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

Onyia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

After 2 years of doing digital design projects for friends and family, I decided to take the leap and form a business. At the end of 2019, I spent countless hours organizing my processes, portfolio, and business structure to launch at the end of Q1 2020. Then Covid happened and set me back months. I postponed my launch in the face of this global crisis and struggled to find the inspiration to keep going during lockdown. After a few months, and no end in sight for the pandemic, I decided to put my launch back on the calendar. I figured I had nothing really more to lose. I officially launched Align in July 2020 and although I was nervous about the response because of the pandemic, it was successful. What I didn’t quite realize then is that it was the perfect time to launch a B2B business. Everyone was home reconsidering how they make money and starting new hobbies and side hustles. Because the pandemic pushed so much of life into the digital world, even more people were understanding the importance of a website for their businesses and seeking designers. Within a month of my launch, I was already booked out for the remainder of the year. Looking back, launching a business during a global pandemic sounded scary, but it was really divine timing.

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?

Align is a digital design agency specializing in Brand Strategy and Design, Website Design, SEO, Copywriting, Workflow Strategy, CRM Development, and Digital Marketing Strategy. We help established but overwhelmed entrepreneurs organize, automate, and elevate their brands so they can free up time, alleviate stress, make more and work less. Our clients need their online presence and back-office organization to be elevated, professional, and magnetic to their ideal audience. They don’t have the expertise in graphic design or business systems but they know how important a good website and CRM are. They want to increase their prices and grow with an online presence and brand identity that makes them, and others, proud to support and share.

I’m a technology nerd with a naturally creative disposition so when I stumbled into web design 5 years ago after building a website for my first business, I fell in love. I listened to my intuition and pivoted into the tech world getting an education in social media management, digital marketing, project management, graphic and web design, and software engineering. I have a uniquely holistic perspective and approach to business. I’m passionate about combining technolgy and art to help entrepreneurs create beautiful and useful assets that make owning a business actually worth it.

As a mom, published author, and full-time entrepreneur, I understand how challenging this life can be. Between chasing down invoices, answering emails, posting on social media, and filing taxes, sometimes it feels like there’s barely enough time to actually do what you do. I used to think that the measure of success was my bottom line. Now I understand that the real goal of entrepreneurship is business alignment because, without that, there is no profit.

We’re not here to just build you a website and send you on your way. We aim to educate, empower AND equip our clients with the knowledge, confidence and tools that make entrepreneurship not only attainable but enjoyable. We incorporate manifestation techniques and spiritual knowledge to help our clients align thier goals with reality.

Over the last 5 years, I’ve been able to transition from soul-sucking corporate America to full-time entrepreneurship while finding joy in business with this understanding and approach. I’ve helped numerous others bring their dreams to digital life and I’m so grateful I get to help my clients create the confidence and success we ALL deserve.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Before launching Align, I created and scheduled 6 weeks of content for Instagram. For the first week, I had a specific strategy to introduce the business and what I was offering. Understanding the marketing theory that people buy from people, not brands, I also shared a mix of educational content, inspirational quotes, and personal stories to build genuine relationships with followers.

I set up all the posts, captions, and hashtags in a social media management app to be automatically posted. When I would get the notification from the app that content had been posted, I would get on Instagram and engage (Like, Comment, Follow) with accounts in my industry (Prospects and Peers) for 15-30 minutes. In the first 6 weeks I was posting 2-3x a day so doing this grew my account quite effectively and 100% organically. Every week, I made sure to check my analytics to look at the type of content that performed the best, the time of day my followers were most active, and other important data, and then used that information to create new and better content.

This strategy really set me up for success and continuing to plan out my content in this way (a month or even just a week at a time) has allowed me to keep consistent with posting and engaging.

Apart from a solid strategy, though, the number one piece of advice I would give about social media is to not let the numbers dictate your value. You don’t need thousands of likes, comments, or followers to be a successful business owner. The people that are interested in your services are reaching out to you directly, not scrolling through your Instagram daily. Keep posting, keep engaging, keep being authentic, and the return will always be worth it.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Before I got into web design, I was in the beginning stages of starting a wellness coaching practice. I was pursuing a degree in Alternative Health and Medicine and had just completed a Wellness Coaching Certification. I felt a strong calling to help others make big changes in their lives and at the time, I thought that was going to be through health and wellness. As I started to play around with WordPress to create a simple website for my coaching business, I found myself really enjoying building and designing the different pages and sections of the site. Partly because of my early experience with design theory at my fine arts middle school, I felt naturally drawn to and comfortable with designing. After completing my website and showing it to others, the overwhelmingly positive feedback on the design (more than the actual business) started to make me think. After spending so much time and energy focused on wellness coaching, I had a hard time even entertaining the idea of pivoting into a brand-new industry. I tried to ignore my nudging intuition that was pushing me closer and closer to design, but after a failed launch with my coaching practice, I finally took it as a sign. I researched and learned everything I could about branding, web design, and digital marketing and fell head over heels in love with it all. I realized that through design, I could fulfill my creative passion while also using technology to help others bring their aspirations to life. Although it was terrifying to step into a field I didn’t know and felt I have no authority in, If I had not decided to pivot, I would have never found my true purpose.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aligndigitaldesign.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aligndigitaldesign/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aligndigitaldesign