Julia Shareika on Energy Management: Sustainable Scaling Without the Burnout

Lamine Yamal steps into McDonald's, looks left, sees Pulisic, looks right, sees Jiménez. Gives a nod to Ronaldinho in the corner with a FIFA World Cup meal. Ronaldinho sees Son in the booth. Son finds Beckham going for extra Big Mac sauce. He's got Davies at the table just behind him. Davies going for his collectible cup. Oh no! A steal by Henry, who pulls his own collectible cup! Collect 1 of 9 legendary cups with a FIFA World Cup meal. Participating McDonald's for a limited time while supplies last. All rights reserved. 2026 McDonald's and FIFA World Cup 2026. What up? It's Druski.

I told BET, if I'm hosting, we gonna do this my way. Sunday, June 28th at 8/7c. Let 'em know BET Awards 2026 got a monster lineup.

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If you want something to get in life, you need to go and I'm not like, I'm not the person that anything comes to me easily. So if you want something, if you really want it, you need just to get up and go. So just sitting and waiting or hoping, uh, that's the worst thing in the world. When you do something and hope for the best.

Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. What if the reason you're exhausted by Thursday afternoon isn't your workload, it's your schedule? My guest today built a company around a radical premise. That your birth chart isn't just for personality quizzes. It's a data layer that when mapped against real-time planetary movement can tell you exactly when to pitch, when to deep work, and when to step away from the desk. Before you close the app, hear me out, because she's not asking you to believe in astrology. She's asking you to treat your energy like a resource worth tracking. Julia Shereka is the founder of UME, a productivity platform that converts your natal birth chart into a color-coded hour-by-hour work energy calendar. Founder, powered by the Swiss ephemeris. She's a female founder who navigated a career pivot, built a product in a category that didn't really exist, and is now marketing something genuinely unconventional to an audience of professionals who are hungry for any edge they can find. Today, we're going to get the founder journey, the marketing challenge of building trust in a skeptical category, and what it actually looks like to grow, grow a brand and a product on a limited budget. Without a huge team around you. Giulia, welcome to Your Brand Amplified.

Thank you, Anika. Hi, and happy for having me. It's my first podcast appearance, so it's like a little bit exciting for me.

Amazing. Well, I'm very honored and, you know, I think I saw the app on social media and I clicked through and now I get lovely charts into my my personal inbox so that I always see it versus my email, you know, my business email, which can get very cluttered. And I find it really fascinating. And so I'm just new into starting to use it. And so that I can see, okay, I see when I'm supposed to be doing this, how does this match up with my current schedule? And at the end of the week, is this what held true? Is this what I saw in the patterns and what other external factors were happening? So, I would love for you to first share what you were and what you might be doing professionally, your career arc before you decided to build UOMI.

Yeah, thank you for introduction. And, uh, I guess I'm 37 and I have a long career so far. I was started working in 20 and I have a degree in legal studies, but like working a couple of years in, in a law firm, I acknowledged that, is this I should be doing the whole life ahead? Like, I was watching too much TV shows about lawyers. And I was thinking that that would be so fun and so cool. I want to like enter the court, introduce myself, like talk and charm people. And nothing of that really happens in real world, especially in Europe. It's not even close to how US course look like. It's more like a paperwork and it's less talking. And then like, and I said, no, I don't wanna do this. So I just quit in one day. I was just like, you know, okay, it's too much. I'm shutting down this. And then I was trying myself in a different things. And after working in a packaging industry, me and my partner, we co-founded a packaging business, a very Like it's an industry that no one, like you, you won't think of starting a business in '24, uh, doing a pack, custom packaging for the big factories. But we landed up with this and we were successful. By the second year, we were making more than a million in revenue and we thought that we are the smartest people in the whole world. You know, when you are young and you're doing something and you are successful, you think that's gonna happen for forever. Like, you know how the things are done, you're smarter than those big guys in the room and et cetera, but it's not. And the real life slapped to us in the understanding that we can't outgrow this revenue level and this company level that we've built. We just didn't have any knowledge. We don't have any mentors or something. We just were doing everything like we thought it should be done, but that was a limited level of understanding how the process, how the hiring works, how a lot of like accountancy, like a lot of things that should be made properly. And we thought we were doing it properly, but it's not. So it ended up with burning out. Because when you try and then you've been very successful and you can't replicate it, you can't grow. Anything you do, line it up with a failure, you then think, okay, I'm a loser. That was, you know, it was success by chance, not because you are so cool. So I just, I sold my share and I was taking one year off, not doing anything. We welcomed our first child and I was super grateful to have this year not working, not worrying about, because this was a very stressful business. Uh, you would wake up in the nights because there is a supply chains, it's always issues. You have like a night calls when like director of, of a ice cream factory shouting at you because they don't have their packaging coming in right time and that's gonna make a big losses. So it, it was stressful. So I was happy to just not having this stress. And then like I was thinking, okay, maybe I can be an employee. I was not much into that role for the years and it turned out to be not so bad. Like I was, it's not bad. Like why I was like, I was thinking that this is the worst. I can go back from being, you know, co-founder, having a business and stuff, very cool lady to like. employee, but I started to make some moves in sales and then I was like, by chance, I landed up with a job in a media company selling newsletter sponsorships. Truth to be said, I never thought there is so much money in—

Yeah.

Media, in ads. Like it was after the real business for me, it was like money from the air. You don't sell anything, you don't own anything. You just kind of sell attention and big brands come to you, pay you thousands and thousands, like 5-figure, like deals just to be featured in a newsletter and people seeing and clicking. And it's like shocked me, like, I didn't know about that. I can make money like this. So now I'm still full-time employee at This Is Newsletter. We are building a cool media brand. And as like a builder, I was trying to make something on the side all the time, all the, all the years I'm working. And Yumi just like appeared after thinking too long what I can create that could be useful, that could be used on a weekly basis, and they can, where I can apply my experience selling sponsorships. So like interception of using and interception of my experience and what I can do. And I'm good at making sales and convincing people that this is a good thing and explaining why it's a good thing. And I've never been into astrology much. My mom was, and she is still, so I think it was coming from some, from there. But the moment I started leaning into astrology, Like everything changed. I was like, I was skeptical. And then week after week of building the algos, uh, how, how things are running, I was like, is it real? Like, why would, like, wait. And then the birth charts and I was going deeper and deeper. I, I bought a lot of books. I've started reading stuff because I love be into what, what I'm selling and what I'm doing. And it, it ended that I'm like the most active user, I guess, of my own app. And this is like the good part. So yeah, I think that was a very short explanation of the journey, or too long, sorry if—

No, I think what strikes me is the push-pull between being an entrepreneur and being an employee. I do both right now as well, but I have the role that I have as an employee is I teach university. And so, I love it and I'm passionate about it. And so, that always helps because I've also had roles as an employee where I'm like, I thought I was passionate and then got in and, oh, this is not for me. Kind of like you had, but you have a background in law, in sales, in owning and running a company. So, all of those are such great transferable knowledge assets to any company that you become part of as an employee or that you just start again and all the lessons that you learned and poured into it. So I love hearing that you were skeptical a little bit about astrology. So let's go back to that moment when you said, "I need to build something, and I think a productivity tool is what it should be." And then how did you decide astrology, birth charts, all of these other inputs should be part of your framework?

Yeah, I was just, any ideas that comes to my mind, and I'm Aquarius, so I have tons of ideas on everyday basis. I have too much of them. I, I literally can, you know, sell ideas on, on the market, on the local market. And I was writing and to structure my, my thoughts, I'm always do journaling and writing so I can, can back and analyze or just seeing my, my thoughts in, in a more structured way. So I was writing and writing, like, what I wanna build. And my main thing about building anything is like, it should be so good that you'd love it. You would be proud of it, so you would not be shady. Okay, I'm building something. I would not tell you, or, oh, it's not ready. I wanted to build something that is powerful. It's not pure B2C, cuz I never build anything in B2C. I've never worked in B2C. I don't know how B2C marketing works, so I wanna something that I'm able to build on myself because it's like, it's built on Lovable connected APIs, but it's like AI coding. So I built the tool by myself. I have, uh, people helping me with part of it, but the whole, like the code, and I'm not the core, I don't know, I didn't know how to code. I still don't know. But using tools like Lovable, you can build anything you want. So I wanted to build it to myself, to have abilities to control the app, to know that yes, I can confirm this is using the correct information. It's using the, the right data flowing. It's, it's not faking anything. It's not using something, some algorithm that not correct. Because you know, when you outsource development and you are not the developer, it's really hard then to control the output because that could be like, uh, some corners that developer could cut and then you, you'd have the results you think you have, but it's not. So because I've built things, I know how to recheck things, like do the analytics, understand where is it coming from. And when someone coming to me, because astrology, professional astrologers coming back to me saying, hey, how do, how is it working? Is it like— 'AI stuff, why you think it's better than the real-life astrologer reading the birth chart and stuff like that?' And they call AI slop. So there is positive and negative feedback, and for a lot of them, I have a long, long reply how the things work, how it works underneath. So it's not using AI to analyze the data. It's like takes a lot of data points and we use AI only to interpret the data. So just to tell you what that data means, but all the math, all the algos, it's just built-in thing that is not, you know, we all use AI like ChatGPT. You ask something and it's just, even if you take your birth chart, upload to ChatGPT and try to communicate with that, that would be crap.

Yeah.

So I didn't want that and I wanted something in, in productivity because this is one of the most expensive niche right now on the market. So, uh, I was thinking upfront that I would be using sponsorships like a monetization strategy and productivity tools like, uh, ClickUp. Our biggest sponsors, they have like Monday, Notion. There's a lot of them. They have like these budgets to spend, and if you can provide the, the high-quality audience and like if you can drive traffic to those productivity tools, you'd be successful. That, that's why it just, what Yume does, it takes the astrology birth chart and it puts, and it gives you a guidance throughout the work week. So I wanted something niche. I don't wanna do about love. I didn't want to do about relationship. I wanted something very niche, but where the tool could be the best on the market. And this is not the easiest, you know, task to achieve because there is so much, so many tools on the market on any, any type of thing. But this one, and I have like, um, professional astrologers consulting me and they were like, oh my God, why I never thought to build the app like this. Like, it's so obvious. It's so cool, but it was just not on top of the mind. So like astrology and productivity at work, it just, it's obvious if you think right now, but it wasn't obvious a year ago.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, and I, I really appreciate you discussing how you used AI because I've done some of the same things. I've worked with a former Zen monk on his program, but I said, how can we make this more interactive? And so I've taken some of his worksheets and made, you know, the Wheel of Life, but interactive so that that you just put in the numbers and then the colors automatically fill in different parts of your life. And then depending on what you put in, the AI does give back quotes, questions to think about, but they're— it's all personalized. And so it's a good mix of his insights from his program and a com— a tool that's commonly used in many programs, right? Assessing where you are at any given time across many different parts of your life. And then interpreting and giving that, you know, those little sparks that can help, that can prompt people. And so, I think that the way that you explained the use case for AI is brilliant, and that is how we should be using it, right? To have our own ideas, our own creative thoughts and business practices, and then input them to help come up with something that we wouldn't be able to do on our own.

Yeah, love your interpretation of this because It's exactly how I feel. Like AI is a good, like, I'm not the person who would say like, oh my God, it's all AI slop and we don't need to use it, etc. Of course we need to use that. It's like a technology that gives us the advantage comparing to myself a couple of years ago. It will not give you the idea of a good business model or a good business idea. But if to have your own thoughts, to have, like, I talk a lot with AI. I'm like, I'm writing my newsletter like that. I'm just dictating, like I can dictate for hours. Then I take this all information and saying, hey, I need a newsletter about this with this structure and that me talking about the, the pain points. That would, I needed for that, I would need a personal assistant. I can't afford it. I don't want it to.

Right.

It's, you need., you know, to align with schedule and et cetera. Now you, you can do this. And with the data, this is, I think, the most amazing part. The, like, non-tech founders and users, we can now take a lot of databases, a lot of data points. Like, I now have millions of data points inside the Supabase, the database that handles all this stuff, and I can talk to it. Mm-hmm. With it, asking questions like, what is the most clickable button on my website? Just go and look for the past 7 days. What was the best acquisition channel in terms of the conversion, in terms of this and that? So imagine like a couple of years ago, you need to be able to work with databases. You need to learn and you need to update the learning to be able just to understand the numbers. that is so important for your business. Now you just can ask it in a, in a chat and, and that's it. And this is like, this is the most amazing part for me.

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Lamine Yamal steps into McDonald's, looks left, sees Pulisic, looks right, sees Jiménez, gives a nod to Ronaldinho in the corner with a FIFA World Cup meal. Ronaldinho sees Sun in the booth. Sun finds Beckham going for extra Big Mac sauce. He's got Davies at the table just behind him. Davies He's going for his collectible cup. Oh no! A steal by Henry, who pulls his own collectible cup! Collect 1 of 9 legendary cups with a FIFA World Cup meal. Participating McDonald's for a limited time while supplies last. All rights reserved. 2026 McDonald's and FIFA World Cup 2026.

Yeah. Well, there's so many little points I wanna pick up on. One is I have another screen here and I do have it pulled up on my other screen, and I did look at this week's newsletter and I clicked on ClickUp and signed up. To get it there. And I also, you have this really great, let's see, it's story map. Am I saying that correctly? That I was looking at and there's so much that you offer.

Like you mean energy map, like calendar, like, uh, color code.

The pudding. What made you happy in the past 24 hours? What about the last 3 months?

Yeah.

That story. Yeah. So it's really just, it's so interesting to see all of the different things that you've included. And I'm sure, of course, you said ClickUp is a sponsor, so, right? But you're, you're making, you're, it's also not just a sponsor that you're promoting, it's something you've fully integrated with. And I, I, that, that makes a very big difference as well.

Yeah, correct. Because like my big idea behind building something for now, Like if to get back to my main job as a salesperson, I talk with marketing people and acquisition teams on everyday basis, starting with the small niche consultants, businesses, ended up with HubSpot, with Apple, et cetera. And what I do on discovery calls, I ask them questions like how they acquire the traffic, how the conversion works, what the conversion rates, how much the CAC, how much the LTV. So a lot of things and they share all this information for me because without knowing those numbers, I'm not able to make a proposal and like doing it years and years right now, I have like a whole database of any business. How much do you need to acquire the user? So if you look, if we look at the average SaaS business, in average costs like $50 per month, $90 per month for any plan. My pricing and what I, try to put behind. I wanted to give for free as much as I can because myself is, I'm just very tired of paying for everything.

Yeah.

Any, any tool, like even something AI wrapper, like they try to charge you and charge you and charge you. Even it's like cost them 1 cent to per month, they will charge you $50 and I, I'm just so annoyed by that. So my philosophy was I would give like the majority of the functionality for free and I'll leave to the paid, uh, just the upgrade option. For example, now you can see always your current week, your personalized, uh, career horoscope for the day, for the week, your advantages and et cetera. You can download your birth chart. Even for that, some of the websites, they, they charge like Yes. You wanna, you can do this for free. Like I, this cost me not like zero for showing you the birth chart. But if you wanna add to your calendar or if you wanna see the next week or the full year, you need to either to pay. And I was working on the, on the payment. It was like $9 per month first. And I had like a couple of conversion coming in and the conversion rate was something like half a percent from the free users. Then I popped it up to $19 per month and nobody paid. Then I've updated to $12 per year and there were, the conversion started to happen. But the tricky point with the marketing and why almost no one has this pricing tiers in SaaS, because the acquisition costs. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right now are so high. So like even for something free, it costs right now from $20 to $50 for any company on the market to get the free user sign up. So if you wanna start like SaaS business right now, either you need to have like a very expensive tiers, like $1,000 per month, $2,000 per month, either you need to have the funding. And not like middle or average one. You need to have, you need to have a real big funding behind you to feed this acquisition because you like the profit. You can never be profitable. Mm-hmm. Or you, you can start making money on only up to 2 years of the user.

Yeah.

Or never, or like faster if it's like the multi-seat conversion, but the truth why companies can't give you like $2 per month tiers, because now like one click could cost you from $2 to $10 for productivity tools. And it's insane. Like the, the, the cost per clicks are going up and up and for now it's not ending. So I was like, what I'm supposed to do? I didn't want to raise money. I didn't want to go to this rally because my kid, he's 4, he's still, uh, small and I wanna spend time with him and with the family. We travel a lot and, and I love, and we live in Spain, it's like a slow pace. So I just don't want to be racehorse right now. I'm not ready. Maybe in future, not right now. So, and I was thinking, okay, how can I make money then? Mm-hmm. Like, should I create the product that will be priced $500,000, $1,000,000 per year or something, something really luxury. And I was thinking about like, no, I don't know what to sell here. So I was like, I need to find something, something else. And I was, I have a lot of contacts with the sponsorship and with the contacts, and I'm able to get deals when you, get like $10 per click promoting something, but I didn't want to promote something that is out of context of, of IUMI. Like, this is like the brand and the goal of the brand to make you more relaxed, to look at your week, to give you some guidance. Not like, hey, do this and that, but it's like a friendly guidance, a friend that is taking account your birth chart and planets. Even if you're not in astrology, but You can't deny like retrogrades that people become weird and more emotional, right? So it's like a friendly guidance and I didn't want to make these popups with like, hey, do you wanna try this? It's just, you know, controversy and I didn't want that. So I was trying to find partners that would be a fit. And for example, ClickUp, one of them. This is a productivity tool that is used by so many teams and it's so easy even with the calendar. With IUMI calendar to work with. You can connect your calendar and you just literally can tell that in my, the lowest energy hours, make blocks for these slots so no one will, will book them. So, and now I found the balance and like the third way of doing business. You don't sell anything super expensive and you don't raise money, but you are able to make money. And I'm at the point that I found the, the, the very good balance of how to make profits from that. My next level, how to get more traffic. So this is like two pillars of any business. You need to understand how to make math work for you because user acquisition is not so hard and you can acquire users for any kind of business. The question is, what would be the cost? What would be the cost of this? You can buy like users at $300, I know companies, they buying users, 300, 500 for just a free guy. I can't support, I don't wanna do that. Like, they have resources for that.

Yeah. One of the things, I mean, I try a lot of different tools and I do sign up for a lot of AI tools and I recently had to audit myself and go, okay, what am I not using that I'm paying for? Because I just don't, I don't have time to get to it, or it's not really useful for where I'm at right now and what I'm focused on. And it can, it really does add up. On the other hand, a product like UMI, I can look at, and even though a lot of my calendar is mapped out when I'm doing podcast interviews, when I'm teaching, I would rather pay and be able to then future forecast and go, oh, maybe I need to move my interviews to different days, or— If I know that I'm gonna be low energy when I'm teaching, what can I do the, the day, you know, during the day before to make sure I'm, I'm saving some of that energy or resourcing properly. And so I find a lot of value in that. And also in using tools, I also have a, you know, because I'm on the, also on the opposite side of the spectrum. My daughter's graduating high school. So I will say, don't do any, like, that is the most important thing. Right, is family. And I think that you can never have too much time with family versus, you know, you can work all the time. We could all do that, but you'll never get back that time. So, I like the fact that you're being really methodical and really thinking through this part of your business. This is something I think a lot more of us need to do, and this is how we should start, right, with the intentionality of what will work? What kind of business do we want to build that will be right for our lifestyle, that will add things, and that also people can try and enjoy and use that won't be onerous? I also have ADHD, so the number of times I've tried to use different productivity tools and failed— Yeah. —is astounding.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, talk about a little bit about Any comments you had there, but then also what has your marketing strategy been? Because again, I think I saw maybe a sponsored post on Instagram or maybe just a post.

I'm not sure. Like there is a couple of options, a couple of things we would promote right now. So we work with newsletters and publishers to get free coverage because this is like The new tool, the new angle that is, people are getting excited about that. Like we have a very high weekly usage stats and et cetera. Then we do like a very dumb thing. We just cold email people. So you probably was cold emailed. This is like one of the parts that I know how to do.

Yeah, you are so correct. This is so funny because I was like, let me search. Somebody, Bridget, said, hi, I saw you follow Chani on LinkedIn. Thought this might be right up your alley. We built an app that turns your birth chart into an hour-by-hour energy map for your work week. It helps you schedule deep work when your energy peaks and avoid pushing through low points. Take 30 seconds to generate yours here. P.S., here's how mine looks. And you're right, that was highly successful. So, uh, I got— it intrigued me right away because it obviously had referenced something that an app that I do follow, not just on LinkedIn, but I have it downloaded on my phone. And since you're in that kind of same category.

Yeah. Yeah. You see the marketing is working. So anyone in this space would tell you that this is the dumbest thing to do, to cold email people with a very premium product that is basically more B2C than B2B. Even though this is the productivity and also to send an, a link and an image in a first email. So anyone would tell you like, this will land on in spam. This is not gonna work because you need to have volume to make it work. So I love to do things no one believe in, making them work. So I was like, I was working like 6 months. To make the system that is sending emails and sending link and sending image, because the image, how the calendar, the energy calendar is looking, this is one of the amazing thing. It looks really cool. It's just highlighting you. It even has nice quotes on it. And you just in second, you understand what's this about, because it's really hard to explain in words. So if, uh, if No one's seen that. It's like when you sign up, you enter your birth data, where like the time, the date, the location where you right now, and then you get the energy map. Imagine like it's a, like a calendar slots, green one, yellow one with a small explanation. So based on the, your birth data, birth chart, like what are you, the person. Yeah. That was built at time when your mother was giving you birth, and then taking the current transition of the planet. So all the, and it's not just taking, okay, there is this and that transition happening right now, the moon, the sun, the transits, but it also like calculates with your birth chart. So every energy map and calendar is unique. So there is no— Yeah. Similar ones. And then you, you have some kind of guidance. Okay. When you can look at the next week and understand when the best time to get a pitch or to go on the podcast. I would check mine, like when I have a creativity window, there is nothing like nothing bad. If you have something important in, in a very low energy window, it's okay. You can handle that. But you know that at this time, your energy could be not so high and you would, could not be so enthusiastic like you used to, like you want to be. Or the, the main like easy case is just having your task plan in the right window. So you just spend less energy on each. Here in Spain, like, and on my life after, after the, like, I have a family and the kid, of course you want to spend as less energy on anything that is beyond your personal, as, as you could. This is my style of life. I don't wanna spend, because time and energy are not equal. You can have 1 hour of a good work. You like, you just right in, you sparkling ideas, everything comes very easy. And the other hour, like you're doing the same task, but you're so drained. You need like, In same hour, but you feel completely different. And that's what the tool is trying to avoid, like give you some guidance when you can work your tasks and keep you aligned with, with the energy. And also for ADHD and people, it just gives the guidance and a little bit push to end the, the task, like in this time slot, not— Or for myself too, I, as any person, I love to complete easy task or task that I enjoy completing. I don't like to make something boring routine, but without doing that, those routine tasks, you will never move forward in life. So it just gives you a little push just to plan and then to end, end this. And yeah, with the marketing strategies, this is really interesting. If anyone like listening to the podcast and you're struggling with cold outreach, you can send me a note. I'm always happy to share what is working and what is not, because if to ask ChatGPT, Claude, any, any, or even professionals, that would be so different in what they recommend. But this user case confirms that you can send emails. You just need to enter, because you've been following Charlie. And this is similar tool, and this is like a good intent to write you an email. And that's why probably you reacted, you clicked the link and, and enjoyed, and that's how we met. And that's how you reached out to me.

Yeah. Selfishly, I reached out to Giulia directly and said, I need to have you on my podcast because this is something unique. It's not something we've spoken about on the show, but, and the fact that you're also a female founder and you've had other successful businesses, you're the sweet spot. Of guests. And so even though it was a cold email outreach, it was still a warm connection because I was already following things that were similar, not exactly the same.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I, I wanna ask a couple things. I mean, interestingly enough, what I love about this week when I'm looking at my, my thing, I'm like, okay, so I'm supposed to be very like, the beginning of this week is a lot better for me to do things. My daughter's high school graduation is Thursday. So I'd already mapped out my schedule without even knowing this information to really focus things, you know, a lot more at the beginning of the week and then not do as much, reserving my energy. But I do love the fact that now I can look at all the other weeks and I can do the same thing. But to that point, I'd love to hear a little bit about how helpful has it been for you is the first part, but then also— You work at Energy and Output. You've spoken somewhat about that, but what's something that founders get wrong about how they do spend their time?

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Oh, no!

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Lamine Yamal steps into McDonald's, looks left, sees Pulisic, looks right, sees Jimenez. Gives a nod to Ronaldinho in the corner with a FIFA World Cup meal. Ronaldinho sees Sun in the booth. Sun finds Beckham going for extra Big Mac sauce. He's got Davies at the table just behind him. Davies going for his collectible cup. But oh! A steal by Henry, who pulls his own collectible cup! Collect 1 of 9 legendary cups with a FIFA World Cup meal. Participating McDonald's for a limited time while supplies last. All rights reserved. 2026 McDonald's. FIFA World Cup 2026.

I guess, like, as a Yuumi, as a product, it just helped me to better understand and to better to work with my energy. I never thought so deeply about what energy means for me. Like, I was a timing person, like the majority of people are. Okay, I have this amount of time and I'm time managing. Now I'm trying to manage energy. So I'm not living like fully aligned with the energy calendar. No, like that would be— Probably not the best outcome of my life because there is a lot of factors outside the astrology, outside the planets and retrogrades. There is like graduation, you can't, you know, postpone it saying, hey, this is like not the best time for me. We all have life and we need to live in it. But I'm just become more like talking to myself in the truth, like about where I need to spend the energy on my work. Like, because when I'm with family, it's so easy for me. I, I get the energy, I give the energy, I, but with the work. Yeah. You need to be like a machine. Like really, that's what works for me. And to be a machine, you need to like puzzle your day that you are like, for example, that was, it was like a challenge for me today to be active by then. Like when we have a call, like this podcast, because 8:30, it means my kid is getting to bed right now or already asleep. I'm usually like already a little bit. Okay, so I, I will go to hang out with dogs and, and, you know, to play a little bit of basketball and to relax. And I just puzzled my day today so I'm not drained because having a full-time job and a side hustle that I love, it's so draining. It's like you, sometimes I feel nothing by the end of the day. I'm just like, I'm, I'm— But you need to do job and I, it's my choice right now to have so much hours of working, but still to have the results, you need to bustle the day and also the task. So everyone is happy. And also that what helps me, and I talk about in my newsletter, I always focus on one task at a time. So I don't do, if I'm doing like Right now for me, traffic is the main task for Yumi. It's not monetization, it's not making the product better, not making SEO, not making AAO, like not making anything beyond the traffic. So, and like, because this is the, what helps me to move forward with my goal to my financial goal with the product, right? And every day I have moments when I like, I have a creativity window. I feel like I can do the product better and like I have those ideas, oh, I can do this and that and wow, like everyone would be happy. I'll get so many positive feedback and I would have, I would do, but I will never do this because for now I'll like go back to, to life, to work. You need to do things that move in you. So I guess this is as a founder, and I talk with other founders and, and employees because this is like, is it for everyone? Be concentrated on one thing at a time. It sounds so easy, but it's so hard. Because you wanna do a lot of, you at least you wanna feel like you are working, you're doing a lot of stuff, you know, you wanna, your, my Moleskine having a lot of, you know, task written and then I like going, oh my God, I've done so much today. And when it's like one thing you need to do, you're like, am I happy about that? Am I enough in this? So yeah, concentration. This is like what I'm practicing for the last couple of years and I, what I'm much better than I was a month ago or a year ago. Like con— no distraction. I mean, like I use the phone and I'm— Yeah. Sometimes I scroll Instagram just while, for example, AI is working.

Uh-huh.

Because you have this time, but I'm just trying to keep myself in one line.

Yeah. Yeah. In the zone. I love that. We're obviously gonna have links to everything in the show notes, but I'd love for you to future forecast. What do you want life and business to look like in one year?

Oh my God, this is the tough question because I always think that I'm used to overthink what gonna happen in one year and underestimate what gonna happen in 3 years.

Oh.

So like, I'm always dreaming that one year is so long, I will do this and that. But to think about it, I just wanted in one year to have any clear and confident model for traffic acquisition, user acquisition. And monetization that, that prove the concept so good that I would be sure about that and sure about my next steps with the career. But ideally I wanna work like 2 hours a day, then have, I have so many books I want to read.

Yeah.

You know, but when you have a kid and work and stuff, it just, I can trade books to time with, uh, with the family. So I will, I'm just collecting them and even now I have on my, my I ask of a book, I read like, uh, 5% and I'm like, okay, I've started it. So read books, travel, and just be less stressful. Cause stress is something that comes to you little by little, especially when you're building things. You're always stressed about something. Cause there is a lot of failures, failures, failures, and then a little bit of success, failures, failures, failures, and a little bit of success. And when you get to the success point, the next thing you have in mind, okay, what should I do next? So, and you like also stress because you have always have so many things to do. This is like one of the worst things being a, a founder. So yeah, that would be amazing if like 2 hours a day of working, 2 hours a day of reading, and then like just spending my life with, uh, Preparing food, hanging out with, uh, with my family, dogs, with, uh, learning Spanish because I'm still bad at it and it's just stops me to have a quality life as much as I want. So yeah. And what's about you? Like, it's interesting. How do you feel like your, your podcast career and also teaching career? Like what, what do you want to achieve in one year?

Oh, wow. In one year, I want to— well, I'm launching a few other podcasts of my own to test out my thesis about how I grew my show and got it to monetization and how much I love doing this. So I do consulting and coaching, so I'll do more of that, but also have my other shows And honestly, if I had my other shows, did a li— just a tiny bit of workshops and consulting and continued teaching, I'd be very happy. I know that you're originally from Belarus. My mom is from Thailand. We're Thai and Lao on my mom's side, and I'm a dual citizen, so I'd like to travel and spend more time. And I know that if I can achieve my goals in the next year, then I can do that. I can go visit my daughter at university in Canada. I can, you know, really have that freedom that we that many of us, I shouldn't say all of us, but that many of us want to have where we can decide when we're going to work. And like you said, the 2 hours or whatever that time is every day, but then also have the rest of the time to do the other things. I do also want to go back and get my PhD. So that's—

That's a hard, hard thing to do.

That'll— but I'm looking at a program that will work with my schedule.

Okay. Okay.

So, yeah, it's a distance PhD with the University of Edinburgh because I wanna specifically do AI-first pedagogy. And so that's—

Oh, interesting.

You know, I have to pick the right university and find the program that will work and still let me do my other work because I'm not giving up the podcast, I'm not giving up teaching. So—

So, like, and by the end of the day, like, what, where you feel you have the most like energy from, from teaching, from podcasts, like all of this. So it's interaction with people, listening, active listening. Then, you know, and how you process so much, uh, so much energy to go with all of those people, then to give you all of them piece of yourself.

Yeah. I have to have that downtime, which is why this the colors, right, are so important because if I do teach, I teach in the evening. If I'm teaching late, like going to campus and teaching and then getting home late, I have to have time to myself to decompress, right? But it is, it is the most beautiful part is the connection that I'm able to make with other people and those con— back and forth conversations. And so I don't wanna lose that, but I also wanna have time to be more quiet and introverted and just focus on my family and all of that. So I, I think it's something that's always evolving for us as women, as entrepreneurs, as parents. And so, yeah, I don't know. It's gonna be interesting. So we'll have to do a check-in with you, you know, and see how things are. Yeah, for sure. And then I'd also love to know, and, and I ask this of every guest, do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto, the words that continue to inspire you to keep going?

I think that would be something, you're gonna work, bitch. You know, nothing, nothing like, if you want something to get in life, you need to go. And I'm not like, I'm not the person that anything comes to me easily. So if you want something, if you really want it, you need just to get up and go. So just sitting and waiting or hoping, that's the worst thing in the world. When you do something and hope for the best, like, I hope this is gonna work, I hope this campaign gonna deliver, I hope this partnership will be successful, I hope this will open the door. Oh my God, this is the worst. Like, I'm trying to get the hope as like factor as little as it possible. So in any case, you have some results. They could be better or worse than you expect, but you'll have them. But when you hope, for me, the majority of the cases, it lands up with either nothing, either the worst. So yeah, just working and, but working and thinking about what you do, because it's so easy to work and think you're working so much, but not Doing the right thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's such a good point. I've really enjoyed our conversation and I'm looking forward to many more in our future, Julia. So, for the audience, if this episode did one thing, I hope it made you rethink how you schedule your most important work, not just when you have the time, but when you actually have energies. Julia's building something that most people in productivity haven't touched, and the fact that she's doing it as a solo founder on a lean budget with this level of clarity about her audience and her message is the real story here. If you wanna start mapping your own energy before the week even begins, or as the week is ending for the next week, head to umme.so, and that's E-U-M-M-E dot S-O, and grab your free energy calendar. It literally takes 30 seconds. Julia, again, this was such a great conversation. I appreciate you being here so much. And for everybody else who's listening, if you, episode gave you something useful, share it with a founder in your life who's running on empty and continue finding us, follow us, subscribe, keep building and keep amplifying. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn To learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.

Ramin Jamal steps into McDonald's, looks left, sees Pulisic, looks right, sees Jiménez, gives a nod to Ronaldinho in the corner with a FIFA World Cup meal. Ronaldinho sees Son in the booth. Son finds Beckham going for extra Big Mac sauce. He's got Davies at the table just behind him. Davies going for his collectible cup. But oh, a steal by Henry, who pulls his own collectible cup. Collect 1 of 9 legendary cups with a FIFA World Cup meal. At participating McDonald's for a limited time while supplies last. All rights reserved. 2026 McDonald's and FIFA World Cup 2026.

Working on building a dream space, but don't know where to start? At The Home Depot, we can help you bring your dream project to life. Whether you're building a backyard oasis, a podcast studio, Or a wellness space. We've got everything you need in store and online. With project guides and free delivery options, it's easy to go from dreaming to doing. The Home Depot. How doers get more done. What up? It's Druski. I told BET if I'm hosting, we gonna do this my way. Sunday, June 28th at 8/7c. Let 'em know. BET Awards 2026 got a monster lineup with must-see performances. Plus, we're honoring the living legend icon, Miss Lauryn Hill, with the tribute Fit for a Queen. It's culture's biggest night hosted by your boy Druski. Oh, y'all already know it's finna get crazy.

Hahaha.

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