Season 2, Episode 6: Becoming an Intra-preneur
Guest Jennifer Cox Erhardt worked in marketing for 18 years, between marketing teams and agencies, before starting her own marketing venture. After some changes and self-discovery, Jen found herself back in a routine with Armstrong Marketing Solutions and happier than ever. Jen is a co-creator of the Beautifully Equipped Podcast, which launched in September 2017.
Host Jordan Lacenski is the founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Brandboss Creative, and co-founder of SheWolf Collaborative.
Host: Jordan Lacenski
Guest: Jennifer Cox Erhardt
Show Notes:
4:33 - “At the end of the day, we do spend a considerable amount of time talking about ‘Okay, what’s the north star of this podcast and how does it fuel us as individuals?’ ” - Jen and Jordan talk about Jen’s podcast, and how Beautifully Equipped manages to give the three alpha female hosts room to voice their different perspectives, experiences, and even (respectful) disagreements.
9:12 - “Note to self: I am the marketer who didn’t do her marketing research!” - Jen talks about starting her marketing company and the challenges of venturing into the world of entrepreneurship.
11:35 - “Somebody asked me “Why don’t you take a look at your goals with a lens of how you want to feel?” and that was like a holy shit, full stop - all of these goals are great, but the way I’m gonna go about them needs to change dramatically.” - Jen discusses how she regained calm within the chaos of making business decisions.
17:10 - “I did have a lot of reservations, though. Am I failing at what I’m doing?” - Jen tells Jordan about the transition process of closing out her own business and moving into more established employment, and how that was the best decision for her.
19:46 - “I was doing all these things so that we could be a better collaborative team, but it just ended up highlighting and shining a light on the things all of us needed to work on individually.” - Jordan relates to Jen’s feeling of ‘herding cats’ when it comes to working virtually with businesses, teams, and clients that rely on your leadership and structure.
33:27 - “Society tells you what failure looks like and what success looks like, like having a million plus followers and getting venture capital and all these things around having a business. The reality is, that’s not the path for everybody” - Jordan and Jen discuss how success and failure aren’t black and white. It’s different for everyone, depending on their wants and needs in life and in business, and doing the work to know yourself is instrumental in figuring that out.
35:04 - “One of the biggest eye openers I’ve had is that you have to be agile in that space, because whatever you envision as success for five years from now, it won’t be that. It’ll be some morphed version of that.” - There is no secret to success, and the only one who can define success, especially in entrepreneurship, is yourself, and your goals are ever-changing.
39:00 - “For anybody in a business or those thinking about starting one, I think it’s a valuable quality to have an aptitude to want to learn.” - Jen and Jordan talk about navigating working in a business vs. working on a business, and that learning new things and problem solving are critical to growth.
40:35 - “There’s almost like a spectrum of entrepreneurial spirit. I think it depends on the phase in your life, where you’re located, what you love doing.” - Jordan and Jen discuss safety nets in business and life, and how they prepare for risk in going out on their own.
48:19 - “Communicate about the hard parts of business, whether it’s through conversations on a podcast, or with partners that you work with, or with other business owners, or with a team of people that you work with.” - Jen and Jordan talk about the importance of communication for entrepreneurs, because business conversations within the business world and in personal life are difficult.
52:25 - “Being okay with saying no is really hard.” - Defining success that isn’t revenue based, finding what work fits you, your business, and your values, makes business and entrepreneurship so completely worth it. Success is truly subjective.
Links:
Beautifully Equipped: https://beautifullyequipped.com/
She Wolf Collaborative: https://shewolf.co/
Brandboss Creative: https://www.brandbosscreative.com/
Also mentioned:
Monday.com: https://monday.com/
Quotes:
“If there’s anybody who’s listening right now that is thinking about going out on their own and are worried, there are so many free resources. And once you start looking, the amount of people in those resources and those groups are unbelievable. They’re the ones who give strength to you, because people just don’t get it. ” - Jennifer Cox Erhardt
“Success really is personal and we have this idea that we will reach success when we reach XYZ in other people's minds. But at the end of the day, it’s really about in your core, in your heart, what do you feel is successful for you. Right now, top of mind for me is a really nice 401k - that’s success for me.” - Jennifer Cox Erhardt