Based in Tampa, Florida, Angela’s entrepreneurial journey began in 2019 when she was laid off from her position as a firearms accessories technician. Her 6 month old son needed open heart surgery, and during his recovery time, she was let go.
From that point on, Angela knew she needed to find work that aligned with her needs and with people who agreed that family comes first, and everything else comes after that. So she began doing general admin tasks as a virtual assistant when she found her love for tech.
Today, Angela is a tech and automation specialist and the founder of The Systems RX. She’s helped online coaches and course creators launch evergreen funnels effortlessly, and has built and maintained multiple 6 and 7 figure evergreen funnels. Through her work, she empowers her clients to spend more time with their loved ones while fully serving and transforming the lives of their clients.
Angela’s website: https://www.thesystemsrx.com
Jessmyn:
Welcome to Interact’s Creator Stories Podcast. Interact is the easiest way to convert curious people into loyal and happy customers by using a lead generating quiz. On Creator Stories, we get to hear the entrepreneur’s journey. This is a podcast about how those creators took their knowledge and experiences to carve out a place in the world, owned what they know is special about themselves, and turned it into a successful company. Today, we get to speak with Angela, the founder of The Systems RX. She’s a tech and automation specialist and has supported online coaches and course creators with their tech and automation buildout, and maintenance for multiple six and seven figure evergreen funnels. All right, let’s get started.
Hi, guys, and welcome back to Interact’s Creator Stories Podcast. I’m so excited to be here with you guys today and with me I have Angela Tan from The Systems RX. Angela, thank you so much for being on our show with us.
Angela:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited.
Jessmyn:
Of course, of course. And people got a little bit of a bio on you already, but can you go ahead and just jump right in. Tell us a little bit more about you, your business, and then how did you get started done all of this?
Angela:
Yeah, so my name is Angela Tan. I am the founder of The Systems RX. I currently live in Tampa, Florida, hot Tampa, Florida, and I am a tech and automation specialist. So, I specifically help online coaches and course creators launch evergreen funnels without the tech overwhelm. So, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past year and a half. But I first started out as a general virtual assistant back in January of 2019. So, I was working for business and marketing coaches, just doing general admin tasks trying to figure out what I enjoy doing in this online space because I had just gotten laid off from my 09:00 to 05:00. I was working actually as a firearms accessories technician. People don’t usually guess that about me. So, kind of fun when I tell them. But yeah, I was doing that for like two years and my son had to get open heart surgery at six months old and while he was recovering, they let me go.
And so, I needed to… I was looking into virtual assistant before then anyways because I was trying to find something where I could be at home and spend more time with him because he had a lot of doctor’s appointments. Just like every… I think at that point it was every two weeks, just tons of doctor’s appointments. And so, I dabbled into the virtual assistant world, got started there. And then after six or seven months, I realized I really love all the tech and automation stuff. All the stuff that most people don’t enjoy, I really love doing. It’s like putting together a huge virtual puzzle, piecing it all together, and making sure that it all works. It all talks to each other and it all functions on autopilot and helps my clients make money while they’re sleeping and they love it. So, yeah, that’s kind of how I niche down to what I do today.
Jessmyn:
Wild and that’s so scary. I don’t know how you got through that, but I’m glad you did it. I’m glad you’re here.
Angela:
I don’t know either. Sometimes I look back I’m like… And actually his open heart surgery was about three years ago around this time of the year. So, around this time of year we get some sort of PTSD around it, but we’re good. We’re all good now. We’re getting better.
Jessmyn:
That’s good. That’s good. But it’s kind of crazy because you went through that and then you lose your job. So you’re like, “Well, I have to figure something out. I have to keep going.” What was that like trying to push through? You’re like, “Well, I have to work, but you know, all this crazy stuff has just happened to me.”
Angela:
It definitely was scary, especially because I knew I didn’t want to go back to a 09:00 to 05:00 where I needed… Because childcare wasn’t an option at that point with his health condition, and I knew I just needed to work from home and be with him. Not that, that was an easy option as well because I realized very quickly that working from home with a kid is almost impossible because they just need constant attention, but it’s just thankfully virtual assistants, it’s so flexible, and they’re so… I mean, I think even today if you look at just the different fields of how you can get into virtual assisting and different ways you can support clients, especially if you find those dream clients that are… I love working with parents who understand that our kids come first and nothing in business is an absolute emergency. So, when I find… Like when I had clients like those, especially in the beginning, it was really nice that they were like, “You and your kid comes first and then these things can happen after hours or whenever it gets done. It’s not a rush.” So, it was really nice having that kind of a support from my clients and then obviously support from family as well. Like my husband and my mom and my sisters were amazing throughout all of that.
Jessmyn:
Oh, but I love that though, because you don’t usually expect that from your clients, especially or who your customers are. You think like, “Great. They’re expecting me to get this done. Are they going to be mad? What will they feel about this if I don’t get it done in time?” But you don’t want to have to choose between life, and work, but that’s awesome that they were actually more… They were part of the support system that you needed at the time.
Angela:
Yeah. And those clients are… I call them unicorn clients because it’s so hard to… I’ve definitely had my share of clients who do not have kids and they don’t understand that yet. So, it was very hard to work with those clients. So now I think one of my values, especially when I am talking to potential clients, if they are parents, we really vibe and we really understand family comes first and then everything else comes after that.
Jessmyn:
Right. I totally get what you mean. I don’t have kids myself, but my sister has a two year old and she doesn’t work in business, but her job is she’s an occupational therapist, so she has to physically go to work. And so, I just see how hard it is to have to find childcare. And then the attention that you have to give when you are home after having a long day at work. So, I totally get it. And so, it is really… It’s interesting how until you see it firsthand or until you’re experiencing it firsthand, you just don’t get it.
Angela:
Yeah. And even when you do find childcare, childcare is expensive. My son’s first year in daycare, I calculated it, and it was over $10,000 in daycare fees and I was like, “This is a lot of money.”
Jessmyn:
Wow. It’s like sending someone to college already at two to three years old.
Angela:
I know. It was so much money. I was like, “Oh my God, that’s how much I’ve paid this year for childcare?” But honestly it was worth it because he got to have social interaction. I got to have some me time and get some work done.
Jessmyn:
Right, right. But you were able to, when you did have him home, you were able to have that sort of flexible schedule of-
Angela:
Yes.
Jessmyn:
Okay, I could work when I need to work, but then I can also put it down if I need to put it down.
Angela:
Yeah. In the beginning it was very hard because I used to be a workaholic almost, work was just everything for me, and I struggled a lot with boundaries. If I knew I didn’t have capacity to do something, I would still say yes. I’m a lot better now. But back then it was just I just said yes to anything and everything that my clients would ask me to at whatever timeline that they wanted. And I would work really late hours. I mean, whenever my son goes to sleep or goes down for a nap, I’d go work. I mean, I’d probably go two or three days without showering. It was really bad, trying to manage all of that in the beginnings. And then when I did get help from my mom, my sister, and my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law I was like, “Oh, it felt so nice.”
Jessmyn:
Right. Yeah. I was going to ask. I was like, “What was that like trying to…” I think flexible hours are, it’s great to have, but you do kind of still have to have a stopping point.
Angela:
Yes, yes.
Jessmyn:
Right. You have to be like, “Okay, my hours are flexible, but I have to stop by at least say 7:00 PM if I start at 8:00 AM,” or something like that.
Angela:
Yeah, having that hard… Because when you do work from home, it’s so hard to separate work life and home life. So, I think one having a designated working space has helped a lot. And then also setting up those designated work hours. It’s like, “Okay, after this time I am not answering any emails. I am not talking to clients.” Just setting up those boundaries. It took me so long to get to that point. Now my work hours, I’ve even added it to my email signatures, and I felt so good about it is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM because those days are when my son’s at school so that’s my work hours, and I’ve done… I think I would say I do a pretty good job keeping to those boundaries.
Jessmyn:
Right. And I think that, I feel like if you… For those who are listening, if you do struggle with time management you can set those expectations in the beginning. So, when people do come to you, they’re thinking about hiring you for work or they need something from you. If you set it at the beginning, it’s less taxing. If you can’t get it done, it’s like, “Well, these are my work hours, and here’s my timeline.” So, you can also set that timeline against what they need as well and let them know, “I actually can’t get it done in that time because of X, Y, Z.
Angela:
Yeah. And just being really honest with yourself about capacity to if you know your plate is full don’t and add it on or find… If there’s something lower priority on your plate that you can push off then tell them, “Okay, this seems like lower priority and can be pushed off.” We can move things around or shift things around. But yeah, I think being transparent from the get go, even in an onboarding packet or a contract, here’s how long you can expect for responding to emails or messages or whatever. I think that’s a great thing to have.
Jessmyn:
What are, I guess, do you have a sort of system of how you figure out what’s lower priority or what’s higher priority?
Angela:
I guess it depends on the season that the client is in, the season of business that they’re in. Obviously, if they’re in launch mode, let’s say they’re launching something tomorrow, anything related to that launch would be higher priority. If it’s something like, oh, this small detail needs to be updated on something completely not related to the launch we put set off to another time after the launch, after we’ve recovered from the launch. But yeah, that would be a small example of that.
Jessmyn:
I like that because I think, I mean, I’ve struggled with this myself even working here just for marketing trying to figure out, okay, how do I differentiate what is higher priority? What’s lower priority? What needs to get done this week and next week? I think it’s, I mean, at least for me, especially in the last year, my job sort of became more flexible in terms of a lot of what you do in marketing is a test. You test to see if it works or not, but it also depends on other things that are happening in the company like maybe this product was supposed to come out. So, all those emails that you just worked on need to get pushed. So, it’s just like trying to figure out, okay, what can I do differently? You’re like, “What do I need to do now?” I’m the same way as you. When people ask me to do something, I’m like, “Okay, I’ll do it right this second.” Even if I’m in the middle of something. So I had to learn that myself.
Angela:
It’s funny because I learned that, because I used to brag that multitasking was a skill of mine, but actually multitasking is really not bad, but it really prolongs how long it takes to do something versus if you just focus on one thing at a time. So, now I don’t say that multitasking is a skill of mine anymore because it’s not.
Jessmyn:
Right, right. I feel like, especially in this day and age when I think people just want things to happen faster no matter what you’re going through, no matter what’s happening, they’re like, “I want it now.” I feel like that could hurt you in the end if you’re like, “Yeah, I can do it all.” And they’re like, “Okay, then do it all.”
Angela:
Yeah. But going back to the whole lower, higher priority thing, I think now that I’m thinking about it, one of my clients they used to do work in sprints. And so, whatever the goal of that sprint was, if there were tasks that were outside of that goal, then it would be pushed off to the following sprint. So, maybe you break it down by quarterly goals, and I actually tried doing this for my business. I wasn’t very successful at it, but I’m going to keep trying. But let’s say my goal for this quarter is to have, or is to write five new blog posts or something like that.,And if I suddenly have a thought of like, “Oh, maybe I want to launch a podcast.” It’s like, “No, that’s going to get moved to another time when I have capacity for that because I’ve set a goal of blog posts for this quarter
Jessmyn:
And you stick to it?
Angela:
I try. We try.
Jessmyn:
The idea is you stick to it.
Angela:
Yeah.
Jessmyn:
I love that. I love that though. I think, I mean it’s important to try new things, especially if you’re like, “Hey, I’m trying to figure out a way to improve my productivity. I want to improve the work that I get done. What can I do or what can I try? I started doing this. Have you heard of the Fabulous App? This is not sponsored but-
Angela:
No.
Jessmyn:
Well it’s this app that basically the idea is to help you build healthy habits. And so, I’m in this goal right now of trying to build healthy habits, and it’s like, you do the same thing, the one same thing once a day, every day, and then you don’t move on to the next habit until you’ve accomplished that habit. And so, I’m in this space right now of I kind of love this. It’s kind of what you were talking about, focusing on one thing and then until you get to the next thing then that the first one that you are working on is now a habit. It’s something you don’t even have to think about more. So, for me, the very first thing they have you do is you wake up first thing and you drink water.
Angela:
That’s so hard.
Jessmyn:
Right. And it was like, they do help you with like tips of get a reasonable water bottle. Make sure you fill it up. Set a reminder to fill it up right before bed and then keep it right next to you. So it’s right there. And so, now I’ve been doing it, I think for a few weeks. And after the water it was like, okay, now, walk around for eight minutes, and things like that, and it continues on with the next habit for a few days and then you build on that. And so, it’s really-
Angela:
Because it takes a certain amount of days for it habit, right?
Jessmyn:
Exactly. Yeah. And that’s the whole idea is they do let you choose new habits if you want to, but they put out a warning and they’re like, “Studies show that if you try to do too much at once, you’re more likely to stop.” Just drop off and stop doing all of this. So we don’t recommend that you move on and add more right now. And so, I just love it-
Angela:
I like that.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. Because it adds to this whole I think for me what’s useful about it is because I work from home and I don’t know if… You can’t see because my background is blurred, but I work in my bedroom. And so, having that separation like you were talking about took a lot for me because I was like, I feel like I’m waking up, I’m going to work, and then I’m going to sleep. And then I’m waking up and I’m going to work and I’m going to sleep and there’s no separation. So, building these sort of healthy habits of routine after working from home, being stuck at home during the pandemic. It’s crazy how much work it actually takes, but it’s working so far.
Angela:
I like that you’re not adding on a bunch of new habits at once because that’s a lot to try. So, I like that it’s one at a time. I’m going to have to check out that app.
Jessmyn:
Right. But I kind of feel like it also adds to this what am I working on in this sprint? It’s like work on one thing and don’t add on another thing until you’re like, “Okay, this is going.” It’s almost sort of muscle memory for me at this point. And then you can keep going onto the next thing.
Angela:
Yeah. I definitely need to drink water.
Jessmyn:
It’s very interesting how it ended up working. Their whole thing is the simplest task. You can do this. It’s so simple. You just open your water and you put it in your mouth. They start you off with really simple stuff. Yeah, definitely recommend, not sponsored. But anyway, the whole point was I think it totally relates to just working, and setting those boundaries at work, and what you do, what you say yes to with your clients, and all that good stuff. But something that came to mind earlier when you were talking was you being a virtual assistant, and that showing you this whole world of automation, and how you fell in love with that, and that’s how you built your business based off of that. So, something that I thought of as you were saying that was just I laughed when you were like, “I realized I enjoyed all the things that people hate doing.” What was that process like of, oh, I actually like this. I can make a business out of it.”
Angela:
I really thought I was crazy when I found out that I enjoyed doing this because my clients were like, “This is a nightmare. I want nothing to do with it.” A lot of my clients who come to me, they are not tech savvy, which I love because they just trust me with it and they’re just ready to not be in it. And I’m starting to see a lot more tech VAs or funnel VAs show up and really own their expertise. And I think it’s so important, especially in this online space where we rely so heavily on tech and automation to run our online businesses. The online course industry is just blowing up right now. And these things just can’t sell on autopilot without tech and automation.
So, when I figured this out, I think it was March of last year, 2020. I was like, “Did I… I think I found something. I think this is it.” Because I really struggled trying to niche down from a general VA to whatever skill it was that I thought that I would enjoy. Then I thought, is it a skill that I’d have to take the course to learn from scratch? I considered copywriting. Copywriting is not my strong suit, and I almost took a copywriting course, but I spoke to a coach and she was like, “If that’s not your thing, don’t try to take a course to make yourself good at it. Find what is it that you enjoy.” So, for any VAs that are just starting out, it doesn’t hurt to try out all the things.
I love that I was a catchall for my clients doing so many random tasks, from booking flights, more like personal assistant tasks to responding to customer service emails. I had a client who… I need to catch a breath. Sorry, I’m pregnant. So I’m like-
Jessmyn:
Oh, congrats.
Angela:
I need to slow down a little. I had a client who had a large following on YouTube and would get 500 emails a day. And I quickly realized that email management was not my favorite thing. I could find ways to automate it to make it easier and more streamlined. But I was like, “That’s not my thing,” but yeah, just figuring out all the tech and automation stuff. I can get so into my zone of genius and my clients love that for me, and they trust me with it, and I just love it.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. That’s awesome. The way you talk about it too, you can see that you light up when you talk about it. So, I can tell you actually enjoy it. So, when you decided, okay, I’m going to focus on automation. How did you decide? And I think the reason why this question comes to mind is because I’ve even talked to a lot of people myself who are like, “I don’t know what tools I need to use.” I don’t even know what it’s supposed to look like. They don’t know where to start. So how did you figure out, “Okay, here’s how I’m going to make a business out of tech automation. Here’s what I’m going to recommend and why.
Angela:
So, for me, I learned that I… I started off actually doing systems in general. So, helping people set up their CRMs or the different tools that they use for their business. And then I quickly realized I wanted to focus specifically on evergreen funnels. And obviously with evergreen funnels, there’s lots of tools and are involved with it. There’s different strategies that are involved with it. So, when it comes to recommending tools for my clients. One, we look at what are they currently using? Do they like it? Is it working for them? Do they find it user friendly? What is their budget? Budget is a big thing because there are more robust, expensive tools out there. There are some tools that are nice to have, but not necessary if you’re just starting out.
There’s only one tool that I recommend religiously to my clients and it’s ActiveCampaign. It’s an email marketing software. But other tools I use usually are pretty flexible with my clients based on what they are familiar with and what… Some people are just committed to one platform. They’re not moving away, and I respect that. They’re paying for the platform. I get that. But I think a lot of it has to do with the strategy that they want to execute for whatever they’re building and the features of that tool support that strategy for them and be able to help them maintain the funnel ongoing because when you have an evergreen funnel, you have to maintain it.
So, it’s easily maintained, if it’s user friendly, and if they don’t hate the software because I have so many clients who sign up for software because so and so told them to sign up for it, but they actually really, really hate it. But they’ve already spent all this time setting everything up in the software. So they’re like, “Now I have to either spend the time myself to migrate or spend the money to have someone else migrate for me. So, they’re stuck at a crossroad of what to do. They just stick with it or spend that money or time.So, yeah, I think really taking the time to, and there’s so many free trials these days with all these softwares that I think really testing things out before you commit to something is so important.
Jessmyn:
Right. And I mean, even for our own software, I say it all the time. I’m like we have a free version. See if you even like the feel and the look of the product before actually signing up for a free trial and then actually testing out paid features because there are those options. You just have to get a little bit creative in the ways that you do test stuff out, and what that looks like. Something that I caught earlier when we were talking about this was you help people figure out how each system talks to each other. So, when-
Angela:
It’s my favorite part.
Jessmyn:
I love the way you said that. It was almost poetic, but how do you sort of figure out like, okay, here’s their goal, the end goal. They just gave me this project. Say in a perfect world, they were like, “I have all the money. You could use whatever. I just want it to do this one thing.” So how do you go from all these softwares in the world to, all right, here’s like five specific ones that makes this system work.
Angela:
I would one look at what they want to execute. Obviously, I’m sticking to my ActiveCampaign platform. Totally not sponsored. I would stick to that, but for the others I would just see like what kind of features and support they need. I just think user friendliness is such a big thing because at the end of the day they are the ones that are going to be maintaining the… Well, in the way that I work with clients now. So, I do VIP days where I set up their funnels and integrate it in one day. If they want to hire me for ongoing support to maintain their funnel, we can do that. But as far as I know, they are going to be maintaining their funnels. So they are going to have to be in there, occasionally checking on things and making sure that everything is still functioning.
So I like, I just think that making sure it’s a platform that they are familiar with or like that they can get a hang of and it’s not too intimidating for them to use, which can be tricky to… I guess I’d have to sit on a call with them and have them like, okay, try this one out, try this one out. But that would just take so much time. I definitely have a handful to pick from to recommend and then that narrows the list down a little bit. But at the end of the day, I would try to have them decide what works best for them and what they like.
Jessmyn:
I love that. I like that you said narrowing it down. You have a handful because I was going to ask, you mentioned that being a VA you were able to try out almost everything, and being all these different and figure out what you liked and didn’t like. But now that you do have a set business, you niche down and you know what you’re doing. Do you still give yourself time to, I guess, research, play around with the new things that are coming out or maybe new things that you haven’t heard of before? How does that work?
Angela:
Yeah. So the tools that I use for my business as well as the tools that most of my clients use, I usually sign up for their newsletters so that when there is a new update, I get it, and I look through when there’s a new feature or automation or something like that just so I can keep myself up to date on the softwares. I’ve been trying and I haven’t been sticking to it because I’ve heard a previous client tell me that having a 20% time in your business every week, whether it be 90 minutes or two hours dedicated to working on your business. So for me, I think that would look like creating mock scenarios for funnels or creating mock automation. So I try to play around in Zapier, and it’s really fun. I love Zapier. Just coming up with different if then scenarios for automations and seeing what I can automate.
Sometimes I just wake up and I’m just like, “What if I could automate this?” And then I go into Zapier and I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s totally possible.” A lot of my followers on Instagram actually love when I come up with different Zapier or zap ideas and I share with them. It’s like, this is possible. One of them is Zoom recordings. Downloading them automatically and uploading them to Google Drive, YouTube, or Vimeo through Zap because you have to go into Zoom and download it and then re-upload it. It just takes a while, and I found a Zap that takes you automatically to upload it to Google Drive or to YouTube or Vimeo, and it saves so much time.
So, it takes a lot of creativity sometimes to play around with the different… I think automation is just, it’s kind of like magic I call it because the possibilities are endless. There’s so many different things you can do with it. There’s so many different ways you can do one thing. So yeah, it’s just a lot of playing around, but trying to carve out that time to make sure that you can play around, I’m working on that.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. I love that a lot because I think we forget. Once you start getting more clients and your business is going, you forget, “Oh shoot, I have my own that I have to also do work on.” I remember what caught my eye about you specifically was this reel that you had posted. I think I told you this already, but this reel that you had posted about how to reformat a Google Doc URL. So when you send it out to people, it automatically just makes a copy for them and I was like, “Wow, that’s genius.” So what’s crazy is just how did you even find that? Your mind is amazing is all I can say.
Angela:
I had a client who had so many Google Docs to share or with her course students and one of the biggest things that people would keep because I find that sometimes people don’t read instructions very well. So, even if you tell them step by step, this is how you make a copy to your own Google Drive they don’t read it and you get the emails like it doesn’t work for me. I can’t edit it. So, why not come out that step and just make it so that it automatically makes a copy and Google and YouTube are my best friends when I’m trying to figure out new hacks or automations. It’s like what if this is possible? Or is this possible? And so, I looked up like how to automatically make a copy of a Google Doc to Google Drive and there it was.
Jessmyn:
Wow, I love that. That is awesome. I think it’s so cool because you just… And this is something I think that I’ve never talked about on here before, but when you are trying to figure out new things for your business or working on your business, you do have to still stay curious.
Angela:
Yes. You have to stay curious.
Jessmyn:
Always ask what if.
Angela:
Right. I like how you said that you will wake up and be like, “Oh, what if I can automate this?” Or like, “What if I can do something to work this way and that way to get that end result?” And that’s how you stay, and this works I think in any type of business. That’s how you stay relevant. That’s how you stay up to date. You’re always asking questions and you’re always staying curious. I think that’s awesome.
Yeah. You can just always have to find ways to be creative because it’s your business at the end of the day so you can do things your way.
Jessmyn:
Do you ever hit… I guess if you are in a space where you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to work on my own business for this amount of time.” Do you ever hit sort of like a… The only word I can think of is like a writer’s block, but in terms of business. I guess, yeah, just a block.
Angela:
Yeah. Sometimes I’m not feeling as creative. It depends on energy levels and like, what I’ve been working on with clients, if I’ve done a lot of funnel builds and I don’t think I’m as creative than I usually would be. Most recently the past month and a half since I found out that I’m pregnant, I have not been creative at all. Just energy is gone. But when I do have those blocks, I think lately I’ve been more, what’s the word? Forgiving or not so harsh on myself. It’ll come to me when it comes. Especially, like when it comes to coming up with content for social media. I think that’s something that I could definitely do better in terms of batching or planning out the content. But that’s, it feels so structured that I can’t stick to it.
I don’t know what it is that I just can’t stick to planning out content. I can dump out ideas of what I want to post, but I can’t sit there and write everything out and then come up with all the graphics or the videos or whatever it is. But sometimes I randomly get a spark of creativity and I find that with social media posts, the posts that I come up with last minute on the fly perform so much better than the post that I plan out ahead of time. It’s kind of funny.
Jessmyn:
Right. And I wonder if that’s because you, I don’t know, you just love it more so you’re like, “I’m posting this because I want to post it not because I have to post it.
Angela:
Yeah. I think there’s a love hate relationship with structure sometimes. And then it falls with the creativity of automations and stuff. What if we did things this way and just having that fluidity and flexibility of doing things. And then when it comes to like content and having a structure just feels so stuck in a box. So, when I do get those bursts of creativity, it’s nice.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. You feel like you can’t play around, I guess, or you can’t do more than what you’re supposed to, so to speak inside this box. But I love the way you speak about systems and tech automation as if it’s art because people don’t see it that way. Especially if they’re not tech savvy they’re like, “Oh, this is a tool. It’s just a tool, but the way you talk about it is like, “Oh, no, like this is me being creative and this is how I express that creativity.” So, are there sort of ways that you’re able to just do it for fun? Or is this something that you’re like, “Yeah. If I have to figure out what it is then sure.
Angela:
Well, when I’m working on it for my own business like when I’m building my own funnels I think my poor husband was playing video games for four or five hours downstairs. And he came up and was ready for bed. And he was like, “Are you ready for bed yet?” I’m just like, “No, this is so much fun. I’m building my own funnel. This is what I usually do for my clients, but now I’m doing it for myself so it’s so much fun. But honestly, when I am like building systems and automations for my clients, time goes by, and that was when I first realized that this was my niche was because the first time I did it, four hours had gone by and I had no idea.
Jessmyn:
Wow.
Angela:
It felt like 30 minutes, and at the end I was like, “Oh my God, I spent that much time doing this,” but I had so much fun doing it that it… I don’t know what that feeling, how to describe that feeling. But I think it’s funny that you said that I described tech and automation systems to be creative because up until that point, I’d never consider myself a creative person because I grew up straight A student, science background. I went to pharmacy school for two years. Very I don’t know, academic, science wise, everything had a reason behind it. So, I was not at art at all. Nothing creative about me growing up, so it’s kind of funny to hear you say that.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. I think that’s, what’s great about it is that when you’re an entrepreneur, when you’re coming up with your own business or you are in your own business, it’s easy to be like, “Yeah, this is what I do,” but at the core of it, you do it because it’s a little bit of a part of who you are. Yeah, I know. I don’t really know what else to say besides I love that that’s how it comes off as if it’s different for other types of businesses where it’s branding or copywriting. That is also a form of art and creativity, but it’s easier to see how it’s creative. Whereas, this, if you were to give me an end goal and someone was like, “Give me five tools.” I would be like, “Uh.” I guess I could try to figure this out, and if I did, I don’t know what to do with it from there. I’m the person that’s like, “How do we get to this point?” Not the person that’s like, “Oh we get to this point by doing this.” So, yeah. I think it’s definitely creative, and I think it’s awesome how you look at it.
Angela:
Thank you.
Jessmyn:
All right. Well, we are coming off on time. Angela, thank you so much for being on our show with us today and telling us your story. I have two questions that I usually close out with if you’re up for it.
Angela:
Okay.
Jessmyn:
Awesome. So second to last question, what are three things most people wouldn’t know about you?
Angela:
Okay. So, number one, I’m a really good detective. it’s kind of scary. My husband can’t hide things for me because I’m very, very good. All my girlfriends come to me when they need something figured out. I’m a very good detective. Google is my best friend, like I said earlier. So, yeah, that’s number one. Number two, I really love karaoke. I recently… Because having a kid I’m always listening to his music and his movies and all that. So, recently in the car line when I was picking him up, I was killing time, and I played all the old songs that I’d used to sing in the shower when I was single. And I was like, “Oh my God, I missed this so much.” So, yeah, I love karaoke. And number three, what’s another thing? I’m not that interesting of a person.
Jessmyn:
You are.
Angela:
Oh, I am terrified for no good reason of snakes.
Jessmyn:
Ooh, that’s interesting.
Angela:
I don’t know why. Nothing bad ever happened. I don’t know why. I can’t even look at a picture. Growing up, I had to ask my sisters to put stickers or Post-it Notes over snake pictures in my biology textbooks because I can’t even look at pictures of them.
Jessmyn:
Oh, wow. Yeah. No, that’s interesting. Have you… I’m wondering if this is a result of watching Aladin or something?
Angela:
No. I really don’t know where it came from. It’s so weird. I want to say I may have had a bad dream growing up, but I just don’t know where this fear came from. It’s really unexplained.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. How interesting. I mean, I’m pretty scared of spiders. I don’t think I could look at pictures of spiders.
Angela:
My husband is the same way. He gets the heebie-jeebies as they get about.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. I used to live in San Francisco in what’s called an in-law. So it’s like I live in an apartment in someone’s garage and once there was… I don’t even know what kind of spider it was. Maybe it was a black widow, but it was huge. It was at least two inches long, and I called my landlord and I was like, “I need you to come down here and kill this bug because I’m not doing it.” I lived alone at the times.
Angela:
Oh, no.
Jessmyn:
She had her husband come down, and he literally grabbed it with his bare hand, and I could not sleep that night.
Angela:
You just feel it like crawling.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. And he just thought it was funny. And I was like, “No, that’s not, it’s not funny.” But anyway, last question that I have for you. If you could give yourself a single piece of advice at the start of it all, what would it be?
Angela:
I would say less consuming and more doing. When you start out in the online space, there’s so much information. Free information, paid information, whatever it is being thrown at you. I can spend, if I’m not conscious and aware, hours scrolling on my business Instagram account just looking at all these posts and videos and reels or whatever that people are posting. And one, it will take me down a spiral of imposter syndrome that I’m not doing enough in terms of posting for my business. Two, have me question a lot of things about how I do content for my business. It just puts me in a place where I’m just consuming, consuming, consuming, but not doing anything productive for my business, not doing anything to move the needle forward in my business.
So, I’ve recently like kind of to taking a social media break from my business Instagram and surprisingly I think I’m on track to meet my second highest income goal for the year, or income month of the year. So, less consuming and more doing. If doing means more posting, making more connections with people, trying to get on more podcast interviews or just doing things versus just scrolling and scrolling and making unnecessary edits to things that like my website copy when I first launched it took me three months. I could have just launched. It’s not going to be… Now I know know it’s not going to be perfect the first time, but that’s okay. You can tweak it over time. So I would say that would be my advice.
Jessmyn:
Oh, I love that, and I think it’s so easy to get caught up in that kind of narrative of what is everybody else doing and crap, I’m not doing that. Oh, shoot. Yeah, I feel that. I think that’s great.
Angela:
Especially now with Instagram wanting it to be more of a video platform. So, now everyone’s like, “Oh, you have to be on video, on video.” I don’t post a lot of videos. Like the reel that you mentioned, the videos that I do post are me showing you how to do something. So, it’s not like me in front of the camera. So, that did a lot of like, oh, my God, do I have to change the way I do business and things like that. But, yeah, just [crosstalk 00:44:22]-
Jessmyn:
In front of the camera pointing at things.
Angela:
I know. We’re not going to start dancing in front of people. It feels really uncomfortable.
Jessmyn:
Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. I’m the same way. Power to the people who are so comfortable doing that, but it would probably take me hours to actually find… If I were to try it, it would take me so long to like one and then actually feel comfortable posting it.
Angela:
To post it. I know like press that post button, like…
Jessmyn:
I will say I have tried. I’ve tried to figure out a dance, and I recorded myself once and I was like, “Yep. Nope, this is not happening.”
Angela:
I think I’ve done two reels that I actually showed my face in it. I did the lip sync thing. One of them did really well, but I haven’t tried since. It just feels like so much work. I got to get myself looking okay, decent for it. And then I will do all the edits. It’s like, this is a lot of work for a 15 second clip.
Jessmyn:
Right. And I will say especially after working from home for so long, I only put makeup on if I’m recording a podcast video or a video for work. Other than that I’m like, if you see me on a regular day, I got my glasses on. I might not have brushed my hair that morning. It is not something that I want to prioritize in my day.
Angela:
Exactly.
Jessmyn:
But before I forget, where can people find you online?
Angela:
So, you can find me on my website at thesystemsrx.com or hopefully when this episode goes live, I will be more active on my Instagram. I should be in my second trimester by then, third trimester maybe. But my Instagram handle is The Systems RX.
Jessmyn:
Love it, love it. And we will put those in the show notes guys. So you will have access to it if you want to just click, but go check Angela out and we will see you next time. Bye.
Angela:
Thank you so much for having me. Bye.
Jessmyn:
Of course.