Meet Jenny Zacharewicz of Big Family Little Farmhouse in NW Georgia- Dallas, Paulding County

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenny Zacharewicz.

Jenny, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I have always had a love for home decor and creating a warm and comfortable environment for my family. I decorate for each season and enjoy the process and challenge of coming up with new and unique settings for most of the rooms in our home for each holiday, but I rarely have the opportunity to share the finished results with others outside of my immediate family.

In April of 2018, I decided to make my home available to everyone by going public with a decor account on Instagram. I had less than 100 followers at the time, and I began by sharing some of my favorite spaces and using hashtags to try and attract attention to my posts. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, nor did I have a plan as to where I was going, I just knew I wanted to share my home.

After several short months, I began to realize that I had something unique and different from my account as I watched the number of followers I had quickly continue to grow. By Christmas of 2018, just eight months after starting my account, I had grown to 70,000 followers. By my one-year anniversary on Instagram, I had reached about 90,000 followers, and I am currently at 122,000 followers, with my feed averaging almost 10,000 new followers per month.

I believe that there are several factors that have contributed to my unusual rapid growth on IG. I am a homeschooling mom of nine children (ages 26,25,23,21,17,13,11,9 and 3) who all still live at home with the exception of our 23 y/o, who just recently graduated from Georgia Tech and moved to Athens, GA, to attend the Medical College of Georgia as a first-year medical school student. My husband and I have been married for 28 years. Our first eight children are biological, but we adopted our 9th child from foster care. We continue to remain in the foster care system and hope to be able to adopt again.

We live on a working goat farm where our two oldest children run their full-time business making goat milk soap and selling it at markets as well as online. My husband works full-time (70+ hrs/wk) as a regional partner in a dental organization and is responsible for a multi-million dollar operation (we are part owners in the company as well), in addition to taking on all the DIY projects that I dream up! He has built everything from our porch swing bed to our boys’ incredible sets of bunk beds to our treehouse, and we still have many more projects in the works. Even though he has no background in carpentry, he is able to do it all without any building plans! We share our DIY adventures and tutorials in my IG stories.

Another thing that sets my IG acct apart is that I have a very unique farmhouse. I use color in my decor (lots of green), and it sets me apart from the scores of houses that stick to strictly white decor in their feeds. I’m also very bold and outspoken in my stories, sharing everything from my faith to my homeschool journey to life on the farm and being a mom of 9! I try to be as real and honest about my life as I can, and I find that my followers really appreciate that and are able to better connect with me. My stories typically average 12,000-15,000 views per story on any given day. My feed posts average about 6,000 likes per post, and I have an A+ rating on Social Bluebook for my engagement. I average several hundred comments and direct messages each and every day, and I make it a point to read and answer each and every one of them. I’ve heard from so many of my followers that I am the only large account that they have reached out to that actually takes the time to not only read their messages but to then also respond.

I am now an IG influencer and have created a full-time job for myself as a collaborator with different companies who are a good fit for my followers. I spend about 8 hours per day answering direct messages, emails, creating content and posting to both my feed and my IG stories. I am able to now charge a fee per post as well as per story, and I often receive products in addition to payment for my collaborations.

I have been featured in a home decor book that is published and for sale in stores like Barnes and Noble and on Amazon. I am currently a contributor to another book that is in the process of being published. I have also been interviewed on a national radio program (now a saved podcast) with Peter Nielsen. I was also featured in several other podcasts for women where I talked about things like adoption. My home will be published (expecting a front cover shot and full spread) in the April 2020 issue of American Farmhouse Style Magazine. I have worked with companies like JC Penney, Michael’s, Aaron Brothers, Antique Farmhouse, Piper Classics, Decor Steals, and several more in collaborations.

In addition to this now unplanned and unexpected full-time job, I continue to homeschool my five youngest children! It’s crazy and hectic, but it’s fun and I couldn’t be more blessed.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Definitely not! I had no intentions of having a full-time job when I started and trying to find a balance between growing an account with absolutely nothing to show for it for the first year with the exception of a large number of followers was hard to justify. I spent hours responding to messages after my family went to bed and am often awake until 2 am working. Very different for me seeing as how the last time I held an actual paying job was before I had my first child about 28 years ago!

Please tell us about Big Family Little Farmhouse.
I’m an Instagram Decor Influencer, and I am paid to collaborate with companies and promote them on my IG feed. My IG handle is Big Family Little Farmhouse, and I came up with the name because I am a mom of nine and we live in a real farmhouse in NW Georgia. I am proud of the fact that my followers can connect with me on a personal level and feel like they’re family, even though there are 122K of them! What sets me apart is that I’m a homeschooling mom of nine living in a beautiful farmhouse and sharing the real struggles and daily life that we experience. I don’t use filters when I’m on camera and I share the good, the bad and the ugly side of life, not just what I think will be popular.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I grew up in a military family and so we moved all over the country and the world. I loved living in Europe and touring the countryside there, and one of my favorite memories is our ski trips to Austria!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bigfamilylittlefarmhouse.com
• Phone: 913-961-1646
• Email: zachsgang@yahoo.com
• Instagram: @bigfamilylittlefarmhouse

Image Credit:
Big Family Little Farmhouse

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