Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in wellness but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Jenny Maenpaa, Founder of FIREwork, located in New York, NY, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
FIREwork is an evidence-based approach to work-life wellness designed to empower both individuals and professional organizations to be forces of change in their lives and the world around them.
Tell us about yourself
I encountered so many people, especially young women, who were burning out in their careers in their 20s and 30s and unsure of what to do to sustain long-term career growth for decades longer. I realized that if we continued to cater to a workplace designed with men in mind, one that assumed there was someone at home doing the cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing, we would continue to burn out at a breakneck pace. Every day, I am sustained by seeing people make fundamental changes in how they approach work-life wellness, both from the individual side and the corporate side.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Anytime a client sends us a thank you and says things like, "I am fundamentally changed because of our work together," I want to burst into happy tears. So many people don't believe they deserve it all and hold themselves back from pursuing their own happiness because they are waiting for permission from someone else. When I give them that permission, they are able to rise up from the ashes of their burnout and redesign their lives to work for them.
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
As a business owner, it's easy to work 24/7. I can tell myself I won't check my emails, but then, like Pavlov's dogs, my finger clicks on the icon on my phone, and suddenly I'm back in work mode, trying to solve problems.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Know your "why." When things are hard, when you're chasing people to pay invoices, or when you get rejected, you will need to know why you're doing this work to keep going.
- Surround yourself not only with cheerleaders but also with experts. You definitely want someone in your corner saying, "You're amazing!" but you also need someone who can say, "The reason this initiative didn't work is that you forgot to factor in this. Let me show you what I did when I made the same mistake so you can do it again more successfully."
- Force yourself to take time off. Whenever I notice that I've been working too many days in a row without a break, I schedule something on my calendar that I have to pay attention to. Sometimes it's buying a ticket to a Broadway show so that for a few hours, my phone will be off, and I will be immersed in someone else's creativity, and sometimes it's planning a weeklong trip to a country whose time difference makes it nearly impossible to try to work during my normal business hours. Waking up in Greece, seeing a bunch of emails, responding to them, and then realizing everyone in the US will be asleep for the next 8 hours frees me up to spend my entire day focusing on the world around me instead of repeatedly checking my inbox.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.dothefirework.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dothefirework
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dothefirework/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dothefirework/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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