Rai Cornell 0:02
Welcome to Season Two of the SOAR! podcast, the place for creative entrepreneurs who want to build healthier, happier, more profitable, self-employed businesses. I’m your host Rai Hyde Cornell, business mentor at Chiron Consulting, and CEO & Senior Copywriter at Cornell Content Marketing. Get ready to soar!

Welcome to the SOAR! Podcast. Today, I have with us the lovely Jennifer Colwell. Jennifer, tell us all about your business and what it is that you do.

Jennifer Lea 0:41
Hi, thanks so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here today. I started a company in October of 2021 called Entry Envy. And we do interior and exterior custom home entry signs with either modern house numbers, last names or monograms. And each sign features a four-by-eight-inch planters box to get our subscription holiday and seasonal bow decor. So you don’t ever have to figure out what to put on your porch or your door for the next season.

Rai Cornell 1:11
It’s so cool. I absolutely love this idea. And when you and I first connected, I think it was through Sub Summit or Subta somehow because I’m big in the subscription space on the Cornell side. And I was like, this is insane. I’ve never heard of this idea before. This is brilliant. And it’s very rare nowadays that you come upon an idea that is truly new and novel. How did you come up with this idea for this business?

Jennifer Lea 1:42
It’s an elegant solution to an everyday problem, right? I was my own first customer. So, the story is, it has to go back to January of 2020. And I made the choice to leave my marriage of 15 years and moved into a fixer-upper. And I wasn’t afraid of that because my dad was in construction. And I was never afraid of tackling different kinds of projects in the home. And my mom worked at a restaurant at night so I would end up oftentimes at side jobs. And I would have a camera in my hand or a screwdriver or whatever, helping my dad who’s like, you know, we didn’t have video games and cell phones, so he’d say, “Is your homework done?” and I’d end up with that. So when I moved into this fixer-upper, I just knew that I was going to tackle it, and I was gonna start working on the house. And I was about 80% of the way done. And the inside of the house looked brand new, but the outside of the house still looked 50 years old. I was out of time, energy, and money. And I was like how do I add curb appeal without spending any of these resources. So I decided to paint the garage door, paint the front door, and then I went on a mission to find a modern house number sign. So I’m in the world of Etsy and Pinterest and Google and I found one sign I really kind of liked that had the planters box on it. And I kept coming back to it but in my head, I had every objection to this being a bad idea. Because I live in Nebraska- What is going to grow outside for more than three or four months of the year? Who has time to water something twice a day? Now I’m gonna have to you know, end up with water over my porch like, what?! Anyway, I had everything out in my garage to make it. I had extra wood, had a nail gun had a side so it wasn’t gonna cost me anything to just do an experiment. So I make the sign, and it’s pretty cute. And then I go down to Michael’s and I stand there in the flower department for an hour and try and figure out, it’s about two weeks before Easter in 2021, trying to figure out what I’m going to put in there that’s gonna look cute. And I have to spend $37 because they don’t just sell three tulips they sell a bunch, you know, they don’t just sell a small amount of moss, they sell a whole bag. So I guess then I had all extra stuff could have made 10 more signs that was the first light bulb that went off. And the sign was so cute. I sent it to my mom, she’s like, well, that’s pretty darn cute. And then I realized that Easter was going to be over in two weeks. And I was going to have to do the whole thing again. And I thought watering this twice a day was gonna be bad, you know? And so it was honestly like, you know, when they talk about you know, mind blown, and that’s the only way I can describe what happened over the next 48 hours in my head. I built this entire company in my head at that moment that I realized that everyone – I was tired of wreaths, I’ve always liked to have my front porch decorated. And I knew I was going to do the work for myself. And then I thought everyone has a front door and some people need house timbers but some people just need their last name. Some people want a monogram. Some people want a horizontal sign some people are gonna want a vertical sign. And then what do I do about the people who have apartments or townhomes or assisted living? So I created a smaller indoor version. And so it was just truly this 48 hour brainstorm super fun activity of just thinking I have a business on my hands.

Rai Cornell 5:02
I think that’s something that a lot of entrepreneurs, people who are just naturally entrepreneurial minded, they may not even identify as entrepreneurs, but they just kind of always have these ideas percolating. They get these ideas, and they’re like, Oh, my husband is doing this every time we watch a TV show, like we’ll watch a cooking show, he’ll be like, Oh, we should start a restaurant and watch this other show and he’s like, Oh, we should start a metal workshop or something. He just gets all these ideas all the time. And, I think a lot of people have that experience, where they just have all these ideas flowing through their head all the time. And that’s a great quality to have, but you took it the next step, you went from this power brainstorm in 48 hours to “Oh my God, now I actually have a business!”. You took it to that next level of taking action on that idea. What was that like for you? And what do you think it is that enabled you to take it to that stuff that most people never do?

Jennifer Lea 6:04
It’s a really interesting question, I’ve been asked a lot of questions. And that one, I have not been yet, which is really interesting, to reflect on this. I would say that I’ve always wanted to run my own business. But I didn’t know what it was going to be. I went back for my master’s degree in 2013, because I thought I wanted to be a law firm consultant. My first six years out of college, I was the marketing director for a plastic surgery group, then for my next 18 years, I have been the marketing or I’m sorry, the executive director for two different law firms. So, my background was all in legal and it made the most sense that I could become a law firm consultant – that was well known in the legal community, had a lot of credibility already there already a lot of law firm consulting companies, but there were also a lot of opportunities to be able to, to pursue some other ideas and take over somebody’s practice. And so it just would have been an easy thing to do. So I went back for my MBA, and I wrote a book, but 85% of the way through that book, I realized that I did not want to manage law firms, I didn’t want to be a consultant, I didn’t want to do any of that. And so, you know, I think for my journey, learning what I don’t want to do has been as important as what I do want to do. And maybe I still don’t know sometimes what I want to do, I’m happy with where I’m at but I don’t think the story’s been written, I don’t think the journey is done, I think my best days are still to come. I just believe that. So, when I had kind of come to this epiphany in 2014, that I was done with my MBA, had a book written that I didn’t want to publish, and a career path that I decided no longer was for me, I had a one year old and a three year old, I didn’t, I couldn’t really start exploring too many other things, just from a logistics standpoint. I did look a lot of different and a lot of different business concepts, it was marine choices, and nothing felt right, nothing sat right. It’s just, I wanted to, but it’s just-the calling wasn’t there. And so I really just sat with all of that for a long time. What was interesting, and being 100% honest, as I always am, is that I got to a point in my career a couple years ago, that I thought that I wasn’t happy in my career. It actually wasn’t my career, it was my marriage. And I think that we look for, we look for a lot of different things. And sometimes, you know, when when there’s answers to issues, or you know, it’s easy to point fingers at people or problems or, you know, whatever it is, but at the end of the day, we have to be happy with ourselves before we can make somebody else happy, and before we can be successful in who we are. And so for me, it wasn’t my job, it was an easy place to point a finger and say, well, it must be the lawyers that I’m working for. It must be that I’m bored. It must be that I’m not challenged or you know, but it wasn’t, it was my marriage. And when I kind of came to that truth for myself, I had to make a choice. And that, I said was the hardest decision of my adult life – was to get divorced, to leave my husband, because that was not part of our family values. The scariest decision I’ve made in my adult life was to quit my job as a single mom with two kids. And I’ve done both of those. So to go back to your question of why did I take the action I did. I think it all has to do with knowing I always wanted to own my own company, not knowing what I wanted that to be, and when it finally fit, right? I was in a space, I was already divorced, I had the freedom, the time, the money, no one to ask permission to do this. And I had this pull like I, this is fun, I could sell this, I could do this, I just decided to kind of follow the intuition. You know, we’ve got our head, our heart, and our gut, and which of the three are talking, and I think, I think I got this. So my very first step was really to do market research. Because marketing is my background. I mean, they knew that like, I can do this is great for the planet, but if nobody’s gonna buy it, I don’t have a viable product. And so that was step two. And when I knew I had product viability, then I said, Okay, we’re gonna keep going.

Rai Cornell 10:49
Yeah, and it sounds like you, you really had this tug of war of the head, the heart, and the gut. And I want to go a level deeper into what you said, because it wasn’t just the decision to start Entry Envy, that was a huge decision, that was one of those entrepreneurial brainstorm moments were like, Oh, this would be such a good idea. And then you took that next step- to actually take action. But you also did this, and I feel like a lot of our listeners can relate to this, you did this in other areas of your life, leaving your traditional employment job, not following the logical path of if you wanted to be your own boss, while you’ve got all this background in legal and, you know, that runs very parallel to my story, where I had all this background in the mental health world, psychology degrees, criminology degrees, mental health hospital, drug rehab facilities, you know, work experience in all those places. And yet, I went a completely different direction. And you did too. And then again, with your marriage, where you’re saying, you know, our family values were saying this, and I thought I was not happy in my professional career but actually, you discovered that it was your marriage, that was the thing that needed to come to an end. How did you decipher? Between, you have all of these logical options, you have all of these options that look good on paper, and then you have this gut instinct, which on paper, and logically doesn’t seem to make any sense. But that’s the one that you chose. And it ended up being the right decision. How would you advise someone who is going through a similar sort of dilemma where they are in this constant tug of war between head, heart and gut?

Jennifer Lea 12:38
Yeah, it’s not easy. But I think part of it is the basics of get up, dressed up, show up. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, and as long as you’re moving forward, you’re not moving back. And there are some dark days, and there are some periods where you definitely kind of step back and go, Oh, my God, what the hell am I doing and isn’t the right thing. But you know, and I think I’ve been third huge part of it is just trusting. And my first word of the year this year is pick a word of the year was fearless. And that was, I can’t remember who said it. The most recent person I remember saying it is Rachel Hollis, who said, doubt has killed more dreams than failure ever have. And so it’s that piece of, you know, you can choose to be scared and not do a lot of things or you can choose to be scared and keep doing, and just go forward. And I like to be in control. And I want to choose my life. I want to design my life. And it’s kind of like, I guess my main equation, and that’s a good one but it’s just like, No, if I’m going to, you know, get in a car and it’s gonna go 200 miles down the road, would I rather drive it? Or would I rather have somebody else drive it? Oh, I’d rather drive it, I trust myself more than I trust anyone else. And when I realized that, so that’s my second word of the year is trust and that is trusting me, it’s trusting the universe, it’s trusting God, it’s trusting that the processes working out the way that it’s supposed to, and working out so much better. I mean, I turned the awful- not happy version of myself two and a half years ago to that literally kind of a pot of gold, you know, that it’s like, you know, wow, this is okay. And that’s – who could have written that, right? And I don’t know how the story ends. We’re still writing it, and that’s good. But I think it’s just, it is just choosing you and choosing not to be scared, just be in the driver’s seat. And sometimes, and I’m just having this conversation with a gal the other day, you know, people who are super, super logical and data driven, this is hard. And I, I am, but I’m also a lot of gut, I’m a lot of heart. And it’s the balance. And I don’t think that there’s anything easy about it. But I think you’ve got to trust yourself, and know that you are enough. And you have, you’re going to make the right choices for you, at the time that you make them. And everything is happening for a reason. And even when sometimes you wonder why there’s dark moments, and there’s days that you just are questioning, just trust. Trust, it’s all happening for a reason. And I definitely, every day have those issues of, you know, it’s easy to look at my sometimes that, you know, sales with us, like a watched pot never boils. Well, some days I look at it, and I don’t, oh, that doesn’t look so good today. But you know, if you look at things over time, and you just trust that it is all happening, and even those days are happening for a reason. It’s part of the process.

Rai Cornell 16:08
And it’s, I love that you mentioned the word Trust, because that’s ultimately, when everything is on our shoulders, or when it feels like everything is on our shoulders, that’s all you can do. Otherwise, the alternative is you crumble, and you give up because of self doubt, to your point. So, on that note, we’re gonna take a super short break. And when we come back, I want to dive into your wealth of knowledge in the business arena. There’s so many things I want to ask you about Entry Envy in particular. So we will be right back. Hey, Rai Hyde Cornell here. If you’re tired of doing it all yourself all on your own, and you want a supportive, high vibe place to call your home, then the Archer Mastermind is where you belong. This small group program includes monthly business building trainings designed specifically for you and where you are in your business. Chiron counsel group coaching sessions, motivating co-working sessions, special ticket prices for retreats in Colorado Springs, Las Vegas, Sedona plus free access to business building week and everything inside the Chiron Academy which includes all of my workshops and courses to help you make massive leaps forward quickly. The Archer Mastermind is the ideal place for creative entrepreneurs, who are ready to take their businesses seriously and remove roadblocks to success every single day. Early bird pricing is open now through November 30th. And if you’re listening to this after November 30th, you can still get in, we opened the doors for the Q1-Q2 mastermind cohort on January 1st. So check it out, learn more and apply at chironconsulting.us/mastermind. And we’re back talking with Jennifer Colwell about her business, Entry Envy, and how she got to this point. Now, Jennifer, one of the things that I, I know a little bit about your business, I have that lucky perspective. And so I want to ask you about one of the recent shifts that you made with Entry Envy. And I think this really ties in with what we were talking about before the break with regard to trusting your gut and knowing what’s right for you. So when we first met, and we started talking about your business and your target audience, you told me your target audience is anybody with a door- whether that’s an outside door, like a house, condo, or something like that, or in apartments, dorm rooms, assisted living facilities, where they have these inside dorm, or I’m sorry, inside doors to the rest of the community, and as a marketing person myself, and you know this as well, because you have a marketing background, that is the hardest thing to market, it’s when your target audience is literally everyone. And so, first of all, that didn’t stop you from rolling with this idea that was going against the traditional marketing rules of “niche down niche down niche down,” and on top of that you recently made a pivot where you decided to go from speaking directly to consumers- the individual door owners, to more of a B2B business model- where you are talking to the assisted living facilities and these communities that have multiple doors in one location. Tell me about what that pivot was like for you and how you came to your decision to make such a big change within your business.

Jennifer Lea 19:49
Well, I think that, you know, I’ve managed $10 million companies for 20 years, starting a startup is completely different, which I recognized from the very beginning. And everything is created out of dirt from the ground up. And as you’ve kind of identified the plus and the minus of this company is there is nothing like it, there is no one that is doing anything like this. It’s a complicated subscription product because it has a base product in which the subscription has to be delivered. The closest comparison would be maybe something like Peloton, where you have to buy the equipment, and then you have a monthly subscription. But that’s software, this is different. Or the keurig, you buy the keurig and your pods are kind of the subscription. So it’s like, it’s sort of similar, but it’s not. So that’s definitely been a challenge. And then as you say, there’s a niche per se. You throw a lot of spaghetti on the wall, and you see what sticks, and you double down on what does and you take off what doesn’t, in the simplest form. And, you know, I didn’t know in the beginning whether I was selling a product or whether I was selling a subscription. I know now I am, it is not, it’s to sell signs without subscription but I’ve known from the very beginning, my business model is not sustainable as a sign company. That’s not really what we deliver. So it’s, I have found that, you know, if I’m on the direct to consumer side, people that are really interested in our products are people who already understand and value a subscription of some sort- they get convenience, they get the need, they like to get a present in the mail. So we’re not setting that side away by any means. But what our customers started telling us in that world was 30-40% of them were buying repeat signs, and they were buying them for a second home, they were buying them for their mother or father in assisted living, they were buying them for wedding gifts or anniversary gifts or birthday gifts. They were just they were loving them as gifts. And the assisted living piece was really interesting, because we were growing at an interesting case in that space. And it was not one that was obvious. And it’s not that the customer, the person who’s living in an assisted living facility, or even if they’re out their house, my grandma’s 91, she’s not going to subscribe because she doesn’t do online, she doesn’t get that whole concept. But what a great gift for us to give her and she knows she’s thought of and loved every month and she can’t get out shop, you know, and go find all of the decorations the way that she used to. And this is something that brings her joy every month, and it brings a smile. And so it’s easy for me to relate to that because it’s her, you know, and that’s what other women in particular, were identifying. And so then it became the assisted living facility saying, “Wait a second, where did you get this really cute sign at?” you know what a great way to personalize the space. It’s really important to seniors who have moved into assisted living, even independent living, that is their home. And they don’t want to make it feel like a room and but we need to be memorable, we need their name on it, we need it to look, if they decorated their front door when they were 40 at their house, they probably still want to decorate their door, even if they’re you know, 80 or 90 or 100. So that was an area that seemed to be obvious. And when you get into the marketing world, if you can sell in bunches, you’re always going to be better off, if you can do it at a commercial business to business level.

Early on, you know kind of Business 101 is pick your fastest way to cash to get a company off the ground, because the number one reason startups fail is due to lack of funding and cashflow. So how do you create that cashflow quickly in order to be able to do more of what you maybe want to do down the road? The other piece that became very obvious from our customers were that any of them who are real estate agent said wow, this is a great closing gift. And you know it’s memorable, it’s on there permanently on their house, they can use it as a pot buy because they can do the refill kits. It’s personal, it’s needed. You know, there’s a lot of houses that you know, need to have identification, even if they have their house numbers. You know how many times you go to some of these new house and you’re not sure if you’re at the right door, you know, your UPS guy hasn’t been trained yet on which is your house, if you can look and see. Oh, you know, I see, I see, I see, okay, that must be place, whatever. So it just became evident that if I could spend time working directly with assisted living, independent senior living facility groups and brokerages and the real estate agent side of it and you know, groups and teams to be able to get to those people, That was going to be a good business decision, not to the exclusion from the direct to consumer side by any means, but that’s where I would say we went with that.

Rai Cornell 24:58
And so what’s fascinating to me about your way, you are an incredibly successful business woman, and you have some vast experience in corporations as well as in running your own business. And I like to kind of dissect that and go, man, what makes her so successful? What knowledge? What insight does she have that we can pass on to people who are starting up. And the fascinating thing to me is that you aren’t all in one camp or the other. You aren’t all, trust your gut, go with your gut, always follow your gut, like screw the world, don’t listen to anybody else. Just follow what your instinct is telling you. There’s some of that, but then there’s also the what I’m hearing you say, we listen to our customers. The customers were saying this, the market trends are saying this, the sales patterns were showing this. And so you looked at the data, you looked at the actual tangible physical evidence of what would be successful in your business? How do you as a very intuitive woman, and also a very business savvy woman, how do you marry the two? And how do you know when one begins and the other ends?

Jennifer Lea 26:12
And yes, great questions. I guess the easiest answer would be I think that’s what makes a really good entrepreneur is that you have to have a combination of both. And I don’t know that it’s teachable. My number three Gallup strengths and top five Gallup strengths, and I love Gallup, I’m an Enneagram 7 with a strong one behind. I’m high I with a lot of DNS and the DiSC world, my top five Gallup strengths are strategic, maximizer, arranger, woo, and achiever. And I always throw my sixth one in which is input, because I lead with that a lot as well. So that strategic, maximizer, arranger, man, they drive every minute of every day, whether I want them to or not, like, just that’s the way I think. So where are we trying? Where are we going? Where are we trying to go? That’s number one. How do we get there in the most efficient, effective, highest ROI way possible is number two. And then that arranger piece, or what are all of the resources, people, profit, you know, environment, I mean, everything, but it’s going to take to be able to do that in the most efficient, highest ROI way to get to where we’re trying to go. And so I think that just, I just naturally think through all of those pieces. Now, those- every strength is a weakness, and every weakness is a strength. And one of the things that sometimes can feel very slow to people, is I stop and back up a lot. When I say, you know, wherever people, they just do it, just do it. I’m like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, because nothing is done in isolation. Every single time you do one thing, it is absolutely going to affect 10 other things. And so what are the impacts of that? So they could be good, or they could be bad. But I stop and back up a lot and say, hold on, let’s think through how does this whole thing make a difference? So when we talk about the gut, and we talk about the data and heart and all of those pieces? A lot of times that is that Hold on, stop back up a minute, and say, Okay, this is what my gut says, but what else? What else do I need to be looking at? What do I not know? What am I missing? And that’s where my number six comes in, which is input. I ask, I ask the customers, I ask my coaches, I ask people around me on my team, I ask a lot of questions. Now, I’m not afraid to make the decision, I will absolutely, at the end of the day, say this is what we’re doing, and we’ll go forward because I’m a big believer in you know, no analysis by paralysis, like forget it, you gotta move. But I want that, that input. And that also helps me get by it helps people understand, especially on my team, why I’m making the decision that I am. I listened to you, I heard you. But based on everything I heard this is what we’re doing different. So it’s, it gets there. I don’t know that there is a line, but it’s drawing upon all of the resources that you have available to make a decision at that time. You’re never going to have all of the information. You’ve got to make a decision based on what you know, at that time. But find out as much as you can and then go and then don’t go back, right? Like, you did it. Like that is not the “Stop, back up time” like I am, you know, go. But in the moment of making the decision, you got to stop for a second and think through that before you just hit the 60 mile an hour but does that make sense?

Rai Cornell 29:58
It does. Absolutely makes sense. And I think in addition to what we can learn about your thought process and the way that you pull in all these different sources of information from yourself, as well as from outside people, I think the kind of like, meta layer in all of this is knowing yourself. So you know yourself, you’ve done the disc assessments, you’ve done the Enneagram, you’ve done the strengths finder through Gallup, and, you know all of your strengths. And I love that you said every strength is a weakness and every weakness is a strength. And I think that’s really the takeaway here, because it’s going to be extremely rare for someone to have the same combination of strengths as you do. But anybody listening to this, who wants to kind of figure out their own best practice for making decisions, needs to go better understand themselves, and these tools, which we’ll link to in the show notes. And so, so glad you mentioned these, these are great resources for really understanding the strengths that you innately have within yourself, and how you can leverage those to make these better business decisions for yourself.

Jennifer Lea 31:03
I mean, what they – every single study that has ever been done on leadership doesn’t argue about one thing. And that is the most important quality of a leader is self awareness. Absolutely, you’ve got to know yourself. And the journey is never done. I mean, I think the quote is something like that the company is only going to go as far as the entrepreneur does, right? So it’s that constant journey of personal growth and development and we never know all the answers, we would never good enough. You know, we we have to keep learning and surround yourself with people who are smarter than you in what they do. I don’t want a team that’s the same. Oh, dear God, we don’t two need to of me. We need, we need people who, who think different, right? And that’s it, you know, and my mom, so I’ll tell you a great example. So my mom is very, very involved in our company. And she’s, she’s a rock star, it’s so fun to work with her. So my number 34 bottom of the barrel, can’t tie my shoe the same way twice is consistency. got none of it. My world I see every shade of gray, every situation is different. Everything is unique, again, can be a strength as well. But if you asked me to do the same thing every day at 8am? I’m out. Like, I mean, you know, they talk about raising kids and like the top, like, most important qualities, I don’t know if you have like kids and that like they say you got to have discipline and consistency, those are the top two things and like, “oh my god, I’m destined to be a horrible mother!” We’re gonna go off of that. Because discipline’s like 18, and consistency’s 34, and thinking, oh, man, Lord help me. But they say it takes a community/a village to raise a child. So I have been depending on my village to have those things that I don’t for the last 10 and 12 years as my girls are. But my mother’s top 3 strengths. And give me just feel a tiny bit sorry for me for a second, discipline, consistency and responsibility. That’s what I was raised for

Rai Cornell 33:10
polar opposites.

Jennifer Lea 33:12
And try and be raised by that. I mean, everything in my world for 44 years needed to be done yesterday for my mom, always, you know, and God loved her. But and it’s probably one of the things that absolutely has balanced, the fact that those are not naturally my strengths, right? You know, but they are hers. So it’s being aware of yourself, and being aware of your team, and the people that are on your team with you, and how do you work together because great teams are by design, I keep saying I’m gonna write a book, and it’s going to be called here, someday, maybe by the end of next year, we’ll see. But it’s lonely at the top starting at age six. And the reason why I say that is I’ve always been a leader naturally. And my children are two, they’ve been running on the playground since they were two. And I in a lot of ways, I see it in specially my daughter who’s now in middle school. I feel sorry for her for right now because I know how hard it’s going to be for her to get through the educational years of our institutional system. And every single person who’s going to come into those classrooms from the company is going to talk to these kids and say, the most important thing that you know how to do is to be a team member to work together to get along with people. It’s the most important quality. Yeah, I know I heard that I heard that all the way through grade school through middle school through high school through college. And by the time I got done with college, I was so tired of hearing that word “team.” What no one told me and the reason I say that is because I mean I’ve graduated with nothing less than a 4.0 through every you know, everything I’ve always had is whatever and I always did all the work for everybody. I was always on the team and I was doing all the work I got the A everybody else got the credit, blah blah blah. And I just despise teamwork by the time I get done with my education, what no one told me was, no, you’re in the top 5% You’re always going to be in the top 5%. And when you are in charge of the team, and you get to design an amazing team, and you get to fire somebody who’s not pulling their weight. Oh, that’s where the magic is at. Wow. I mean, that was when the light bulb went off. And so man, I build great teams, great teams are 100% by design. And all somebody needed to tell me was when I was six was “Someday, don’t worry, you’ll get to be in charge of that team. And it’ll be different.” Nobody ever did, right? So it is a small group that might ever read that book. But it’s but that’s that’s that message. So.

Rai Cornell 35:50
And on that wonderfully inspiring note, where can people check you out? Learn more about what you’ve built? All on your own?

Jennifer Lea 35:59
Oh, well, yeah. But I don’t think it’s all on my own. I really, I embrace from the very beginning that this is a teamwork effort. I hired an entire international group of people, my Bangladesh and Pakistan developers, I have a virtual assistant in the Philippines, I’ve got a social media group in South Africa, I’ve got an SE consultant at Australia. That was how I built the business overnight, literally 8pm to 3am for five months. And then once I launched the company in October of 2021, you know, I brought on more of the US physical labor in Omaha and I have a production assistant, I have my mother very involved, I have three high school girls who help paint. I have a fractional CFO. So you know, number one piece of advice to anybody who’s thinking about starting their own businesses, don’t do it by yourself, period, do not do it by yourself. You’ve got to invest in your company, and it should not be lonely. So surround yourself with all of this people who will be able to help you grow and do it so much better. To learn more about Entry Envy and a little bit of a journey that I’ve been on. And I think we’re going on our website at simply entry-envy.com. And you can follow us on social at entry_envy. So we’d love to share that. And I’m always happy. We are a very transparent company. My email address is readily out there on LinkedIn. It’s available on our website. We are easy to get ahold of. So if anybody wants to connect with me, don’t hesitate to reach out. Always happy to do that.

Rai Cornell 37:38
Thank you so much, Jennifer. Thank you so much for being here and for all of this eye-opening advice.

Jennifer Lea 37:47
Thank you so much for having me.

Rai Cornell 38:01
Hey, Rai here again, thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and rate us in your favorite podcasting platform. Want to be a guest on the show or know someone who has an amazing story of entrepreneurship? Apply on our website at chironconsulting.us/podcast.