Jaz Broughton has been running her career coaching business for two years, but entrepreneurship is second nature for her. Both of her parents are multi-passionate entrepreneurs. She had her first business cards at 11. She sent her first invoice at 13.
"I've always been enchanted with creating solutions—be it a product or service—and connecting with people in this way," she tells us.
In fact, she's so dedicated to this kind of work that she does it in addition to her full-time job: Jaz's business is a side hustle.
From being coached to coaching others
In 2017, while working her first job at a tech startup, Jaz had a panic attack when walking out of the tube station. "That was all the wake-up call I needed," she says. "I crashed and burned. I took some time out, and came back with some strong boundaries on my time."
She also decided to try out the life coaching service her employer had just introduced.
It worked. It was so successful for her that she wanted to be able to help other people this same way. She began the journey to becoming a certified life coach. And in the meantime, she became a mental health champion at work, spending hours each week having "listening" sessions with colleagues.
Fast forward four months. "I completed the certification course and nervously asked my clients, who I was coaching for free, if they would be willing to pay me," she recalls. And they were. So Jaz's side hustle took off: she dove into creating content, delivering workshops, and offering 1:1 coaching.
And that's how Just Jaz was born.
Jaz's goal is to empower people in tech to have fulfilling lives to do work they love. When COVID-19 hit, she knew that goal became massively harder for almost everyone, so she planned an international conference to inspire attendees and create a revenue stream for speakers in need. "Small businesses will save small businesses—and inspiration generates more of that," says Jaz. In that spirit, she also runs workshops via her Side Hustle School, where she helps folks build their own side hustles.
The struggle of the side hustle
Jaz has a full-time job in tech, which means she needs to maximize her efficiency for her side hustle. "I'm acutely aware that if I only have evenings and weekends and lunchtimes to work with clients, I should spend the time that way," she says. "Not doing admin, downloads, uploads, and other tedious tasks."
Time is my most precious resource, and Zapier gave that back to me.
As she was getting started, she turned to a digital marketing agency to help her with her workflow. "We walked through my new shiny funnel that led to a free live webinar," she tells us. "They told me I'd need to get the registrants onto my mailing list. I said, 'No problem, I can do a CSV upload at the end of the week.' They politely declined and told me we'd set up a Zap instead."
And it's a good thing they did. Over the course of four weeks, Jaz added 500 people to her mailing list. "There were no CSV uploads, and there was no delay with new folks getting my welcome emails," she recalls. "I had saved time and got what I wanted simply by moving out of the way and trusting the tool to do it for me. Zapier was my assistant. All I needed to do was continue to work with my 1:1 clients and show up for the webinar."
That was her first Zap, but her aha moment came when she was running her first Facebook ad. "I sat in my bed and said, 'This is how the big companies do it. It's so nice to know what that feels like.' All my new subscribers were being welcomed while I slept."
Since then, Jaz has used Zapier to connect almost every other tool in her stack. For example, when someone registers for an event on Eventbrite, she asks them if they'd like to join her mailing list. If they say yes, Zapier automatically adds their information to her email marketing tool, Flodesk.
"Flodesk is my bread and butter—all roads lead there and start there," she says. "It's a relatively new app, so I was so happy to see it in Zapier's app directory."
With thousands of apps to choose from, you can connect almost any of your tools using Zapier. Take a look at our app directory, and then learn how Zapier works.
Jaz doesn't have time to waste. Between her full-time job and her growing business, she needs to protect her time and resources so she can focus on what she does best.
"Zapier lets me spend time in my zone of genius, increasing my impact and helping people create lives they want doing work they love."
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