How Busy Parents Build a Business w/ Jo Ebisujima

If you are a parent with hopes and dreams of starting your own online business, or maybe you're trying to do it but it's so hard because you have kids with you, today is going to be a great episode. Today's guest is Jo Ebisuji-Ma. I know I got that name right because I double-checked. So in this episode, we do get into how she got discovered, how she started her online business, so you can get some nuggets from that. But also, we talk about how to Be efficient with your time, even if you have kids. Life gets busy when you have kids. So this episode is very impactful if you're trying to find the time. To learn more about Jo Ebisujima, check out the links down in the description. If you like what you hear in this episode, you will definitely want to connect with Jo. So make sure you look, links in the description to connect with her. Without further ado, let's dive into the interview. Jo, how you doing over there in Japan?

I'm good, thank you. And thank you for having me on.

Yeah, super pumped to hang out. It's 3:30 my time. I'm in California and it's 7:30 AM your time. It's PM for me, so it's pretty, pretty wild. You're just waking up and I'm like closing my day out. So that's awesome. So yeah, I want to just dive straight into this. I think you have a really cool story and I think it's going to benefit my audience a lot in considering or starting their own online business or someone kind of getting some new ideas to help grow what they've already began. So can you tell me a little bit about, about who you are, kind of how you got into selling digital products, moving your business to an online business?

Right. So I'm in Japan. I moved here initially to teach English. Basically, I just wanted to travel and teaching English was a way to fund that. Got married, had a kid, and then when my child came along, the choice was either go back to teaching English or figure something out by myself, uh, because my Japanese sucks. So I started doing stuff online. I opened a little Etsy shop. Um, I was selling Japanese fabric online and Montessori files and sewing patterns that I was creating, but they were all printed and I was sending them off physically. And then in 2011, the big earthquake and tsunami happened. And we're just outside Tokyo, like an hour north, so we were affected but not too badly. But that was like the big wake-up call because suddenly overnight nobody wanted to buy fabric from Japan that had been, you know, nuked or whatever.

Right.

So I went back to the drawing board and I was like, well, I can turn all my patterns and Montessori files into digital products. And I'll just ditch the fabric side of things. But then, you know, the products were only like the most were $12. I think I've got things now that are $15, but it's still not a huge amount of money. And so I thought about how I could increase my sales. I got a big audience from blogging. So I've been blogging for years about Montessori at home. And back then there weren't many bloggers doing that. It was mostly Montessori teachers talking about Montessori in school. So I leveraged the audience. Um, I wrote a book about doing Montessori at home, Montessori-inspired activities at home. Um, and then I was also getting a lot of questions from mums who were like, how are you doing it all? Because I'd be blogging about all these things I was doing through the day and that just seemed normal to me. And they were like, how? I can't even get the kids out the door on time. How are you getting all this stuff done? So I realized I was actually quite good at productivity, but I hadn't formally trained in any way. And so I created a course to help moms to get organized at home, and that developed into the Wonder Mom Success Club, which is a membership. To help moms get organized at home with their kids and with themselves and in their business. So kind of encompassing all that because I couldn't see anything out there that did that. It was either mom stuff or business stuff. And the trouble is that a lot of the business stuff doesn't really equate to mom stuff. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Mom's just trying to, I mean, they, Being a mom is a business almost. There's so many moving parts. They have to be able to manage it. That's pretty amazing that you, I just love the progression of your story of like, I'm just like how you were like building an audience and you weren't even thinking about it. Granted, it was like with Montessori blogging, it wasn't anything like super popular at the time per se where people, a lot of people were blogging. There's not a lot of competition, I guess, or other people creating. So you were just kind of like blogging, not even knowing about keywords or SEO and just building this audience. Yeah, that's so cool. And then, yeah, moving over to helping the moms. When it comes to like helping moms with productivity, do you notice that you work with more like stay-at-home moms or is it just moms in general? Is there like a specific type of mom, I guess, that you work with?

I've got quite a few expats in my community. I think they gravitate towards me, but also moms that are starting their own business and they want to do their own thing, but they're struggling with the time because whenever you try and do anything with a kid, it takes 3 times longer than it does.

I don't have a kid, but I do understand because I have a nephew and my girlfriend's a nanny. So she tells me about the kids and I'm like, that's crazy. Down the road, though. That's awesome. I think it's really helpful towards my audience who people want to start, grow their own online business. They're interested in it. I think something that I noticed in what you've done is that you were just doing the work and following your intuition really of this is fun for me and I want to do it and expressing that creativity in the form of blogging. And then you started to notice that there were problems and develop your audience along the way. I think so many people get stuck in their head of like, I have to have everything figured out and be perfect before I can start, you know, and then they never start. So many people suffer with that. So I'd like to go into the productivity concepts that you help moms with because I know that you specialize in moms, you know, but people are busy in general. So tell me a little bit about like the process that you take these women through and how they can apply to kind of everyday people and just being more productive and efficient with their time.

Yeah. So when I realized that I was actually quite good at the productivity thing without doing any formal learning, I started reading up and learning about different techniques because I don't believe there's a blueprint for everybody. I think that we all have our own personal situations and I, I'm a mum with one child and a husband that works out of the home a lot, whereas, you know, other mums might have 4 kids and be a single mum, or dad might be at home. So, you know, the situations are completely different, and the age of the child makes a difference as well. So I wanted to learn more so that I could help, um, with different situations, basically. But what I found was And also I started following a lot of the marketers and a lot of them are like yourself, male and childless. So the advice that they give doesn't work for moms because they'll be like, all right, put like 6 things on your to-do list and make sure you get those finished for the day. 6 things for a mom is too much. There's no way that they're going to do it. So I started breaking things down and using just 3 things. Like, we have a hit list. We don't use a to-do list. And your hit list are the 3 most important things to do in the day. And the aim is to do them as early as possible so you can get them out of the way.

So what are kind of things that you help women decide goes on the hit list?

So if they're starting their business, if that's their focus, then business-related things. So it could be just to send that important email or to get the newsletter out or, you know, these things when you've got 6 hours in a day to work shouldn't take so long. But when you're trying to fit it around looking after kids, you know, like writing, sitting down to write an email can take forever. So, you know, if that important email's got to go out, then that goes on the hit list and gets done as early as possible in the day.

Right.

So yeah, that kind of What— look, taking a step back, looking at what's going to make a big impact in my business, focus on that first. That's kind of the philosophy.

Well, I like the rule of 3. I'm a huge proponent of the rule of 3. I play in a band actually, and we're a 3-piece, and it's just like 3 is all around me and it's just like always been there. And I used to actually be a productivity coach and that's when I started to create digital courses. And I did like performance coaching. I was really into health and fitness and efficiency and all that, because I was really good at it too. And I mean, I still am, you know, I can pack a lot into a day and be really focused with what I'm doing. And then I started like learning about passive income and courses and stuff like that. And I just had this passion for helping others. So that's where I kind of made that transition. But the hit list is really cool. I like that instead of a to-do list, it feels like it's just the term hit list sounds a lot more fun than than saying like a to-do list, like I have to do this on top of all the other things you have to do. Uh, something I really like about what you do with women and what you mentioned too, and I think is really valuable for the listener, is that like there's a lot of people— like I used to be a productivity coach and I would teach things about productivity, and I'm a guy, I don't have— like I'm a young guy, you know, I don't have kids or anything like that. So the things that I would say, I couldn't really understand women. And that's why it is so important to really— or like, you know, moms stay-at-home moms because I've never been in those shoes. And that's where it's so valuable, I think, for anyone thinking about starting or growing their own online business. If you've been trying stuff and it just doesn't seem like it's working, it's like, get really dialed in on an audience that you care about. And I think that that's like so important. Like, I love creators and, you know, coaches that are a lot of creators and people that want to just start these businesses because I was so lost for so long, you know, and I'm always learning more. And the more I learn, the more I get to share. But leveraging that real personal experience that you have is, is so big.

Yeah. And it makes a huge difference and bringing in like the home side of things as well, because once you get your home organized, you have more time. If you're spending an hour a day like cleaning and cooking and, you know, all that stuff, that's a huge, or it's more than an hour a day. That's a huge amount of time. So if you can get on top of that, that helps with then the business side of things because it gives you more time. So it's all about leveraging what you can do in the home, and then bringing the Montessori in is setting up the home in a way for the children so that they can do things for themselves. You know, toddlers can put things away, but they need to be— they're like puppies, they need to be trained, you know. And you can get the kids helping with the laundry, and if the home is set up in a way that they put things away themselves, you're not doing it and you're not nagging.

You're outsourcing the cleanup to the kids.

Yes.

Genius. Oh my God.

And that's a big Montessori thing, is a part of the environment, you know, the prepared environment. So I feel that's an important thing for kids to learn. Oh, wow.

I didn't even think about that. This is so cool. So, okay, well, let's say that there's, you know, anybody who has a kid or kids listening to this right now. What are some Montessori methods that you, you could share to kind of set up your house for success and kind of teach your kid in a, a very fluid way to like kind of outsource tasks to your kid in a way?

Well, first of all, they have what they call the work cycle. So in Montessori, the activities are called work. But so they take the activity off the shelf, they decide where they're going to do the work, they take the activity off the shelf, they do the activity, then they clean up and put it away. And often kids are not taught that little cycle of taking a toy out, playing with it, putting it away. So starting that with a toddler, you know, my son learned to do that when he was 18 months old. You know, he gets the Duplo out or whatever, plays with it, and then puts it away. And obviously they need help when they're little, But learning to do that cycle, you know, that carries on. He's 17 now and not all the time, but majority of the time he'll get stuff out and he'll automatically put it away because that's the way he grew up. And the other thing is often when I work with mums, their family set up, like they have a toy chest, so all the toys are thrown into one chest. Or one big box. And then when the kid wants to play with, you know, the red fire truck, they have to ferry it through the, the box to find it, and things get thrown out, and it's just chaos. And then clean up, everything just gets thrown in, which might seem good at the time, but in the long run, it's not helping the kid with organization. So I'm not a naturally tidy person. Montessori, when I did my Montessori, training helped me become more organised. So having everything in its own home, so the Lego lives in this box, toy cars live in this box, train track lives in this box. And when it comes to tidying up, even if they've had all of it out, they can sort it. And that's a learning skill as it is, just sorting. But then it makes it easier for them to get things in and out by themselves, which frees up your time again. So it's—

Wow. It all comes full circle.

Yeah. Oh, putting that little bit of effort in to begin with, it pays off in the long run.

Right. So to kind of sum up, instead of having the big— like when I was a kid, I had a huge bin full of toys and I would just throw them around. But you're saying instead of doing that, like help your kids organize kind of their playroom so it's a bit more streamlined for them. I think it's so funny because People are the same way. I mean, I worked with a lot of people when I was doing pure productivity coaching and organizing like their computers and all that kind of stuff. And I would see someone's computer and it was just chaos. Mine's very neat. If you look at my Google Drive, everything's full folders, color-coded, it's beautiful. It took me time to practice that. But it is funny that like, you know, if a kid learns these Montessori principles at a young age, then it does carry on into later in life. You know, if they decide down the road to be an entrepreneur or just pursue some sort of career, they can already be a lot more organized and skip all of that.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's beautiful. You said in, in your bio, you said that your, your parenting and work philosophy is really centered around the Montessori principle of follow the child, which guides every aspect of someone's journey as an entrepreneur. Author or parent. What is follow the child? Is that what you just mentioned, or is this something else?

It's something else. So follow the child means— some people think that when you say follow the child, it means giving the child a free rein to do whatever they want, and it's not that at all. It's following the child's interests and then giving them the opportunities to build on that. So, you know, like with an entrepreneur, you go down rabbit holes and you learn about different things and you'll be like, oh, I want to learn about SEO, and then you go down the SEO rabbit hole. It's a similar sort of thing. So instead of forcing a child to study whatever, you follow their interests. So when my son was about 4, he was obsessed with knights, castles and knights and jousting. You know, I live in Japan. So, there's not a lot of stuff around here to do that.

Not a lot of jousting going on.

No. But when we went back to England, we took him to Warwick Castle and he loved it. But we would still do math or practice English, but using knights and castles as the topic. So, whatever we were learning at the time, whether it was counting or learning these ABCs or whatever, we would do it with a theme about knights and castles, so he would learn that way. But then as he's grown, we've just followed whatever he's kind of interested in and given him the opportunities to do more of that. So if I found that he was really interested— he had a thing about bats at one stage— so I would buy a couple of books about bats, and I created a file about bats for him so that he could take that further. So it's just paying attention really to what the child is interested in so that you can give them what they're needing. And it might not be a specific subject, it might be something physical, it might be that they are, you know, kids like adults go through cycles. So it might be that they're in a cycle of big movement and it's big muscle growth. So they might be wanting to climb up everything. So them climbing up the fridge isn't, you know, something you want them to do, but you could be taking them out to a climbing gym or to a park where they can climb trees or something. So it's paying attention to what their needs are and giving them more of that.

Right on. Yeah, that's, I think, I think it's cool what you're doing, especially related to like being more productive. There's a ton of people have kids, you know, and then they're like, I really want to start this business. And then it's like, but I have my kids, I don't have the time. And it, that's why I was interested in like talking more with you about like having you on the show and stuff, because I feel like a lot of people just kind of talk about like, just like business growth and stuff and they can't really meet like real people where they're at. This is like meeting real people where they're at. Like you have kids, you know, how do you manage this and like pursue my entrepreneurial dreams at the same time?

So if I can just add a little bit onto the, yeah. So mums are trying to get stuff done with kids underfoot. If you give them, you know, you go onto Pinterest, you see this great activity and you give the kid and they'll sit there for 2 seconds and they're off, they're not interested. That's not going to work if the kid is not in the right cycle for that activity. Whereas if you've been paying attention to what the kid is interested in and you give them an activity that feeds that interest, Bam, you get yourself 30 minutes because they're just focused on what they're doing, and you can go and do your thing for 30 minutes or whatever. So it pays to pay attention because you can then give your child what they need, and that gives you more time to do what you need to do.

Very cool. One thing I did kind of want to touch on is, um, just the mindset alone that you kind of coach these women around and just busy people in general? Because like you have your, your hit list with the 3 major tasks you want to get done. What if I'm like making my whole hit list and I'm like, I got these steps all planned out, but when I get down, even if I have the time to do it, I'm not in the mental space or have the mental capacity to actually focus on this. Do you have any kind of tips around that kind of the inner like focus game?

I think, I think being a mom changes that. My pre-mom days, when I sit back now and I think, oh, I could have done so much more because, you know, you've got the choice of scrolling on Facebook or sending that important email. What's going to move your business forward? It's, and if you don't have much time, then You know, we have check-ins every day that you check in with your hit list and then you come back and celebrate when you've done it. And also looking at why you didn't do it. So maybe you're not feeling very well, maybe you're not feeling into it, or maybe, you know, the kid's throwing up everywhere and everyone's come down with flu, so you didn't manage it. I think a lot of it comes down to if you are determined to make the business work, and you are a mom and you do have little kids underfoot, that you've got to go in with that attitude of, I've got to make every minute count. So every little pocket of time that I can create, I need to use that to help my business move forward. And so any, you know, like affirmation or like that, I'm not huge on affirmations, but if if there is something that's going to help you move your business forward and that why is what's going to get you there, then have it above, you know, behind your computer or, you know, somewhere that you can see it. So it's a reminder to use those pockets of time wisely.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of like we're gonna start closing out a little bit. One question I love to ask people when I interview them is Why do you think that people don't take action? Because, you know, I mean, there's obviously excuses, there's obviously things that happen in life where we can't take action, but I feel like a lot of people kind of shoot themselves in the foot. And there's, there's so much information available nowadays. You've given some awesome just examples and ideas in this episode, but I always think it's interesting just to kind of have this quick conversation of like, why do you think that people don't take action if they have these entrepreneurial dreams, that they just don't, don't do it despite having all this information available for free?

I think overwhelm is a big one, and fear, they're probably the two main ones. Yeah, it's very easy to get overwhelmed. Um, when I started out with Montessori, there wasn't much information out there. These days, if you put Montessori into Google, you're going to get millions of hits, you know. So then, whereas I was struggling to find information, these days it's too much information. And I think the same with business and starting online, you know. If you want to learn about, say, SEO or keywords, you put it into Google and this, like, where do you start? Which one's the best one to follow? You know, who is the, the right person? Who's got the correct advice? And it just gets all overwhelming and then you just don't do anything because you end up in like paralysis. So I think I'm a big fan of kaizen and breaking things down into tiny steps. So I think if you get into that point where it's just too much, just take one step, one tiny step. You don't have to do a whole course on SEO. Just learn, you know, just read about one blog post or something, or, you know, you don't have to set up your whole, if you're creating a course, you don't have to set up the whole thing. Maybe just set up the first lesson or an outline or one tiny step. And usually that one tiny step will be the momentum to get you going.

Yeah. Yeah. To kind of add to that, I'm a huge fan of like following intuitive action because before I did productivity coaching, I actually like started originally as a life coach and like spiritual life coaching. And one of the biggest takeaways is just like tapping into your intuition. That always resonated with me. Not all of it resonated with me, but if you can look at action steps, there's some that you know are like, if I do that, that's going to get me closer to the end goal. And you just like, you have this feeling in your gut of like, I know it will, but it's scary or it's intimidating or I don't feel like I have the time, whatever it is. And I really love that. Just like take that. First step. And like you said, typically what happens is you get the next inspired action that's like, oh, I could do this. Or maybe it didn't work out the way you intended, but it opened up new doors that you didn't expect.

Yeah.

So I love that.

Yeah. If you get that butterflies in your stomach that, yeah, I wanna throw up, take the step.

It's a good one. That's a good one. Awesome. Okay. Where can people find you to, to learn more about what you're doing? If I, if we got busy moms listening right now, where can they learn more about you?

Um, if you put in Jojo Ebi, J-O-J-O-E-B-I, that'll bring me up all over the place.

Okay, I'll put links in the description too.

And then, um, the business that I'm kind of focused on at the moment is teaching kids about the world. So I've got a club where you get a digital pack each month, and, um, it's a different country each month, and they learn all about the world and culture, and it's to help promote kindness and more like global understanding. So that's 193 Little Adventures. So if you put that in, that should come up. Cool.

Yeah, I'll put links down in the description.

Thank you.

Jo, do you have any kind of final thoughts for the audience?

Just that, yeah, if you've got that scary feeling in your stomach, you're on the right track. So go and do it, whatever it is.

Yeah, I think it is that simple. You just got to take the action, figure it out along the way. Awesome. Check out Joe, links in the description again. And, uh, until next time, we will see you in the next one.

Aah!