THE OFFICIAL
ONLY FROM REDWOOD MEDIA
A RATING
Hover over a menu item to access other pages
Jeanet Wade
An Innovator and Entrepreneur Behind Innovators and Entrepreneurs
Some leaders build companies. Others build the leaders who build companies. For more than 25 years, Jeanet Wade has been “activating the potential of innovators and visionary leaders”—the energizing and insightful catalyst whose fingerprints can be found on game-changing products, systems, and decisions that touch people every day. The best-selling author of The Human Team: So, You Created a Team But People Showed Up!, a book that earned the Eric Hoffer Book Award, helped cement her reputation for turning complexity into clarity, chaos into traction, and big visions into scalable, human-centered realities. Her newest release, co-authored with a colleague, GROW!: How Entrepreneurial Leaders Optimize for Growth, continues her focus on human-centered relationships at work and elevates the way entrepreneurs optimize themselves.
Today, as an Expert EOS Implementer™ and founder of Business Alchemist in St. Louis, Jeanet helps privately held companies get more of what they want from their businesses by aligning vision with action and activating human potential at every level. But long before she became one of the top 1% of business coaching practices in the nation, Jeanet was already shaping the future.
An Early Career of Innovation
Jeanet began her career at one of the largest performance-improvement companies in the world, where she was part of the team that created the first gift card and helped introduce it into incentive programs. That early work launched her into the dawn of the internet era, where she helped build what were essentially the earliest “communities of interest”—precursors to today’s social networks. By the mid-90s, she was presenting to corporate boards and leadership teams about whether the internet was “a real thing,” backing her arguments with metrics and adoption trends. She launched interactive websites, database driven applications, extranets, and intranets that were secure yet engaging; several of which won awards for their new and innovative approaches. Eventually this led her to launch her own marketing and growth firm, where she served as a fractional chief growth officer and “general contractor of marketing.” Her career path expanded across start-ups, family-owned businesses, and large corporations. Wherever new ideas were launching, Jeanet was there early, simplifying the complex and building frameworks that got results.
Building Better Companies Through Better Leaders
At Business Alchemist, founded in 2000, Jeanet works with visionary founders, innovators, and entrepreneurs—leaders with brilliant ideas who often struggle with the operational discipline needed to turn ingenuity into sustainable growth. “Most big innovations were small at the beginning,” she often tells them. “One-degree shifts compound.” Her coaching helps founders solve real-time and long-term problems, make better decisions, and bring clarity to their organization so everyone rows in the same direction.
Entrepreneurs, Jeanet notes, are uniquely prone to distraction—shiny-object chasing, highs and lows, and sudden detours that pull them miles from their destination. “It’s like going from New York to L.A. and suddenly deciding to stop and see the world’s biggest ball of twine.” She adds another metaphor she uses often with her clients: “I’m constantly holding onto the string of a balloon that’s floating around. Sometimes they float off and get lost. I pull them back and say, ‘Okay, great—let’s consider what balloons to add and keep them a cohesive bouquet.’” That ability to realign priorities, redirect focus, and ultimately elevate entrepreneurial leaders is why so many of them hit extraordinary milestones under her guidance—and why her impact shows up in countless successes.
Frameworks that Change How People Work
Jeanet has long been recognized for her original thinking around leadership, team health, and human potential. In 2019, she was asked to speak at a conference about team health in a new way—beyond culture talk and soft-skill clichés. There, she introduced what became her signature framework: the Six Facets of Human NeedsÒ—Clarity, Connection, Challenge, Contribution, Consideration, and Confidence.
Inspired to “flip” Maslow’s hierarchy, Jeanet designed the Six Facets to reflect not how individuals find fulfillment, but how teams function. “You built a team, but people showed up,” she says, meaning human nature walks into the room with every employee. Pizza Fridays won’t fix what leaders fail to understand about human needs.
Her new book, GROW!: How Entrepreneurial Leaders Optimize for Growth, co-authored with Jonathan B. Smith, expands her body of work with research and case studies. It introduces the Optimize for Growth Model, which asserts that entrepreneurs need three things working together:
• a company operating system (like EOS),
• a coach for mastery and performance, and
• a community of peers for perspective and challenge.
“You can’t go it alone, and you can’t grow it alone,” she emphasizes.
The Invisible Influencer
Jeanet’s clients often post their big wins on LinkedIn or publish in trade magazines —new products, major contracts, breakthroughs. She celebrates them quietly, remembering the pivotal questions or push on tiny decisions that helped spark the shift. “You may never see my name on any of it,” she says. “But it is silent validation for everything I put into it.” Behind the scenes, she has witnessed (and influenced) the birth of patents, the evolution of business models, and the transformation of entire leadership teams. She has served on the Franchise Advisor Council for EOS Worldwide, earned distinction as one of the Top 100 St. Louisans to Know to Succeed in Business, and has been featured by Forbes Books and multiple best-seller lists.
Leading with Humans in a High-Tech Era
Though she embraces and leverages technology—having helped shape technologies from gift cards to internet platforms—Jeanet believes the next frontier of business is not just technology-led, but human-led. “The U.S. is a service-based economy. Humans make the difference.” With the rise of AI, she argues that leadership must understand human needs more than ever: “If you don’t lead with humanity, you will miss the opportunity to discern how to use and leverage technology, and will miss the connections and relationships you need to stand out.”
She cites Isadore Sharp of Four Seasons: “We’ve systemized the predictable so we can humanize the exceptional.” That balance, she says, is the key. Technology can enable excellence, but only people can create it and truly engage in human moments.
Purpose, People, Profit—In That Order
Jeanet’s passion sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship and human potential. “If we get that right,” she says, “your purpose thrives, your people focus in the right direction, and profit becomes the natural outcome.” She sees her role not as the star, but as the steady hand behind entrepreneurs who change the world—one degree, one decision, one human moment at a time.
Jeanet Wade
Expert EOS Implementer and Founder
Business Alchemist
Website: www.business-alchemist.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeanet-wade-ab5500