this is a productivity tip for myself, but like, you have an email, you open the email, you read the email, you click away from the email, and you don't deal with the email, and then you have to go back and do it again. Instead of doing that, open the email, read the email, handle the email, one touch roll, and I'm trying to implement that role in my home with the school papers, right? Like, I'm going to get the mail, I'm going to get the school papers, and I'm going to deal with it while it's in my hand. And that prevents that Doom box kind of thing. It totally prevents the Doom stack of papers. But so my husband is usually the one that gets the mail. But if I get the mail, by the time I walk from the mailbox to the house, the mail is sorted into a recycle at hand, and a go through at hand that recycle at mail, literally, I hit I hit the recycle bin in the driveway, the big one, it doesn't even come into the house. One touch. So that I guess is a really good bonus tip. Because the one that I want to talk about is the use of timers and alarms. This is a big deal for me with my ADHD. But I have timers all over my office, I have one that's a cube that has preset times on it one 510 and 15 minutes. And then I have one called the Time Timer. That's a very more visual timer that you can set between one and 60 minutes. And they will give you an audible beep or alarm when that time has passed. And that's really good, especially for work life balance. Because how many times have you walked into your office or sat down to your computer saying, I'm going to be 10 minutes, and you look up an hour and a half later, this forces you to stick to 10 minutes. So I will find these exact ones and pop in links to buy them on Amazon or whatever. We don't have Amazon Amazon affiliate, but I'll pop them into the show notes because they're really cool. And if you'd like timers, these are good. Or use your phone.

Jennie Wright 22:44
Like I'm not really a timer person. But I'm pretty. I think and I understand this about people with ADHD is there's a disconnect between length of time and how long it takes to do something and also showing up on time and things like that. My research.

Alyson Lex 23:02
I have a terrible concept of time. Yeah, I'm even recording this episode. I was a couple minutes late because I was like, Well, I want to curl my hair. It'll take 15 minutes. It does not take 15 minutes to curl my hair. It takes 20

Jennie Wright 23:18
Yeah, yeah. So so as an aside, I do I've been doing a lot of research on ADHD to try and understand and be able to support my co host better. So yeah, I absolutely love that when she uses the Time Timer. I don't use them, because I don't feel the need to but I definitely see why it would be beneficial. Okay. I would love to know more about the one thing that you love about running your business. There are so

Alyson Lex 23:48
many things that I love, that I feel like are things that anybody who runs a business loves the freedom and the you know, in control of my own destiny stuff. For me, it really is that I get to learn new stuff whenever and all the time. Like anytime I want to learn something new if I'm feeling like hey, my brain hasn't been challenged. I get to, like I have a list of things that I want to learn. And that I can write them off. So for take a class on Udemy or LinkedIn learning or buy a course I can write that off and learn new things all the time. Plus, with my clients, I'm consistently learning about new industries. Every single day. It's amazing. I get to learn new stuff. What about you?

Jennie Wright 24:44
Definitely up there on my list of things I love about it. I think the biggest thing for me that I love about doing this business is that it has allowed me to heal. I've really been able to I mean when I worked in core But I just wasn't able to deal with a lot of the stuff that I had gone through not only personally but also professionally. And it's allowed me time to heal and be a better person. I've done a lot of personal development. And when you're working in corporate, or at least when I was, it's not so much about personal development, as much as like, it's not the soft skills that are being developed as much as the hard skills. And I remember distinctly on my performance reviews, that I would get this feedback that my soft skills were a challenge, like, I was a pain in the butt people, okay, I was hard to get along with. You didn't want to be my manager. I didn't like to be micromanaged, or even managed, let's be honest. And I was not an ideal employee, but I always got the job done. Okay. I was like a hard, hard worker, like you wanted me on your team, you just didn't want to have to deal with me on your team. There was like, Yeah, but being my own boss has allowed me to heal, it's really allowed me to work on those soft skills and be I think a better person, which is, in turn made me a better partner, to my spouse, and has made me a better friend, to the people I care about. I relate to people better, I have a lot more empathy in this business, because quite honestly, if you look at the amount of people who are entrepreneurs, we are statistically, statistically, there are more people who were dealing with trauma with ADHD with mental health issues with the you know, freedom issues with all these different types of things, or people who were coming out of different types of situations. It there is a I swear there's a larger amount of us. And I really feel like it gives us an opportunity.

Alyson Lex 26:45
I think I feel like when we had an episode, maybe with Sarah, um, we talked about this, but I do believe that entrepreneurs tend and business owners tend to be more likely to work on their own personal development than people who live in or who work in corporate simply because our success is tied to us.

Jennie Wright 27:09
Yeah, Sarah, Madras. So she had the documentation of that. Okay. Yeah. So she, yeah, because she's a professional. She's a professional. Exactly.

Alyson Lex 27:17
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's when you're, when you're success, when your financial future is not tied to how healthy you your brain operates, or how well you've managed or how well you're coping, or dealing or moving or whatever. When it's not tied to that it's not as big of a deal. When it is tied to it, we really focus on that. I love that. Um, so on the topic of mental health, let's talk about the things that kind of destroy it. What's your favorite social media platform?

Jennie Wright 27:54
Yes, what a great transition, I think my favorite social media platform for browsing and participating in or, okay, I need clarification, is it to help me grow my business or that I just like to serve? To help me grow my business? Let's go with both. Okay. So to help me grow my business, it's Instagram. I've really found that in the past 20, or 18, to 24 months, that my ideal client is because I mean, it's owned by the same company, but I get more traction, I'm getting more traction out of Instagram, in the past, I think maybe a year, whereas previously, it was mostly on Facebook. And I really also, I want to say that I've also upped my, my LinkedIn game. So Instagram first, you know, possibly LinkedIn second, and then just literally for getting really cool information, because I'm always in learning mode, just like Alyson, but there's some really good opportunity to learn from some people and to understand things off of Reddit. So if you can weed out all of the, there's a lot of stuff on Reddit, that's just you know, yep. But if you weed all that out, and you go specifically for things that are going to be helpful, I've gleaned more information off of off of Reddit that's been more useful in terms of my personal skill development, but also my business development than a lot of books I've read.

Alyson Lex 29:30
I love Reddit, as like, Yes, I could lose hours on Reddit. And you want to know something about anything? Reddit has it? Composting, I'm in there. Snakes with hats. Yes. Like, it's crazy. The stuff that they have. So I love the Reddit thing and it would definitely be one of my favorites as well. I have been I'm definitely into tick tock. Um, you know, it's the videos, which is funny, I'm not usually a video consumer. But if I want to turn my brain off a little bit, then tick tock is a fun place to be. And there's, again, a variety of content on there to book recommendations, plant care tips and showing off and that may or may not have inspired me lately. So for personal, I read it, tick tock, I like a place where I can get a variety of random user generated content that can be thought provoking, but also at times, not thought provoking. Because we all like to turn our brains off to grow my business. I like Facebook, still fate and more specifically Facebook groups. They have been not running my own. Although I have one. And I don't want to anymore. It's not. I'm not giving the attention to my own group that I should, my people aren't getting what they want out of it. And so I'm gonna go ahead and archive that I think at the end of the year, but participating in other people's groups, kind of just helping other people that might need answers to questions that I know that that seems to help my business a lot. The engagement there.

Jennie Wright 31:26
Okay, this next one, this next one is going to maybe pick some interesting feelings for you. But how about investments you've made in your business?

Alyson Lex 31:39
My favorite investment that I've made in my business? That is really hard. Yeah. Because, I mean, there's a lot that

Jennie Wright 31:53
that I've bought,

Alyson Lex 31:56
from books to computers to this. You know what, it's going to be my big old desk. Okay, I know that sounds really silly. But I am for those of you that aren't seeing this on video. I have a big, I'm talking takes up like two thirds of the room. A big U shaped desk with a hutch and a filing cabinet.

Jennie Wright 32:26
And

Alyson Lex 32:28
it's massive. And you might think but Alison, you literally work on a computer all day. Why do you need such a big desk and it goes back to that organization. It goes back to the ADHD. I have a control center. I have literally I have. I have two printers because I have a kid and a husband who now works from home. And they both have stands under my desk with organization. I have, you know mailing labels for the cards that I send out, I have my cat bed on it, I have everything I need and all I have to do is swivel my chair, which is my second favorite most recent investment I spent a lot of money on a chair. My back does not hurt nearly as bad as it used to. And that is it reminds me of another saying that I use a lot. Spend, don't cheap out spend the money on things that come between you and the floor, your shoes, your chair, your bed. If it comes between you and the floor. It's worth spending the extra money on because your feet but and back don't hurt respectively. Oh yeah, desk and chair. That's my favorite investment lately that I've made in my business.

Jennie Wright 33:53
I'm so glad she got that chair because I was as soon as you I've been wanting you to get a new chair for like how many years?

Alyson Lex 34:00
Well, I think I only had that other chair for like three years. But it was I cheaped out on it a little bit. It was a nice big executive chair. It was fabric. When I first got it it was super cushy and comfortable. But it had memory foam. And the thing I hate about memory foam is that over time it compresses especially when you sit in a chair as often and long as I do. Yep. And it compressed and it no longer supported the way I needed it too. It was too big. And now I have a new chair with mesh and different situation.

Jennie Wright 34:38
I think the biggest investment or my favorite investment that I've made in my business, is having somebody else support me with social media. Huge. Having somebody else do that for me because I have been stumped for years on growing my social. I grow everybody else's businesses. I don't have the time to grow my own in some aspects especially when it means that I have to spend more time on social than I really want to do, like I'll do the main things, but social is not one of the things that I want to do. So I've you know, somebody else is doing that for me it's made a huge difference. I'm really seeing the return on investment in that area. Love it, and love not doing it. And then the other thing was buying myself a brand new webcam. brand spankin new webcam. I love this thing, because it's flawed. By the way, it's the Logitech BRIO go check it out. It's the latest one by Logitech. I love it. And the reason being is that I had another Logitech I had the Logitech C 920. And if you are looking at the layer, if you see video of me, I have these massive windows over on my right hand side. And the light from those windows when I first moved in here and Allison is giggling because she knows I had to I had to cover these windows constantly with an old blanket. When I first moved in Allison and I were trying to record an episode and I literally taped up boxes on the windows. And as we're taping one of the boxes came loose and fell and I like you know did the like sort of movie scream.

Alyson Lex 36:18
It is my one of my favorite outtakes ever. Yeah, it's awesome recording. I have it. I think I use it. I'm using it in our YouTube years, but it's like my favorite thing.

Jennie Wright 36:31
And I totally made like this really an uncouth little mini scream when it happened and it was just ridiculously funny. And I've had to cover my Windows what I like so so this Logitech BRIO. It has automated or AI, light detection, and it evens out the light. So I don't look like Casper the Friendly Ghost on all of our podcasts. I just look slightly less than Casper. So it's good. That's, that's my thing. That's my favorites.

Alyson Lex 37:02
All right, what is your favorite thing about yourself? As a business owner?

Jennie Wright 37:13
Hmm. My, my ability to see, huh, let me rephrase this, my ability to see the big picture possibilities for somebody else, and convey it in a way that creates enthusiasm and excitement that they can actually achieve it versus them thinking they have to go from A to F in the alphabet. And there's, you know, a whole bunch of steps in between and getting overwhelmed. I can look at their business and say, I can get you from A to F. Here's the steps. They're completely all doable and break them down. I can see that picture. And I can see that success.

Alyson Lex 38:05
So what you're saying I'm feeling a little called out as you don't steamroll people into stuff. Got it? No, it's cool.

Jennie Wright 38:13
Oh, yeah. I ever seen

Alyson Lex 38:15
that. Yeah, right. And I get super excited about something because I too can see the possibilities. But my brain runs away like a freight train. And I assume that everyone else is on the same page as me. I recognize. I recognize now. And I've always recognized that's not always the case.

Jennie Wright 38:38
But saying around you. It's true to Mother

Alyson Lex 38:41
BPPV. Yeah. And that's what I said, You better get on board this train.

Jennie Wright 38:46
Yeah, it's leaving the station where the it's going

Alyson Lex 38:49
or not, because like we're we're doing it so to to

Jennie Wright 38:52
cause great next big

Alyson Lex 38:53
idea, my my best idea ever. But I have six or seven of those a week. So they're not unusual. But Jenny is very good at. She will talk about like the end result. And then bring it back. So you see how you're going to actually get there instead of just flying by the seat of your pants. I would say that another big superpower you have is that planning and understanding that, you know, these are the steps that it needs to take and here's when that needs to be done. And how can that work within your life?

Jennie Wright 39:30
Thank you. So it also means though, that I get to I end up being the party pooper for some people, especially you.

Alyson Lex 39:37
I don't know what you're talking about.

Jennie Wright 39:38
Yeah, because I see the loops and the holes and the you know, and where things may not work. And I hate being that person. But because I've gone down these roads so many times. I'm able to see where there's like a possible roadblock what you're really good at, and I know you haven't mentioned your stuff yet but what you're really really good at is your incredibly good at the problem solve. So you're quicker to solve the problem than I am. Even though I get there too. You compute faster you're like, I think your computing power, your personal computing power, your your PCP is going faster than mine. And you get to solution quicker than me. And I have to catch up. But you're, but it's amazing. It's amazing when you do that, I think that's what I think you should make sure that's one of your things.

Alyson Lex 40:29
Well, and it's related to one of my favorite things, thank you. By the way, I do really like that I can get excited and see big things. Like I can see, when my clients come to me, I can see what success would look like for them, I can see right away. If this is something that's going to work, I can see it working big. And here's how. And that's really what makes you in such a good team Jenny is that I see that, because that's my computing, right? I'm off, that light turns green, and I am the drag racer that's just off, you slow down because you see the cop at the corner, and you make it to the destination. But you didn't get stopped for a ticket on the way. So we work really well together because I get there. And then I come back. And we talk through it. And I'm still I still know the rest of the way. But now you're showing me the potholes and the cops of the corner. If we can just stay with this metaphor forever. That would be great. Right, like, so I love that. I'm always having ideas.

Jennie Wright 41:42
Yes, I love that you're always having ideas to me, because I think that's huge. I think it's something that's created a ton of progress, not only for the podcast, but also just how we work together.

Alyson Lex 41:55
Yeah. And I mean, I made the joke that I have a best idea ever about six or seven times a week. It's really not a joke. I have. And that's yes, that's approximately one a day. And that's just the best idea of the day. Always. And so like when I get on a strategy call, or I call it a brainstorming session or whatever with a potential client. I throw ideas, I just can't help it, they fall out. I really like that it's fun. So at the beginning of this episode, I said we had come up with nine categories. And that was number nine. But I thought it might be really fun to ask you, Jenny a personal question.

Jennie Wright 42:43
Okay,

Alyson Lex 42:44
if anybody listening has seen any of your videos, they know that there is a veritable jungle behind you have houseplants that I am hoping to replicate at some point. Which one is your favorite? Hands down

Jennie Wright 42:58
the money tree? Why? One is from you. But two because it is it's a temperamental little. You know what? But I love that it is so even if you just take it. So by the way, if you're watching this video, it's the one directly behind my head. Like it's hit, you know, it literally crowns me. And if you turn it, okay, just to give it different, like positions of light. It'll say, Oh, you horrible person, you and it'll like stop drop, it'll start to drop like leaves. Because you've literally turned it 60 degrees. It is that finicky. But I love it. Because it is beautiful. And it there's this weird thing. Allison gave it to me. And it has a lot like I'm very sentimental when somebody gives him something. But in addition, every time I seem to like every time I seem to be on the precipice of closing a really big deal, or that something really big is happening. This thing starts sprouting A New Leaf, like a new set of leaves at the exact moment. It's kind of cool. So I love it. All right, yes.

Alyson Lex 44:07
And so that money tree is in the Ficus family. Yeah, fake I don't even know they are notorious for dropping leaves at the smallest change. So for any potential plant owners out there, Ficus is fake guy. Money. Trees are very tough, but very rewarding. I had a money tree, I still have a bar. And it broke. My cat broke it. So I'm trying to save by Re growing and it's going to be a long road, but there's growth on it. So I'm good.

Jennie Wright 44:42
Yeah, and you gave me that money tree. Geez. When?

Alyson Lex 44:47
I think it was 2019 Right.

Jennie Wright 44:49
It had been in 2019. And I still have it was 2020 it was yeah, it was 20 Oh

Alyson Lex 44:53
no, it's just last year.

Jennie Wright 44:55
It is 2020 Because I have a video on my desktop of you saying believe in them.

Alyson Lex 45:00
michaleen victory, I have it

Jennie Wright 45:03
in your hair so much shorter. Okay, my turn. Since you got the chance to ask me something personal, I'll get the chance to ask you something personal. Why do you love? Why do you love having signs up in your office? And what is your favorite one?

Alyson Lex 45:25
That is a really good question. i There are two reasons that I like to have signs on my wall one, my mother is a very wall sign heavy person. So I grew up with it. And there are people who grow up with it that just like anything else, right, anything your parent does to excess, or whatever, you will grow up with an either not do it at all, or do the same exact thing. And so I have kind of done the same exact thing with some edits. So I really, it feels comfortable to me. But I think the real reason is I want to show my personality. And every sign on my wall has personality to me, a lot of them are sentimental. Um, you know, I have my logo and our podcast logo sign. They were painted by my mom. But the logos were designed by your partner. And so and then, of course, you know, the podcast we do together. And my logo has a cat. So it's very sentimental and dear to me, but also it has my personality on my wall in a physical representation of me. So my favorite, I'm gonna have to turn around and look.

Jennie Wright 46:57
Okay, but don't speak until you turn your head back because we won't be able to catch you. I know. Okay, so Alison literally has her head turned away from the camera right now. And he's looking around our office at our favorite sign.

Alyson Lex 47:09
Okay, it's really hard to pick one. But there's a small one. And it's really up there for me not for anybody on camera. It says You had me at health insurance. And my husband bought me that sign our first year of marriage, because I had been laid off from a corporate job a week before we got married. And I didn't qualify for unemployment. Because I didn't work there long enough. They had recruited me literally a month and a half prior. So it was a huge transition time in my life. We were going on our honeymoon, I didn't have time to apply for new jobs, look for new jobs. And I looked at him and I said, How would you feel about marrying the business owner marrying an entrepreneur and he was supportive. And I made the joke, at least I'll have health insurance again, because we're getting married and I could hop on to his. And so now almost 10 years later, our joke is I married you for the health insurance, blah, blah, blah. And he bought me that sign. And it just reminds me of where my journey started. And I had a business before then I've been writing for money since 2007. This was in 2012. But that was really the start of it. I like it. So sentimental and personality.

Jennie Wright 48:31
And I went the other route because my mother was a put a sign on a well person too. And I've gone the other route. I've gone minimalist. I mean, this is the most amount of the what's behind me is the most amount of decoration in the entire room. Yeah, there's that this has been fun. Are you going to pop up some other crazy question? I mean, or do I get to actually wrap this one

Alyson Lex 48:51
up? You get to actually, you know,

Jennie Wright 48:53
you know what? Oh, come on.

Alyson Lex 48:56
I don't I don't want you to wrap. It's not a question. Okay. All right. So at the beginning, I talked about Oprah and Oprah give stuff away. And I know that we have links and stuff that people can get trials or whatever on our notes page, but I want to give something away. It can't be a car can't afford a bajillion of those. But can we give away like a 30 minute brainstorming call with ideas and plans and all that stuff that we talked about? We're really good at

Jennie Wright 49:22
that we can because this is the Allison's team trained to to and

Alyson Lex 49:27
I'm just I'm just to chill and like I want to do it so let's let's make a link I'll make a calendar link for it. We'll do like system to thrive.com/thirty done and we will I was so creative best idea ever. And yeah, hit the link book it let's let's talk let's brainstorm. Let me overwhelm you with ideas and then Jenny can rein me in and we can dream big for you but show you the steps to make it happen. All that stuff we said we're good at let's just yeah 30 Min. He will usually offer a 15 but it's Christmas. So we're gonna we're gonna double that to 30 Right? Yeah. What do you think? Yeah,

Jennie Wright 50:09
sure. And I will do in regular form I will just jump on board the choo choo train and because nine times out of 10 Jumping on this thing just results in something good. So it is it's fun. I've I have let go. I'm a control freak that has let go of her control and jumps on the Allison choo choo train. So yep, head on over to system to thrive.com forward slash 3333 Zero

Alyson Lex 50:32
that works not not the spelled out because yeah, that's three zero system to thrive.com three, zero. I'll make it after this episode after the recording.

Jennie Wright 50:42
And you guys have access to almost everything that we talked about today. So you can check out our favorite things that the tech things the minute you know, the the time saving tips, the organizational hacks, the all of that kind of stuff. We're going to set everything up in there into the Resources section. Find everything that you can if it makes sense to you let us know what your favorite things are. So head on over to Apple podcasts and leave us a review. For this episode. Let us know if there's something over there that you really liked in terms of like the content in this episode. And we will be back again soon answering another big question or sharing more of our favorite things. We'll figure it out.