Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Murray.
Hi Jessica, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’ve spent a large part of my career inside companies at the moment growth gets really exciting and messy. For a lot of people, that inflection point feels daunting. For me, it’s where I have fun.
I’m a New Yorker who moved to Nashville in June 2021. I started my career on Wall Street, then traded my Bloomberg terminal for early-stage and high-growth tech in 2014. Over the next decade I watched the same pattern play out again and again: as emerging businesses gained momentum, customers and bigger teams, they stalled internally if they hadn’t intentionally built the connective tissue between people, process and systems.
After time at a much larger enterprise, I wanted to get back to driving impact for those businesses. So in 2024, I took the leap and launched Empower.
Since then, I’ve worked with founder-led businesses in Nashville and across the country, spanning consumer tech, interior design, professional services, beverage, franchise and more. The business’s ethos is to empower these teams to move from the place of founder-reliance and lean into the next phase of growth with confidence.
Outside client work, I’ve found real camaraderie in Nashville’s small business community. I’m an advisor at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and Vanderbilt’s Wond’ry; I host monthly coffee meetups for female entrepreneurs who want a space to trade ideas with peers; I’ve taught workshops to empower founders to take the next step with their business; I sit on the board of two local non-profits: Nashville Design Week and The Children’s House of Nashville.
I’ve called this city home for more than five years, and since launching Empower, I’ve gotten to know the entrepreneurs building for its future. Getting to guide, teach and learn alongside them has been one of the best parts of this journey.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Ha, you should question anyone who says building a business has been a smooth road.
The hardest part early on was navigating a business community I was still very new to. New York City and Nashville are different. People build relationships differently. People transact differently. If you want to grow a business in a new city, you have to learn those dynamics, and I had to learn them quickly.
There were plenty of other zigs and zags, from structuring my service offerings to sharpening my message to figuring out where my time actually mattered. What kept me focused was my why: I wanted to tilt the odds of long-term success in more emerging businesses’ favor.
Since launching in 2024, I’ve built a six-figure business from scratch. I’m proud of that, and the work only continues.
As you know, we’re big fans of Empower LLC. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Empower builds the operating structure founder-led businesses need to grow with clarity, consistency and control. Most of our partners find us in the messy middle: the business is working, but the founder is still the answer to every question, and growth has started to feel heavier instead of exciting.
We work with partners through advisory, focused project sprints and fractional COO services. What sets us apart is the operator mentality. I’ve spent most of my career inside growing companies, building teams and systems myself. I know firsthand what it takes to move the needle and bring a team along the journey.
I’m most proud of what I hear from partners after the fact. One founder recently said: “It was incredibly valuable to spend a full, uninterrupted day with Jessica focused solely on big-picture business strategy, goal setting, and planning. I haven’t made the time or space for this focused strategic thinking before, and it was a really helpful exercise to step away from the day-to-day and thoughtfully map out where I want the business to go and how to get there.”
What’s next?
The answer here is simple. I want to keep attracting meaningful work, identify new growth opportunities and never stop learning. If I can do those three things, the rest will take care of itself.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hiempower.co
- Instagram: @hiempower.co
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jmurray2
- Other: https://newsletter.hiempower.co
