Member Since 2017
Optima Office, Inc
San Diego Area
Jennifer is the CEO & Founder of Optima Office, Inc, her second successful venture. She was able to grow her first company to over $6 million in revenue and 90 employees in just 6 years. Her second company, Optima Office already has 85 employees and is expected to have revenues of $9.5 million in their 4th year, 2022. Jennifer has a degree from the University of Arizona with a BA in Finance, Accounting and Marketing. She has an MBA from SDSU and completed the Becker CPA Courses. Career wise, Jennifer spent a dozen years as a consultant in the role as Controller or Director of Accounting for numerous companies and non-profits throughout San Diego. She was named in the top 40 under 40 business leaders in San Diego in 2018, was named 2017 Young Entrepreneur by San Diego's Chamber of Commerce, the most Influential Leader in 2016 by the Connected Women of Influence, 2021's CEO Business Woman of the year by SDBJ, has won best place to work for 7 years in a row between her two companies and recently made the list of the 500 most influential people in San Diego. In 2022, Optima will be in the top fastest growing companies in San DIego and will make the esteemed Inc 5000 fastest growing companies in 2023. Jennifer is a tenacious, kind, and authentic business executive. Work-life balance is very important to her, so she is adamant about her team having a flexible, friendly, and awesome place to work. Jennifer is married with 1 child and has 7 nieces and nephews, loves spending time with friends & family and enjoys running on the beach and snowboarding.
Climbing the corporate ladder all the way to the top is a common goal of many high-achieving professionals. No matter which rung you’re on, there’s always steps you can take to help you achieve that goal. From building a positive track record to taking leadership development training, there are a number of ways you can build the skills and the experience necessary to succeed in the C-suite.
Whether you're creating a short ad for TikTok or a longer-form video series on YouTube, the quality of your videos can have a major impact on your company’s ability to draw in and retain customers. Poor editing, distorted audio and a bad script can all make it seem like you aren’t willing to put effort into your marketing—which may make customers question the quality of your products or services as well.
Bringing on new hires to your team is always a gamble. While applications, resumes and interviews can help you make an educated decision about whether or not you think someone would be a good fit for your company, you never truly know until you hire them and they start working in their role. This is why a trial period can be a useful next step in the hiring process that can help you see how a candidate tackles real-life problems.
Ensuring your financial records are correct and organized is essential to the success of your business.
Data can tell a business owner a lot about the decisions they should be making or the paths they should be following if they want to grow their business. However, with so many metrics to keep track of and so many variables at play at all times, understanding exactly what data to collect and what to do with it can be confusing, especially for new or inexperienced entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship is a journey filled with obstacles that every hopeful business owner must defeat if they want to prove they have what it takes to succeed in the business world. And while some obstacles are easier to overcome than others, there are those which can be lifelong hurdles entrepreneurs will need to work to climb in order to find true success and happiness.
While you can never predict every possible outcome, the most likely financial futures are easy to identify with strong business books and an experienced financial team.
When growing a business, it's best you focus on what you are good at, and leave all the back-office tasks to those who are best suited to handle those tasks.
While the details of any single COO’s job description may vary from one company, or one industry, to the next, the role of the COO in an organization remains relatively constant.
A negative mindset can be poisonous in the workplace. It can lower morale, decrease productivity and spread to other members of the team, leading to toxic work culture.
Finding the perfect candidate to fill an open position is about so much more than choosing someone with the necessary skills and experience. While it's important to hire someone with the technical knowledge and expertise to get the job done well, it's equally as important to find someone who will fit into your company culture or be a positive influence on others.
If your company is in financial danger, meaning your liabilities are much greater than your assets, there are some strategic moves that can help you turn things around.
No matter what industry you're in or how tumultuous the market is, hiring the right people for your business is crucial for its success. The right fit needs to have the experience and expertise to perform tasks properly, but more importantly, their personality and values should align with those of the company. Hiring the wrong person to fill a position can cost your business time and revenue.
Determining the right price for a product or service is one of the most important elements in a business's formula for success. If the price is too low, you'll be losing out on well-deserved profits, but if the price is too high, you'll be losing out on potential customers and clients. There are several factors to take into consideration when setting a fair price for a product or service. To share insights into what these factors are and why they're important, nine professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) answered the following question:
Performance feedback is an important way for your employees to know how well they are doing in their role, especially in a growing company. While annual reviews help your employees see how they’ve been doing throughout the course of the year, they could also benefit from receiving regular performance feedback.
Sifting through piles of job applications and resumes can be tedious work. However, you can take advantage of certain recruiting “hacks” to find the best job candidates, people who are likely to be a great fit right from the start.
When your team is feeling uninspired, try these activities and initiatives designed to boost morale.
At one point or another, most professionals face a crossroads in their career. Whether they simply want to change jobs, pursue a different career path or still don't know what their true calling in life is, there are a lot of questions a person can ask themselves before choosing a direction.
Many business owners gravitate toward hiring in-house staff instead of bringing on a consultant or fractional resource mostly because they aren’t familiar with how the process works.
Part of creating a successful team is getting them to buy in on your company’s mission, vision and goals. Those employees who do this are likely to develop an “ownership mindset” in which they feel that they have ownership over their responsibilities and outcomes and are more willing to do what is necessary to accomplish tasks.
As a leader, it’s important to ensure that every voice at your company is heard, no matter the size of the team. Barriers should be broken between upper and lower management, if they exist, to allow for the free flow of information and ideas. But it can still sometimes be difficult for lower-level employees to feel their ideas are being heard all the way at the top.
When assessing resources as we look toward optimization of our operations, the key is identifying interest.
Happy staff equals happy clients.
A strong manager can inspire loyalty and guide their team toward reaching their goals, helping the company reach new heights. Conversely, a manager who is ineffective or difficult to deal with can drive away talented employees, leading to high turnover rates and the subsequent loss of time and capital.
The happiness of its employees can make all the difference in a company's success.
Success starts with building one small habit at a time.
Many professionals have been fired from positions in the past. Getting fired from a job can be embarrassing and anxiety-inducing, especially when you have to explain the reason why you were let go to a potential new employer.
Sometimes, even employees who have a track record of excellent work can have bad days. But when bad days become bad weeks or even months, leaders should take the time to investigate. However, because it could be a sensitive situation, it may be best to take it slow and follow a few key steps.
Right now, most businesses have less of a cash buffer.
Invest in strengthening your HR team to get through these hard times.
Having the right clients can make all the difference in your business’s success. Of course, finding those ideal clients isn’t always easy. You don’t want to be too selective and turn down a good business opportunity, but you also don’t want to overextend yourself for a client who won’t stick around in the long run.
Small-business owners realize almost immediately how different their businesses are to run than large corporations. For success, a small business needs to adopt its own strategies that work with limited available resources. Entrepreneurs in this position need to make critical decisions about what approaches they'll take to elements of business growth and development.
It’s easy to have an “always-on” mentality when you’re an entrepreneur. You own a business that depends on you to survive, so you never really get a day off – right?
As a manager, you likely have a long list of responsibilities and many demands on your time. This may leave you with little time for unplanned meetings or additional questions from your team members, let alone time to complete your own work.
For many growing teams, in-person leadership conferences have been the go-to method for training and developing the organization's future leaders. In today's world, though, there's a lot of uncertainty around when these types of conferences might return.
Consider which roles can be outsourced, and clearly outline who is responsible for every task in your organization to be certain that you are optimizing your team during these difficult times.
Business advisers have the potential to be instrumental to a company's success. Unfortunately, not all business advisers make a positive impact, and it's up to the entrepreneur to decide which adviser they want to work with.
Within an organization, some skills are far more valuable than others. If your business is looking at hiring new employees, then these skills should be a primary focus for your interviews. Knowing what skills are crucial for an enterprise to grow and thrive helps you figure out if an employee may be worth hiring, even if they don't fit the ideal. Sometimes the company needs more than just the right qualifications for their employees.
Lean on your accounting team to assess business continuity and profitability
Customer complaints are a necessary part of a business, but it can be discouraging to deal with them. A good leader knows how to look at customer complaints and extract the positives out of those disparaging comments. A skilled leader can take these complaints and turn them into a power to motivate and direct the business's positive growth.
Winning a business or industry award can be a great honor for your business, as well as a highly effective PR opportunity. However, to be considered, you'll first need to submit an application to be reviewed by the award committee. To help you with this process, we asked the members of Young Entrepreneur Council the following question:
Businesses have seen a period of massive growth, especially those that deal solely with online sales and services. While this development is promising, it also opens up a business to another problem -- that of having their growth outscale their ability to communicate.
The right accounting team can help leaders avoid fear-based decisions by adding transparency and facts to the equation.
Team members who feel connected to an organizational culture they helped create tend to be happier and more productive.
When you spend time in the business leadership world, you start to hear a lot of cliché phrases and vague terms that other managers frequently use. Sometimes they use them sound smart; other times they're not sure of a better alternative. Either way, these overused words begin to sound like jargon over time, and may lose their meaning when you're communicating with your staff.
[long-form article emailed to Kelsey]
[LONG-FORM EMAILED TO KELSEY]
At times it can be difficult to turn off our emotions -- especially when it comes to separating personal feelings and work. While it’s perfectly normal to have negative feelings in the face of difficult work situations, wallowing in these emotions for too long can affect your job performance as well as your overall well-being.
Having the right people do the right tasks at their respective levels can free up much-needed cash.
Moving into the second quarter of the year, entrepreneurs should be well aware by now that the only way to ensure that their company gets more efficient is to examine its performance in the previous quarter and see where it can improve. Performance evaluation is much more than just assessments that focus on a small core of metrics.
Every business owner hopes to succeed in their venture. Access to the right resources plays a huge role in that success -- but barriers do still exist, especially for female entrepreneurs.
Running a business is no easy feat, and with each new challenge that arises, an entrepreneur risks becoming buried under the weight of the responsibility. There's no way that an individual can stop the flood of responsibilities, so the only option that a new business owner has is to find an effective and efficient process for managing the situation.
For a nonprofit to survive long-term, it is imperative that it makes some of the same financial decisions as a for-profit company, and that includes managing its budgets effectively.
Like many business owners, you’re probably busy double-checking the difference between 1099 and W2 employees, considering how the new rulings will affect you and how best to make a seamless transition to W2 employees where necessary.
The experience of the CFO has to be based on the company's future goals and not simply what happened historically.
Remember, succession planning applies to unexpected emergencies in addition to retirement, so it's important to get started now.
An economic downturn may be your opportunity to thrive, but you still need to be strategic about your decision-making.
Take the time to strengthen your balance sheet to ensure you have the ability to get financial assistance from investors.
Remember, preparedness and prevention are the best medicine.
How can you prevent late payments from putting your business at risk?
Outsourcing has many benefits to help you weather a looming recession or streamline the production within your company.
Being "busy" doesn’t always necessarily mean productive.
You don’t want to be caught by surprise when the next recession happens.
Implementing internal controls lowers the risk of fraud, errors and inefficiency in your accounting department and company as a whole.
Believe in the product or service you are selling and its capacity to help others.
Finding ways to cut costs is important, though going with the cheapest option isn’t always the answer.
We are a team of accounting specialists who bring varying degrees of experience in every single industry, with most accounting softwares and to businesses of all sizes, from start-ups to $50+ million in revenues. We also specialize in servicing non-profits.
Accounting