Jenny Askins

SheBoss with Jenny Askins

Megan: I am so excited for today’s SheBoss episode with Jenny Askins. She and I have some commonalities from our history, which I’m so excited to start talking about, but Jenny has been a face of Huntsville for a really long time. If you haven’t seen her, number one, you’re probably living under a rock, but number two, you need to know because she is playing a massive role in our community. Moving forward.  I’m so glad that you’re joining us today. 

Jenny: Thank you! I’m glad to be here; this is nice. 

Megan: You’re the first SheBoss in our new office so you get to break it. I know it’s just really exciting. So in typical fashion, we’re going to do it over a mimosa. So please feel free to join us. So just tell us a little bit about you, and your background, and then we’ll jump into what you’re doing now. 

Jenny: I moved to Huntsville, like a lot of people, most of us are transients or we’ve come here because of our parents. So I moved here back in the early 80s, went to High School, graduated, did all the things that you’re supposed to do, college and all those pieces and then wound up. My story is a little wiggled around but I spent some time in service on the Board of Registrar’s, it’s a four year term appointment. So I was appointed to the Board of Registrars because I had dabbled in political campaigns for a little while, did that and from there, I was nominated to be in a local leadership program here in Huntsville, and so applied for Leadership Huntsville, I’d heard a lot about it, a lot of good things. So I applied for it and they were just kicking off a young professional program and they suggested I start there instead because I was in a certain age range.

Megan: Was that Connect? 

Jenny: So I was a member of Connect class six, the best class ever? I know that seems like forever ago now.

Megan: I’m in Class 35!

Jenny: I remember hearing people saying they’ve been in Connect one and two and thinking, that was so long ago but I was in Connect class six and it just blew me away from there. To me, that was the experience that changed my life. I went in, I sat like a lot of people do in the back looking around going, “How did I get here. I don’t belong here. These people are so amazing.” So I was there and that’s where I fell in love with Huntsville. That’s where I was exposed to the community and to organizations and people. I just fell in love with all of it.

So from there, I began volunteering after I’d gone through that program and I volunteered every year afterwards. People would tell me where I worked, they would say, “You’re there more than you’re here, your volunteer work is so important.” I love it so when a position became available at Leadership, they had an opening for their Alumni Director. I called Sara Savage, the CEO at the time, and I said, “This is me, nobody else.” I mean, I just knew it was my calling so I just wouldn’t let it go. I sank my teeth into it and had to have it and thank God, they decided that would be fine. I mean, they chose me. So I was doing the alumni and then I got to do the focus program, and then the leadership program. And again, it was just the most amazing experience, being around Sarah was amazing. The other team members, were just fantastic, learned so much.

I realized my style of leadership is servant leadership, that’s where I fall in. I love serving. I’d rather be pouring the tea than doing the speaking necessary. So that’s where I found my calling.

Megan: Leadership has created such a great program for individuals to get engrossed in the community. A lot of people may not recognize what that is exactly. So they’ve got several different groups that you can be a part of; Flagship Management, Academy, Connect, Focus, they’ve got a couple of other programs but it’s a long program take takes an investment. The purpose is to expose you to all things community that you may not be familiar with and I’ve been here for 15 years and in Flagship and I was blown away. I had no idea that we had these different challenges in our community and these different nonprofit organizations and such a great way to get exposure into the underbelly of our community that you don’t get another way. 

Jenny: That’s what I would hear all the time of, “I’ve been here all my life. I was born at Huntsville hospital, and I didn’t know this existed.” It was just all the time and how much fun is that? I mean that was my job to show off all the cool things in Huntsville, or introduced people to the vision or the plan what was to come so it was just fantastic. It was great every day it didn’t feel like work or a job. We even had this thing we did, instead of being a nine to five type office; we did ROWE, which was a Results Only Work Environment. So it was all about goals being set for you. And then it didn’t matter where you worked from, or when you worked on it kind of thing. It was just about getting your work completed, which is the right thing to do. So, to me, most of us worked harder than 40 hours a week, because we loved it. So we would work however long during the day, and then I would get home, feed the kids, get them settled, and then I’d get back on my laptop, because I just loved what I was doing. So from six to 10, I’m back to doing my thing and I think everybody was like that. 

Megan: I have a question for you and I would imagine it’s going to be very hard to pinpoint just one but if you could take something from that experience with Leadership early on in your career, what’s the one thing that you think you really gained from that that helped kind of propel you afterwards maybe a lesson that you learned or something like that? 

Jenny: You’re right, there are so many. One was working for Sara and realizing that your boss didn’t have to be bossy. You know what I mean? There wasn’t a day that she didn’t pass by my door and go, “What can I help you with?” I mean, what is that? And just total support of trusting me to know what I was doing and handling it, but her just there supports, like an upside down triangle theory. So that was huge seeing that, versus I’m the boss and I’m going to tell you what to do. So that was huge. The ROWE experience was amazing that we were trusted to actually get the work done without being told to work nine to five. 

Megan:  Not everybody works well with a nine to five now. 

Jenny: So that was amazing and one of those things too, that you almost can’t go back after you’ve experienced that, it’s such a great benefit. The calling that perpetuated the rest of the things that I’ve done since was trying to figure out in my head, how I could do what I was doing for more than 52 people a year because you have 52 or 50 in the class, thinking how I can help expose more people that aren’t necessarily being able to get into the class aren’t accepted or don’t have time, or maybe can’t afford it, different reasons. How can I help everybody get to see and know and learn about Huntsville? So we even had a day that we created called Living like a Local. 

Megan: You guys created that? That’s also my favorite day so far. 

Jenny: When I started, became the Program Director for Leadership Huntsville, I wanted to do the Living like a Local day and I wanted to do an innovation entrepreneur day so added those two into the schedule and that’s when they came about. The Living like a Local was exposing hidden gems and we were trying to figure out how we could share the most, get the most ‘bang for our buck.’ So that’s when we divided everybody up well the first time that everybody has been divided into small groups, and going out and then you come back together and share what you learned. So that’s something I started thinking about before I left. I wanted to do something like that where I could share how do you do that and make a job out of it? 

Megan: Isn’t that awesome how that experience has kind of come full circle to what you’re doing now? That’s exactly what you’re doing with Destination Huntsville. 

Jenny: And a lot of people that have been in those classes that were there then recognize that they see that piece now, that’s a strong connection. 

Megan: So after you spend some time with Leadership, what was the next phase in your career?

Jenny: Well, the stadium was being built in Madison, the trash banners were coming and that group needed some help as far as they needed boots on the ground local to be able to help introduce them around, and to help bring them into the community, they wanted to be a part and so they brought me on as the community partners person. So I went over there and I learned a lot there too. In my brain, it was like a startup because yes, you had the product baseball, but everything else was kind of figuring it out and making it happen and you didn’t even have the team here yet. We had a small group of us that were behind the scenes and we were doing everything so it had that nonprofit feel like we’re coming from where it was all hands on deck, you did everything that needed done. It wasn’t I have this job description, it’s we do everything. So I’m doing the groundbreaking and I’m opening the store at Bridge Street and we’re choosing t shirt designs and we’re picking out colors for the seats. So we’re doing all those kinds of things and that’s when the peace came for a startup, like I was learning all about building a brand and choosing how to make those kinds of decisions and the purpose of things, getting really into the details of why you’re doing what you’re doing when you’re creating a business. 

Megan: So by being on the ground floor with that experience, totally different, you gain a new respect for exactly that process as a whole. 

Jenny: Yeah, it’s totally different and I’d never been a part of anything like that before. So I learned a lot there too. Between what I wanted to do from Leadership and learning how to watching the steps of building things building a brand, I left there after about a year, because it was time for me to take some time to myself and figure- that was a lot that year, I mean, if you think back to everything that happened during that one time. So after that, I wanted to take a little break and I thought I’m going to start my own business and I’m going to try to figure out how to do that piece that I’ve been wanting to do and use the experience I had from the from the ball team and pull them together. 

Megan: So let’s talk about that process a little bit. You know, I often joke that when we started Flourish, I did not know what I was doing and I was literally like googling how to start a business because I just didn’t know the steps that you needed to take. I quickly realized that there are a lot of community resources here that can help with that, like The Catalyst and The Chamber and everything. 

Jenny: Yeah SBDC is fabulous. 

Megan: So tell me a little bit about what that process looked like for you and what resources you leaned on and how you made all the mistakes and or just learned from going through things through for the first time? 

Jenny: I took about three months off to just decompress and chill out for a little bit then I thought, “Okay, I want to do a business, what am I going to create?” So I googled the top 10 tech companies on the West Coast because my experience- I’m really into music and all that and that comes, there’s some other music stuff later so I always think about how music in California, it seemed like it always took about five years to get to Alabama. By the time we were listening to it, people in California are going, “That was last year’s music.” So I thought they were always ahead of us. 

So I was googling top 10 tech companies on the West Coast and one of the top 10 was a company called Vayable and it was an online marketplace for locals to provide tours and experiences. So if you went to Spain, you could look it up and hang out with a local, they would take you to see local music or local food or cook for you or anything, they could do anything they wanted and I thought that’s pretty cool so I looked up the company and then I put in Huntsville to see if anybody was providing experiences here and they weren’t. So I thought this would be cool, because we have Charleston, Savannah, all these places that do these really cool experiences and things. Huntsville doesn’t really have that; there’s a piece of Vayable I like there’s a piece of the traditional things that I like so maybe I can put those together. That’s what I’m going to do. So I started doing a little research on different companies that were like that there’s a Tours by Local Business, too, that’s large. 

So I started working with a friend of mine on a brand and building the website then I reached out to some leadership friends and alumni that had specialties so I reached out to a friend of mine that was a History professor at UAH and so what you do a History walk and he was like, “Yeah, sure.” So he was going to do that and then had another friend that made cookies, and decorated cookie. So it’s like, “Can we do that?” And she’s like, “Sure anybody that wants to have a cookie decorating experience.” It was very home style but we had some traditional like things. We had a low meal tour, we had this we had that, but it was just pulling in friends and asking them to please help me with a bike tour, a downtown bike tour. So we started with that maybe nine experiences and then we had a great kickoff and there it was, and then I had to walk around and kind of explaining to people what Touronimo was and people will call it Terra Nemo and things like that. 

Megan: Well how did you come up with the name?

Jenny: Just sounding it out and looking at looking at other words that had- I mean, thank God for Google now but looking at other words and seeing what fit and I am sure that something probably popped up that was like words that would sound like a kind of thing like a generator or something but it was like Touronimo is Touronimo and I thought, that’s perfect. And then this little city marker I wanted, I didn’t want it to be Huntsville-centric because I knew in my head, I wanted things to spread and I wanted it to go further than just Huntsville. So I made sure that it was where it could be a national brand if we wanted it to be. 

Megan: So that’s thinking about scale and broader beyond this market. 

Jenny:  I’m thinking, probably never do that but let’s just try and see where we can get to 

Megan: It’s good to think about not having limitations right off the bat, which I think sometimes when you start a business, you may not think about that so it’s great that you did. So how did you get from Touronimo to Destination Huntsville and talk a little bit about the difference between the two? 

Jenny: Yeah, so Touronimo is more of a one-off type. If you’re a local or a visitor and you look up tours and excursions here in Huntsville- I wanted Touronimo to be like the umbrella of all tours and excursions so that’s what it’s for, destination and corporate, it is your boots on the ground local experts. So if your corporate ration is based out of Ohio, but you’re opening an office here, you can call me and I take care of all the things here that you need, so that you’re not looking on Yelp, and hoping that the reviews are right when you’re sending people or hiring services. 

So in doing Touronimo, launched in September of 2019 so by January, I was thinking, “All right, it’s time to start spreading the word.” So January 2020, I started visiting the hotels, going to any speaking engagement that anyone would invite me to. When I went to the hotels, I said, “Here’s Touronimo, if you need it, if you want to refer people to it, you’re welcome to but I’m just letting you know I’m here.” So this one marketing director at one of the hotels who I blame now, we joke that I curse and thank her every other day. I’m not even going to name her name it’s Mary Beth Lewis. She’s over at 106 Jefferson now so I blame her for this because she looked at me and she said, ‘That’s all great, good for you’ kind of thing but this is what I need, I need a DMC and I was like, “Oh, okay.” 

Megan:  And were you familiar with that term? 

Jenny: No. So I nod and smile and I go through the whole thing. And she’s telling me- 

Megan:  What is the DMC? 

Jenny: So she tells me, this is what I need and all of that. So when I leave her I am pumped up. I’m so excited because I have received the word. Now I know what to do. And so I go home and I Google, ‘What is the DMC?’ and it’s a Destination Management Company. And I go, “Yes, this is it. I didn’t know what it was called but this is where I’ve been led this whole time. This is it.” So I was so excited and thrilled and was ready to start figuring that out. So I spent 2020, learning more about what that was and working also on Touronimo’s branding, wanting to make sure everything that I’ve done before. There’s a saying too, that ‘If you’re ready, you’ve waited too late, like to start a business.’ So there was that piece. So I went back and I wanted to look over everything I’ve done with Touronimo and tweak it and make sure it was like I meant for it to be in the first place. So that was a great year of doing that and learning about Destination Huntsville.

So then I didn’t want to do Destination Huntsville by myself, because I did Touronimo by myself. So I wanted the fun of having somebody with me so I did start out Destination Huntsville with a partner but after about a month or two months, it wasn’t her thing so she went on to do some other things. So I found myself back to where I was again by myself with this. So there was a little bit of time I’ve tried to decide whether I am going to keep doing this. 

Megan: So much work too, the amount of detail, you have to be a very detail oriented person. I’m assuming you probably are otherwise you’d be insane to come into this space-

Jenny: I’m not but because it’s not natural for me, the detail part, I overcompensate, which I think is actually a strength. I mean, I think it works because it really does take a lot of details and going over things a million times. And because I stress about that, I do wind up probably over communicating with emails and I put all the details and I want to cover everything because it’s just not my nature. So I would just show up and turn the music on and serve the drinks and the food and go, “All right, let’s have a good time. Does anyone have a board game?

Megan: That’s so fun. I’m very similar to you. Katie, over here who’s listening too, is a very detail-oriented person. And I’m like, “Well just come and hang out.” She’s like, “No, that’s not we need to…” She’s so great with that. Thank God. 

Jenny: That’ll be my first hire is somebody that likes to do that.

Megan:  You can take Katie

Jenny: No, no, no, I know how that is. You don’t poach employees. So that’s how Destination Huntsville evolved. I wanted to do this big grand opening or announcement or anything like that and COVID was still a little scare. Also I created a press release to let people know that Destination Huntsville has been launched but there’s no way really to send a press release anymore. So I sent in a telegram like who’s got the other telegram machine. And so well, I’ll just post it on LinkedIn so I did. We received a message from LinkedIn, for the National Cyber Summit that’s held in Huntsville and we had three hotels reach out, and I was just like, “All that after just a little post.” And I thought, “We’ve got something this was a need a service and so just hit the ground running.” So no grand opening, not much of anything other than just working, no marketing, it’s just been word of mouth. 

Megan: That is so great and I think that definitely validates the fact that this community needs something like that. I mean, at the pace and rate that things are growing and building and expanding, we’re making all of these lists but it’s like, ‘How can people actually take advantage and be able to experience things in the right way?’ Coming from hospitality, I know we share this I worked at a DMC when I was in college, and it was so much fun, because it’s a great way to be like, “Hey, I’ve got a client coming to Miami.” So we’re going to create this experiential three day thing, as opposed to trying to figure that out on your own and Huntsville has become such a destination. So having something like Destination Huntsville and Touronimo is huge. Yeah, I mean, it’s big. 

Jenny: Well, I think sometimes when we think about these businesses coming here and Amazon and Facebook and Kohler and all these great companies that are landing in Huntsville, and we think, “Oh, more jobs.” Okay yeah, there is that piece of it but there’s so much more that trickles down, okay, yes, these people are coming, and now they have jobs. Well, now we need more restaurants. We need this, we need that we need all the services that people moving here expect. They’ve been accustomed to it and then they get here and they’re like, “Where are all the things?” So it opens it up so much wider for everybody to do even more creative things. Now we can do tours and excursions where maybe Huntsville couldn’t have held it or supported it. Now we need more car services. Now we need more daycare centers, it’s all of it. I mean it is absolute, all of it, bigger schools. I know some of those are growing pains I get that and infrastructure we can talk about that forever roads and bridges, but I mean, just the smaller things that I didn’t think about just in my business alone now I’m like, okay, Nashville supports a lot of entertainment and entertainers. So right now when I have to have somebody for certain things, a lot of times I’m checking Nashville or Atlanta and that’s another thing I’ve been trying to kind of get the word out is like we need those things here now, I need a fire eaters and I need clams and I need still people and stuff, all the cool things that some of the bigger cities have, we’re getting there. We’re going to need those things now, which is cool, bringing them up from Birmingham or wherever.

Megan: That is so cool. So I know that you have a passion for music. So talk a little bit about that. I would love to hear you just see your take, especially being here for as long as you have about the music scene in Huntsville, and how that’s grown. And you guys are doing something really cool too, in Five Points, which I didn’t get a chance to take part in the past, but it looks so awesome and it’s so unique.

Jenny: There’s not enough going on right now. So after the pandemic, and at the end of 2020, I moved into a little house in Five Points, and it has this great wraparound porch. And the first thing I thought of was, “Oh my gosh, we have to have a porch concert.” And I have a nice side yard that you can put chairs in and I just thought this is perfect. So I invited a couple of friends of mine to come and play and invited friends to come and sit and listen and we just had the best time. So I was talking to a girlfriend of mine who’s actually a singer-songwriter, Judy Allison. And I was telling her about what I was thinking. And I said, “What do you think about that?” She’d been having the same kind of vision of it. She had actually attended an event like that in Franklin, Tennessee, I think she’d actually been a musician for one of their concerts, porch concerts. Anyway, she started telling me about it and I was like, “Oh, I didn’t invent this. This is a thing.” So they’re called Porch Fests. So you’re just doing concerts on porches, reached out to some of the neighbors and we found five porches on Pratt. 

I worked on trying to get sponsors because after the pandemic, I mean, the musicians really suffered during that time. So that was important to us to be able to pay the musicians and the sound and take care of everybody but I wanted it to be free to the community for you the public. So we invited sponsors, porch sponsors, and the first ones to jump on board were Taco Mama, Church Street Wine, Family of Restaurants, Southern Reclaimed Salvage Barn, Engel & Volkers, and Brandi Cagle, Copeland now, she’s married, with Keller Williams, so the five of them were just instantly on board. And since that, we’ve added three more porches. 

Judy brings the music and the bands, and we have about three to four on each porch. You just walk from porch to porch and listen to live music, you bring your chair and your beverage or your food or whatever and just enjoy. 

Megan: That is so great. I love that. 

Jenny: Thank you, it’s amazing and I can’t say enough about how well Judy does as far as the coordination of it. It’s so much more to her- she has such a passion for it that it’s so much more than just putting musicians on the porch. She looks at the porches and she thinks about the style of, ‘Who could be on there? Is this more of an alternative rock? Is this more of a singer songwriter, bluegrass porch, or blues or jazz or whatever?’ So she really puts it puts a lot of thought into that. I don’t know if everybody realizes that. 

Megan:  It’s true art to house. 

Jenny: Exactly, it’s not just, oh, we’re gonna- like I would do it, ‘You go over there and when you’re tired, you get up there.’ She really coordinates it and puts a lot of thought and feeling into it. And another piece too, is, like we talked about, we want at some point for there to have been someone that hits it big where everybody goes, “I remember seeing them on the porch.” And so she also tries to get people that are just at the cusp of hitting it, album coming out and things. So there’s some people that are going to be in on this year’s porches that I’m not, I can’t say anything, won’t steal the thunder but she’s going to have in announcing some of them but their band members from other bands or they’re right there at the edge of again, hitting it. There’s this all girl band that she’s got coming up from Jacksonville that I’m so excited about and then think there might even be a Grammy Award winner that’s going to be there. Again, it’s just things that are kind of low key. It sounds weird, but I just think we can take it for granted because we’re enjoying the music and we’re doing the sound and the experience to which sometimes you really get into see the art of it. 

Megan: I love that so much and what a neat way to bring community together at Five Points, just with the neighbors and I think a lot of people for the first time got to know those around them during COVID because we were home all the time which is crazy to think about. So when does porch fest happen? 

Jenny: May 7th

Megan:  May 7 

Jenny: Yeah, so Saturday from six to 10, it’s one of those things that we do market it a little bit. I don’t market it out a lot because I get nervous. 

Megan:  Yeah, too many people 

Jenny: Too many people because last year, there was this feeling of I don’t know if anybody’s going to show up or not and then it was just packed. So now I’m like, “Whoop don’t tell anybody.” let just the people that know, know and they can come and that’s fine.

Megan: And you’re still looking for sponsors for that event, I imagine.

Jenny: Sure, we’ve taken care of all of the big sponsors there but there’s always room for Friends of Fest. We have some places where if you just want to support or be a partner, you can definitely do that for very small amounts, we just wanted to everybody to have the opportunity if they wanted to be listed as a Friend Of, that they could do that and it wasn’t breaking their budget or anything, it was helping to support the musicians and sound.   

Megan: Again compensating the musicians

Jenny: Exactly, the more we are able to raise in sponsorships, the better we are able to take care of everybody.

Megan: So I have a couple questions, a little bit about Destination Huntsville before we wrap up so what’s the future with Destination Huntsville and Touronimo? Now that we are out of COVID, things have transformed completely in a way that would benefit exactly what you’re doing so I think that’s why I get so excited and I’m so glad that you’re here because the sky is the limit, anything can happen with it right now. My kids will tell me it’s not the sky it’s the base.  There are so many things that I think is on the horizon for you so what does it look like for the next year that we can rally around and support you with?

Jenny: Thank you. Expansion! There is so much need and so much to do. I have not had the chance to really get out, market it and get the expansion going because it’s daily, I haven’t hired anyone yet so my biggest goal is to hire someone that can take care of the inside things so that I can get out and spread the word and do what I’m trying to do. So with Touronimo, 2020, it was supposed to expand to North Alabama, it didn’t make it so that’s the goal this year, trying to make it more user friendly and start marketing it for more guides and marketing the brand. So it’s going to go statewide by the end of this year for sure, that will happen. For Destination Huntsville, I’ve started working with other cities in coordinating some things. It’s like I’ve identified the dots now I have to connect them. So it’s a manner of going and visiting here and making sure we all understand what’s expected and so I’ve been finding the time and I’m going to make the time. It’s getting ready to go towards Brimingham first and then we’ll probably go towards Florence and everything later on this year.

Megan: That is awesome.

Jenny: The goals, like we were talking about, if it doesn’t scare you, it’s probably too safe and I’m scared to death so it will be great. 

Megan: It means you’re on the right path.

Jenny: Yeah I’m going to take over the world so I gave myself a five year plan and I’d like to get it done in two.

Megan: Good luck

Jenny: I mean there’s so much to be done and I’m sure even with your business it’s the same way. There’s plenty and I think too especially in Huntsville where we are watching all these growth, there’s plenty for everybody. Nobody has to step on toes, there’s plenty.

Megan: There’s enough to go around and I think that mindset is very receptive as well and the community which I love so much because everybody helps each other out. Everybody is out for the greater good of just the community which is amazing. I think that’s one of the reasons this town has become so successful because of that nature and mindset. It’s not cut throat and it’s not competitive which I think is evident that we can see on a daily basis because of the growth.

Jenny: Yeah absolutely, that’s also what I think has made Huntsville so successful. I think in Huntsville we work smarter not harder and we probably do the hard too, I mean we are grinders but there’s a piece where we respect what we are good at and respect what someone else’s really talented at doing and so there’s a piece where I’m like, “I don’t want to do that but I’ll hire you or contract you to do that.” So it’s like you’re supporting everybody and you’re not stepping on toes and it’s like, I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, let me bring in an expert, that’s what they do so what Destination Huntsville’s been doing is bringing in those experts together to collaborate to create some awesome things.

Megan: That is awesome. Do you have locals who take advantage of Touronimo?

Jenny: Oh yeah that’s great too. I do a lot of team building experiences for locals and things like the last meeting they wanted me to take their employees for an appreciation type event. So we do things like that. We do charcuteries very big, charcuterie classes. We’ve done tours. We do all kinds of fun things, outside the box type things. I work with an organization here that lets employees and teams come in, cook and make meals that are frozen and delivered to the people that need the meals. So it’s just a whole program and that’s another thing people can do.

Megan:  So you’re giving back?

Jenny: Yes, so you’re giving back.

Megan: What organization is that?

Jenny: I can’t think of the name now and I’m so sorry because they’re so great.

Megan: No that’s fine.

Jenny: I think it’s the Team Up. It may be Team Up but anyway there’s a lot of people doing really cool stuff and instead of me trying to do that, I’m like, “Let me bring you in.”

Megan: Just connecting them, that’s so great. So last question for you, if there’s one thing that you’ve learnt throughout this journey and maybe looking and saying, “Had I known then what I know now”, just anything you would have changed about the process and all and maybe not. Just anything that now looking back that you think would have made things a little bit easier, something that you took in the past that has helped you in the future when you reflect about the last couple of years, what stands out to you?

Jenny: I think that I was really spoiled for a long time of having a great job experience, working with great people, really enjoying what I did. I mean I just lived this little dream life of everything is wonderful and then I had another experience that wasn’t good for me. I think you cannot appreciate good without bad so I think it floated along for a while and to have a bad experience was really good for me. So it just really helped me grow and know exactly what I did not want. And also to be able to create not only the businesses but also keep in mind the environment I wanted to have as I started to have a team and know that I wanted people to enjoy what they do and-

Megan:  -create a culture

Jenny: Yeah which I don’t think I would have appreciated if I took for granted how easy things had been and how much of joy.

Megan: That’s a really great lesson. I agree with you. It’s really hard to appreciate the good when you haven’t experienced the bad because you don’t know how bad it’s going to be.

Jenny: I’ve been so blessed and just lucky and fortunate with the people I’ve worked with.

Megan: Well, we are so excited.

Jenny: Thank you.

Megan: All the best