We were lucky to catch up with Ashlan Glazier-Anderson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ashlan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about making remote work effective.

Our team works remotely and has since I launched the business – in fact, we now have one team member represented in each time zone across the U.S. We use tools and technology to assist us in staying connected during the workday. A few of our favorites are Slack, ClickUp, and Loom. Slack allows us to communicate across the team on specific clients – we have a channel for each individual client. We also send direct messages to one another, send files, and it really cuts down on email communication. ClickUp is our project and task management system. It can facilitate moving projects along and letting us know when it is our turn to touch a project. This is another tool that helps us cut down on emails – we can leave comments, files, and status updates directly in the application instead of digging through our inboxes. The final tool Loom helps us to hold asynchronous meetings. Another use case for Loom is to facilitate training – you can record yourself doing something on the screen like setting up a complicated email workflow or how to schedule something in a social media platform.

One of the pitfalls is that if you don’t have a strong internet connection it can make your work difficult. There was a time that I was working in a more rural part of Hawaii on the Big Island and the internet connection in the Airbnb was not the best and my hotspot was not working well. It made hopping on Zoom calls or overall getting work done difficult. I also think there is something valuable in bringing the team together in person to collaborate. Someday, I’d like to host an al company retreat so everyone can meet the rest of the team. I have met everyone on the team in person, however, I don’t believe anyone else on the team has met everyone else. We are also co-creating our working culture. We have a “watercooler” channel in our Slack workspace where we share about our day-to-day lives and we are working on doing more of that kind of thing on our company’s social media channels.

The benefits are many – I am able to access incredible talent that is not geographically bound. In fact, we have a team member who is soon going to be traveling in Europe while still working on projects with our team. As a business owner, my overhead costs are much lower and I don’t have to rent an office space, the furniture that goes in it, and all the other supplies and expenses. I also provide my team with lots of flexibility to get their work done when they are “on” and rest when they are not. I find that we are more productive, creative, and happier.

Ashlan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have personally been involved in marketing and communications for the past 15 years. I started studying this field in high school. In my undergraduate study, I received a business administration degree with a focus on marketing. And went on ten years later to get a master’s degree in strategic communications to complement that work. The field of marketing has changed since I first started in it, however, even as the technology and tools change – the underlying best practice remains the same – understand your target audience and the marketing that will resonate with them and you’ll never find yourself without sales.

I started the business in January 2021, solidly as a side hustle and giving myself 15 years to grow it large enough that I could replace my day job’s salary. That 15 years ended up being 15 months, and since that point, I have not let growth slow at all. We reached six figures of gross revenue in the second year of business, and now in our third, we’ve blown that out of the water in five months.

I started this work to help small business owners and nonprofits who have a really great product or service, but no bandwidth to get it out there, grow and scale to make an impact. Unlike other agencies, I will work with solopreneurs and small nonprofit teams at accessible prices to design a sustainable marketing strategy – focusing on foundations – so they can manage the operations and product/service delivery with a steady pipeline of clients, customers, or donors. We also differ in that we explain the strategy and if a client wants to leave, we’ll offboard, train, and get them ready to take on the systems for themselves.

One of my longest client relationships is with a staffing agency that works directly with nonprofits to recruit, hire, and onboard staff and also provides nonprofits with temporary staffing and interim solutions. At the start of our work together, the CEO of the organization had one other full-time employee and a handful of consultants. Our businesses have been growing and scaling in tandem. As she has added new full-time employees to support business growth, now up to three more team members, I have also added members to my team. Not only is her growth impressive, but she also purchased the company from another entity and is now the sole owner.

Our process for each client is consistent and based on what we know is necessary for the marketing and communications space for all businesses and nonprofits. We start with your online presence, specifically your website – making sure it is optimized for search engines and set up to convert your ideal client or customer to take the actions that are most valuable to your business. From there, we move on to setting up your email marketing. Through a combination of building out email workflows to automatically communicate key information to your constituents to timely and beautifully designed email newsletters – we make sure that our clients are leveraging one of the highest converting marketing channels. After both of these channels are set we move on to content development for the blog and social media channels. We can provide the graphics, copy, and video edits for the major social media channels – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and Twitter. Once we maximize the client’s presence on all organic marketing channels then we have a conversation about whether paid advertising is a good fit for their business. Because if a business is not converting without the ads, then adding those will not be a magic pill.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Referrals and networking. For years prior to starting the business, I have been involved in my community and attended lots of networking events. I have volunteered for three nonprofits in the area where I have shared my marketing skillset and become known for doing good work. When I started my business, my network was more than happy to send me leads, whether or not they were a good fit. The more that I have shared the what and how of what I do, the more referrals come from my network. Clearly defining who is a good referral has also been helpful, this is who I work with, this is how I could help them, and here are the results. I also am open to speaking to folks and connecting them to resources. I operate with an abundance mindset and feel that even if a client is not a good fit for my business – I am happy to connect them with someone else who would be a better fit.

In fact, I recently joined a networking group called neXco and am on the leadership team of the Seattle B2B chapter. I know many folks in Portland and wanted an opportunity to join a new room and new space to share about my business and how I help my clients.

Any advice for managing a team?

One thing I continue to come back to is that my work and my business – marketing and communications for our clients – is not life or death. We are not surgeons saving lives and therefore we can have lives. If someone on the team gets sick, their kid, pet, or family member gets sick, they have a big trip or vacation planned, or they need a mental health day, or deep work day – I honor that for them. Your family, friends, community, pets – are all more important than the work. I treat my team like humans first and leave the door open for communication and sharing concerns, anxieties, and what’s keeping you awake at night. Then if it is in my power, I remove those barriers or create space where they can address them and come back to the work refreshed and ready for action.

I also am very transparent with where we are in business, what’s coming next, and what they can expect for their roles and responsibilities. We have weekly team meetings where we share the facilitation of the meeting, I give updates on new business, we plan our collaboration across client work, and we do a skillshare. As a business owner and leader, I constantly think about how would I want to be treated as an employee. What were things that I found frustrating in other workspaces? Who were the bosses that I hated? What did they do and how can I avoid that in my own business? How can we create a space where everyone feels that their opinion is welcomed, valued, and validated? My constant gut check is whether I would want to work for myself and at this company.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ashbeanpdx.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashbeanpdxmktg/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashbeanpdxmktg
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ashbeanpdxmktg/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashbeanpdxmktg
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWo7SI9t6yWQKcYtiujxqsA
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ashbeanpdxmktg

Image Credits
Colin K. Crader II