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

Alright, Jordan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Risk 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.

Entrepreneurship is always a risk. There isn’t a checklist or a map to show you how to get from point A to point B. There’s no perfect model, perfect team or advisor. You learn by falling and failing and getting up again. You update your contracts based on experiences where you’ve been wronged or unprotected. You hire the wrong people and learn how to fire those people. You charge too much or not enough. You struggle with quickbooks and business registrations and quarterly tax estimates. Even with a MBA, I have always felt like a total moron when it comes to every inner-working of running my business.

I have a small creative shop. It started as a side hustle in 2016. I was the acting Director of Marketing for one of the top 5 Charity Wine Auctions in the country. We lived on the Gulf Coast of Florida in a small, yet thriving community and I had several entrepreneurial friends and a few local small businesses and nonprofits who needed help telling their story. “I can do this,” I thought. “And I can probably make way more money.” Isn’t that the myth?! I do make significantly more money than I did at my 9-5 but for the next 4-5 years, I worked almost twice as many hours and I hustled my tail off. The side hustle quickly became full time when my husband took a job on a ranch in Montana and I took my little baby business to Bozeman knowing I needed to make a serious splash if I wanted to succeed. I joined every networking group, every lead generating organization, made friends with local media, went to 3 or more coffee meetings a day. I was lucky. Bozeman, Montana is full of small businesses, somehow attracts some of the most creative, badass women I know. I was quickly welcomed and grew.

Shortly after one year, my husband got a job offer he couldn’t refuse in my hometown. Here we go again. I moved my business back across the country to North Caroline but kept growing. My little branding shop was also part of another business I created with a partner, a community of women in the creative industry who could work together on bigger projects. SheWolf Collaborative was a way for all of us to get bigger fish, and ease the pain of those clients having to work with 3-4 different agencies. We felt like we could provide one solid strategy and awesome branding, advertising, photography, videography, design, content, social media, packaging, and more.

It was a BLAST! One of the discoveries I made during that time was that it paid to have a network that was spread out and not hyper-focused on one community. This helped with sustainability of lead generation and learning from my fellow She-wolves all across the country. I also quickly discovered that we all needed more support, more community, more folks we could talk to, lean on, learn from. This entrepreneurship deal really felt like the hunt, and we needed a pack.

So….I pivoted. I wanted to create an online community for female entrepreneurs. I poured every dime into launching this community. I planned a dinner tour in 12 major cities all over the country in various restaurants, selling tickets to female entrepreneurs in those areas. I started planning a retreat out west, with speakers and creatives and artists, a badass woman-owned motel turned beautiful retro cafe and stay. The risk was BIG. SheWolf was doing just fine, but I wanted it to be bigger.

I hired a consultant, 3 other advisors. I enlisted 9 of the most dedicated women I knew to join as an advisory board in exchange for a percentage of profits once launched.

And then…like so many other business stories, a pandemic broke out, I lost money on the dinners, I canceled the retreat, and we all immediately burnt out, fell apart, and took care of our individual families and businesses.

In this case, this thing I believed in so passionately, this community I truly felt we all needed, just didn’t launch at the right time, with the right resources and reach, and the pack had to take a massive pause.

I still haven’t relaunched SheWolf in full force. I get quiet when people ask me what’s next for the brand. I scaled everything else way back and even my small branding shop went through a complete restructuring where I closed my office, I got rid of the team, I canceled all of my tech subscriptions that made life and business easier.

The branding firm is just me now, just “brands by jordan.” I take on as many clients as I can or I have demand for, and it all looks very different. Do I regret the risks? No, definitely not. Have I learned irreplaceable life lessons? Yup, sure have.

Working for someone else would be so much easier and so much more stable, but I couldn’t do it. Not right now anyway. The cost of freedom and autonomy is too important. The time I have to spend with my kid, the schedule I can work when he’s asleep or in school, all worth it. It’s not always smooth, and I still go through the rollercoaster of emotions, even wanting to throw in the towel from time to time, but the risk is worth the reward. And for now, I’ve still got my feet in the water.

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 a little bit southern, a little bit out-west. My heart is in the mountains, but the boys in my life love the beach, so beach bumming it is for now. I am equally right-brained + left-brained, a high D on the DISC assessment, an ENFP, and an enneagram 2 (with a 3 wing). I am a networker, and connector. I’m great at zooming out, finding the purpose, building a foundation, and coming up with out-of-the-box, creative ideas to help reach an overall goal.

What does that all look like in the business realm? I offer creative strategy, branded logo and website design, interim CMO work, and small business and non-profit support in the form of mentorship, consulting, and most recently – online courses and education.

I WAS ALWAYS “BOSSY.”
You can ask my siblings. I’m the middle-child, and at different stages of life I’ve been told I’m “too much,” “intimidating,” “too fast,” “care too much,” “too loud,” too…whatever. I have always been a truth seeker, a bleeding heart, a fast worker, and well…a little anxious. Ya know what, I’ve found that you love that too! It’s exactly what you need. You are coming to someone you need expert advice from, and I’m not scared to give it.

I am creative, really into aesthetics, a wannabe home renovator, and lover of all of my migraine triggers including cheese, chocolate, good wine. I really look forward to weekends away with the gals and my 1x a year “do whatever I want” week. Becoming a mom has been the most insane and unexpected journey of my life.

I can’t pretend to know how motherhood impacts others but I can only tell you that time just spiraled. I was living in two different bodies, one that still only knew who I was, how hard I worked, and what I defined myself by, and the new me that I had yet to know. Don’t get me wrong, you could still find me pumping in the bathroom at a client video shoot two weeks after Everett was born. But for the most part, I was forced to become the one who quit anything unnecessary to be with my sweet #craniowarrior who endured skull surgery at 3 months old, wore a helmet for the next 9 months, and now amazes me every damn day. His story WILL be a great one. I can feel it.

He’s doing great now. I sometimes forget about those 9+ months in the helmet and countless appointments, and I’ve finally figured out a balance that works, which usually entails of cranking out the creative while he’s at his little preschool for 9 hours a week and then posting up in the corner of our sectional with my laptop from the second he falls asleep until my own bedtime.

I developed (or discovered) that I have an auto-immune disorder through this wild ride of early motherhood and was forced to rework my priorities and how I offer my expertise.

I STILL REALLY LIKE BEING MY OWN BOSS. Life has forced me to learn to pace myself and do less. The “get shit done” attitude and approach is still very much here, but I try very hard not to manage too much. I only take a few clients at a time, I work from home, I pause everything to go pick my little one up from school. I prioritize good sleep and quality time.

I feel like I have climbed the mountain. I know there will be many more to climb, but for now, I am really enjoying this gorgeous view.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I know I am supposed to say my email list, my social following, my content..blah blah blah. I mean, I’m in the marketing and creative space. However, I’m often the cobbler’s kids when it comes to doing what I do for my own business.

True answer – my relationships. Almost all of my clients for branding work come through word of mouth. In fact, this very interview is a result of my very own friend and hype woman making connections for me. I have incredible friends and colleagues. Even colleagues with whom I have worked with on disaster projects still work with me and recommend me for things.

I love connecting people and I love seeing people succeed. I think that, combined with the unique way my brain works and helps folks sort out their strategies and organize their missions in ways that they can’t do in their own little silos, gives me the most leads and clients.

So when in doubt, keep it old school, be nice to everyone, and pick up the damn phone to connect with folks.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I don’t want to be a GIRLBOSS. When I started this business, I had big dreams, like 7-figure revenues and blowing through glass ceilings, and being on the cover of Forbes. That is no longer what defines success for me.

I had to unlearn the hustle. I had to unlearn the need to be everything to everyone, to work around the clock, to grow grow grow, to post post post, to keep up with the ever-changing algorithms and platforms.

That just wasn’t serving me. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked myself (or thought I did), when I was traveling and speaking at conferences, and getting the spotlight. I found worth in being one of the last folks at the office.

But the more important things were suffering. My husband was sick of bringing me dinner to my my computer every night, and tired of watching me spend unnecessary revenue dollars to attend the next hottest conference.

Life forced me to slow down, and damn, am I thankful. My word for 2024 is REST. And I really am gonna keep leaning into saying no, protecting my time and my calendar, and living from my REAL values.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brandsbyjordan.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandsbyjordan/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/J.lacenski/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanlacenski/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjDpBiB7DiBlg7woAvsX0xA

Image Credits
Lindley Battle Photography