How to Digitally Organize Yourself Before You Get Caught, A Founder’s Story with Jaclyn Strauss

I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. My childhood memories consist of mostly the lessons taught through tough love by my parents. I was always expected to focus on my studies first and was held to a very high standard regarding what types of grades I was to deliver. I also grew up in a traditional household where both parents worked. However, my mother was still somewhat subservient to my father. It was old school now that I reflect on the dynamic in my house and the family I have created with my husband. I like to think I am a 51% partner in my household. We always sat down as a family of four to eat dinner each evening and talk or not talk about our days. We were all expected to be present, and I really miss that as it seems nearly impossible to do six days a week like I was accustomed to. My parents always took Saturday nights as date nights, and we were left with the babysitter, which was always a treat for my brother and me.

A personal need was the inspiration for starting my business. I was given a second chance after I nearly lost my life when I delivered my second child. The doctors told my family that I was not going to be coming out of the hospital alive. After making it home from the hospital, I had a horrifying realization. Given that I am a CPA by profession, I am the household CFO, activity director, and pretty much the jack of all trades that held the keys to our very modest castle. The issue was I never shared the details with my spouse on everything that powered our lives and made it operate as seamlessly as possible each day. With that, I took the opportunity to do better. I tried hard to organize things in a way to create greater efficiency today to allow me to be more present in my second chance at life — while at the same time making sure that if something happened to me tomorrow, all would be prepared to take over. I was paralyzed and didn’t know where or how to start. There was no good tool to do this in the most time-efficient and straightforward way. So I created a paper organization system in the simplest way that creates a true user experience that guides someone down the path that we all found overwhelming.

I am a perfectionist and needed to get over myself to be successful. When I launched my own company that I had in development for three years, I needed to put aside some areas that needed work personally to become a successful CEO. Three years of working on getting everything perfect and the time that I likely lost from getting objective feedback from my consumers and potential clients was lost because I got caught up working to make everything perfect. Little did I know that the most valuable feedback was going to come from the market itself. The only way to receive that feedback was to launch and put the service out there. I used the rule of 3’s to help guide me as to when it was needed to update my product offering. To elaborate a bit on that, if I heard the same feedback three times, I knew it was a trend and one I had to incorporate. As a founder embrace feedback and pivot as the market demands. Do not be set in your ways because ultimately if you listen to feedback and market input you will be led down the right path.