Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Barnes
Hi Jennifer, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
When I started my first company, I was mostly concerned with creating a company that I would want to work for. If I was going to remain a consultant in the field. I asked myself questions, such as: What would I want from the firm I worked for? How would I want to be paid and treated? What kind of schedule would I want? How many clients would I want to serve at once? This is how I came up with the idea of doing a revenue share for my team members, and to give them a schedule that made sense for their lives, individually. I found some people wanted to work 40+ hours a week while others were happy with 28-32 and wanted a ton of flexibility with their hours as they had young kids at home or other obligations that made it almost impossible to work a 9-5 schedule (or for many accountants 8am-7pm!)
I learned alot with company #1 and it helped me build my second company into a much stronger, more agile, and more thoughtful firm. We fortunatly didn’t have some of the baggage that accumulated at company #1, especially some of the toxic humans I had to put up with at my first company. Starting company #2 gave me a fresh start to do things much better than I did the first time around.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
When my ex-partners stole my company out from under me in a devastating hostile takeover where I was walked out of my own company with security, I was pretty pissed off. I used that anger towards them as fuel to start over again. I didn’t let them change the course of my life for the negative, and I didn’t sit around crying that I wished things would have been different. I focused soley on the future and how I could get back to where I was when my world was turned upside down. I started a new company three days later and fought hard to rebuild everything I had worked so hard for. Although we spend a grueling year and a half in litigation as the guys decided to sue me not to compete with them, I ended up winning. Its been exactly six years since I started my second company, and never do I look back and wish things had been different. I’m grateful for the experience and elated that I was able to rebuild so successfully. I learned many lessons along the way and am in a much better place. I consider all the pain and suffering that I endured all a part of my journey, and a major blessing.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Optima has been around for 6 years and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to build a second company. I also built Optima to be twice the size in half the time and currently have 97 W2 employees. We have revenues of over a million a month and service more than 300 companies.
In my personal life, I have a 2 year old son and am married to my best friend. We have been together for 16 years and did so many fun things together before we decided to have a family. We love to snowboard, go to the beach, hang out with friends and spend time with family. Life is pretty good!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.optimaoffice.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/optimaoffice_/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jennifer.Audrey.Barnes
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@optimaoffice
