By SUSAN LEATHERS & KELLY GILFILLAN
First in a series on Brentwood Home Page’s history as it celebrates its fourth anniversary.
A fourth anniversary isn’t as sexy as a first, or fifth, or as revered as much as a silver, gold or diamond one. But as Brentwood Home Page marks its official fourth anniversary this month, we want to begin to share with you, our readers, a few of the milestones that have brought us here.
A fourth anniversary isn’t as sexy as a first, or fifth, or as revered as much as a silver, gold or diamond one. But as Brentwood Home Page marks its official fourth anniversary this month, we want to begin to share with you, our readers, a few of the milestones that have brought us here. We also want to say thank you to those of you who have been with us from the start and all the rest who have joined us along the way.
In coming days, we’ll share our news story, our advertising story and a bit about our impact in and on the community.
Are we tooting our own horn? Yes, a bit. But anniversaries are a time to celebrate, and a time to reflect. With the official launch of our third site, Nolensville Home Page, it seems an appropriate time to do both.
Most all, it’s a time to say Thank You for reading, for contributing, for advertising and for supporting our advertisers. We truly see what we do as a public service — and one that is making an impact on the city we call home.
When we launched Brentwood Home Page as a local, independent online “newspaper without the pulp,”  we started at ground zero. We told ourselves, “Well, if there’s no news in Brentwood one day, we can always go out and take a feature photo.” One of our early advisers told us that when it came to marketing our first ads, we’d be selling “air” since we didn’t even have an actual website yet.
Today we’re happy to report we have never had a day without news; in fact, most days there’s more news than we can post. And we sold out our advertising inventory within two months. We had to quickly go back to the drawing board to add more.
It hasn’t been easy. And despite appearances, no one here is getting rich, far from it. But with pride we can announce that in its first four years, BHP has had 1,051,000 unique visitors, 3.3 million visits and over 7 million page views.
We have also grown our parent company, BrentWord Communications LLC. From our humble 2009 beginning in a home office in Meadowlake, in January 2011 we hung our shingle well, make that our big feathered “B”â€â€Âon an office building in Brentwood’s Town Center. We added BHP’s popular weekly Real Estate section on our first anniversary. We launched Franklin Home Page on our third, and now, on our fourth, Nolensville Home Page. In January of this year, we launched BrentWord Marketing.
The “Susan and Kelly show” has given way to a paid staff of talented and dedicated news, advertising, and design professionals. Joining them in our mission of providing the most comprehensive coverage of the city and Williamson County are our engaging columnists, a family of freelance sports writers and photographers, and many community correspondents.
Soon after our site went live, we were featured in a Nashville Business Journal story about the Ladies Who Launch organization. Less than four years later, in the spring of this year, we were honored to be named one of the journal’s Williamson County Impact Award recipients. The United Way of Williamson County honored us with its Excellence in Media Award last year.
Susan is a 2010 graduate of Leadership Brentwood and was a member of the 2013 inaugural Williamson County Schools Ambassadors class. Kelly will graduate from the regional Transit Citizen Leadership Academy this week and is a member of the Leadership Franklin’s Class of 2014.
As we reflect on our growth, we would be remiss to not mention our families our husbands and children, parents, in-laws, siblings and others who have walked through the wilderness with us, and who have supported us through the highs and lows of bootstrapping a business from scratch and all of the sacrifices that presents, personally and financially.
The news business isn’t always pretty. There are always good stories and bad to report. That’s why we’re here. From the beginning, we’ve sold Brentwood Home Page as being independent and credible. We strive every day to stay true to that course. And we’re still doing it at no charge to our readers.
Thanks again for being part of our story, and for helping us celebrate.
Susan Leathers and Kelly Gilfillan
Founding partners
Coming Thursday: A look at the business side of Brentwood Home Page.
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