In 2016 Gritty Brids partnered with Treefort Music Fest and DIY label Self Group on a short run series picked up by XRAY.FM, featuring artists with a continued focus on festivals. It was translated into a weekly narrative radio show and podcast receiving a Regional Arts and Culture grant to attend Podcast Movement that year. Since then, Gritty Birds has partnered with multiple organizations and festivals.

Originally supporting content creators and multimedia producers through workshops with Siren Nation, Jeni began consulting in 2016, working on an unreleased podcast with Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and recording interviews for podcast networks including Nerdist.

Working in pro audio full time at Guitar Center as the leading saleswoman in the PNW, Stottrup built her chops for consulting and supporting creators and brands with recording. 

In 2019, Jeni founded Gritty Birds Podcasting LLC as she continues to speak and give workshops nationally, including Podcast Movement’s PMX, Siren Nation and Women Crush Music. Jeni has also spoken at She Podcasts Live, Podcasters Toolkit, Podcasters Summit, Podfest, Podcast Editors Conference and was a founding writer for Podcast Magazine. 

As a child, Jeni dreamt of going to Oz and later manifested a moment to become Glinda. Jeni was surrounded by the beauty of the Midwest and a family who favored the arts and BlueGrass music. Dipping her toes in the education industry, Jeni found her footing in consulting. Listen in as Jeni and I discuss dreaming, systematizing, and navigating the many pivots throughout the entrepreneurial journey.

So yeah, there was that, that dreamer traveler who gets to create and. Make something in the world literally make something.

Lori Brooks: [00:03:54] I love it. I think I wanted to go to Oz at one point too. I don’t know that I, that was, a two goal or more just to dream on my,

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:04:03] Well, I read all the books, all of them. So it was a big thing.

Yeah. And when we were little, that was one of the first musicals that I saw. And then that was my friend, Julia. And I used to play that every day. And she always played Dorothy, when I’d play Glenda. And eventually actually I was Glenda in a play. But it was, that was part of what it was, is it was the idea of traveling.

We were on the road a lot in the summers and parents were teachers. So it would be let’s, you know, They were, it was a very fun, imaginative place to explore. Yeah.

Lori Brooks: [00:04:33] In fact, you just brought up something that the last episode that I was just recording, we were talking all about mindset. And I just love that you just told us that you manifested that moment in your life. So please, I know this is not what I was intending to do, but I’d love for you to share a little bit more about that. How did you get to be Kalinda?

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:04:52] Well, actually I was in a children’s theater and I started when I was 11. And we would put on these plays, these musicals and they, we double cast. I think this one was, yeah, this one was double cast and it was my freshman year. So we, that was the musical that we put on as a part of that. So I, yeah, I have the photos of me and the giant orange wig and I absolutely did. In fact, play Glinda, the good witch of the.

Lori Brooks: [00:05:21] I hate to ask you to share that picture. So I won’t,

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:05:25] I don’t have it on, I mean it probably somewhere, my dad sends me photos all the time. It’d be easy to find. It’s a little ridiculous.

Lori Brooks: [00:05:32] I love that. I absolutely love to see that.

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:05:37] We can find that very easily. Yeah,

Lori Brooks: [00:05:39] you rock. So you started off, you were interested in the arts, you had a farm. In Minnesota, I’m assuming this is a family farm that you originally were dreaming of and thinking of how did, how for you, do you think that thought process of the farm even became incorporated remotely close to what you moved into, which was creative arts and theater, or do you feel that was just something that was a dream as a child and never realistically came to fruition?

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:06:08] I think it was the idea. Of just that imaginative side, because, you know, growing up as I got older, I learned the realities of the farm and that’s not a thing. I mean, not at all, but it was just that little kid silliness because the farm was a place where, you know, brought a lot of memories when I was young.

Cause I was eight when we sold it and when my grandfather passed away and then my grandmother on the other side passed away and that. Within a month. And it was, you know, as I was little, some of it was, we were in Northern Iowa. So going up to Minnesota was always amazing and it had a lot of mystique and it, you know, it had a lot of history of our Dana shop grow growing, and there was census of where you were from, which is something in my hometown.

We, there was elements of that, but. It had to do with roots and origin and it was beautiful up there. And we had a spring that we maintained and these gorgeous, it was just a beautiful, beautiful place. And I think some of that was just kind of wanting to connect back. Our family has got a lot of creative art side to it too.

And so when we were up there, that would be when we’d be singing bluegrass, my uncle, you know, there’s a lot of memories of being up there and just that creative freedom of it. And so for me, I think it was more. I didn’t understand or think about what it meant to run a farm when I was under eight. So it was very much, I’m going to go to that beautiful place up there that these days probably has no good internet.

Cause you know, anywhere remote has terrible internet. I would know it wouldn’t work, but when you’re little, it becomes very romanticized.

Lori Brooks: [00:07:42] Right. Very much so. And that’s actually why I asked that because I loved how you throw it in there. I think we all have those little pieces of our life. For instance, becoming a doctor or x Y and Z there’s different things that we might fantasize about. And that’s why I was asking because as we’re growing up, we all have these thought processes of what our life is really going to look like and what we want to do when we grow up. But everybody has moment of a pivot, whether it be just maturity.

Or life circumstance, we all have different things that we look to in the future and different ways that our journeys pivot for you. I don’t see that it was amazing or pivot. I feel it was more of an evolution of your journey into the creative arts and the way that you became a pilot. I asked her, so I’m curious if you’ll share how entrepreneurship became a part of your life.

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:08:36] Oh my gosh, you know, in ways that’s true. In a ways it goes a couple of different places. So I ended up. Having just some circumstances changed in my life, particularly when I was 18 and I got vocal nodules. So I ended up picking up a political communications degree. And one of the things was that kind of changed what I would do on stage as a singer.

And it also really brought in some of the other elements of what it means to create campaigns, what it means to create media and really focus more on that writing side. So when I left. College. And I had these political communications degree on this vocal performance degree. So I automatically hit this place where today, to this day, sometimes it’s hard to say I am a, you know, I’m a recording engineer.

But I also really focus on continent. People, like, what do you mean? And I’m like, well, it’s kind of been there the whole time. And you know, when you’re having an entrepreneurial journey, you often want to really have that focus. So I was often kind of separated between those two things. And when the economy crashed, I.

I ended up going and getting a degree in a Montessori education. So I got a master’s in Montessori and came back to the Pacific Northwest and was like, okay, the date is performance are done. And even at that point, I’d started, you know, I’d had had blogs and since I was 13 and the journalism side that’s done too, which was funny.

Cause that was just the beginning for me. I taught for a couple of years and there were. Things that happened, unfortunately, in the jobs situation where I was not able to stay in the schools because the school, um, had to cut half of it. And the, I ended up getting heavy, heavy into performing, and then also using that time to get even more into journalism and show production.

And that’s when I really, really, really got my nuts and bolts as far as recording. And, you know, the engineering that I learned and really fell in love. Because one of the things about performing is I hadn’t really even thought about some of the production sides of thing. And I’d played around with things and recorded since I was young, but I hadn’t really known what to do, but when you’re performing and when you’re putting out records and stuff, it’s really actually hard to be able to survive.

So for the first decade, From the time I was 16 until I was 26, I was in restaurants. And then for this next phase I spent, I’ve spent a lot of that time in education and teaching people and in recording. And so it was kind of these phases about what’s your day job that helps to get through. And teaching became a huge part of that for me.

And at a certain point though, I really was still not sure what I wanted to do. I was like, maybe I have a production company and that didn’t work. So I went ahead and started kind of taking. If there was a day workshop or a short couple hour thing, I would go ahead and take those workshops. And it was when I was at guitar center, I spent two years in pro audio and sales there.

And at this time I’d even been gone into teaching a little bit. And I, I was in my head at this point, really wanting to get into public radio. And I’d had a show that had gotten picked up by a radio station and we’d gone to narrative. And at this point I’d also been writing for multiple publications and had been performing a little less than I had been before, but the podcast was doing really well.

And I was going to festivals, interviewing people, bigger names. But it was a ton of work to produce. So my head, I was like, oh, I’m going to get into public radio. I’m going to find a job. But what was challenging is it was actually very hard to find those jobs because most of the people that were getting hired by public radio, where they were J school.

And they, yeah, they were J school credits just that alone, or they started when they were younger and like they were groomed into it. And so it was kind of frustrating because I kept producing and I’m like, man, but in this whole time, and this is funny because I would get. I was putting on workshops and how to podcast started even six years ago, I guess at this point I’d done such similar, like you said, very, very similar routes.

So it wasn’t hard for me when it came down to it to really step into podcasting. Because I mean, I launched with sponsors. I switched my show up and its format within the first. Like 20 episodes over two years. Cause I would, I did a first block that was just really fun interview style. And then I started doing artist interviews that switched in the second one.

So the first season was all people who were in the world of music. I wanted to answer those questions about how we actually make it. And so I used the context that I had and the Portland music scene and it was all Portland based. And then the second season I expanded and I call that the second season and that’s when I got picked up for radio.

And then we turned it to narrative at episode 20. And I was learning all these skills, but again, how is that sponsors? I always had partners because it was the radio. I was able to even have volunteers, but it was a ton of work and I would. To teaching. I was working part time in schools, but like, I don’t know, there just hit a point where it was just really not working out in schools.

I’d been out of it for too long. And I was becoming like an assistant at times, but like not actually hired on as one. And I, was really kind of discovering. Yeah. And getting to know my ADHD, like, because now that they’re now, you know, this was the beginning of when you finally started to see research into brain.

So things that felt really frustrating to me were for the first time in my life being like, oh, interesting, like what this is, I, this things make sense and you know, really starting to approach it and find ways to make my brain. Find the job that my brain likes, right. And do things that are successful.

And again, production company. And I was dabbling in this entrepreneurial space and I got gotten a grant to go to podcast movement. I had gotten a regional arts and culture grant from the city of Portland. When I started the narrative side, the year that I was picked up with the radio station. And that allowed me to go to two years of podcast movement.

So in August of that year, I attended podcast movement. I was producing a narrative radio show. For x-ray FM. And then I, in that January, a friend of mine got me a ticket offer for, to have me go to Nam, which is like this gigantic humongous music tech gear conference, like a hundred thousand people. It takes over the LA center.

And I had started making connections with different Mike manufacturers, like sure. Et cetera. And I did a Kickstarter. I started working on a Kickstarter cause I, at this point, all I had was like a Yeti cause I’d had other gear from years before, but it all started to die and my computer was toward the end of its life.

And all the recording I’d done had been in studios, but I really wanted to. I have, uh, I, I, wasn’t wanting to work in studios anymore. And so this really created a huge shift in my life. And when we talk about the pivot and I look back at those two things that happened, because the next year I, by then I got a job at guitar center.

Cause after going to Nam, I ended up forming relationships with RME audio, and then also usher and a few other people kind of starting like these things that people were like, you have really good audio and I’m like, thank you. And. Operate it and how to explain it to people and to all of these things started getting really into tech.

And so I got hired for pro audio and at this point I was about six to seven months in, and there’s, wasn’t a split position yet in pro audio. And it was really, I was getting really frustrated and I’d also been interviewing with a public radio job in Iowa, which ended up not working out. And when I went to the podcast movement, the second time, I that year.

Uh, I went to a stage and they were like, yeah, I have an editing business. And I’m like, what the heck am I not doing that for? Right. Like, forget going to public radio. I needed to do this. And I’m like, I’m going to give myself two years. And I ended up bringing on one client. And I was at guitar center for two years.

I ended up doing that Kickstarter. I built the studio. That’s how I built my studio and was able to get the gear that I have so I can be able to do sound really well. And I was able to finally start doing things less theoretically, like I was learning a lot of things at guitar center, but I was one of the things that was happening is I wanted more time to actually really dive into being better at the tools.

And so I was editing for other folks. And finally made the leap to, to leave. Now it’s been two years and I, I was just like, okay, we’re doing this. This is going to be great. And I, it was hard. It was a hard journey, but that was a huge shift for me, was getting that, that, that was that push. I was like, I don’t want to be a guitar center forever.

It was really physically demanding on my body. I’d had a couple like ankle injuries from like from festivals and various things while I was working. And I had. You know, my body was wrecked and it was very one of the ways that you become a top salesperson is by selling subs. And those are those giant John Q Mongo things that aren’t huge stages.

And it was just really physically demanding my body. And I was not being able to keep up. And I was in a lot of pain and like that went along with like an invisible, almost that I have. And so it was really frustrating. So I needed to get out of guitar center and. Started to explore that then to kind of get to know business more.

And that was the beginning. That was the big pivot. So it kind of a long story there, but like you said, it’s sort of a shift over here, but so much had to do with falling in love with tech. Definitely. Definitely. No, I hear it. I hear it. And I like how that happened though. It truly was, you know, and evolution, as I was kind of thinking you were in the arts and that was kind of a focus for you.

Lori Brooks: [00:18:19] So it wasn’t as though, you know, you came out of. Planning on your CPA and then jumped into the arts and podcasting. You know what I mean? So it really truly was an evolution of your journey and just kind of recognizing where you were feeling stagnant and wanting to see that new form of growth for yourself.

What do you feel like were the hardest steps when you did make that pivot and make the decision to go out on your own? What would you show are some of the hardest steps.

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:18:47] Well, I think even to this day, some of the things that I’m always thinking about our messaging and even the online marketing side of everything has been interesting.

Cause if I had known what I know now, Then when there weren’t as many editors or, you know, like there’s just so many little pieces of it that I just didn’t even factor in. And I learned as I went and I, I definitely have like, had a crash course this year and how that works, especially for getting the word out and all these different things.

And I was off, I was really focused on systems and various pieces about, you know, how to really operate our shows and. I think that it’s been a lot of little things, but I really would say the side of the marketing was one of the most challenging, because it was like, how do you, how do you sell yourself and have the packages make sense that people really want.

I think that th these days are so many great resources for getting started there. And I took advantage of what I could that first year, but a hundred percent there’s things I could have been doing from the beginning that just didn’t even occur to me. And like a big one this year has been kind of really spending more time with my email marketing.

And I don’t know that I would have liked. Without being in this position, but I sometimes look back and I’m like, man, what if I had hired a coach or taken a coaching program in that first year and how much the difference would be? And a lot of people say that. And part of it is because it’s true because you think, you know what you’re doing, you’re doing, you have all this experience, but you need other people’s eyes.

But when you’re like in the midst of trying to get clients or working a bunch or trying to get clients or keeping things going, it can be really hard to balance those two. So I’ve learned a lot, but I’d say that that’s like the part where, when I look back at the beginning and I’m like, man, you thought you knew and you weren’t, ah, you weren’t totally.

But I definitely have a lot more steering now than I used to.

Lori Brooks: [00:20:43] I actually have a title for that mode. So I move my clients out of that exact mode and I call it W.I.N.O. Mode. We all fall into W.I.N.O. Mode where we’re working in, not on our business, we all do it. So I move people into B.O.S.S.  Mode where they’re building out operations to support their success because we all do.

We all end up in that W.I.N.O. Mode where we are so busy with wearing all the multiple hats that we have to wear to start the business that we’re so overwhelmed, that, that area we don’t take the step back and pull ourselves out of W.I.N.O. Mode. And that’s why it’s important for people to invest in them.

In themselves so that they can have the coach that pulls them out of that moment. We all need it. I even need it. And I pull my, my clients out of that moment, but I at times need a coach to pull me out of those moments because we all, we all end up there.

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:21:40] And that’s what I do with podcasters, because I am a systems person and I have those systems for, you know, making shows work.

But it is funny when you’re like, sometimes you do it for others, how it doesn’t necessarily translate in the same space. And I think that’s the thing I learned. I know, I think I not even learned, but know about podcasting is I’ll meet people who have done. So while business are various things and don’t understand kind of how the systems are a little bit different, how we need to approach them and in a new lens so that we can be able to like succeed with those shows and get the feedback loops.

Cause they’re a little bit different and it’s not the same as a blog. And, but, but it is also different. Running a business. You want to run your podcasts like a business, but it’s not the same as running a business. So if you’re trying to run your business, like you run a podcast that also does go exactly the same.

Lori Brooks: [00:22:25] Right? Right. No, definitely. So tell us about your business. Tell us about your practice and your podcast, please.

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:22:33] Yes. So I have two businesses and they’re both tied and I am a podcast producer, engineer, and coach between the two of them and gritty birds. Podcasting is where I help people with editing and production very specifically.

So a projects that I like to work on. Are shows like a couple of the conversations I’m having right now, one of them is a narrative show and the other one is that’d be a short series, like eight episodes. And then the other one is taking these large amounts of content and building them into like taking them into smaller videos.

So I do a lot of constant work, you know, things that involve scripting sound design that involve narrative, teaching other people how to do narrative. So I also take, you know, Projects that people have that are meeting just basic editing. So I do have a couple of clients that are just straight editing. I do both video and audio.

And have a really good ear that came naturally for me. And I’ve got like a lot of really good tools. So in that position though, because of the fact that I have those two sides that I’ve always had, which is the communication side clients who come to me like another one is a hypnotist that I’m working with right now.

And she’s sending me the audio. Train her on her mic because not everyone has used Mike’s and we want to get that really good sound, finding the spaces, helping optimize for them, and then, you know, tweaking as we go along and then also taking a look at our scripts and figuring out how we can change things like, you know, repurposing your articles and podcasts.

Also not the same. So when I’m worked with people, I also working with them on the content side. So I get to merge those two sides. I also really enjoy doing launches. I’ve done last year. I think I did six or seven. I can’t remember exactly. Cause there’s always a couple, like there were a couple that are still kind of in progress.

When someone has a full-time job, like we work on it when we can, but the other company was launched in December and that is the podcast forum. And it came up because I was actually building out my courses that I was doing for gritty birds, but I was really having, finding that gritty birds was focusing heavier and heavier and finding a bigger audience in audio.

But I really wanted to still have this wonderful content site as a writer and yeah. It’s so important to me. And I wanted to have a conversation more on the marketing side and the things I was learning over the last couple of years from people who really know it as well. And some of the things that I’ve learned is in, especially in brain science and brains and all this stuff, as I was building these courses, I found the name on a, just to stay when I was like, okay, what, what are, what are we doing in the world?

And it became the podcast. And it’s been out since January. It’s one of these things sort of evolving and growing. And this is where I jumped in and enjoying this year long coaching program with a wonderful lady who is part of my community here in Portland. And it was, it was like, Hey, we’re going to, we’re focusing on courses.

And I’m like, oh my gosh, I need this. And so I made this investment and it’s really great. I’m very happy about it and learning a lot about memberships because we’re still figuring out whether it’s going to be a membership or if it’s definitely going to be a courses. This all looks like the podcasters form.

Right now we have a monthly that we meet and have conversations about podcasts. Dean. We have like two people who actually give talks and speeches, not maybe to gave talks. So this last month, one of them was on planning. So she shared all her systems. These are like PDF awesome talks. And then in the first hour we network.

So this time first one we had about 20. Five people. And this time we had a solid group of eight, which was great. So we treated it more toward the mastermind. So we’re, I think that’s kind of where we’re heading right now is having a monthly mastermind and then figuring out how to kind of access those tools that I’ve created my courses as I’m building like my like big courses over the next year, couple of years.

And that way I can share a lot of these tools that I’m doing and more of the coaching side of things, where I can train people how to do narrative, but not just in the sense of where I. Doing it one-on-one because it, same thing as like when these clients get busy, I want them to be able to access some of these things.

And I also want to be able to do longer programs where we’re doing it. And there is that expectation of it because there’s a few people who are really into it or are not. And that’s the, that’s the beginning of the podcast Russ forum. So that one is very course online. And then the other side right now is slowly transitioning.

It’s still my YouTube channel. I, yeah, it’s really fun because I love being able to review tech tools and that’s really what we’re doing. One of the huge things we’re doing there. Okay. It’s been great, seeing like certain videos, just take off and have comments where you wouldn’t think about it. But so many people have questions about these gear.

And I w I showed you a little bit earlier, like I have a ton of tools and some of them were gifts. Some of them were sent to me. Some of them were things I picked up at guitar center because when I was there, I got a really great discount. Like one of my mikes I use. It’s not out here right now, but I got that one.

I did a partnership with army, so I actually ended up working with army and I recorded a, went to Nam last year, right before everything shut down. And I recorded 35 interviews on floor with them and did a video in the fall that I produced with them. So it’s like, all these things are coming full circle, both on the tech side and the other.

And I said, I’m still figuring out that marketing cause it’s hard sometimes to say, well, where do we focus the energy? And as I’m learning. You know, we wanted to be more centralized, but I find that if I go to tech. I miss out on the other side and the two for me and that go along with the boys. Like I always considered us a triangle, my like three areas.

Cause they go together. But at the same point, how do you explain that? In three words? So someone doesn’t go, I don’t understand what you do.

Lori Brooks: [00:28:29] No, I think your website does an excellent job of explaining exactly what you do. Podcast producer, editor, and content creator. So, I mean, there is a chunk more, of course, if we go. But surely I think your, your website does an excellent job of encompassing who you are and, and what your services truly are that you assist your clients at.

So of course, I will be sure to include a link to it through the show notes page. I’m curious, Jenny, if you could go back say 10 years and tell yourself just one thing, what do you think that.

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:29:04] Oh, it’s challenging to say that because of the fact that I was a teacher at that point, and I didn’t know what was going to come in that next year, which was pretty crazy. I think I would just, man, it’s really hard to look at that for a period of time. Cause it was like one of the best times in my life.

And that moment there was just so much positivity. It would, I think it would be, uh, save more money. I don’t know how I, but I say this because it was, I had a really good job. So I was excited after the economy crashed and I had a job. And so I think I was, I was definitely, that’s funny in a time, I would say let’s think about that side a little bit more, you know, and, and just really creating that financial plan that, because what I learned in losing jobs was like that insecurity and that kind of up and down and got really tiring.

So some of those things where I would say. From an early side, like what you can do for that kind of structure and building that in because for a person with ADHD, that’s that structure is something we really work on and it’s best to do it when you’re in a place of really good stability, because then you can build on it because of the fact that I was working on some things at that point, but it was more like I would a hundred percent say the things I would take a look at were just getting.

Finances and understanding money a little bit better. And it was really challenging because that was actually what happened with the school is they didn’t do that. And it was an issue. It became an issue.

Lori Brooks: [00:30:29] The show is designed to assist entrepreneurs with coming up with a business idea and an industry that they may not have been thinking of and Jenny I have enjoyed this conversation and as a podcast, producer and editor content creator, In the broadcasting space, as well as coaching space where you, I’m curious if you could wave a magic wand and change anything at all, what do you feel like it would be in what way you can do operationally? You can, it’s up to you. What way would you like to see things change at night with your practice?

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:31:05] Yes. I feel like one of the things I would want to do. A hundred percent would be for people to have a clear vision when they’re creating their show. That allows them to imagine just beyond putting out the episodes. And that’s really the one, like the example is when someone comes to me and they’ve launched show and they’ve put out a bunch of stuff and they just haven’t gotten anywhere yet.

You know, all the time, there’s someone who’ll come in. They’ll be like, I want you to take a look at what I’m doing. It really is so sad to see when they’ve got a lot of the nuts and bolts and pieces, but they only focused on getting it out there and not on like the relationship building or on some of these things that let them, people actually know that it exists or they put so much into what it looks like.

And this is a mistake I’ve made before that you forget about some of these other steps. So I really want to. People kind of figure out what makes what they really are good at and use their shows to connect with people. And I think sometimes people forget about that connection sides so much because they want the numbers and they want people to come to them.

But then they’re forgetting about the fact that that’s a two-way street and what that means for their content and the way that they. Yeah. I mean the other, I mean, for years it was like the bad sound and I don’t know, I still would love it if people had better sound, but I think that’s the one that keeps me up at late at night less because that’s pretty like quick solve once we get down to it.

And that was sort of where I’m like, well, if I’m working with someone, we fixed the sound what’s next. And granted, like, I feel like that’s never as easy as it sounds like it takes some time, but. It still should be easier, but that shouldn’t be all we talk about. That’s been a bigger part of what I focused on and in the way that I communicate with others as well about what I do, because I was one thing I was hitting with, some of the clients I had is we were so focused on audio that, you know, six months in, they would hit me up with a question that I didn’t even.

I didn’t even realize they were having issues with it. And it was that other side. And I’m like, I’ve got to start talking to them about the fact that I did work in sponsorship. I was a, you know, I was on boards. Do we a sponsorship for years? And that I do know B2B and not hiding the side that I do know about marketing, because I always felt insecure about it.

And I think that it’s key when we’re taking. Production that we’re also looking at the marketing and that’s why I’ve learned so much this year and continue to, you know, put my time and energy into not just learning content, storytelling for content storytelling, but using it for messaging.

Lori Brooks: [00:33:56] Definitely. I love that really having the visualization of what the end goal is prior to starting the project, which is true of not just the project, but entrepreneurship as a whole. It really helps to make sure that you visualize figure out what that end goal is so that you can reverse engineer it and truly create a product to program a business. Proud of excited to show him to the world, to really having that in front of you to make it a clear project or business.

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:34:29] And this is one thing I’m now focusing on more is less the launch, but you know, that person who’s been doing it for six months and says, I feel stuck.

Right. And they’re doing a lot of really good things because there are so many plans out there about how to put on a show. But w there are less services that are like, Hey, I know you’re a year-end to this. Let’s, let’s take a look, you know, there’s audits and things like that, but, but say, okay, that’s great.

You got to this point, what, what are the next steps for you? And how can I help you? Great. That’s definitely a great goal to have, and hopefully someone out there as listener will put together a program that can help your class. Go ahead and visualize. Yes. Go ahead of visual. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m doing.

That was what my pod Fest talk was on yesterday, about brain science and archetypes and how we’re using kind of what we know about ourselves and our strengths to kind of take a look at this as some of the five elements of production and where we’re still feeling. And how we might even change the way that we’re producing it to make it easier for us so that we can be doing social media so that we can be hitting a success in each one of those five categories, even if it’s small so that we can get to that next mile marker of our vision.

Right. Because it is easy to do. See what doesn’t work or to see when things feel like they’re failing, but we often forget about where we’re winning and how we can actually just say, okay, great. Like let’s, let’s build that up. And then let’s figure out one of these areas that isn’t so strong and figure out how we can strengthen the two together and, you know, use that as a, as a splinter.

Lori Brooks: [00:35:59] Yeah, 100% that I love that it’s, it’s very important to figure out where those strengths are and where those weaknesses are so that you can overlap. Cause that does always enhance the ability for you to move forward. It comes back to that comes back to that goal.

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:36:14] Yeah. And then you just modify the goal slightly. It’s good. Faculty generally use it.

Lori Brooks: [00:36:19] Outstanding. I truly appreciate you joining us today. I thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey with the audience. Please share the best way for our listeners to find you.

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:36:30] Yeah. So I have the two websites and it’s gritty birds.com. So G R I T T Y, birds, B I R D s.com. And that was actually the name of my podcast. So if you’re listening to that podcast, it is a show that has a lot of narrative elements. I play a lot without one in you can. It’s not a, it’s not a super linear show. And then I’m launching a new show called the podcasters forum. I might. Uh, part of this, this group.

So if you’re curious about the podcasters forum, you can go to the podcastersforum.com or you can actually just join our Facebook group. So it’s facebook.com/groups/ the podcasters forum, that’s with an S and come on, join us. But if you go to the podcast, reform.com/events, that’ll allow you to sign up for our monthly and I’m still keeping that free for now.

I might at some point, move that into another package when we launched the mastermind, but I really like that we’re building a community right now, and that seems to be a good fit. For where I’m at within my growth and what we’re building for the next year, which is very nice. It’s good.

Lori Brooks: [00:37:35] Well I will be sure to include links to both of your websites as well as to the Facebook group on our show notes page. But thank you so much for joining question,

Jeni Wren Stottrup: [00:37:45] Lori. Yes,

Lori Brooks: [00:37:47] Jenny, thank you again for sharing your time, energy and wisdom with the community today. We truly appreciate it. And techie community. Don’t forget to reach out to Jeni. Listen to the podcast over@greedybirds.com or you can always reach Jenny through our show notes page at Technology-Equality.com/JeniWrenStottrup. If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe like and share until our next episode, when we continue to hear the journey, find the challenges and create solutions, enjoy the week!.