EE513 - Mentor Moment: Jenny Johnston - Your Network Is Your Greatest Asset

Welcome to this week's Mentor Moment. Some of the most valuable lessons in business won't come from a book, a course, or even your own experience. They'll come from people who are just a few steps ahead of you. In this clip, Azure Communications founder Jenny Johnston shares how building genuine relationships, asking for help, and learning from generous founders accelerated her growth far more than trying to figure everything out alone. If you're building a business, your network might be the biggest asset you'll ever have. Enjoy this week's episode with Jenny. But where did you pick up all this?

I listened to one of your podcast episodes with Nick Keegan-

Ah

... from Mailmetrics.

That's a while back now.

Yeah.

Yeah, great guy.

And he started out with a very similar business to us, and sort of pivoted and has a really amazing tech company. And he has actually been phenomenally open with me in terms of how he did. He, his scale is, I mean, off the charts, phenomenal business, and I really respect and admire what h- what he's done. So I had a call with him, and, like, he was a complete open book, and Ireland is great for that, you know?

Love that.

You can reach out to someone and ask for help, and he was, like, on a, on a Teams call or something with me. And then he said, "You know, you need to talk to my CFO," Shane is his name, super guy as well, and then I had a call with Shane. And they were like, "Here's how we've done it." And I said very openly, like, "Why are you doing this? Why are you giving me your playbook?" You know, 'cause it was so ridiculously generous. But, like, you know, he was saying, "Well, other people helped us when we were on the way up," and so on, so he was kind of paying it forward. And, and, like, that was just music to my ears because I'd already done the Azure deal at that point, but we were looking at other things, and I was just asking them about, you know, how did you structure it and what did you do? And I mean, Shane literally sent me templates, you know? Here you go. Phenomenal, like. So I learned from them a lot, and I'm so unbelievably grateful to them for that. Um, and then I have a couple of advisors who, again, have done this, like, day in and day out. They kind of do it for their career. And similarly, like, they're not getting paid to do it. I think this is a really uniquely Irish thing.

Mm-hmm.

They're just happy to help. So I obviously don't abuse that situation. I don't overuse it, but, you know, if you're in a bit of a bind or if you've a question about how should I approach whatever, um, I suppose I learned from them.

Mm-hmm.

And I just use them.

So I've seen your growth in the last couple of years, and you seem very good at building a really strong network around you.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause we, we move in kind of similar-ish circles, but you seem to have been really, really good at building a good, good network of people around you.

Mm-hmm.

Like, we kind of, we know the same people, and you can... People who hold themselves to a good standard, like Nick.

Yeah.

Like, perfect example.

Yeah.

Just a good egg.

Yeah, yeah.

But an absolute savage businessperson.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And I love that, like, you heard the podcast and you chatted