by Shannon Matson

Every time we host a guest at Bungalow HQ and they’re able to see the operation in action, we end up having the “how do you manage everything?” conversation.

From the ever-changing projects at The Social Bungalow to the in-person needs of owning Bungalow Coffee, we are certainly busy.

Most importantly: We’re able to produce the volume of content, client support and coffee (my 3 favorite C’s) because of a strong team with defined “ownership lanes” that operates first from ‘radical care’ – our #1 core value across both businesses.

If not for their support, I would have to scale back massively to sustain the level of peace, focus and service I like to maintain. Some projects are more draining and some seasons are more stressful, but more often than not this level of business is something we’ve figured out (mostly lol) and I’m very proud of what we’ve created.

But that’s a BIG “we”, which leads me to…

A Team Effort:

The Social Bungalow Roles

Full Time Employees

Shannon (me)

OBJECTIVE

My focus each day is either client work, curriculum mapping, content creation, or general CEOing– whether that’s putting out a fire or trying to light one under a new project to get it going. It’s critical to my own success that I set intention for each part of my day at HQ, I live by my calendar and share it with the team so everyone knows where to find me if they need me or what periods of the day I may not be reachable (i.e during 1:1 meetings, interviews, or my dedicated focus hours). I make sure to set up my team for success ahead of time so that I can confidently go head down in my own work or jumping into a client session – read below to see how they’re set up for success!

Ryan; Chief Operating Officer

OBJECTIVE

• Collaborate with the CEO in setting and driving organizational vision, operational strategy, and hiring needs
• Drive quality and profitability to meet or exceed company’s objectives
• Assess organizational structure and recommend changes for efficiency
• Partner with Corporate Capital (financial management) to achieve favorable results with respect to asset management, sales, profitability, cash flow, systems, reporting and controls
• Provide accurate and timely reports outlining the operational condition of the company
• Spearhead the development, communication and implementation of effective growth strategies and processes

Rhosabelle; Customer Service & Systems Manager

OBJECTIVE

• Operate and optimize all systems
• Interact on the behalf of The Social Bungalow and Shannon through multiple platforms
• Continue education and hone skillsets in advanced funnel work
• Take ownership as the program manager of Full Suite – From onboarding facilitation to ongoing support communications

Annalyse; Media Manager

OBJECTIVE

Create & manage the marketing calendar for all brand activities, partnering closely with Shannon to ensure messaging is top notch, present quarterly plans to team, and drive the development of processes and documentation to help create “marketing manifesto’s” for our future campaign’s efficiency + future client support.

Do the above by creating ambitious, creative concepts and bring them to life on our digital platforms. Align & attack content trends for that “ever-relatable + go-to creator” place in our audience’s hearts. Playing with video and experimental formats that can take our accounts to the next level in the industry.

TSB’s Tried & True Contractors

Paid Ads & Automations with Max Sadik – You know him from Massive Passive Income Academy, and it’s likely you’ve also had the chance to experience his genius firsthand! He’s our internal ads and automations support wizard and an ongoing member of team Bungalow as we work on big projects.

Brand & Website Design with High Moon Studio – The experts in creating cult-brands, they’ve designed The Social Bungalow + Bungalow Coffee’s main brand, websites, and print assets. Our work with them is on a case by case basis and the demand varies by project.

Website Development with Rebel and Rise Co – We’ve worked with Katie and her team of developers in the past and couldn’t recommend them enough, they are ShowIt savants and tremendously helpful if you’re looking for dev support.

SEO – We’re working with a private SEO company to pull in more search, direct and referral traffic from Google, other’s sites and Pinterest. Our goal is to get more reach out of our blog content in order to pull in new eyeballs, offer a free resource and ultimately direct them to the evergreen funnel. This is a new endeavor, I’ll keep everyone posted on the results!

Copywriter(s) – While we pride ourselves on penning all of our social media copy, curriculum + trainings, PR articles, and main website copy, we still need to call in the big guns to nail conversion copy. We’ve worked with (and adored) Black Diamond Copy Co with Becca Mitchell (Massive Passive Income Academy sales page and emails), Jess Jordana (Business Expansion Blueprint & High Ticket Sales Systems sales pages), Gabby Jackson (Sales Content Creation Group Program sales page and for in-course resources) and Oxford Comma Co (Bungalow Coffee support).

Photo and Video with Keystyle Media – The latest The Social Bungalow brand imagery & video is from Keystyle Media by Yev Zakharkin. Yev also filmed and edited Massive Passive Income Academy, and will be the videographer behind our upcoming additions to all other Bungalow programs. Keystyle also shoots for Bungalow Coffee – From website imagery to product shots for our new app. He’s located in Las Vegas, but available for travel.

Taxes & Bookkeeping with Corporate Capital – Corp Cap is the company that we initially formed our LLC through. We utilize them for a full suite of services: Bookkeeping, taxes, asset protection, and prior to the offices, they acted as the P.O. Box for our public address.

Legal Services through Taylor M. Tieman, Esq. – Taylor is the lawyer who’s secured The Social Bungalow and Bungalow Coffee trademarks. We’ve hired her for custom legal documents such as Earnings and Affiliate Disclosures, Fulfillment Policy and Refund Policy, as well as utilize her Library Card suite of contracts for:

• Coaching agreement
• Amendment / modification to agreement
• Terms & conditions + privacy policy
• Copyright license
• Employment agreement
• Guest speaker agreement
• Instagram giveaway rules
• Media release form
• NonDisclosure / confidentiality agreement
• Testimonial release

*Taylor is a long term friend and trusted legal council of The Social Bungalow, she offers TSB members 10% off their contracts when entering BUNGALOW at checkout of mentioning us when hiring for legal services.

Bungalow Coffee Roles

Full Time Employees (8 in total)

Josh; Shop Manager – As manager extraordinaire of the coffee shop, Josh maintains the day-to-day tasks that allow us to look ahead and have the time to work on big picture projects for Bungalow Coffee. Josh works closely with the barista team to manage ongoing training, creates the schedule, coordinates with shift leads, and will jump on bar (look at us using coffee shop lingo 😉) when needed.

Shift Leads – We currently have two fabulous shift leads who serve as go-to’s for the barista team. When needed, our shift leads can escalate any issues to Josh, who can then take it to Ryan and I, but having leadership in place at every shift allows for smaller points of contention to be handled on the spot. Both shift leads are cross trained on kitchen and bar, meaning they’re able to jump in to either department should we need it.

Kitchen Lead – In addition to our shift leads, we have a dedicated kitchen lead who acts as an added point of high-quality execution. This role is crucial for not only maintaining the highest level of excellence in food safety, but also keeping the kitchen organized and in optimal working order.

Baristas – We are extremely proud of our specialty coffee barista team, as they are not only talented in the art of the pour but also genuinely awesome people to see when you’re grabbing your favorite beverage.

Contractors

Outsourced Instagram Support – Bungalow Coffee uses an outside Instagram wiz to schedule posts and keep an eye on the ‘gram during busy times so that Ryan is free to respond to comments and authenticlaly engage with our local community in the DMs.

Outsourced Surprise Health Inspections – Just like on Undercover Boss, we work with a surprise health inspection company to do random pop up visits + audits (just like the health department does). The staff doesn’t know who’s real and who’s fake, we review our score in the monthly team meeting and identify opportunities to make micro shifts for prep speed and sustainability.

Managed with Meetings

Let’s zoom back to Shannon in the corporate world for a moment *That’s So Raven spinning effect*

There I was in a pre meeting to discuss the upcoming meeting that addressed the next meeting about meetings. AHHH! I can’t tell you the amount of times I exclaimed into the sky, “What are our takeaways!?”

So if there’s one thing I’ve carried with me into my life as a CEO, it’s… Avoiding meetings. KIDDING. A little. I do try to keep them to a minimum and utilize our systems & communication channels as much as possible.

Here’s what we do routinely:

Monthly Social Bungalow Leadership Meeting: Ryan and I to sit down and go over everything “numbers” for TSB – Traffic, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, anywhere I’m feeling stuck, inefficiencies or issues that have arisen. This is a data-driven session that allows us to make adjustments to plan for the next month and quarter.

Monthly Bungalow Coffee Leadership Meeting: Josh, Ryan, and I get together to review the prior month’s reports and personnel updates from the coffee shop, which we then use to guide any new plans for the following month. There is a stark difference between this meeting and our TSB sessions, as we’re looking at inventory, foot traffic (was it up because of a DTLV festival, down because of the rain?), and other variables that simply don’t exist in the online business space.

Monthly 1:1 with Bungalow Coffee Shift Leads: This is a 30 minute meeting just between the shift lead and Ryan. They use this as a safe space to share any concerns, personal updates, and be able to speak candidly about operations.

Monthly Bungalow Coffee All Hands Meeting: Once per month at 4:30pm (after close) we all get together and talk updates and share opportunities for tightening things up. Sometimes we have pizza from our DTLV neighbor, other times we do updated menu tastings to ensure everyone’s on the same page with execution. This is a great connection point for some baristas who haven’t worked together in awhile, and for us to hear the collective voice of ‘change’ if there’s an apparent update wanted.

Monthly Systems & Customer Service Check-In: This is my set time to talk with Rhosabelle about any requests in the community, recurring issues in the Hello@ inbox, wins with students, optimize program management, review any tech glitches, organize systems, SOPs for upcoming events/launches, and talk through ideas that she’s brought to the table to streamline our operations further.

Bi-Weekly Marketing Meeting: Every two weeks Annalyse and I sit down for a marketing specific meeting. We review our inbound marketing ecosystem and see if there’s anything we need to add to our original quarterly marketing strategy – social channels, new trends that have popped up over the last week, create a plan for any last minute assets that we need, discuss implementation, and map out a timeline.

Weekly Social Bungalow Team Meeting: Every Tuesday the whole TSB team gets together for a review about last week’s to do list, a presentation on each person’s new priorities list, and any other outstanding team topics. It’s our opportunity to get everyone on the same page so that we can execute without creating bottle necks for one another. Our meetings are recoreded on zoom and have accomodating notes prepared in ClickUp; the team refers to both the recording and meeting notes thorughout the week as they work through their tasks.

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My Daily Schedule

You know I love an itinerary, so I do my best to stick to the same schedule each day. You can see from above that we have a great team in place to make sure things run smoothly, so because of it my day’s typically look somehting like this…

5-9am:
Suns up, I’m up! Something I’m endlessly grateful for as a business owner is the ability to wake up without an alarm each day. If I slept well, I’ll usually be up around 5:30-6am, if I tossed and turned I’ll naturally wake up closer to 7am. this freedom to get as much sleep as I need is the greatest impacter of my day.

I jump up, scrape my tongue (do this if you don’t already!), drink a couple big glasses of water + get some light movement while we make pour over coffee at home.

From here, I grab my coffee & laptop and head into the den to catch up on morning work. For some people, they don’t touch their electronics until their reading/meditating/journaling is done – for me, I feel most at peace having a handle on some of my projects / people who need info from me, especially while my cognitive energy is at its highest.

To keep myself organized in the AM, I write a note using the notes app on my phone the night before. I title it “Morning!” and only list 3 things to do + what order to do them in.

It’s at this time that I’ll review my calendar for the day, making sure to note any updates to the schedule and finalize whatever I need to ensure meetings run smoothly throughout the day. Sometimes I’m in back-to-back meetings all day with the team, contractors, or VIP Clients, and other days I strategically leave open so I can go head-down in a flow state.

I recently shared my tips for Organizing Your Calendar, and making these upgrades to my own schedule has drastically improved my ability to focus and produce.

I tackle those and then move on to..

Depending on the day, Ryan and I might pop over to Bungalow Coffee to catch the early crowd and support the team OR we head to the gym and attend a class in the 8am hour.

Since opening Bungalow Coffee, I’ve learned that a physical business throws a whole new element into the mix so I try my best to stick with the schedule for the day and not let myself get too sidetracked by the business being right in front of your face. Setting clear boundaries on my calendar has been a great way to balance both businesses, and the team understands that certain blocks on the calendar mean I’ll be in deep-focus mode so anything they need from me should be discussed before that time.

And on that note, the team has full access to my calendar. So everyone knows where I’ll be and when they can expect to hear from me if they have pop-up questions.

10am:
No matter the morning, we’re always at the shop by 10am. We live 30-40 minutes from the coffee shop, when you add that in with the gym, walking the dogs, and getting ready – I don’t start any meetings or trainings until 10-11am so there isn’t a frenzied scramble.

If I don’t have any meetings on the calendar, I’ll start out my workday in the coffee shop, grabbing one of my favorite seats and noise-canceling the world as I whip open my laptop. By now I’m already in ‘itching to dive back in’ mode, I’ll either pick up where I left off with the morning work or move on to my next area of focus.

These days I’m hyper-focused on the build-out of our Full Suite launch, community and updates to all course curriculums. So there’s a LOT of head-down-flow-state work going on.

12pm:
I’ll usually pivot mid-morning, head upstairs to the offices, and give myself a break from my first project. I’ll normally dive into mapping out curriculum for upcoming workshops and events, prepping for podcast interviews, catching up on emails, checking in with the team, and beginning to batch film reels and story content.

The TSB team and I tend to follow an A/B week schedule where A weeks we’re sprinting on one main project, and B weeks we’re scrumming on a few different projects. This is the time I’ll course-correct any priorities for myself and the team.

If I have plans to post a story day-of, I’ll usually plan to do it around mid-day when I know things downstairs are rocking and rolling and I can just close my office door and get some much-needed face time with YOU.

1pm:
I’ll break once more from my mid-day projects and grab a quick bite to eat. Some days it’s a BYOS (bring your own salad) situation, but most days I’ll pop back downstairs to make a salad in the kitchen… trust me, having a full kitchen below your HQ is a major plus!

If you’re a longtime community member you may have already snagged the recipe, but here’s everything that goes in my beloved go-to salad…

My Favorite Salad Recipe: Chopped romaine base topped with radishes, green apple, cucumber, carrots, green onions, unsalted pistachios. The dressing is 1 lemon, tbsp olive oil, a splash of ACV, a sprinkle of Himalayan sea salt & black pepper.

2pm:

Every Tuesday we have a Social Bungalow team meeting, we’ll spend an hour mapping out everything that we have on the docket for the week, breaking down upcoming sprint weeks, problem solving when needed, and seeing where we can collaborate more.

Multiple Beverages required for team meetings- it’s the rule.

3-4:30pm:
Since I’m such a morning person, I recognize that the afternoon can take a lot out of me if I’m not careful. Because of afternoon-brain setting in, I try to be finished with external meetings and calls by this time. I’ll do another sweep of my inbox, team chat, and DM’s to be sure I’m not letting anything get too far off the radar.

Once I know things are still running smoothly in all inboxes, I’ll usually circle back to any of the bigger projects that I had on the docket for the day. I’ll button up loose ends and make sure to update my calendar with new tasks in relation to the main project.

4:30pm
I’ll usually head home after closing out my projects for the day- the traffic is dense heading back to our neck of the woods, so we try to make it on the road by this time. I use the drive (in and out) to catch up on Voxers or Instagram voice memos.

6-8pm:
Because I *typically* start my work day at 6:30am, I take 6:30pm as the sign to go “pencils down!” I close everything up and don’t look at my computer or phone until the morning. I have an iPad that only has the podcast app, streaming services, and personal text messages. I exclusively use this for the night to listen to something interesting while I make dinner (we follow the Alkaline diet throughout the week), we eat & clean up, I then strap on my sneakers and play an hour of Beat Saber & Supernatural on the Oculus (it’s my fun PM workout) and take the dogs around the block.

From here I get ready for bed, make a cup of tea, watch 20ish minutes of the Real Housewives, put it away once I finish my tea, and turn over to my latest thriller novel. I’m asleep come 9:30pm.

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No day is exactly the same and you’ll always need to be flexible, but multi-business ownership is absolutely doable. How do you set up your days for productivity AND peace? Let me know on Instagram!