Missouri

As a child, Glam Cam KC owner Melanie Johnson took photos of anything she could find with her mother’s 35mm camera. But it wasn’t until she went to a photography convention in 2019, after years as a medical administrator, that she realized her passion could be her career. “They had a photo booth there,” Melanie recalls, “I stood watching the people in line having fun, and decided I wanted to be the person who makes it fun.” Eight months later, Melanie bought her first photo booth and opened Glam Cam KC, an all-inclusive photo booth experience for weddings, parties, and corporate events. For Melanie, it’s more than just a business. “Guests are having the time of their lives celebrating. I get to freeze those moments and give them a physical memory of that time.” Melanie began with three events in 2019, and today Glam Cam KC has two photo booths that serve dozens of events each year.

Establishing a Google Business Profile was one of the first steps in building Glam Cam KC, and the profile now accounts for about half of business inquiries. “When people look us up on Google and see the reviews, it makes us look credible and more professional,” Melanie says. “That's the first thing I do when I think about going to a business or a restaurant.” Melanie uses Google Workspace to communicate with customers on Gmail, note ideas with Keep, and stay organized with Sheets and Docs. Gemini helps Melanie with marketing, generating text that she uses as a starting point when she’s not feeling creative. “Sometimes I really don't have the bandwidth to come up with something from scratch,” she explains. “That's when I go to Gemini and type in, ‘Start a post for how fun we are at weddings.’” As she grows, Melanie is thinking about making Glam Cam KC a lasting part of her community. When she’s retired someday, she says, “I’d like to still see my logo around town and be like, ‘That’s me!’”

Leaving city life behind, Jake and Becky Grzenda rented a rural property in 2015 to start their family farm, White House on the Hill–with six chickens. Jake was commuting to multiple jobs and farming with Becky in his off hours. But the couple was introduced to another possibility when they turned to YouTube to learn about bird care. “YouTube opened our eyes to this whole other world of homesteading, which is raising your own food, raising your family out in the country,” Jake says. “We saw other families that were doing this and were able to make an income.” Taking their cue from those YouTubers, Jake and Becky launched their own YouTube channel in 2017 to share their homesteading journey. Within a year and a half, they had earned enough to dive into content creation full time and stay home with their four children. Today, White House on the Hill’s YouTube channel has over 1 million subscribers, and the family has purchased their own farm where they raise all manner of birds, along with a few pigs and cows.

The Grzendas have about 1.6 million followers across social media, but YouTube is their most successful platform by far, earning them more than 90 percent of their income. “It’s really the main platform we post content to, and it’s always been the easiest to work with,” Jake says. “They’ve done an amazing job putting our content in front of new viewers so we don’t have to spend time and money advertising.” Jake and Becky use YouTube Analytics to track click-through and retention rates to understand what type of content performs best (exotic bird videos, according to Jake). As the Grzendas continue to grow their YouTube channel, they plan to finish building a large aviary and a horse barn and to expand their own home. “We have a lot of plans to develop our property,” Jake says, “but YouTube has been in the middle of it to help us achieve our goals.”

When Lisa Hu worked in finance, two things became clear: making spreadsheets as colorful as possible was not enough to satisfy her creative urges; and, accessories for professional women were either fashionable or functional, but not both. She founded Lux & Nyx in 2018 to create handbags that are, Lisa says, “discreetly functional.” They combine posh style with durability and plenty of features to help high-achieving women stay organized throughout their busy days. The name, Greek for “light and night,” is a nod to the big leap Lisa made in her own career, as well as to how her bags can transition from workday to evening. “If our products can help women who are working on their careers be more focused and empowered–that’s the goal,” Lisa says. With many of the Lux & Nyx team members working remotely, collaborative Google Workspace tools like Google Meet, Slides, and Calendar keep them working together toward that goal.

Lux & Nyx supplemented early online sales with pop-up events in St. Louis and other cities. “Seeing women supporting other women and having fun together is amazing,” Lisa says. COVID-19 put an end to the pop-ups, clipping the fledgling company’s wings. When Lisa noticed sales coming in from Australia and the UK, insights from Google Analytics told her that a Marie Claire article had generated the leads. “Google Analytics gave me hope that there was something to build on,” Lisa recounts. “We could see where the traffic was coming from and know where to focus our efforts.” Revenue has since grown six- to eightfold and the company is back to hosting events, including identity-building and empowerment sessions, as well as supporting women-focused not-for-profit organizations through donations and onsite retail events. They plan to expand into corporate gifting next. “My spreadsheets aren’t as colorful now,” Lisa jokes. “My creativity finally has an outlet.”

Al Doan and his sister, Sarah Galbraith, bought their mother, Jenny, a long-arm quilting machine as a way for her to make a bit of extra money during the economic downturn of 2008. This led them to eventually forming a company to sell quilting supplies and offer machine-quilting services. “We've always been a little bit entrepreneurial, but we'd never started a business before,” Al says. They soon opened a store in their rural town. “You open a store in a town of 1,500 people and get all 1,500 to come, but that's where it ends,” he says. “You think, all right, what else can we do?”

The family launched a website and considered what came next. “Quilting is challenging, because you can't just go advertise on a quilting channel,” Al says. So they turned to Google products to reach people outside of their city limits. They created their own YouTube channel, where Jenny (a.k.a. Momma Doan) began hosting video quilting tutorials that transformed her into an online star. “She’s sweet, right?” Al asks. “She’s pretty awesome, a ham.” And clearly YouTube viewers agreed, as the success of Missouri Star Quilt Company has surpassed their wildest dreams. They now have more than 300 videos on their YouTube channel and they consistently see more than 100% growth in their business year-over-year. Ninety-five percent of their sales are through their website and they use Google Analytics to track sales and measure the effectiveness of their marketing. The growing business relies on Google Apps for Work to keep employees connected through products like Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Sheets.

Missouri Star Quilt Company now is the largest employer in their rural county. They ship thousands of packages every day to customers around the world. Tour buses filled with quilters sometimes pull up outside the shop, which has become an international quilting destination. Perhaps best of all, in 2015 the U.S. Small Business Administration named Al and his sister the National Small Business Persons of the Year. Neither could quite believe it when they visited the White House for the ceremony. “How are we here? How is this our life?” Al occasionally wonders. “But every now and then, you think, wait a minute, we actually built something pretty impressive.”