Go Local: Whanganui entrepreneur finds new focus with home-based business

Entrepreneur Jessica Anne markets her Key Planner tool from a home-based office and warehouse in Whanganui. Photo / Supplied

Most of us know the folly of making New Year resolutions and setting ourselves up for failure and disappointment.

And in a year that has posed a raft of brand new challenges and disruptions, Whanganui entrepreneur Jessica Anne is offering a nifty tool designed to help individuals and business owners reset their schedules and goals.

"The Key Planner is a tool I devised to provide a personal accountability system," she said.

"The calendar covers 52 weeks but it does not have dates so it can be started on a day that suits the owner."

In 2018 Jessica Anne had established an international career as a brand strategist and keynote speaker whose services were in demand with celebrity clients and hotel chains around the world but she suddenly hit a wall.

"As I sat at my window overlooking the London skyline I realised I had hit a plateau.

"I was caught in a directionless daze of uncertainty after a health scare which led to personal problems, business failure and the feeling that I failed myself."

Jessica Anne had a high-powered career as a brand strategist and keynote speaker in London before she returned to Whanganui. Photo / Supplied

Heading home, the young businesswoman settled in Whanganui to be near her mother and set up a home where she provides live-in support to her grandmother and disabled aunt.

"My grandmother was living in Auckland and her health wasn't good.

"It is part of my Cook Island heritage that I should care for the grandmother who raised me and I love my nana and Aunt Rose."

Once settled in Whanganui, Jessica Anne began using the strategies she had devised for her clients to reflect on her own life and her journals, diaries and notebooks grew into a big stack of paper.

"I thought to myself 'No wonder I was a mess and had hit plateau'.

"All my thoughts, desires and strategies were all over the place."

Unable to find a stationery item that met her needs, she set out to design one and realised the Key Planner might be a useful item for others.

"It is a yearly diary, combining the elements of scheduling calendar, habit tracker, expense tracker, goal-setting tools, diary, sketchbook and bullet journal so you can keep your goals, thoughts and ideas in one place."

In a portable B5 format (the size of an iPad pro), the planner comes in pink or black with an expandable envelope for keepsakes in the back and there are plenty of pages designed for writing, drawings and graphs.

"I believe it is the perfect tool to help people gain clarity on who they are, what they want and helps them to actively schedule the action they need to take to get to where they want to be."

Setting up a home office in her sleepout and a warehouse in the garage, Jessica Anne is now marketing the Key Planner online and in Paper Plus stores.

Running a home-based business in Whanganui may lack the glamour of her previous life but the 35-year-old said she realises she is where she wants to be.

"I am with my loving whānau and they are my cheerleaders for this venture.

"I set out on a mission to create a product that allows people to become purposeful, intentional, to boldly dream and chase after what they want to achieve in life and I hope it works as well for them as it has for me."

The Key planner is available to order online from thekeyplanner.com