Jennifer Gutekunst: Maine Entrepreneur

Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine. Today I have with me in the studio Jennifer Gutekunst, who is the co-owner of New England Treads and the Wooden Screen Door Company. It's great to have you here today.

Jennifer Gutekunst: Thank you for having me.

Lisa Belisle: I'm very impressed with the fact that you have two businesses that you co-own, but also you have had multiple lives and multiple creative things that you've done with your business identity and your professional life. So how did we get here? How did you make the choice to have these very lovely niche products that you're putting out into the world, and also just continuing to evolve as a business person?

Jennifer Gutekunst: My husband Neil and I moved up here to Maine in 2019. We had come for a vacation in the prior year and had a really hard time leaving. And when we returned back to suburban Philadelphia, we kind of sat down one night and Neil had just kind of looked at me and he is like, what are we doing here? Are we working for two weeks of vacation every year so we can go back to the place we actually wanna be? Why don't we make it happen? And it was one of those nights where it's like, yes, you're right. I would love to do that one day. That's a pipe dream. But Neil really worked to make that happen, and we actually found our first business, which is New England Treads. We found that online and moved up here in 2019 and began running that. Prior to that, Neil was an attorney and I worked in organizational development as an HR analyst, which I still do. So those skills transited nicely into owning your own business, finance background, knowing the rules. So we got Treads up and running, and then a year and a half later we purchased Wooden Screen Door Company. And we've had that for a year and a half, and we're cruising right along with that as well.

Lisa Belisle: There's a lot of different threads that I'm interested in following here. I think the one I have to go with first is the organizational development. Tell me about that.

Jennifer Gutekunst: Sure. So I began my human resources career at a local community hospital. Hospitals are a great place to kind of cut your teeth in the HR world because rules are very important there. You have licenses, it sometimes is kind of a life and death scenario there. So really learning that sense of urgency and the sense of professionalism. We were in North Carolina based outside of Camp Lejeune. Neil was a judge advocate for the Marine Corps. So when he decided to retire from the Marine Corps, we came up here and I began working for a small tech company outside of Philadelphia that's a cloud services company. I have no tech background. It was strictly for human resources. And I've been with them for eight years now. And that's really where I learned to cut my teeth as a business owner. Our management team at the tech company was very transparent with their team members. So learning how to look at financial documents, how to analyze data and make it information, were very important skills that I was able to kind of take with me and bring up here and apply to both businesses up here.

Lisa Belisle: So a lot of times when people are making a decision to realize a life dream and go in a different direction, they feel like they have to throw everything away and just jump in both feet and have financial uncertainty. And it sounds like you've continued to have what we'll call a day job and then also these businesses that you've invested in and started to develop. Tell me about that choice.

Jennifer Gutekunst: So Neil and I are very structured individuals. He being an attorney and me being in human resources, we're very process driven. So we are very mindful in the steps that we take and we're very measured. An example of that is when we moved up here to purchase Treads, we rented a furnished apartment because we both knew we were not going to have time to unpack our lives and set up our lives while figuring out how to make a stair tread, and how to even run a business that makes the stair treads. So really taking those thoughtful, measured steps. Neil and I are also incredibly honest and communicative with each other. So if there is something where I'm seeing red flags everywhere, I will say to him, I am feeling uncomfortable about this. So being able to have those very frank conversations. We looked at several businesses and there were some where I can see right away, like, this is not gonna be where I want to lay my roots down. So really being mindful of taking those smaller steps. And I think also reaching out to a network. We have, at this point, a network of experts up here that really help us to run the businesses. So when I have a question or I have a concern, I don't have the answer most times, but I know someone who does. And that's important for me as a business owner because it keeps my anxiety down, which helps me to run my businesses better.

Lisa Belisle: Does Neil still work as an attorney?

Jennifer Gutekunst: He does not. Neil and I are both very emotional people and we tend to bring our work home with us, and working with people, particularly Neil was a defense attorney, so working with people who are not having their best day, it's hard to leave that at the office. And I'm the same way working in HR. People come to you with emotional stories, they're going through personal things and it's hard to turn that off sometimes. So we are kind of situated in those businesses now because there are no stair tread emergencies. There are no wooden screen door emergencies. We close at four, we can shut down and go home and live our lives.

Lisa Belisle: That's great to hear, and also to know that you know yourselves that well, that you've just come to a place where you say, these are some hard things and it's hard for us to leave them behind, so we wanna do this other thing because we want our life to look a different way.

Jennifer Gutekunst: It is, it's scary. I think Neil and I are always looking to make things just a little bit better. Can we make this a little bit easier? How can we just enjoy this a little bit more? Neil calls it pulling the flywheel. You have that first big pull and it's hard and it's tough, but every pull after that gets increasingly easier and things go so much faster, so much smoother. It's not going to be perfect all the time. The tech adage, progress not perfection, is very applicable on the shop floor. So we're always looking to get better knowing that we will most likely fall short of that.

Lisa Belisle: Yes. So you fail forward, fail fast, and learn from it.

Jennifer Gutekunst: Fall, get up. Exactly.

Lisa Belisle: Yes. So stair treads, tell me about that. That's also an interesting thing. I mean, it's something I'm not sure everybody spends a lot of time thinking about, but also as you're walking up the stairs, you're thinking, oh, that's a little worn right there. Maybe I should do something about that.

Jennifer Gutekunst: It is, it's a very niche industry. New England Treads is set up to custom stain and manufacture stair treads. So stair treads are the part of the stair that you step on. Flooring companies obviously sell hybrid flooring. They do not sell stair treads, and stair tread companies do not stain their stair treads to match hybrid flooring. That is where New England Treads comes in. So we will manufacture and custom stain your stair treads to match your flooring. People often don't know they have a problem until they do. And when they find us, they are so happy to have found us. I am not passionate about stair treads by any means, but I do now appreciate a nicely stained, custom stained tread and handrail. It's one of those things where it's a utilitarian product. You're going to use it every day, and if it's not working, it's going to drive you utterly mad. So if you are stepping on a tread that doesn't match or is creaky, that's just one little thing in life that you wanna make a little bit better. And that's something that Treads helps with.

Lisa Belisle: Yes, it's so true. It's kind of the things that you see every single day and you're thinking, oh, I would really like to fix that because it's kind of bothering me. And then it goes out of your mind. Then the next time you step on a stair you think, oh, I would like to fix that. So I think you're providing actual peace of mind once people can actually get this taken care of. And similarly, the screen doors, because I think before we started talking on air, you were talking with my husband and he was telling you about our screen door woes, that it's actually a thing when screen doors do not work and we're in this very short season in Maine of summer. We wanna enjoy the outdoors. So how about the screen door side of things?

Jennifer Gutekunst: I always like to say Neil and I are very passionate about building wooden rectangles. We excel at right angles. We purchased Wooden Screen Door in November of 2021 from the original owner. He has a workshop up in Waldoboro. He's been making these custom doors. You see them everywhere. I saw five on my drive here to Portland. I counted. It is a ubiquitous kind of piece of art in Maine and it's also the first thing that you see. So we found that business. It was being run by the original owner. He was ready to retire at that point. Neil and I had the flywheel running fairly well at Treads and said, we can rinse and repeat with this. We walked in and saw some of the similar issues that were plaguing Treads were also plaguing Screen Doors as well, and we knew how to fix them. For us it's just a matter of finding the right individuals and getting them in the right position with the right training and the right knowledge and letting them go. So we've set that up at Treads. Took us about two years. And we're setting the board for doing the same thing at Screen Doors now.

Lisa Belisle: So what are the patterns that you see in businesses that you feel like you can do something with, that you can turn around, and things that you can apply your knowledge and skills to, to create success?

Jennifer Gutekunst: So I have a pretty deep finance background. I'm a big Excel person, big QuickBooks person. So when Neil and I are looking for businesses or approaching a business, the first thing I wanna do is I wanna see the books. And I really truly wanna see payroll because I wanna see how are you treating your employee? How are you treating your most important asset, your most important resource? Because if those folks aren't happy, I know I'm gonna have a much larger battle to fight than any kind of business win. Recession, any of those economic problems aren't going to solve HR related problems basically.

Lisa Belisle: So you look at the books.

Jennifer Gutekunst: I look at the books. Neil's more of looking at the product. He likes to get in and touch things. Neil's a very tactile person. So I'm usually in the office, buried in the computer, and Neil's out on the shop floor ripping things, asking questions, usually comes in covered in sawdust or some kind of something. And that's usually how we work. Then we get together in a room and we kind of have that postmortem. All right, what are our thoughts? When we were looking for our first business, typically that meant sitting in the car afterwards with Neil's green notebook and just kind of having what I call word vomit. Just every thought that comes in your head, good or bad, here's my red flags, here's what would be great. And then you kind of go home and digest that.

Lisa Belisle: So how did the two of you decide, okay, I'm an attorney, I'm an HR specialist, and I'm sure I don't have the terminology right because I know the HR specialist is a very specific thing in HR, but somebody who specializes in HR, how do the two of you decide, well, we would like to own a business together and we would like to work together? Because a lot of couples go in completely different directions. They just keep working their lives, and then at the end of the day, they get back together. You actually have a separate job, you come together at the end of the day or probably throughout the day, and you're doing stuff together all the time.

Jennifer Gutekunst: How do we make it work? Yes.

Lisa Belisle: Or how did you even make the decision to decide you wanted to make it work?

Jennifer Gutekunst: So Neil and I both come from entrepreneurial families. My parents have owned a retail store outside of Philadelphia for 25 years. They just recently retired. Yay. Neil's parents, he actually grew up working with his parents. They own several laundromats. So between the two of us, we can get our hands dirty and we can count the beans. After that, it was just finding a business where we could apply that. So we didn't want something too big and we wanted something that we did care about. I don't wanna be making nuts and bolts. You want something that you are relatively passionate about. When we found New England Treads, it was previously owned by a husband and wife with no treads experience. The husband had 20 years of military experience. So when we walked in, we worked directly with them. There was no broker. We walked in and we laughed. And I remember sitting in the car and being like, we could do this. Like we could do it. And those first owners, Bill and Tara, really set us up for success. I remember calling Tara a few weeks in, just needing a moment. Sometimes being a business owner, no one else knows how your day is. There are so few people that at the end of the day, you can commiserate with and really connect with over these individual problems. So to have someone who had the five years of experience who could say, it's okay, this happens, it's how we fix it, it was so wonderful to have that. And we had very much the same experience when we bought Wooden Screen Door Company. The original John, he was wonderful. He came in a couple weeks ago, so they care so much about the business. They were so good in the transition and the handoff that really made Neil and I feel like we made the right decision. When people care that much about the handoff, they were caring that much about the business prior to that.

Lisa Belisle: And on a day-to-day basis, you must have developed some communication skills that enable you to work through conflict perhaps, or creatively problem solve.

Jennifer Gutekunst: Right. So right now we each take a business. So one takes Treads, one takes Doors, and we switch days. At each business there is what we call the book. It's on the desk, and everything that happens in the day needs to get written in the book because the book is our sanity. So if someone calls on Wednesday and says, I called yesterday, I talked to Neil, I don't need to go through the whole conversation again. I flip back to the book, Neil left notes. Fantastic. If things need to get done, you put a post-it on it, it gets done. I think the most important thing as a couple for Neil and I is checking our egos. When we walk into the business, it's not Jen and Neil anymore. We're not business owners. We are just another team player here. I'm not here to win. I'm not here to be right. I'm just here to get the treads or the doors out the door. And that really goes back to Neil and I's management philosophy of extreme ownership. When things go wrong, it's Neil and I's fault. Either someone wasn't comfortable coming to us, they didn't have the right tools or the proper training. So it's really important to lead from the top down. And Neil and I practice what we preach. I am so quick to point out to everyone when I make a mistake. I'll walk out and just be like, I really messed this up. And it's sometimes just wonderful for people to know that their boss is a human.

Lisa Belisle: I do love this idea of extreme ownership, because I think one of the things that often causes problems is finger pointing and an inability to take on responsibility for something. There are obviously always things we can't control, but we can control ourselves. So do you feel like your willingness to do this has meant that people that you work with are also able to take on this ownership?

Jennifer Gutekunst: Very much so. I think one of the positive outcomes of extreme ownership is you have team members who now have the sense of autonomy, being able to own their work. So being able to set up their own work areas, being able to pick out their own tools and define how they want to work, when they want to work. We've even gone to a four day work week up at Wooden Screen Door because that's what the team asked for and Neil and I made it happen. So giving your team members the power to kind of control their destiny has really worked out well for us. And in particular at New England Treads, Neil and I a couple months ago brought up our first hire, our first employee we ever hired at Treads, is now running the company every day. Basically, Neil and I are there on a very limited basis to be able to say, four years ago you were our first hire. You took a gamble on us. And now to say you can run this. You taught us, we taught you, we gave you the tools you needed, we have these discussions. He knows he can come to us. It's so rewarding. And it's something I'm still kind of settling into because it is so new being a business owner, and I think I'm a little bit of a type A person. There's a little control there. And the freedom of being able to trust your teammates is so freeing. It's uncomfortable and it's unsettling. And I'm excited to get used to and comfortable and settling into the fact that I don't need to control everything and be everywhere. I trust those people that I work with. I pick them myself, so I know they can get the job done.

Lisa Belisle: And that trust piece, it isn't easy to come by because it really does require working through a relationship and making sure that somebody has the skills, and just knowing that you've done everything that you can to set them up for success. But at the end of the day, you're a little bit letting go of the rope, as you say.

Jennifer Gutekunst: I am. A lot of our team members we hired based on what I call emotional intelligence, or EQ. Our most recent hire at Treads, I interviewed her on the phone and we spoke on the phone for probably 10 or 15 minutes, and I realized after I got off the phone, I didn't ask her anything about her work experience. We just started talking. And I got off the phone and I was like, I will happily walk into work every day to see her. And she was promoted a few weeks ago. When you find that right person and you make the connection, you will make that work. Anyone can do this job. It's not rocket science back here. We have experts, we have craftsmen with that deep experience and that pool of knowledge. So I trust that you have the emotional intelligence to figure this out and make this work. The other thing with that EQ piece is with such a small team, you really have to watch those personalities. So it's important that people that you do hire also understand emotional intelligence, also understand communication, transparency, understanding a little bit of office politics. At the end of the day, we're all human and there are days where I look at Neil and it's like, I can't do this today. I have to go home. I don't wanna do this today. And everyone's gonna have those days at work. There are days where you don't wanna go to work. The thought of it is just too much. And I love that when my team members can come to me and say, I just need to go home, it's like, great, go home. Thank you for knowing your limits. Thank you for being strong enough to say something about them and let me know how you're feeling. If you need anything. And that kind of holistic approach to management I think helps with retention, but it also just helps with anxiety at work. When you don't know what your expectations are or how people are going to react, it just makes things so much harder. So always having that open door policy, but really meaning it, is what's important there.

Lisa Belisle: What is it about Maine that caused you to think, oh, I would like to upend my life and be here?

Jennifer Gutekunst: I think when you come over the bridge, there's no more billboards and you don't realize it probably until you get past Portland. Maine removes the noise that you don't even hear. And I think that's what I like most about Maine. I got up here and it was like, oh, there's sky and there's birds and green, and I can appreciate it all. And there's just so much less distraction, that sense of urgency. I think I carried that a lot with me. Being in the tech world, everything's on fire all the time. And that's not the case. Settling into that adjustment has just opened up the world to me. Being able to be still is productive. Maine really helps me find that serenity.

Lisa Belisle: And you have a connection to Cushing?

Jennifer Gutekunst: I do. So Neil and I just recently purchased our first home up in Cushing, which is very exciting. What's so amazing is where we're located is across from the Olson House, which Andrew Wyeth painted. And we hail from Chester County, which is down the road from Chadds Ford where Andrew Wyeth grew up. So I feel like there's this tiny little Pennsylvania connection where you come to Cushing and you're like, ah, he got it too. We met our first neighbor across the street up in Cushing. He worked for the Philadelphia Children's Hospital for 30 years. So there's a contingent of us up there in Cushing and Philly's fans, but we really just enjoy the serenity of Cushing. We're a half mile from a preserve. I see more bald eagles than I've ever seen in my whole life.

Lisa Belisle: And you split your time. So Cushing is part of your time. And then the other time is sort of your work time.

Jennifer Gutekunst: We spend down in Portland. So we have an apartment down in Portland. So typically Neil and I will take turns. During the week, Doors is on a four day work schedule. So they're only there Tuesday to Friday. And Treads is closed early on Fridays. So whoever doesn't work Monday has to work that full Friday. But we'll typically meet up Friday at five o'clock, we're home. You're sitting on the deck, you're having a cocktail, you're not talking about work. You're usually listening to the birds and just decompressing. But that time splitting is a little bit difficult. There are days where I wake up and I don't know where I am, or you have to pause before you answer the phone. What business am I working at today? Who am I today? But that adjustment is temporary. As we begin to transition more responsibility to the folks at Treads, Neil and I will be spending more time up at Cushing. And the goal of that is really to give us more time to work on the business instead of being in the business so much. After four years, you have to lift your head up and say, where are we driving this train? Where are we going? And where can we take it? And that inflection point is where we are now, is pausing to find that time and really refocusing and driving new directives.

Lisa Belisle: A lot of what you're talking about happened during Covid.

Jennifer Gutekunst: Yes. We had approximately nine months with that business before the world shut down. And this goes back to experts. This is my pool of experts. So our local bank, Gorham Savings Bank, shout out to the team up there. They helped us immensely through Covid. They called me on a Sunday afternoon to let me know that Covid loans had been approved. And I just remember crying and being like, oh my God, we're gonna be okay. Lumber prices went through the roof. There were days where I fell out of my chair when I looked at the prices of white oak versus what we were paying six months prior. Having to make price adjustments and not knowing how your clients are going to feel it. We offer health benefits to our team members and making sure that they had the information they need so that that anxiety on their end was decreased. At the beginning no one knew anything. It's like, are we even allowed to drive to work? I was printing out the letters from the governor being like, keep this in your car because you're driving to work at four thirty in the morning. If you get pulled over, things were weird then. But again, reaching out to my insurance experts, when you have questions it's like, how do I get this? Is this funding allowed for this? Who am I reaching out to? What is my liability here? All of those pool of experts picked up the phone on the first ring, and that again goes back to keeping my anxiety low. And when we bought Doors, it was so fun to get the team back together. You get the bank, you get the insurance, you get the lawyer, and it's like doing it again, guys. And you get so excited and it's really like getting the band back together. So when I do have questions that need to reach out, at times when times get stressful, like during the global pandemic, I know that I have individuals that are gonna be able to help me out.

Lisa Belisle: Do you have contemporaries who are doing things the way that you're doing them?

Jennifer Gutekunst: We do. Shannon at Hay Runner, she's a very large inspiration only because she's very similar to Neil and I in that she can kind of take other businesses. She does a great job of integrating them into her main Hay Runner business. Shannon's great. Heather over at Juniper Design Build is amazing. You don't see a lot of women in the construction world or manufacturing, particularly women owners. So seeing her big renovations over on Peaks Island has been really exciting. Outside of that, I love seeing the other husband and wife teams, the other small business husband and wives. I love watching the dynamics, because there's so many different ways to run a business. So our largest client over at Treads, it's run by a husband and a wife and they're so much fun to hang out with. So contemporaries, yes, but I really think it's more just like a wonderful group of friends and experts.

Lisa Belisle: And I guess I use contemporaries and I suppose there's an age connotation. It's more like your group. You know, other people who are doing things the way you're doing them, which is what you've just described. But it is a unique thing that you're talking about. I think that many more people are likely to show up corporate job nine to five. And that's kind of the way they live. It seems like there are fewer and fewer family owned or husband and wife type businesses that are out there now.

Jennifer Gutekunst: Particularly in Maine. You have an older population here. You have more of a manufacturing kind of blue collar economic industry up here. And as those folks begin to retire, their children may not wanna take it. I didn't take my parents' business over, neither did Neil. I knew I didn't wanna do that. So you're going to have these opportunities to purchase these very successful businesses that just need a second lease on life. Maybe they need a quick dusting off, maybe we need to automate a few things, bring things up into the current century. But they're successful little businesses, diamonds in the rough. And Neil and I, I think Neil's always looking around for other businesses that kind of fit that mold. So it's taking that measured jump, getting into the books of a business saying, all right, this is a financially sound business. What can I do to get it to the next level? Or what can I do to streamline these processes a little bit? Do I hire someone else? Do I outsource, do I bring things in? With Neil and I, a lot of that is verticals. What else can I do with the things that I already have here? A stair tread, it's a wooden rectangle. A mantle is a wooden rectangle. Floating shelves, tables, those are all wooden rectangles. So kind of keeping that growth mindset and always looking for, how can I make this a little bit better?

Lisa Belisle: It's so fun to listen to you talk because I think a lot of people perceive creativity as I need to go paint a painting, which is wonderful. And you can certainly paint a painting and that is very creative. But as I'm hearing you, what I'm hearing is the creativity and the work that you're doing with these businesses, that you're like, how do I arrange this? And I'm gonna put this over here and how do I make all these things kind of come together? And that's something that clearly you feel passionate about.

Jennifer Gutekunst: I always joke, I went to business school. I am not an artist. I cannot render things 3D in my mind. And for me, my art is making my spreadsheet. I love when my accounts are reconciled. When my accountant calls me and says, we're all good to go without any questions, that's a win for me. So that's my art and that's my creativity. I think what really drives me is the people. Who am I working with every day? How are they making me feel? How am I making them feel when they leave at the end of the day? That's the driver. And you have the customers, not so much at Treads because it is a little more B2B, but with Wooden Screen Door, no one is ever showing up sad to get their door. They have waited a couple of months, if not years, to get this product. So when they come in it's like, it's door day, oh my God. Get it together. It's gonna be so much fun. We're gonna load your door up. It's gonna be awesome. So that's so fulfilling to me when people come in. I've been driving past this place for 20 years. I finally decided to get the door today. And it's like, I cannot wait for you to open this door every day of your life. And remember how much fun you had getting it.

Lisa Belisle: First of all, I feel like you and my husband, who you already know, you've met him, he's here, he does the radio show, he's the owner of Portland Art Gallery. I feel like you must be kindred spirits because I hear him talk about spreadsheets the way I hear you talk about spreadsheets. It's like you're the same person. So I think that's actually wonderful. And if I had not met him before, I don't think I could have a full appreciation for you sitting here in front of me. Because I think it's great. When I think, I tend to think more in words, but I know that there are people who think in numbers. So the fact that you get this excited about a spreadsheet, it's like you're speaking a language that I can understand. Maybe I don't speak it as well as you do, but it's pretty cool actually.

Jennifer Gutekunst: I feel the same way. When you talk to these artists, it's like they're talking about all the media they use, the encaustic and the sculpture, and I'm just like, I have no idea what you're saying, but I appreciate it so much. I think that's how Neil feels when I start getting into the spreadsheets and I'll start doing charts and stuff and sometimes he'll just be like, this is great. I have no idea what you're talking about, but so proud, so proud. And at the end of the day, it's having that support. Even if you're not really sure what's going on. You did it, you did it.

Lisa Belisle: And I think that it's always fun. For me, every time I get into a new space and I hear people speaking a different language, it's like, oh, that's just a different language. It's like you've gone to a different kind of intellectual country. So when I talk to artists, and obviously my background is in medicine, not art, I get the language and I'm encaustic, oh, that's wonderful. It's stylistic and process. And so for me it's the joy of understanding kind of where people are coming from and the language that they're putting around their experience that kind of gives me insight into those people.

Jennifer Gutekunst: Very similar. I sometimes think of myself as like a sponge. You walk in and it's like, I just immediately wanna know everything about that. And maybe that goes back to, you know, a little anxious. The more knowledge I have, the less anxious I'm going to be. So being able to understand what's going around me, what drives people, that helps me understand you more and makes me really a better business owner and a better person.

Lisa Belisle: And you're right, it really is about the relationships and the people. And I think, you having been in healthcare, you understand that sometimes in healthcare, which just happens to be in my primary business, but certainly other businesses, people are treated a little bit more like widgets kind of. We'll take one out, we'll put a different one in, it's all interchangeable. But what you're describing is really tapping into other people's innate creativity and drive and passion for life and goal setting and that sort of thing. So the fact that you know that upfront and you're trying to meet that with people you work with and also people that you create product for, I think is really important.

Jennifer Gutekunst: I try to appreciate in others the talents that I don't have or wish that I had. I try to surround myself with people who I want to be like. So someone who I'm thinking about, just our lawyers and bankers, these professional individuals who are okay saying that they don't know or that they're going to reach out. It's okay to not have the answer.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I love the idea of surrounding yourself with people who know things but maybe still don't know everything. And they're okay with that. They're okay with saying, when you go to them, they're the expert and at the same time they're like, I don't really know. Let me think about this. Let me go look somewhere. Let me talk to somebody else. Because I think in this day and age, it's tempting to believe that we have all the information. It's just right there. We should all know stuff, but sometimes we just don't.

Jennifer Gutekunst: It's not, and so I feel like you really see that on the shop floor when there's a problem. I love walking out and seeing three people standing around a machine, with their arms crossed, kind of troubleshooting, going through all of the scenarios, and working your way down the line. It's like playing chess. So giving folks that time and that space to be able to present ideas, even if maybe they're not the best, or to be able to talk through and build on each other's and piggyback off ideas, that teamwork makes things so much easier and it makes it so much more enjoyable. I'm learning all of this stuff, we're figuring it out together, and it builds that camaraderie. We're all in this together.

Lisa Belisle: And I think you're right, the creative process, the collaborative creative process, there's something so rich and rewarding about that. I'm a big fan of kind of working by myself and having my own introspective time, and also I love getting together with other people and bouncing things back and forth and being like, wow, yes, no, I never thought about that. Or yes, we're definitely on the same wavelength. There's something about that that's really rewarding.

Jennifer Gutekunst: I feel like I have that moment at least once a day still. Like, I had never thought of it like that, or I have no idea. I never even knew that this would be a problem. I love when folks come to me and it's like, did you ever think about? And it's like, no, I definitely never thought about it because I have no idea what was even going on in there. So when you have people that are interested, that are curious and bring those kinds of things up to you, that makes it so much more fun. Like, huh, this is a fun puzzle for me to solve. This is a great logic problem for me to find the answer to. And again, that's another big driver for me, is just finding that answer, finding the best way to do things.

Lisa Belisle: One sense that I have of you, and it's really an interesting thing, is that you're simultaneously very excited to go towards things, but also it's clear that you do things despite feeling somewhat uncertain and fearful.

Jennifer Gutekunst: And I think that's where Neil comes in. If it was up to me, I would probably still be working at a hospital in North Carolina. Neil is constantly reminding me to pick my head up and to work on myself and not just in myself. He's very good at helping me make measured steps because I am a pessimist. I will go to the worst case scenario without hesitation. I'm already on the ledge. And he's really good at bringing me back down to earth. And he also understands my driver. He knows what makes me anxious is the unknown. So give me the knowledge, give me the data. That's what Neil always says, let's look at the data, let's look at the data. And nine times out of 10, he's right. That usually brings anxieties down because the math's not gonna lie. Math is math and those numbers are always believable. So when you have that data and you have someone bringing it to you in a very emotionally thoughtful way and not throwing it at you, but having a conversation and presenting it in a really constructive way, that's helpful for me. And Neil also knows that I have skills that he needs, so it would behoove him to present it to me in a way that's going to make me as not anxious as possible. And that's the yin and yang of us, I think, is I'm pulling him back and he's pushing me forward most of the time.

Lisa Belisle: Well, and I also wanna give you credit. It sounds like Neil absolutely is a good balance point and a good partner for you. And also I know it is very difficult to push through uncertainty and fear and still do things and still show up and still kind of work toward the incremental. I give you so much credit for doing that, because even with a good partner, you still have to be the one who shows up and is willing to do that every day.

Jennifer Gutekunst: Teamwork makes the dream work. And not every day is easy. During Covid in particular, there were days where you just kind of wanna bury your head in the sand, and again, it goes back to your experts who you have surrounded yourself with. So a lot of times I'd reach out to my dad, he's a big spreadsheet guy, he's just like me. Dad knows the data. So when you have moments of self-doubt or questioning, that's when you reach out to those folks that you've chosen to surround yourself with.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I have really enjoyed this conversation.

Jennifer Gutekunst: I appreciate you having me. It was a total blast.

Lisa Belisle: Yes. I have been speaking with Jennifer Gutekunst, who is the co-owner along with her partner Neil Gutekunst. They are the owners of currently two businesses, but I think more to come, you're gonna hear on this one. Currently New England Treads and also Wooden Screen Door Company. They're both Maine businesses. I encourage you to look them up. I'm pretty sure we're probably gonna be in the market for a wooden screen door ourselves, just saying. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you have been listening to or watching Radio Maine. Thanks for coming in today.

Jennifer Gutekunst: Thanks for having me.