Join host Aaron Burnett as he sits down with Jennifer O’Neal, co-owner of Live Oak Audiovisual, to explore the powerful shift from perfectionism to growth mindset and how that shift transformed her leadership, business, and life. In this episode of Moments That Matter, Jennifer shares how early lessons in customer service, humility, and generosity shaped her entrepreneurial journey, and how EO Accelerator helped her rebuild, reframe, and ultimately scale smarter through uncertainty.
Note, this podcast features real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. No pitches, no sales - just honest conversations about the moments that shape successful businesses.
Jennifer O'Neal: My default position was, I am a bad person. I suck, whatever. But it helped me refrain like, okay, I did something bad, but I can fix this. Or I did something that wasn't the way I wanted it to land. Yeah. Let me fix that wasn't what you intended. Okay. What do I need to practice to make that better?
Aaron Burnett: That's Jennifer O'Neill, co-owner of Live Oak Audio Visual, describing a shift that every high achieving entrepreneur needs to hear. For years, Jennifer carried the weight of perfection. One mistake, one misstep and her internal monologue was brutal. I'm a bad person. I suck. It's the curse of the good student, the person who built their identity on gold stars and four O GPAs, and it's exactly what made joining EO Accelerator so uncomfortable at first.
Because EO and EO Accelerator requires that we do something that can feel so uncomfortable, show up with all our warts and wrinkles, ask for help. Admit we don't have all the answers. I am Erin Burnett, and this is Jennifer's story on Moments That Matter from EO Seattle.
Jennifer O'Neal: Tell me your story, tell me your entrepreneurial story. Um, I started working for McDonald's in, in high school. And what I didn't know then is that my boss, his name was Tom, was like the quintessential entrepreneur. For me. It was just, um, working at the counter and then working in the drive-through. Our boss had this philosophy.
That he didn't really care, you know how old or young you were? Mm-hmm. He was going to keep promoting you if you had the ability as my first job. I didn't know how unusual this was like in a company, and so we had some very young managers because they had. Great skills and, and he would just keep promoting them.
He didn't believe in like, you have to be a certain age or have these certain degrees. If you could, could prove what you could do.
Aaron Burnett: Sure. You could do it. That you could do it. Yeah,
Jennifer O'Neal: exactly. When I started with him, he had, uh, one restaurant and then it was time for me to go to college and I went to college in the next town over about 30 miles away, and that's where he lived.
And so I had these ideas of, you know, I was gonna get this cool new job in, in college. And what I really wanna do is I wanted go back and work for Tom. So I came back to him and he is like, yeah, since you're here, why don't you become my administrative assistant? You can work out of the home office. And then at this point we were building a second restaurant in Willows, which is kind of 30 miles the other direction.
And so I'm like, okay. And so part of my job would be, uh, doing some of the admin work. I learned a lot of the backend, like bookkeeping and submitting payroll. Uh, reconciling bank statements. And then part of my job was going out to oversee operations at the restaurant. So doing the hiring, um, doing the orientation, doing the bank deposits.
And then eventually we added a third restaurant, um, that was a Walmart store. So I got an inside peek about the relationship between McDonald's and Walmart. And so I stayed with Tom and his business all through college. So it was about eight years. Hmm. And you know, he was like, I'm just gonna keep promoting you and giving more things.
Um, and so like in college, I took a computer course, so I'm the one that taught him how to like, put all his stuff on Excel. Like I was the first person in the company to use, right? Microsoft Office. And so we kind of got the restaurants online and, but I learned a ton about like build to inventory. Um. And what customer service should look like.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: Tom was one of these guys. So if a customer came back and they're like, Hey, you put, you know, onions on my Big Mac and I didn't like this, he'd be like, you know what, lemme make that right. And would you like an apple pie on us? What he would tell me on the thing on the side is like, it costs us less to replace that than to lose him as a customer, lose his person to customer, because now they feel seen, heard, taken care of.
And now they're gonna come back to us and then the story they tell in the community is they really fixed it. They treated me right. You know, let's come back. Instead of like, you know, pitching a fit or here's, ah, well, you know, no, you actually said this. It's like, because like it doesn't matter who was right, fix it, make it feel good because the value of having them come back is greater than the val, the cost of that sandwich.
We had to
Aaron Burnett: Sure.
Jennifer O'Neal: A lot of that was really instrumental and I probably learned more working for him. Than any college degree I ever got. Yeah.
Aaron Burnett: Face-to-face retail jobs, teach people so much about, mm-hmm. Up close customer service.
Jennifer O'Neal: This was in Northern California, so then I moved to Seattle and didn't realize how much Tom had spoiled me.
'cause as I tried to get new jobs, thinking that it would look similar, and then I would get pigeonholed and I would pretty much just flame out of any jobs that. I became like that employee for sure. And lots
Aaron Burnett: of helpful ideas. Oh
Jennifer O'Neal: yeah. Like I knew how to fix it better because you know, we had been empowered to do that
Aaron Burnett: Sure.
Jennifer O'Neal: At McDonald's. And so those qualities that a lot of entrepreneurs have about like being a great entrepreneur, being a terrible employee, like I totally embodied those in every other job that I have.
Aaron Burnett: You are not the first person on this podcast to mention being unemployable.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yes. And so tangentially. My husband, Dave, who is the other owner, he had started to work in the AV field and so he worked for the global company at the West End.
He learned a lot there. He had no previous experience, um, and just learned a ton working in that hotel environment. One of the things that really, really bothered him, because he came from, um, he had worked in restaurants as a waiter for 10 years, so he also had this really, really deep customer service approach to everything he did that clients were getting overcharged.
They weren't really allowed to give them the level of customer service that Dave thought they should get, because who really understands ab, right? You're really leaning on the, the knowledge of the technician. So he was, he was there for about a year and a half, and then he moved to another EV company.
It's a company that's still around. They run a different leadership at the time, and he was kind of running into those same barriers. And so he came, he came home one day and he's like, I can't do this anymore. I think, I think we could do a better job, you know? Of course we're, you know, young and so we're like, how hard could it be?
Sure. Let's just start a business. Yeah. In 1999, in a little apartment in West Seattle, we're like, okay. Let's, let's start this. Let's see if we can do it.
Aaron Burnett: And your company is Live Oak av.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah, live Oak Audiovisual.
Aaron Burnett: So tell me about Live Oak. Why the name Live Oak?
Jennifer O'Neal: So my husband, his dad was a career Marine, so he moved all around the us but he spent high school in Fallbrook, California.
His favorite park with his friends was called Live Oak Park. He had a friend who was involved initially decided to name the company. They named it after their favorite park Live Oak Park. What we didn't realize is that there is literally no cultural touchpoint in Seattle for Live Oak,
Aaron Burnett: right.
Jennifer O'Neal: It had zero relevance to both the area and our industry.
So we spent a lot of time explaining, you know, it worked in our favor eventually because it was so unique. A lot of EV companies are called like. Audio, visual, professional or services. And so there aren't, isn't a lot of differentiation Yeah. Between the names. So we accidentally gave us a marketing differentiator.
Mm. By naming it something completely irrelevant to, to what we do.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah. Well, so tell me about the company. What do you do?
Jennifer O'Neal: When we started, we. Have always done, um, AV for live events. So when you go to a conference and you see the, the video screens and the sound systems, that's what we're doing. If you need anything bigger or louder, we can do that for you.
As COVID happened, we added live streaming and hybrid events, and so, so now we have a, a larger service offering that would include, you know, adding live streaming to event or having just a live streamed event. In addition to just doing interim av,
Aaron Burnett: what differentiates what you do from what another service provider, uh, might do?
Jennifer O'Neal: You know, the, the equipment, the gear is probably gonna be the same. If you order a large fastforward screen from us, it's probably gonna be very similar to one you would get from another AV company. Um, where we differentiate ourselves is in the customer service approach, um, ahead of time and how we're going to.
Treat you as a client.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: And how we're gonna, you know, we recognize that this is not common knowledge. Like the, the average person ordering AV doesn't know how bright their projector should be or how many speakers should be in the room. So we're very generous with our knowledge upfront to walk that client through that process and to make recommendations.
When we first talked to them, we're like, tell us your story. You know, what does it look like, um, when you walk into that room? What do you see? What do you hear? Um, you know, who's in, how many people are in the room. And as we're asking these questions, we can do the math.
Aaron Burnett: Sure.
Jennifer O'Neal: So if they say we walk in and the room has 500 people, um, we can do the math to figure out how many speakers are needed in that room.
We can do the math to know what size the screen should be. You know, if we ask them, uh, what do you hear? Oh, there's some background music playing. Okay. We know we need to have another input in the mixer.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: If we say, how many people are going to be talking on the stage at the same time, oh, we're gonna have a panel.
It's five people. We'd like them each to have their own mic. Great. We can do the math for that. So we don't need to intimidate them up front by saying, how many lumens? Or, you know, what do you need? Sure. Tell us your story. If we can't do the math, we don't deserve your business. You know, um, there's no reason to intimidate someone right up front and there's no reason for, for the event to go wrong and us to come back and say, well, you didn't say you needed that.
Aaron Burnett: Right?
Jennifer O'Neal: Like, we we're the experts. We should be able to say, uh, let me suggest something for you, or Let me see some. That's worked Another. Situations and this is gonna give you a better event experience.
Aaron Burnett: So is it more typical for other providers to make it more transactional and expect that the customer knows what they need?
Yeah. And they're placing an order. So it's more like, uh, it's more like going to Don Lumber and attempting to order materials and Yeah. Depending upon who you get. Yeah. That may be a friendly and helpful experience, or you may feel like an idiot.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah, it is kind of, um, if you go to Home Depot and trying to find either a person or a thing.
But then you go to McClendon's and they're like, they're, they're tracking you down. They're like, Hey, what do you need? Right. Can I show you? Let me walk you over here. Here's, here's how you might wanna do this. Can I cut this board for you?
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: You know, it's a very different experience. You're buying the same product, but I am a devoted McClendon's shop.
Aaron Burnett: Sure, yeah. Because
Jennifer O'Neal: of that. Yeah.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah. I can see how that would be a much better and a much more comfortable experience as well. Yeah. For your clients. Before we continue, I want to tell you about the community that made this podcast possible. A Seattle chapter of eo, that's Entrepreneurs Organization. It's not networking, it's not selling to each other.
It's real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. If you have a business that does at least a million a year in revenue, and you're curious about joining a community that gets what you're going through. Check out EOCM. So who are some of your clients?
Jennifer O'Neal: We have done a couple of events for President Obama, so my husband's been cleared twice by the Secret Service.
So he's safe. Yeah. Um, we have done a lot of big name events. We have been doing, um, a celebrity golf tournament with Macklemore the past couple years. Mm-hmm. Um, so that's super fun. Um, we do a lot with UDub and UDub Medical a lot of times. Like some of the really cool events might be small events. We did the, um, christening ceremony for the big Bertha drill for the tunnel.
Yeah. You know, when they smashed. Sure. And then for a while we didn't like promote that because everybody was mad at Bertha. Right.
Aaron Burnett: When it was stuck. Yeah. When it was stuck. They were
Jennifer O'Neal: like, well take that off the website. Um, tugboat. Christenings.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: So when you, when you christen a tugboat. You have, uh, the tugboat is actually out in Elliot Bay mm-hmm.
With the officiant who's doing the christening. And so we had gear on the tugboat and we were sending it back to the dock so people could hear the blessing. You know, some of that really unique, how do we solve Sure. This problem,
Aaron Burnett: it would never have occurred to me that there is a formal process for christening, a tugboat.
Jennifer O'Neal: Us too. Yeah. We're like, okay, sure. I was like, can you figure this out? Yeah, you bet. And so
Aaron Burnett: is there a, a very specific blessing for a tugboat?
Jennifer O'Neal: So
Aaron Burnett: is it the same every time,
Jennifer O'Neal: for example? Yeah. I, you know, I don't know that.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: But um. Dave was, comes home and he is like, yeah, we're gonna Chris and Tug. But I'm like, alright, how does that work?
That's great. I'm not sure yet. During COVID, when we were live streaming as horrible as COVID was for fundraising for nonprofits.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: The, the interesting part was it gave a nonprofit, um, the ability to show their donors the look behind the curtain. 'cause we could do the live stream in spaces they had never seen before, or spaces that weren't big enough to hold.
You know, an event. So one of my favorites was, uh, we worked with the, uh, the feral cat project in Linwood, and the goal was we were gonna livestream from their surgery clinic because this is what donors had funded.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: And something is a space that donors had never seen. It was this really, really small space, not too much bigger in this office.
So. The setup I brought was very, very compact.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: And so we're, we're talking to the client and we are working with this great, uh, auctioneer. Her name is Sasha. Um, summer ow, who is up for anything. And the client comes to us and she says, so how would you guys feel if we did a kitten cam during this?
We're like, okay, if we don't do kitten can, I'm dropping you as a client. Like we absolutely kittens and the internet, like we have to do this.
Aaron Burnett: Right? It's magic.
Jennifer O'Neal: It's magic, right? And so then Sasha gets involved and she's like, oh, I know the perfect way to do this. And so as we're setting up, they had a partner come in and they did this kitten play pin in another room.
And so we put a camera on this play pin. Every time we'd show the play pin, we would have a how to adopt these kittens. Mm-hmm. Lower third come up on the broadcast. What Sasha implemented into this broadcast was that people could win kitten camp time, so anybody who made a thousand dollars donation or more, one kitten camp.
And so she had, we had monitors that she could see the action. And so anytime there would be a. Donation. She'd be like, we've got another donation, Jennifer, give us some kitten cam when we've cut to kitten cam, you know, and we'd see them all. Sure. Playing and the little adoption link would come up as the broadcast went on.
More and more kittens made it onto this stage like. When the executive director would come on, she'd be holding some kittens, and when Sasha would come back, she'd be holding more kittens. And so like, by the time this, this event is over lagged, there's, you know, all these kittens have made it to this stage.
Um, and it was just super fun. And that's, that's not anything. Either the organization or us would've ever done in the context of like our everyday mm-hmm. Lives. But we had this space just to be really, really creative and out of the box with something that was really challenging for a lot of organizations.
Aaron Burnett: Part of the way you're differentiated is that you are generous with your time and your expertise. You're a published author. I am. Most recently, this is the, uh, lead, like a woman series. It was a second installment. Mm-hmm. Published, um, in which you wrote a letter to your son. Tell me about that process.
Tell me about the letter to your son, generosity figured prominently into what you had to say.
Jennifer O'Neal: So the theme of the book was gratitude, and I was really stuck on how to write it. I was actually talking to my therapist and, and he's like, well, how would you explain it to somebody else? And I'm like, I'm gonna write a letter, like I'm gonna write a letter to Zachary.
What I realized is that. Even though the business has been part of his life
Aaron Burnett: mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: whole time, he's only seen one part of it. And so what I wanted to explain to him is why I do some of the things I do. 'cause he's probably, what he's probably seen is like, oh, I've gotta go do this thing or whatever.
But he hadn't seen the reason why it was happening.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: It really was a chance for me to think through, um. What I did and why I do it, and I realized a lot of it was to show gratitude, to show people that I appreciated how they show up every day. You know, without this team, we wouldn't be where we are, and so I really wanted to present to him the why.
Behind the one facet that he sees all the time. Going through that exercise helped me to figure out why I do it.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah, like,
Jennifer O'Neal: like why is that important to me?
Aaron Burnett: You described in that chapter, which I thought was beautifully written, how your attitudes have changed through the years and some seminal moments for you that were shifts.
You share a little bit about that. You mentioned in particular. Mm-hmm. A shift from what amounts to a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. The difference between doing a bad thing and, oh no, we're just learning. We're on the path to yeah. Getting better at this thing.
Jennifer O'Neal: And some of that I think comes from, uh, being a, a girl socialized in the seventies and eighties.
Sure. You know, you're a good girl or bad girl. So having internalized that growing up, it kind of becomes, became my default position for how I see other people. As we were going through. Some of the, the stuff with my son, um, one of the things that was really, really prominent in the, in the therapy sessions was that the person is their own person.
It's the choices of the behaviors that, and they're not even good or bad. Mm-hmm. Um, and they helped me to really refrain. There's some, some things that we're doing and there's some things we just need more practice doing. Yeah. You know, so there was this one time we were in the post office and, and Zachary just loved a long tunnel.
He would just run with wild abandon to the end of like the mall or the post officer, whatever. Looked like a long tunnel.
Aaron Burnett: A big crowd where you Yes.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah. Well, I'm free. Yeah. And we're in the post office and as soon as we get in the door, he like bolts for the end of the post office. My default position was like.
Zach, you know, don't run, but I did. So I go back, I get him and we go back to the door. I'm like, okay, we need to do this again. We've gotta practice our walking feet.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: And so, you know, we practice our walking feet to the post office box. What I didn't realize is there was a lady watching us and the door, and she comes up to me, she's like, you know, I really appreciate that you went back.
Practice the way it should be done instead of just like yelling at your kids. Sure. In the post office, it was a lot of stuff like that that helped me refrain, reframe in my head. Um, not defining people as good or bad, but really looking at them as a whole person and separating their actions or my actions.
It took a lot of guilt off of me because if I screwed something up, my default position was, I am a bad person. I suck, whatever. But it helped me refrain like, okay, I did something bad, but I can fix this. Or I did something that wasn't the way I wanted it to land. Yeah. Let me fix it wasn't
Aaron Burnett: what you intended.
Yeah. Yeah. I didn't do
Jennifer O'Neal: that. Great. Okay. What do I need to practice to make that better?
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: It really helped refrain how I look at things in other people. It lets me accept people more. How they are. Yeah. Instead of how I project they should be.
Aaron Burnett: Tell me about the importance of the word sonder to you.
Jennifer O'Neal: Oh my gosh.
So this is something that I credit to eo. I was in the accelerator program and we were having a, it was a speaker and accelerators were invited to this. I have zero idea what the present presentation was about because this was a, a conversation. This thing happened. Great. Yeah. There was this conversation before and.
The presenter is getting ready and he starts talking about, he's like, Hey, what are some of your favorite words? Uh, an EO member says, my favorite word is sonder. And then someone else, of course goes like, I love Sonder. And so we started having this conversation about what Sonder means, and I had never, ever heard this word before.
So immediately look it up. And what sonder means is. It means to approach everybody else as if their life is as complicated as yours. Like that was such a tectonic shift in how I thought about other people like that one moment.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: It brings to, to light the fact that I'm only seeing one of their 20 facets.
So my interaction with someone is only this small thing. If I assume that that's their entire life, then I'd be like, well, why don't they show up like this? Or why, whatever. But if I can look at that, like I am only seeing one of 20 pieces and whatever the behavior is now is because their life is just as complicated as mine, right.
It really, um, brings me some peace and lets me see people differently. Mm-hmm. So I can say, well, maybe, maybe they're having a bad day. Maybe they were late. You know, maybe they got a ticket on the way. Maybe
Aaron Burnett: kind of invites grace.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah. And it takes the pressure off both of us. Yeah. Right. And that was, I don't know, maybe a five minute conversation at an EO event.
Aaron Burnett: Right.
Jennifer O'Neal: But the shift was immediate.
Aaron Burnett: I didn't know the word either before I read it in your chapter, so thank you for that. It's great. Word. An important word. So you mentioned EO Accelerator. What brought you to First EO Accelerator and then sort of EO proper?
Jennifer O'Neal: We were working with a company called Work Tank, um, and Let Ruger is a long time mm-hmm.
EO member and in her signature it said, ask me about eo. And there was a link, okay, what is eo? And it brings up, you know, the EO Seattle website. I sent an inquiry in and talked to whomever probably the membership person was, and they, um, said. Well, you know, you don't qualify for eo, but we have this accelerator program, so I'm like, oh, you know, tell me about this.
And so we learned about that. We were in the right revenue range. We joined Accelerator and it was being led by, um, Odette and Hal Lamb.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: Uh, it had, it had just been kind of relaunched in Seattle. It was really what I needed at that point in the business. I had just the year before started working for the business full-time.
So we were in like, all our eggs are one basket, we gotta make this work. Or right, or not right. It was extremely helpful both from an academic standpoint, 'cause I'm, I'm very academically motivated, so we'd have these learning days and you know, as I explained to people now, you know, when you build your business, you have your technical expertise in whatever you're doing.
So like, we were fantastic at AB and, and while you're building your business on the technical thing. There's all these sort of operational potholes that you go around.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: But accelerator helps you fill those back in. How do you hire people? Uh, what is cashflow? Um, strategy, execution, how do you, you know, your core values.
And so it was incredibly helpful for me, even though we were doing a really great job in the AV space as we're growing. It's like, I need to hire, so how do I do a skills grid? How do I hire for core values? All of that. Foundational work, I could develop that out and accelerator. And then it was the first time in our accountability groups where I felt like I could be really open.
It was a safe space, and it was people who got it. So if I said, oh gosh, cash is killing me this month, they're like, oh yeah. You know, no judgment. The things you can't talk about with your employees, your mom, or whomever, right? This was my safe place. To problem solve those. Yeah.
Aaron Burnett: You graduated. Mm-hmm. From Accelerator, which means that you got to a million a year, at least in annual revenue, and now you're in EO proper.
How has the experience of Accelerator and now eo, how has that changed you or how have you changed through that experience?
Jennifer O'Neal: It took me a while to settle into some of the tenets of eo. Mm-hmm. Even an accelerator, because I'm someone who needed to get the A, the gold star. The 4.0,
Aaron Burnett: I'm guessing that's nearly universe Yeah.
In Yale.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah. You know, it wouldn't show my weakness or if I made a mistake, hide it or walk around or hope nobody sees it. Um, so it was a huge behavioral shift
Aaron Burnett: mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: To actually come to a meeting and like, here's all my warts and wrinkles, you know, can you help me with these? So it took me a while to settle into that, to kind of, to trust the process.
Mm-hmm. Not that I didn't trust the people, but it was so alien to anything I had been at before. It kind of took me a while to, to get into that. And then once I embraced that, like that's when the value comes. Like that's when you're really solving problems and you're really moving the needle. So we'd grown and, um, and so how was my mentor?
And we had set these goals. So January, 2020, we set these goals. I had a whiteboard for checking our sales. I still have the whiteboard and, um, I'm, I'm beating all my targets. And then March hits, right? Yeah. And so we overnight, we lost half a million dollars in in sales. And so we went from on the track to qualify to EO, to only qualifying for accelerator by $10,000.
Aaron Burnett: Oh.
Jennifer O'Neal: In a single year. And so my whiteboard, you know, March, April, it just says keeping the lights on.
Aaron Burnett: Right.
Jennifer O'Neal: It was the target. Yeah.
Aaron Burnett: I remember the day that I sent everybody home. It, it's March 6th.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah. So it took us two extra years to come out of Accelerator, but honestly it was, um. And I tell people without accelerator, we would not have survived COVID because when we first shut down, we're like, okay, what do we do?
So we, we looked around, what are our assets? Okay, well we've got a bunch of gear on the shelves that we can't do this and we have empty vans. And so, so Dave picks up the phone, he starts calling anybody who's doing food delivery, and he is like, we have a fleet of vehicles. Do you need us to deliver for you?
It was a fellow accelerator member, um, Michelle, who we went through Accelerator together. She had a connection to a food tour company. That was transitioning to mailboxes, but they didn't have a delivery fleet. Mm. And so she connected us to that company and we became their delivery fleet.
Aaron Burnett: Oh, wow.
Jennifer O'Neal: And so we would load up five vans
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: Every day with these meal boxes. And we would drive them all over Seattle. Redmond. Bellevue. Like basically it was my gorilla marketing tactic. 'cause we'd drive our logo vans Sure. Like all over and bring meals. Like without that connection, I, I don't know what that would look like. And we did that for about four months.
And in the meantime we, um, were building a studio, a livestream studio. Hmm. So I had about 30 days to teach myself how to live stream. Yeah. And again, it was those connections studios, we reach out to all of our nonprofits, Hey, we know you can't go through another budget. But come into our studio, let's see if we can do a virtual fundraiser.
We got partnered with Ethan Stoll, who was working with United Way. We live streamed, uh, cooking classes from his backyard. We did these things for United Way. We did a lot of events for eo. We had the St. Patty's Day drink thing.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: So Dave and I would be in the bar live streaming the event. We live streamed some of odette's like cupcake decorating classes.
Yeah. And so it was through a lot of these EO connections that we were able to. Generate enough business to make it through COVID.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: And because I'd been accelerator, I had learned all of these foundational things. You know, there's that exercise. If you had to hire everybody back again, would you do it
Aaron Burnett: Right.
Jennifer O'Neal: And normally it's a philosophical exercise, but we actually did it in real life.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: And the answer was not really. Yeah. Um, we hired. One person back. Oh, wow. Um, but we rebuilt the entire team, but I had all this experience as accelerator, so rebuilding the company, I, I could, uh, you know, employ some of these tenants that we had learned.
Aaron Burnett: Sure.
Jennifer O'Neal: So from 2020 to, it only took us two years to scale to a million. You know, it took us. 15 plus years to scale to almost a million, and then we rebuilt it to a million in two years. Having had all of this accelerator support. Yeah. That's so
Aaron Burnett: impressive.
Jennifer O'Neal: In years. It was crazy. Yeah, it was just crazy. Yeah.
I'm glad we did it. I don't wanna do it again. No,
Aaron Burnett: no. What do you want people to know about you? What's important for people to know?
Jennifer O'Neal: I would really like to, people to see me as a resource. One of the things that I get get joy from it is, is helping people. Like, a lot of times I'm asked to sit on nonprofit boards and I, and I, I'm honest, I'm like, I really only have the bandwidth to sit on one board and I'd be your, your best board member for three months.
And I'd be the tip, the worst board member for the other nine months of the year. Even with our staff. And just in general, I like, I like to help, I like to support. So, um, being able to be a resource for someone or. Hey, I know somebody. Can I introduce you? Kind of a surprising thing coming out of this journey is how much I like to do that.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: And I really like when I'm giving the opportunity to do that. Yeah. Even if it's just like, let me introduce you to somebody type thing. Um, but I get a lot of reward from that. And so that's one of the great things with EO is it have such a big network. I have a lot of opportunities to do that, even if it's just something simple.
Even with our staff. So if, uh, there's someone, Hey, you know, my girlfriend's trying to find a job in this industry. Oh, let me ask the network. I have found that as I get older, I really enjoy being able to do that for people.
Aaron Burnett: That's a, a gift.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah. Yeah. I don't always, you know, do it well, but I like, but, um, but I appreciate being asked.
Yeah. Growing up in sort of a classic pink collar family, you do the job until you retire and then you do nothing. And then I've seen how that negatively impacts a lot of money. Family. Oh, sure. Um, so I think originally when Dave and I started the business, it's like, okay, we're gonna do this until we retire, and then we're gonna hand it to Zachary.
And Zachary has let us know, no, I I This is not a legacy situation. Sure. Yeah. Right. He's been clear, he's like, can you build me a studio? But I don't wanna do the other things.
Aaron Burnett: Right.
Jennifer O'Neal: And so we started this with this kind of very narrow definition, being in EEO and being exposed to how other people define business ownership.
And for example, we've been connected with, um, an EOS coach. And so we're two thirds of the way of implementing, uh, the EOS operating system. Mm-hmm. Um, 'cause we never even considered that we could be business owners who don't have to touch all the things. Right. We could be business owners who have. People who do the thing, so we could actually go on vacation together mm-hmm.
At the same time Right. To the same destination. Right. Yeah.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah. I suppose that would've been a real problem before.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah. It was, um, more of a tag team, like, okay, right. I'll work the three days so you can take three days off. Yeah. So that's really unique, especially in the past three years. It's really helped Dave and I open a conversation about, like, me, like purposely planning what the next 10 years could look like.
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: And it's completely different than what our definitions were before.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: And it's kind of exciting, like, okay, if we don't have to be in the day-to-day, like what could that look like for us? Because before our options were like, pass on or sell it. And so it's like, well actually there are other options in there.
And so being around other entrepreneurs who have done this, it's been. Really eyeopening or, or entrepreneurs who have multiple businesses mm-hmm. Or they're silent partners in something, has just really expanded, uh, the, the mindset and has given us so many more things to think about is like being personal, purposeful.
How do we want to retire? How do we want to have the next 10 years? And that's been really critical in the marital happiness quotient. Sure, yeah. Of the home life. And it's, it's kind of empowering. It feels a little fancy. Like, like, okay, this feels fancy.
Aaron Burnett: I know just what you mean. Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's really cool.
Mm-hmm. It's really cool to see that and it's been, um, really liberating Yeah. For us to kind of. Reframe how we, how we view ourselves.
Aaron Burnett: Speaking for myself, there's a process to work through that has to do with, okay, if I'm a business owner, is that all right? Do I deserve that? Is that okay? Yeah. Or is it necessary to be working really hard long hours?
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah.
Aaron Burnett: To get the fruits of the business, and I'm still in that process.
Jennifer O'Neal: It, it's tough because then you're also like, okay, if the team doesn't see me doing all the things they're doing. Does that look okay?
Aaron Burnett: Right.
Jennifer O'Neal: It helps me frame conversations with the team. Like, okay, if I have these two things, where do you want me to put my labor?
Mm-hmm. At, do you want me helping you load the truck or do you want me to run payroll?
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: Um, and so it's kind of opened the door for some of those conversations and, and to put some of that thought process and accountability on the team as like, okay, well, where if Live Oak has. Finite dollars, where are the best dollars spent to my labor?
Aaron Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer O'Neal: And so that's been a really interesting exercise with the team.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah. It's also very interesting to hire people who are much better at doing their thing than you are.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yes.
Aaron Burnett: And then to realize, oh, actually it's better. Yeah. It's better that I don't do that.
Jennifer O'Neal: Oh, yeah, exactly. Like, I have done a lot of events.
Uh, I am, I'm probably, I'm not the best, I am not as organized as other people are. Like in the pre-event Right. Thing. So I'm actually not the best person to drive your event. I'm the best person to introduce you or have a conversation, but I'm not the best person to manage your event.
Aaron Burnett: Right.
Jennifer O'Neal: And we have people who are fantastic
Aaron Burnett: at that.
And it's magical that there are people who love to do these things. Yes. That we don't love to do and don't get joy from. And they would like to be left alone to Yes. That thing.
Jennifer O'Neal: Exactly. Yeah. And if I step in to help them, it just takes everything off the rails. Right,
Aaron Burnett: exactly. I've had the same experience.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah. So that's been. Very interesting, like from a personal development standpoint is to, to see all the possibilities and what could life look like. Yeah,
Aaron Burnett: I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Being exposed to other ways of living. Mm-hmm. A more expansive view of the options. Yeah. Has been exhilarating.
Jennifer O'Neal: Yeah. And there's definitely a feeling of like, oh, that looks like fun.
How do I do that? Sure. How do I make. Make it work so that I can do that.
Aaron Burnett: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Neal: But I need to sort out in the business. Yeah. So I can you just see those, those little um, emails like, oh, we still have spots at eo, you know, India conference. And I'm like, I wanna go to EO India. Okay. Right. So looking ahead, how do I sort out.
Set up the business so that when I see these opportunities, they'd be like, sure, let's get on a plane and go do that. Sure. Yeah. So,
Aaron Burnett: alright. I'm with you. Make a pact to figure that out. Yes. Together. Well, thank you for doing this. Yeah. It's been fantastic. A good conversation.