We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stephanie Thompson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Stephanie, appreciate you joining us today. Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

I’ve not only been managing my own social media, I have also made a full on career of helping others manager their social medias. Being on Instagram alone can feel like a FULL time job. Engaging, posting, responding, content creation, stories, & so much more. How do you make time to do it all? Especially if you are still working a full time job while trying to build your online business. This is exactly why I started building my virtual assistant business. I wanted to help people take their brands & businesses to the next level online without feeling like they had to break the bank. It’s important to have support not only with the day to day activities but a lot of us are goin it completely alone in the beginning. Who do bounce ideas off of? Who do you ask questions to? Who do you look to for support on the days when you just don’t want to do it?

Building a team is crucial to your longterm success. That is why I created Money Moves Management so I could build a team of like minded women who want to help & support other women in leveling up their businesses.

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?

Hey there, I’m Stephanie, but around here, they call me Miss Money Moves. Why? Because I’m the brains behind Money Moves Management, and I’ve been working in the world of entrepreneurship for over a decade now.

I’ve worn many different hats in many different industries, like hospitality, personal finance, real estate, and sports, to name a few. After years of successfully managing a crazy calendar of odd jobs in too many industries to count, I realized it was something I was — pardon my language — pretty f*cking good at. So I thought, why not create a service that can help small business owners succeed by giving them more time and freeing up mental space?

For the past three years, I’ve been working to revolutionize how entrepreneurs use Instagram to catapult their businesses to new heights. Your Instagram feed isn’t just a platform for pretty pictures—it’s a launchpad for your entrepreneurial journey. And I’m here to show you how to make every post count.

My passion? Making your life easier. Whether it’s equipping you with the tools you need to amplify your brand, connecting you with the right people to fuel your success, or handpicking the perfect VA to support your hustle, consider me your ultimate wingwoman on the path to entrepreneurial greatness.

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

When I first started building my social media I truly had no idea where it was going to go. It was mostly for myself personally to start learning about personal finance. Then I stumbled across a story that said “Looking to hire a VA, DM me to apply.” I thought to myself, “Well I’ve been an assistant in the real world, I’m sure I could figure out how to do it virtually.” So I slid up on the story & introduced myself.

The next thing you know I was on a zoom interview pitching myself as a Virtual Assistant. After landing that first client, they had about 20,000 followers at the time in 2021 – I started to learn everything I could about Instagram from them.

From simple commenting & liking hacks to bigger picture content creation & ideas. I spend hours on Instagram before & after my day job learning & engaging & always trying new things.

Two of the biggest things I’ve learned after helping that original client get to 111,000 followers & adding new clients to the mix while also working on my personal brand is that you have to focus on the community. Engage with your followers. Use social media to be SOCIAL. That is the best way to grow. Make connections, do collabs, share people’s posts, & show up for the followers who are supporting you.

Also don’t forget to do what works for you & be authentic to yourself. The right audience will find you & the sales will come.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

The biggest thing that helped be build a reputation within my market was to niche ALL the way down. I had originally worked with finance creators solely. I got good at what they were doing, learned a lot about their market & because of that other finance creators trusted me with their content. Because I was established in that particular niche.

Once I had enough income from my finance creator clients is when I began to brand out slowly. Not to just anyone but to people I knew. As I grew my virtual assistant business I would run into a lot of people that would ask “How do you do social media?” They needed help because they couldn’t even wrap their head around posting consistently much less actually getting sales from their brands page. This when I started to work more 1 on 1 with smaller brands & business. Which is also what has led Money Moves Management into launching it’s new Money Makers Course to help you with ALL the basics of growing your online brand/business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://moneymovesmgmt.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ms_money_moves/

Image Credits
@andreamichellephotography