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

Kelly , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

The biggest risk I’ve ever taken was leaving the security of a full-time job and steady paycheck to start my own business—all while being a single mom raising two small children. It was a leap of faith that, at the time, felt both terrifying and exhilarating. To add to the challenge, I was living an hour away from any family support, so the stakes couldn’t have been higher.

I ventured into email marketing when it was still uncharted territory—long before tools like Constant Contact or MailChimp existed. Back then, this kind of marketing was practically unheard of, which made it all the more daunting. I also began organizing networking events to connect and empower others, which eventually evolved into becoming the publisher of Rochester Woman Online magazine and owning my own event coordination business, multiple online publications and creating social media marketing and podcasts for clients.

It wasn’t easy. There were moments of doubt, sleepless nights, and times I wondered if I’d made the right decision. Balancing entrepreneurship with motherhood meant there were sacrifices, but it also meant my kids grew up seeing what passion, determination, and hard work look like.

Looking back now, 20 years later, I don’t regret a single moment. Those challenges shaped me into the person I am today—resilient, resourceful, and driven. Taking that leap not only transformed my life but also allowed me to create something meaningful that inspires and uplifts others every single day.

Kelly , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Kelly Breuer is a spitfire. She is an innovator, entrepreneur, workhorse, and master of re-invention. She has founded several successful businesses and is currently the publisher of three online women’s magazines, is a podcast creator, an event creator and coordinator and a social media marketing expert with a passion for helping local businesses as well as the animal rescue community.. Even over Zoom, Kelly’s boundless energy crackles through the screen like a Fourth of July sparkler. And, as she begins to talk, it’s evident she’s a straight shooter with no time to beat around the bush.

Kelly has grown Rochester Woman Online to over 200+ pages a month, created a special section in the magazines featuring female entrepreneurs called The Influential Woman, has a huge social media audience – and, in the coming months will be launching another publication, and has some pretty large announcements coming. Her readership is upward of 100,000 subscribers across all platforms – social media, web, email, YouTube, and more. And until now, she’s done most of it on her own. “For RWO, it’s just been me doing the day-to-day responsibilities, creating the look and feel, doing the design, and creating the brand. I am responsible for all the sales, customer service, editing, layout and design, keeping the websites updated, the uploads onto the distribution platformand more that take hours…I work at least 70 hours a week.”

But Kelly is quick to give credit where credit is due. “I couldn’t have gotten to this point without an incredible team of freelance writers, photographers, and supporters along the way.

But even with such an amazing and motivated group, it is a constant struggle to ensure that deadlines are met, along with scheduling everyone and, of course, bringing in sales to keep everything going. But, in her words, “What worthwhile dream has ever been easy?”

The truth is that Kelly has been busting her butt for well over 30+ years. The eldest of two children, she grew up in the small town of Geneva in New York’s Finger Lakes area. After her parents’ divorced in her early teens, Kelly went to live with her paternal grandparents and stayed with them until she graduated from Alfred University in 1992. She had a close relationship with both of her grandparents, especially her grandmother, who became an important role model for Kelly. She taught Kelly to go after her dreams no matter what – that quitting was never an option. “She taught me to have a strong work ethic and the drive, determination, and strength to go along with it,” Kelly says. “Working is in my DNA. My grandmother worked until she was 92. She was raised on a farm with 8 kids in the family in the early 1920s, so she had to work her whole life. She was a ball of energy – only 4’9” but she could outpace me shopping, even in her 90s!”

Her grandmother also modeled a positive and loving outlook. “She always saw the good in people, no matter what,” Kelly says with a hint of tears in her voice. “She was always so incredibly proud of me and encouraged me to live my life to the fullest. I know she is looking down on me, and she is part of the reason I work as hard as I do. She sends me signs, like the butterfly that landed on my shoulder last summer and stayed there for nearly 45 minutes, or the cardinal who would visit me at my window. She always sends a sign when I need that little nudge.” 

From the beginning, however, it’s clear that Kelly didn’t need much nudging. She learned early on to appreciate hard work and the independence it could bring. As a young girl, Kelly performed children’s voiceovers on the local radio station, babysat, and worked for Carvel Ice Cream throughout her middle and high school years. She set herself the goal of owning her own business by the time she reached 40. An overachiever, she started her first business at age 32. With a degree in graphic design and photography from Alfred University, she started her career working in advertising, then moved on to Xerox, where she worked in the Industrial Design and Human Interface Department for several years before working for local printing companies. Even working for a large corporation, she showed her talent as an innovator and now holds more than 15 patents with Xerox.

“I always try to think outside the box,” Kelly asserts. “I like to be forward-thinking and ahead of the game. If you’re not able to pivot when things don’t go your way and get creative, especially RIGHT NOW, you won’t stick around.”

After Xerox, Kelly took a position for a Rochester-based family-owned printing company called Phoenix Graphics. Perhaps that’s where she started to identify with the phoenix – the mythical bird who rises from the ashes to be born again and again. Impressed with her comprehensive knowledge of graphic design and pre-press production, along with her already cultivated accounts and her innate ability to network and attract business, Alex Debiase, her supervisor at Phoenix Graphics, recognized that they could better utilize her as an independent contractor.

The next phase of Kelly’s career began with building her client base. Utilizing her graphic design background and love of helping people, she started creating networking events to help build her print sales. She started out working with Phoenix Graphics and the Rochester Americans hockey team (known locally as the Amerks), where her passion for networking took hold and she started organizing networking events. It all began when she organized a private event for the Amerks in their “Hall of Fame” suite – a place where clients could relax, eat, drink, and watch the game privately behind the scenes, or go down to the seating by the arena. The event was a smashing success. She walked away with over 20 new client contacts from that night, with over 200 people in attendance – and realized she was onto something big.

Encouraged by the success of the Amerks event and seeing a clear need in the community, Kelly began tapping into her significant contact base to create more networking events that would bring together local entrepreneurs and businesspeople. The goal was to create a fun and effective way for these entrepreneurs and businesspeople to meet and support each other while drumming up business. Another of her groundbreaking events was held at Empire Brewing in High Falls, New York, where the bar made over $9K during the three-hour event. “People loved it,” Kelly says proudly. “No one else had events like this at the time in the early 2000s, so it was a huge hit, and everyone wanted more and more.” Eventually, her networking business evolved to include monthly events all over the upstate New York area, as well as four large expos per year.

Networking is Kelly’s happy place and her gift, giving birth to her nickname the “NetworkROC Queen.” Following her passion, she left Phoenix Graphics in 2007 to focus on her own company, Network Rochester. As a visionary, she was far ahead of her time. “I had an email marketing database in place before anyone else,” she says proudly. “There was no Constant Contact or MailChimp at that time. Network Rochester developed my database, and with help from a former colleague, we teamed up with someone who knew the technology to develop our very own email marketing platform.” Together, they developed a robust email marketing system that served to grow Network Rochester to a point where she was presented with the opportunity to reinvent Rochester Woman Magazine, which at the time was a bi-monthly print publication.

In typical can-do fashion, Kelly agreed to re-create the old magazine with her own twist. “I thought, ‘How hard can it be to be a publisher?’” she says with a wry smile. “Well – all I can say is, thank God for one credit card from my former business partner and one amazing advertising sponsor.” That sponsor was Kitty Van Bortel, who owns one of the largest Subaru dealerships in the United States. “Kitty invested in our vision and potential in the magazine because she believed in it, and in us,” Kelly says. “Without her help, the magazine wouldn’t have been able to even get going. We were printing upward of 15,000 copies per month for years, until the end of 2016 when it became abundantly clear to us that print media was dying. The costs were escalating to a point where we just couldn’t keep going and make it profitable. All the money from advertisers went right back into the magazine and there was nothing left over.”

Like her current ventures, Rochester Woman Magazine was a free publication. “We never wanted to charge for the publication because we wanted it to get into as many hands as possible – to make a difference wherever we could,” she explains. Though the magazine flew off the shelves, getting enough advertising to cover print costs was a constant burden, especially with the costs rising on a near-monthly basis. Still, that didn’t stop Kelly and her team. With her innate “go big or go home” gumption, the team started Syracuse Woman Online a year later, partnering with Syracuse-based Eagle Publications. After eight years of publishing the print version of Rochester Woman Magazine, she and her business partner saw the writing on the wall: print publications were going out of business. The magazine was going further into debt every month as businesses switched to online marketing, and even the large networking events began to fall off. It became obvious that digital communication, online shopping, and social media marketing were the wave of the future.

“Thankfully, we were smart enough to see the direction things were heading long before the trend,” says Kelly. “We created an online version of the print publications, and even an app. We were doing all this in addition to the print publication, which we were still putting out.”

In 2016, Kelly knew it was time for a drastic change. In January of 2017, Kelly and her business partner parted ways and Kelly launched the now hugely successful Rochester Woman Online. Using her social media network, her experience, and vast connections – after a bit of a learning curve – she was able to produce an online publication much bigger than anything she could have even imagined.

For years, Kelly had been creating large events and fashion shows that tied in with Rochester Woman Magazine and carried her unique creative stamp. For example, she began using plus-sized models for her fashion shows well before others would consider it. With the advent of the online magazine, she saw the need for a change from the big shows and began hosting smaller, more intimate pop-ups – boutique-style events where clients got personalized attention.

In 2020, another challenge reared its head when COVID-19 struck, bringing live events to a screeching halt and making a significant dent in Kelly’s projected earnings. With her usual talent for re-invention, however, she restructured the events to be COVID-safe and launched a series of live video segments called She Hustles Talks to help women’s businesses promote themselves by reaching a larger audience. Using a live platform, Kelly goes into local businesses and chats with the entrepreneurs about what they do. This platform reached an audience of thousands, replacing the large expos that used to fill that need. It got us through for a few years, and then Kelly launched her own podcast called Conversations With Kelly where she has quests come to her professional studio space in Fairport NY and they talk “real talk” about everything and anything. She has always done well with her LIVE video reels on social media, so this was just the next logical addition. So she teamed up with an amazing video editor, Julio Montalvo and is able to bring professionally edited podcasts to the mix.

In spite of her natural energy, creativity, work ethic, and talent for re-invention, it hasn’t always been easy for Kelly. “People have wanted to see me fail,” she admits. “That’s natural when you’re a go-getter and to the outside everything appears to be easy. Not everyone will like you, and you have to develop a thick skin. It’s taken me many years to do that. I’m a pleaser; I want people to like me. I’ll give my all to help people and small businesses succeed – that’s what I love to do. But I’ve had some hard lessons to learn along the way. I’ve had to learn to take a step back and re-evaluate many of my alignments, clients, and even friends and colleagues. I have to be creative because as a single mother of two, failure is not an option. I have to provide for my kids. I have to succeed!”

Being a successful entrepreneur is not without its challenges in the personal realm. “I don’t have much of a personal life,” Kelly says with resignation. “Most men are intimidated by my independence and my crazy work schedule. Dating is hard. Then you add a pandemic to the mix, and, well…let’s just say I am fine just hanging out with my fur babies.” She also stresses that her kids have always been a huge priority for her and come first in her life. “It hasn’t always been easy being a single mother for the greater part of my children’s lives. I’ve had to juggle work, which of course brings in the money for the kids’ needs and the bills, with my daughter’s crazy dance schedule, traveling, and my sons sport schedule when he was younger. It hasn’t always been the easiest thing. I’ve cried myself to sleep many nights.”  However, her children have always been involved with Kelly’s work life. “They’ve been remarkably understanding and supportive even when I had to choose work over their activities,” she adds. They are grown now with my son in the Air Force in California and my daughter in her last semester of nursing school. I couldn’t be prouder of the two of them.

So, what’s next for Kelly? “As a good friend of mine put it, I’m like the cat with nine lives. She gets run over, stands up, brushes herself off, and says, ‘OK, what’s next?’” Kelly laughs. Or, to put it another way, she is the phoenix that keeps rising from the ashes and reinventing herself in response to whatever is needed at the time. 2025 is going to be the year of huge success and some long time plans will be coming to fruition. New alignments, clients, businesses and more!

As for the bigger picture? “I have a vision of women working together,” she muses. “We all need to help and support each other instead of sabotaging each other out of jealousy.  I love what I do. I love to help even one person who needs that extra push. But, I don’t want to do it alone anymore. I woke up and saw myself doing something bigger – working with other women to get my mission out there on a bigger stage.” A global stage where women support women. Where women worldwide can empower each other to achieve success and satisfaction. Where, like the phoenix, women can rise from the ashes to grow, evolve, and support each other to flourish. I plan to make that happen and more in 2025 with some of the plans I am currently working on.

 “Have I made mistakes?” Kelly says, laughing. “Sure – tons of them! But I’ve grown each and every one from them. You can grow or you can stagnate. And well the naysayers just make me push even harder. I’m growing bigger and better! Come along for the ride!”

Have you ever had to pivot?

please see previous response

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

Building my social media audience has been an evolving journey that started well before social media was the powerhouse it is today. Back when I began, I relied heavily on email marketing. I started collecting emails years ago—way back in the days of Roadrunner! At first, it was as simple as keeping a running list of contacts, but as my business grew, I developed an organized email marketing system.

I would collect emails through events, networking opportunities, and other interactions, and this formed the foundation of my audience. When social media began to rise, I saw an opportunity to transfer that engaged community to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Building my brand and social media following happened organically over time. By sharing authentic content and engaging directly with my audience, people not only stayed but also brought in their friends, family, and colleagues. It’s like a snowball effect—each person adds a little more momentum, and the community grows stronger with each connection.

For anyone just starting out with their social media presence, my advice is:

Start Small and Stay Consistent: Don’t worry about having huge numbers at the beginning. Focus on building a meaningful connection with the audience you already have, even if it’s just a few people.
Be Authentic: Share your story, your challenges, and your successes. People relate to authenticity and will connect with your genuine voice.
Engage and Interact: Respond to comments, ask questions, and make your audience feel seen and heard. Building a community is about relationships, not just numbers.
Leverage Your Network: Like I did with email marketing, use existing contacts to help build your presence. Encourage people you know to follow and share your content.
Be Patient: Building a loyal audience takes time. Focus on creating value, and the growth will come naturally.
Social media is a powerful tool, but it’s about quality over quantity. By focusing on connection and authenticity, you’ll create a community that not only supports you but also helps you grow.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rochesterwomanonline.com
• Instagram: rochesterwomanonlinemag
• Facebook: RochesterWomanOnline or https://www.facebook.com/kelly.breuer.12
• Linkedin: Kelly Breuer

Image Credits

Brody Wheeler
Robyn Baty