She's the owner of Who's There, Inc., which deals in all things procrastination-related.
A most sprightly piece in the June 15 Wall Street Journal - hey, I mean, consider the subject here, a week and a half after the fact isn't that bad... - by Gwendolyn Bounds profiled Jen and her business, which is exploding.
She started with 13 products two years ago, and now offers over 300. Total revenue for 2003, her first full year in business: $650,000.
This year she expects it to exceed $2 million.
This clever woman personifies that book, "Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow."
She's an unbelievable procrastinator, so she decided to ride it instead of fighting it, and look at her now.
Her upscale stationary products - "studious whimsy," she calls them - tap into what is a growing national obsession with "preparing" to get things done.
Boy, don't I know about that.
I can't tell you how many times I've gotten all dressed to go out for a run, my running shoes double-tied, my Casio runner's watch set to the stopwatch function - 00:00 - my iRock music player clipped to my waistband, and then just one more thing before I go out and start running, and another, and before you know it, it's too dark out to run.
Jen sells her stuff under the brand "Knock Knock, Who's There?"
That's a nod to the afternoon she spent gluing the words "Knock Knock, Who's There?" to the front and back of her door to avoid a writing assignment.
Among her products: the Pro/Con writing pad, which includes rows for tallying each side of the equation, and the To Do pad, which separates missions into Tasks, Errands, Correspondence and Notes.
She's currently developing what may become her company's piece de resistance: a kit called How to Procrastinate.
Says Jen: "It'll help you make sure you've done everything you can to procrastinate before you get around to procrastinating."
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