Brette Borow hasn’t been home in days, weeks, oh, who’s counting? Although she technically lives in Los Angeles, her business, GirlsGuideTo, planted roots in downtown Cincinnati, too. These days, the advice website aimed at women 18 to 35 is taking off, and Borow is "pretty much living out of a suitcase," as she expands her staff, works on a redesign and conducts the perpetual business development every startup demands.
Although Borow grew up in Chicago and now lives in Los Angeles, she set up an office in Cincinnati to tap into the region’s Midwestern roots and the concentration of colleges in and around the city. "Our [readers] are very much your everyday girl and our audience is really the girl next door. She’s relatable and I think that the Midwest is a prime example of that," Borow says.
Despite her own marketing background, Borow has a small marketing budget: “There are ways to grow your audience without spending millions and millions,” she says, noting GirlsGuideTo’s continuing rise in reader engagement and traffic.
GirlsGuideTo started off as a website whose content was mostly created by website visitors who asked and answered questions amongst themselves. With the recent addition of a Cincinnati-based editor, Katie Ostoich, the site is shifting to primarily editorial content focused on popular topics.
“I wanted to make sure GirlsGuideTo wasn’t just a place where women came when they had a problem, but a place they were coming on a daily basis, basically getting the information and advice they needed whether or not they were actually asking a question,” Borow says. By providing a safe place for women to ask questions, seek advice or simply read, she may be doing just that.
By Robin Donovan
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