My Story
I'm Kari — a Houston-based mother of two boys who grew up jumping haystacks and running barefoot in the sticks. I built MissSouthernQueen because I got tired of watching small businesses — the heartbeat of our communities — go unseen while big corporations swallowed up all the attention.
That upbringing planted a respect for real — real food, real people, real work, real community. The kind of things that don't come shrink-wrapped or shipped in from a warehouse.
The Moment It All Clicked
My aunt owns a local farm. She refuses to put hormones or additives in her feeder cattle. She grows her own fruit and vegetables. She does it the right way, even when the right way is harder.
Watching her work made me think about how few people understand where their food actually comes from — and how the small operations doing it honestly are the ones getting drowned out by big-chain marketing. So I made a video for a local meat market. Just one video. To show people their food doesn't have to come from a corporate aisle — it can come from someone they know. Someone in their community.
That was the spark.
The more I made content like that, the more I saw the bigger picture — the corporate greed, the mass-produced goods, the way small business owners were doing everything right and still losing the visibility war. Long lines wrapping around chain restaurants while better food, better service, and better prices sat empty next door.
I couldn't unsee it.
How MSQ Was Born
In 2025, I started a Small Business Friday segment on YouTube. Just me, a camera, and a mission to put a face on the small businesses around me. It grew. People responded. Owners reached out. The community showed up.
That segment turned into something bigger — MissSouthernQueen. A full social media and viral video marketing business built for the small shops, the family-owned spots, the local owners who deserve to be seen.
I'm not a directory. Directories are soulless — a name and a phone number and a star rating. I give businesses a face. A voice. A vibe. I make people feel a place before they ever walk through the door. That's what social media can do that nothing else can.