We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jenny Svehlek a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jenny thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

For me being successful has several components. Prior to Covid, I worked in the Audio Visual industry. I started as a technician on the bottom rung, and worked my way up to a Sales Manager. Now running my own business, I actually take a lot of ideas and what I’ve learned from that industry and apply it to my business.

The first part being: attention to detail. This might go hand in hand with already being a perfectionist, but I’ve always prided myself on this attribute. When I worked in the Audio Visual industry, I started as a technician– helping to setup the AV for corporate events. We used to say, once you finished the set, to leave the room, and take a break, and to come back ‘with a fresh set of eyes.’ I think about this a lot actually. The idea is that you become too engrossed, too close to the project that you miss things. I apply that idea to my products so I know when it heads out the door, it’s done to the best of my abilities, and that I don’t miss something.

Attention to detail can mean a lot of things to me. It can be choosing the right piece of string to tie your price tags, to big picture items. I like this aspect. I love the thought and detail that can go into planning. For me, showing purpose and intent in what I do is very important to me. I like when people make a connection in saying, ‘oh, this is like your logo!’ I nod and smile, but internally I’m thinking, yes, and that’s 100% intentional. I am meticulous by nature, but I feel that’s what sets me apart from other small businesses and competitors.

Another part of success for me, is customer service. When I was a Sales Manager, I would say 90% of my job was customer service, the other 10% was being knowledgeable about Audio Visual. This idea translates over to a lot of careers. No one cares if you’re the most knowledgeable person in the room. What they care about as the customer is their experience– how they’re treated. It’s easy as a business/ owner when things go well and when people rave about you and your products. But show me the person handling a difficult customer. Show me how they handle a bad day, when things don’t go the way they are supposed to. I used to tell colleagues to breathe and step back before replying to an angry email, and to allow themselves the time to think of the best possible positive solution. Being a one-woman-show, I’ll sometimes lean on other small business owner friends and ask how they’d handle something. But in also being one individual, I’ve really learned how to balance my time and to protect that. While customer service is absolutely paramount, I can’t stress enough that you also have to be able to protect your time too. At the end of the day, without good customer service, you’ll likely have no customers. Eventually, even if you have the best product, people are going to stop buying from you if they have a bad experience.

Finally, I’m going to say passion. You should love what you’re doing. It should resonate and radiate from you. Like a true smile, where you can see it hit a person’s eyes– your business should light you up. One of my favorite things to ask other business owners is, ‘what is your next big idea? what’s the big goal of where you want to see your business in 5 years?’ It’s not just how they respond, it’s the way they light up when they respond. When you have passion and love for what you’re doing, you’ll do anything to make it succeed. It’s essentially a relationship– you get what you put in. I’m so incredibly lucky that I love what I do. I love being able to share my story, how my business started, how it got its name, and just how much it means to me. I’ve always kept the tagline: “Creating. Joy.” It’s meant to have several meanings. I’ve always said that the day it ceases to bring me joy, is the day I know it’s time to step away.

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?

I’m Jenny Svehlek, proud owner of The Plaid Badger. I make high quality dog accessories in small batches. I love keeping items small batch, even using vintage fabric — so that each item feels special, unique, bespoke, and not mass-produced.

Like so many businesses, my business was born during Covid. However the story starts much earlier. From a really young age, I was creating. I was always drawing which then stemmed into painting and making crafts for family and friends. As a poor college student I didn’t have the money to buy things, but I had enough money to be able to make things.

Right before we entered lock-down, my husband and I rescued our dog, Hunter. I’m a true believer in everything happening for a reason. It was 10 days later that I’d be laid off from my job. I won’t sugar coat it, this was one of the toughest times I’ve been through. I would take Hunter for walks and sometimes break down crying. I was mourning the life I had, my career, and felt so lost. I realized a lot about myself including so much of who I was I identified by what I did. Now without my career, I didn’t know who I was.

Little by little the pieces of my heart slowly started to mend back together. By September of that year, I wanted to make my husband a birthday present. Not having a ton of money to spend, I opted to make our dog a bandana, that featured my husband’s college. I went to the University of Wisconsin and was a badger (yes, that’s where the badger comes from in my business name), but my husband went to Iowa. I thought it would be sweet to allow our dog to be “an Iowa dog.” So The Plaid Badger kind of started there. When November rolled around is when I officially started my business. It was a way for me to gain back some of the control I had lost. It started as just a something, a means to feel like I was contributing, and to keep me occupied. It became so much more. I found a love and passion I never knew. It was around June of the following year when I told my husband I believed so strongly in my business that I wanted to pursue it full time and couldn’t see myself going back to events.

I’m most proud of myself for listening to my heart. (Having a supportive husband helps too). But I find so much of what we do, is because of what we feel we should do, as opposed to what we want to do. It was not easy, I felt guilt, I worried of what others would think. I’ve really learned that I have to tune a lot of that out. I take a lot of pride and joy in what I do, and have to also recognize how brave it was to make the leap. I’m also proud that I get to do something that brings me so much love and joy everyday– while getting to spend more time with my family.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Absolutely.

I have 2 references I’m going to make.

The book is called, “Joyful,” by Ingrid Fetell Lee. There’s also a great Youtube clip of her speaking, that essentially is an overview of the book. I saw the clip and had to go and buy the book after. I love the idea of what sparks joy? Ingrid has an art background, and essentially goes into a deep dive of what we perceive as joyful. While I don’t use this as scripture, I love the concept and it helped me hone in more into the idea and how I reflect joy into my business.

Second, I’m going to reference Jack Daly. I’m a sales person by nature and trade. He has a bunch of books and has done lots of speaking engagements and has some great kernels of thoughts and advice geared towards sales, customer service, and essentially scaling up your business.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As I lightly touched upon, starting my business wasn’t easy. I had some people very close to me not respect my decision to pursue my business full-time. They couldn’t see it turning into anything bigger than a hobby. I’ve always been driven by the idea of ‘I’ll show you.’ I’ve always been tenacious by nature and wanting to prove people wrong. When it’s someone close to you though, it hits so much harder. It’s so much more personal. It’s so much more heartbreaking. I had to have a lot of internal pep talks with myself, and found that I needed to be my biggest supporter and cheerleader. I had to continue to push myself to keep going, to just keep sewing, just keep creating. For me, it was having to block out all that noise and just focus on taking one step at a time.

Resilience doesn’t have to be a big thing. It’s just continuing to move forward in spite of everything. I’ll stress listening to your heart and having conviction in what you’re doing can be the easiest and hardest thing at the same time.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/theplaidbadger
• Facebook: facebook.com/theplaidbadger
• Other: etsy.com/shop/theplaidbadger

Image Credits
Jenny Svehlek — self (I do my own photography! :) )