As the doors to Creative Bube Tube’s meeting room swing open she pleasantly chats with and leads her smiling clients out of their early morning pre-production meeting into the front-foyer and gives each one a genuine warm hug as they depart. She turns around, enthusiastically greets me and pulls me by the arm into her office and offers me a bottled water.
It’s 8:00 a.m. and on top of the just-finished 2-hour meeting, Jenny, Creative Bube Tube’s cheerful and energetic President, has already held a conference call with her representatives at her soon-to-be opened satellite office in San Francisco …which in-turn was preceded by a stop-off on the way into the office to visit a client’s Ostrich farm to gauge the early-morning light for an up-coming commercial shoot. Her next meeting is in a short while – as I’m able to gleam from the image on the computer screen that I can just make out over her shoulder – so I’m pleased Jenny would take the time to sit down and chat with me. I notice one particular item on the computer-screen is emblazoned in red.
Jenny Munford, who is trilingual by the way, recently moved back to Canada after living in Frankfurt, Germany for 12 years where she owned and operated a health club and also found time to co-own a video-production company. Among other accolades, Jenny received the award as Frankfurt’s Business Woman of the Year – 2000. A longing for family and friends pulled her back to Southern Ontario (she grew up in Vineland) and she started Creative Bube Tube, an up-tempo T.V. and Internet commercial production company.
When I ask Jenny about the bright red portion of her scheduler my internal questions about where she gets her boundless energy are answered as she says gently but assuredly: “Well, that’s my work-out time, of course. That’s my time to pay attention to me, to push myself, to, you know, solve the world’s problems. [She giggles but then adds contemplatively]…You know, I’m always bursting with new ideas for Bube Tube after my workouts.”
One of the first things Jenny did when she started Creative Bube Tube, was to implement the services of a corporate wellness company. Jenny outlined the health benefits of a company-wide health initiative and then brought in CPEC, a corporate wellness service provider, to explain the dollars and cents productivity benefits of such an approach. Last November, Creative Bube Tube employees went through a series of education seminars and non-intrusive assessments and now have woven personal well-being strategies into their daily lives. In fact, the entire Bube Tube Team schedule their daily workout “energy-infusions” before they come to work each morning and they are effusive in lauding the effects of the company wellness initiative saying the benefits have already far out-weighed the expenditure. As Jenny puts it:
“Everybody here just enjoys their work so much and love coming in to Creative Bube Tube each day. We get to work with our clients, our ‘extended family’ as we call them, to help them increase their business and their profiles …it just such a privilege and to do that we have to be committed to working long hours and to be able to that we have to maintain positive, healthy outlooks that grow from positive, health-promoting habits. Our clients are all big-picture forward-thinkers and we have to be as well!”
As we make our way around Creative Bube Tube towards the exit, I notice that on every computer screen that had a personal time-scheduler currently visible, all had big, bolded, red-emblazoned time blocks. Back again at the front foyer, Jenny gave me a warm hug and thanked me for stopping by and as I make my way outside she energetically jumped back into her long-but-joyful day.
