I TURNED MY PASSION FOR COOKING INTO A THRIVING BUSINESS HOSTING VIP CLIENTS = JEAN WINTER FULL
fast very excited to bring you today's guest first of all i'd like to thank the rove hotel in dubai marina for allowing me to use their venue and their endless support within the podcast so let's move on to today's guest she moved to the uae in december 2016 and she's very quickly made a name for herself as an entrepreneur in the food and beverage space she is the owner of jean's private kitchen which caters to international high profile clients all around the world her clients include actresses footballers diplomats and the united nations so without further ado i'd like to welcome jean winter to the podcast today thank you zoe very happy to be here thank you for thinking of me thank you for your time um thanks for coming on gene so gene to kick this off will you tell us a little bit more about what you do well um it started out as a passion project in geneva 2010 i started gene's private kitchen pretty much from my home space and it quickly grew from a take away for my clients in the un who wto and it pretty much grew into a private kitchen where i started hosting very private dinners in my home initially it was an underground concept where it was pretty much illegal i started it for friends and friends of friends for security reasons because my husband was freaking out that i was getting strangers to a home but somehow within 18 months it grew to almost 700 people on my guest list and wait list to come for dinner i hosted initially when i started i said i would host one dinner a week maximum and then the demand grew and grew and somehow i've had to register myself as a proper business by pretty much 18 months really and i was doing a lot of catering as well as private dinners from my home and when we moved from geneva to hamburg that was when i decided to brunch the business a bit further by taking on bigger projects i'm agreeing to do food shows international food and doing my shows in representing singapore as a food ambassador for our singaporean cuisine which i think is very misunderstood and i used my platform pretty much to explain about the history of our country our cuisine our culture through my business and in dubai because of hosting dinners and pretty much the demand for hosting events i've had to start well i have a consultancy ongoing in singapore anyway because i have international clients from singapore where i advise on business business well if they want to branch out of singapore i basically come in as a business consultant on an international basis and in dubai i pretty much had to open another business which was an events management company to also handle the event side of things on top of the well the private dinners i just want to touch on what you said earlier about it being a passion project is it still you know now that you've developed developed it further into a business are you still as passionate about it as you were back then oh yes um it has always been a passion project and it remains one and i think i'm very blessed because many people don't have a choice when they work because they need the money whereas for me i am blessed in the sense that i choose my clients and i choose who i want to work with because for me work remains a passion it has to it has to i don't have a choice because with businesses running in several countries and different continents at the same time if it's not a passion project it's going to drag you down very fast you're going to burn out whereas for me in terms of cross-cultural as well as cross-continental work it has to excite me and that's why i'm very picky about my clients who i work with who i work for i think in terms of reputation i've got quite a reputation for turning up turning down jobs as opposed to accepting whatever comes my way i'm extremely picky about who i work with because for me our values have to coincide and my business values as well has to be in line with the project or the event that i take on because i don't want to have at any one point any clashes with my personal values or what i see as important values for my business in terms of ethics in terms of beliefs yeah so it remains a passion project till today because i'm working with people i love i'm working with companies i believe in i am very positive in terms of my working relationship because for me it's not just one event but a long ongoing business as well as uh emotional relationship yeah yeah it's interesting what you say about the fact that you can pick and choose um and we were talking earlier about kind of entrepreneurship and mental health and and how i found doing these podcasts that seems to be like a correlation and i guess when you say that you're in the position to be able to pick and choose that puts you in quite a good position really because a lot of entrepreneurs out there aren't you know that you know they need that money coming in so maybe you know they would just take any job you know just for the money so you know in many ways i guess um you're in quite a good position there yeah i i i'm always very thankful for the position i'm in because um i'm able to build a reputation in the industry because of this very fact that people know that if i pick a project and if i decide to work with you on a project you have 100 of me in it and it doesn't help it doesn't help that i'm a bit of ocd and i'm a perfectionist so i think it all complements um in you know it all it comes in a nice package i guess where you have someone that is fully involved and fully invested in a project because she chose to do it not because she has to yeah how does it feel to have carved out a career doing what you love i am always very careful to remind myself that i am in a position where i am because it is a blessing um i don't take it for granted because if i do lose everything tomorrow nothing changes because um it started out as a passion where i started from scratch and it would not affect me because you start again so i know catering is such a challenging like my family have been in catering for many years my grandparents my mum and my sister she traveled and she lived in argentina so what she's done she recently well recently she moved back to the uk many years ago and she now lives in hastings and she's set up her own um it's called penelope's pit stop and yeah and it's basically um kind of argentinian street food like um i don't know if it's street food but argentinian food and she goes to like the festivals and all the farmers markets and i went to see her and oh my god like i didn't appreciate i mean i just respected so much what she did when i actually saw her you know just you know because she she pretty much she has people working for her but you know she just all the heavy lifting the setting up the preparation everything that goes into it and i just thought oh my god like you know i just thought i couldn't do what you're doing right now um and that's why this is where passion comes in again because if you're not interested in what you're doing then it becomes pretty much a troll and this applies to any occupation any professional work you do but i have to say that in dubai i'm again very very selective about who i cook for but most of my job here is consultancy as well as event management at a bigger level so yeah you moved to the uae from singapore what was from so i moved um to the uae from hamburg i'm originally from singapore but in the past 14 years we have moved from italy um to france because my husband was working in geneva at that time my clients were in geneva then we moved to germany hamburg before moving to dubai so okay what were the challenges that you've faced transferring your business from hamburg to dubai and having to build up a new book of clients and establish yourself as an expert in your field here because i guess in many ways yeah you've got your resume you've got your cv and they can see what you've done but in terms of networking and and establishing relationships and connections you're starting from refresh uh yes and no i think i'm again very very lucky because um before each move to whichever country you've moved to uh friends or clients have already talked about me before i've arrived so upon arriving usually i get the contact for work even before i'm even set up so people pretty much know i've arrived within my niche market even before i've actually set up so i get emails or calls saying hey we heard that you have been here someone told us you're here now can you do this so in fact that was actually the incentive to start the business in dubai i had wanted to take one year off work because i was extremely involved with work as well as the refugee effort in hamburg for one whole year and um i wanted to take one one year off and just not work and enjoy and settle into dubai so when we arrived christmas 2016 i got my first call in january and february so i had by that time four or five calls asking me to start work for events and i have to say look guys i can't because i'm not even registered yet but because of that push i somehow my husband laughed at me he was like let's see how long it can last without working and yeah so i started the business because of demand rather than the need to again and yeah that was pretty much my push in dubai and in every country because again when i arrived in hamburg i got the call calls to start work to do international work even before i settled down in dubai as you remember my my we were still in boxes we haven't even unpacked the boxes and um i was asked to do a show in paris uh and it was actually my husband that say you know what you should just do it we will nothing nothing's gonna go wrong um you should just do it so i'm again very very blessed because i also have a very supportive husband so he's the one pushing me to accept a lot of jobs when i'm the one saying you know what i need a break after this project i don't want to work for a few months and every time a new project comes up it's my husband that says you know what you can do this we are okay without you for a while or we can manage this we can handle this um the move can wait or the boxes can be ready to be you know to be open after you come back so uh yeah it was a very for me it's um i've been very very lucky in terms of my networking because my network is pretty much international so before i even land wherever we have been posted to people already know i was arriving before i i even arrived so that's i guess uh an advantage you call it yeah i see yeah definitely so you're a mom too yes i'm up to two gorgeous girls 10 and 13. and that is also why i love doing what i do because being a business owner it gives me a leverage to focus on what i think is important because at the end of the day i still want to be a good wife and a mom to my two kids and that's why a lot of people ask me gene why have you not hired a driver yet because you are constantly running around handling so many events at one time different projects different meetings but i always say i know that the day i hire a driver i will lose my whatever little time i have left with my girls because during our drives that's our very that's my precious time with them because i'll drive to school to drive back home sending them for swim trainings when they actually tell me about their day their friends interesting things that happen in school new friends that they've made so these are all things that i don't really want to lose interestingly i think it was quite recent that my husband and i were discussing having to um hire a driver at one point because my daughters are swimmers in different swim squads and at different times so that's pushing it a bit my husband he so he's a director of a shipping company he's sometimes he he travels as well so we we make sure that we travel at different times so that there's always one parent home for the girls and it's also challenging because he's training for example now he's training for the world championships iron man and um he's awake at four or five in the morning sometimes and he finishes his own training at 7 38. so obviously i have to be the one chauffeuring the kids around but when we have events this is when we rely pretty much on our very lovely house help i um well i don't ever call her mate i always call her my my home manager because she then has to take the girls um you know on their school runs but um yeah that was going to be one of my questions what is the challenges of running a business and having a family i think you've just answered yeah yeah it's all about priorities because for me the business will only be successful if you have a happy family so this is something when i brought when i was brought up because my dad he was the vice president of bank of america and he always taught us that the work-life balance has to be very very um it's very important because as long as you get your priorities wrong that's when things go bad and i remember growing up no matter how busy my dad was he's home for dinner every day at seven o'clock and he would send his general managers out to entertain but he'd always be home for us at seven no matter one and weekends were always family days and this is something that i've andrew and i have said was very important that we sat down for dinner no matter how busy we all are at the end of each day yeah that's amazing i haven't worked in finance myself and knowing the amount of entertaining that goes on for a vice president you know to be home every single night at seven o'clock i was doing quite a that was a commitment it it's definitely a choice over anything else and i think this has pretty much carried over to how it is in our family as well that um if we have a choice we'd always pick having a family dinner sitting down over an event so whenever i'm out for work the girls know that i have to be there because i'm actually running the event as host so i can't not be there but if i have a choice to do it any other way i'll be home and that's why it's also i'm also very picky about the events i attend because i will attend events where i know i have to be there but given a choice if i turn an event down it's because i haven't seen the kids enough or that is the day my husband gets back from his travels yeah it's all choice i think it boils down to uh priorities and nowadays i think um like i said my dad's best advice was pretty much if you get your work life balance right and you always put god and family in front in front everything will fall in place and this is what my parents brought me up with and i see it carrying over to our own family and how we run it till today so if i have to turn down a business proposition because i know that it's gonna take me out then i wouldn't take it usually yeah thank you gene do you feel like the uae encourages and offers enough sport uh support for female entrepreneurs is is it something that you found a challenge when you were setting up your company or um yes and no um the initial uh problems or frustrations i would say not problems frustrations i got arriving in uae was pretty much for example setting up my business account and my husband had to be there because he he's the sponsor main sponsor to the family arriving in uae and i remember having to ask him what do you have to beat them when i'm setting up my business account and he's like i know and we just couldn't understand it and when we went to the bank and we were opening up our account andrew had to sign a noc letter for me and that really frustrated me as a i guess i'm pretty much a modern day independent woman and i'm like hey wait a minute why do you have to give me you know an acknowledgement or to or a go ahead for me to open my business and i think my frustration in the i can remember very clearly one incident where we sat down and we asked for um credit cards for joint account family account and the guy that was at the bank basically asked and i was sitting in front of him and he asked my husband not looking at me saying are you sure he wanna give her access to the accounts and my husband and i were like wait what yeah it's our joint account what are you talking about so for us i think coming from europe and coming from a very modern society like singapore totally blew my mind and i remembered i was getting all edgy and annoyed and andrew had to put his hand on my lap to calm me down this was the initial frustrations i would say um what would be not so much female but entrepreneurs as a whole i think the setup costs are very expensive and i yeah but that's something that a lot of people are i mean they seem to be getting a lot more and more expensive yes because look i've started businesses in five countries um licenses are always so easily available to encourage business entrepreneurship be it or not you're local or an international or expert business owner i'll just take singapore for example you get a business license for two hundred dollars sync and it's ongoing you don't have to repay you don't have to you know pay for a new license every single year whereas um in uae we are pretty much coughing up at least seven times more per year every single year to run a business and that's for just one business so assuming i have two different businesses or two different offerings a consultancy and an events management company i have to i have to double that as well every single year it's absolutely crazy it's in the uk what you'd set up for a limited company for peanuts yeah um yeah i find it quite contradictory in a place that encourages kind of forward thinking and entrepreneurship and that is evolving and you know moving at a really really fast pace but these challenges that are put in place um because i guess you know there's so many small businesses out there that just are struggling except they're not able to i realized that when after i arrived in dubai i know that a lot of female entrepreneurs were they were put off by the cost of the setup and that's why a lot of people were setting up their businesses online as well as on a private level where they are not licensed and i think it was last year was am i right last year where they zoomed in and came down quite hard the government came down quite hard on freelance work and people working without license but i think this is not just um tying back to your previous question it's not a problem for females but in general entrepreneurs as a whole however the pre the women are affected more because a lot of women are here because of their husbands not because of the other way around i'm sure that there are many instances of women who are here because of their work and men have their husbands followed too but the women are more affected because a lot of the wives follow their husbands and are unreal either unwilling or unable to cough up such a big amount to restart their business especially if they don't have the existing networks so for them to have to restart the network restart the business from scratch it is too much of a risk to take because even before you earn back that initial amount you have to cough up the next year again and the initial business license start from anywhere between 28 to 38 000 germs a year every year and that is pretty much a a huge put off for a lot of female entrepreneurs because when dubai so out of 12 months three months a year we are not even around from holidays to summers so they pretty much have nine months to ten months to make that money back plus profits to make it even worth you know their while so i think that's what puts a lot of women on the back foot even before they even start yeah i agree totally thank you i always like to ask my guests about their morning routine for me my morning routine is so so important if i'm going to have a productive happy day do you have a specific routine that you do on a morning oh man our family is boring because our routine is pretty much standard every single day um we wake up at six um andrew would go and show that the girls are awake he's more of a morning person than me so he goes down with the girls he spends he sits down for breakfast with the girls if he's training he would somehow make it back in time just to catch them before school and then lani our my house manager would uh pretty much um make sure that the girls have breakfast i come down at 6 40 very precise i come down but between 6 40 and 6 45 to make sure that that the girls have really eaten to tie my girl's hair it's nice i mean the girls are 10 and 13 and if they still enjoy having mommy tie their hair simple things like this i think i should appreciate it and enjoy it while it lasts so you know we come down for my coffee tie the hair chat a little we are out of the house by 6 55. i don't leave the house anything later than seven and that's a late day because then i'll be caught in traffic so i dropped them in school by 7 15 and then i rush off to my gym so i go to um in a fight at by 7 30 and do an hour of exercise i finish at 8 30 go home shower change and then my day starts so that's my morning routine every single day you train it in a fight every morning yes wow that's amazing that's fantastic commitment yeah but um you know i think that pretty much wakes you up and starts you off well for the day because if i don't get one hour of exercise time or that's what i call my meat my time a day you pretty much feel so sluggish it pretty much sets you off on the right uh first yeah i totally agree i like to do exercise every day um even if it's just like 20 minutes of kundalini yoga like doing my breathing um i used to do i mean i ran this morning i did some um interval training i'll tell you what i always start the day with ice on my face nice yeah and i've also started having cold showers as well the ice is easier than the cold showers but i'll drink water and then i put ice cubes on my face it's like i don't normally drink tea very rarely drink tea or coffee so and i feel it's just just kind of makes you feel invigorated it's also supposed to be really good for the skin as well um but yeah yeah i think i've kind of slowed down more and rather than do like my intense exercise on a morning like i used to sometimes like i'm just happy if i just get a little bit of yoga in but as long as i do something you know just to kind of balance the energy and you know keep the mind sane so gene the theme of all my podcasts is mental health and i'm finding that the more i speak to people especially entrepreneurs it seems to be a correlation between entrepreneurship and mental health problems do you agree with that and and have you had any challenges along the way with your own mental health in terms of setting up your own business or just in general um i think this ties back to how i was brought up again mom and dad uh brought us up me and my brother uh with the mindset that failure is a stepping stone to success i remembered that was my first 8 out of 10 of which was my choice of composition for primary school where even at a young age it was ingrained in us that failures are fine because that will only make you stronger and i think it's quite interesting because i never i'm someone where i don't get affected by something that goes wrong because i'm a problem solver rather than a warrior i don't waste time worrying i don't have time to worry so if there's a problem you solve it so if there's a problem you find ways of going around it so i'm very practical i think i'm a very practical person in terms of as a woman as well as an entrepreneur business owner and i think that helps because i'm whichever country that i've been to whichever business i want to set up my mindset is just go for it because if it works then it's meant to be if it doesn't work it's not happened yet it doesn't work part but i think again because of the mindset i don't let anything affect me negatively because if i preempt a lot of problems so when you before i even start up a business i look at what possible problems there are first and i clear those problems away before i even start a business so because i'm so practical i pretty much try to preempt issues and then i go for it which then also helps in terms of failure and in terms of mental health i'm actually quite a happy person i'm i don't know i'm always happy so even in the gym i'm always laughing and you know smiling with my clients with my business associates yeah i don't think i've ever been like depressed or upset of course everyone has stresses in their life um everyone has high points low points stressful moments but if you take those stressful moments with a positive pinch of salt everything's fine and okay i'm one of those crazy people that thrive on stress so when things are highly stressful or when things need to be then you just you just deal with it so thank you it's interesting what you said earlier about um taking action um a lot i i think where a lot of people struggle with mental health and me in particular as well i guess i'm speaking from is is actually you know you know we have all these ideas and we don't take action but you said yourself that you know you've always executed on your kind of on what you want to do and and as a result of that you've never failed um and i think that would that's probably a really good lesson for a lot of people you know because okay they're maybe not going to be successful with everything but you know there's probably a good chance that they will be they just need to execute and take action don't think and stay at thinking do it so that's why i always tell the kids as well don't think i mean everyone thinks but it's the doing and then if you fail then just try again there's no harm or embarrassment to it if you feel you would still be the same and this would be just as easy if you didn't have the support of your husband and your family around you no i'll be a different person i think the the family environment um that you grew up in uh and i think your family environment like for me my parents are such a huge source of inspiration and they are my role models because look my parents are 71 and 75 this year they are still doing voluntary work they are still taking all people out um it's like when i call them yeah it's like when i called them i was like what are you doing today oh we are taking old people out i was like well older than you and they said yeah until we stop being able to walk we can still help people we can still keep motivating people and they spend um their retirees now but they spend i would say four out of five days of their of their days now um out having meetings bringing doing charity work doing um church work helping people in the community so i grew up with those kind of parents where they don't stop doing till now and then my husband is so supportive i mean i love him too [ __ ] because he is so supportive i'll never be where i am today if not for him because he's always the one telling me you know um you have so much potential but you don't see it and i was like it's not that i don't see it i i'm not that career driven to the point that i'll you know he keeps saying oh why don't you take the business one step further and i'm like because no no because i'm happy where i am and if the business comes my way for example every project that becomes bigger and bigger i take it because i see it as a blessing and not a given um i now take it on if i think it will not um take away from family and if and yes so back to your question um without my family my the mindset of my parents how they brought us up the beliefs the morals the values that they've instilled in us the supportive nature of my husband how he believes in me and how you know how we are able to work such that both of us still have our own time our family time and time for careers i think um is pretty much the backbone of my success story of what many people see as a success story but for me it's not it's just my story everyone has their own success stories thank you last question we've actually been talking for almost 40 minutes no way i know doesn't time fly when you're having fun so um yeah my last question it's kind of you've spoken a lot about your parents and the influence that they had on you growing up and so who would you say was that you know your the biggest teacher to you was it your mom or your dad both so i come from a very close-knit family mom dad my baby brother myself we've always leaned on both my parents for advice i mean i was back from singapore recently i just got back two days ago on a work trip well it was supposed to be a holiday but i ended up being a work trip um i came home from work one night that's a classic case where i came home one well from work at 11 pm and i literally said mom dad come into the room they got into bed and i i jumped into bed with them i'm 43 this year and i still jump into bed with them and talked about my work day because that's what our family unit is because i treasure the advice i want them to hear what has gone on with my work if i have any frustrations i tell my husband and my parents so if you're asking me to pick one inspiration it's very difficult because mom and dad offers very very they always advise on a very united front on family issues when it comes to business my mom is usually more emotional whereas my dad is more practical my dad would always be the one giving financial advice whereas my mom would always be giving more emotional advice but they will always be listening to me at the same time i always talk to them at the same time and even if i call home from dubai just to chat with them i'll make sure that both of them are on speaker before i start talking about my day because i always make sure that both of them are listening growing up they were both very very involved in our lives and as you remember our dinner times were very very important because that was when we talk about our days as well and that's when they both advise at the same time so growing up they've both given a hundred percent of their time and their love to both myself and my brother um and i would say that my brother and myself we are products of our parents and very proud to be because they're very very good inspirational and very you know motivational in their own ways and um they are pretty much leaders within their own communities because of what they do without having to talk a lot about it and i think that's ironic because recently i um not ironic that's the wrong use of word i would say that they don't talk about what they do and my brother and myself we too don't really talk about our work much to anyone else unless we are asked about it so recently at a project a big government project that i'm doing they asked me for my website i said i don't have a website i still don't have a website till today so they ask so how do people find out about you and i said by word of mouth it's always been and you probably always will be because if i believe that if you're good at what you do people will seek you out you don't have to talk about yourself people will come to you and the right ones will come to you thank you oh thank you so much for your time today and i'd like to thank everyone that has tuned in to listen to this podcast your support means a lot if you're listening on itunes please subscribe and leave a review because this helps the podcast become visible and enables us to reach a wider audience and again i'd like to thank rogue hotel for allowing us to record the podcast in their amazing venue thank you thank you so much maybe
2021-01-19 13:47
