We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jen Berson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jen below.

Jen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Jeneration Academy champions the PR agency model for ambitious women seeking a satisfying, high-powered career that doesn’t require the sacrifice of personal and family time to make a powerful impact. I strategically built my business to support the kind of work/life integration I wanted when I became a mom, and I’m committed to empowering others to do the same.

Within Jeneration Academy, I share my personal roadmap for success in creating a business that’s allowed me to have a successful career while also being a present parent to my family. We’re committed to showing our members it’s possible to achieve professional goals without sacrificing your personal life. What you do outside of work has a major impact on your agency and how you function inside of it. You need to dedicate just as much time, energy, and care to improving your home life as you do to your professional one.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Jen Berson, president and founder of Jeneration PR, serving clients in the beauty and baby industries, and the creator of Jeneration Academy, a community and comprehensive suite of training programs and resources for public relations pros to find their path to success.

I led the creation of multiple educational programs to serve PR professionals at every stage in their careers, from beginners looking to learn the fundamentals of pitching the media, to seasoned pros aiming to scale their agency to seven figures. My programs help PR pros hone their skills to become a Pitching Powerhouse, bring in their first paying clients, then launch, grow, and scale their own digital agency.

Our Powerhouse Pros community has served thousands of professionals throughout the world — from the US to Australia, Denmark, South Korea, Sweden, and even a member running her firm from a boat off the coast of the Azores Islands while traveling the world with her family.

We have helped PR professionals create businesses to support their families and desired lifestyles by sharing the step-by-step process for success, providing needed tools and frameworks, and changing the PR-industry norm of keeping secrets close to the vest.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

My career started as a civil litigation attorney. I had an incredible job at a top firm in Los Angeles, but I felt like I was heading down a path that wasn’t appealing to me. Not because I was afraid of the challenges that lay ahead, but because I was afraid of what my life would look like years down the road.

I was planning to have kids and I wanted to see them whenever I wanted to and to be there for all their activities. I eventually realized that this lifestyle wasn’t possible as a lawyer.

Once I knew that I wanted more for myself, I started to do PR work on the side. My first-ever experience with it happened while I was in Europe. I discovered a perfume that I loved. Even though I was still a lawyer, I reached out to the company, spoke to the founder, and told her I wanted to help her get her brand out to more people.

I didn’t know what PR was or that this was a service that companies pay people for, but I was drawn to it. I started doing the work for free, and I loved it. That was the seed that led me to decide to leave my career in law. And pretty soon after that, I left my law firm to start my own PR firm without any training or contacts.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

For my agency Jeneration PR, referrals have always been the best source. It’s all about keeping your reputation stellar and maintaining great relationships, so I created a program called “Lead to Landed” that helps other digital agency owners get client leads in their agencies based on what has worked for me. It really focuses on narrowing down your niche (deciding who you serve and how you want to serve them) and tapping into your network to request leads and referrals.

Being consistent with content has been the best way to grow the Jeneration Academy community. It’s slow and hard to find new members for our community, but we created a Facebook group, and we’re listening to our members to hear what struggles they’re facing. Our content is created around what they need, and we’re very consistent. We have a weekly Facebook Live and repurpose all of that content for YouTube, my podcast “Pitching Powerhouse,” and blog posts. People are coming into our world from different avenues, but they’re finding the same content leveraged in different platforms. Once they’re in, they’re in. They consume a lot of the content and then decide to join a program. They get results quickly, and then they’re all-in on our content!     

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jenerationacademy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenerationacademy
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitableprpros
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenerationpr/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCS4zZXcqrm_xuvN2oU0ysg

Image Credits
Michelle Adams