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Welcome to the Women of HubSpot, a podcast celebrating the voices shaping marketing, technology, and the ever-evolving HubSpot ecosystem. Hosted by George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. Each episode brings you the stories, strategies, and superpowers of the women driving this industry forward. It's their time. It's their mic. This… is Women of HubSpot.
Welcome to the Women of HubSpot podcast, the show that celebrates the voices shaping marketing, technology, and the ever evolving HubSpot ecosystem. Hosted by George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. Each episode brings you the stories, strategies, and superpowers of the women driving this industry forward. It's their time.
Intro:It's their mic. This is Women of HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:I am super excited, ladies and gentlemen. We're back with another episode of the Women of HubSpot podcast. It has been a while, and let me be honest with you. These have been some of the most fascinating conversations that I have had the opportunity to be part of just to be able to dive into the brains of these powerful females. If this is the first time you're watching or listening, how in the world did this come about?
George B. Thomas:It was a Super Bowl a while ago at this point. The Philadelphia Eagles were in the Super Bowl. The quarterback had an all women's team. My daughter had, like, this moment where I was like, wow. Okay.
George B. Thomas:And I went to LinkedIn, no strategy, and I said, hey. If you know a woman of HubSpot who is kicking butt and taking names, let's tag them into the post and give him a, you know, let's go. And that post probably became the most highest engaged post I may have ever had in my life on LinkedIn. And so we immediately started to talk, my daughters and I, my wife, and said, you know what? We need to dig into this.
George B. Thomas:Let's go ahead and create some content around this. And so we have been on this journey. Today, I'm excited because I have Jasna. Jasna, how the heck are you doing today?
Jasna Suhadolc:I am great. It's Friday afternoon in Slovenia where I'm at. It's been a long week, but I'm really happy the weekend is starting, and this is my intro into the weekend.
George B. Thomas:There we go. I love that sounds like a great way to start the weekend, to be able to just have a powerful conversation and help some humans along the way, Jasna. I'm I'm excited. I feel like I'm talking to a time traveler because for me, it's actually Friday morning ish. So I still have a good amount of day to go before I can get to that weekend.
George B. Thomas:Jasna, let's start with this just so the listeners and viewers know. What do you do? Where do you do it? And who do you do it for?
Jasna Suhadolc:Okay. So I am based in Slovenia, which is a tiny country in Europe next to Italy, Austria, and Croatia. I've been doing, well, content marketing. I started as a digital PR person when I was still a student. I opened my little agency when I was 25, just out of college.
Jasna Suhadolc:And then, yeah, I started doing HubSpot ten years ago when we became a partner. And today, Actuadol, my agency is a diamond solutions partner, the only one in Slovenia, and women owned and women led.
George B. Thomas:I love women owned, women led, and and I love that flex, the only diamond partner in Sylvania. That's that is amazing.
Jasna Suhadolc:Like, tiny country, but still
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Hey. It's all good. You if you can say it, then embrace it and say it. That's what I would say.
George B. Thomas:So let's time travel a little bit. Let's go back in time, Jasna. If we could go back in time and meet young Jasna, just starting out. This is before HubSpot potentially. This is in college.
George B. Thomas:This could even be before that. Like, this is literally whatever whatever you wanna kinda talk about and tell here. But if we could go back in time and meet young Jasna, just starting out, like, what would we see, and what would she be most surprised about where you are right now?
Jasna Suhadolc:Jasna at 25 was already working for about five years as a student, but almost full time for a research agency here in Slovenia. And I was supposed to get a job there. And then I had a friend who said, Why don't we do, you know, the digital PR work? Because no one was actually doing any content. When you created a website, this was done by, you know, people who knew how to use design tools and development tools and so on.
Jasna Suhadolc:So it was a much different time. So I said, yes, let's do it. She changed her mind. I still went ahead. And my first client was actually the company I worked for when I was a student.
Jasna Suhadolc:And I think my entrepreneurial journey was really almost an accident or I don't know, serendipity moment, whatever you call it. I wasn't, I didn't feel very entrepreneurial to be honest. And I remember everyone saying to to me, Oh, you're so brave. And I was like, maybe I'm missing something because I felt like, you know, I did the job there. Now they're gonna pay me not like a full employment, but still, I didn't have to work full time, I could have other clients.
Jasna Suhadolc:And I got other clients pretty quickly, word-of-mouth. So I don't know, things just went well since. I think that the Jasna then would be surprised how far Jasna now has come in terms of not just, you know, the achievements. I mean, there have been some, but there could be more. But I think in terms of being happy where she is and, you know, being worried less, I think that comes with age, to be honest.
Jasna Suhadolc:But, you know, just confident and happy the way things are. And even when sometimes things are not the best. I think one of the things I learned about myself lately in COVID, I would say, is that I fairly quickly bounced back, which is, you know, a good thing for someone having their own business.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I love this story that we're starting to weave. First of all, this idea of a accidental entrepreneur. It's very interesting that, people around you are saying you're very brave, which is almost like a window into the fear that they would have to step out of what is the norm. And you're almost ease to step out and say, I'm gonna do this thing, even though the person who kind of had the idea with you was like, No, Never mind.
George B. Thomas:Go ahead. Do that thing. But I I love that now the surprising thing is, like, how happy she is, how less worried she is, and how flexible or being able to pivot or bounce back from the thing. So there's some great lessons just in that part right there. So you've kind of gone through this journey, right?
George B. Thomas:Starting there to getting where you're at now. I'm super curious, like, who are some of your biggest inspirations or mentors along the way to get you where you are today?
Jasna Suhadolc:Yeah, so actually the CEO of that research company, his name is Rudy, Rudy Taucer. He was, I think, one of my first mentors, maybe not in like official capacity like we would have now, I'm mentoring now some younger, mostly females, but he was a good inspiration to me and he encouraged me in things where I was not sure that I'm capable of. He just gave me stuff to work on. When I think about it, it's like I was 19 when I started. That's the age of my son now.
Jasna Suhadolc:And although he's capable, but still, I think it was quite a vote of confidence. So yeah, I was, you know, thrown into the sea and I had to swim, and they saw that I am able to swim. So I think that that was one of the first things that I learned that, you know, I am able to do this stuff. And even though I was, you know, to be honest, worried a lot of the time, and I was very worried that I don't know how to do this stuff, that other people may know how to do it better, the impostor syndrome and so on. So, yeah, it still happens sometimes, to be honest, even even now.
George B. Thomas:Oh, yeah. I I totally agree. I was just talking to Lika yesterday, who was also someone you did a podcast episode with probably about a month ago. I said, Lika, listen, I deal with imposter syndrome every single day. And most people are like, what?
George B. Thomas:Like, why do you but it's just a thing that we humans do. I also like this thing, Jasna, that you were kinda talking about. My brain goes in different directions when I start to hear these stories. And it's this idea of, like, you know, don't get me wrong. I was worried along the way.
George B. Thomas:I didn't know if how to do this and shit. And the thing that I've learned is that the antidote for worry is work. Like, if you can just execute and take one step at a time, you'll get past the thing that once worried you. And then guess what? Once you're past it, it never worries you again.
George B. Thomas:So okay. So again, this kind of journey, you've had mentors, you've had inspirations, you've had help along the way. I position this as have there been. I know there have been, but I have no other better way to ask this question. So the question I wanna ask you next is have there been any hurdles or biases that you've had to overcome in your career?
George B. Thomas:And and if so, like, how did you navigate those in in those moments of life?
Jasna Suhadolc:Well, one of the hurdles, which will probably sound worse than it really was, but I later, not immediately when I started, but about five years later, I got married. And my husband and I had the company then together. We merged, you know, his business, my business. He was mostly in IT, I was in communication. So we merged that and you know, thought we that was great.
Jasna Suhadolc:Well, it was great, but we got divorced. So that was one of the things that, you know, people immediately think, Oh my God, that's horrible. It was not that bad in terms of either our relationship or business. But obviously it did change. We still had the company together for about, I would say, maybe six years, five, six years.
Jasna Suhadolc:And then we separated the companies, but not because we didn't get along, but mostly because we just went into separate directions. Mean, it didn't make sense to have the company together and we collaborated later as well. But definitely, it was one of the hurdles. And sometimes when I think when I talk to people who are, you know, married, have their company together, work together, maybe not even married, but a couple that works together or maybe family members, I think that is a big challenge. And not like for us when we got divorced, even before, because you don't have any, well, you should have migrants, we didn't have any boundaries in terms of you know, speaking about work at dinner and speaking about the child or son during the day, and it's all meshed up.
Jasna Suhadolc:And I don't think that's good. I like to, I mean, my life is obviously really, it's not separated, the business and the non business part of it. But still, I think it's, I wouldn't want to work with a family member or a husband or, a brother or sister if I had them, I wouldn't want that. I think that really complicates. Although I know some people who are really good at it and they thrive, but I don't know, I didn't have a good experience about that.
Jasna Suhadolc:Otherwise, I don't think I had that many hurdles, to be honest. Not that I'm not ambitious, but you know, our company is still small, even after all these years. It's eight people, so it's not a big new partner that you would find in the HubSpot ecosystem. And I like it that way. We collaborate a lot with other agencies, companies, freelancers, and so on when we need them.
Jasna Suhadolc:And I like to work with people who are good at what they do and it just works out well. So maybe that's why I didn't have any difficulties. Like I know some of my friends who have bigger agencies, you know, they grew really fast and they just bring so many problems along in the way that I didn't want to. So maybe I didn't have that many. I would say the hurdle that I would think of the most was not being able to separate my my private life, my family life, and my business life.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yes. No. There's so much good in there. Like, so my brain, a couple things.
George B. Thomas:One, and again, had a very similar conversation recently about, Hey, how big do you wanna grow your agency? And I said, What do you mean I don't? Like maybe one or two people. We wanna stay small because there's this thing that I want everybody to realize that the thing that you just taught, hopefully, they're paying attention, is that you don't have to be huge to make an impact. You don't have to be big to be powerful.
George B. Thomas:You can be a small, nimble team that is, like, impacting the organizations that you're helping and maybe even at a a deeper human high touch level, with that. And so I think that's very important. The other piece that I was giggling the entire time you're talking is that I literally have what we call and my my daughter coined this phrase, the theme, because we are a family and we are a team. And through this journey, I've actually been able to hire both my daughters, both my sons, my wife, and some other humans. We're maybe, like, nine, ten strong with, like, some contractors along the way as well.
George B. Thomas:I'm giggling because I'm like, yes. She is right. It is challenging. Like, as soon as you mix family and work together and basically, like, needing to lead and love at the same time, it gets all sorts of, like so I I feel what you were saying. But also, I I hope people got the important piece out of what I heard out of your story is that even though there was a divorce, you still ran the company together for six years.
George B. Thomas:And just because your life changes doesn't mean your life has to be chaotic. And so many times people think change equals chaos, and it it doesn't have to be that way. So so good. So so many good nuggets here. Okay.
George B. Thomas:So let's continue on. Take me back to a moment where maybe this could be a client, this could be in life, wherever your brain goes. Take me back to a moment where you felt maybe underestimated or overlooked or potentially out of place. And how did you handle that? How do you navigate that if you find yourself in that situation?
Jasna Suhadolc:Yeah, well, I am a woman working, started to work in the marketing, but now as you know, HubSpot, I deal with IT, I deal with tech people and so on. And I have to say still to this day, I still think that it's really better if I have a meeting with a man with me, so a team member, that's a man, when I speak to certain people, I wouldn't say all of them, but it does happen. So I'm not surprised anymore, but I'm still not happy about it, obviously. But I've been to meetings where, you know, there were several people and the men were listened to much more than I was listened to, even though I was speaking about HubSpot and I know HubSpot, and the men that were asked about HubSpot were, you know, they knew HubSpot, but I think I knew it better. So these things really got on my nerve still.
Jasna Suhadolc:I'm trying just to lead with example and lead with the knowledge that I have and also acknowledge whether I don't have enough knowledge and, you know, have a team member that helps with that. But I realized that I was doing the same thing and I didn't know it. And that was a big shock to me. So a few years ago, I remember we had two students in my team, a man and a female. I realized that I said to the female, to the woman, to the girl, Do you want to, you know, take the notes?
Jasna Suhadolc:No, no, no, don't do this, don't do this. You're doing the exact thing that people are doing to you when you're, you know, in a, like in a conference and we have a team and we need to do something together. And they're like, you know, the man says to the woman, that's a difficult thing and it happens to me a lot, you know, do you want to take the notes? Or you should take the notes. And I'm like, I'm really, I really write, you know, my handwritten stuff, you won't be able to read it, which is true, but it's also a good excuse.
Jasna Suhadolc:And I was shocked that I did it, you know, the same way I'm also biased. And I keep talking about this. I've told this story many times because I was shocked that I am doing it to other women, and I really don't want to. So I want to be mindful of not doing that and realizing that, you know. I think we, well, I know a lot of people keep doing this, and we don't want to, but it still happens.
Jasna Suhadolc:And for the tech part, it still happens to this day. And now I'm sometimes I'm just pragmatical and I take the man with me. And, you know, recently I told a friend that's also a company that we work together, and he's an IT developer company. And I said, Can you just go with me to that meeting? Because I think it's going to be a room full of men just to be like a mascot or something.
Jasna Suhadolc:And he was laughing. But that's, you know, I don't even need you to speak too much. Just, you know, be with me and look smart. I don't know. I try to adjust as well, but I fight it as well.
Jasna Suhadolc:So I pick my battles. I think that's the best answer I can give.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I can tell you one thing. I'm laughing because it's like, Hey, Guy, come with me. I just need you to sit there and be a pretty face for a hot second. I got this, but it's going to change the temperature of the room, which is crazy.
George B. Thomas:I'm on board with you. I'll stand out and say, like, this thing over the interviews that we've had, this is a reoccurring theme. And frankly, it it's frustrating as crap because it's 2025, you know, almost 2026. Like, things, they should not exist based on the who you are as a human, female or a male. Like, I know a lot of women are who are way smarter than me, and I would literally just shut my mouth and, like, listen.
George B. Thomas:And why this can't be a broader thing of where we're at in business is beyond me. So men, women, as you just heard, we're all doing it. Like, let's focus on it and stop it. That's the only way we'll change it if we focus on it and we actually stop it. Okay.
George B. Thomas:Jasna, I I love this so much. This is a great conversation. I have these what feel like valley questions. I swear I get we're gonna get to the point where we kinda start to travel up the mountain, but I'm super curious. Like, take me back or or talk to me about an experience where you you had, like, this maybe a significant failure or a setback, what what I like to call a gut punch of life.
George B. Thomas:And and in that moment, like, what did you learn from kind of that, you know, maybe chaotic or gut punch moment?
Jasna Suhadolc:So when my son was in the first grade, my client, one of the biggest client we had as a web agency at that time, wanted to create their own like internal agency. And we agreed that I would lead it, at least for a while. So, you know, I would be the first managing director, the CEO. And I did that, and I did that for almost a year. It was horrible for many reasons, and one of the reasons was also that I was underestimating the amount of work that I would have to do.
Jasna Suhadolc:I mean, they didn't care how much time I spent there, but I cared, so I did. And I really neglected my own agency. And also it was really hard because my son was, you know, six and I had two jobs. I was a single mom, so it's just crazy when I think about it. What did I get myself into?
Jasna Suhadolc:And the thing that was really a, you know, punch in the stomach or face was when I went there to the owners and said, you know, I want to stop this. I cannot do this anymore. They were so offended because I think they had such, you know, high hopes what I would do that from the, We're really happy that you're on board, it was an immediate switch to, Well, we weren't that happy with you either. That was really painful for me. And it took me quite a while to be confident.
Jasna Suhadolc:Again, I think it took a few months. And then I got an opportunity to work with an amazing Italian company, and I worked with them for several years, just one of the companies, but it was one of the first international clients, and that was really fifteen years ago or twelve, thirteen years ago. And it was, I think, a step that we needed to become an international company because we don't work with just, I didn't mention that, but we don't work just with Slovenian companies. We have a lot of international clients as well because as you know, you can, you know, do HubSpot and onboarding and implementation anywhere in the world, even from a computer in Slovenia.
George B. Thomas:So I love that we live in this world where you can have a global company out of your bedroom or second office in your home. It's interesting because, again, I love the story that you're kind of threading here as we're having this conversation. Because to me, when I think about what you just shared, it was like, hey, I had this gut punch or this slap in the face. It was a choice I made. Immediately, people changed who they were based on what they thought I was interested in or going to do.
George B. Thomas:But here's the lesson, I think, from what I heard you say is, like, I closed a door, but the universe opened another door. Because I wasn't spending the time doing that, something better came along. And I would just want the listeners or viewers to take kind of a report or take stock of, like, what are you currently doing that if you weren't spending time doing that, something better could actually enter your life? Because I think that's a very important kind of thing to reflect on or think about. Okay.
George B. Thomas:Let's start climbing up this mountain with these questions, Jasna. The word empowerment. What does empowerment mean to you? I mean, how do you feel like you pass that on to others in your field, in your company, in your life?
Jasna Suhadolc:I think empowerment means to me that I am confident and that I don't allow for too long for the emotions of being inadequate and so on to, you know, I don't linger in that. And I really try to pass along that to the team members, which are mostly female, but not all female. They were for a while. And also the mentees that I have, which are mostly just women. And I think that's one of the things that, you know, we keep maybe we're more inclined as women.
Jasna Suhadolc:I'm not sure. I don't have the research behind it, but I think that we're more inclined to just spin and spin and think about it. And I remember, you know, when the book Clean In was published, Sheryl Sandberg, there was an anecdote there where she when she mentioned the you know imposter syndrome that she was studying and her friend was studying and also her brother, and they were like really worried after the exam. And he was like, Oh, you know, he just joined them the last day. He, you know, they helped each other and he was really confident and they weren't, they're really worried.
Jasna Suhadolc:And this is something that I think about often, even though the book is now, I don't know, ten plus years old. I think about it often, and I try to remind myself and remind other people around me that we don't have to do that. And we just, you know, need to stand up for ourselves and, you know, just not linger in those emotions, which do happen. I don't, you know, we're not robots. Of course, they happen.
Jasna Suhadolc:But I think if you can climb out of it, like, you know, from your valley to the hill, I think it really helps. I'm not sure how much this is really a, you know, thing that you have, like, intrinsically in yourself, or this is something you can learn. I don't know if I'm, like, made that way or just, you know, the life shaped me, but I think you can at least try to be more confident or not to worry too much.
George B. Thomas:I definitely think everybody has the power to change. And what's interesting, and I want to just double down on this, is at no point did you say you shouldn't have the emotions. Because you should. You're human. You should have the emotions.
George B. Thomas:The word that you use several times, two, maybe three times in that is like the lingering. Don't waller in it. Don't stay there. Like, have the emotion, unpack why you're having the emotion, find the lesson that you need to learn, and then pick yourself up and and move on. And I I love kind of that framework of, like, accept it, reflect on it, move forward.
George B. Thomas:Very, very cool. Okay. Now we've got a shared definition of what you feel empowerment is. So my next question I wanna ask you is, was there a moment in your career where you felt especially empowered or proud of something that you had achieved?
Jasna Suhadolc:Well, the latest one was probably the diamond status this year because, well, we wanted it for a long time, but we had hopes that it's going to happen this year. And then, to be honest, it surprised us a little bit and it was already in June. And when I saw it, because you see it in a, you know, leather board type of thing, I saw it and I didn't want to tell anyone. I just told my best friend and my son. I didn't tell the team before it was official because I was like, I'm going to jinx it.
Jasna Suhadolc:I don't want to jinx this. This was the thing that I am right now most proud of. But I would also say, you know, the team that works really hard, and they're really smart, and I can learn from the team so much, I think that's also important. Because for years I was, you know, the one leading, I still lead. But now a lot of the, you know, things that we do, team members know much more than I do about certain functionality or certain, you know, outputs and so on.
Jasna Suhadolc:And I really liked that. And it took me a while to get there because I'm hopefully recovered. But I was definitely a control freak, I wanted everything to be really good, really perfect, and this is really tiring. So got a good team.
George B. Thomas:Man, I feel you on that. I would say I'm probably trying to be a recovering control freak sometimes as well, like, especially when it comes to client work and making sure that it is the best. Because there's just this thing as a business owner of, well, that's my name. Even though it's not your name, but it's your name. That's kind of a mental place that you allow yourself to go.
George B. Thomas:So it's okay. I'm gonna move on from that. Otherwise, my brain will dig into that for too long for this episode. So here's here's the thing. I wanna give you a magic wand moment.
George B. Thomas:Jasna, if you had a magic wand and you could change one thing about how women are supported in the industry that we're in, what would that one thing be?
Jasna Suhadolc:If I was employed, I would probably say paycheck. But since I'm the business owner, I will probably say a seat at the table, but not just because you know, some quotas, but because we or certain women, I don't want to say just for myself, we earned it. So we should have a seat at the table as much as any man with the same skills and and knowledge would have.
George B. Thomas:I see. Let's wave that magic wand right now. I I agree. My brain is going into this, like, you know, honor the hustle. Give them the respect based on the grind.
George B. Thomas:You know, give them the seat because of the smarts. Like, there's so many different ways that we could say this, and and I agree. Like, I would hope and pray in the future that isn't a magic one moment, but it just becomes truth. Okay. So moving on.
George B. Thomas:We're we're getting there. We're getting there. This is called the Women of HubSpot podcast. So I at least have to throw in one HubSpot question. So are there any particular tools, Jasna, HubSpot tools or HubSpot strategies, inbound strategies, or, like, HubSpot trends that, like, excite you right now?
Jasna Suhadolc:If I say the the words, everyone will go like, oh, we can hear about AI. But yeah, AI. I mean, I was in San Francisco now for inbound and, you know, it's my eleventh or something like that. So the first time was in 2015. I've gone every year.
Jasna Suhadolc:Well, with COVID we had it virtually. I think this year was, I don't know how you felt about it, but I felt like fully energized. I didn't always. So I thought like 200 new functionalities and so on. But just the feeling was really good, you know.
Jasna Suhadolc:I felt really elevated, energized and so on. And I tried many tools that are new or some are still in private beta and I don't have access to them. Some of them I do. And really, you know, even the things that we already had, like the remix and the translation and so on, that were not always ideal. So, you know, we would test it, but not necessarily use it or advise client to use it.
Jasna Suhadolc:But I feel like we're on steroids. We can do so much more with AI generally, but also with the some of the tools that we have in HubSpot, like the remix. Love the I don't know if you tried the the meeting notes. I tried it with I have a integration with Fireflies and it works like magic. Know, it's it's great.
Jasna Suhadolc:So I'm really excited. I feel like a little child that can play now and so many tools to to try and test.
George B. Thomas:There's a couple things where my brain goes. One, because of what HubSpot's doing with AI and the tools, I'm sitting here as a business owner trying to figure out how do I shrink my tech stack because there are some tools that I might not need because now HubSpot is actually replacing them. And I agree. While everybody of like, Ugh, do we always have to hear about AI? Listen, I was playing with the blog research tool the other day that HubSpot is released in beta, and I literally had an oh my god moment because just the the power that it gives at your fingertips to at least get a starting point on a scheduled basis to then take and run with however whatever process you wanna go with after that is crazy tough.
George B. Thomas:Like, it's it's just and it's amazing. And then also knowledge vaults. If you're listening to this or watching this and you haven't checked out HubSpot knowledge vaults and what can happen with AI and the Breeze Assistant. Okay. That's enough nerding on HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:Let's get back to our conversation. Think of, like, your career. Right? We've been talking about your journey from there to here. What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career?
Jasna Suhadolc:I would say the international aspect of my work, even though I'm based and have lived always in Slovenia, because I feel the international aspect of it, be it with the clients where I was, for a long time I was a member and also on the board of the European or EMENA part of the International Association of Business Communicators, and also now the HubSpot community and the entire ecosystem. I think it gave me, you know, some of the breadth and the different aspects that I can now work, I would say almost anywhere with the knowledge that we have now here in Slovenia. But as a mom, I would say the flexibility of being a business owner and a mom, it's not always, it wasn't always easy. But I was at every you know, show that my son had in the, from the kindergarten to the, no, in high school, he didn't have many. But I attended everything.
Jasna Suhadolc:I was you know, I traveled a lot, so I wasn't that present, which was maybe for this environment a little bit strange. But also I, when I had the time, when I took the time, I was able to you know, do it whenever, on my terms, whenever I wanted to as opposed to being employed in a big company where this is less flexible. So I think the flexibility of the business that I still have, obviously my son is now 19, so it's not that important for him, but it's still important for me and for the things that I want to do privately apart from being alone.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I love this idea of flexibility. Like, listen, you can't get the time back. So to be able to say, like, I was at these things because I wanted to be at these things. But, like, you use the words my terms.
George B. Thomas:And listeners or viewers, I again, I'm having these conversations because I want you to stop and think about things. And I have to ask you, like, right now where you sit, in the seat that you're sitting and the life that you're living, are you living it on your terms or somebody else's? Just stop and kind of think about that and and what that means for you in the next three months, six months, twelve months, if anything, if anything. Okay. Yes.
George B. Thomas:Now, what advice would you give other women who might want to choose this career path, whether it be in HubSpot, in tech, or even agency owner? Like what advice would you give those women?
Jasna Suhadolc:Don't be afraid, you know, test it out. Don't just dive in. Obviously, you need to plan a little bit. And I'm not saying just follow your dreams and not plan, but try to maybe do some of the things that you want to do on your own before when you are employed, if that's the way you can do it, and then just try because you can always go back to the job or a similar job that you had before. But you know, the time you don't get back, as you mentioned.
Jasna Suhadolc:So yeah, I I would just go with it.
George B. Thomas:It's almost like Nike, just do it. Like, go go for
Jasna Suhadolc:it. Basically.
George B. Thomas:I love it. Okay. So you've achieved a lot. We've talked a couple times about Diamond Partner. But if you if you pause for a second, Jasna, like right now, what are your long term goals?
Jasna Suhadolc:I don't have too many, to be honest. I don't really plan too much. Maybe I should as a business owner, but it just I think that, you know, the environment changes so quickly that I mostly have just like directions that I want to go into, not really hardcore plans. And the things that I want to do is just to work on interesting projects, and as you mentioned, necessarily to grow as a company. If we do, we do.
Jasna Suhadolc:I'm not against it. But it's really not the goal. The goal is that we have a good balance. We don't work too hard, but that we work on interesting projects and that we like to go to work and, you know, work on these things and have fun.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I love that the whole work thing, have fun. There there's a mindset of mentality that I've tried to live by for at least the last fifteen, twenty years of, like, go to play instead of go to work. It changes the way that you show up, changes the way that you, you know, make decisions of, like, keeping a client, not keeping a client, accepting that client in in the very beginning. And I love that you kind of lean into that whole thing of that.
George B. Thomas:Okay. We're gonna start to land the plane here. Last couple questions. One, what is a surprising or little known fact about you, Jasna, that people might not expect?
Jasna Suhadolc:I just recently told that to a friend in San Francisco, actually, that I'm a really lucky person because I don't play lottery, but I did win quite a lot of things in my life. And usually it was, I didn't even try. So like the first thing that I remember that I won was at a I was still a student at a conference. And we had, you know, we picked a number and then they pulled the number out. It was my number and I got up on the stage.
Jasna Suhadolc:I had no idea what's happening. They gave me a big check and said, and the reward for trip to Caribbean for two people goes to and then you know, the mic was in my face. I was like, Oh, yes. And yes, so I went, I was 20 then, so I went to Caribbean with my boyfriend. And then I ten, fifteen years ago, probably, I won a car.
Jasna Suhadolc:They called me from a bank that said, You want a car? And I was like, For a weekend? Because I did win a car for a weekend drive and hotel stay before. So I was like, For a weekend? No, it's yours.
Jasna Suhadolc:And we paid the taxes as well. And I'm okay. So yeah, I don't know. That's maybe something that people don't necessarily know about me. You know, it hasn't happened for a while, so maybe, you know, I'm now putting it out there, you know.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Put put it out to the universe. It's gonna happen again. I love that. It's like, hey, bet on Jasna because it's probably gonna happen.
George B. Thomas:Last question. We'll land this plane here. Finish this sentence for me. Success to me equals blank.
Jasna Suhadolc:Being content. That was the, you know, the the first thing that came into my mind. I think just being content where I am with me and yeah.