Jenna Holmes, or P Mami as she’s known to her friends, has had every career under the sun from PE Teacher to Uber Driver, before landing on her ultimate passion – plant stylist and pasta aficionado. She is the founder of Pasta Mama, Plant Mama and Sheila’s Club, and in this episode, Jenna and I chatted about the importance of being a multidisciplinary creative, becoming a personal brand, and how she’s staying creative in times of uncertainty.
Key Takeaways
- It’s okay to have an ‘interest loop’ – the length of time you stay interested in a career or direction. Pasta Mama Jenna has had multiple careers over her life, and she’s learned to embrace when she feels her interests shifting.
- No skill is ever wasted. Jenna used her photography skills to help her launch Plant Mama when she spotted a gap in the market around indoor plant styling.
- Love what you’ll do and you’ll never work a day in your life doesn’t take into account the realistic aspects that every job has.
- All of Jenna’s businesses, Plant Mama, Pasta Mama, Sheila’s Club, are designed around creating an experience. Jenna has taken her ultimate dining, styling and business experiences and turned those into marketable products.
- While Jenna believes social media is responsible for the growth of her business, she’s also diversifying into email marketing to help grow the different streams of her business.
Podcast Transcript
Claire Deane:
Today we have Jenna Holmes who is obsessed with all things, pasta, all things, plants and small business life as well. Welcome, Jenna.
Jenna Holmes:
Thanks for having me.
Claire Deane:
So tell me a little bit about yourself. What’s your career journey been like so far?
Jenna Holmes:
So currently, I have just some little businesses that I run.
Claire Deane:
No, don’t undersell yourself!
Jenna Holmes:
Just tiny things. No, I’ve got three businesses now. But I definitely in terms of getting from to the point where I am now, I’ve had lots of other careers. I think that’s definitely important to talk about. I suppose, share where I have been mainly because I feel like a lot of people think that I’ve just like, come to this job. Like I’ve had to fight to get to these things. I’ve had to give up secure jobs that I’ve had. My initial job that I suppose came from tertiary education was I actually studied at Uni to be a high school PE and media teacher. So I was teaching PE to high school and a bit of primary as well, for like six years, I think I’ve worked out that my loop is six years.
Like my interest loop goes for six years. So like I’ll do something for six years and then get over it like pretty much past it. I’d worked that out in a hilarious way. Cause I was like, okay, well I’ve been teaching for six years and then I changed careers and then Plant Mama was about six years old before I started Pasta Club. So I was like say maybe six years is where the itch kind of starts, but I did the teaching for a bit. Then noticed I think a bit of a gap in the plant market and I was always had a photography business. And so I got to the start of those businesses because I had left teaching and that was that progression of I was doing relief. So I’d left my teaching career full time so that I could start Plant Mama, but I obviously still needed to make money.
So I was a relief teacher, which was a great job to have at the same time as starting Plant Mama. So I think it was that really nice transition of slowly drop the teaching days as Plant Mama got more busier and then eventually you dropped teaching and Plant Mama was fulltime. But I mean like while I was doing Plant Mama, I drove an Uber, it was waitressing on the weekends. I was a nanny, like I think, it’s not just like this shiny end product where you’re in a business and you are like working just on that business. Like you’re not making any money for the first few years. You kind of, I think that it’s really important to talk quite loudly about those early days when you have to do other jobs.
Cause I think there’s like misconception or glamorization of social media and businesses and stuff. And like, we are only all working on our business. It’s like, no, we have to pay bills. So we have to do other jobs sort of thing. So obviously I’m at the point now where I have staff and I get to go to the beach and be creative director and do like my dream life-work balance. But up until only recently, like it’s been me working seven days a week, like 24 hours a day. So I think there’s a journey to get here eventually, but I’ve tried so many different things and that’s why I’ve gotten to where I’ve gotten.
Claire Deane:
And did you love plants beforehand or was it purely a kind of market decision that you saw there was a gap?
Jenna Holmes:
No. Well, it’s funny. I actually hadn’t realized, I had grown up very luckily in a family who heaps of indoor plants. We ate lots of our food from veggie gardens my parents had grown. So I grew up in Toowoomba. So my mom, all our veggies came from the garden. Like we ate predominantly vegetarian, all that kind of stuff. So plants growing, gardening, and stuff was a huge part of my life. But I think when I was a teenager and then into my early twenties, I had forgotten about all that. Like I was at Uni and going out and being like social and stuff and it wasn’t until I moved to Melbourne and really struggled with the concrete cuz I’d come from Brisbane and Toowoomba, I moved to Melbourne and was quite overwhelmed with the city of Melbourne. And I started to bring indoor plants inside to my house to kind of balance out that requirement for nature. And I think cuz my mom was a full that’s why it’s called Plant Mama because of my mom. Because my mom is so amazing with gardening and plants and stuff because I’d grown up with them. I did have to learn initially at the start, but it was quite a natural, I think, ease into it because my mom knew so much. But also I had grown up with all of the plants around me.
Claire Deane:
What do you think of this ‘If you love what you do, you’ll never work in a day in your life’ kind of vibe that we see a lot? Because obviously you love plants, but what do you think of that mantra?
Jenna Holmes:
I feel like I understand the concept of where it comes from because I love what I do in all aspects. So every day is partly a joy. However, I think that it definitely doesn’t really talk about the realistic side of like every job has things. Like every job that anyone has, it doesn’t matter if they’re at the peak of their career and they’re doing the best job that they’ve ever wanted to do. There are parts to everything. So it is true that if you love what you do, you’ll never work down your life. But I actually still have to work and I still have to answer difficult emails or even do jobs that I don’t really wanna do because I have to pay staff and I have to pay myself. And so I agree that you should do something that you naturally love or that you’re naturally inclined to want to do. However, I think that we also need to be realistic, that there’s stuff that in any job people don’t enjoy doing, but you just have to because nothing is always a bed of roses.
Claire Deane:
What a great analogy considering you love plants, a bed of roses. You are just living the brand right there. So how did you come to launch your other businesses, Pasta Club, Sheila’s club? How did they fall out of this Plant Mama experience?
Jenna Holmes:
A friend of mine had actually made a really good point. She was like, I think you started Pasta Club because you get to actually control everything creatively. Like whereas with Plant Mama, although it’s my business, I’m essentially doing jobs that are conforming to what the client wants. So if they want this color or whatever, or, and it’s also quite a labor-intensive job where with Pasta Club, everything is completely mine. Like it’s my styling, it’s my recipes, it’s my table, it’s my music. It’s what I want. I can choose to say these are the rules of Pasta Club. Like, gimme your phone, hand your phone in and before Pasta Club, I can just decide to do that or like I can just decide to do so. I think it was that what was so appealing is that I could just like fully put what I wanted into something.
Pasta Club is essentially my dream dining experience. I literally just created something that I like that I want to go to and just had done it with my friends initially. I realized that there are probably a lot more people out there that are like me and want that kind of experience. Like I have struggled for a while in restaurants, because I have ADHD so if I go to a restaurant that’s really busy and I’m having lunch with someone, I don’t actually retain a lot of that conversation because ADHD is essentially a really easy way to explain, it’s a lot of noise going on in my head all of the time so when I go to a restaurant or a normal bar or something, there’s so much stimulus going on. Like it’s really loud and there’s a lot of people talking and it’s a lot for me to try and take in. So the experience can sometimes be a little bit jarring or overwhelming, whereas with Pasta Club, it takes away all of those aspects that I can’t control and it’s a bit more homely experience.
Claire Deane:
Is it the same with plants? Do you find that plants have a calming impact on ADHD? Do you think that’s why you’ve chosen that career too?
Jenna Holmes:
A hundred percent. So nature is something that calms us because it’s consistent. It kind of stays there. It doesn’t change a lot, but it also provides a really calming, fresh environment. I think both businesses come from a place of sensory and that’s what I talk about. Like I talk about I’m the captain of sensory experiences because when people come into one of my jungles or one of my plant jobs, they’re looking to feel kind of something and it’s the same way with Pasta Club like when people come in at the start, that it is like they’re coming into a sensory experience that I’ve created kind of thing.
Claire Deane:
Do you think you’ve kind of naturally gravitated towards careers that do provide that antidote to that noisy brain? Or have you consciously sort out those experiences or those careers?
Jenna Holmes:
I think honestly like they’re actually just extensions of my personality. I think that is where the beauty lies in trying to find, the ‘you never work a day in your life’ quote. I think that is connected in a way where if you can actually find what you naturally do or what you are naturally good at, that’s where that saying comes in. It doesn’t feel like you’re working because like building jungles or I think when you really break it down, what I do is I build visual things that make you feel. If we go really far back, I like to build things. My strength is in visuals in terms of like styling and colors and where things go and I’m essentially a photographer first.
That was the first thing I ever had done or created or was my craft. So I build photographs. Like I build at things in a way that they photograph and how do they look. And I think that because my style is a little bit chaotic and different and colorful. I’m trying to invoke people coming to something that I do to feel inspired or feel different. I just feel really passionate doing things differently. Because I think that everyone is kind of going through this world, in the same trajectory.
Claire Deane:
It is also bombarded with so much of the same imagery and so much of the same stuff that’s out there that something different is so novel.
Jenna Holmes:
We’ve obviously gone through this stage in design, especially interiors over the last five to seven years where everything has been minimal and white, which is fine. But I think when people have seen that for so long with everything. Like most houses are like that, most things are like that, like commercial spaces and all that. What I bring is different, which gives people something different to look at.
Claire Deane:
Definitely. How do you kind of marry those diverse passions into that one career? Like, are you, you know, every six years it’s just onto something new or can you kind of combine them into something that makes all of the elements even stronger?
Jenna Holmes:
I think the only time that all started to happen was when we created Pasta Club or Pasta Mama. I think the creation of the name of that was able to tie it together. My name is P Mami because it’s like Pasta and Plant Mama together. I think that small concept of naming that from the start had helped connect the two because it was two different things. A lot of people think that there’s a connection between it being vegetarian and plant mama. Like a few people have said that like, oh, you’re into plants and now you’re doing like fresh produce and stuff and food. So there might be a connection there, but I don’t know.
I don’t think it was a huge conscious decision. I think that then calling it Plant or Pasta Mama was just a play on the brand of Plant Mama. I know that it’s crazy because it’s quite contradictory. I know and believe in the concept to find one thing that you’re really good at and focus on that. But at the same time, I just get bored and that’s an ADHD thing as well. Like we are completely interested space like completely. I don’t wanna do something I’m not interested in. Plant Mama was kind of becoming boring because I had done it for so long that I had done all the different type of jungles that I wanted to do and I wasn’t getting inspired anymore. Like I had done everything and I had done all my different versions of what I wanted to do in jobs.
So when stuff was coming to me, I was like, this is not really inspiring. Which is what I need to like feel me. And so I think Pasta Club came along, because it was just like the desire to showcase my creativity in something different. So Sheila’s club it’s the same, it’s something that I noticed was a gap in the market that hasn’t gotten too much attention of my time. However, the small amount that I’ve done has paid off, we’ve sold out some of our sessions already. I think that Sheila’s club is kind of why I think that business is about to get its focus because we are just rounding out, having all the staff, taking over other roles in Melbourne for Pasta and Plant Mama so that Sheila’s can get its kind of time. because it’s definitely got a space that I know is going to go far.
Claire Deane:
So tell me about Sheila’s club. What is it? Why did you launch it? Where did that come from?
Jenna Holmes:
So Sheila’s club is a club for females. I definitely know there’s a part of me with making it female only. There’s that whole argument of, what about men? Like can’t we be inclusive and all that? Because it’s always something on my mind. What about men? You’re being exclusive by not including them and all that kind of stuff. But to be honest, it comes from a place where I have spent my career, both in teaching and also as a freelance owner, founder, all that stuff. So many situations that, and we’re not saying it’s all men, but I have found myself in lots of uncomfortable situations in business, in relation to charging, in relation to conversations, in relation to inappropriate comments, in relation to so many different things.
I felt like there were so many other females that I had known in the space of owning small businesses that struggle as well. I felt like I wanted to create a space where we could actually just have really open free conversations about our experiences without offending anyone in the group and offending the people in the group would potentially be the men in the group. I’ve literally had a guy say to me and I’m saying this because it’s hugely inappropriate, but I’m telling the story to show why there is a place for Sheila’s club. I literally had a guy say to me once when I was in his office, he said, when my colleague comes back in the room, can you just tell him that you just finished giving me a blow job?
And then when his employee came in the room and because I was in shock and didn’t respond fast enough. When his employee came in the room, he said, Oh mate, good thing you waited a little bit longer to come in, she just finished giving me a blow job. . There are so many more stories. I had another client say, do I get a discount if I take you out on a date? It has its place and it has its confusion. And there have been so many times where I haven’t known what to do. I’ve combined that with then also the other side of owning a business and having questions and not knowing where to go to get them.
I was Googling like what’s GST, how do I put someone on the payroll? How do I charge? How do I increase charging? When I started Plant Mama, it wasn’t a job. I had to like create concepts by combining what an interior designer would do and what a landscaper would do. And I think I’d found that my journey in the business side was cut. Like I cut lots of corners because I’m surrounded by a life coach, a mother who has a business, my friends have businesses. Like I’m very lucky to be in the space where my contacts all have businesses are females and are on the same journey. There are a lot of people who don’t.
Like the minority is that they don’t have those contacts in those people. , and a lot of people were coming to me being like, how did you do this? Like on my Instagram, asking or sending emails. I know that there’s other groups and things there and all that do business things. But I really wanted to create a space that was like, this is really hard. And these are things that you can do to fix it. Not like what are the 12 steps to success? I don’t need that. I need someone to tell me that there’s gonna be weeks where you’re not gonna get paid and you’re gonna have to have eggs on toast with baked beans, but I had to do that and it’s okay because I’m here now. I wanna create a space where the conversations are actually a bit more honest about what it feels like to own a business. I feel like all of it is very glamorized on social media and can be really hard. So I just said it will grow and it will have that space and Sheila’s club needs the attention soon. But yeah, it just was something that a lot of people were talking about that was missing. I just was like, okay, well I’m just gonna start it.
Claire Deane:
That seems to be something fairly common in your career. You see something missing and you’re just like, all right, I’m just gonna do it. What do you think that is? Why do you think that you are like that?
Jenna Holmes:
There’s actually a business that I’m about to open, a pop up that I had the idea maybe five days ago. I was like doing it. I’ve already got an investor. I’ve already worked out the space. I’m meeting the people next week to start it. So like that’s in four days we’ve created a completely separate business idea. I think the reason why I do that or why I’ve done that is only because over the last six years I have learnt that I have lots of ideas all the time. I have just like a brain where I work out, like what’s realistic. I also have an amount in my head that I’m willing to throw on the idea to test it out. What most people don’t see behind the scenes of what I do is that I am trying and testing hundreds of ideas every year and I’m spending money on ideas that have failed.
I’m like trying all these things purely because I think I’ve literally worked out that, the really good ideas come out of the 99 that failed. If you are not trying ideas and failing and testing and learning and all these types of things. I think I’ve also just learnt to let go when they don’t work. Like I’ve got quite a sense of if it’s not worth, if this cost too manage, it’s too much effort. It’s not worth it. Let’s just cut it. But also like with this idea that I may be launching in the next week or two or however long it takes us to get it started. I was having the same conversation with people throughout this town every day. If everyone is complaining about this and no one has done it, what the hell?
In my head, I’m like, okay, well how much does it cost to try this idea out? How much money do I have? Okay. Could I throw a few grand? Because in my head I’m like, you could throw a few grand at it. Let’s say it doesn’t work. I’ve lost the idea. It didn’t work. It’s only a few grand. However, if my intuition is right on this idea and the market research I’ve done just from conversations sounds about right. I could spend a few thousand on an idea that takes off and works. I definitely am a risk-taker. That’s another side of ADHD, is that we just don’t think about things like it works in two ways, in a good way. It works sometimes where I don’t think before I leave, but it also works in ways where I don’t think before I leave. So I would just be like, let’s go try it sort of thing.
Claire Deane:
How much do you rely on that intuition versus the data? Like what do you weigh up? Which kind takes more priority?
Jenna Holmes:
I am 100% intuition-based. I would probably say that if any of my friends and family were listening to this, they would like crack up laughing, being like data what’s the harder. I am not technical. I am not data-centered. I’m not business-centered. I’m not admin-centered. I am a creative who takes great photos and has ideas and knows what I want. That’s really it. So I’m definitely not like let’s face down and see how much each thing costs and then add a margin. That’s probably where I got myself in a lot of trouble financially with Plant Mama. I wasn’t charging enough because I was just like, this much for a job is great, but I had never thought about your rent’s gotta get paid from that, your car insurance. Like that’s definitely something that is not a strength of mine. But that’s why you pay people to do it for you, eventually.
Claire Deane:
So you surround yourself with people who actually have those skills to compliment your own.
Jenna Holmes:
Yeah, in an honest way, that’s only something that’s happened very recently. Like I have pulled, held myself together, and pulled it off for six years. And only in the last I’ve had staff kind of work on and off me over the years, but only in the last few months, do we have actual staff with roles taking over stuff. It’s fine to say that now, but it has been literally me doing everything up until that point. So it’s nice now, I haven’t ever had this amount of time to do creative things because I’m doing everything else.
Claire Deane:
Speaking of you doing everything, is your personal brand separate from your business brand, or are they completely one and the same? Like Plant Mama is Pasta Mama is You?
Jenna Holmes:
Yeah. That’s a good question! I think that it’s actually all a bit of a warp for me. I actually never got into, and that’s why the whole, when people, or make a comment or something about like influencing or influence or whatever, I get a little bit like, oof, because I actually never got into these jobs wanting to be known or wanting to have a following or wanting to be liked in this world. I honestly started Plant Mama, I was doing my jobs and I loved the plants and I took beautiful photos and I was just working and working. I was working in my business and the Instagram came with that, and the following and the interest and the brand came with that. So I’ve never really been super comfortable being like the brand is Jenna Holmes. My dream scenario is me on a farm with all of my dogs and I just create cool things and you can’t get to me.
I struggle with, if you meet someone and they’re like, oh, you are a Plant Mama. I was like oh, you know about me? Like, what do you mean? Like shocking that you follow. Like, I’m still not understanding why people follow me or engaged or I’m not because I never came out with that being my I purpose. So I’m confused by it. So I think there’s a bit of confusion in my brand, but I kind of lean into that. I like that I’m not all over Instagram or it’s not like it is me, but it’s also more about like the pasta and the events and like that kind of thing. I struggle with where I sit in there or where Pasta Mama, or where Plant Mama or that. But to be honest, I think that also helps, I think it’s nice that it’s not too much of me. If that makes sense.
Claire Deane:
Do you think you can grow a business these days without social media?
Jenna Holmes:
I think that if you create a product that is really amazing and people need it and it’s there and people somehow get their hands on it and they just keep coming back then, No. Because you’ve found the audience of people that found what they like and they’ll just go to it. If you were creating a product out of nowhere or without a following. I think it’s kind of yellow pages. Like what do we do now when someone goes, I went to this restaurant, this place we instantly go like on our phone, find the Instagram. What’s the food? Who’s got it? It’s the new yellow pages. I think, there’s been that real shift from Instagram being a personal page to it actually being our website of some forms. I think it’s important depending on what you’re doing.
Claire Deane:
How has social helped grow your business? Do you think you could have gotten to where you are without having it?
Jenna Holmes:
Not at all. Social media is hands down. I probably would say equal parts to my skills. Like I would say it’s 50, 50. Like it’s 50% my skills and it’s 50% my marketing skills and also the audience. Like I was lucky that when I started Plant Mama, it was at the start of when plants were starting to come back into houses. I was a photographer, so I was capturing cool content that meant people were sharing it. That meant people wanted plant tips. So then when I started Pasta Club or Pasta Mama, I just transferred those people right across, because I was like, I’ve started this new thing. Then everyone went across. But again, a lot of people have found Pasta Club or Pasta Mama on their own. Like not through Plant Mama. So there are a lot of followers on that account that haven’t necessarily come from Plant Mama. They’ve found it. There’s more people now being like, oh, Pasta Mama than they are Plant Mama. So that’s obviously where the space is at the moment.
Claire Deane:
And so how do you manage it in a way that keeps it sustainable for you? Because you wrote on your blog recently about how the trolls can get you down. How you do need to do those detoxes? How can you mitigate the fact that you have to be on social media for your business but it can be a bit of a spiral of negativity sometimes?
Jenna Holmes:
Totally. I have a love, hate relationship with social media. My brand obviously relies or partly relies on it, but also I hate it as well. I think everyone has that relationship with it. It is difficult to manage. That’s why Sheila’s club Instagram just gets like a bunch of random love ones and then not touched again for a while. It is obviously hard to manage different brands. You’ve gotta post on Plant Mama and then it’s like, okay, there’s Pasta Mama stuff. That’s essentially the reason why we’ve hired people is so that I can focus on those things because that’s what I’m good at. I don’t need to answer emails anymore or do shop stuff because I’m meant to focus on Instagram and sharing our content or sharing our thoughts or teaching people about what pasta recipes to do.
The concept is that trying to get me not to just focus on Instagram, cause we’re obviously doing other stuff like running the business. Like when I am on Instagram and I am selling things or explaining things or talking about things or my own products like there is such a clear line when people are buying stuff, it’s true. How much I am on does actually reflect how much money we make, which is crazy.
Claire Deane:
And are you doing anything to try and move away from just social? Like, are you building email lists, are you doing other press or are you really see really just kind of doubling down on the social at the moment?
Jenna Holmes:
I think there are definitely two types of business strategies that you can take. It also depends on how much money you have from the start. I never had money to put into hiring a PR team, hiring, marketing, hiring outreach, all that kind of stuff. That was never my schtick. I have always come from the place of just uploading and like doing all that kind of stuff on socials in the last year. I didn’t even know what an EDM was until like, one of my friends was like, it’s like an email you send out. When we started the shop and the waitlist for Pasta Club, we obviously got a subscriber list going and now we’ve got like three and a half thousand on that list, which is insane.
We send stuff out and people will just sell stuff out immediately, which is crazy. But I only learned about that a year ago. I am not from that world of like, what’s PR, what’s this like. I’m from a world of like, I didn’t go to business school. I don’t know anything about marketing. I just know how to take photos and write call captions. But then we are moving to Sydney next year and Sydney is very PR world. It’s very connected world. So I think we will step into a new space when we get to Sydney because Melbourne was all our creative contacts and all that kind of stuff. And it was fun. Whereas I think Sydney’s got bit more of a brand world. I’m sure when I get to Sydney, I’ll be like, Googling. Like, what does this mean? There are all these phrases of stuff that everyone knows I have no idea about.
Claire Deane:
With the difference between each of those cities, what do you do for marketing?
Jenna Holmes:
I’ve lived in Brisbane, Melbourne, and I’ve been to Sydney a lot. So I already know about it, but Melbourne definitely has that really collaborative creative world. I truly don’t believe that none of those businesses would’ve taken off in any other city. It was really the place where people were willing to take risks on paying me for something they didn’t hadn’t seen before. They took Pasta Club in really well. It’s a beautiful city. Melbourne is to create those ideas and create the structure and the friends around those ideas. I think Sydney will just be a different experience. I think an elevation experience because it’s different clients, it’s different people. Not in a way that Sydney is above Melbourne, but it’s just different. I think it’ll be a different category of how we do things, which I’m excited about.
Claire Deane:
Definitely. So speaking of collaboration. With Pasta Club, you collaborated with chefs, you host these private dinner parties in your studio space. What do you think makes a really great collaboration and how do you get people to agree to collaborate with you?
Jenna Holmes:
I think especially like cooking collaborations they’re so different to creative artist ones. Creative people doing collaborations is different when I think cooking comes in. Because cooking is in every person’s right. Their own version of like what they like to eat or what they like to cook. I think what I’ve learned with working with chefs or things like that is that you really just need to trust them and like find the right chef and let them do what their skills are. There are so many chefs around, but not everyone knows how to pair or pick a really good tomato. If we are just eating tomato and basil and mozzarella most of our focus is really on produce. The quality of the ingredient from the start. I’ve found that working with chefs, it’s about finding the people who have the art of dealing with produce based Italian cooking.
If they can make a great Asian noodle stir fry, that’s amazing, but that’s not what I need. I need chefs that really are coming from a place of produce essentially. I think we haven’t worked with too many chefs because, to be honest, I have done most of the cooking. We’ve had like a few chefs that come in and do the cooking. I don’t do the cooking as much anymore but for the first run of Pasta Club it was me and we’re at joints in Byron now, it will be me. So it’s kind of essentially led by me food-wise. Like I create most of the recipes, but then if we have chefs come in that are doing on the spot, we’ll kind of collaborate and be like, what do you think you wanna cook?
We’ll bounce ideas off each other. I think with most creatives, it’s just about finding a person that you love their work and you can stand by what they’re doing, and then you just trust in what they do. So instead of just hiring any chef, we need to hire a particular chef.
Claire Deane:
How have you had to adapt over the last 18 months to years? What did you have to do to stay inspired to continue that adaptation?
Jenna Holmes:
It’s actually been very hard because I find that travel and moving is what inspires me. So being stuck in the same place has actually halted that majorly. I’ve probably felt more flat and more uninspired than I ever have in my whole life. I think that because we haven’t been able to do Pasta Clubs or Plant Mama, I haven’t been able to like, Yes, I’ve got beautiful content I can upload and stuff like that and take photos of food that I’m making. But in terms of producing things, I don’t actually feel like best in anything really special or wild. Because I haven’t been able to move about and be inspired to make new things. Like in terms of how I value creativity and the level. I feel like people are probably like, what are you talking about? You’ve done all these things like for where I sit. It feels like just me at the moment.
Claire Deane:
Have you got anything planned to kind of help lift that?
Jenna Holmes:
I definitely think coming to Byron has been an absolute treat. I moved from Victoria and came here to host the Pasta Club at joints until we moved to Sydney. Just being here these last few weeks is actually been a game-changer. Just getting on my bike at lunchtime and cycling down to the beach and going for a swim and reading my book like just that activity alone has given me space and juices to like create different details or table cloths or like be inspired about different ideas. I feel like that has helped, I definitely feel like when I get to Sydney, it’s gonna be a game on which I’m excited about. I think Byron all this time at the moment is kind of like healing and getting ready. When I get to Sydney and we secure our next Pasta Club location, it will be tiling tables and building things and it will be it’ll be on. Excited!
Claire Deane:
Which leads to my next question. What can we expect from you next?
Jenna Holmes:
A few things happening, I can’t tell you about. There are actually quite a few fun things coming out in terms of merch. We’ve got some amazingly awesome shorts, which sounds like a really crazy left-field thing. I’ve combined my desire when I was a PE teacher for these particular shorts and we’ve made them. We got a patent made of my pair of shorts. I know it’s crazy. It’s very left field, but we aid my dream pair of shorts into a pattern and we’re currently getting them all made. So they will come out with these matching tees. We’ve got a few things coming out. There are a few different Pasta Club at home packs coming out. Sydney location will get announced once we secure and write everything down. The thing I’m doing in Byron obviously will come out soon. I definitely enjoy surprising and delighting people. So I like to keep plans to myself. So you can all be, what are you doing next? I think you tell people all your plans, you then have to stick to it. So it’s nice to just like keep things to yourself.
Claire Deane:
Nice. I like it. And final question. What was the last thing that you Googled for work?
Jenna Holmes:
Today I Googled, just a thing on Photoshop. I had accidentally closed the toolbar and I was panicking because I’ve trained myself on Photoshop through Google. For all my graphics, I have not done a course. So I’m constantly Googling questions. I Google a lot of questions, like questions that most people like that are so silly, I wanna know what the answer is. So if you looked at all my Google questions, you’d be like, wow, but I love when you Google something and someone’s already asked it. Someone’s already answered it. This is amazing. Normally just stuff like that.
Claire Deane:
Yeah. I remember Googling once. Why does Voldemort have no nose? I don’t know why I Googled that, but I was like, why does VOR and had no nose was the, was the prompt up? Like, obviously someone’s asked this before. It’s not just me.
Jenna Holmes:
I feel less stupid. I’m like, okay, someone else is wondering about why. I don’t know. I’m the same. Like I just, real stupid questions. Like why does that middle marry this guy in like 19? Or like, you know, just stupid things.
Claire Deane:
Yeah. Well how else do you know?
Jenna Holmes:
Yeah, exactly. That’s how you learn information.
Claire Deane:
Exactly. And you can use it for trivia moving forward.
Jenna Holmes:
Well, the reason why so many people can now run their own business is because of Google. Like if I were to make something, I just Google and I find it and it’s like, if I wanna make a hat, I just Google like hat wholesalers. And I think that’s the beginning of the internet and Google is how so many of us have been able to achieve what we have. Cause we click with our is can get something straight away, you know?
Claire Deane:
Exactly. It’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining me. It was great to have you. And I think I mentioned to you early on in our call that my colleague Mon was the first who introduced me to you. She decided Pasta Mama and she shared that with me. So she was so jealous that she didn’t get to talk to you today, but she will be listening. But thank you. Great to chat to you.
Jenna Holmes:
No Worries.
