We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jacqueline Wiener. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jacqueline below.
Jacqueline, appreciate you joining us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.
I am a partner in two small businesses. Leaving corporate America to start the UpScapers business was a giant risk but was always the goal. I was making a six-figure salary and left it with absolutely no cushion and 6 kids. My husband also left his government job to share in leadershihp of our dream of being our own bos. We pushed hard. It really is just like most business owner’s say, there were hard days in the beginning, we didn’t know if we were going to make it, we launched right before COVID hit. We had some legal battles early on when my old company thought my business was too close to theirs and our children’s play place business was closed for many months during COVID.
Taking the risk was so crucial though to our current success. These businesses could never have been built as a side-hussle, you need to have a plan, be confident in your abilities to execute the plan and then keep your head down and push push push until you reach that goal and then the next and the next. It helps that our businesses have the mission to grow in order to fund a nonprofit that we are passionate about starting. That and security for our family drives us to take calculated risks to do something ultimately that’s bigger than just us.
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?
We have two totally different businesses that stem from the fact that my husband and I have seven kids all together. It’s an indoor children’s play gym in Brentwood, Tn. The Monkeys’ Treehouse – This fantastic gem of a place provides indoor play for kiddos with their families as well as enriching classes that kids 0-8 really can’t get anywhere else outside of school. We have kids yoga, kids music, kids cooking, kids science experiments all under one roof along with imaganitve play spaces and tons of explorative and social learning. We are also incorporating longer hours with healthy food for the family and local beers for parents, so that families have a place to go together to unwind after the work day instead of the current options of pizza places or breweries.
Our other business stems from my 12 years in artificial turf. We discovered an amazing faux green wall out of London and became the preferrred North American distributor for this product. UpScapers provides amazingly realistic, maintenance-free green walls and planters to commercial and residential customers. We provide all of the benefits of biophilic design without the ongoing cost to maintain them. UpScapers green walls also cost less from the start to install than a traditional livein wall. This business is growing rapidly and we’ve expanded to have warehousing facilities in three states and more than 300 resellers.
Both of our businesses are set to give back. Our indoor children’s play place should be closed because of COVID but we poured funds from our green wall business over to it during the pandemic to keep it around for the community to enjoy. We reopened as quickly as possible for families to be able to get their kids socializing again, It was amazing to see the difference in kids who were born early in COVID when things started getting back to normal, they needed time to learn how to play and socialize together again.
Our other business UpScapers is being built out with the goal to fund a non-profit farm for “The Least of These” We have a dream of creating a working farm that supports families of kids with special needs, children in foster care and the court system, widows and elderly daycare services. The farm will have learning programs and animal therapy programs as well as work on socialization of the different groups to promote all around well being.
Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?
We did buy The Monkey’s Treehouse – The indoor children’s playground. It was an asset sale, we learned a lot about commercial leases and hidden fees in those and what is our responsibility and what is the landlords. The due dilligence process and setting up a business entity from scratch, ficticious names and local and state taxes and resellers license. There is so much that goes into buying a business and then setting one up. We are still learning 4 years later and expanding now to learn about interstate commerce once we reach Nexus in a state and start having to process sales tax for all the states we do business. in.
How’d you meet your business partner?
My co-founder is my husband. We met in 1996 in the Marine Corps and were friends for 19 years before dating. We both had very successful day jobs. He worked for the Navy as a public affairs officer and I was Vice President of a large artificial grass company at the time. I have always wanted to work for myself someday and he was always supportive of that. The opportunity came up to move to Nashville and buy a small business, while I still had my day job and could work remote. We did and he left the hospital to run The Monkey’s Treehouse. A year into that we came up with UpScapers and started that business from scratch. I left the turf world and Michael left The Treehouse to head sales and installations at UpScapers while I handle the marketing and more administration at both businesses. We both also install walls together still and enjoy the chance to connect on these job as we get bigger and grow. Our kids rage in ages from 2-26 with six of them in the house. It can be challenging owning two businesses, and having 6 kids, 8 goats, 6 chickens and all the other things we have going on in Tennessee but we wouldn’t change it for the world. –
Contact Info:
- Website: upscapers.com themonkeystreehouse.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/upscapersgreenwalls/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/monkeys_treehouse/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/upscapers/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/upscapers/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/upscapers
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCndfbmr2D05xoIKVxsXfndw
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-monkeys-treehouse-brentwood
- Other: I also meant to mention – we donate our space and funds to a local moms group at the monkey’s treehouse – mops. moms love it and it’s a way to pour into the community and those local moms that need that connection with other moms of little ones.
Image Credits
Jacqueline Wiener