Jesse Genet: Becoming Your Own Refuge – Well Made E16

Running a business for 13 years, Lumi founder Jesse Genet has learned a lot of the ins and outs of entrepreneurship. She's been an entrepreneur since she was 16, so on this episode, we fielded questions from listeners about everything from small space living (Jesse lives in an Airstream trailer) to finding the right systems for your business.

In this episode, Stephan also talks to her about her recent viral essay — Running a Business with Boobs: The Things I Never Say. In 13 years of entrepreneurship, Jesse has raised over a quarter million dollars on Kickstarter, pitched on Shark Tank, participated in the Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator, and built a company into seven figure sales without a venture investment, and she hasn’t even turned 30. In her essay, she talks from firsthand experience about the five things people should never say to a female CEO.

Jesse answers these questions from listeners:

Amy Kosar — "Tell us your best small-living tips! Also, your top tips for scaling small business."
Aimeegzmn — "I'm working growing my business and expanding my team! One thing I struggle with is putting systems and processes in place so I don't reinvent the wheel every time!"
Justine_chong — "My business runs pretty smooth with profits used for production but it just seems like that's all that’s happening, the business covers itself with no monetary gain. How do i move on from here? Love don't pay the bills."
Blackscoutsurvival — "We really have not put much effort into packaging presentation until recently. How important is packaging/unboxing experience for online business?"
Oakandinkpaper — "Packaging is usually my biggest hang up. I run an e-commerce store so when someone receives their order, I want to give them the feeling they just stepped into an actual brick and mortar."
Notgregkalai — "Simple question: how do you persevere when things aren't going your way? When clients aren't ordering enough, when investors aren't returning emails, when the tide is seemingly still? Have a lovely day."

Also mentioned on the the show:

You can find this and all future episodes on iTunes, Google Play, and here on the Lumi blog.