On this episode of One Small Change, our guest, Jessica Koch, shares how designing your business around the life you want leads to meaningful growth—without burnout. Learn practical steps to outsource efficiently, master consistency, build accountability, and prioritize revenue-driving tasks. Real-world stories from launching her agency and making space for both family and business illustrate simple, powerful shifts that can radically improve your results and satisfaction. Whether you’re just starting out or ready to expand, these actionable insights will help you transform overwhelm into a life—and business—you love.

Guest Bio:

Jessica Koch is a seasoned sales and marketing consultant with decades of experience, an Italian mother of seven, and founder of a thriving virtual assistant agency. Passionate about helping entrepreneurs design businesses that serve their lives (not the other way around), Jessica brings energy, practical wisdom, and a knack for actionable systems. She’s also a longtime podcast host, tech innovator in automation and AI, and dedicated community builder.

Chapters:

00:00 "One Small Change" Podcast Introduction

03:35 "Balancing Business and Personal Life"

08:04 "Hippie Reflections: Tie-Dye & Thrift"

11:34 Adaptable Problem-Solving Mindset

15:40 Tough Love Accountability Partner

16:37 Accountability and Frequent Check-ins

20:39 Launching First Personal Event Series

23:21 "Now is Later, Sooner"

Quote from the Guest:

“Now is later, sooner—so do it now.”

Link:

"TOP 10 THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN CREATING AN AI AGENT FOR YOUR BUSINESS"

Thinking about integrating AI agents into your business? Whether you’re automating customer service, sales, or workflows, this guide will help you make informed decisions before diving in.

This is a must-read for entrepreneurs who want to harness AI but don’t know where to start!

Link: https://go.jessicalkoch.com/widget/form/NGvucei9jhtAO80tWckB

Welcome to the One small change. I am really thrilled that you took this time

out of your life to embark on this journey of exploration and transformation

with us. I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring almost 30 years

of entrepreneurial experience. And I have a passion for

discovering growth through the power of seemingly small change.

As I said, I am so glad you're here. One of the reasons that I

do this is to help to expand your world and see that there are

lots of different ways that you can grow your business. I've invited people

who to share with you some of the things

that they've done that have had a big impact, even though it seemed like a

small change at the time, to grow their business. And today

I have with me Jessica. Jessica Koch. I'm sorry.

Who is amazing. You will learn so much

from her. I am so happy that she's taken the time out of her very,

very, very busy schedule to spend time with

us today. Jessica, hello. Hey. I'm

never too busy for friends or amazing collaborations

or trying to, you know, give, give to anyone that

I can so try. I always try to plan a life that

leaves space for that. We, we should never be too busy

to take a day and just go kayaking, reschedule all the meetings and do

whatever our heart sings too, right?

So I'm going to tell you right there, that nugget right there

is worth the price of admission because as an entrepreneur,

how many times, you know, my kids say to me all the time, mom, you

make your own schedule. Why can't you find time to

do this? So that right there is worth the price of admission.

And Jessica, even though we have not done a lot of collaboration together,

I have followed you for a long time.

So tell people what it is that you do and,

and why you are particularly good at it and how this

change help you get that way. Well, I

am Jessica Koch. Koch likes scotch. And I am the

Italian mother of seven. We have seven children and nine

grandchildren. So I'm a young hot nana. That's my story and I'm sticking

with that. And I've been in sales and marketing since I

was actually very young. And.

I can literally tell you true life story of being

in my first preschool class and making a

sale. So

I, it has been a part of me for most of my

existence and I do sales and marketing

consulting, social media training. We have a virtual assistant

membership program. We make custom AI task agents and

automations for our clients. And I've been a podcast host

for going on. We're having our 10 year birthday next

year and we interview people who improve someone's personal

life or grow their business. And I love this small increment,

kind of small change, small adjustment

of the dial to make our lives better concept

of your podcast, Yvonne. And I've been following you equally

for a very, very long time as well. So I'm so

glad that we're merging our worlds together in a way that

better serves us and our communities right. How much value

my community will receive from all the things you're up to.

So just, I'm really happy to be here. Should we start talking about

these small changes now? Absolutely.

Well, one of the very first ones, when I started my business, I recognized

right away I'm a big believer, like I said earlier,

in designing my life so that any moment

I, I could be doing only and always exactly what

I want to be doing. Right? I don't want to be anywhere else but here

with Iran right now. And I was playing

Yahtzee. This is True Story one night with my

daughter, who's now 14, but at the time she was much younger because this was

on the beginning of my business and my husband and

I didn't like that. I was thinking about

the virtual networking had attended and how I needed to take that

chat and put it into a spreadsheet and import into my CRM system and reach

out to everyone individually and connect with them on LinkedIn and send

them a nice message to say, hey, here's my calendar link. Let's collaborate. I'd love

to learn more about you because we really didn't get to meet well and all

the things. My brain knows that as a sales professional that needs to

be done. I wanted to be fully present in

Nazi right and manifesting my

Yahtzee man. I want to win the game. When I play, I play to win,

but I do that in everything I do, right? And so it occurred to me

that I needed a solution to that. And my instant

solution was, oh well, I just need to hire someone. Well, I'd only been in

business a few months and so I thought, well, I don't want to go into

debt paying someone if I can't afford to pay someone. I had a few clients

that were consistent, but, you know, still getting my bearings. I was

still figuring out my expenses. And so what I did was I looked at things

that weren't nailed down that our family just no longer needed around

my house and I put them up for sale on Facebook Marketplace. True Story.

And I made about, you know, five to seven hundred bucks

Cash like right away on Marketplace with stuff we weren't using anymore.

And I made that my virtual assistant fund. So this is what I

was going to use to outsource the tasks that I knew had to happen. And

there were money making actions that were going to lead to new clients and better

relationships and more collaborations and I would get them to do

them. And so I immediately hired three people I hired based on project,

based on need. I interviewed in groups, I trained

them all three in a group and then I assigned them

specific projects based on me and I use that fund. And I made

sure I had them doing tasks that were going to lead to more revenue so

that I can then continue to grow their amount of time with me and, and

helping me. And then that grew to. We now

have, you know, the VA agency for over seven years. We end up,

we typically have between 60 or 100 base at any given point. We

help clients all over the world with their back office things. And so that

began to grow to that. But before I launched my

agency myself only just for the clients I was consulting

and the other speaking of work I was getting paid for, we had about 15

days just working for me before I kept getting the

question of how do you do that? And the world and, and the

universe decided to say, you need to start this agency. All right, I need to

stop you because you have said so many things

that we need to go back to. Okay. So the

first thing that we talked about is, what you talked

about in the beginning is having a business that lets you live the life

that you want to. So we kind of covered that other

thing that you said that I think is so impactful

is you assign them tasks

that were going to bring in business. And I

think as entrepreneurs sometimes we get into the creative

mode. We're creating. We're creating. And I know I did this. I created

programs and courses that nobody wanted to

know. And it was a shock to me when somebody said,

don't create the whole thing. Only create like one or two chapters or

one or two lessons just so that you're far enough ahead of somebody that

you know if you sell it, you can, you can actually deliver. Right.

So you know, stick a pin in that. Look at the activities

that are going to make you money. Right.

The other thing is I love the fact

that you said you took things in your house that you

didn't need and sold them to get the fun. And, and, and

you may not know that at one point I was a hippie.

No, I did not know that. I'm old enough that I was a hippie,

you know, and every time my. My kids. Both my kids and my

grandkids at some point have said to me, we're doing this new thing.

We're doing tie dye. And I'm like, oh, God, I'm.

You know, where there is a will, there is a way. And

there is a difference between spending money

and investing in your business. I mean, there was a point when I

wanted to go someplace and, you know, like when in

my hippie days and my husband and I collected beer

cans and we sold them and, you know, did the recycling thing to make

money to get a trip. You know, our car smelled like steel, stale beer.

But we got to go in the. So

and so make a way. So that. That is a mantra I live by on

my vision board. To the right of me here, it says in very

big letters, I make a way. So if I want something or I see something

that I don't like in my life that, like, I wasn't fully present in

that moment of Yahtzee, and in my mind, I thought, I don't want to be

thinking about this. I want to be fully present. And how do I

achieve that? How do I make a way for that to happen?

And then I started thinking about my options. Hire someone. Well, I don't want to

go into debt. So how do I make a way that I can have this

and not go into debt having it? And then so. And so I just

kept working through the problem or. Or the

scenario, the formula. I can. I like it when you use

formulas and math equations versus problems. Right? So

I kept working through the formula. So I made a way

that met. Because just hiring someone and going into debt would have made the

way. Would it? Would have done it, but it didn't make the way. That. That

was in line with my mission and my values. So until I keep

working through the formula, until I can make a way to make

it happen just the way I want it to.

And I. And I think that's another, you know, stick a pin in

it. You can hear a strategy, which

makes sense generally, but you have to figure out how

it works for you. So if, you know, people say

speaking is a great strategy. All right, well, if you don't

feel like you can stand on a stage, you can still do a

LinkedIn live. You can still do a video.

Put the video up if you're not comfortable being, you know, being live.

And so you have to find a way that fits you

in the way that you are. Right? So I Mean, if,

if I were to say to you,

you know, you have to memorize this 10 page speech before

you can get up and speak. I would never speak because

I have a fear. I mean, I had a thing when I was, when in

high school that I practiced a speech for the

Junior Honor Society. Got up on the stage and went totally blank,

right? And ended up the bottom. I didn't know it at the time, but

apparently ended up ad libbing my whole speech. I mean, I came off the stage

crying and, and my speech teacher said, why? You did a great

job. I mean, nobody knew that you forgot your speech.

I don't memorize speeches. I memorize points

or, and I can always remember the three points that I want to cover and

each of those points. Underneath them lives a story.

And stories are almost impossible to forget, right?

Is that, you know,

don't listen to a strategy and take it as a hundred percent.

I have to do it exactly like this. And, and

so someone else may say, well, I don't have anything to

sell, but I have something else that I can do to get this money,

right? And, and, and so the point is, you

know, here's a formula for you problems. PSPs, problem

solution, problem solution, right? So if you have a problem

and you find a solution, chances are that solution is going to give you another,

another problem that you, you know. So for instance, you don't have enough clients,

you get clients and suddenly you discover your back end is not working,

right? You haven't thought about it back in. And so you, one of the things

that you also brought up is the fact that

even though you may think you are a solopreneur, you

really are not. Especially if you have got, you've

got apps that have support system support teams or

you've got other things, you know, that you're doing that have support teams.

And this became very clear to me

this summer when I thought I had canceled my workshop but

didn't tell anybody and so

found out that I still had affiliates that were good. You know,

a week before the workshop I had 20 people registered

because I had people that were promoting and I had never told anybody that I'd

cancel. That's a good

thing. That is, that is, that is not a humble

brag. That is like a really good thing. That momentum is going.

Okay, so tell me.

I have gotten so much from talking to you already. So

just because my brain is like a swirl. Let me let you bring

it in. If there were three things you would tell

entrepreneurs to do to help

them to grow their business, what would it be? Especially in the

marketing realm, figure out. How to have

systems, processes and outsourcing tools that

automate things and have

an accountability community or process. Put

accountability into your life. Because that is the other thing

that has moved the needle for me tremendously.

And I'm part of several different kinds of accountability

depending on what I need it for. And I'm very

consistent with it. I'm very consistent with what I

do. So I guess consistency is the other thing.

So have systems and outsource, have accountability

and be consistent in everything that you set up.

I truly believe consistency.

I did a post once that said consistency is not sexy and somebody

wrote me back and said consistency is very sexy because it

gets you results. So talk about

accountability more if you would, and the kind of accountability

groups and why it made such a big difference.

So I have a Monday morning one I've been doing for years and

years and years with a specific individual. And it's more,

it touches different aspects of my life. And then I have a

Friday morning group with other entrepreneur women where we

focus on a book, we read a section of the book and then talk

about it together. I have another Monday morning small group

pod where we go through our celebrations, our wins, our commitment

for last week and our commitment for the upcoming week.

And I've been involved in daily accountability

calls or group texting and things. And those

really push the needle. Because if you have a plan for

the upcoming week and then you have someone you need to check into, even if

it's just in a group text or a pod, however you set it up

or just a one on one, you can just find that person that

it can't just be your friend. Friends will let you off the hook too easily.

Or if they are a friend, they need to make a commitment to you that

they're not going to let you off the hook easily. And I'm

not a big punishment person. Some people do

the what happens, you know, the consequence of what

happens, the reward of what happens when we do it.

But there, there has to be something real

driving you forward because if it's just a buddy, they'll be like, oh, that's okay,

you didn't feel good today. You need to take care of yourself and you need

to do this and that. Yes, it is okay to have a sick

day, but how are you going to adjust to reach the

goal still for what you didn't achieve yesterday that needed to be

achieved so that you can still reach that goal, you know, so having

someone that has that Little bit of tough love

and an expectation in you so that you can, that's the point of an

accountability partner, you know, otherwise it's just a friend that you're

chatting with. And you're right, because I have

someone that we do joint working every morning. And you know, the

good news is we go, okay, what are we going to accomplish during this time

frame? Right? And so there are times when I come back

and go, I went down a rabbit hole.

And so it is important to have somebody that says, okay,

now what are you going to do? How are you going to get it back

on track? Right. And what I love about what you said is that

you have different accountabilities that, you know, groups that

do different things. And I think

what's really important in terms of making progress

is that your check in points are

as close to possible, as close together as possible. And, and I say

this because when I was losing weight,

my mantra for myself is it doesn't matter how many times you fall down,

it only matters how many times you get up and how fast. Because if you

say to yourself, I'm going to start this again next year, it's going to take

you forever. If you say next month, if you say next week, if

you say tomorrow, but if you say I'm going to, you know, I'm

gonna get back up and get started again on this next meal,

then your progress is not going to be hindered. And so I think that

is so important. And so I think one of the ways

to be accountable, you know, and consistent

is if you say, I'm gonna post at

least once a week, right? I mean, there have been times when

I was like, I do not feel like doing this. I didn't do it ahead

of time. And I'm like, okay, I told people I was

going to do this. And so, you know, and of

course over the time I've gotten smarter and I've, I've gotten ahead.

So. But the thing is I know that, you know,

I have my Sunday scoop that comes out on Sunday and

people are waiting for it. Yeah, the tool, the

automation tools, the skit, once you've written your creative, unique,

authentic human piece can be scheduled, right?

And so just deciding how you're going

to use automation and scheduling and

other resources are really important

because we can just do so much more, so much more

consistently if we determine how

to automate it. I love automating things. Oh yeah.

And I think that's part of, that's part of the,

the consistency is if you say, I'M gonna do

a newsletter. You know, like I do my Sunday scoop on

Sunday. And then there's a system now that I have a form where people can

put in their things so that I can, and I'm getting it to a point

where I can take the form and put it in the chat GPT and it'll

generate the whole thing for me. You know, it's, it's getting a lot

more streamlined. But the, the, the, the point for me

is the accountability is my feeling like people are waiting for it.

They know that it's coming. I promise other people that I'm going to promote their

stuff. Right. Okay. So let's see.

We, we did, we, we talked about the three things

and I would definitely say outsource as much as you can

possibly outsource and get it, you know, off your. And you're not

spending money. I mean, my example is would you,

although, okay, would you, would you pay a surgeon to do

filing? You know. No, you

would not. It would cost you a huge amount of money to do it where,

you know, and they wouldn't necessarily do it well either because,

because they're not interested in it. Right. So that is

one of the things to take a look at. The other thing is.

All right, let's shift gears again. And, and you said you wanted to build a

life that you like. So like a life, let's try it again. A

life that you like. When was the last time you

did something new for the first time? Something

new for the first time? You asked me this earlier. Well,

you know what? I am doing something new right now for the first time.

I have been consistently aspiring speaker and a paid

keynote and at other people's events and

I'm doing a legacy gratitude and a money gratitude event of

my own. So other than hosting the podcast, I've always been the

party crasher. And so we are now throwing

our own party and that has been a journey of discovery

and learning curve for

all that goes into, especially the way I envision it. I

want something more long term and not just a virtual summit that people are going

to give you tickets and then everything is gone when the event's over.

We're building long term websites and long term directories and micro

courses that will have long term value and you know, as

well as giving these speakers the spot to virtually speak

at an event live, you know, on these events.

So that has been a big, a new

exciting thing for me. We're not having the events themselves and until

next year, February and November of next year, but we're already building

collaboration and affiliate and speaker

relationships to get everything set and to

have a really amazing, successful event. And that was

my way of approaching it. Like, I've seen and watched so many other people

do this summit thing, this virtual summit thing, and

I've been on yours, and they're wonderful. But

I just, I knew I needed it to go differently

or be done differently if I was running it. And

so that's been a new thing for me that I've never done before.

And I did a summit this summer, and I

did it differently than the traditional way, and I loved it.

So more of them to come. So I'm looking forward to hearing

about that. Absolutely. So, all right, it's time for a

commercial. And if you haven't done it yet, make sure that you

subscribe and share this podcast podcast with other people. And as I

said, this is my way of giving back to my vibrant community because

I want you to be exposed to as many things as possible

to spark your creativity and your innovation. And so I hope you'll

continue to join me on the one small change so that we can keep

embarking on this journey so that we can collaborate, so we can build a

world of bold vision and innovative possibilities. So,

Jessica, you've told us so much, but if you had

to give people, like, your last words and, you know, share

words to live by, what would they be? So I mentioned that

I am the Italian mother of seven. So at one point we had six teenagers

in the house pretty much all at the same time because six of them are

all adults. Now we have a 14 year old at home. But one of the

things I'm going to leave you with a quote, and

maybe it makes me seem a little fool of myself, but it's a quote by

me. It's a Jessica Koch quote. And the quote

is now is later, sooner. So do it now. So if you'll think,

oh, I'll do that later because my teenagers say, so go do your homework,

go clean your room, oh, Mom, I'll do that later. And my comment

always was, now is later, so much sooner. So go do it

now. So now is later, sooner. Do it now. Don't do that to yourself.

Don't tell yourself that you'll do it later and you'll get to that later.

It's on the list for later. It's a project I'll do

later. If it makes your heart sing, do it now.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more.

I can't believe our time is up. All right. So, guys,

you know, remember, change is simple, but it's not always easy. And it

requires courage, resilience, and a willingness to step out your comfort

zone. If you're comfortable, then you are not good growing. So you want to be

uncomfortable. And so although this is not

uncomfortable, it is a change. You have to put time aside

for it. So I hope you will continue to join me on the one small

change as we embark on a great future together.

Jessica, thank you so much for giving me your time today. I really

appreciate it, and so does our audience. My pleasure.

Thank you so much. Don't forget to grab my free gift help.

Absolutely. And it's in the notes. Bye.