Jeannette Balleza Collins

  Arkansas native Jeannette Balleza Collins seemingly does it all. Jeannette currently serves as a consultant and creative at both Scribe Marketing and Terrapin Consulting. She has co-founded two companies, both Tonic Regional Funds and Grit Studios. She is a mother to two children and was named one of “Arkansas’ 50 Influentials” by Arkansas Times.

Jeannette and I met at Onyx coffee shop in Bentonville just steps away from Grit Studios, an innovation community and coworking space that offers coaching, professional development,  and strategic networking. Jeannette directed The ARK Challenge technology accelerator program and sometimes was called the “mother” of the startup companies, a title she now takes as an “extreme compliment.”

Her journey as a multi-time business co-founder and fundraising consultant began out of college, where she was actually an English major and Art minor. Fending off questions of if she was going to go to law school or teach, Jeannette decided to take a different route with her career. Her first job was as a copywriter for a web design company, Vulcan Creative Labs. While working at Vulcan, Jeannette gained her technological literacy, and eventually wore all of the hats when it came to sales, goal setting, managing employees, and even creating the product offering as her job role grew to a full partner.

Thanks to her experience at the design firm,  Jeannette was able to take her newly developed skill set and translate it into her drive for company creation. Her first try at building a company? Scribe Marketing, a marketing firm with the focus on creative, critical thinking and content creation.

After gaining experience as a company founder, Jeannette was soon pulled in by two local CEOs, who asked for her to speak to their CEO forum about the challenges of hiring (and keeping) Generation Y employees. “They didn’t understand why the carrot that worked for them didn’t work for the younger generation,” she explained. As a Xennial, or someone who is in-between both Y and X  generations, Jeannette was able to curate a panel for this prestigious forum and give a voice to younger consumers and business owners. After her presentation, the CEO group extended Jeanette an offer to join a CEO Forum of her own.

“I was uncomfortable at first. Not only because I was the youngest, but I was also one of the few minorities and women in the room. I also wasn’t managing huge 100-person organizations like a lot of the other folks, but it peaked my curiosity. You know that you are always told to strive to be the dumbest person in the room. So if I was ever given the opportunity to be outside of my comfort zone, I tried to learn from it.” In CEO Forum II, Jeannette was able to learn about the issues that larger organizations face through the other members’ stories, gaining knowledge and insights that she hadn’t necessarily addressed yet.

Jeannette also tried to bring another perspective into discussion within the forum. One of her more memorable experiences was when Jeannette was pregnant with her firstborn, a moment she describes as a crossroads. “I was trying to juggle this idea of being a good mother, professional and citizen.” So Jeannette “laid herself bare” and proposed the question of how motherhood affects a woman’s career to her fellow CEO peers.

“At the time, I didn’t know that if two weeks into my maternity leave if I would become stir crazy, or if I would look into my son’s eyes and all ideas I had for my career would fade into nothingness. None of the things were clear to me.” So Jeannette asked her peers, “But the ‘baby math’ that some people were giving me was ‘well, how many kids do you want to have? Because that will directly impact the years that you will be outside of the workforce.’”  

Jeannette questioned why she needed to give up her career trajectory to be a mother. Why would motherhood mean compromising her earning powering or losing her standing in the professional world?

“I was asking a question to people who had never walked in my shoes before. Many of them had a spouse at home, and the things that were on their mind were completely different than from what was weighing on me, and so it was shortly thereafter where I kind of left that meeting shell-shocked and didn't have the peace of mind or solution that catered to what I wanted in my life.”

Jeannette decided if she didn't have access to mentors with experience in areas she was searching for guidance, she would find them elsewhere. "So I ended up turning to books," she explained, using these outside resources to be the mentors she needed on the topic.  “I had to find a way to become resourceful and figure it out as I went and be comfortable not knowing or having all the answers.”

These experiences have shaped Jeannette into the powerhouse she is today.

Outside of being resourceful Jeannette succeeds because of her driven nature and self-discipline over her schedule. “I am a big fan of flexibility, and I strive for working moments rather than working days.” Between both Scribe Marketing’s office and Grit Studios, the locations of which are about 40 minutes apart, “there’s a lot of work that gets done in the car.”

“With a 9-month old, I’ll usually try to get some things done in the middle of the night and the wee hours of the morning.” Jeannette shared with a laugh, “I’m all the time trying to do things at the same time. You have to do what you have to do.”  

Managing her time and working smart is how Jeannette is able to own so many projects. Every day she makes certain that she creates real value for her organizations -  “so that the hours that you bill aren’t directly proportional to the work that you have created, but rather create exponential value.”