You’re not disorganized. You’re carrying a lot of work that no one can see.

When you’re running a business while also managing kids, a household, relationships, clients, and everyday life, there’s an entire layer of work that never makes it onto your calendar or task list. It’s the remembering, deciding, planning, and holding onto all the little things until they finally get done.

In this first episode of our five-part Life First Series, we’re talking about the invisible labor of running a business and why so many traditional productivity tips don’t actually solve the problem. From trying another app to telling yourself you’ll get organized when things slow down, we’re breaking down four common beliefs that can make the mental load even heavier.

Because you probably don’t need more discipline or another productivity hack. You need systems that get things out of your head, work with the way you actually operate, and support the life you’re building your business around.

In This Episode, We Cover

• Why feeling overwhelmed doesn’t mean you’re disorganized—and how unnamed tasks contribute to your mental load.
• How brain dumps, voice notes, AI, and simple capture systems can help you stop relying on yourself to remember everything.
• Why another app, template, or productivity system won’t necessarily solve the problem—and can sometimes create more work.
• How building systems around the way you actually work makes it easier to stay consistent, even when life happens.
• Why you shouldn’t wait until you hire someone or things “slow down” to document processes and get the invisible work out of your head.

Resources Mentioned

A Mind Sweep — a guided exercise Rachel uses to brain dump everything she’s holding onto and turn those thoughts into actionable tasks.

Meet Your Hosts

Jessica Walther is the founder and CEO of The Launch Collaborative and Sustainable Success Systems. As a launch strategist and systems consultant, Jess is dedicated to helping solo business owners and small-but-mighty teams build businesses that deliver both peace and profit. She specializes in creating sustainable growth strategies that align with her clients' values and lifestyles.

Rachel Lopez is the founder and CEO of Gal Marketing Agency, a boutique email marketing and strategy firm. With over a decade of experience, Rachel helps heart-driven entrepreneurs craft intentional marketing strategies that attract, nurture, and convert leads sustainably. Her human-first approach ensures that marketing efforts feel authentic and effective .

Together, Jess and Rachel blend systems, storytelling, and soulful strategy to help you grow a business that's deeply aligned with your life—not just your revenue goals.

Connect With Us:

• Jess Website
• Rachel's Website

Hang Out & Say Hi!

• Deeply Rooted Business Instagram
• Jess Instagram
• Rachel's Instagram

Life has been lifin' extra hard these days, and if you're like

2

us, maybe you're running a business

or chasing a kiddo around, it isn't

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the only thing that you're doing.

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On top of all of this, I run a nonprofit.

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I co-host this podcast.

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I run my business, and on top of all of

that, we all do the normal things that

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help sustain a normal life, like eating

every day, and cleaning your house, and

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bathing and maintaining a social life.

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And I think the thing of when

people ask, "How do you do it all?"

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The answer is, honestly,

we literally don't.

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I drop things all the time, every

single week, and the reason that that

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question keeps getting asked, and

I think the honest truth, is that

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nobody really answers it truthfully.

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A lot of people are out here comparing

your actual Tuesday, your client

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call Mondays, to somebody else's

highlight reel of their 10K launch

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success or their 10-hour-a-week, you

know, 500 lead generator type things.

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And you end up getting this

comparison trap and wondering,

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"What the frick is wrong with us?"

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And so we wanna start this series because,

first of all, nothing is wrong with you.

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You're carrying a ginormous portfolio of

work, and responsibilities, and things

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that also don't necessarily exist on

your calendar, and they don't necessarily

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show up on an invoice or an SOP.

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is the invisible labor of running

a business, doing all of the

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things that normal people do,

and trying to make it all work.

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So we're gonna be naming

all of this today.

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We're breaking it all down and

specifically, we're gonna be sharing

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why a lot of the productivity hacks

that are been shared for small

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business owners and specifically

moms aren't necessarily helping.

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So this is going to be one of a five-part

series, so let's go ahead and get into it

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Jessica: But before we do, welcome

back to another episode of Growing a

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Deeply Rooted Business, the show for

women building businesses that support

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their lives instead of swallowing them.

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I am Jess, your systems and

sustainable growth operations half,

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and I'm here with Rachel, who is

our marketing mastermind/architect.

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And between us, we've got kids, we've

got teenagers, we've got ADHD, and

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we've got a couple neuro-spiciness

bits floating around here.

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We have not a big team behind the

scenes, so when somebody tells us

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just to theme our days or batch

our content to get caught up, that

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kinda makes us laugh a little.

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Before we get into it, it's Monday here.

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You're probably listening on Thursday,

so you're at the end of the week.

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But whenever you're listening, we want

you to just let some of that stress go.

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So take a deep inhale, exhale, and

give yourself permission to stop

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being the one to carry it all.

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Alright

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Let's get into kind of belief number

one, that we tell ourselves when

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we're trying to handle it all, or

we're trying to work towards that

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business goal of sipping margaritas

on the beach while we bring in money.

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Just kinda getting through our days.

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If you were just more

organized, I could handle this.

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That is something that we tell

ourselves all the time, I'm sure.

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And as a Notion person, I always

kinda default to maybe if I just

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kinda get my Notion a little bit

organized, I won't be more stressed

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out, when reality, I'm pretty organized

already, and that's not the issue.

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Rachel: Yeah, this is my biggest problem,

too, and when Jess was in my business,

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she noticed a lot of it lingered in my

head, and that's both in my personal

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life as well as in my business.

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I'm the type of person that I

go, we're out of barbecue sauce.

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Okay, I'll remember."

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Did I remember?

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No, I sure did not remember.

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So I think a lot of this comes down to

really trying to understand that the

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problem isn't necessarily discipline.

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It's literally trying to build a

system that actually supports you.

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And, I have tried all of the other

systems of ADHD, AD, da, da, da, da,

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da, and from a marketing side, too,

I tell people, the templates that you

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buy for your email list wont work for

your business because it's missing your

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spiciness, your neurodivergent little

things that say, "This only works if

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you understand that because I do this."

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And so I think this is the most important

part, is that finding something that

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really connects with your vibe, you know?

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Jessica: Yeah, and I think giving

yourself permission to play around.

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I mean, especially as an ADHD person,

I think for me, I need freshness,

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I need newness for motivation.

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So the way that I plan every week

is not the same every week, but I

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have my notion project management

system that will eventually catch

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it all the way that it gets there.

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And I think that a lot of the

overwhelm that entrepreneurs face is

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that mental overwhelm of just trying

to store everything in your head.

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So just doing a big old, brain dump

of okay, here's everything that needs

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to get done, and then looking at

my calendar and being like, "Okay,

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I've got a meeting here, so this

needs to get done before that."

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And starting to prioritize things

so that I can get it on a list and

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at least start checking things off,

whether that's in Notion, which is my

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tool of choice, or on a paper planner.

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Sometimes I do both.

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Rachel: Yeah, I have a amazing podcast

that I listen to where it's literally

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just called, A Mind Sweep, and the

link will be in the description.

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It's minutes of this guy just

narrating, and you're just making a list.

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And so the system that I've used to help

me get out of these self-sabotage moments

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where I refuse to write something down

and I say, "Oh, trust me, I'll remember,"

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and I literally don't, is that will sit

down every Monday, and I will play this

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15-minute podcast, and I will just brain

dump everything into a Slack to myself

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or into a channel or whatever I can see.

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Afterwards, he tells you, "Okay,

now go clean this up, put it to

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the assigned projects, assign

it a due date," kind of thing.

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And I have a scheduled AI assistant

that then takes everything that I just

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did and loads it into my Notion so that

after I've done that brain dump, the

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exhausting part to me is sitting there and

creating a new task and putting it there.

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So I've simplified it in the sense

that it's removed a lot of the parts

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where I'll go, "Oh, I'll do that

later," or, I'll look at Slack."

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Those elements where for sure

gonna fail myself, I've created

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that kind of gap to bridge that.

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So that's something that's definitely,

helped me remove a lot of that mental

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load of just being like, " I'll do it.

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And.

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My own sabotage of saying,

"I'll remember it."

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Jessica: I do a similar thing After I

drop off Stella at school, on the way

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home, I've got about a 30-minute commute.

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So on the way home, my brain

starts going with everything.

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Instead of just letting it rummage

around in there and induce more anxiety,

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I just turn on my voice recorder and

start to record everything that I can.

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And then I can drop it into a chat

or AI or ever I'm using at that

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point and disseminate it into it.

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I also love this for client meetings,

having AI sweep your meeting notes so that

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you can kinda grab all of those tasks.

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'Cause I think the biggest

thing is me missing items.

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So even if I am putting tasks in

after a meeting, I still have my AI

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go through and sweep the transcript to

make sure that I didn't miss anything,

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so that I'm not feeling like I'm

constantly having to remember things or

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forgetting things and then being behind.

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Rachel: Yeah.

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So it brings us to myth number

two, which is saying, you know,

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it's really not that much work.

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It's just little stuff.

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It's just putting barbecue

sauce on the grocery list.

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It's just things like that.

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But I wanna reframe this in the sense

that, action itself might take you

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a handful of minutes to do, but me

telling myself, "Hey, remember this"

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is an active effort for the span of

Friday to Sunday when I'm trying to

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compile what next week's menus are.

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And so this goes all into the same

thing as business, where you're

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saying like, "Oh, I just need

to send that client follow-up.

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I'll just do it on whatever day it is."

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It's taking up this space in your brain,

which is why this doesn't necessarily

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help when you truly are, a solo team or

a solopreneur or a small team business

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owner is because that invisible labor

doesn't stop when the laptop closes.

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The actual task may get logged into

wherever it goes, but remembering it

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and holding onto it so you don't forget

is where can self-sabotage a lot more.

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So I think the thing that works here

is you're putting it into its allocated

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bucket, when you have that thought of

saying, my task is instead of doing

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the remembering, I'm going to just put

it where it needs to go the first time.

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And it's something I'm telling my son now,

where I'm like, don't walk away from it.

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Put it back.

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Put it where it goes."

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I have to have that remember for

myself, too, so that it's not,

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getting trapped in here for five days.

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Jessica: Yes.

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Yeah, I mean, I feel after a brain

dump, it's like, "Ah, I don't have to

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remember all of this stuff anymore."

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It feels so much lighter.

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And then I'm like, why

don't I do this to myself?

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Why wouldn't I just do this more often?

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Why can't I just do an artist way page

every day if I know how good that it

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makes me feel to brain dump everything?

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I totally, I totally get it.

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And you know what?

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You gotta try to just figure

out what works for you.

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I saw a girl, I'm like, that's so smart.

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She has her Apple Watch, and it's

connected to her reminders list, so

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she can just "Remind me of the barbecue

sauce, Siri," and then it's on her list.

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I'm like, this is amazing.

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One thing that I love is we have an Alexa.

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I kinda don't like her 'cause she

knows way too much about me now.

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But we have an Alexa in our kitchen,

and I've trained my entire family

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that when they use something that

they want to get replenished at the

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grocery store, that they have to

tell Alexa to put it on the shopping

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list because I will pull up my Alexa

shopping list when I'm there and buy it.

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But if not, they do not get to buy it.

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She was unplugged, I don't know

why, but she was not activated and

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I really missed her, so she's back

in action now 'cause I need all the

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help from the robots that I can get.

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Rachel: No, I totally hear that.

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I totally hear that.

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Okay, what's myth number three?

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Jessica: So myth number three

is, I just need a better system,

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the right app will fix this.

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And I think that's the same thing as

another template or another AI bot.

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Implementing anything new into your

business is going to take time.

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That this is a trap that I fall into a

lot is that I'll be overwhelmed because I

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have so much stuff to do, but instead of

doing the stuff, I try to get a new system

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to make the stuff less overwhelming.

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And then I'm like, "Oh, I just spent

eight hours doing this thing, and

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now I'm behind on everything else."

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This is why I think time tracking is

so important so that you are really

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cognizant of where your time is going to

know, okay, this is a not right now task.

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Or you'll scroll TikTok and

you'll see somebody built

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their chief operations officer.

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And you're going this tangent to build

this but you didn't do any of your work.

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It's important just to be mindful if

you are that type of person, and we

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both are that type of person, because

of our ADHD and because we're trying to

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find these solutions, it's like, okay,

do I have time to invest in this now?

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Same thing with buying

courses or stuff like that.

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If you don't have time to implement,

it's not worth doing it at all.

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So it's not usually the system.

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I just had this conversation with a new

HR person, she doesn't think Notion's

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working, so let's move to ClickUp.

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That's not gonna fix it.

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It's the habits, the routines that

you've built around that piece of

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software and not the software itself.

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Rachel: Totally.

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And I think, the main thing that

people do is they throw it out

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before they make it their own.

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Jess has worked very hard to turn me

into a Notion girly over here, ' cause

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before I was like, "I don't need this.

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I don't need that.

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I can be in ClickUp.

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I can be in Trello.

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I can do in all the things."

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When you actually design something to

work the way you work, not the way that

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that person on TikTok works or the planner

that you bought is gonna, you know,

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process it out for you, really making

sure that you build it to give it time

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to make it your own, I think is super

important, especially when you are saying,

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"Hey, I'm a no systems type person."

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Okay, well, you just haven't quite found

your system yet, because everybody needs

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a system, or else you're just gonna keep

failing the life happens test constantly.

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Well, I tell myself this every week

when I ignore my tasks for three

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days, and then I jump back in.

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I go, "Okay, I need to make these changes.

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I need to do this kind of thing,"

which is a beautiful thing once

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you've finally found it, because I

truly was that person who was like,

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"You know, this isn't gonna work."

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And then now has beat it

into my head that it, it

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Jessica: Yeah.

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I mean, you gotta use it in your way, too.

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I think people think they fail systems

if they don't use it every day.

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But I'm a Notion complete nerd, and

there will be days, they're probably not

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my most productive days, that I don't

open my Notion at all and I'm working

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off of my head, or I jump straight into

Slack and move from this reactive mode.

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So it is a little bit about getting

some sort of discipline to start your

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day, but you just kinda have to figure

out what your work boot-up routine is.

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Rachel: Yeah.

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So then that brings us to myth number

four, which is I will deal with this when

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I hire someone or when things slow down.

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And I think the problem with this is

that, one, nothing's gonna ever slow down.

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Jess and I were literally just talking

about how the heck is it September?

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How did this just happen?

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Where did summer go?

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And the second part of that is

that you don't want to bring

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somebody in and deal with this

stuff after you've hired someone.

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You want to deal with it now.

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You want you to be the use case

for a successful employee in your

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business versus hoping that when you

hire somebody that you'll put the

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pieces together and figure it out.

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This is something that I have had to

overcome significantly, and now that we

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have a really successful VA working in

both of our businesses and in the podcast,

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it's mindblowing how it's so easy to just

fall into the trap of like, "Oh, I'll just

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do it myself, it's a five-minute task."

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But freeing up certain things that exist

in my head and freeing up time on my

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calendar to live this life first business

that I want to live is so validating

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that I don't live in these two spaces

of , " I'll just deal with it myself,"

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and, "Oh, I'll put it off when things slow

down," 'cause that's never gonna happen.

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Jessica: Yeah, for sure.

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And I think even preparing to hire

someone makes you so much better

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at your business or at your role

that you're trying to hand off.

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I'm in a role right now where I'm kind

of dual strategy and project managing,

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but I really can't hold it all forever.

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At this point, there's not enough

systems built around what I want to

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hand off for someone to step into.

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So now as I'm going through this

process of building out the system

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for them, I'm like, "Oh, okay."

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This is breaking down.

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"Oh, this is how I did…

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it and this is how I could be more

efficient, and this is how I'm

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recreating the wheel every time,

and I don't have to do that."

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Even if you don't plan on hiring, it's

still worth creating an SOP for or

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a process for yourself that you can

go back, revisit so that you're not

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starting from scratch every single time.

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Rachel and I, we're gonna do a

whole podcast about how we run

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our podcast on two hours a week.

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But I think it's really because

we've leaned into don't recreate.

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We use the same prompt every single week.

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We use the same pillars that we've

had since before to pull from.

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We have the same process

for how we're breaking our

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content down every single week.

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And we really optimize this podcast

from end to end in a way that allows

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us just to flow through the week.

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Even in our busiest weeks, we're

still able to show up and, do this

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because we've got processes around

it, and we've got it written down,

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and we're not trying to start fresh.

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We just kind of have to show up and check

off the boxes, which sounds robotic.

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But systems like that free up space

for more creativity and other things.

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Rachel: All right, so let's go ahead

and wrap this one together, 'cause

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I think the most important part is

understanding the invisible labor is

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the remembering, the deciding, and the

holding until you decide to then do it.

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The four beliefs and myths that

we want to help shift while we're

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starting this series is, one,

you're not disorganized, you're just

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carrying a lot of unnamed tasks.

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Number two is that it's not that

it's just a little task that you can

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hold, it's unaccounted on your list

that needs to go onto your list.

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Number three is the tools that you

have added have quite literally

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made it heavier because you have to

maintain them, and it's creating a

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system that you are working against

versus a system that's working for you.

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And then four is waiting until you can

afford help doesn't quite work to organize

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your system or to figure out all of these

things that you're holding onto because

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you can't really hand off everything

that really just exists in your head.

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So Over the next four weeks, we're

gonna be breaking this all down by

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category or by bucket of business.

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We're gonna do it for your

projects, for your clients.

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We're gonna show you how we do this

podcast, where most people assume

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that we have a really large team

because we crank out probably like

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50 plus pieces of content a week.

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We don't.

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We have a massive system that has helped

us, me and Jess, manage this podcast

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in between all of our businesses, all

of our lives, and all of the things.

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So, we're gonna be breaking all

of this down for you, so this

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is just the start of the series.

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And so one of the things we wanna

leave you with is that none of this

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is a discipline problem, right?

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If discipline were the fix, it would've

been fixed years ago when you decided that

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you wanted to start a business and you're

still sticking with it five years later.

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We business owners, small business

owners, especially small team

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business owners, are some of the most

disciplined people we know because

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they've stuck with it for so long.

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So stick with us through this.

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You do not need more time.

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You need a system.

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You need to stop trying to

cookie cutter other people's

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productivity tasks into your life.

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If this named something for you,

send it to a friend that you know

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is also a little neuro spicy and

is productivity optimizing, and

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help unleash this mental load here.

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And until next week,

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Jessica: are rooting for you.