Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Lynn.
Jennifer, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was going to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for civil engineering and needed a way to pay for school so I started working trade shows through agencies on the weekends back in the city. I leveraged my tech education to become an in-demand asset for medical and technology companies that wanted to generate leads at the conventions.
Then, around the time I left UIUC, the economy tanked, the construction market bubble burst and I needed to pivot. Salaries dropped for civil engineers, job security was gone, and there wasn’t light at the end of the tunnel. To top it all off my father was sick and commuting 2 hours a day, working 50+ hour weeks, and making half what I thought I would be making in an industry struggling for building projects was not worth it.
The ah-ha moment came when I realized a lot of well-educated people were having issues finding work across all industries. Just like that, I set out to create a trade show agency that connected college-educated talent with trade show exhibitors looked for knowledgeable, hardworking talent to generate leads — Motivated Models. By moonlighting at night I managed to make the website, collateral, content, and graphics myself from scratch. This was before the internet was as competitive and savvy as it is now. When everything was in place and ready to go, I made that my full-time job and haven’t looked back.
Motivated Models has grown leaps and bounds above what I could have initially imagined. Our list of clients and talent are constantly growing and the areas we serve are expanding. We have provided models, artists, and staff for household brands and fortune 500 companies all the way down to representing mom and pop shops as well as startups.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Growth is a product of overcoming challenges, and we’ve had our fair share. Part of it comes with owning a business, part of it is a product of chance. We had our servers fail which rendered our online database useless until it was repaired (which, despite being with a large hosting provider, took nearly a week), an account manager that was affected by cancer twice during his time with us, a large client that filed chapter 11 and we were never paid in full for the work rendered, our website was hacked, checks to talent were lost in the mail, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But, that comes with the territory and for every hiccup, there are dozens of moments that I was overjoyed from our successes.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Motivated Models – what should we know?
Motivated Models provides models and talent to clients that are looking to make an impact at live events, in print, and on camera. We specialize in providing clients with trade show lead generators. We provide the most qualified and highest quality talent to our customers in order to obtain quality results for our clients.
Our selection of talent combined with our management team provides a successful end result. Our hand-picked and qualified talent demonstrates products, gathers crowds, excites audiences, promotes featured and key products, directs customer questions to the appropriate personnel, maximizes press opportunities and much more! We make sure our clients get the most qualified leads possible from a trade show. With our service, our client’s cost per lead decreases significantly.
The way we achieve this is by qualifying trade show attendees; we ask a simple question which will determine whether or not they are a potential client – due to our due diligence most of them are! If they say yes, we give them a one-sentence description of what our client’s company does (or what their message for this show is) and invite them to speak with their on-site representative. It is a very high-class approach, and most importantly, it works!
The other portion of our business comes from print and on-camera talent assisting clients that have ad campaigns, runway shows, industrials, and video spots. For clients with product launches or those that have entertainment needs, we have a division that handles those requests as well. As an agency, we try to be humble, hungry, and honest. Part of this is striving to identify how our clients measure success and making sure we meet and exceed those metrics, whenever possible. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
Over the years we have grown from a small agency in one geographic area to one that can serve clients in multiple countries and continents. Successfully executing contracts across the globe is exhilarating and humbling.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
In this day and age, being on top of technology is important. Staying in-the-know means staying in the game and to do that one must constantly be learning. Making sure our team and myself are always up to speed on SEO tactics, new business products that help streamline processes, and social media marketing has become even more important as the years go by.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.MotivatedModels.com
- Phone: 707-968-7536
- Email: info@MotivatedModels.com
- Instagram: MotivatedModels
- Facebook: facebook.com/motivatedmodels
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/motivatedmodels
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