Most leadership failures inside growing companies are not caused by a lack of intelligence or effort. They emerge from patterns the CEO cannot see clearly enough while operating inside them.
That problem becomes more dangerous as a company grows. Operational success creates momentum. Momentum creates complexity. Complexity narrows reflection. Over time, founders can drift into decision patterns that no longer match the priorities they claim to hold.
Jane Monroe’s story is not primarily about the events industry or entrepreneurship. It is about what happens when growth exposes blind spots in leadership identity, personal priorities, and organizational culture. Her experience building Embrace the Grape forced a series of difficult realizations about delegation, self-awareness, and the hidden leadership signals that only become visible under pressure.
The tension running through the conversation is familiar to many scaling CEOs: the same ambition that builds the company can quietly distort the judgment needed to sustain it.
Long before Monroe owned a company, she was already studying how businesses operated.
As a server, she paid attention to staffing decisions, scheduling dynamics, and operational inefficiencies. As a mobile DJ, she watched a growing regional company manage expansion, cash flow pressure, and team coordination. Wherever she worked, she instinctively evaluated how the business could function differently.
That instinct matters because leadership patterns rarely begin once formal authority arrives. In most companies, the founder’s operating tendencies exist long before the company itself. Scale simply amplifies them.
Her move into entrepreneurship followed the same pattern. Monroe entered the liquor business with little operational experience, learned bookkeeping and forecasting in real time, and eventually helped launch a beverage-only catering company in a market where almost nobody specialized in that niche.
The business grew quickly. Year after year, revenue expanded at rates many service businesses never sustain for long. But the growth exposed a structural problem Monroe initially failed to recognize clearly enough: operational immersion was consuming the priorities she believed mattered most.
That realization surfaced during a conversation with her daughter.
“I realized how far I had strayed from my first purpose.”
The significance of that moment was not emotional sentimentality. It was operational clarity. The company had gradually become the organizing force around her life, even while she still believed family remained the organizing priority.
Many founders experience some version of this drift. Intentions stay intact while allocation decisions slowly change underneath them. The calendar, the workload, and the emotional energy devoted to the business eventually reveal priorities more honestly than internal narratives do.
By the time leaders recognize the gap, the pattern has often been visible to everyone around them for much longer.
One of the more revealing moments in Monroe’s story came when she described learning “what the word delegation means” after years of functioning as the operational center of nearly every part of the company.
Like many founders, she initially interpreted indispensability as commitment. She booked events, managed logistics, handled operations, bartended events, and simultaneously tried to remain fully present as a parent.
The underlying problem was not workload alone. It was identity.
Early-stage founders often become psychologically tied to operational centrality because the company initially requires it. Over time, that behavior becomes difficult to unwind even after it starts creating organizational fragility.
Monroe’s decision to hire her first assistant did not come from management theory or efficiency planning. She simply wanted the ability to disappear for a week without the business collapsing.
That distinction matters.
Delegation is often framed as a productivity exercise. In practice, the deeper issue is organizational resilience. A company overly dependent on the founder eventually creates vulnerability in decision-making, culture, and operational continuity.
The irony is that many founders discover this only after the company begins succeeding.
Operational dependency frequently hides inside growth because founder intensity compensates for structural weakness. Revenue growth can temporarily mask unhealthy concentration of responsibility. The problem becomes visible only when the founder encounters exhaustion, personal disruption, or scale beyond direct control.
Monroe’s experience illustrates another uncomfortable reality: delegation often arrives later than it should because over-involvement initially works.
Until it doesn’t.
The central analytical framework in Monroe’s discussion revolves around what she describes as leadership cohesion — the relationship between how leaders see themselves and how others experience them.
She references a version of the Johari Window framework to explain four categories of self-awareness:
The framework matters because scaling companies become reflection engines for leadership blind spots. As organizations grow, founder behavior becomes increasingly consequential. Small communication habits, emotional reactions, and decision patterns begin shaping entire teams.
Many CEOs underestimate how much culture forms around unconscious founder behavior rather than explicit values statements.
Monroe frames the problem directly:
“How are you supposed to figure out what you don’t know about you and nobody else does either?”
That question becomes especially important during periods of pressure. Stress tends to expose operating defaults leaders do not fully recognize in themselves. Some founders become overly controlling. Others disengage. Some over-rationalize decisions. Others react emotionally while believing they are acting logically.
The danger is not having blind spots. Every leader has them.
The danger is operating at scale without relationships, feedback mechanisms, or personal discipline capable of surfacing those blind spots before they distort execution.
Monroe’s emphasis on “right brain” and “left brain” cohesion is ultimately less about psychology than executive self-regulation. Leaders who cannot recognize their own behavioral patterns become increasingly vulnerable to reactive decision-making under pressure.
That vulnerability compounds as organizations grow because teams absorb founder behavior faster than founders realize.
One of the clearest operating principles Monroe articulates appears near the end of the conversation while discussing difficult clients.
“You don’t need every client.”
In many service businesses, especially during growth phases, founders rationalize accepting damaging customers because revenue pressure overrides cultural discipline. Monroe argues the opposite: certain clients cost more organizationally than they contribute financially.
That perspective emerged from years of managing event operations, staffing pressure, and customer behavior in high-stress environments.
Her logic is straightforward. High-conflict clients consume disproportionate emotional energy, management attention, and operational time. The direct revenue may appear attractive, but the second-order costs accumulate quietly across the organization.
More importantly, the clients a company tolerates eventually shape the environment employees experience.
That relationship between customer selection and internal culture is frequently underestimated by scaling CEOs. Organizations do not build strong cultures solely through hiring standards or internal messaging. They build them through repeated operational decisions about what behavior the company will accept from customers, vendors, and leadership itself.
Monroe’s understanding of culture deepened further during her own divorce.
She began recognizing a pattern she had previously missed: many of her bartenders were women navigating major life transitions who needed flexible income and operational stability. The company had unintentionally become a temporary bridge during periods of financial and personal uncertainty.
That realization changed how she understood leadership inside the business.
Before that moment, staffing was primarily an operational concern. Afterward, she recognized that the company had become a stabilizing structure for people rebuilding parts of their lives.
Importantly, Monroe does not romanticize the work. Event operations remain physically exhausting, logistically demanding, and emotionally draining during peak seasons.
But she began seeing a clearer relationship between encouragement, trust, and discretionary effort. People worked hard partly because they felt respected inside the environment.
That distinction matters because many founders attempt to manufacture culture through messaging while ignoring the operating conditions that actually create loyalty.
Culture forms from repeated lived experience, not aspirational language.
The most valuable aspect of Monroe’s framework is not self-awareness as an abstract virtue. It is how self-awareness changes executive judgment.
Founders who better understand their own patterns make different operational decisions. They recognize where they overextend themselves. They identify emotional triggers earlier. They become more deliberate about the environments they create around the business.
That ultimately changes hiring, delegation, client selection, and organizational design.
It also changes how leaders interpret pressure.
Throughout the conversation, Monroe repeatedly returns to the idea that difficult experiences reveal parts of identity that remain hidden until tested. Her realization that she was capable of endurance athletics came only after taking on a demanding river race she never previously associated with herself. The same pattern appeared throughout her leadership story. Capabilities became visible only after difficult operating environments forced discovery.
That perspective reframes leadership development itself.
Many CEOs search for confidence before acting. In practice, much of leadership identity is discovered retrospectively through action, constraint, and adaptation. The company becomes the environment where hidden tendencies — both productive and destructive — eventually surface.
The challenge is not preventing those discoveries.
The challenge is recognizing them quickly enough to adjust before they harden into organizational behavior.
For scaling CEOs, that may be the deeper lesson underneath Monroe’s story.
Leadership problems rarely arrive fully labeled. They appear first as recurring patterns: exhaustion, strained relationships, operational bottlenecks, cultural drift, reactive decision-making, or priorities that no longer match behavior.
The signals are usually there long before the consequences become obvious.
The difficult part is recognizing them while you are still inside them.
Jane Monroe is the CEO of Embrace the Grape, a beverage catering company serving the Kansas City and St. Louis markets. Her work focuses on leadership cohesion, self-awareness, and organizational culture shaped through operational experience rather than abstraction. In addition to leading Embrace the Grape, she speaks on leadership, self-discovery, and executive development through the lens of real operating decisions.
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Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
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The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
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Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY
00:00 – From Stay-at-Home Mom to Entrepreneur
04:21 – Thinking Like an Owner Early On
05:56 – The DJ Career That Changed Everything
11:25 – Motherhood, Plate Spinning & Real Priorities
15:08 – Buying a Liquor Store Without Experience
18:49 – The Moment She Chose Family Over Business
22:12 – Creating Kansas City’s First Beverage-Only Catering Company
26:04 – Scaling Fast, Learning Delegation & Surviving COVID
32:34 – How the Business Became a Lifeline During Divorce
39:43 – The “Leadership Cohesion” Framework Explained
47:42 – Discovering She Was an Athlete at 40+
53:29 – Why Saying “No” to Bad Clients Changed Everything
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Jane Monroe (00:00)
I realized how far I had strayed from my first purpose. How are you supposed to figure out what you don't know about you? And if the project does not invigorate you, you will not last. You don't need every client. I had no idea I was an athlete.
Jeff Holman (00:13)
Welcome back everybody to the Breakout CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman, and I'm so glad to be here with you again today. And we've got ⁓ somebody who's got an interesting story and some lessons to share with us. I've already enjoyed talking with her before recording this, doing some of our icebreaker questions. And so I'm really glad to bring her onto the full episode here. Jane, thanks so much for coming.
Jane Monroe (00:38)
Thanks, I'm glad to be here. And yeah, those icebreaker questions were fun. Thank you.
Jeff Holman (00:42)
Yeah, I enjoy it. I always enjoy that because it's, I think people come onto the show and they're like, prepared to give you the hard lesson. And it's like, wait, let's talk about some other easy stuff first. So it just gets the, it gets the brain going. But Jane, I should have introduced you with your full name, Jane Monroe, and you're with Embrace the Great. I'll let you tell people about what that is. But ⁓ you reached out and you've got a few lessons to share. But before we go into lessons and, and we already talked about the artwork on your wall.
I don't know why I'm bringing it up again other than I just am really intrigued by it. So go back and listen to the icebreaker questions if you want to hear a little bit about that. Jane, ⁓ tell us what got you started down the path that you're on.
Jane Monroe (01:25)
The path to entrepreneurship, think, Jeff, I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. Even when I was a kid, I waited tables for a while and did some other things. And I always thought, if I owned this restaurant, how would I change it? And there's not been anywhere that I worked as an employee that I didn't contemplate. How would I change it if I owned it? So I was fortunate enough to be a stay at home mom for some time, about eight years, and it was terrific. And I knew I would
eventually go back to work, not really because I wanted to, but because I wanted to provide the option of a college education without debt to my kids. And, and I knew that it would be some, something would come along and I didn't, I wasn't in any hurry to do it. And actually the something that came along, came along probably two years earlier than I would have wanted, but, ⁓ it was the opportunity to own a liquor store.
And I knew nothing about owning a liquor store. ⁓ so I thought it looked like a great idea. It's a franchise here in Kansas City. And so I owned 51 % so we could be a woman-owned business. And off I went into entrepreneurship and learned that I knew really less than nothing about it. Even though I have a business degree, I had no idea what I was doing. And so I got mentors quickly.
to help me out and one mentor was the owner of the franchise and you they say you shouldn't take advice from somebody who doesn't have a vested interest in your company. Okay. And so and I don't really think I agree with that by and large but I thought to myself okay this guy is going to actually give me industry secrets because he has a vested interest in my company. Yeah. And he did and he was terrific. And then we spun off a catering company which is beverage only there's no food involved here. ⁓
about three or four years into my experience of owning the liquor store. And then we split. My partner and I split the store and the catering company and I kept catering and he kept the store. And I have been a solo entrepreneur, 100 % owner ever since. And I love making all the decisions and reaping the rewards and the consequences when they're not good decisions.
Jeff Holman (03:48)
Yeah,
they're both there. Hey, I want go back. What you said about being a server really intrigues me because I don't think everybody does that. And not everybody goes into a job and says, you know, if I were running this business, I might do it this way. A lot of people go into jobs and they say, I hate this. I hate that. Why do we do that? But they don't say, I wonder if there's a better way to do this. Or I think there's a better way to do this. Do you think that's a unique thing that you and other
you know, true entrepreneurs kind of ponder.
Jane Monroe (04:21)
I've always been a cup half full kind of girl. And I think it's real easy to complain about circumstances that you don't like, ⁓ which there's no, there's, there's no time in life that you can't point to something that you don't like. But I think for me, the cup half full kind of girls said not, ⁓ let's complain about the schedule and how it's done, but instead contemplate Jane, if you were doing the schedule, how would you put it together? How would you prioritize who's working and when?
How would you assess the dynamic of this person and that person and how well they do or don't work together? ⁓ I guess I just got lost in my own thought about how I would or could do it more effectively than it was being done.
Jeff Holman (05:08)
You know, I asked because I can relate to that. When I was, practiced, had my own practice for a while, helping people get patents on their inventions, right? And ⁓ then I went in-house because I had this whole plan to go be an in-house attorney, a general counsel, work with companies who've raised lots of money. And I went in-house and I had a great time. But when I went in-house, I got to that mode again where I was like, you know what, there's a better way to do this. The way I did it was the way I was taught by other attorneys.
I got excited, re-excited, guess, about going out and figuring out how to run a business ⁓ differently and better than what I had seen in the past. So here I am. But I think you skipped over something that I read in your bio and I'm curious about. Where does DJing fit into this?
Jane Monroe (05:56)
on me.
man. Yeah, so I was a disc jockey, a mobile disc jockey. So the crazy thing is, I have this theory that everything you do in your life leads you up to today. And some things just are happenstance fortunate and being a DJ was one of those things. So I would say that I learned all my people skills. Well, I got a really good start on my people skills waiting tables because there's money at the end of that people skill capability.
then I parlayed that people skill into learning how to entertain crowds of people I don't know for four hours at some random person's wedding. And in the process of that, I watched, it was another company that I was like, yeah, if I owned this company, how would I do it differently? But it was a big disc jockey company in the northern Midwest, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa. And they were expanding and growing.
After I finished college, I went and worked in their office and I learned their operations and I learned their sales. And I watched the CEO manage expansion, manage cashflow difficulties that you get when you expand. ⁓ And so I started my adult life when I was 19 in the events industry as a disc jockey, who knew I would leave that job finally to go and have kids.
And 10 years later, I would find myself right back in the events industry, but this time behind the bar instead of behind the DJ stand. So the connection here is so great because as I've grown my company, I have many times thought to myself, what would Rick have done? Rick was the CEO of this DJ company. If Rick were sitting here, what would Rick do? And then I kind of
do whatever I think Rick might do. And that sounds so simplistic, but it has guided me. And he doesn't even know it. Like, I haven't seen that man since 1998, probably. He has no idea the effect he's had on my life. So I will say, for an event, I will argue that the two most important parts of after the wedding's over and whatever, the DJ and the bar.
because if the DJ can't entertain the crowd, it's not a great party. And if the bar doesn't know how to manage the alcohol consumption or help people manage their alcohol consumption, then things get out of hand. So I find it fascinating that I am in the second half of the best part of the events industry. And I learned so much when I was 19 to 27 years old.
Jeff Holman (08:41)
Wow. Well, so you didn't start your own business. You went out and got a job and worked for somebody else, but you leveraged it. Like not everybody gets to work with the boss, right? How did you, how did that happen?
Jane Monroe (08:52)
You mean like right now when people work?
Jeff Holman (08:54)
Well,
well, I just mean when you worked with Rick, right? You just happened to get hired in or was there something that he saw in you and said, Hey, I want Jane to work in my office closer, closer to the headquarters or whatever.
Jane Monroe (09:07)
Well,
let me back up to how I got the job as a disc jockey before I got to the office. I got a speeding ticket in college on spring break and I didn't have any money. And it was my, in my opinion, my father's fault that I was speeding down the highway because we were late going somewhere and he was the one that was late. And so I was cruising down the highway like, I don't know how fast.
Jeff Holman (09:31)
in the car with you.
Jane Monroe (09:33)
And I tried to give my dad that speeding ticket and say, you know, you're the reason we're late. You're going to pay this? And he's like, uh-uh. No. yeah. But we were late leaving the house because he was not ready. And so we were going to a concert and you know, at concerts, it was a symphony concert. And if you don't get your body in a chair when the conductor takes the stage, they close the doors on you.
Jeff Holman (09:39)
Was your dad in the car with you?
Right. So it's a while to get in.
Jane Monroe (09:59)
Yeah. So I just answered this ad in my college school newspaper to be a disc jockey. I knew nothing about it, but I knew that I had six weeks to get a job and a paycheck and I was out of money. And so, ⁓ I jumped through a whole bunch of hoops and, ⁓ and I talked more about this in a keynote that I do, but I ended up making something out of that job when those guys expected me to not survive.
So then I had been working there for three, four, five years and that's maybe let's say four years through college. And then when I graduated from college, it was just a natural movement because I knew the business so well. By then I had helped to write a manual because I was the first female disc jockey who actually stuck in the company. And so I helped to write the part of the manual addressed to women about what
women need to pay attention to when they're out and about. Because sometimes, mean, bar time was 2.30 in the morning in Wisconsin. So we'd close off the DJ stand at 2 a.m. and we're not home until the sun rises. So how do you, as a woman, what precautions do you need to take? So I just kind of slotted in over time. They just knew I was the right one. And they paid me almost nothing. But for some reason, I knew that it was an important launch pad for later.
Jeff Holman (11:25)
How interesting. And it's so interesting that you've connected that with your career now that you've been. So I want to touch on the break that you had because, my wife was a stay at home wife, mom for a long time, probably 17 years, I think, if I'm not mistaken. And she eventually said, I'm going to go back into work. She wanted something to do. She thought that the lifestyle of ⁓ spa days every day would be awesome.
and she does enjoy a spa day, but she really finds some fulfillment doing this other thing. How did your stay at home mom years and experience add on to the server and DJing experience that you already had? Just a quick note about our guests. I host the Breakout CEO podcast to share behind the scenes insights from scaling businesses. As an attorney, I see the real challenges leaders face.
long before success becomes public. But client stories have to stay confidential. So we invite guest CEOs to share their own moments of struggle and success. I'm so grateful to our guests and my team at Intellectual Strategies for making this show possible. Now, let's get back to the show.
Jane Monroe (12:42)
When you're a stay at home mom with four kids and your wife, she were sitting here, she'd be saying, preach it sister. There are plates spinning everywhere all the time. And as the mom, you're just trying to keep the plate spinning. And whether it's when they're in diapers and learning to walk and knocking stuff over, or they start to have a social life and they want to do birthday parties and they've got...
Jeff Holman (12:48)
Yes, you are.
Jane Monroe (13:08)
school projects and they don't tell you that they've got a school project due tomorrow until 430 in the afternoon the day before and you got to go off and get all the things. You know, it's just plate spinning and it's exhausting and yet it is so much fun. You get all the goods from your kids. get to read the books and ⁓ roll down the hill and bounce on the trampoline and you know, but it's grueling work being a mom.
Jeff Holman (13:37)
Yeah, definitely.
Jane Monroe (13:38)
⁓
So I guess I'm just built for grueling work.
Jeff Holman (13:43)
Well, so what was the trigger then when you've done all that and you're like, you know, I'm going to go back. Yeah. I want to, I want to go buy. mean, did you, did you jump right in and buy the company at that point?
Jane Monroe (13:53)
No, ⁓ I knew this store was opening, this franchise was opening, and I knew one of the guys who was going to run the store and he told me about it. And I had a kid in a carry car seat. So I think like a year, 18 months, couldn't have been a carry car seat. Anyway, it was a little kid. And I just said, well, I can keep the books. Like I just wanted a little something to do. Because my grandmother always said, ⁓
A woman should always have her own money, money she doesn't have to account for to anybody. And so really this was just my way of, I could see an opportunity that I could have just a little cash for Jane. So I didn't know how to keep the books. I took accounting in college, which didn't mean anything.
Jeff Holman (14:40)
Wait, you offered to keep the books, but then you're like, better figure this out.
Jane Monroe (14:44)
Well, yeah, pretty much. So what I meant was I know how to balance a checkbook because I paid the bills at home. I didn't know about receivables and payables and payroll and taxes and employees and I didn't know that. And so they just handed me a computer with a QuickBooks program in it and a stack of beginning invoices and said, get started. And I was like, no.
Jeff Holman (15:05)
Wait a second, what have I done?
Jane Monroe (15:08)
I guess I can't ask for help because they think I know how to do this. again, I figured it out along the way. then it was about three or four months in, the guy, the partner with the money came to me and said, hey, I want you to give me a projection about the first quarter of next year. How much money are we going to need? How do I need to fund the company to the store to keep it going? And I had never put a projection together before, but I did that too.
and ⁓ gave him a number. And then I said, you know, how are you planning to fund this? And he said, Well, I'd really like to take another partner. And so we kind of talked through that. And I went to this is 2005 when if you had a ⁓ pulse and could breathe, the bank would write you any size check you wanted. And so they did that. And so there I am now I'm a liquor store owner. Congratulations. And six figures in debt and you know, a good six figures and
Jeff Holman (15:55)
Yes.
Jane Monroe (16:05)
⁓ Yeah, so then I began to spend more and more time at the store because truly, Jeff, I loved it. I loved knowing what people drank. I loved pointing them to the next new thing that I thought they would love. I loved helping people find gifts for other customers because I knew what those customers drank. I really enjoyed all of it. And then we spun off this catering company. now, and along the way, the guy who knows how to run a liquor store, we've had to move on because he was not ethical.
And so now I'm running a liquor store, which
Jeff Holman (16:39)
So this was like your manager or the general manager of the store you said hey this isn't working. We don't do that here. We'll see you later.
Jane Monroe (16:47)
He had to go. were some legal issues and we had to move them along. So then now I'm running the store and I'm running catering and both are growing and I am now actively losing track of my children. The oldest is 15 and the youngest is eight. And I mean, there's cross country meats I'm struggling to get to and my eight year old is sick and I got to go get them from school, but nobody else is at the store. it just, Jeff, I just couldn't anymore.
So I went to my remaining partner who was the money guy and I said, listen, I got a problem. I'm losing track of my kids and I need to rework how we do this. And so he paid more attention to the store. He still had a corporate job at the time, which is why he was the money guy. Let's be clear.
Jeff Holman (17:35)
He was the semi absentee owner of sorts.
Jane Monroe (17:37)
you want. And, and then he had an idea about what to do with some how to manage the first quarter of an upcoming year that I didn't agree with financially. And I kind of put my foot down and said, you know, it's your money, and if you want to do that, I can't stop you. But if you choose to do that, I'm out. I'm not going to stand by and let you do that. So I went home that night.
Jeff Holman (18:02)
Okay.
Jane Monroe (18:05)
And was sitting on my 15 year old's bed and I was just talking to her about the day and what had happened. And I said, you know, Melody, I think I might have to leave the store. What do you think of that?
Jeff Holman (18:20)
Now just pause real quick sorry is Melody the one that did the artwork behind you? Okay, okay so we know a little bit about Melody.
Jane Monroe (18:25)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
bit
about Melanie. She's such a sweet and tender heart and said, I might have to leave the store. And she looked at me with this tiny glimmer of hope in her eyes that only a 15 year old can try to hide. And she said, really, Mom, would you actually do that?
Jeff Holman (18:49)
You could see this in her eyes, but she was like, this is a good thing. Yeah.
Jane Monroe (18:55)
And in that moment, I realized how far I had strayed from my first purpose, which was parenting those children. And I had allowed myself to get distracted and excited and thoroughly out of place, putting a company, two companies before my children. And so when my business partner went and did that financial thing, it was easy for me to say, okay, let's split it up. What are we doing?
He kept the store and I kept catering. And now with a catering company, if my kid is sick, I just close my laptop and I take it home with me and get the kid from school, take the laptop and the kid home and we watch Blue's Clues and we nap together and we read books together and then I can work that night. I don't have to work during the day. It worked perfectly.
Jeff Holman (19:46)
Were the two businesses separate enough that it was an easy split? sometimes in these small business worlds, they're very, very intertwined, right? We call them two businesses and yet there's a lot of inner company borrowing and you're splitting them, the staffing essentially. Or was it a cleaner way to break it?
Jane Monroe (20:06)
it was relatively clean because it's the liquor industry. And so each company had to have its own set of licenses. And you have to act in a certain way under each kind of license. essentially, my partner kept the retail license and I kept the catering license and and all the peripheral things that went with each. Now we did we were legally allowed to share inventory at the time and we did do that. So
there was some inventory I took from the store ⁓ when I moved the catering company out of the store. But all of that it was a very amicable split. And all of that was just a conversation with my partner.
Jeff Holman (20:47)
It's a
matter of, ⁓ do you take this? I'll take this. Got it.
Jane Monroe (20:50)
Yeah.
So it was really like a professional divorce. And what do we do with the kids? How do we split the kids up? And we went to the attorney and we split the kids up.
Jeff Holman (21:03)
Well, is it common for ⁓ retail liquor stores to also do catering or is that... I'm not totally... Listen, I'm in Utah. We have a liquor store somewhere. I don't necessarily frequent it myself, but I know you have to go to a specific state-owned liquor store to buy hard liquor and they're around somewhere. Other than that, I can't say I know much about the industry.
Jane Monroe (21:27)
Yeah, you know, since prohibition, when prohibition ended in the 30s, the federal government said we, okay, we're going to legalize alcohol again, but we don't want anything to do with the regulation of it. So every state makes their own rules and regulations. I have a company, a catering company in Missouri, because I'm in Kansas City. And then Kansas City also
goes over into Kansas. And so I have a separate catering company in Kansas with separate licenses, separate rules, separate locations, separate insurance, separate, separate, separate. Just because it's a regulated industry and that's how I'm dictated to act.
Jeff Holman (22:04)
Okay. Okay. Well, and so, and so is it common there or in the surrounding area for
Jane Monroe (22:12)
It was not, it was, this was sort of a crazy, ⁓ we were the first beverage only catering company in the Kansas city area. There were some, restaurants that catered and would do the bar as an add on, but to do beverage only was, ⁓ different and nichey.
Jeff Holman (22:31)
What prompted that? nobody was doing it, sometimes it's like, I've never seen it before, so it doesn't even cross my mind. But you guys said, I haven't seen it, but we could try it.
Jane Monroe (22:40)
So the partner who we had to move along said, early on, said, let's get this store up and running and then I want to open a catering company. And I thought that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of because I'm thinking green beans and chicken breasts. I didn't grasp it. then about five years in, there was a new ⁓ venue that was being built very close to the store.
And it was a city run facility and it has an event space in it. And their very first bride called me, so this is the fall of 2008. I ⁓ can't tell you if the market has crashed yet or if it's about to crash, but we're right in that area. ⁓ And this girl called me and wanted me to price liquor for her wedding in this new event space. So I did. And then she called me a couple of weeks later and she said, Jane, can't use your liquor store for my liquor. And I'm like, why?
She said, it's a city facility and they require a liquor licensed caterer to do all their alcohol work. And she said, I've called the people on their list and I don't afford them. I don't know what to do. There's gotta be something you can do. So then I called the people on the list and got quotes for, know, fake quotes for a wedding. And I was stunned at what they were charging.
Jeff Holman (23:44)
Okay.
Jane Monroe (24:03)
absolutely like I thought, how do you sleep at night charging money like this? Because I'm used to a retail mark, not used to a catering mark. So then I came up with the bright idea that we should go ahead and do this catering company. And let's split the difference between a retail mark and this catering mark, do something that's very, very affordable, and see if this thing has legs. And so that's how we started was some poor sweet crying bride 17 years ago.
Jeff Holman (24:32)
Wow. Were the quotes really high because they were really food catering businesses and they would upcharge to just come do the beverages only?
Jane Monroe (24:44)
I think the quotes were really high because the options were really slim and market demand. Yeah. Got it. And then I came along and upset the apple cart.
Jeff Holman (24:51)
Market demand.
And that was back in 2008-2009. And when did you guys split the catering off from the retail store?
Jane Monroe (25:07)
It was 2011, summer of.
Jeff Holman (25:09)
so not too long after that. so Embrace the Grape, was that the name of it when you guys started?
Jane Monroe (25:11)
Mm-mm. Not too long.
Yeah, so it was embrace the great bell LC was the parent company and the DBA there's a DBA of the liquor store under it and then DBA embrace the great beverage catering. And so we just split well I'm talking to an attorney who probably does this you know in his sleep. But we just I took the embrace the great LLC name and my partner had a new LLC created for the liquor store and we just moved.
that under his new LLC and I kept the existing tax ID number and LLC and DBA.
Jeff Holman (25:49)
Yeah, minor details that probably, if they're done right, don't really matter too much.
Jane Monroe (25:55)
There's no big deal. The attorney did it all and we just wrote the check.
Jeff Holman (25:58)
said, all right, sounds good. And when it's amicable, that's a lot easier. So since 2011, though, you've been growing this. What does that growth look like over the years?
Jane Monroe (26:04)
huh. huh.
Year over year, for the most part, especially in the beginning, we would grow 25, 35, 40 % a year in the beginning. And then in about 2014, I learned what the word delegation means. And because I had something, I wanted to drop off the grid for a week in the summer of 2014.
And you can't just drop off the grid when you're in the events industry, unless somebody is on the grid in your, in your place. So because of that, I hired my first assistant and I really learned to begin, I began to learn how to delegate. And from 2000 and 2014, oddly enough was the first year that I needed to start taking money from the company to pay a college expense for this girl back here. So the whole reason I went back to work was to pay for college and
About the time I could take money from the company, a kid went to college.
Jeff Holman (27:06)
So it worked. Melody was the first beneficiary.
Jane Monroe (27:09)
She
sure was. Yeah. That's fantastic. then once I learned delegation and I learned how to grow my bartending team strongly.
Jeff Holman (27:22)
Wait, were you run? Does this mean you were running, you were scheduling, you were booking, were picking up the drinks, you were cleaning the glasses, you were carting stuff around, and you were showing up to the event, and you were serving, and you were everything in the business?
Jane Monroe (27:38)
Yeah. Now I had, I had a team of people who bartended for me from the beginning, but I bartended quite a bit just because I didn't have to pay myself. And so that was just money in the, in the bank account. Yeah. Yeah. And I still do a little bit today. I actually really like it, but, but yeah, in those early days, I was doing all that stuff and I was also going to cross country meets and I was taking lunch money to school and I was picking a kid up from band practice.
Jeff Holman (28:09)
It's non-stop.
Jane Monroe (28:11)
But I also had, I had the privilege of a husband who took care of our household expenses and we were, we lived real skinny, ⁓ but we made it on what he made. And so that allowed me to continue again, to pay attention to the kids, grow the company slowly because we didn't need that money to put food on the table. I just wanted that money to put kids through college. So it was a little bit of a different motivation really.
Jeff Holman (28:40)
That was...
Jane Monroe (28:40)
But
then we, after 2014, 2015, amazing, 16, 17, 18, and then 2019 came and we were off the charts success. couldn't, like nobody, nobody could breathe in 2019. were, I had an office team. have 25 bartenders. We're working, we're humping hard. We are just having a great time. And I remember saying to my dad, dad, I
I've never seen money like this. It's so much money doubt. And he would give me this, this grin, you know, his proud daddy grin. And, and luckily he taught me that smart girls don't, don't spend everything they make because who, who could see 2020 coming and COVID.
Jeff Holman (29:15)
Yeah.
which in the events industry was devastating, I'm sure.
Jane Monroe (29:30)
Yeah. So I had a pile of money and I learned that cash is king and I took some PPP money and kept all my people working. I hired a new full-time person on March 3rd of 2020, right before the shutdown. yeah, and I was so confident that she was exactly who we needed that I did not mind paying her to do nothing for the next however many months.
Jeff Holman (29:59)
Yeah. What was it like? What was it like where you were at? Cause I know some places events just shut down completely. I mean, I think everywhere they shut down completely for a time, but some reopened up much sooner than others. What was it? Was it a more lenient or strict kind of environment that you're in?
Jane Monroe (30:00)
Yeah.
The city of Kansas City proper was strict. They were locked down for a very long time. ⁓ In fact, if I remember correctly, they were locked down like through the end of November of 2020. But you get out into the suburbs and we had this great venue we did all the work in who did outdoor weddings and could do outdoor receptions. And so they opened up and they were off in the suburbs. And so those regulations didn't apply to them and they opened up pretty quickly. mean, I would say.
We might've done a wedding for like 20 people in June of that year. But also there's no money in a wedding for 20 people. Like it's all the same administrative work and there's, you with, yeah, yeah. So. ⁓
Jeff Holman (30:58)
Less volume.
But something to keep your team busy, least a little bit, right?
Jane Monroe (31:06)
It did. And the other thing that I did to engage them was I decided to ⁓ see if I wanted to expand the company to another market. Because, gosh, what would that be like? During COVID.
Jeff Holman (31:16)
During COVID?
You're like, hey, Mark is not great. Maybe we should grow. Well, and I guess I could see that, right? Because you're saying, well, maybe we, if we're doing smaller events, need more events. So where do we go? Maybe adjacent city. So you added a city to...
Jane Monroe (31:21)
Maybe we should go.
I
ended up in St. Louis also.
Jeff Holman (31:37)
How
far is that from Kansas City? so it's not an hour away. ⁓ Just because I know I've talked to business owners who have businesses near them and businesses far away from them. the further away, the more burden it becomes sometimes.
Jane Monroe (31:39)
It's about a four hour drive.
Yeah, yeah. The Amtrak goes from Kansas City to St. Louis. So that's nice because if I wanted to, and I have just gotten on the train and then you can still work on the train and it's about five hours on the train and then poof, you're there. ⁓ But yeah, that project also kept my team busy because I could say, I want a list of every venue within 50 square miles of city center that allows outside alcohol. And that would give me something to do. I really just wanted to keep their...
their mind engaged in what we were doing because I didn't want them to get bored and then go get a different job because I really did believe that our team was exactly right. And here we are six years later and I'm right, they're still with me. They're fantastic. They are stellar.
Jeff Holman (32:34)
That's fantastic.
As you grew this team, were some of the maybe lessons that you kept seeing and then you're like, wait a second, I've seen this seven times now, why haven't I fixed it? Where did you see those growing moments?
Jane Monroe (32:54)
What I didn't realize was happening for a very long time was it seems to be a soft landing place to be a bartender for this company. If you are going through a divorce and we got over the years, there's been probably 15 or 20 people who have come to me mid divorce. And I didn't put all this together until I was mid divorce and realized the pattern in this company. So.
Jeff Holman (33:23)
You're saying that people getting divorced from what you saw in your business often came and said, Hey, I'd like to be a bartender at events company.
Jane Monroe (33:32)
Yeah, because I'm an extra job. I'm extra money. I only hire people who have a real job somewhere else. So I only hire professionals in their own right.
Jeff Holman (33:42)
So this is after hours, weekend job, weekend money. Okay, okay.
Jane Monroe (33:46)
So
a lot of, and women specifically, some men, but mostly women who are mid divorce and they don't know if they can pay the car payment. They don't know if they can pay for league sports for their kids. They don't know if they can keep the house, but they add something else, a little extra revenue. And all of a sudden it has created freedom for these people to maintain their lifestyle. And the other completely unintentional consequence is that
You know, I mean, you know, when your backs up against a wall, you work hard. these people work their tails off for me. It is the bartending part, the mixing drinks and handing them over the counter. That's the easy part. What you don't see is schlepping boxes out of the warehouse into a vehicle set up at an event, repack your vehicle at the end of the night, bring it back to the warehouse, put it, put everything away. The hard work that goes into catering and food is the same.
The actual service piece is a piece of cake is all the other stuff. But these people work their tails off for me. And I did not see that trend until in the middle of my own divorce several years ago. Suddenly these humans gathered around me and said, Well, let me tell you what you did for me during my divorce.
Jeff Holman (35:05)
Really? So they had brought that up. They brought that to your attention.
Jane Monroe (35:09)
Yeah. And it's a stunning realization that you don't even understand the impact that you have until somebody says something. I had no idea.
Jeff Holman (35:25)
What did that switch for you? What were you thinking before, if anything? Maybe it wasn't even a conscious thought, but what was it before and what was it after?
Jane Monroe (35:36)
Before I just thought, ⁓ before I was like, why do we have so many women working in this company? Where's where the men? Yeah, we love man muscle at the end of the night, man, there's nothing better than a man to help you unload a truck. And we're strong and we're capable, but where are the men? And, and that's the answer. The men were not, it was the women who were coming to me for extra money. ⁓ But, but also,
Jeff Holman (35:48)
Yeah, for sure.
Jane Monroe (36:06)
When you go through the heartbreak of a divorce that is so, ⁓ for me personally, it was the bravest thing I have ever done for myself ever, was that time in my life. And to look at these other people that I had taken for granted in their heartbreak, wow, the strength of these people who work for me. ⁓ Yeah.
Jeff Holman (36:36)
You know that?
Jane Monroe (36:36)
Because
they were doing their own brave things in their own way. And I just happened to get to be part of it.
Jeff Holman (36:43)
hadn't necessarily seen it the same way until you were there. My wife just the other day, she was, because I have a daughter who moved into a new home in a new neighborhood, you know, an hour from here. And ⁓ she, of course, I will give it to her, she is much more perceptive and observant and reflective than I am a lot of times. And she said, she said, you know, we need to be better about ⁓ welcoming our neighbors. And we have a neighbor moving in across the street in a home.
She's like, we haven't done a great job with that. And I'm like, yeah, you're probably right. We could do better. She said, no, because Lauren has just moved in a month ago down in that new neighborhood. And not as many people stopped by as I thought, as I would have thought would have stopped by. And seeing your daughter go through it on the one side of it, and then simply coming home and seeing the moving van across the street, it's like, oh, we probably should.
we have an opportunity to do a lot better. And it makes us reflect just differently on the situation. It sounds like something similar, maybe more, you know, I don't want to trivialize it at all because moving and having a divorce have got to be two very separate things, but just seeing it differently, right?
Jane Monroe (38:00)
Yeah. And sometimes we're just so up close and personal in a situation that we can't see. We can't see the intricacies and the fine points of it. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (38:10)
Did going through and I don't want to get too personal, but I'm really curious here did going through a divorce ⁓ in the end light a different fire in you then
Jane Monroe (38:21)
It is a different feeling to now have, especially post COVID, to have this, like this company's got to work now. Before it was, hey, this is a great idea and I want this to work because I want to pay for college education. Now it's, you got to do the hard phone calls because you've now you've got
Jeff Holman (38:42)
This
is, this is the source. Yeah. That makes sense.
Jane Monroe (38:44)
This is it.
Yeah. also along the way, that team that I was speaking of before, were many times they would see me at my desk in tears and they'd say, Jane, go home. You're no good to us here. Just go home and we don't want to see you again until tomorrow. And so I would pick up my laptop and I would wipe my tears and I would go home and work or not. And they
They carried me. They carried me through a really hard time.
Jeff Holman (39:19)
Wow. How big is your team now?
Jane Monroe (39:21)
⁓ So there's four in the office total, two of us are full time, two are part time, and there's about 25 bartenders. everybody's got their, in the office, everybody's got their jobs, except for when we're overwhelmed and then ⁓ all the job descriptions go out the window and we just get.
Jeff Holman (39:39)
How does this play into what you call the road to leadership cohesion?
Jane Monroe (39:43)
⁓ gosh, this is a great question. So the road to leadership cohesion has to do with how you see yourself and how you are perceived and where there is disconnect and how to discover that disconnect and ⁓ patch through it, really be more cohesive through it. And in my keynote, I talk about a framework
called the road to inner cohesion and our leadership cohesion. And it's about who do you know yourself to be that everybody else knows you to be as well? Your known self. Who do you not know yourself to be, but other people know that about you? It's your blind self. Who do you not know yourself? How did I say that? Uh-oh, now I'm all wrapped up in it. Who do you know yourself to be that everybody else knows? Who do you not know yourself to be, but everybody else knows?
Who do you know yourself to be, but nobody else really knows, except maybe you're super close in our circle. That's your mystery self or your hidden self. And then your mystery self is who you don't know and nobody else does either. And that mystery self is really the rub. It's the rub. how are you supposed to figure out what you don't know about you and nobody else does either? And that becomes a whole conversation about...
getting outside your comfort zone, doing things differently, doing different things, being open to not failing, ⁓ looking at every failure as the stepping stone to the next success. And then if we talk about what does leadership cohesion really mean, I look at it as being intellectually sticky.
Like getting my right brain and my left brain to talk to one another because you know, your right brain is all full of emotion and your left brain is all full of logic. And we all know people who are so centered in their left brain that they're all to-do lists and accomplishments and golly, they're so boring at dinner parties. They're just horrible, horrible to be with socially. And then we all know people who live so completely in their right brain that they're all emotion and drama.
and everything is highs and lows and there's no middle ground and those people are just straight up exhausting to be around. So how do you take the right brain and the left brain and teach them to cohesively speak? And it becomes about as you're figuring out these things, the things you don't know about yourself that other people know or that you don't know about yourself that nobody else does and your brain begins, you begin to notice patterns.
of how you act and react to things. And if you can take a step back realizing some patterns, then when you think you're going down a certain path that somebody has told you about yourself is where you tend to go and you often don't have a successful outcome. If your right and left brain are more cohesive, then as you head down that path and your right brain tries to take over, your left brain says, hang on, right brain, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Hang on, let's talk about this for a minute. And then your left brain says, just breathe, just breathe, right brain, just breathe. And then you can take a step back and become a more full, complete leader because what you're really doing through all of this is learning to lead yourself first. And then you can lead others. So that's a very Cliff's Notes version of what is
Jeff Holman (43:28)
Yeah.
Jane Monroe (43:35)
an hour long conversation.
Jeff Holman (43:37)
Yeah, where did this come from? Like I thought you were going to talk when most people talk about cohesion and leadership, they're talking about team, right? They're talking about interpersonal relationships and culture and those things like that. Not necessarily left brain, right brain. And so that's a really intriguing thought to me. It reminds me of when I was taking a tennis lesson from a coach one time when we were in, Northern California and, you know, I have an engineering background, so I might be one of those slightly boring people at the parties sometimes.
But yeah, I overcome or overcompensated. It depends on who you ask. ⁓ But he said to me, hey, you know, don't overthink this. What you can do is, you know, when you're going to serve the ball, say, every time you bounce the ball or every time the ball hits the court, when you're in a rally, just say the word bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce. And that's going to occupy your left brain and take the overthinking out of it. You've given the left brain a task.
Jane Monroe (44:08)
You've overcome that. ⁓
Jeff Holman (44:36)
Now you can let your muscle memory and you know, whatever else take over. Yeah. Get into the, get into the feeling of tennis instead of the thinking of tennis. Is that, is that kind of related to what you're talking about?
Jane Monroe (44:39)
Feel it. Yeah.
Yeah, I love that analogy. That's awesome off the cuff. Good job. So it actually comes from a sermon from a church that I've been attending forever. it was funny because I was talking to some other people who have been in this congregation for longer than I have. And I said, do you remember that sermon about what you know about yourself?
Jeff Holman (44:54)
Well where did this come from?
Jane Monroe (45:15)
that you know that everybody knows and what you don't know about yourself, but everybody else knows. And and other people remember this sermon too, but I have that has stuck with me. It's actually a framework originally called the Yohardi window. And if you Google it, it'll give you the all the sciencey stuff about it. But I I've taken that it's probably been 15 years since I've heard this sermon. But I've taken that and just along the way, I've been like, yeah, I didn't know that about me.
yeah, that falls into this category. Or here are some things I know about me that I don't talk about. And when I, when I talk about this section, it's not about, we could go down a path of childhood trauma or things that you hold shame around, but yeah, but I am not qualified to talk about that. So what I talk about about what I know about me that you don't know are just the ways that I am, how I live my life.
Jeff Holman (46:01)
How did we get to where we are, right?
Jane Monroe (46:15)
things I don't have to speak about because the way I show up speaks it. And so on first meeting, there's a lot of stuff that I just know about me and you don't know that. But if we spend enough time together, you'd be like, yeah, she's that kind of girl and she's this kind of girl. And then over time between a relationship, a friendship between you and I, becomes more things get put in the bucket of what I know about me and you know about me too. But in the beginning,
Like when I started as a disc jockey, those guys didn't know I was going to make it. In fact, they did not expect me to make it because they hired other women before and they went so far as to tell me in the interview, you know, we've hired other women and they don't make it. So don't be surprised when you don't either. And what they didn't know about me was that I had a speeding ticket and I had six weeks to get a paycheck. And I didn't tell them. And they also did not know that I am a pit.
dog, pit bull dog, tenacious. When I've got to get something done, it will get done. And they didn't know that. they learned it. But so it's just those kinds of things. And as I began to put things in buckets through my life and think about them, ⁓ there's a moment that I came to about 10 years ago that I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that I'm an athlete. I didn't.
Jeff Holman (47:18)
Yeah.
Jane Monroe (47:42)
know that about me and nobody else really did either until I took on a giant challenge, the thing I wanted to drop off the grid for a week for. I thought an athlete had to be able to throw and catch a ball. I can't throw and catch a ball. I still can't throw or catch a ball.
Jeff Holman (47:58)
What was the week off the grad?
Jane Monroe (48:01)
It was a canoe and kayak race down the Missouri river from Kansas City to St. Louis. really? 340 miles. And I had to train for it. My sister and I have done it together 10 out of the last 12 years. um, but from that, hadn't, I, had no idea I was an athlete. And then there I am. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (48:25)
How does this, Jane, how does this play out in your business? mean, is this something that makes you a better leader with your team? Is this something that you share with your team and brings the culture together? It reminds me, I started a job one time at a company and the first thing they did is, hey, take this personality test, the disk, right? And everybody's going to figure out what it is. We give you this little token, you put it on the corner of your desk. Someone walks in your room and they're like, ⁓ you're...
You're this type of communicator or this type of thinker. And that helps me to understand better how to maybe present things to you. Like, it like that? Or how does this, how does this exhibit itself in your business?
Jane Monroe (49:07)
I think it parlays into my leadership style in this ⁓ amazing ability to accept people for where they are, who they are and where they are. And to give guidance in in this particular capacity to be a little bit better tomorrow. Okay, and and then to encourage people who want to get out of outside their comfort zone to go do something crazy.
One of the gals in the office has hiked rim to rim of the Grand Canyon. I think three times. mean that's No small feat ⁓ So so I think it has Created in me the glass half full girl is now the ultimate encourager of all ways somebody wants to live life go live your life and
Jeff Holman (49:43)
Fantastic.
Jane Monroe (50:03)
something that happens to me sometimes is I lose really good bartenders because they have accomplished what they wanted to accomplish working for me and that part of their life is over.
Jeff Holman (50:14)
They're ready to level up.
Jane Monroe (50:16)
and they go live their life and I admire every last one of them. I think that's it.
Jeff Holman (50:23)
Is that because there's power in helping in discovering things that you didn't know about people, the stuff that they knew and you didn't, or in helping them discover the things that they didn't know about themselves that maybe you did or didn't know? Is that what it is? It's just really this self-discovery ⁓ exploration kind of journey.
Jane Monroe (50:43)
It really is. It really is. And it's just made such an easy leadership path for me because I take that excitement of the discovery and apply it everywhere in my life.
Jeff Holman (50:56)
How have you seen this impact the people that are around you?
Jane Monroe (51:02)
I came to understand at a fundraiser I went to in my industry ⁓ in January, there are a lot of people who know me, who know who I am, but I don't necessarily know who they are. The events industry has a lot of turnover business-wise, not everybody makes it. I've also got this gray hair that is hard to forget. ⁓ But it came to my attention, it was my aha moment.
that I'm kind of a matriarch in this industry. I've been around for a long time. I'm the first in my little nichey niche of work and people know me. And so all of a sudden at this event,
It occurred to me that not only do people know me, but they like me. Now, why do they like me? They like me because I like them. Even though I don't necessarily know who you are, know your name, if you greet me, I am absolutely gonna have a conversation with you. I have coffee with my competitors. We talk about things. That's a great place to be. And also, if that woman is rocking that skirt, I'm gonna tell her.
So I think that is this radical optimism and love of life that I have. And I just spill it. I just spill it. And it makes people want to work for me. It makes people want to do the hard things I ask them to do because I spill out great things.
Jeff Holman (52:37)
I'm gonna have to give some more thought to this because it seems like there's some more magic in there around just, it feels like you've taken this perspective of life and relationships and self-reflection and by using that, it's attracting people to you and around you and working well for you. that's really interesting.
What would you tell other people, like if you're sitting down with one of your competitors, like you mentioned, or somebody else who has found themselves traveling a similar journey? We talked about that a little bit earlier. What would you tell them about how to leverage this in their own either leadership role or in their own team and business?
Jane Monroe (53:29)
⁓ One thing I tell people in the events industry a lot is ⁓ don't be afraid to say no to that client. You don't need every client. You don't need the hard ones. You don't need Bridezilla. She's going to cost you so much in time and energy that your bank account does not need that money. Know that when you say no to Bridezilla, that you're going to say yes to three perfectly lovely clients who will take the same amount of time that that one would have taken.
and your bank account is going to love you for it and so is your mental health. So I'm a big believer in let the desperate clients go to the desperate vendors and ⁓ leave the good ones for me.
Jeff Holman (54:15)
That sounds like there's more to it than just making good business decisions. To put it back into your framework, it's almost like that's a no-none. This bridesilla is a no-none. Let's put the no-none where it belongs, not in my business, And we'll just open our minds and doors to the unknown for a minute, which...
Jane Monroe (54:36)
with somebody else's fear.
Jeff Holman (54:44)
surely is going to be better than the no known in that case.
Jane Monroe (54:49)
Yeah, and it works. And then that keeps the cohesiveness of the entire culture in my company because I'm not asking people to work with people who are difficult. And every once in a while, yeah, we still get one. It's not a perfect science. But yeah, most of the time it just goes along. We work with good people because we are good people.
Jeff Holman (55:12)
Yeah, I love that. We work with good people because we are good people. So that sounds really simple. We just have to implement that now.
Jane Monroe (55:22)
Right.
Jeff Holman (55:24)
Well, Jane, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you taking some time and sharing your story, sharing some insights with us and presenting a framework that I think has ⁓ more depth to it. It sounds like you talk about this in some keynotes. Maybe you have a book coming out someday. Who knows? You know, where would somebody, if somebody wanted to read more about this, ⁓ this framework, this leadership or inner cohesion, where would they, how would they do that with you?
Jane Monroe (55:54)
Well, they can certainly find me on LinkedIn. ⁓ My website is keynotejane.com. ⁓ You can poke around there and I've got a link there if you want to talk to me more about whatever. I mean, it doesn't have to be about booking me to speak. If you just want to have a quick conversation on the phone, hey, I got a question about whatever. I'm an open book for all of it. So yeah, those are probably the two best ways to find me.
Jeff Holman (56:19)
Okay, so in addition to Embrace the Grape, the catering company that you're running, you're branching into speaking. love it. you've got a good message to share. It's great that you're willing to share it. So thanks for coming on the show and being a part of this.
Jane Monroe (56:27)
Yeah.
Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you.
Jeff Holman (56:38)
It was great having you and to our audience who's joined us again on this episode. Thanks for joining us on the breakout CEO podcast Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform And if you enjoy the show a rating or a review goes a long way Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling sass e-commerce and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence
Thanks again for joining us on this episode of The Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman and I'll see you next time.
