Today we meet Jade who is making it a priority to spend time with her babe and change her successful career accordingly.
- Tell us about yourself, a bit of background.
If people had tag lines, Jade Reinertsen’s would certainly be ‘Think Loud’. Her strong entrepreneurial spirit saw Jade begin her career as a modest junior sales executive and quickly scale the ranks to Media Sales Executive, achieving Sales Person of the Year. Jade’s love of leading people to unlock their potential and achieve their professional and personal goals saw her co-found Jawbone Management – a leading brand activation agency. The business has grown from an impactful idea into an 18 person agency that now serves as the top pick for leading brands in the country. Jade was also recruited by Cliff Central – South Africa’s leading uncensored online content hub. Here, she made an impact as a co-host and DJ. Jade’s energy, ambition and love of helping everyday people achieve their purpose – professionally and personally – have seen her move very naturally into a life coaching space where she can share her experience and skills with others, encouraging them to be brave, bold and flourish.
- What were you doing before you started this business?
Working as a sales executive.
- Is your business full time or part time and why?
Full time. We’re working on an exit strategy from the JAWBONE agency into more flexibile coaching consultancy hours.
- How do you juggle the responsibilities of being a mom with your work?
Wow! It’s a tough one and I think each day you have to take as it comes and do all you can to balance motherhood and career growth. My theory is if my baby needs me or is sick or there is something I have to do with him that time will never come back to me. Client and work come second.
- Do you have a business plan? If so, can you share a bit about your strategy to make it successful? I’ve got one for the coaching consultancy launching in 2017. To make it successful I choose to be coached around accountability and also mentored on what this plan looks like, crafting the milestones and achieving the launch date.
- How do you get clients/ market yourself?
I’m very fortunate that the agency as well as coaching has reached wonderful organic levels of word of mouth and referrals and when those are not as fruitful in certain months- I sell and approach brands we’d like to align the agency with.
- What’s your biggest challenge right now?
Being 4 months pregnant with a 10 month old baby, working on exiting our agency after a decade of being here to pursue a more full time coaching career. Balancing this all right now is tough. Physically and mentally.
- Did you need a lot of money to start off? And how long was it before you made a profit? For the agency, my husband gave me 4 months when we began in 2008 which then amounted to a savings of around 100k. If I’d not had fixed costs- might have been less but the start up costs were fairly low. We made a profit fairly soon . The coaching however will be a completely different ratio and waiting period. I’ve been on a mentoring prgramme for 12 months. I’ve began my coaching qualification and studying in 2016 and will qualify in Jan 2017. The biggest challenge there is having had to travel to the UK 6 times over 9 months, being pregnant as well as having a currency which was at one stage 24:1
- What makes your business unique from other brands?
JAWBONE – Our USP ( for lack of a better word) is a our ability to conceptualise epic ideas for brands to enagage with consumers as well as a back end factory where we do all in house production. Very rare in our industry.
COACHING – My style of working alongside others and helping them unlock their potential.
- Share with us your social media links and website.
www.jadereinertsen.com – not live yet
Wow, Jade. You sound like an absolute Superstar. I admire your dynamism and drive. Congratulations on the organic growth of Jawbone and all the best for your new venture. Something tells me you’ll be a brilliant coach.