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

Ryann, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

My first client was a woman that I was connected with on LinkedIn. She both commented on a mutual friends post and he was told us that we needed to know one another.

We scheduled a Zoom coffee. I wasn’t at all intending to walk away from the conversation with a new client. I was still so new in my business and what I was building.

I simply told her what I did, like I do in all of my coffee meetings and she was literally stopped me midsentence and was said, “I need that…”

I sold her a simple 3 pack of coaching calls. It was so simple and made me realize that I was completely over complicating everything in my sales and marketing!

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 15 years in the Corporate World, I woke up one day feeling unfulfilled. Bored. Stuck. Frustrated. And guilty.

See, I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do in life.

Go to college, get a degree, get a job, another job, another job, an MBA, another job, met my husband, got married, bought a house, another job, more travel, more responsibility, had a baby, another job.

I felt like I was living society’s perfect version of success.

But I wasn’t happy.

And I was DONE.

Done living life by someone else’s rules.
Done being told when to work and how.
Done feeling like I had to choose between family and career.
Done chasing goals and “success” I didn’t even WANT.

I began my entrepreneurial journey as a sales coach. I loved it – and I was good at it. I successfully built two million dollar businesses in a very short time. But, a few years in… I was burned out, stressed out, and overwhelmed.

I felt like I had no where to go with this.

In one community, I’m the thought leader.
In another community, I’m surrounded by potential clients.
Neither space felt safe to share what I was experiencing.
I literally wound up on the floor in my shower in tears. I felt alone. I felt like a failure. I felt like no one understood.

Through networking and connecting and meeting new people – I met armies of amazing women doing amazing things.

BUT – they all had one thing in common: they lacked a supportive community.

They lacked a safe place to come with their feelings.
They lacked a place to feel seen, heard, and understood.
They lacked a place to go when their friends, families, and co-workers didn’t understand why they weren’t happy with their “perfect” lives.

When Be in the Room came to me – it felt like that safe space. The space to come as you are. The space to have difficult conversations. A space to find advice, feedback, and friendship.

The problem was – I thought I had a business problem. A strategy problem. A sales problem. A messaging problem.

Surprise – it was none of those things.

I needed to feel seen, heard, and understood.

It’s our most basic human need.

I am on a mission to create a safe space for every woman who has ever been told she’s too much, too picky, too loud, too ANYTHING to come together and be fearlessly themselves.

Because when women connect, work together, and harness our power into ONE common mission – we will be invincible.

How did you build your audience on social media?

The first community I created was a Facebook group for women looking to leave their 9-5 jobs behind and build their own business by mastering their sales skills.

The first several (several) months, I got crickets. No engagement. At all.

I kept posting consistently – even tho it felt like no one was listening. Eventually, it happened.

People began engaging, conversations started happening, and the group began to grow. The group had grown to over 7,000 members by the time I decided to switch gears in my business and start the process over.

My best advice:

Keep posting. People may not be engaging, but they’re watching.
Be patient. You won’t get the results you want right away, but if you stop – you start over.
Provide value. Share your most vulnerable stories. Become someone who is both an authority figure – but also relatable.
Keep promotion to %20. Your content should be 80% “value” or “give” content – and only %20 promotional. The conversations that happen on your give content are JUST as valuable as the promotional content itself.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I was the Director of Sales at a marketing agency – and sales was the only career I’d ever known. When I decided to make the shift from employee to business owner, I spoke with my co-worker (now marketing manager) about the vision I had for creating a space for women to come to find the support and skills they needed to be successful in all areas of life.

I wanted to offer them sales skills so they could start businesses.
Career advice and interview training so they could advance in their careers.
Finance advice so they could learn the things they didn’t learn in school about how to manage money.
Relationship, health, leadership… all of it.

Naturally, as an expert in sales with over a decade of experience in it, I decided to really focus on that aspect of business. It felt the safest. So, I began a sales training course for women looking to leave their corporate jobs and build profitable businesses. I offered them sales training so they could learn to sign clients and pitch their services without feeling slimy, sleazy, gross… or any of the other emotions that come along with having a “sales” job.

I took this further and joined a business partner in creating a sales team training organization. This business helped the 6-and-7 figure CEOs scale their business even further by helping them to hire and train sales teams to close sales consistently.

Something still didn’t feel right.

A few years into it, I finally made the pivot. I looked back at what I originally wanted to build and decided to step away from the 2 7-figure businesses I had built to fulfill my calling.

I founded Be in the Room (a community for female leaders who want to live life by their own rules and be successful on their own terms). I had no idea how people would react or if this was something people would even WANT to be a part of – but the business is rapidly growing.

My team is smaller. My business is smaller. Everything is smaller – but I’m living my truth. I’ve received so much positive feedback taking this leap. I am so glad I followed my heart – and I regret nothing.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://beintheroom.org/
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/ryanndowdyofficial/
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/groups/beintheroom
• Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/ryanndowdy/
• Other: TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@ryanndowdyofficial

Image Credits
Ryann Dowdy + Team