How Jen Manswell Built a $110M Pipeline by Fixing One Critical Business Mistake

Jen [00:00:00] The challenge with referrals is that they end right? you always come to the end of your little black book, and then what you're gonna do, you're gonna find yourself in situations of feast and famine, and you're not gonna be able to rely on the revenue the way you ought to.

Jen And it's interesting how this concept is true of small businesses and large multinational corporations. The reason is because people just like to default to the thing that's most comfortable.

Hector Hello, and welcome to another episode of the How to Scale Business Podcast. My name is Hector Sonte and I'm your host. Our special guest today is Ms. Jen Manwell, and she's a, we'll just call her a, profit revenue expert, someone who consults and helps businesses on all things growth, scaling revenue, and, gonna just that so Jen to the show today.

Jen Oh, thank you for having me, Hector.

Hector Jen, catch us up on some of the key sort of stops and milestones along the way in your career, and then I'd love to know more specifically what you're doing with your clients now.

Jen Sure thing. So if you're hearing a bit of an accent, it's [00:01:00] because I am from Trinidad and, uh, I started my, life in the United States.

Jen It matriculating at different colleges and universities. but I really focused in on, the communications world. Right. I started off in the performing arts space and you are wondering, how does performing arts relate to this? I'll tell you in a minute, did broadcasting and at the master's level did communications and, marketing, advertising and pr.

Jen From a global and multicultural scale. Then as I was exploring my career, I started off in the agency space and then I tried the client side for a while and wanted to see which one would work best, stuck with the client side and worked with a myriad of corporations. Right? And so my primary focus or my preliminary focus in career was in communications, and I realized that.

Jen All of the performing arts work that I did applied to my professional everyday life, but as my career continued on, I must have done, you know, [00:02:00] marketing communications for about 10, 12 years or so. And then I started transitioning into demand generation and. Really building my expertise in that regard.

Jen how do you, market in a fashion that engenders people to purchase whatever you are selling, be it a brand, be it a service, be it a product, et cetera. But one of the things I really struggled with was, hey, I was generating all this great demand and people were really excited about all of the pipeline coming in, but then.

Jen The rest of the system was falling by the wayside. So I found myself working cross-functionally to ensure that all of the parts and pieces that needed to be in place to serve the prospective customer were in place so that we could secure the transaction and nurture an ongoing relationship with that prospect.

Jen Little did I know that I was actually revenue architecting, so recently I made a transition out of the world of. corporate America, and I'm [00:03:00] now concentrating on helping businesses, number one. Identify where the revenue leaks are, right? I'm not just looking at marketing. I'm looking at your entire business processes and trying to identify, Hey, here's an opportunity to improve this part here, or that part here to optimize what you are already doing, and helping you also identify other key components to driving revenue and then systemizing the entire thing.

Hector Jenna, one of the reasons that I love having someone like you on the show is that you have a lot of experience, or at least a wide cross section in terms of, you know, larger sample size than just one sort of be able to see a lot of the, you know, a lot of the mistakes that I think a lot of businesses are making and we all think that we're all sort of.

Hector Unique or our problems and challenges are all, all unique. Are there any similarities or are there sort of any, pitfalls or, you know, sharp turns that people might be aware of that if they sort of solve these things, it might help some of the things that you're. [00:04:00] Working on.

Jen Absolutely. the greatest pivot that I encourage my clients to make from very early on is to transition away from thinking of marketing as a cost center and transitioning to thinking of marketing as a revenue engine, you know?

Jen and the only way to do that is to ensure that it connects itself. A systemized process, right? A lot of businesses, large corporations and small ones, think of these disciplines as separate entities. Marketing, sales, operations, even finance, which is a part of the framework that I teach. However. If you create the through line between them all and make them a consistent process, optimizing the things that are working, doing away with the things that are not, you'll find yourself creating now a predictable, scalable, and repeatable system.

Jen So the very first thing I [00:05:00] tell a business is. Marketing is not a tactic. Marketing is not guesswork. Marketing is not throwing a press release at a wall and seeing if it sticks. It is a strategic lever within your revenue architecture that can help you drive growth if set up correctly.

Hector Yeah, it really is a, big shift Mindset, right? Mindset to go from one side to the other. What do you think holds people back? Or are there, some things that keep people stuck, in their ways or from making that sort of shift in perspective?

Jen there are some businesses that really tend to lean into what's most comfortable, right?

Jen Particularly when you're talking about startups. entrepreneurs who have beautiful visions and fantastic ideas about how they wanna change the world, they may have worked within an environment for X number of years. They have great relationships and great networks, right?

Jen They find themselves relying on referrals. [00:06:00] And or relationship business to drive that revenue pipeline forward. And it works for a time, right? It's really powerful when you are able to call a former vice president who knows what you're capable of, and, hey, I've developed a, a system or a process or a product that can help.

Jen Fix this problem that I've seen in the industry. The challenge with referrals is that they end right? you always come to the end of your little black book, and then what you're gonna do, you're gonna find yourself in situations of feast and famine, and you're not gonna be able to rely on the revenue the way you ought to.

Jen And it's interesting how this concept is true of small businesses and large multinational corporations. The reason is because people just like to default to the thing that's most comfortable. Yeah. and I often tell people that a business has its own complexities and dynamics, but at the end of the day, you're dealing with people and habits and systems and [00:07:00] processes and things that make people comfortable and uncomfortable.

Jen So oftentimes what I encourage people to really, really think about is how do you offset that referral business, right? The relationship building that your sales team has spent many years curating and cultivating with, I won't say passive income, I would say alternative income. In other words, how do you diversify your revenue?

Jen Architecture and a fashion that ensures that when you enter feast and famine with your referral side of the business, you are still getting a pipeline that you can action.

Hector you bring up some great points and another sort of challenge that, we live in today. Right. It's great.

Hector Opportunities, and there's so many different modes, to do things so many different ways, so many things that we quote unquote should be doing or could be doing that it, prevents a business owner from really committing and sticking to sort of, creating these repeatable systems. You know, a lot of 'em, engage in sort of these [00:08:00] ad hoc activities that are far from a system.

Jen Yep. The other thing to consider too, and I'm working with a client on this right now, is they do such great work, right? They do fantastic work. Their customers are happy. Their pricing doesn't guide, gouge your eyes out, but they spend. So much of their time getting the work done that they forget to talk about it.

Jen They're horrible at talking about themselves. They're horrible at articulating their areas of expertise. And so again, that ushers them into the feast and famine mode, principally because they don't have the arms and legs necessary. To express who they are and what they're capable of because they're so busy just doing the grunt work.

Jen So that's another challenge that I've seen with clients as I've worked with them

Hector for business owners who sort of, I think part of the challenge is they, Are sort of half baked perhaps. they're sort of coming in and, and something is sort of built. [00:09:00] Some things might be good, so might be not.

Hector And so I'm, curious for you when in. You know, if you're auditing a business or, or, you know, analyzing sort of a business is there sort of a, a framework, a order of operations? Is there sort of steps or a, a hierarchy, if you will, that can at least tell people, here's the first place to look and then here's the second.

Hector You know, is there sort of a stages to, iterating and developing on these things?

Jen Absolutely. you are correct. I begin with an audit, right? Or as I call it, a revenue reality check. I sit back, have conversations with leadership, really assessing where you are. 'cause how can you figure out where you wanna go if you don't know where you are, right?

Jen And invariably, there is always. Whole, right? There's always a place where the revenue is leaking. So I, champion the things that they are doing well. I identify the opportunities, but then I also match that against their overarching [00:10:00] business goals. And I encourage the clients to, let's just have real candid conversations, right?

Jen Let's not sugarcoat anything. Let's take the suit and tie off. Take the jacket and the suit and tie off and have a, no holds bar conversation about where do you wanna go and what is realistic Stage one, stage two, and stage three. Once I understand fully where they are in their journey, what I do is I invite my signature partners, right?

Jen So the operations of my company. I provide the consultants of services, but then I have partnered with a host of killer signature partners, and I, I can't find the right word to describe them because these are partners that I've worked with. Throughout my career who have helped me identify that 110 plus million dollars in pipeline that I talk about sometimes, and I invite the pertinent ones, the ones that are relevant to the particular challenge [00:11:00] to participate in, continuing to ideate the framework.

Jen Or the transitional process that the business should be going through. Once we are all in agreement, then I hand the task over this to the signature partner and I hold the hand of the business throughout about a six month period to ensure that everything is going in the direction that they hope for it to accomplish.

Jen I might talk myself out of opportunity here, but my desire is to not just. Fish for the client. It is to teach them how to fish, to teach them how. To really concentrate their efforts around that system that needs to be built, plugging the holes where they need to be plugged. And those holes can be born out of, ineffective marketing activity.

Jen It could be born out of, talent shortages or a realignment in talent applications or allocations to different. Parts of the discipline. It could be [00:12:00] that, they are going after the wrong revenue paths, right? They really think that the money is here, but oops, the money might just be here if you just shift a little bit.

Jen You know? So every one of our clients are, very, very different in their needs and their, focus. So the revenue reality check it's the critical first step, but it's the springboard to everything else.

Hector I think it's probably never a better time to lead, run, start a business, however you wanna say it, Anna?

Hector It's probably never been more, I don't know what the right word is. Challenging, confusing. Maybe things are moving so quickly, whether it's technology or geopolitics or economies or the weather. I mean, you name it. Things are sort of shifting and evolving at a much faster pace than. I think a lot of people were used to, especially business owners.

Hector And so the rate of decision making or the rate of improvement or evolution, the rate at which, businesses need to evolve, I think is accelerating and it's important for business owners to sort of, be willing to [00:13:00] plug those holes, quicker than maybe they, you know, than they were doing in the past.

Jen You are correct. There is a caution that I offer to my clients. You know, I can sit here and talk about all of the business things and use the right terminology to perhaps impress the audience and such and whatnot, but I am a very. Human being centric, consultant. the truth of the matter is you're working in a human world with human evolutionary problems and business owners are no different.

Jen Right? there's a reason you went into business. There's a reason you wanted to branch out on your own and build the vision that you're trying to build. And it's very easy for us to attach ourselves to, oh my gosh, AI's taking over and I can't keep up with this. And what am I doing here and why am I doing this there?

Jen And what I find myself doing is calming my clients down, going look. We certainly [00:14:00] have a few things that need to be done, but if we get the one thing done first, let's identify the order of things. Let's get the one thing done, see some results. Let those results from a data perspective, inform the next step and the next step and the next step.

Jen And don't allow your head to be turned by this or that. Be very, very laser focused on where you wanna go. And you will get there eventually because even though technology is evolving, even though tastes are evolving, at the end of the day, you are still trying to convince somebody to buy from you what you are selling, be it a product, be it a service, be it whatever you're offering, and the right person will find you.

Jen At the right time. I find myself saying that more often than not, because there's so much angst in the world, right? What's happening with politics, what's happening with everything else? But I found that [00:15:00] if you, Work really hard to stick to the blueprint that's developed and the vision that you have.

Jen You find yourself vaulting over whatever your mind is telling you.

Hector Yeah. parenting and entrepreneurship and you running a business have brought me closer to faith more than anything else.

Jen Well, you find your way there.

Hector Yeah. Yeah. One way or another. I have two more questions. the first is if people wanna get more connected with you, go deeper in your world.

Hector follow up with you. Where's the best place for people to go?

Jen Well, you can start with mylene.com, that's the website for the consulting business, and fill out a form there. Or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn at jen manwell, linkedin.com/jen manwell or Mylene consultants business page, whichever is easiest for you.

Jen But those are the ways to get ahold of me.

Hector Amazing. We'll link those up into show notes for you as always. And last question here, and Jen, in your opinion, what is the secret to scaling?

Jen being able to pivot smartly, [00:16:00] and what I mean by that is a scale is only as effective as your willingness to shift in the direction in which your customers are taking you and in the direction in which the services that you're providing are taking you. Too often businesses become so caught up in what they believe they can do well, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't strive towards excellence in your discipline.

Jen You also have to remember that what you are doing well should serve. And if you lead with the customer's inclinations and interest, if you go forward with that focus in mind, having your system in place, you should be able to scale effectively. So being able to pivot but smartly.