We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lily Kramlich-Taylor and Kara Cecala. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lily below.
Lily and Kara, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
It was my business partner and co-founder, Kara who originally concepted the idea from her work at Teach for America helping make Dallas feel like home for the new teachers coming into the city. We both moved to Dallas for jobs in the mid-2010’s, along with numerous other millennials, without any connection to the city, and had to explore it and figure it out on our own. On my end, I loved exploring, discovering hidden gems, spending weekends wandering neighborhoods etc, and would feel for people who told me they didn’t like Dallas or didn’t know what to do, how to meet people or find a likeminded community.
We both had this innate interest in wanting to help people fall in love with Dallas and Dallasites101 was born to do just that, through the lens of fellow transplants who were also exploring the city alongside. We didn’t ever sit down and say “this is something that is missing in the market, this is a problem that needs to be solved,” but just happened to figure out that it was needed because we were the people in that position, but were ones passionate and motivated to help others.
And once Dallasites101 began, we never slowed down or said no. We didn’t yet know what we wanted our business to be, or that we were even building the foundation of a business, but knew that we wanted to help people, and showcase small local businesses too. When we were asked about hosting events, we started doing so; when we ran out of space for content on Instagram, we started a website and newsletter; and so on. It was thrilling, addicting and time consuming and before we knew it, we were making money and beginning to realize that we did have a business in the making. That got us really excited, because we learned that we could monetize our passion for helping connect people with happenings in the city, while also uplifting small businesses and the local economy, and potentially do it full-time to help people continuously as a career!
Lily and Kara, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We are 101Media, 1/2 a B2C digital & experiential communities business and 1/2 a B2B digital marketing agency for other businesses, and we aim on both sides, to propel the prosperity of a city, its people and businesses.
On the communities side, we share digital content daily, in Austin and Dallas through public platforms including Instagram, TikTok, a newsletter, website and Facebook. We also host events in Dallas, ranging from 2000+ person bar crawls to intimate chats about the real estate market. Lastly, in both markets, we sell “Passports,” that help people explore their city through a specific topic: margaritas, fitness, tacos, coffee etc. We are the bridge between locals excited to discover new places and local businesses making the city a better place, and we aim to provide easy-to-digest content that answers the who, what, where, when, and most importantly the why, of a topic we are covering. The coolest part of this work is hearing from people who’s lives we have directly made better through our content and experiential offerings – whether it was a new friend they met, or a place they tried and fell in love with, or that we were able to provide a better overall feeling of belonging in the city.
On the agency side, we offer a full slate of services, from social media management to photography and videography to seo and website design. We didn’t plan to get into the B2B side of the business we were in for consumers, but did so naturally as businesses we worked with, began asking if we could run their Instagram pages. Overtime, we built up a slate of enough clients that we began hiring, and being the yes people that we are, started taking on additional services beyond social media management, and started hiring people with those specialities: production, website, influencer marketing etc. We are proud that we get to help businesses on both sides: through our brand and through their own brand, to drive more business and growth.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
In a world in which the younger generations care more and more about the type of company they work at and what company culture is like, maintaining high morale is SO important! We were blessed with Kara having worked for a company that cared deeply about culture and mental health, before it was cool, so that we were able to really apply a lot of the experiences she had, to our company. Celebration is a core value of ours and we make sure to celebration every important moment in each of our team members’ lives: birthdays, new pets, new homes, etc and even the bad times too…flowers, cards and special gifts that let the person know that they work for a company that truly cares about their well being.
In terms of managing a team, one of the most important things I’ve learned to pass on is give freedom to your team. If you have hired well, which means that the person in that seek can do the job better than you can, you need to let them do just that! Sometimes it won’t look like how you would do it…the speed or process or direction might be different, but again, they are the expert! Your employees and team members will do some amazing work if you give them the reign and encouragement to do so, but still acting as a leader that they can rely on for guidance when needed.
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
Dallasites101 started as a side hustle and was that for four years! We committed to the time of succeeded in a full-time position and building a company so that we didn’t take the financial risk associated with jumping ship and going all in right away, and I think that allowed us to be more intentional and take more time in making decisions.
Another important piece to scaling up is that Kara and I unintentionally chose each other as co-founders with opposing qualities. Kara is the visionary who dreams up big ideas and I am the integrator, that makes this dreams a reality. Most businesses when starting out just have the visionary, but visionaries can often struggle with figuring out where to even start, and also organize operations, finances and implementing structural processes. This is where the Integrator can come in and build out and manage what the visionary concepts. It’s a super important relationship and Kara and I got extremely lucky that we each were the other to each other. My advice to anyone reading this is making sure you have a partner or team member that is your compliment, because both are vital!
That allowed us to scale at a swift but intentional rate, leaving our jobs at the start of 2019 to take it full-time and begin hiring in 2020. By 2023, we are in a position to really act as leaders to our team members who are running the company on their own, and it’s really exciting to see!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dallasites101.com 101media.com website
- Instagram: dallasites101 @101media_ Instagram
- Facebook: dallasites101
- Linkedin: dallasites101
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