Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ashley Mason. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Ashley, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I’ve been entrepreneurial-minded since I was six years old, when my sisters and I played this game called “stores,” where we would pretend to own businesses and “buy” things from each other with fake money. I made them play it with me so much that they eventually became sick of it, but all it took was that first experience of entrepreneurship, and I was hooked.

Fast forward a few years, I got my first real taste of entrepreneurship at the age of 15, when I started a fashion and lifestyle blog during my sophomore year of high school. I’ve had a passion for reading and writing for as long as I can remember — I’ve always been the girl with her nose in a fat stack of library books and a notebook by her side to jot down random thoughts — so starting a blog felt natural to me.

I treated that blog as if it was a part-time job, spending at least 10-15 hours per week on it, between writing new blog posts and connecting with other bloggers. Despite feeling passionate about my blog, I realized that there were two things that were missing. If I was going to spend that much time on it each week, I needed to 1) get people who weren’t just my family to read it and 2) find a way to monetize it to make the amount of time I was putting into it worth it.

That’s when I discovered the solution to both of those problems: social media.

I realized that if I used social media to promote my blog, I would 1) reach the right audience I was looking for of high school and college-aged girls and 2) increase the website traffic to my blog, which would allow me to pursue paid partnerships with brands.

After teaching myself how to use social media from a business perspective and consuming what felt like every blog post, webinar, and course under the sun about it, I was able to grow my blog organically and received several opportunities to work with a variety of companies, becoming a micro influencer. This experience of building my brand led me to discovering my newfound passion about social media, and being who I am, when I feel excited about something, I don’t let it go. I realized that a lot of the brands I was working with barely had a social media presence, if any at all, which I knew was a missed opportunity for them. Wanting to get more experience with social media marketing and support the brands who supported me, I offered to work with them on a pro bono basis to develop and execute social media strategies, and long story short, I couldn’t get enough of it.

Itching to get my hands on more opportunities and leveraging the network I had built as a blogger, I officially started freelancing during my senior year of high school. At that point, it was like a lightbulb went off. After years of knowing I wanted to own a business but unsure of what it would be, I had my “aha” moment and realized that starting a marketing firm was what I was meant to do.

However, I had always felt that I had to take a predetermined path in life based on what society expected of me — and that didn’t involve starting a business at a young age. Instead, I felt expected to go to college, get a degree, and build a successful 20+ year career, and then I could start a business.

It wasn’t until my mom’s diagnosis of terminal brain cancer in January 2016 that I realized it didn’t matter what I was “supposed” to do; what mattered was what I WANTED to do. Eight months later, I started my marketing agency, Dash of Social, in September 2016.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Information on how I got into my business is shared in the previous answer.

We specialize in content marketing — specifically marketing strategy, social media, email marketing, and blogging. Our clients work with us because they know the importance of marketing their brand, but they also don’t have the time or resources to do it on their own. We’re able to develop a consistent, value-driven online presence that builds brand awareness without requiring heavy lifting from them.

I’m proud of the fact that I started my business when I was a sophomore in college and was able to take it full-time once I graduated; that income from my business was able to pay off my student loans less than six months after graduating; that I gave a TEDx talk; that I was featured in Business Insider; and so much more.

Any advice for managing a team?

1) Use a project management system like Asana to make it easy for team members to see their tasks and due dates.

2) Avoid micromanaging. Give team members some space and trust that they’ll produce quality work on time.

3) Give helpful feedback on work that your team members produce so that their work becomes even better over time.

4) Compliment your team members when they do a great job.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As you can imagine, starting a business at the age of 19 came with its challenges — teaching myself everything I needed to know about running a business; trying to turn a profit; facing ageism; and the most difficult one, balancing life, as I was also working around 20 hours a week during the opening shifts at a local coffee shop throughout all of this.

A little over a year after my mom’s diagnosis, she suffered a stroke that then required her to be in a wheelchair full-time and need a lot of physical care in the morning. My dad, who is a rockstar all on his own, was coming back and forth to work each morning to take care of her but understandably got to the point where he couldn’t do it all on his own and wondered what he was going to do.

That’s when I said, “Well, why don’t I quit the coffee shop and do that for you?”

So, in addition to being a full-time college student and running a business, I became her caretaker.

Being go, go, go from 4 am to midnight daily became the norm for me because I had so much I needed to do and needed all of the time I could possibly have to do it.

Between going to the gym, coming home, showering, and working or doing school work for four hours before then needing to get my mom out of bed, help her in the bathroom, shower her, dress her, walk her (and even physically pick up and carry her) down the stairs, give her medicine, feed her, and make sure she was comfy on the couch before we had a family member or friend stay with her for the day so I could run off to school, I was always going from one thing to another.

Ultimately, that was my “new normal” for over a year until she passed away in June 2018.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dashofsocial.com
• Instagram: @dashofsocial
• Facebook: @dashofsocial
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/ashleyjeanmason
• Twitter: @dashofsocial & @ashjeanmason

Image Credits
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