We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ashley Fritsche. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ashley below.

Hi Ashley, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Let me share the story of Petal & Bloom – a 100% woman-owned and operated website development firm dedicated to serving women-owned businesses. Several compelling reasons led me to structure my business this way. Working in corporate America while raising young children simply didn’t align with my priority of putting family first. I vividly remember the moment that changed everything – watching tears stream down my daughter Sayley’s face at before-school care when she was in first grade as I left for work. My heart knew then that balancing corporate life as a single mom wasn’t the path for me.

The struggle to juggle career and motherhood is real. As “mom guilt” consumed me, I realized I needed to create a different life that would nurture both my family’s success and their emotional wellbeing. Being a single mom with full financial responsibility for our future meant careful planning! I envisioned building a fully remote business that would allow me to be present for my children while generating the income we needed. This vision sparked the creation of Petal & Bloom.

Today, our core mission empowers other moms to achieve what I dreamed of – the ability to work remotely while being present for their children and maintaining financial security. We take pride in supporting amazing women entrepreneurs who share similar challenges in balancing business and family life. The truth is, moms need to support each other! After all, raising a family truly takes a village!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After I graduated from college, my first “big girl” job was at a news station in Reno, NV. While working there, I was lucky enough to grow into the director of the digital department, which entailed structuring all the digital ad campaigns (local and national) and building out the websites for the clients. This is where my love of technology and marketing began.

Over the past decade, I have run marketing departments for multi-seven-figure global corporations, built and managed multi-six-figure e-commerce stores, and grown many multi-six- and seven-figure businesses through brand and marketing strategies.

Fast forward to today, Petal & Bloom focuses on building custom websites for women-owned businesses that emphasize understanding the ideal client and conversion on the website. What does that include? A full brand strategy and Ideal Client Workshop. We get into the nitty gritty and develop your positioning statement, ideal client avatar, full website copywriting, and more. Plus, we love the tech! That means we handle the FULL tech setup! All the domain transfers, CRM setups, Google Accounts – everything.

That is just the start! After we begin building the website for our amazing clients, we start the entire marketing strategy. This strategy looks different for each client since every business is unique. Our tailored approach can include any of our services, such as SEO, Paid Ads, Email Marketing, or Organic Social Media.

We really are a full-service firm for female entrepreneurs.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Yes! My side hustle did turn into my full-time business—thank goodness! That was through a ton of planning. I have always had 2 – 3 jobs at any time. This was necessary being a single mom who was fully financially responsible for my kids—life happens, and you need extra income! (Hello, broken bones and braces!) My passion has always been building websites so that I would make them on the side for additional cash flow.

After about sevenish years of doing this, I was capped on my time between working 80-90 hours per week. I was burnt out and realized that I could not make any more money using the time that I had. Between being a salaried employee and squeezing in the freelance on the side – it needed to be fixed; I was maxed out.

So, I sat down and began mapping my way out of the burnout. I set my boundaries on how many days and hours I wanted to work per week and how much money I needed to make. From there, I just worked backward on setting my goals! It took me nine months to grow the “business” enough to transition into a full-time/main job.

But let me tell you, it is such a mixed bag of emotions making that jump. There is the fear of “Am I going to make it?” “Will I have enough to cover my bills?” “Am I good enough?” Then, there is the relief that you have the freedom and time to give to your kids and family, that you are achieving your dreams, and that you are the role model your kids can look up to.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Hands down, Instagram! This is where our Ideal Client lives. But when we were first starting, we did a ton of testing on all the platforms—Facebook, LinkedIn, Google—all of them! My best advice is to test, test, and test again. Pay attention to the analytics and ensure your pixels are installed to track conversions!

Plus, it is excellent if you have an ad that your Ideal Client is responding to, but make sure you also have a killer lead capture set up to convert them into clients. It is essential to have your entire client journey mapped out before starting any campaign. Without the conversion factor, you leave so much money on the table!

For our Lead Forms, we use HoneyBook CRM. The potential client fills out the information and books an appointment, and we are able to send the proposal and collect the payment through this system. It’s our favorite!

We love to build on Showit for website conversions. This enables mobile-first development, link pages, ad landing pages, and more! It is a great way to showcase information for your Ideal Client for a higher conversion rate.

My favorite tools:
HoneyBook: https://share.honeybook.com/ashley3279685
Showit: https://showit.com/r/w6f5q057

Contact Info:

• Website: https://petalandbloomtechmarketing.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petalandbloomtechmarketing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PetalandBloomTechMarketing
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/