We were lucky to catch up with Jenni Brown recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jenni, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.

We donate to a range of different organizations across the world, the main ones being Kurandza, Reef Check and Trees For The Future, but we do ad hoc donations to other causes too. Over the years we’ve donated to everything from a koala hospital in Australia to a children’s bereavement organization in Florida. We record everything on this page: https://www.lyricalhost.com/causes-we-support-%e2%9d%a4/ so our customers can see what their money goes toward.

Some of the causes we chose from our own personal research, others were chosen by our customers after we asked for suggestions. We wanted them to be a part of the decision making too. Generally we try to choose causes that are small, independent organizations set up by people who are truly passionate about making a difference and usually have a close personal link to their mission.

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 blogging in the early 2000s when it was still pretty new, and from there I ended up going down the route of getting into the tech industry. I started out by doing web copy and proofreading for small companies, and by that point hiring people to do social media and search engine optimization was really taking off, so I started doing digital marketing in-house for various companies and tech start-ups. Eventually I decided to start my own hosting company, Lyrical Host, that was tailored toward women, minorities, and people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. Most hosting services are skewed toward businesses rather than people working alone, and we found that a lot of people needed a cheerleader more than anything else. We host and support people in 50+ countries around the world, and it’s incredibly rewarding.

A few years later, I started The Createry, which is a combo coworking, podcast/video, and photography studio space in my home city of Nottingham. Meeting people in person and seeing them bring their ideas to life in various creative forms is incredible. I’m incredibly lucky to meet so many great people and have an awesome team to support my ideas.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

Brand loyalty and customer trust is central to what we do. As our customers often don’t have anyone else to turn to for technical advice and support, it’s essential to their success that that trust the advice we provide and that we can work together for the outcome they look for.

We celebrate every anniversary with every customer by planting trees. This is something we all look forward to doing, and it’s an opportunity to show our appreciation for them choosing to work with us as well.

Having a personal relationship with our customers is really important because so many companies take a step back from their customers and often treat them as numbers or want to fob them off, whereas we love to hear what customers are up to, celebrate their successes with them and support them through challenges, or just be a voice of comfort and support.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Working in highly competitive, predominantly male-dominated industries means that our “why” is incredibly important, as not many businesses understand the different needs of women, minorities, those with chronic illnesses and disabilities, and all the other individuals we support. They are also often people who are more vulnerable to being miss-sold purely because they trust that someone will help them, and often this “help” takes the form of unnecessary and expensive products and services.

Being in the industry we are, there is often criticism, insults, threats, and more to us and our customers. We had one incident where the previous company a customer was using had called her up and made her cry because they’d been so aggressive to her. We’ve also had several incidents where people have tried to undermine what we’re doing or told outright lies about us and our company. Resilience is a necessity every single day, but it makes us stronger because it only highlights the need for us to be the honesty and transparency in the space, as well as being able to advocate for and support many different groups who need us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lyricalhost.com
• Other: https://thecreatery.co

Image Credits

Alison Edwards Photography (second two images)