#2 Jane Bertch
Jane and I met in Paris through our business school association. Her versatility, generosity and ability to have a wise and balanced perspective on anything continue to amaze me.
🤩 About Jane Bertch: In the spirit of having what we call a ‘portfolio career’ I wear a number of hats. In 2009, I founded La Cuisine Paris, which is a business in culinary tourism in Paris. Fourteen years later, each year it welcomes on average more than 10K visitors from around the world. At this point, my involvement is punctual and more on strategic oversite on large or new projects or clients relationships.
Wearing my consulting hat, I relish spending time helping other business take a renewed look at their client services and client experiences.
I always make time for speaking and guest lecturing opportunities, particularly on topics around entrepreneurialism, client experiences, cultural awareness and agility, etc. When I can, I dedicate time to longer term teaching roles on those subjects (and thank you, Natasha, for taking time to visit my class last semester!)
I consciously dedicate time to mentoring, which is very important to me.
And lastly, I’ll add to that small list that I am a first-time author with a mémoire The French Ingredient: Making a Life in Paris One Lesson at a Time that will be published in April by Penguin Random House, so a good bit of time is dedicated to writing.
I have come to realize that I need all of these elements in my ‘portfolio’. They feed and nourish each other.
I am proudly from the great city of Chicago, which has certainly influenced a number of the values you may read between the lines below.
🗽 Freedom dimensions: At the point more than fourteen years ago when I took the jump to leave corporate for other pastures, I did not have a particular goal in mind. I was rather chasing stimulation and happiness.
Years later, I understand that I need to optimize for roles that give me variety, flexibility, creativity and stimulation – and expose me to diverse, intelligent colleagues. Whenever I look for a new experience, or a new team I want to partner with, I need to make sure a number of these elements are there.
⚡️ Trigger: That is a wonderful question. In full discloser, for the first half of my life I worked in Banking. I was extraordinarily intentional about that career and for the most part had a rich and fulfilling decade long experience surrounded by the most intelligent and wonderful colleagues. Along with that, in every role I had, I had the luxury of extraordinary leaders around me. It was a dream situation, and I was on the track I wanted to be on. Until I wasn’t.
I talk a lot about this in my coming book, but as a result of a number of life changes in my family, I started to question if I was really following my North Star. So, the stars aligned for me to uproots from the life I had spent years curating and do something different – despite my self-doubts, and despite the doubts and fears of friends and family who loved me.
I am always very keen to share that the business I created was NOT a lifelong dream. It was not intentional. It was an idea that came to me and I decided to pursue and explore. It turns out the risk was worth it.
🚀 Start: The first thing I did was give myself permission to dream. I had to construct the business in my mind before I could put in on paper.
I will admit that after having spent the first half of my life working in baking, the fear of not having a very manicured plan ready to execute was daunting. However, I learned to turn this fear into excitement.
From there, it was pure operational execution and testing and the very long journey businesses go on to succeed. Keep in mind I also embarked upon a business where I had no prior experience, and in my adopted country, France, where I needed to learn the cultural codes. Not only did I need to grow a business, but I needed to grow myself in a number of ways to adapt to how business is done in France.
🔀 Pivot: If you are a successful business or Entrepreneur, in my opinion the question of when you should pivot needs to be revisited regularly. Markets change, consumer habits change, interests change. And frankly after the COVID period, the most unlikely of events can impact and change your strategy.
The real sweet spot is accepting that everything needs to adjust and/or pivot, even if on a micro level. In that spirit of adjusting, one must learn the careful balance of having conviction in your ideas (and yourself) enough to see them through despite the odds AND, the strength to let them go when it is clear they will not work at that point in time*.
The business I started 14 years ago is a very different business than it is today, but so are its clients, and thankfully so am I – that is healthy evolution. Staying rigid and homeostatic is deathly.
*I do believe everything is timing. I see red flags when an Entrepreneur says, ‘I already tried that, and it doesn’t work’
💰 Finance: I am naturally prudent so did have a savings built up that I could rely on, and, I was also at a stage in my life where I could easily take that risk. Having said all of that, my savings account was never a key part of that decision making.
🏆 Why it worked: What worked is that I was very comfortable with knowing nothing. Having a blank page with no preexisting information, for me, is exhilarating. Secondly, up to that point, every role I had thrived in, was a role where I had a very different profile from my colleagues – I had confidence (and when I didn’t have confidence, I made my way through that) that I would figure it out.
My ability to look at a product/experience/client differently than someone who has long experience in the industry has always been my ‘plus’. Partnering with others who are industry experts with previous knowledge allows us to create magic together. That, to me, is critical to bushiness health – a true diversity of ideas/opinions/experiences. I will always want someone on my team who sees things very differently than I do.
📌 Learnings: It’s a luxury to have a blank page. And it’s a strength to have the vision and fortitude to draw something beautiful upon it. At the point when I created the business, having no experience, I spent a good bit of time questioning my abilities. I would have loved to discover earlier that my lack of experience would become my superpower.
The other learning I would add is using fear and imposture syndrome to your benefit. I finally channeled them in being useful for me. Another thing I would have loved to have learned early on.
🤔 Key advice: If someone has attitude and aptitude, they can learn the rest. I remind myself of this every time I have self-doubt when pursuing a new project or opportunity, and most importantly, every time I sit across from a candidate who does not have the typical experience.
☕️ Are you open for my readers to reach out for a coffee chat? Yes – with pleasure! My LinkedIn.