Learn More About Jennifer Bourn

Speaker, Graphic Designer, Website Developer,
Internet Marketing Implementation Expert

 

Jennifer Bourn owner of Bourn Creative Branding, Graphic Design Website Design and Internet MarketingShort Bio:

Jennifer Bourn helps entrepreneurs and small business owners build their brand, market their business, and live their dream life. Jennifer partners with her clients to create powerful, authentic personal brands and she creates and implements the planning and implementation needed for online marketing success, using a combination of Internet tools, marketing strategies, and award-winning communication-based design.

  

Medium Bio:

Jennifer helps entrepreneurs build their brand, market their business, and live their dream life. She designs award-winning brands, websites, blogs and marketing materials, and helps entrepreneurs design their businesses around their passion so they can do what they love and have the freedom to spend more time with the people they love.

In the fast-paced game of Internet marketing and social media, it is easy for entrepreneurs to feel overwhelmed and unsure of what the best course of action is for their business. As a former university instructor, Jennifer takes even the most complicated online marketing strategies and breaks them down into simple, step-by-step processes that are easy to follow and implement.

Jennifer truly lives by the mantra “Go Big or Go Home.” She believes every entrepreneur can attract more clients and make more money with the right marketing message and compelling sales materials. Known for her vibrant, passionate, and energetic approach to business, Jennifer delivers real world how-to strategies designed to inspire growth and motivate action.

  

Volunteer Work:

Sacramento Down Syndrome Information AllianceDown Syndrome Information Alliance
Jennifer is a member of the Board of Directors for the Down Syndrome Information Alliance (DSIA) of Sacramento, California and the chairperson for the DSIA annual fundraising event, the Celebration of Hope.

The Down Syndrome Information Alliance is committed to providing resources and support for those affected by Down syndrome while ensuring access to services, treatments and programs that enhance health, quality of life and productivity.

eWomenNetwork FoundationeWomenNetwork Foundation
As an active member of eWomenNetwork, Jennifer regularly volunteers her time and talents to help the eWomenNetwork Foundation raise funds. The eWomenNetwork Foundation, through it’s individual chapters, provides grants for local non-profit organizations that serve women and children, as well as the Foundation at large, supporting nationwide non-profit organizations.

In The Classroom
Bringing her talents into the classroom, Jennifer also volunteers as the art docent at her daughter’s elementary school, teaching the children about art history and leading art projects.

  

Qualifications & Skills:

As a trained graphic designer, Jennifer has been working in the field since 1997 with experience at an advertising agency, newspaper, magazine, public relations firm, publishing company, and design firm.

She has developed branding, messaging, websites and blogs, email newsletters, marketing material, Internet marketing, social media marketing, and more for:

  • Political campaigns and legislative initiatives
  • Entrepreneurs and start-up businesses
  • National corporations
  • Internet and e-commerce businesses

As a former instructor at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS), Jennifer taught upper division Corporate Identity Design to senior-level designers, focusing on the idea development process and the application of the idea across a complete brand identity package. She also worked to develop training/teaching manuals and course materials for lower division introductory design courses.

Through her company, Bourn Creative, Jennifer partners with her clients to create powerful brands that attract attention, websites that generate leads, and marketing materials that convert prospects into paying customers. She is proud to be living her passion everyday by using a combination of design, marketing, and Internet tools to help entrepreneurs and small businesses build their brands, market their businesses, and live their dream lives.

Jennifer’s extensive expertise covers:

  • Branding, logo design, and message development
  • Graphic design and print marketing materials design and development
  • Website design and Wordpress blog design
  • Online business development
  • Squeeze page, landing page, and sales page development
  • Search engine optimization
  • Content management systems
  • Strategic Internet marketing planning and implementation
  • Email marketing and ezine design and implementation
  • Social media training and education
  • Social networking strategy, training, and implementation
  • Shopping cart systems and auto responders
  • List building strategies
  • The mompreneur lifestyle

  

Memberships & Affiliations:

Jennifer Bourn, owner of Bourn Creative, is a member of eWomenNetwork, the Sacramento Speakers’ Network, the National Association of Professional Women (NAPW), and the Art Directors and Artists Club (ADAC) of Sacramento.

eWomenNetwork entrepreneur and professional women's business networking organizationspaceNational Association of Professional WomenspaceArt Directors and Artists Club of Sacramento

  

How Bourn Creative Was Founded:

The Early Years

Jennifer has always been driven to be successful, but her picture of what success looked like has changed as the years have passed. At first, she envisioned success as an executive level job (notice the word job and not career), business suits and power lunches. Weird for a designer right? Well, the closest jobs she saw that melded the two were the crazy-busy workhorse advertising executives.

Being the confident, go-getter that she is, Jennifer did several internships during college, each in a different field related to design. She interned at a magazine, a newspaper, an advertising agency, a printer, and a university. At the same time, Jennifer worked 30 hours a week as a designer for an amazing woman who owned her own advertising agency and ran it out of her home. Here, Jennifer was able to get her feet wet in every aspect of the business.

When she graduated with a Bachelors degree in Graphic Design, Jennifer bought a suit and interviewed for creative positions at advertising agencies and design firms alike. Soon she found herself in an odd predicament. With all of the experience she had, you would think getting a new job would be easy… but it wasn’t.

“You are over-qualified for this position” was what she heard over and over. One interviewer said she was a threat to his job because she was more experienced!

At that point, Jennifer switched gears and interviewed for higher-level positions. Unfortunately, she was again turned away because she had zero management experience. Finally, a prominent advertising agency in town called for a second interview and told her that she was exactly what they needed to supplement their creative team. Jennifer was ecstatic. This was finally her big break!

The Moment Everything Changed

Jennifer did the interview and it went well. This was her dream job and she was about to land it. Shouts of hooray and woo hoo were echoing in her head. Then she heard her interviewer say something that jolted her back to reality.

The man interviewing her, one of the agency’s owners said, “Unfortunately we do not have a position for you at this time. I think you are too confident for a woman to be successful in this business.”

Um, excuse me?! Did he just say that?! Jennifer was crushed, and to say the least, angry. How dare HE play the gender card and say a confident female can’t be successful.

At that moment, as she walked out of their offices, Jennifer promised herself that no matter what, she would achieve success. This was the moment that she decided to prove to that man, and herself, that she could accomplish anything she set her mind to.

Making Progress and Moving Forward

Jennifer accepted a position as the Publication Manager for an insurance industry news publisher, managing and designing four publications. She stayed there for two years, building her management experience and meeting some very influential people, one of which offered her a new job.

This was it! This was the job she had always envisioned. Jennifer was now the sole creative designer at a boutique public relations firm. At first, the job was great and the rest of the staff were amazing, talented, and fun to work with. But soon “agency life” started to not look so good.

Jennifer was a salary employee, but still expected to work nights and weekends (in addition to my 40 hours during the week) to meet client deadlines set by the account executives, who to be fair, were not used to working with an on-staff designer. She was commuting an hour and a half to two hours each day and combined with her firefighter husband’s schedule, that equaled little to no time together as a family. Plus, on days when Jennifer had to be at work at 9 am and her husband didn’t get off work until 8 am, they were forced to do the “baby swap” at the fire station.

Family is the absolute most important thing to Jennifer and her husband and this schedule quickly began to take its toll. Jennifer missed her family and felt like she was missing out on her daughter growing up! But, they had recently bought a large new house and Jennifer, always thinking about the future, knew she couldn’t have a position on her resume that lasted less than a year.

Almost exactly at the one year mark, Jennifer found out she was pregnant with her second child. Both she and her husband expressed concern over raising two children with this schedule. A couple weeks later, Jennifer had her one-year review and was told that several of the things she was promised to receive at her one year mark, including a raise, wasn’t going to happen because profits were down.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

At this point, Jennifer was beyond frustrated, tired, and burned out. She barely ever saw her family, and she was missing her little girl growing up. Jennifer was making about one-fifth of what the firm was billing for her time, she was sick and tired of commuting in traffic, and she was wondering how she was going to manage this with two children!

Then one Friday evening, after a particularly bad day, Jennifer was stuck in traffic on I-80 crying and wishing things were different. Then something she had read recently popped into her head, “If you don’t like what you are doing, do something about it.” She knew that if she wanted things to be different, she was going to have to take matters into her own hands and create her own path.

She picked up her mobile phone and called her close friend, a true example of a mompreneur, who just happened to also be her first employer who had built an extremely successful advertising agency out of her home with three children under the age of five at home. They spent the rest of the drive home talking about running a business from home and balancing work and kids, marriage and family.

That weekend, Jennifer, with the help of her incredibly supportive husband, made the decision to become an entrepreneur and start her own business, Bourn Creative. She filed for a business license, built her website, purchased some equipment and just one month later, on a Monday morning, Jennifer submitted her letter of resignation.

Building a Powerful Business that Helps other Businesses

Jennifer founded Bourn Creative in 2005 to give her the freedom to spend more time with her family and fulfill her passion of helping entrepreneurs build their brand, market their business, and live their dream life. She was determined to provide outstanding marketing and design services that were affordable for other small business owners just like her.

Immediately, Jennifer contacted everyone she could think of in her network to tell them she had started her own business and to ask for any referrals they may have. Soon things started to fall into place, business was steadily coming in, and referral after referral was contacting her for bids.

Within one year, Bourn Creative had completely replaced Jennifer’s full-time salary. In the second year, its income had doubled! By the third year, its income had doubled again! And as time went on, each year brought more growth.

By choosing the path of entrepreneurship, Jennifer was in total control of her future, her income, and her time – or so she thought.

While her business was experiencing huge success, Jennifer was yet again, exhausted and burned out. She felt used and abused. She was working 12-15 hour days for a total crazy person – herself! Like most business owners, she started her business because she is an incredibly talented designer and has a keen mind for marketing. But she didn’t know anything about running or managing a business.

Jennifer was so protective of her business and all of the hard work and sacrifice she had poured into it that she couldn’t delegate any of the work. She was too busy to train someone else and too busy to take the time to setup some automation tools to help her streamline the business. She wasn’t sleeping, she was stressed out, and things were slowly starting to slip through the cracks. Jennifer didn’t realize that by spending some time up front to get the right systems and processes in place, she could save her self hours and hours down the road.

Creating Positive Change for Explosive Growth

Jennifer was doing everything herself and she soon realized that she was heading for a major breakdown or business catastrophe. She was only working IN her business, and never ON her business. She knew that the Bourn Creative needed a major overhaul and that she needed help.

  • The first thing she tackled was outsourcing all of the invoicing, billing, accounts payable, and much of the admin work.
  • Second, she took her own advice and implemented the very same automation tools she uses for her clients.
  • Third, she hired a virtual assistant to help her organize her business structure, systems, and processes. This virtual assistant is also working to help Jennifer build a virtual team of experts.

Bourn Creative is now running more efficiently and effectively than ever and Jennifer is actually living the life she had dreamed of when she first started her business in 2005. She has more clients than she ever imagined, is making more money than ever before, and has more time to spend with the people she loves.

After seeing the positive effects it has had on her life, Jennifer is committed to working on her business for the life of her business. She attributes much of her success to her fantastic clients who give her the opportunity to help them achieve their dreams by building a strong personal brand, marketing their business, and teaching them the strategies, tools, and tricks they need to stay in control on their own brand and business.

She believes in leading by example and lives by the mantra “Go big or go home.” Solely by word of mouth, Jennifer has grown Bourn Creative into the award-winning branding, graphic design, website design and Internet marketing firm it is today and looks forward to working with many more entrepreneurs and small business owners to create profitable, passion-based businesses that will change the world.