Today we’d like to introduce you to Jen Swanson.
Hi Jen, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I started my consulting firm about 6 years ago after nearly 20 years in corporate and non-profit work, mostly in marketing and customer experience-related roles. My career started in Higher Education, and I began working in administrative roles at Hamline University and the University of Minnesota, including a role as the Associate Director of Programs for the University of Minnesota Alumni Association. But I was excited by business and technology roles, and made the switch to for-profit education with a move to Capella Univeristy, and that started my career in working at the nexus of technology and experience.
Starting my own business wasn’t always on my radar – but after working for a few large organizations, I wanted to try my hand at offering my skills to a few companies at once, rather than working for one company for a long time. I loved the variety that came with consulting – clients had similar problems in new contexts, and that gave me more energy and interest to solve them. Over time, I grew from a one-woman show into a company with a bench of consultants who share a passion for coming together to solve interesting problems.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Nope! While I’ve been fortunate to see a slow and steady growth trajectory over the last 6 years, the economy hasn’t made that easy. And I’ve made my share of mistakes – whether that’s been hiring people that weren’t a match for what we were doing, or taking on clients that weren’t a match for our ethos. I’ve also done things the hard way – and arrived at the finish line of a project only to look back and realize we could have taken a much easier path.
I think the hardest thing to do when running a business is to let go of regret when you experience it. It’s so easy to beat yourself up for what you should have known to do or for what you should have done better. In reality, everything you do is a learning experience, and regret is a wasted emotion. But it’s really hard in the moment not to get tied up in it.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Tuckpoint is a boutique firm specializing in helping companies define, strengthen, and mature their operating model. A business’s operating model is how work gets done inside a company – how decisions get made, how work is prioritized, how work is funded, how teams are structured and assigned that work, etc. Oftentimes, these things just “happen” inside a company and are not expressly stated or decided. And as such, it’s not at all clear how they happen. Or worse, employees have different understandings of how they happen, and that’s how confusion and misunderstandings arise- and that gets in the way of strategies being completed and goals being met.
Our bias is to the product operating model, which, in conjunction with agile delivery methodologies, is how most modern technology-driven companies operate today. And in today’s digital world, most companies are technology-driven.
Because we are small, we can adapt to our clients’ specific cultures, meet them where they are, and deliver approaches tailored to them. We are really proud of our long relationships with our clients – we embed with our clients and become part of their teams for the kinds of actual, transformative work that we know will stick for the long term.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Being an entrepreneur is inherently risky, but not just in the “bootstrap your own business” kind of way – I think it’s really risky to show up, day after day, and invest in your own brand and company and sell a product or service you believe in, even in the face of a tough sales market or a part of society that says “Doing this thing on your own is really hard – most people don’t make it. Maybe you shouldn’t even try!”
I don’t think of myself as a risk taker, but then again – I’ve been doing this for 6 years through one of the toughest economic markets we’ve ever known. So maybe I’m a bigger risk taker than I think I am!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tuckpoint.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tuckpoint-advisory-group
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgswanson/
