Jen Naye Herrmann of The Marketing Greenhouse: Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started My Consulting Business

An Interview With Doug Brown

You will never be ready, so go before you’re ready. It’s important to be prepared but work towards 80% ready and launch. You’ll never launch perfectly. It’s better to launch and learn. I did this with my first online course. While it financially wasn’t my most successful endeavor, I broke even and learned a ton.

As a part of my series called “Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started My Consulting Business ”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jen Naye Herrmann.

Jen is a former corporate brand marketer turned small business digital and marketing strategy consultant. She has a proven track record of leading cross functional teams and managing projects through the entire product lifecycle at both MillerCoors and Dyson. She launched Girl Meets Party in 2015, with a newsletter totaling 100K impressions a month. In 2020 she launched The Marketing Greenhouse and sold $200K of project and retainer work in the first year.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I spent 10 years in corporate brand marketing building bigger brands like Dyson and Coors Light. I’ve always been curious and love learning, so I started a blog 5 years ago and grew an Instagram following. After three years, I built enough revenue to go full time and I took a leap of faith.

After leaving the strategic marketing work behind, I missed it and started consulting. Freelancing alongside, my now business partner, Jessie Bernhardt inspired us to start a business together. I am still a content creator, but am now a Chicago marketing consultant as well.

We founded The Marketing Greenhouse in March 2020. The beauty of forming as the pandemic started is we learned at the forefront to be nimble, pivot quickly and build a business nationwide. Our full service digital marketing agency is intended for businesses that are aspiring to start, scale or structure.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?

I think the most interesting thing that’s happened is we launched two days before “14 days to flatten the curve.” I’m glad we did because if we waited until “the time was right,” we’d still be waiting!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Hands down, my mom. Especially as a mother myself now, I am floored at how she successfully built a business around me. I was fortunate to have her take me to school, pick me up and never miss a sporting event all while she built a successful business. She is always my sounding board and just “gets it” because she’s been there before. I’m forever grateful that she’s always there for me because being an entrepreneur certainly has its highs and lows.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I operate with a mantra of freedom within a framework. I believe in following your creativity but setting guardrails so you’re effective.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. We’d love to learn a bit about your company. What is the pain point that your company is helping to address? What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

The Marketing Greenhouse is unique for a few reasons. First of all, my business partner and I come from entrepreneurial families. We understand family businesses, small businesses and start-ups. We know that good work comes from collaboration and integrity and truly appreciate every investment.

Second of all, as a digital agency, we’re focused on beautiful brilliant strategies, but are hyper-focused on tying them to business goals. We firmly believe that KPIs are the core to all successful marketing strategies.

Most importantly, we are content creators ourselves and test strategies on our own social media pages and blogs before recommending them to clients. It allows us to truly provide the best recommendations possible.

When you first started the business, what drove you, what was your primary motivation?

I always wanted to work for myself and set my own hours. I appreciate the flexibility, and I also love the challenge of jumping into new companies, quickly understanding the lay of the land and making actionable recommendations.

What drives you now? Is it the same? Did it change? Can you explain what you mean?

Now, I’m motivated to build something bigger than myself. We’ve been fortunate to grow our team and I’m very motivated to grow their careers and expand our team further.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes! We are launching the TMG Collective in a few weeks, which is a monthly membership full of information to help people launch their businesses, create their strategies and answer any marketing questions they have in a fast and easy way. Our goal is to help as many people as possible so they can get best-in-class help for a fraction of the price.

In your specific industry what methods have you found to be most effective in order to find and attract the right customers? Can you share any stories or examples?

As content creators ourselves, we find it most beneficial to practice what we preach and be active on social media! I find when I share our availability on social channels and reach out to previous clients, the pipeline fills quickly.

Based on your experience, can you share a few strategies to give your customers the best possible user experience and customer service?

The best think you can do is set clear expectations up front. Before we kick-off a project, I always send a detailed schedule with dates, deliverables and working hours so clients know what to expect. Managing expectations has been our key to success.

Also, building in some time to pivot or go off script is key because something always comes up.

Thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started My Consulting Business”. Please share a story or an example for each.

1. The average overnight success is 6 years. When I first started, I thought I’d be a big success inside of 12 months. That’s what you read about, right? Wrong. It takes years to build credibility and a viable business. I wish someone told me to readjust my expectations and go with the flow.
2. You will never be ready, so go before you’re ready. It’s important to be prepared but work towards 80% ready and launch. You’ll never launch perfectly. It’s better to launch and learn. I did this with my first online course. While it financially wasn’t my most successful endeavor, I broke even and learned a ton.
3. Track your time so you can charge appropriately: I learned to track my hours the first few projects so I could confidently send proposals quickly and be happy with what I was charging.
4. Ask for feedback and a testimonial before you send final work. Gathering testimonials is tough, so build it into your process.
5. Carve out time to try something new and fail. Diversifying your revenue streams allows a business to flourish, but not everything is a slam dunk. We carve out time to try something new every year in hopes that it makes the business that much more robust.

Wonderful. We are nearly done. Here are the final “meaty” questions of our discussion. You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I’m passionate about fueling more women in the workplace. I believe the more we can normalize working with children at home, the more dynamic women can be. It takes away having to “choose” between work and family. Let’s foster a culture that empowers women to successfully do both. At The Marketing Greenhouse, we believe in creating an army of contractors that can set their own hours to build a career while they build a successful home life.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

It would be a dream come true to sit down with Martha Stewart. She has truly built an empire, and I’d love to listen to her tell stories over lunch.

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!