Melissa Lohrer

Who is Melissa Lohrer?

Melissa Lohrer is the owner of Waverly Ave, a female-led growth-partner for creative agencies. She works with founders to help them unlock their potential by rethinking how their business is positioned, sold, and experienced.

Her work centers on three things most founders overlook: strategic positioning, relationship-based sales, and building more modern revenue models. Her approach prioritizes growth by alignment.

Why She’s a Rebel

Most founders get into a loop where they start to focus on what they think their clients want and completely forget about what they do best. 

Lohrer helps her clients rediscover why they started their business in the first place and puts them back in the driver’s seat. Her approach is built on the idea that if growth isn’t happening, it’s usually a positioning problem. Instead of asking, “How do we get more people through the door?” she asks, “Why aren’t the right people walking through?”

Where traditional marketing doubles down on visibility, Lohrer focuses on what the business is and how it’s understood. Because if the positioning is right, marketing gets easier, sales cycles shorten, and pricing power increases.

She also treats revenue as something to be designed from the bottom up, instead of just optimizing a broken system. She helps her clients rethink the structure entirely, looking at factors like what is being sold, how it’s packaged, and where the value is actually concentrated. This leads to models that better match how clients want to buy, resulting in fewer but higher-quality opportunities that convert more naturally.

While many founders attempt to streamline sales by automating more elements of it, Lohrer advocates for building real and authentic relationships. She believes in shifting away from transactional selling towards finding clients that deeply align, building trust, and aiming for long-term engagement. It may be a slower sales process, but when this approach is taken, sales becomes engaging, genuine, co-creative and exciting. And once you see momentum, deals move faster and the work is funner. 

Her Impact

Lohrer notes that a lot of founders became business owners somewhat by accident. They started freelancing, gained more clients than they were able to take on themselves, hired support, and soon found themselves running a business. Because of this many founders end up continually reacting to demands instead of making decisions proactively. 

One of Lohrer’s main focuses is on revisiting the fundamentals with founders and helping them determine what they truly want from their business, then helping make adjustments that align with that vision. She also helps founders identify their strengths and lean into them, which informs their promotion, outreach style, the kinds of clients they’re interested in attracting.

Lessons We Can Learn

If you’re trying to build something that doesn’t just participate in the noise but actually stands out, Lohrer’s approach offers a different path.

First, standing out isn’t about being louder, it’s about being clearer. Many founders assume differentiation comes from better branding or more content, but clarity at the positioning level is what actually separates you. When your audience immediately understands what you offer, what you stand for, and why it matters, you’ve already done the hardest part.

Second, growth problems are often misdiagnosed. It’s easy to assume the issue is a lack of leads or weak marketing. More often, the problem is in misaligned offers, unclear positioning, or weak market fit. Adding volume just amplifies these problems.

Third, revenue is something you design. The structure of your business determines how easily it grows. Founders who step back and ask whether their offers align with how clients actually buy, whether their pricing reflects the value they create, and whether they’ve made it simple to say yes often unlock disproportionate results through relatively small shifts.

Finally, authentic relationships remain one of the most underrated growth levers. In an era dominated by automation, there is an advantage to being genuinely connected to the people you serve. Real conversations, thoughtful follow-up, and long-term trust may not scale in the traditional sense, but they compound in ways that salesy outreach can’t come close to replicating.

Resources for More

If you want to explore Melissa Lohrer’s thinking check out:

• Founded By Women interview
• Dreamers & Doers feature on women leaders
• Authority Magazine interview on lead generation strategies
• Bold Journey founder story and perspective
• Melissa’s podcast

Remember, you don’t stand out by doing more of what everyone else is doing. You stand out by finding how you’re different and offering something that only you can.