Jerrilynn B. Thomas is the founder of Smart Women Partner & Grow Rich. She partners with female entrepreneurs who may be “sales shy” or “time-starved” but have 7-figure business aspirations. Jerrilynn helps these entrepreneurs to leverage LinkedIn’s key features as a marketing playground to amplify their visibility, build a collaborative marketing tribe, and grow their female client base by positioning themselves in front of its community of 300+ million business and professional women.
If you are interested in working with her, please visit https://smartwomenpartner.com for more information.
What were your initial years of growing up like? Tell us about your life before starting your corporate journey/venture/initiative.
Since my teenage years, I have dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur.
Every industry that is now a large-scale, top-notch business once started as a small idea in the minds of entrepreneurs. What was that idea or motivation that made you start your business /initiative? What motivated you within to say YES, go for it!”
The birth of my twin daughters was the catalyst that pushed me towards starting my own home-based business. The idea of working a 9-to-5 job and paying for daycare just didn’t make sense to me. By the time my third daughter was born, four years later, I had fully established the foundation for my business. Drawing from the public relations and marketing course I had taken in college, I combined it with current events in the early 90s to create a business that assisted mothers in starting their own businesses using their existing job skills. At the time, news and talk shows were frequently highlighting daycare horror stories. To address this, I created a business support group for working mothers where we brainstormed and promoted each other’s business ventures.
Tell us something about your initiative or current role. What is it about, and what impact are you trying to make?
The impact that I am striving for is educating B2B women on the benefits of collaborative marketing partnerships using LinkedIn as their marketing playground. Many women struggle to grow their businesses because they are not marketing in the right place and have the mistaken belief that everyone is a potential customer. Instead, women should utilize LinkedIn to build strategic marketing partnerships with their female connections who offer complementary products and services. By doing so, they can move their ventures forward instead of solely relying on posting sales messages all day long and hoping to find their audience.
Your journey and your vision are very inspiring, but are there any achievements or accomplishments you would like to mention?
Many people are surprised to learn that I am an introvert. My greatest accomplishment is creating a business that accommodates my introverted style of business interaction while also serving as a resource for other women like me. I dislike selling and had to build a business that attracts my target audience. As introverts, we prefer collaborating to market our businesses rather than being in the spotlight and trying to sell to strangers. On LinkedIn, I have established a reputation for facilitating collaborative marketing partnerships between like-minded women.
Would you like to share with our young budding women entrepreneurs the change you would like to see in the world if given an opportunity?
I believe that there should be more attention given to co-marketing ventures led by women, to demonstrate the value of collaborative marketing partnerships and their positive impact on their bottom lines. You don’t see many stories about how women-owned businesses are joining forces to grow together.
What would you want to say to our young women leaders/audience reading this?
Surround yourself with Women on LinkedIn who have Dreams, Desire & Ambition; they’ll help you Push for, and Realize Your Own
