Today we’d like to introduce you to Judi Melton.
Hi Judi, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I spent 28 years in corporate America before I made the jump into real estate. That change opened my eyes to how much people need good, trustworthy information about the place they’re moving to — I’d watch families get emotional at closing, starting a new chapter in a town they barely knew yet.
Back in 2021, I went looking for things to do around Black Mountain and came up short. I dug through more than 15 Facebook pages trying to find local events, and everything just pointed back to Asheville. Black Mountain didn’t have its own voice online, so I decided to build one. That turned into visitblackmountainnc.org, a community calendar, and things like our Digital Christmas Gift Guide.
It’s kept growing from there. This year we’ve expanded into Swannanoa and Old Fort with two new websites for those towns. In 2027 we’re bringing it all together with our first cross-promotion event, Taste of the Towns, celebrating the food scene across the whole area. What started as one person scrolling Facebook looking for something to do has turned into a real network covering three towns now.
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?
It hasn’t always been smooth, no. We self-fund everything, so when something big hits — COVID, Hurricane Helene — it gets tight fast. But we’re committed to this community, so we keep going.
Helene was the hardest stretch. In the aftermath, we shifted what we were posting almost overnight — away from our usual events and gift guide content and into sharing resources for people who’d been impacted, letting folks know which businesses were open, and then, when the time was right, encouraging people to start coming back to visit and support the area again. The mainstream news wasn’t really covering the reopenings, and local businesses were struggling because people just didn’t know they were back open. That’s exactly the gap we exist to fill.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’ve been in the finance industry since 1989, and I moved into real estate in 2016. Today my day job is as a mortgage advisor with All Western Mortgage (mylenderjudi.com). I help people build, buy, refinance, renovate, and secure what’s usually the biggest asset they’ll ever own — their home. I also work with people looking for financial solutions around big life milestones, and around aging in place, so they can stay in the home and community they love as life changes.
What sets me apart is that lending isn’t separate from the community work I do. I live here, I know these towns, and when I’m helping someone get into a home in Black Mountain, Swannanoa, or Old Fort, I already know the schools, the businesses, and what’s going on locally — because I’m also the one building the websites and calendars for those towns. Rooted in local isn’t just a tagline for me, it’s how the two sides of what I do actually fit together.
If there’s one thing I want people to know about my brand, it’s that I care about doing right by this community — whether that’s helping a family close on a home, helping someone figure out how to age in place, helping a new business get some visibility when they’re just getting started, or making sure people know a local restaurant reopened after Helene. It’s all rooted in the same thing: support local, because local is what keeps this whole area going.
What matters most to you? Why?
Three things: God, family, and community — and honestly, in that order. My faith is what keeps me steady, my family is my foundation, and community is where I put that faith and steadiness to work.
It’s the reason I don’t walk away when things get hard — and things have gotten hard, whether that’s Helene or a stretch where the business is running thin. I’ve watched this go from Black Mountain having almost no presence online to a network now covering three towns, and that’s the payoff. At the end of the day, I want people here, and people just visiting, to feel like this is a place that takes care of its own.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mylenderjudi.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mylenderjudimelton
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mylenderjudi/
- Other: https://visitblackmountainnc.org/
