We recently connected with Jenny Melrose and have shared our conversation below.

Jenny , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

I started my company as an inner city school district teacher that had a six month old baby girl and as someone who felt like they had lost themselves as a new mother. I needed something that was mine and gave me an identity outside of being a new mother and wife.

I created a food blog, The Melrose Family, and taught myself food photography, content creation and social media marketing. Over the course of ten years I grew my website to replace my teaching salary of 75k a year. My site was sought out by national sponsors for me to represent their products and introduce them to my audience. I was able to retire from teaching at the age of 35 and solely focus on my company, which grew to a team of people as I was being asked to speak around the country on how I was able to attract national sponsorships as a micro-influencer that never had more than 10k followers on Instagram.

As my speaking engagements increased I found myself with a new audience of bloggers and influencers that wanted to scale their businesses. I created my signature course Pitch Perfect Pro and taught thousands of students how to secure sponsorships without having a massive following. In order to continue to meet the needs of my students, I developed a membership site, Mastering Your Influence, that gave them group coaching and kept them up to date on the latest strategies that were working on social media and influencer marketing. After hosting my first in person conference in the Spring of 2019, I sold my food blog for six figures and solely focused on my coaching business.

I began working on my first book, Influencer Entrepreneurs: The 4 Step Framework to Building Your Audience, Growing Your Business and Making Money Online, the Summer of 2019 with an anticipated launch date of the Spring of 2020 where it would be released at my second annual conference. Little did I know, or the world for that matter, but Covid-19 would cause me to cancel my in person event with hundreds of attendees coming from around the country two weeks prior to the event. I virtually launched my book and got it in the hands of women around the country who now more than ever needed to understand how to create content online to drive an audience to the products and services that they offered.

My podcast, Influencer Entrepreneurs, became a weekly staple of strategies and tactics for women to continue to grow their businesses. So much so that our downloads doubled as we developed content to release twice a week with an interview and then a mini lesson each week. We will celebrate the 300th episode release of the podcast the middle of August and I can’t wait to see what is yet to come as we develop more ways for women to scale their businesses through masterminds and one on one business coaching.

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

Jenny is a former reading specialist who “retired” from her teaching career when her blogging income far exceeded her salary. Through hard work and dedication, her lifestyle blog, The Melrose Family, became regularly sought out by nationally recognized brands such as Neutrogena, Smuckers, Glad, Costco, Stanley Steamer, Sara Lee, and many more. She is a content strategist that helps entrepreneurs better understand their messaging and unique position in the online space. Now, she’s combining her passion for teaching with her extensive experience of creating strategic content for online business owners via JennyMelrose.com and her podcast, Influencer Entrepreneurs with Jenny Melrose as well as her first book Influencer Entrepreneurs: The 4-Step Framework to Building Your Audience, Growing Your Business, and Making More Money Online.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Over the past 12 years that my business has been online, I have seen social media applications change their algorithms and also even entirely shut down their applications. Something that all business owners need to understand is that in order to build an audience of raving fans, you need to know what problem you are solving for your audience. Your audience wants to know what to expect from you and if you constantly change topics with the content you produce, they will not know what to expect. It is also important to understand that social media is rented property. You do not own it. If Meta decides to change an algorithm or get rid of a feature inside of Instagram, there is nothing you can do about it. Consequently, it is vital that you grow an email list and have content that is yours on a website or podcast.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As a young girl I was told that you go to college and you get a good job that is consistent and you remain at that job for your entire life. You don’t take risks that could potentially jeopardize your earning potential or the livelihood of your family. When I retired from teaching in NY at the age of 35 my colleagues and family all thought I was crazy. I was leaving a position where I had the earning potential to make 100k per year and receive a pension once I retired after 25 years. I had summers off and all school holidays. Why in the world would I ever take the risk of leaving that to own my own company that came with the stress of being responsible for myself and any employees? I believe that we need to live a life where we are fully happy with the work that we do and the energy that we put out. I refuse to live by the saying, “It is what, it is.” You have the potential to make your life whatever you want it to be. It is up to you to control your happiness and joy in life. You will need to take some risks in order to have that life and it won’t always be rainbows and unicorns, but as long as you enjoy the work and the life that it gives you then you need to jump in.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jennymelrose.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenny_melrose/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennymelrose1
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennymelrose/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/JennyMelrose
• Other: https://jennymelrose.com/podcast/