We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joanne Hanson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joanne below.

Joanne, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

After being let go from my corporate job as a Marketing Director in 2022, along with my entire department, it reminded me how dispensable we are when working for others. At the end of the day, however hard we work, however well we perform, we’re just a number on the expense sheet.

I’d always wanted to work for myself and start my own business, but it’s hard to leave a comfortable job, with great salary and benefits. So when I was getting nowhere in my (half-hearted) search for another corporate job that I honestly didn’t want, I decided to make the jump into starting my own business.

There are aspects that are definitely harder, like being on 24/7, having a huge drop in salary as you get it off the ground, and having to wear all the hats whilst working mostly alone. But the perks far outweigh any comfortable corporate benefits in my opinion.

I love being in full control of my destiny now, without the glass ceiling that corporate held over me. If I want to double my salary, I can, it’s up to me to go out and make it happen.

I love being able to work with other entrepreneurs who also own their own businesses; collaborating with them as “colleagues” makes the journey feel a lot less lonely.

The best part though, is being able to choose my own schedule. One of the biggest reasons for me wanting to start my own business, was to be able to spend time with my daughter and family whenever I choose, and not being restricted by the set number of vacation days and working hours. Now I get to take my daughter to playgroups and gymnastics two mornings a week, which I never would’ve been able to do as a full time corporate employee.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After starting with our own short term rental investments in 2020 and seeing great success from them, I wanted to help others do the same.

After being let go from my corporate job and finding out I was also pregnant, it gave me even more motivation to start the business. So in 2023 The Works BnB opened its doors to its first client’s short term rental in Minneapolis.

We turned this first property into a $100k + per year short term rental. Generating about $60k more per year for the owner than if it was a long term rental property.

Since then we’ve helped more clients turn their short term rental dreams into reality throughout Minnesota.

The thing we do best is creating unique memorable stays that stand out from the crowd. Whether it’s a retro theme, or a botanical themed cabin. Each property is unique and professionally designed and branded.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Before The Works BnB started managing other peoples properties, we had our own short term rentals. We brought all of our learnings over from these properties and implemented them into our business. From then on it’s been a whirlwind of stages of growth for us.

Not everything always goes well, especially in a new business, and something that corporate taught me, was to take these issues as a good opportunity for a lessons learned. When we were scaling so fast, and focusing on speed of delivery over anything else, it taught us to slow down and make sure we had the basics in place so we could go faster with less flaws. We spent time looking at our operational processes and making sure we had all our processes documented, and checklists for everything. A former boss of mine once said to me “sometimes you have to slow down to speed up” and this was very true. Now we have such strong processes for all our key steps, that it makes it much smoother and less chaotic to move forward at greater speed.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I’d love to say it was marketing, being a former marketing professional, but it was good old fashioned business development on the most part. Networking, both in person and virtually on Facebook groups. Networking with complimentary businesses for referrals. And through clients recommending us to their friends as family.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.theworksbnb.com
• Instagram: https://Www.instagram.com/theworksbnb
• Facebook: https://Www.facebook.com/theworksbnb

Image Credits

Kristina Soligny of Steenz Studios