Jaime Weatherby, Weatherby Media, Hooksett, NH
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| Jaime Weatherby, Owner, Weatherby Media |
Jaime Weatherby, a solo entrepreneur who started Weatherby Media LLC, has an immense passion for entrepreneurship and helping women owned business find their digital voice to get their products, services and unique talents to the populations that they serve. Weatherby Media launched in 2016, but the behind-the-scenes work started about 2 years before that. Jaime’s business is a direct reflection of her personal values of female empowerment and owning your own future.
When she graduated college from Northeastern University in 2011, she faced what felt like an insurmountable hurdle as a young adult that many young people today face – immense student loan debt. After working through college, attending a great school and leaving with a great GPA, she quickly realized that she would need to create an outside-the-box solution to live the life she thought she was working towards. Waiting tables almost full time and working a full time, entry-level, low responsibility job that allowed her to balance the two was not going to cut it forever. She started to creatively think of how she can live the life she always wanted despite her student loan debt.
Taking the Entrepreneurial Path
As a result of her career coaching experience, she launched “CareerPeak” a career coaching business to support individuals looking to kick start their job search and build their ideal careers. Although coaching and empowering individuals is a strength and passion of Jaime’s, she came to a very common obstacle when starting a business - the model wasn’t quite right. First, she was marketing to individuals who were unemployed or underemployed, there was very little repeat business, and the second she did her job (her client got a new job) it put her out of the job – not great. At this point, even though she loved the work and it was something she was passionate and skilled at, it wasn’t what she was looking for.
As she came to this realization her father, a serial entrepreneur himself, was launching a new health insurance business. In all her research, Jaime had learned how to build websites, advertise on social media and run email-marketing campaigns for CareerPeak. She jumped in to help her father get his digital marketing strategy off the ground. After that, she supported a friend who owned a hair and nail salon do the same. It was at this point that Weatherby Media started to gain momentum organically.
Find the Right Resources
With a starter client base, Jaime sought out resources to expedite her growth and cover her bases as a small business. The Center for Women & Enterprise (CWE) through the Small Business Administration became the integral resource she discovered to support her business in its early stages. She met with the CWE Director to discuss her 5-year business plan, client acquisition and revenue model and scalability tactics. After gaining more clarity, Jaime discovered she needed to meet with experts to understand how to manage her business finances and taxes, and create contracts to protect her in long-term partnerships. CWE connected her with two different expert volunteers, a CPA and a lawyer, to tackle both issues. With this support, Jaime continues to grow her business, leverage CWE’s workshops, networking and teaching opportunities.
Weatherby Media LLC now has an annual revenue of about $25,000 a year, which has given Jaime the freedom to cover her student loans and then some within the first 6-months of her first client. She once thought she had to figure out how to live the quality of life that she wanted despite her student loans but now she knows that she will live a life better than she had imagined because of them. Without this obstacle to force her out of her comfort zone and away from the ordinary path she never would have met the extraordinary women at the CWE who helped her realize her limitless potential to pave her own way outside of a nine to five.
"To us, being a small business owner or entrepreneur is a little bit like being a super hero.
You create something from absolutely nothing taking a risk and leap of faith because you know the impact you can have on the world around you while creating the life you have been dreaming about.
We believe it's BOLD. We believe it's BRAVE. We believe it's MAGICAL."
Jaime Weatherby, Weatherby Media