Meet Melissa Lushbaugh | Owner | Creative Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Melissa Lushbaugh and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Melissa, let’s start by talking about what inspires you?
Books, magazines and things I see online. When I read a book I get ideas about language, modes and tones to use in the text that we write. Magazines are a brilliant way to spark ideas for concepts, trends and phrases. We use a lot of this inspo in our social media campaigns.

What should our readers know about your business?
South Made was built on the idea that businesses need an advocate and an in-house expert to help them build their brand and generate traffic. However, most brands do not have the budget to hire a full marketing team (graphic designers, photographers, social media experts, web developers etc). So by building a firm that excels in these areas and partners with the various brands, every business can benefit from our expertise without the overhead. Further, we wanted to really focus on the local market rather than the big box shops. Helping local businesses excel in their areas and be top of mind with larger (national) competitors. South Made is all about supporting local and helping entrepreneurs grow their business. Building a business is never easy. It takes hours, months, years of hard work and energy. If you are a business owner there is no such thing has “business hours”, you work round the clock- it isn’t luck to grow a business. It’s day in and day out work. Having drive and putting in the energy to build a plan, network, design, deploy. The hardest thing is managing the work/life balance. I believe some people are built for it- running a business, and others want to work for a business. I’ve learned that who you work for and who you work with is also huge. In business, and in life, partnerships should be mutually beneficial- that makes it worth doing and allows you to get excited about projects. In the beginning you work with anyone because you are building a brand. I have learned now though, that mentality isn’t what is best for the business as you expand. It is more beneficial to love the work you are doing. So, if it isn’t a good fit don’t force it. I also have learned that training our employees is insanely important but they also need to buy into the South Made mentality. So just like you can pick and choose what companies you work with, the staff you keep should be the same.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?

Knoxville is a great city. There truly is something for everyone here. We also work in Marco Island and Naples- which is paradise. The mentality at South Made is to support local, and support the brands we work with. I don’t want to go to a big box coffee shop for example. I would go to Honeybee Coffee or Wake Up Marco where you are supporting local business owners. We work with a ton of restaurants so I would want to hit as many of these as possible. Happy hour and drinks at one place and the dinner at the next.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Derek Lushbaugh, my husband and co founder. Derek started a web design firm in 2007. At the time I was a high school English teacher and assisted in the content and editing portion of the websites he was building. From there I was inspired to open my own marketing company, South Made, and together we became the powerhouse firm we are now- offering services that far extend web design. With his encouragement I had the courage to build South Made.

Website: southmade.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southmademarketing/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/southmade

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/southmademarketing/