We were lucky to catch up with Shelley Treadaway recently and have shared our conversation below.

Shelley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

The Creative Scoop was built from my desire for freedom. The freedom to work remote world-wide, the freedom to choose my own working hours, and the freedom to balance the delicate work/family life. My mission is to create pathways for financial success and social awareness toward the issues or topics that are true to my heart: environmentalism, travel, family life, cooking, and holistic living. For those who want to consume content in any of these categories, my goal and mission through my brand is to make it easy to participate in activities, causes, and learning experiences. No ridiculous advertisements scrolling down a page when all you want to see is a recipe. No tricks with pop-ups. Just transparent, helpful tips, tricks and guidance to living a life by design.

I’ve learned in my life that the most important mission for myself is to live a happy life. Happiness is simple, but we as humans tend to overcomplicate just about everything. Do what you love and love what you do. My greatest hope is that I can stand as evidence that you can live the life of your dreams AND get paid for it. Because, why not???

It takes courage, a lot of courage, to grow up and become who you really are!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started The Creative Scoop in 2015 when I was pregnant with my second son and tired of giving my time and energy to corporate America. I quit my job, asked my husband to build me a website, and started writing for blogs and websites. I am self taught, but writing has always been a passion of mine.

After my son was born, our family traveled throughout the United States and Europe for nearly 6 months. We explored the most beautiful places in the UK, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany. While traveling, I wrote for travel magazines, parenting blogs, and created a brand for our traveling family. This filtered into the side work I was doing for web developers creating content for their businesses.

Eventually writing led into content creation. With the rise of social media marketing I jumped on the trend and continued my education in digital marketing and content creation. I now create and manage content for multiple businesses, including my own, and write for magazines on topics that our family is moving through. RV travel, vegetarian cooking, gardening, you name it!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Authenticity, transparency, and giving people what they WANT.

There is nothing I despise more on social media than a facade. I had to ask myself, who am I? What do I want to offer to an audience? Once I gained followers the question then was asked, what do THEY want? What performs best? How can I GIVE more of what people want to consume?

There is, of course, strategy that goes behind building an audience as well. When you are in the initial stages of building offering a giveaway, utilizing hashtags, collaborating with other users, and having a clear, concise bio all help. If you want to grow organically, you need to be patient! There are “overnight” successes that put in a decade of organic strategy to get where they are currently. There is no perfect way to grow, but if you can stay authentic and true to your brand, you will NEVER have to pivot unless the product or mission changes.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

In the beginning The Creative Scoop was a side hustle. I enjoyed being a stay-at-home parent (which is the hardest job a man or woman can do) and during nap time or after the kids went to bed, I would write. Once my children were in school full-time I made the decision to go full-time with the business. I dedicated more energy to networking and growing my portfolio so I could increase my price and work with fewer clients but more intimately. After a year in the business I was a full-time business owner!

Key milestones: Attending networking events with my brand new business cards (so official!), creating a website, branding on social media, and working with the clients I wanted to vs. accepting everyone.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thecreativescoop.com
• Instagram: thecreativescoop
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-shelley-treadaway-382ab22b/

Image Credits
Images: SotoFoto and Shelby Vercelli