Jake Hassel-Gren | GROWth Architect for Canadian Women

Jake Hassel-Gren, MBA is the Founder of the LEAP Learning Lab, the Chief Learning Officer for PowHERhouse Media Group, and the Principal Advisor for LEAP Advisory Services.
Jake Hassel-Gren | GROWth Architect for Canadian Women | Inspire Me, Portraits, Spring 2017 Magazine

Jake has been designing, delivering, and developing transformational learning on leadership, business growth, and professional development excellence for more than 20 years.

Throughout her career, one of her responsibilities was designing and delivering customized learning to large corporate groups on a national scale, smaller more intimate audiences, and in 1-1 performance coaching sessions.

Jake has logged hundreds of hours in both virtual and in-class facilitation on a wide range of topics including:  Women’s Leadership, Business Finance, Financial Management, Business Development Strategies, Sales Process Delivery, Net-Promoter System Implementation, Change Management, Team Synergy, Multi-Generational Team Leadership, Leadership Development, and Customer Experience Excellence.

She has taken her corporate career experience and harnessed it into the entrepreneurial space, dedicating her skills to change the model of personal and professional development for women by leveraging the power of the online space. With her business banking background, Jake understands both the monetary and influence opportunities available to women online.  Expanding any business into online is possible, and it’s Jake’s mission to work with an amazing team of women to help other women embrace this opportunity and never look back.

Describe your Mission.  What’s it all about for you? 

It’s all about providing personal and professional development opportunities to women in a new model where the barriers to entry are removed.  Over the past 8 months, I’ve done a significant amount of research about the opportunities in the online space for women who own every type of business.  Brick and mortar, services, educators, coaches, advisors, retail – you name it –  and there is immense opportunity.  The online space gives women direct access to the market, and unlike traditional workplaces, there is no “boy’s club”, patriarchal rules or checkbox definitions of success.  Women can write their own rules, create their own brands, and build their businesses in a space where gender is not an obstacle.

What is your ultimate dream for the LEAP Learning Lab and where you’d like to take it?

Jake Hassel-Gren | GROWth Architect for Canadian Women | Inspire Me, Portraits, Spring 2017 MagazineI have a dream for sure but I cannot do this alone!  Our mission is to remove the three most common obstacles we hear stopping women from making the leap into the online space 1) fear of technology, 2) a lack of understanding of how to convert their rich content into an online offering that connects, and 3) the overwhelming amount of information coming at them from too many sources with too many conflicting messages.

The women we speak to are tired and they don’t know who to listen to. They stop listening and then they don’t act because it becomes too hard.  We are determined to change that for them!

The ultimate dream is to grow our current team to 200 women instructors.  Giving women the opportunity to deliver their content, services, courses, programs, and books online to connect with a wider audience. We want everything from knitting, piano playing, golf, yoga, meditation, physiotherapy, personal finance, business finance, taxes, bookkeeping, gardening, fitness, wellness, speaking, writing, leadership, growing an online business, and corporate learning solutions for women leaders, employees, and member bases. This in no way is an exhaustive list…. the list is endless, as are the opportunities!

Having the Lab be “the go-to place” for Personal and Professional development for women, and supporting them to learn, grow, and succeed in a community environment.  It’s truly about giving them access to resources, subject matter experts, and the opportunity to expand the reach of  their business by embracing a blended-delivery model

One thing that you feel has been most pivotal or useful thus far in your career/journey?

Because I had a very carefully executed “plan”, which I deliberately set in motion step-by-step, decision-by-decision, when the plan changed, I was in shock.  Although I’m closer to embracing this pivotal experience, I’m not yet quite there.  What’s helped me immensely is to build a business around others’ success and achievements and empowering women to grow.  Being able to measurably see women achieve greater success by learning new skills brings me closer and closer to fully embracing my new path.

How would you describe what brings you the greatest joy in your current role?

Wow – I love this question! Hearing women process through a new realization is my greatest joy! Watching them take that realization and create results for themselves takes me to another level of joy.  One I didn’t know even existed.  I’ve been facilitating and instructing learning for a long time, and I’ve had graduates of my programs go on to huge success and achievement, but the experiences I’ve had with women over the last few months … man, these are outer-limits.  There are moments where I feel like my heart is going to explode with joy!

What would you like women to most understand or consider – on a higher level – with regards to your role and your mission?

I want them to seriously consider joining us on this journey! Our current team is keen to see the team grow to 30 by the end of 2017.  We want them to STOP believing they need to do it on their own and have faith in their gifts enough to let us help them achieve their goals.  They can get in on the “ground-floor”, and anyone who knows anything about opportunity in business knows the “ground-floor” is when to get in, particularly in the technology space.  They can be a part of something we know, is going to change growing a business in the online space for women.

Describe your Top 3 Time Management Tips as they relate to your Mission. 

1) Calendar cadence.  I learned this in my corporate career, and it’s a valuable skill to have. Tightly managing my calendar is how I work at such a high-capacity for such long periods.  I schedule my days to start with my most challenging tasks and work my way through each task until it’s complete.  I parcel out my time in small achievable tasks.  I leave the chunkier tasks to a “full-day”, and when those days happen my calendar is completely blocked to work through them.

2) Mental preparedness – I rock it out.  I dance it out.  To the same song every-single-time.  Run DMC, “It’s Like That”.  It gets me ready.  It turns me into a woman-of-steel who can face anything in the day ahead.

3) Plan. Plan. And then Plan some more.  Sunday nights I write down my Weekly Plan, and then I execute it.  Period.  It’s about discipline, and I must admit, it comes easily to me because of how I am wired. I am predisposed to managing my time with a huge amount of discipline due to my athletics background.

Describe collaboration and what the looks like/feels like on the ground – how does it show up in your life?

Jake Hassel-Gren | GROWth Architect for Canadian Women | Inspire Me, Portraits, Spring 2017 MagazineCollaboration is the foundational principle of our mission and our current team demonstrates this. Each woman on our team has their own successful business, and they’ve come together to grow and expand their businesses with online courses, programs, and digital products.

Collaboration doesn’t simply “show up”, it IS the business and it’s modelled around discussions we’ve had numerous times Char. You’ve been on this mission in a different way for a really long time now! Coming together with learning was the next logical step for your audience. I’m thrilled to be doing this with you and other PowHERhouse women and new women in my life.

Women can engage with us in numerous ways: 

  1. Join our team as a Featured Instructor – We’re always looking to add to our Team! This opportunity is for women who have great content prepared and ready to take it to the market but don’t want to manage their own technology. Or they’re currently delivering content online, and are ready to scale-up and bring it into a larger marketplace. We onboard them onto the Lab and manage the technology for them. We give them a home for their online course, program, or services in an open marketplace where they own their IP, set their own price, and become a part of Community. We want them to work in their zone of genius and do what they do best while we do what we do best! They are up and running in 60-days without all the headaches of systems and overhead costs. The BIG bonus is, we all work together to cross-promote each other and they get to work alongside women already delivering high-value Programs into the market. If you’re a woman who’s thinking about taking your seminars, workshops, keynote, or book and making it into an online course/program, please contact us and let’s talk about how we can help you make that happen: info@leaplearninglab.ca
  2. Participate in one of our specialty Programs, 3 of which are in partnership with PowHERhouse:  SPEAK, which is delivered and managed by the one and only Charlene SanJenko, the CEO of PowHERhouse, PUBLISH, which is delivered and managed by the fabulous team of Tina Overbury and Meribeth Deen or LEAD, which is delivered and managed by me.

See! Collaboration is the foundation of our mission! We are bound and determined to remove ALL barriers to entry for women in the online space and help them grow and scale their businesses, and brands, and expand their reach and influence.

What are the apps or online tools you most use?

Facebook Live, BeLive, Zoom, Google Drive, Thinkific, Camtasia, AdobePRO DB, FaceTime, Workflowy, Facebook Messenger, Facebook, LinkedIn and PowerPoint design-tools.

Your thoughts on mentoring young women?  What do you feel your most valuable lessons to pass on are? 

Mentoring is a tired and broken word.  I’ve been involved in hundreds of programs, as a mentor, and a mentee, and I’m not convinced the current model produces ANY results. We need to smash the model apart and make it about real-time results – whatever those look like for a young woman.  Here’s what I mean; you need help with this. You come and work with whoever on our team can get you the results you want.  We help you do it in small bite-sized bits OR big chunks depending on your goals.  Once you’ve achieved your results, you become a part of the machinery and take your place on the bench.  It’s like a “next woman up” type mentality. Therefore, we need all sorts of women involved because we need to have something for everyone and millennials are vital to our success because we need to learn from their ability to take risks and leverage technology. Two things the generations before them do not do very well.

Where do we go from here in terms of supporting and inspiring women to step-up and continue moving forward with their missions… regardless of how hard it may feel at times.  #confidence  #courage  #connections #capital

Jake Hassel-Gren | GROWth Architect for Canadian Women | Inspire Me, Portraits, Spring 2017 MagazineOver my lifetime, I’ve observed women needing to achieve alone to truly “take-credit”. I’ve done this myself! It’s not a sustainable model.  It’s why so many incredibly smart, talented women, burn-out and don’t achieve their goals.  You cannot scale and grow a business alone.  Now, this is a catch-22.  In the entrepreneurial model we employ today, people cannot engage, or elicit help, or hire people until they generate enough “revenue” to-do so.  This leaves them hustling and running around “doing” to grow.  “Doing” does not grow a business.  Reach, influence, and #connections do.

We’re determined to change this by showing women a new model. A model with the ability to create immediate results.  The women who have the #courage to embrace this model will grow and scale their businesses quicker.  This is a layered model; businesses, within a business catering to a multitude of customers/clients.

It’s a well-researched model.  I’ve spoken to many smart, capable women in business.  I’ve tested the model across their numerous businesses, and not one failed the test.  There’s room in the online space for EVERY single type of business to expand and GROW.

I want to be clear about something for the women reading this article; this is not about giving anything up, it’s about adding another delivery mechanism to your business.  It’s not one or the other – it’s both! A blended-business is a way to bust through the “scaling” stage, which is where women often get stalled.  In my previous career, I often sat in front of brilliant women entrepreneurs burnt out from trying to “do-it-all”, and do-it-alone with the same-old-processes, in the same-old-model.  Trading hours for dollars and not being able to influence in the meaningful way they desire.  We say NO MORE! Let’s stop the insanity, and work together to grow, and scale, our businesses.  Let’s bring our talents, skills, and businesses together into a powerful marketplace full of powerful women!

It’s no longer the way of the “future”. It’s the way of “today”.