We were lucky to catch up with Jordan Jones recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jordan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with 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’m not a natural risk-taker, which can be hard as an entrepreneur. I love having a plan and knowing exactly what I need to do to accomplish it. But in the world of entrepreneurship, there’s often so many ideas and so many ways you can implement them successfully. What I’ve found is that taking small risks at each stage has helped me get better at taking bigger risks. My first big risk was leaving my corporate job as a management consultant and backpacking South America. That risk felt ENORMOUS, but it was something my then-boyfriend, now-husband and I had planned for almost a year before we did it. We saved, we planned, and we left really high-paying jobs that looked great on paper but made us miserable. When we got back to the US 4 months later, we figured we had already taken this huge risk, so why not try to start a business? Worst case, we’d just look for another job. So we built an excel sheet of businesses in our small 7-small island that had really terrible websites and started knocking on doors. We weren’t web designers by any means, but we had some good skills from building our own travel blog and figured most of those businesses didn’t need super techy, high-end sites – they just needed simple ones that worked well. From there, we started saying “yes” to new things that clients would ask of us, like if we could run their Facebook ads (with very little experience). So we hired coaches, took courses, and learned through a lot of trial an error. We then pivoted our business to a Facebook ad agency. We were planning our wedding at this time and trying to figure out where we wanted to live. My husband threw out the idea of RVing full-time while we figured it out. So we took our business on the road and traveled the country full-time for two years. We actually bartered our first RV by pitching a smaller company on letting us live in a fifth wheel while we created content for them. We also pitched and worked with Camping World to film lifestyle RV videos (something we had never done, but took a chance and figured ‘why not try”). Then, when I was pregnant with my first child, I knew I couldn’t run our agency model like we were when I became a mom. We were booked out and burnt out – and we’d always wanted to create a course. So our next “risk” / pivot was turning our service-based coaching into a DIY course. That first launch brought in $30k in passive income while I went on maternity leave. We ran that business model for a year before my husband had an idea for a journal (just for himself). We wound up taking another risk and creating a Kickstarter campaign to see if anyone else would want it. 300+ people funded that Kickstarter, and a year later we shut down our successful marketing company to pursue the e-commerce business full time. We scaled that business to half a million dollars in revenue in years. So all that to say, I think risk-taking is a really integral part of entrepreneurship, but what I’ve found is that by taking smaller, calculated risks it helps build that muscle so you’re able to try new things and pivot more easily in ways that better serve your audience and helps you build a life you love.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Yes! I’m Jordan Jones – a mamapreneur & marketing strategist who lives in the mountains of Colorado with my husband, three daughters, and our german shepherds. Our journey to entrepreneurship has been a fun, wild ride – and 8 years in our lives and businesses look nothing like they did when we first started. I’m a recovering perfectionist and workaholic – I’ve always loved business and marketing, and that’s what I studied in college at Georgetown. I took the “normal” route at first (good college, great job with travel + benefits) until I realized I was totally unfulfilled working 60+ hours for someone else, not doing what I love. My husband and I started our business originally as a travel blog while we backpacked South America. We dealt with a lot of criticism by people who were uncomfortable with us leaving “regular” corporate jobs to pursue something we loved. We DIYed our first blog and learned everything as we went. That first blog gave us the skills to then pitch small local mom & pop shops on building new websites for them. We literally just started knocking door-to-door to get our first clients. And it’s funny looking back because that “relationship” type of business has actually been what sets us apart – that we keep things personal and don’t try to make it this standoffish-type of agency that doesn’t have a relationship with our clients. We learned what we were good at by a lot of trial and error and saying “yes” to everything. We invested early on in coaches and courses to hone in our skills, especially with Facebook ads and funnels. We always just had the perspective that we could figure something out (like how to create a product-based business and launch it on Kickstarter). That mindset has served us really well, because it’s helped us to pivot and try new things as our lives and priorities have changed (like traveling full-time, becoming parents, or growing a business during a pandemic). Now that my husband runs our e-commerce business mostly on his own with our amazing assistant, I focus mainly on marketing coaching, specifically helping entrepreneurs turn their service-based offers into scalable online programs with evergreen funnels. I really geek out over the strategy & tech behind building funnels, and after years of working with entrepreneurs I realized that was a lot of what was holding people back from trying out funnels and courses. After seeing the freedom, impact, and income our own funnels were bringing us (like making $30k while on maternity leave & still being able to serve our audience WITHOUT more of our personal time invested), I really got fired up about helping others experience the power of funnels in their business and lives. I think what sets me apart from others is my ‘why’. I’m not trying to just be a “boss babe CEO’ and make 7-figures at the expense of things that matter most (like my family and faith). I’m purposely running a business only 2 days a week so that I have the freedom to raise my daughters and eventually homeschool them. It’s what allowed us to say ‘yes’ to moving across the country for my husband to join the pastoral staff at a church. Our business is what allows us to steward our God-given gifts, time, and experience to serve others without sacrificing the things that really matter most to us. That’s really important to me and a big part of how I approach funnels/business gross. I focus on helping entrepreneurs, mostly other mamas, build simple & scalable businesses so they can do what they love while having MORE time for the people and things they love. I’m most proud of the fact that I’m able to still do work that fires me up and serves others while prioritizing my role as a mom (my most important job). We’ve always chosen to do things a little differently (like backpack south America, RV full-time, start multiple businesses, etc) and our businesses and the way we’ve built them have given us the freedom to make those decisions that align with our family’s goals and values. That’s the biggest thing – building a business with purpose AND profit in mind.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
As marketers, we love trying to think of creative ways to hit our goals. When we were getting married and thinking about where we wanted to live, my husband came up with the idea to trying RVing full-time. Instead of just buying an RV, we figured why not try to barter one first? So we filmed a little “promo” video of ourselves to share our story and “why” and then we built landing pages specific to different RV companies. We created a little template, researched companies we’d want to work with, and then built a landing page for that company specifically with why we’d want to work with them and really focused on how we could help THEM. We emailed and reached out to as many of them as we could find. We wound up connecting with a company in California who was excited about the idea. Just about a month after we were married, we packed up our truck and drove from NJ to CA to meet the team and pick up the fifth wheel. We had never RVed before and had no idea what we were doing – but we were great at marketing and had lots of ideas for how we could create content and help the RV company. It was a rocky start and we learned a LOT through trial and error. We traveled in that first RV for a year while creating content and working with the company, while still running our own business. It was such a great way to try RVing and full-time travel without investing in an RV ourselves. It also helped us learn how to build relationships with brands and companies – and it taught us important lessons too. We wound up not getting along great with the first company for quite a few reasons, and we went our separate ways after that first year. But we learned SO many great lessons and wound up buying our own RV to renovate after that. That experience then led to partnerships with companies like Camping World. So while it wasn’t a “perfect” situation it was a really fun way to try something new in a pretty risk-free way for us! It was such a fun way to pitch a company and use our own marketing skills to accomplish both personal & business goals.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Becoming a mom changed everything for me – in my life and my business. I had always wanted to be a mom, but when it came down to the first time I was pregnant, I was actually really fearful of how it would impact my business and work. I LOVED our business and lifestyle, and I struggled with feeling like I had to choose one or the other. I didn’t see a lot of examples of women who were doing both well. I loved coaching and struggled with the idea of building courses and evergreen funnels because they had always felt “icky” to me. I didn’t like the talk that so many entrepreneurs were saying about funnels – like “making money in your sleep.” It felt hands off and insincere. But when we found out we were pregnant with my oldest daughter, I knew I couldn’t keep running our business the way we were (100% service-based offers) if I also wanted to be a present mom and work part-time while still making a full-time income. So we decided to turn our offer into a course and scale it with an evergreen funnel. But the entire time we built it, we kept asking “how can we do this differently?” We wanted to build a funnel that would help us earn more while working less, yes, but we also wanted to make sure our clients/students were still seeing great results. I was fearful people wouldn’t get the same results if they weren’t working with me 1:1. By building a course focused on the results and impact for our audience, we were actually able to serve MORE people at a more affordable price, still get them incredible results, and significantly decrease our own time invested. That first course brought in over $30k in passive income while I took 3 months of maternity leave with my oldest. While it was a scary move at first to pivot from service-based offers to online courses, it wound up being such a gift and blessing. It proved to me that I could run a profitable business on a much more part-time basis that didn’t sacrifice the impact for our customers. It showed me that it was actually possible to run our business in a way that allowed me to still prioritize my role as a mama and homemaker. That first pivot has had such an impact on me, my business, and my family that it’s now what I focus on helping others do. I want everyone to be able to experience the freedom and impact that funnels can have on their businesses and lives.
Contact Info:
- Website: jordanjones.co
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/jordanjones.co/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@jordanjonesco
Image Credits
Lauren Elsasser Photography Laura Lee Creative