In this episode of the Natupreneur Movement Podcast, I spoke with Productivity Ninja Julie Jones all about creating a productive business that’s actually good for your health!
(Editor’s Note: This episode was originally recorded before NatEx 2019, but Julie will be joining us again for NatEx2020! This provides a little taste of what she’ll be teaching there.)
T: Today I am pumped to introduce you to a very special individual – the amazing Julie Jones.
Julie has so many facets to her and we’re so lucky to have her here chatting with us today, but also at the NatEx stage! She has so many different worlds that she brings together. Julie’s background is in marketing and nutrition for some very large food organisations here in Australia, as well as manufacturing. She’s also got an incredible background when it comes to her love of diving and taking incredible photos underwater. She’s also had personal experience through a cancer journey herself. And that has taken her to really step into understanding overwhelm and productivity and the role it can play in our busy lives. So welcome, Julie!
J: Thank you, Tammy. It’s really great to be here with you.
T: It’s so wonderful. I’m so excited to talk to you today. So, where do we start with your journey? Where did your journey meld for you, when it came to being in corporate and your love of nutrition?
Corporate Life
J: My original background is I have a degree in biological sciences. I originally set out after leaving school to work in some shape or form in that industry. My passion was actually around animals. I love the natural world and I love being involved with animals. And that took me into a journey that I wasn’t really that happy with at the time in medical research.
But that then led me into a corporate role. I was actually working with the Mars Corporation in their pet care division and looking after animals in the sense of looking after our pets and understanding nutrition for pets. So it was an interesting road from there into other corporate marketing roles. That kind of eventuated after I moved from a research background into market research. So understanding pets and understanding owners and then into marketing itself. So it was a kind of a convoluted route in that in those early days.
T: It’s an amazing mix! My background is in research as well and it can be really disillusioning. But there is a real crossover with understanding what data and information you can get. And being able to feed that back from a marketing perspective. Even getting grants as a researcher is essentially marketing.
J: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many facets of what we’ve learned in our early days and in our training that just helped to guide people to us in terms of the connections that we’ve made in the way we learn. So I’ve found that really helpful.
T: So corporate brings about these amazing learnings. And it also brings about some interesting experiences, from what I gather from a lot of my clients as well as what I’ve seen from so many people who have climbed the corporate ladder, which can quite literally be exhausting. What was your experience of that light?
The Corporate Grind
J: Yeah, it’s really interesting to me. I never thought of myself probably as a very driven person. But I guess in competing in that corporate world, it starts to become just second nature. I found that I was very much an ‘A’ type personality, really striving to achieve great results whilst managing a big career but also looking after family – two young kids and building a home – all of that kind of stuff.
It was second nature for me to have really big, long days at work, then juggle everything else around that. Because that’s what I needed to do. About 10 or 11 years ago, I became a single mom as well. So raising the kids on my own put even more pressure on.
I use this as one of my analogies when I’m talking about Productivity Ninja’ in the workshops that we run. I measured the pace of my day by the fact I’d get to the end of the day and I wouldn’t have had time to pee.
T: My goodness. So many people can relate to that! I personally have gone through those times when I didn’t have time to eat. But not having time to pee and being so proud that you can hold it the whole day! We laugh about it now, but my goodness, the things we put our bodies through for that achievement.
Journey with Cancer
J: Absolutely. And I’ve actually had two journeys with cancer. Around about 11 years ago, I was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which was a real shock at the time and obviously, “Oh, my god! What’s happening to my body?” and “Why did this happen?” And all that kind of stuff.
Luckily it was a benign tumour and operable. Had the surgery, back at work six weeks later, off on the journey again.
Lessons From The Universe
So the universe was throwing me these little lessons and I really just didn’t take notice of them at that stage. Then I went through a marriage breakdown. I went through a whole lot of stuff around that and making sure my kids were okay. And then I moved into more corporate roles. When I was made redundant from Mars due to restructuring, I went straight into another corporate role was there for about another nine years. Just yet one corporate role led to another. That desire to just keep on going and not learning my lessons was quite interesting.
About five years ago I was made redundant for the second time from Sara Lee McCain (which was a great opportunity). We knew it was coming. They were moving the marketing to Melbourne and I didn’t want to move to Melbourne, so I started my own business. So that was an interesting journey. I loved running my own business.
But then very quickly, one of my clients turned into a very important client and one that wanted me to be their general manager. So I moved into back into that corporate zone as General Manager for a small marketing company quite close to home, but with lots of travel. That was probably the most stressful role I’ve ever been in. That was quite insane.
And within probably 18 months of being in that role, I realised that it wasn’t going to work out for me. And at the same time, just as I sort of discovered that I really wanted to get back out and do my own thing, I was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. And this time around, it wasn’t quite such a lucky experience. It was malignant uterine cancer.
So that really was a big shake and a wake-up call to say, “Okay, now I really have to take this seriously.”
The Feather, the Brick, and the Mack Truck
T: We often talk in the naturopathic profession about the feather, the brick, and the Mack truck. We get these tickles from the stress or doing things that aren’t 100% in alignment with us. But because they’re in our comfort zone, we just go back to it. Then we get the brick and it slows us down even more. Then to get those big diagnoses, those are really the Mack truck. What came out of that journey for you? Because thankfully, you’re out of that journey now.
J: Absolutely. It was one of those experiences where just before I was diagnosed, I had gotten to the point of no return. I was saying, “I have to change things. I have to get out of this.”
Then when I had my diagnosis, I realised I was tied to this place. I had sick leave I needed to use, I needed to still be earning an income. So I ended up having surgery and going back to work very quickly afterwards because I needed to. And it was even worse when I went back. I literally got to the point where I just said, “That’s it. I can’t do this anymore.” So I asked a friend if they would loan me some money if I needed it. And I decided to just say, “That’s it. Call it quits.”
So I ended up going through radiation therapy with a little bit of money in the Bank that I had already. But I realised during my radiation treatment that I needed to start building my own business again. And that’s where the connection with Productivity Ninja came in.
Matt had actually come and run a workshop. He came and did a workshop for my team when I was working in this corporate role as General Manager. And I just loved the programme fell in love with it and realised how much of a difference it made to me, even in those early days of learning to be a little bit more productive. So when I was doing radiation, I spoke to Matt and said, “Hey, I want to come work with you.” And he said, “Yep, come over.”
I do run my own business separately. I’m actually running sort of two businesses at the moment, which is really cool. And also working for another client, which I’ll talk about another time. But the Ninja stuff is kind of where my passions now lying.
Creating a Productive Business
The Productivity Ninja programme, which I’m going to share with you guys at the conference, is one that’s really helped me to get to grips with:
- where I really need to focus my attention
- what my priorities are
- where I need to focus my time
- so that I can make an income
- but have some balance in my life
Because the real lesson for me is that I can’t keep going like a train, my body suffers, my family suffers. I need to be able to focus on the things that are really important. And set some wonderful goals. My goals at the moment are to work four days, dive three. That’s the kind of fun stuff I want to be doing long term.
Productivity and Creating the Life You Want
T: We often talk about this in the Natupreneur Hub and Club, about creating the life you want rather than focusing on the job that that is at hand. Looking at the life you want and then working backwards from that. And having your ideal life of working four days in own passionate work, and then being able to have those three days of diving and being underwater and really connected with the animals that you love the most.
It sets you up to be yourselves, to thrive as yourself. And then it sets you up for an amazing four days of work because you know that what’s coming next is the things that you love. We as practitioners haven’t been shown examples of how we can do this without being ‘all or nothing.’ We’re all in for one on one with our clients. And then there are all of these things to do with business plus all of the stuff that we’re supposed to know and take care of.
That’s the fascinating thing about what you guys do with Productivity Ninja. When you go, go, go, it gets so overwhelming that you get nothing done. But then if you actually pull back, it feels so good that you get nothing done again! It’s amazing to find that balance in the middle with the incredible set of tools that you have, to be able to take that overwhelm and stress away so that you can actually live a life that you want.
Boss Thinking vs. Worker Mode
J: Absolutely. I was talking to Matt this morning about exactly that. I recently picked up a client contract for two days a week back in corporate at McCain foods,. They needed some help with some strategic work and some project management, which I was happy to do short term for a couple of days a week.
Seeing the difference in myself in terms of how much productivity I’m bringing to their organisation. They are quite blown away by how much I can achieve in a day, even on two days a week. I’m quite blown away myself, actually, when I see how impactful this has been as a programme for me. So I just love sharing it.
Being able to set aside time every day for the ‘boss thinking,’ where you plan what you’re going to do. And then you go into ‘worker mode’ and you do the work. Being able to separate those two types of thinking is just so powerful. It really gives you a new lease on life. It gives you that ability to plan for the good stuff as well as the stuff that you just have to get done.
T: Absolute gold tip there! I think that’s like the tip of the conversation. A lot of us have worked before we owned our own business. And as employees, we sat and we listened to the boss and then we got the thing done in the time frame that the boss wanted us to get it done. Or we start to become a boss ourselves and then we can hand it over to everybody else and we don’t really have to do a lot.
But when we go into our own business, all of a sudden, there’s nobody telling us what to do and there’s nobody doing nothing. We just want to delegate. So having even just that tip of setting aside ‘boss thinking time’ and then going into employee or worker mode for a certain time and actually staying in integrity and getting those things done that you said you would do.
Productivity Ninja Workshop at NatEx
J: Exactly right. There are so many simple tips and techniques that I’ll share on the day around how to do that. So things like the Pomodoro Technique, which is a 25-minute sprint, five-minute break session that you do to get stuff done. It’s so powerful you’ll achieve twice as much in 25 minutes as you would have done normally in just kind of vaguely trying to get stuff done. Really powerful little tips and ideas and tools. And there are apps we can use. It’s exciting! There are so many things that I can teach you guys. So I’m really excited.
Connection, Collaboration, Innovation
Innovation
T: I love that. And that beautifully brings us to our final question that we always ask in this podcast. The themes of the conference (2019) are Connection, Collaboration and Innovation. What I’m hearing from you is that the Productivity Ninja side of things is just so innovative. It draws on many different tools from different areas, including apps, these things can help get things done quicker, easier, and more efficiently. Without the pain that it can sometimes cause..
So that covers the innovation side of things. But how have connection and collaboration really shaped your business?
Connection
J: The connection for me, has been incredible in that I’ve actually not advertised for work since I set up my own business. Everything’s come through word of mouth. Everything’s come through a connection by being passionate about what we do and being able to share that with the people around us. It’s created a business opportunity for me that I never expected to be there.
Connection is such a powerful one. To be able to learn and grow from others, but also to have people experience what you’re going through and experience your business opportunities. And they just want to be involved in that. Connection is really strong in that way.
T: Yeah, especially from a marketing side of things as well, I get that angle for sure.
J: I struggle a lot with the idea of selling my business. So making genuine connections and having coffee catch-ups and just talking with people about what we do is really powerful.
Collaboration
T: Definitely. Collaboration is obviously a part of what you do because you have these three different facets of your business. How does that help you in your business?
J: Hugely! The collaboration between the Productivity Ninja side of things and my own seed innovation business is helping me to create the right flow in everything I do. And vice versa. There are things for my seed strategy business that I’m able to help Matt develop the productivity side of the business, as well. So collaboration across the board. I think even with talking with yourself and with Murray Guest and other people that I network with. That building of a network of people who have common goals in their business creates a life that you really want to be living.
That aspect of collaboration for me means that we just step-change things every time we talk.
I think it was. Lisa from mine valley that mentioned things like, “stand on the shoulders of giants” and “be around people that make you want to stand on your tiptoes.” That’s the kind of collaboration that you guys are generating from the NatEx perspective. So I’m really looking forward to being connected with you guys to do that, too.
T: Beautiful. Well, we’re so looking forward to you being part of NatEx. I can’t wait to be part of the workshop! I have had the opportunity to be pretty part of multiple productivity ninja workshops and so many people ask me how I get stuff done. Well, we swear a lot more than that. But how do I get so much done? And it is from so many of the tips and tricks, the productivity hacks that you guys share, that really have cut down on my wasted time so that I can just be so much more productive.
I’m super keen for your presentation and your totally actionable workshop and getting everybody involved to be able to get more productive, productive in their own practices.
J: Wonderful! I look forward to seeing you there.
T: Thanks so much, Julie, for joining us today.
Take Action – See Julie Jones at NatEx 2020
Julie will be joining us to share her Productivity Ninja Workshop again for NatEx 2020!
Don’t miss out on this awesome training.
Leave A Comment