Jenny Melrose

Transcript:

Narrator
Welcome to The Best of LKN, a podcast featuring the best small businesses and the most influential professionals around Lake Norman, North Carolina. Each week, we spotlight those businesses and individuals that are making a positive impact here in the Lake Norman area. Thanks for joining us enjoy the show.

Jeff
Welcome back to The Best of LKN. This is Lake Norman’s number one small business podcast, where we work each and every day to elevate the Lake Norman small business community and introduce you to the best and brightest small business owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and leaders of local nonprofit organizations. I want to first give a shout out to our sponsors who make the work we do here at The Best of LKN possible. We appreciate the support of our sponsors and brand partners more than I can possibly say. I encourage you to get to know these exceptional local small businesses by going to our homepage at thebestoflkn.com. There you’ll find a list of all of our platform sponsors with links to follow to learn more about their businesses. While you’re on our homepage, go ahead and sign up for our weekly email newsletter. It’s packed with links to all of our latest podcast episodes, blog articles, and our newest YouTube videos. We’re also including local upcoming events that we think might interest you. So, hop on over to thebestoflkn.com after you listen to this episode, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter, it’s free, easy to sign up, and a great way to show some support for The Best of LKN platform. In this episode digital content and influencer marketing expert, Jenny Melrose, joins us to share the story of her entrepreneurial journey. Jenny is the founder of jennymelrose.com, a business that combines her passion for teaching with her extensive experience in creating strategic content for online business owners. I have to warn you, I do a lot more talking in this episode than usual. Jenny is a subject matter expert in topics that I find fascinating and many of the concepts we discuss are very relevant to the work we do here at The Best of LKN. So, forgive me if I nerd out a little bit in this episode. Let’s go ahead and roll my interview with Jenny Melrose.

Jeff
Joining me today is Jenny Melrose. She is the founder of jennymelrose.com. Jenny, welcome to the podcast.

Jenny
Thank you so much for having me, Jeff. I’m excited to have this conversation.

Jeff
I am too. I’m a little nervous, you’re a prolific podcaster yourself. So, I’m feeling the pressure here a little bit.

Jenny
Don’t feel any sort of pressure. You’ve got to remember; I’m used to just talking and that’s the best type of conversation to have.

Jeff
I love it. And that’s what these episodes are all about. Just conversations with local businesses, owners and entrepreneurs and freelancers. So, this is cool. You happen to be in a space that I really have a lot of interest in for obvious reasons. You know, we produce a media platform ourselves, a dot com, with a podcast and long form written articles. And of course, we’re active on social media and always looking for information and advice on how to do things better and more efficiently. So, this is gonna be really cool, because that’s really an area of your expertise, and you even produce courses on the topic. We’re gonna dive into that. But Jenny, before we get started, I do want to first give a shout out to Laura Tompkins who is the principal at Laurel Belle Photography. Laura was a guest on the podcast a few episodes back and she was kind enough to introduce me to you and I’m so happy that she did, so many thanks to Laura. Really appreciate her connecting us.

Jenny
Yes, absolutely. Laura is one of my favorites. She’s actually my photographer, she shot the cover for my book and does all of my branding photos.

Jeff
She is so talented and so creative and really, really good at brand imagery. Full disclosure, we’ve actually connected to do some brand imagery for our platform as well. So yeah, really happy. Really happy about that. Jenny, share for the listeners a little bit of your background. Before we get into jennymelrose.com, what were you doing in your previous life, your previous career? Where are you from and what inspired your own business?

Jenny
Absolutely. So, I am previously from New York, an hour north of New York City. I was a former inner city school district reading specialist. I taught there for nine years. I loved teaching. I loved my students. I just didn’t love the way that administration handled things. And slowly started to realize that it was not the right place for me because I walked into school every day feeling like a failure because I wasn’t able to service the students the way they needed to be, because there were so many students that were behind and not enough of me to go around. I started my first site called The Melrose Family, which created quick and easy recipes and projects for busy parents. Back in 2010, when my daughter was six months old, and I was still a full-time teacher, I needed something that was my own. I had lost myself as a new mother. I really didn’t understand my role, and I just really needed something that was mine that I could kind of have that creative outlet, and then still get to be mom and really understand what that dynamic looked like. I quickly realized after attending my first conference, probably about a year into it, I went to a conference called Blog Her which was in New York City at that time, and attended with thousands of other bloggers, and listened and had the opportunity to actually sit at a table where the women I was sitting with were full-time bloggers making six figures, retiring their husbands, they had, they have been doing it probably for about five to six years. Because still at 2011-12, it was a newer kind of online marketing, what does that look like? But realized from them, I could make an income from this. And from that point on, I started trying to really figure out, how do I grow my presence, my audience? What do I better understand about my audience? What problems do I solve for them? And then I was able to grow that site to replace my New York teaching salary of $75,000, back in 2015. And I retired from teaching at the age of 35. We then moved from New York to North Carolina, because we needed to get out of the cold. And we loved the weather down here. And of course, taxes and housing costs and everything else, it was just a much better fit down here. And I started blogging full time. Then in 2019, I sold The Melrose Family for six figures, because I also had started this Jenny Melrose side of my business. When I retired from teaching, bloggers, I was routinely getting asked to speak across the country, at conferences, of course, pre-COVID, which I’m really excited I actually attended my first event, probably two, three weeks ago in Chicago for the first time, and got to speak again in front of people, and it was amazing to be able to do it again. But because of the speaking opportunity that I had; I would always come home with a ton of emails in my inbox. What do I say when this happens? What do I do to do this? What about this? And at that time, I was reading Pat Flynn’s Will It Fly?, who I know you also are a fan of. And Pat had talked about, if you’re getting a routine, the same questions over and over again, that’s a problem that needs to be solved that they think you can solve, which I could, you need to create a product or service that solves that. So, I decided to create a course. I reached back into my education background. That is my zone of genius. Over all the years I have figured out like that is what I am good at. I am great at being able to teach and educate people at whatever level they’re at, to understand how to be able to move forward from where they are. Not from someone that’s, you know, six years down the road compared to they’re only six months in, so I created courses. I have workshops. I do in person. I run masterminds. I do one-on-one coaching. I really like to get into people’s businesses and see how they can grow online. What could they be doing differently in order to increase their revenue as a business? I primarily love to work with females because for me, it’s that women empowerment. My purpose in my business, is to truly make sure that the little girls that are in my clients’ lives, see them running successful businesses. Because I wasn’t someone that saw women running their own businesses. And I want them to realize that that is a possibility for them.

Jeff
I love it. Yeah, you mentioned Pat Flynn and I am a big fan of Pat Flynn as well. I’ve been following him for several years, even before I started producing my own podcasts and it was a great place for me to turn to when it came time to start producing my own podcast. So, I learned a lot from Pat Flynn but there’s so much more to Pat Flynn than just podcasting you know, and I do also love how he addresses the sort of stigma or misunderstanding around passive income. And I’m holding up finger quotes because while passive income is yes passive, there is a lot of work upfront that goes into creating a passive income platform. So, I love that he addresses that as well and so many other topics. The Melrose Family, that was a food blog?

Jenny
It was primarily food. I did do some like party planning projects, things that would go along with it. But it was primarily food. I enjoyed doing the photography side of the food, I didn’t enjoy shooting the projects and little things. So, it was probably 80% food.

Jeff
Yeah, I love it. On another podcast, the Charlotte podcast, I interviewed a couple years ago, a very prolific Instagram food blogger. Where To Eat Charlotte is the account, and Miranda Mounts is the creator. And so, I got to ask you, well, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna save this question for a little later, remind me so I can circle back. There’s a question I have about that particular topic for you. You mentioned that you created your first courses to address these common questions you are getting from guests and followers and students. And you’re absolutely right, Pat Flynn is one name that comes to mind that talks a lot about the topic of, not only are these ideas for course creation, but also, they save you a lot of time if you can encapsulate the answers to these questions into a digital platform or a digital service that you can direct folks to it saves you a lot of time too. You’re not constantly answering the same questions all the time.

Jeff
Yes, absolutely. And the thing I love about courses, it’s they’re strategic, I believe in you can’t go from A to Z, you have to actually do all the steps in between. And that’s the way that I teach. So, courses just made a ton of sense for me. That was the first product that I put out when I started jennymelrose.com.

Jeff
Well, let’s talk about jennymelrose.com. What are, share with for the listeners, just kind of an overview of the products and services that you produce for clients there at jennymelrose.com.

Jenny
Yes, so I have a podcast that I have now had for five years. And that is my primary way of getting content out there so that people can listen in to a lesson is the way I look at it. Again, I go back to those teacher ways. I always am giving strategies, and then usually always have some sort of homework that I’m looking for them to do so that they can actually implement it. From the podcast, you can then, based on the topics, I teach anything from pitching, as far as pitching to brands to get sponsored content. So, for like influencers, because that was how I was actually able to replace my teaching income. And I never had those huge influencer numbers that we think about, like 500,000 followers on Instagram, I was always smaller, I would consider myself a micro-influencer. But I was able to pitch brands and show them that my audience was the perfect fit. And that is what my primary signature course is about. It’s about how to pitch brands and make a long-term, actual contracts and revenue from doing that. I also teach on email marketing, the importance of making sure that you’re growing your email list, and then how to actually get followers to a website. Because a lot of people think that they can just, especially when you hear the word blog, I always like to say website because people hear the word blog, and they think, oh, you’re just writing about what you ate today, or you’re just writing about the trip that you took. Because it had a very negative stigma when blogs first came out, that’s what it was. It’s like a journal. It’s like a diary that people often kept. Whereas now, that’s not what blogs are at all. They are using SEO. They are doing keyword research to make sure that they are answering the problems that you are asking for. And those that are not seeing traffic coming to their websites and are creating content of usually not doing keyword research, or don’t understand that you can’t create a title that no one is looking for, or content that no one is looking for. The best example I can give of this because I know when people are like keyword research SEO that sounds way too technical. But I had a Valentine’s Day project that I did for The Melrose Family, and it was called something fruit cups. Oh, lovebug fruit cups because they were a Valentine’s Day gift. No one is searching for lovebug fruit cups. But it went viral on Pinterest because back when Pinterest wasn’t really paying attention to SEO at that time. And I realized I’m getting a ton of traffic, people obviously like this, this is something that people are wanting to have but they’re not searching for that. But they are searching DIY Valentine’s Day gifts, non-candy. And as soon as we switched it up and started using that term more in the post, still calling it something cute like lovebug fruit cups was still kind of in there. That is what drove the traffic then to that particular article. So really starting to think about like what are the terms that your people are putting into Google to look and find that. Whether it is a recipe, whether you are talking about the best bathing suits. What is it that is going to actually drive the traffic to your site?

Jeff
Absolutely. And that really hits home because we’ve been doing so much keyword research over the last year since we began our longer-form written articles. Our, finger quote, blog for the website. And again, I don’t like using that term either because it has those connotations of the daily journal from years ago of someone just basically pouring their heart out there. But, if you ask a group of people, small business owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers, you know, do you, how often do you read a blog, they’ll say, I don’t read blogs. And I understand. I don’t expect anyone to really pour over blogs every morning, you know, before they go to work, or in the evening at night. But in reality, we all read a blog, when we punch a search term into Google, you know, ask Google a question. Your search results are going to, it’s going to bring up blogs more often than not, you know? Video, of course, is huge now too and YouTube is owned by Google, so that’s gonna, you’re gonna get some video results as well. But, you know, that technically, that’s what you’re reading when you’re finding information on Google. It’s a blog article, and that’s to your point, what we create our articles for is to answer those common questions about the Lake Norman area. You know, where to eat, where to go, where to hike, where to, you know, where should we have our daughter’s wedding reception? You know, and that sort of thing. So yeah, I love that. I can talk on and on about blogging, it’s such a hot topic here at The Best of LKN lately. But I want to move on, out of consideration for your time. Pitching brands, that was your original, was that your original course?

Jenny
Yes, it’s the signature. It’s one that I’m best known for, especially amongst bloggers. That is what I’m normally asked to speak on because that was where the majority of my income came from. And a lot of them assume that they need to have huge numbers in order to do that. Well, like I said, I never had 10,000 followers on Instagram. My blog probably saw less than 200,000 page views, which I know some are listening and going, that’s a lot of page views. But there are other bloggers out there that see a million page views in 30 days, or they have 500,000 followers on Instagram. But I was consistently able to make upwards of $75,000, if not more just on sponsoring income, and that wasn’t my only way that I was diversifying my income. So, I had a unique way of going about it. A lot of people thought that they had to wait for the brands to reach out to them. And I believe you reach out to them and find the right person and talk about your audience and the problems that you solve. And it works for anything from working with influencers reaching out to work with brands, but also to like land on podcast, or to pitch your product or services, to speak at a conference, whatever that might look like for you and your business.

Jeff
Well, 200,000 page views per month is a lot in my world, for sure. But in the food website space. That’s not it, obviously, it’s a huge space and extremely competitive. So, that brings up a topic that I wanted to kind of get your insights about, and that would be narrowing down your audience. Producing content or producing courses or your influence toward a narrower market. What advice would you have like in the space of picking a niche?

Jenny
Yes. So, this is such a good question. And it’s one that I think a lot of people that are influencers or bloggers or even business owners sometimes make this mistake too or thinking that they can just talk about all their interests. We know that you are multi passionate, we know that you have lots of different interests that you could probably talk on. You need to pick one-ish and keep it within that realm, which is what we’re talking about when we say niche. The reason for this is because people are going to come to you for that problem. If you start talking about your diet, and then you start talking about your fashion, and then you’re talking about your hair, it’s all over the place and people don’t know what to expect from you then. So, I always tell people, like when you’re trying to figure out what your niche is, you want to think about, what are you really good at? What is it that comes to you naturally? Think about the questions that people routinely come to you for. Are they asking you, hey, how did you lose that weight? Or how did you meal plan? Or you always have the cutest outfits. Where are you getting things from? That then narrows down your niche. And also, you need to be able to combine like, what it is that you’re able to do? Most people, that when you can speak to a niche, it’s because you solved that problem that they’re having a couple years ago. It’s not something that you’re still figuring it out. It’s something that you’ve already figured out, and you’re doing it well in your life.

Jeff
That’s so well said. And it brings up another point that I was hoping we could talk about as well. And that is, you don’t have to be a world-leading expert on a particular topic to have influence in that subject to create content around that subject. And, you know, it could be, everyone really has a skill or something that they’re passionate about that they could create a website about, YouTube content, social media content around, or even digital courses.

Jenny
Yes. Oh, absolutely. There’s always something that you are three steps ahead of someone else. And that’s what you’re going to then create that content about and answer those problems that you knew you had to be able to help them on their journey. And I know some people might be listening and saying, well, I can answer lots of different problems for lots of different people about lots of different things. And they think, well, if I set out a wider net, I’m going to pull in more people. When in reality, you just want a hundred perfect superfans. Pat Flynn again. You want that audience that are going to love you and want to do everything that you do, and not get kind of turned off because all of a sudden, you’re talking about the books that you read, when in reality, you started off as a fashion blogger. They may have no interest in that, and they’re probably going to get turned off. And then they’ll be like, eh, is she really for me? Maybe she’s going in that direction. Now, I’m not going to come back as often as I would have. So, really knowing that you’re trying to, you’re going to end up repelling some people, and you’re going to attract others. When you first asked me what I did, I told you I primarily work with females, I prefer to work with females because I am a female. I understand the pain points that they are going through or have. I often tell, most, a lot of my clients or former teachers, they’re also mothers, because that’s who I am. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t outliers. I definitely have a couple male clients and I have worked with women that are 70, and I’ve also worked with women that are 22. There are definite outliers, they’re going to be attracted to something else about you. And that’s the reason that they’re going to want to work with you. But just being okay with attracting those that you’re meant to attract and repelling those that you’re just not meant to work with.

Jeff
Absolutely, I love that point. And circling back to talking about a person’s expertise in a certain area and where they could create content around. If someone just thinks about, what is it that they know 10% more about than most people in most rooms, you know, like that is a subject that you could create content around, that you could teach other people about. It’s not about being a published author or, you know, being on the speaker circuit. But just knowing 10% more about a certain subject than most people in the room makes you an expert in that room on that subject. And, you know, in a lot of ways, and that’s a good place to start, don’t you think?

Jenny
Absolutely. And honestly one of the best exercises for this to really figure out what you are an expert in is, ask the people in your life.

Jeff
Yeah.

Jenny
What do you think that I know a lot about? Like, what word comes to mind when you think of me? Just seeing what other people because a lot of times we’re too close to it. That’s honestly why most people come to work with me either in a mastermind or one-on-one, is because they’re so close to their business that they can’t see what else is out there that they’re missing. It’s all these little foundational pieces that they’re often missing because you’re just so close to their business and the content they’ve been creating.

Jeff
Absolutely. Ask people who are in your circle who know you, and also think back to over the years or over the past year. What is a topic or question, to your point that you mentioned earlier, that people are constantly asking you about, you know? What are your friends always asking you about advice for that you may not, it may not have registered at the time, but if you think back and think about those topics that people are asking you about? And not having, not needing a million fans. Kevin Kelly’s essay, 1000 True Fans, I think was the title of it, and it’s basically a manifesto of how a creative or an artist can make a living with just the minimal viable audience, right? Seth Godin is always talking about that minimum viable audience. And Pat Flynn echoes those sentiments as well, and so many other really highly successful creators and experts in this space. But, you know, Kevin Kelly’s argument is like, if you have 1000 fans who pay you $100 a year, you know, that’s a living for most people, you know? And a living is different for everybody. How you kind of scale it for what you need, but you don’t necessarily need a million views on TikTok to be, you know, in fact that might be totally useless. But that’s a topic for a different discussion. Very cool. My next topic, and I’m gonna kind of circle back to the Miranda Mounts and her food blog, her Instagram blog. The question I had from Miranda was at the time is, you know, do you have a website? Can you, are you sharing this on a website? Are you searchable on Google and that sort of thing? And she had the domain, it was parked, but there’s no content there. And I thought that it was unfortunate that this, it’s content that seems like it should be on property. An analogy I’m always trying to use is, property that you own, you know, that you can control, kind of, and that is your domain, your website. What are some of your favorite technologies for influencers, for small business owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers, to share their knowledge and spread their influence? What are your favorite platforms?

Jenny
So, I think a website is definitely important. You said something that, you know, the idea that it’s something that you own. I always tell people, social media is rented property, it’s not anything that you own. They can change the algorithm, they can decide that your content isn’t appropriate because you used something that might have been or had a little bit more of a political lean, even though you didn’t mean it that way. They get to decide, and there’s nothing that you can do about it. It is a free platform for you to get to use to be able to reach more people and to grow an audience. So, although I’m not going to say don’t use social media, I am going to say have something that is yours. Have a website, have an email list, make sure that you are growing that email list so that you have people that you can email when you do put up new content. And then my personal favorite social media platform is definitely Instagram. I like it because I can have conversations in my DMs with the people that are following. If they have questions, I can respond to it. I actually, as part of my podcast, always tell them, hey, if you have a question, and you’re listening in, or you want the guide that I just talked about, send me a DM on Instagram, and I’ll send it right over to you. That is the easiest way to then continue the conversation and say, hey, how often are you listening to the podcast? What episodes are your favorite? What do you want more content of? Just being able to better understand your audience, Instagram definitely gives you the ability to be able to do that. But again, social media is going to have the, you’re gonna be at the mercy of the algorithms and what potentially could happen, the new trends that are coming out. And then does it actually result, because you are a business, does it result in income? One of the things that I often see, especially in the Charlotte area in particular, those that are influencers that will go on Instagram stories, and they’ll do an affiliate for something, or they’ll tag something, they are looking, they are very close to potentially getting their accounts shut down. Because they’re not disclosing that it’s sponsored. This is something that it’s an FTC guideline. You can’t just hop on and talk about the latest dress that you found and link to it, and it be an affiliate link where you’re going to get a portion of the proceeds and not disclaim that. That is a big part of what you have to do as an influencer. So, instead of trying to do it on social media, having that website that you’re going to do the 10 best spring dresses for the south. That’s something someone’s probably searching for. Or the 15 best wedding dresses to wear in Charleston. Those kinds of things are more specific, Google’s going to look for it, and you can still use that content on Instagram. One, make sure that you’ve disclosed. Two, reuse it, repurpose it. Just because you’re creating content in one platform does not mean you need to create entirely new content on another. Repurpose what you’re doing so that if you’re creating a blog post, that’s your Instagram post. Find a way to use it. You could actually take that 15 dress idea for the weddings in Charleston and make 15 different posts for Instagram. You just had 15 dresses, why not talk about all 15 as posts? You have more content than you actually realize, when you are creating that article, that thing that Google is going to search for.

Jeff
Absolutely. I’m so glad you mentioned Instagram as one of your favorite social media platforms, because I was afraid you were gonna mention a platform that we’re not on. And I thought I’m gonna have to start all over. But yeah, we’re very active on Instagram and Facebook, and more so on Instagram, but we do have a Facebook account as well. And yeah, unfortunately, the social media platforms, especially when it comes to businesses, and anything that might take a user or redirect a user from that platform off of that platform, the network’s just not going to put that in front of your followers. Even people who follow your account, it’s just not going to happen unless you pay to play, and I get it. It’s a, you know, what they say, if the platform is free, you are the product. That’s again, a different conversation. But yeah, I mean, but starting with a blog, starting with an online, a digital, a website, is a great way to create that content on a place where property, like you said, that you own, and easily shareable to social media networks. And that’s great content that transferred so easily to Instagram. And that’s actually the path we take. We create off social first, and then we share it to social. So, that’s kind of the path we take. The email list is so important. And so like, it’s so frustrating to me when I talk to a small business owner, but especially someone in the professional services area or sales, professional salespeople. Like, I’ll just name a couple of industries that, like realtors, mortgage brokers, insurance agents, there’s so much value in your email list. Pat Flynn tells a story about how years ago, when even your website, which you own, can crash, can fail. And if that’s a big driver of leads, lead gen or revenue for your business, you’re, you know, dead in the water if the host crashes. And the website is down for a few days. But he had his email list. And he was able to keep the business going through email communications, through email blasts and broadcasts. So, yeah, email is not dead. Blogging is not dead. Email is not far from being unuseful.

Jenny
Yes. And I think a lot of like the industries that you mentioned, the mortgage broker, the real estate agent, their pushback is always, well, they’re not selling their house right now, or they’re not looking to get a mortgage right now, so why would I have them on my email list? Who’s to say in five years from now that they’re not? And if you’ve been nurturing them with giving them updates about how the market is going, or what you should make sure you do in your house, if you’re looking to potentially put it on the market. Just once a week even to get into there or once a month, bare minimum. They are going to go to you rather than going to Facebook and saying, hey, does anybody have a good real estate agent? Because that’s how most people are getting their referrals. But if you’re in their inbox, they’re going to go to you. It’s all about getting in front of them and creating that relationship and nurturing them with your emails.

Jeff
Yeah, and staying relevant, right? And staying top of mind and relevant and send, you know, again, don’t try to, it’s not necessary to try to appeal to a million people. You can send the content that’s relevant for the people that you want to work with, that are your ideal customers or clients. And it might not even be, if you’re a realtor, your content might not even be real estate related. You know, there’s a realtor in Lake Norman he’s, oh I forget his Instagram account name, but he’s a wakeboarder. And he’s, I think it’s like The LKN Guy or something. But he’s big into wakeboarding and boating and that’s his tribe. He’s in that circle and that’s his network and he creates a lot of social media content around waterskiing and wakeboarding. And so, you know, again, you don’t need 100,000 of those people. You just find your 1000 true fans and it can lead to a lot of success. Of your courses, pitching brands, I might have to follow up with you after this. That’s one that I think would be very useful for me and the team here at The Best of LKN. And of course, email marketing is always just important technology to stay up to date on and want to make sure that we’re bringing as much value as we can to our email list, to our email newsletter subscribers. We don’t want to lose them, you know, they mean so much to us. And we want to make sure that we’re constantly delivering value, so I’m going to talk to you offline about this and see how I can get started in one of these courses. All right, another question that I love to bring up with my guests and kind of puts you on the spot because there are so many local small businesses that we want to just give shoutouts to and show so much love for. But I do ask my guests to kind of narrow it down to two or three or four local small businesses that have either been great partners for you and your business or are just local businesses that you and your family adore. Do you have a few that you could give shout outs to?

Jenny
Yes, absolutely. Natasha Hemingway is a great one for sales. If you are someone that is trying to improve your sales, she works one on one, also has courses on improving sales. Then there’s also The Wright Design. It’s actually W-R-I-G-H-T, if you are looking for actually like little signs, little things. She’s more of a creative, which are my first love, of course, having been that blogger that used to create that type of content. But The Wright Design is a great one. And then also JC Art is an excellent one. Drew and Courtney Langdon. They do all logo designs, as well as they’ll do designs for T-shirts. They do the printing for the T-shirts, they just are, she is so creative and just gets what it is that you’re looking to put out there in a different format than most people aren’t used to being offline. And then of course also does like logo designs and things of that nature as well.

Jeff
Natasha Hemingway, The Wright Design, W-R-I-G-H-T, and JC Art?

Jenny
JC Art, yep.

Jeff
Okay, I’ll have links in the show notes, of course. And I also want to point out, and of course, we mentioned Laurel Belle Photography, Laura Tompkins. I’ll have links to her business as well, and her episode. I have to say, you’ve done extremely well, you’re the first guest, this will be episode 100 and something, and you’re the first guest that I didn’t get topics to ahead of time and you absolutely nailed this just shooting from the hip. So, you’ve really, I’m really impressed. There’s no way I could do it.

Jenny
Well, thank you. That’s the best. Honestly, my favorite interviews are the ones where I don’t know the questions so it can just be very genuine. And it is that kind of conversation of trying to figure out what is the most important information that people need to have in order to move forward.

Jeff
Absolutely. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I love conversations where we don’t, you know, we’re not scripted. So, yeah, I agree. You mentioned Pat Flynn’s book, Will It Fly? Are there some other resources, books, or any recommended resources that you could share?

Jenny
Yes. So, On Purpose, regardless of what you do in your business, especially my women, by Tanya Dalton, is amazing. And then there’s also We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers, which was excellent. I’m looking at my bookshelves as I’m doing this, making sure I’m not forgetting anything that’s like, something I definitely want to say. Yeah, those are the two that absolutely come to mind right away.

Jeff
Excellent. Yeah, I’ll have the titles in the show notes as well. On Purpose. Tanya Dalton, and We Should All Be Millionaires by whom, who is the author there?

Jenny
Rachel Rodgers and Rodgers is R-O-D-G-E-R-S.

Jeff
Rachel Rogers. All right, very cool. I’ll have those links, or at least the titles in the show notes as well. In fairness to our local independent booksellers that we love and adore so much, I don’t put Amazon links anymore in the show notes for books. But I will have the titles and I will recommend that you visit your local independent bookstore, if possible, to pick up the book. But if not, you know, do what you got to do. So, Jenny, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. Share with listeners how they can learn more about Jenny Melrose. Where are the places to go? And what are the platforms?

Jenny
Absolutely. The best place to go is the website, jennymelrose.com. You’ll be able to see all of my courses linked there as well as my book, which I should have mentioned, which my PR person is gonna be like why didn’t just say it? So, I also have a book that can be picked up it’s called Influencer Entrepreneurs. It’s a four-step framework for building your audience, growing your business, and making money online. But everything is there, any of the guides that I have, depending upon what your interest is. And then of course, the best social media platform is Instagram for me, and it’s @jenny_melrose. Send me a DM, I’m happy to answer any questions that you might have. Oh, and the podcast, of course, is also linked on jennymelrose.com.

Jeff
Influencer Entrepreneurs?

Jenny
Yes, that’s correct.

Jeff
By Jenny Melrose, I’ll have that title of course, front and center in the show notes as well. And jennymelrose.com. And at Jenny underscore Melrose on Instagram. Jenny, where do you live?

Jenny
I live in Denver.

Jeff
Okay. Just for the listeners, wanted to let you know that this Jenny is a Lake Norman area resident. That’s the whole keeping things in the context. That’s why we connected for this podcast. So, wonderful. Thank you, Jenny. Again, thank you so much for joining the podcast. This has been a real pleasure and I appreciate your time.

Jenny
Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Jeff. I appreciate it.

Jeff
Big thanks to Jenny Melrose for joining The Best of LKN podcast and for sharing her expertise with us. Friends, you can learn more about Jenny and her work online at jennymelrose.com and follow her on Instagram @jenny_melrose. I’ll have those links as well as the links to the businesses Jenny recommended during our conversation in the show notes for this episode. As always, you can find the complete show notes for all of our episodes at the home for Lake Norman’s number one small business podcast, www.thebestoflkn.com. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for our free weekly email newsletter. It’s easy to sign up and a great way to stay up to date on the new content we’re releasing each week. It’s also just a great way to support The Best of LKN podcast. Huge thanks to our sponsors for their support of our efforts here at The Best of LKN. We simply couldn’t keep this going without them. And we are so proud to feature their businesses on our platform. You can learn more about our sponsors on our homepage at thebestoflkn.com and also in the show notes for this episode. We have two new sponsors at The Best of LKN, local leaders in the mortgage and real estate industries. I look forward to introducing them to you very soon. They are the best of the best in the Charlotte and Lake Norman region, and we are so proud to partner with them. Stay tuned for more on these sponsors in the coming weeks. For now, that’s going to do it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening in and following along on our journey as we connect with the best and brightest small business owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and nonprofits in the Lake Norman area. We’ll be back next week with another episode, same time, same place. So, until then, cheers Lake Norman. Bye for now.

Narrator
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of The Best of LKN. For more information about this podcast, show notes, video episodes, and links to our featured businesses, please visit www.thebestoflkn.com. We publish episodes weekly, so be sure to subscribe and stay up to date. Until next time, cheers Lake Norman.