I first met Adrienne on my back porch six years ago as she introduced herself as my new neighbor while offering to show me how to use a chop saw. So my first impression of her was “now here’s a gal who knows her shit”. I mean she can teach woodworking on the back porch, knows how to install wood floors, unlike myself who really had absolutely no business doing these things. And she runs a farm across the gravel road. She raises sheep and pigs. She makes soap! Then I find out that she commutes to the East Side as a high-powered Project Manager for T-Mobile. Yeah, at that point I’m just plain intimidated.
Over the years, we become friends. And I see how methodically she runs her farm, then I watch her sell her beloved large farm for a sweet spot on Puget Sound. Waterfront, mind you. I see how smart she is with finances and her inquisitive brain as she talks about business ideas. I send my adult girls over to talk to her for business and financial planning advice. She gives me financial planning advice. I tell people, “She’s the smartest person I know.”
Six years later, she’s now at my side running Frank + Candor as our Project Director and now I feel like the smarty pants for bringing her on board. She asks the obvious but unasked questions. She organizes all of our projects and calendars, handles budgets, partners with our clients on goals and deliverables, and keeps everything and everyone moving in the right direction. At this point I should tell you that she also worked at Starbucks, AT&T and tech startups as an IT project manager, often running multi-million dollar projects. And now she’s on this new venture with me at Frank + Candor, disrupting our own industry with our quasi-virtual advertising agency platform, while we collaborate and grow our client’s businesses.
Adrienne now knows me well enough to not help me with a chop saw as she’d suggest I hire that out. Or better yet, have the patience to wait until my husband has the time to lay a wood floor. She’s the practical left brain that every company owner needs.