Ashleigh is the founder of a social media marketing agency: Creative Cacti. Based in Melbourne, her number one goal for Creative Cacti was to give small businesses and start-ups the opportunity for content marketing, without the costs of a boutique marketing agency.
After working in the ‘agency land’ for years, she’d always wondered how small businesses could afford someone to help them with social media marketing. After asking questions to her account manager their reply was “They just do it themselves” Ash decided to take the skills she had and start a freelancing company aimed at this target market. With packages as low as $580 a month, this gives them the opportunity to actually grow, expand and become a brand.
For more details, visit their website here.
.Here we sit down with Ashleigh, to learn a bit more about her journey as a social media marketer.
Q. Tell us a little more about your journey as an entrepreneur – how did you get started? What inspired you?
Ash: I spent my first 6 years in the corporate world thinking that that’s where I had to stay for my whole career. It wasn’t until I worked myself to a point of no return, that I was so overworked and underpaid that I quit and traveled the world for a year. That trip made me realize that I had to start something on my own. So that I could never be overworked and underpaid again. So that I could have the freedom I was craving for years. So that I could create my own story and make my own decisions.
I knew I wanted to do something on my own, but I didn’t know what to do, or what to build. I thought back on all the things I enjoyed in my previous roles and it always came back to Social Media. As I was building my agency and putting together all the details ready to launch, I spoke to a family friend who started a candle company. She asked me to help her out and I said “Of course! I’d love to help” She thanked me and said she got quoted $10,000 a month from an agency in Melbourne… that’s when I knew that SHE was my target market. That’s when it clicked for me… “I’m not doing this for ME… I’m doing this for every start-up that doesn’t have the resources to get a loan. I’m doing it for the Mum who has a dream to build a business. The teenager who wants to create a start-up. It’s for them.”
Once I knew who I was targeting – those clients landed in my lap. My life became creative, inspiring, motivating, and everything I craved when I was working at the agency.
Q. What’s one thing in your routine that you do consistently that has made a huge difference in your personal or business life?
Ash: I continue to learn new things in business and social media marketing. Education is one of the most important things in life. It creates a better business owner, leader, and person.
Since day one, Friday afternoons have always been my ‘Study Time’ I choose a subject to research for a few hours and absorb all of that information. It can be anything from “How to act like a leader in your business” to “Meditation techniques” Learning new things for both business and how to develop myself into a better person has got me to where I am today.
Q. Who are your mentors and inspiration? and what knowledge or insight did they give to you that was valuable?
Ash: Gary Vaynerchuk has always been someone I looked up to. After seeing him at a summit in 2019 I’ve felt like my business has grown 10x because of the advice I was given by him.
Q. What has been your most satisfying moment in business?
Ash: There have been a lot of satisfying moments on my journey but some of the top were:
Quitting my job in the middle of time square in new york city. I had just landed a client that was willing to commit to 6 months with me, and that was a turning point. It meant that people started to see my potential and trusted me for who I was. I was still working full-time and was only doing this on the side, so being able to quit was a massive moment.
Hitting 6-figures was a big and unexpected milestone for me. I didn’t start my business to earn a lot of money, I did it mostly for the freedom of my time. But being able to see my success in my first 2 years and hitting 6-figures made me more driven to build creative cacti even further.
Q. How do you market your business, and which tactics have been most successful?
Ash: It’s always been Instagram. Posting on this platform has let me create a community of almost 6,000 people who all cheer me on. I’m able to share my day, my highs, my lows, and everything in between by posting my story and keeping it personal. I’ve found that people book with me because of how real I keep it on my business page, it’s not just graphics of my promotions, it’s my actual life.
But I do know this was a dangerous thing to rely on, so over the years I have also been collecting emails and testing out other platforms to see where everyone is.
Q. What have been your biggest failures or challenges?
Ash: During my first two years, I found it extremely hard to connect with people. I was working from home and spending all of my time alone, I was missing that social aspect that I was getting in the office. There were no more lunch breaks or events or gossiping with people which is a very important part of socializing.
This meant I was all alone, I felt like the loneliness crept up on me in 2019 and I wasn’t feeling good about my business. I had no one to test out ideas on or run conversations by so for about 6 months I was just in survival mode instead of success mode.
Q. How did this failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
Ash: I got over feeling alone and uninspired by getting myself an office inside a co-working space. Now I get to choose when I go into the office and talk to people, whenever my social battery is running out I can just go home. I get to make new friends every day and be inspired by people in all different industries.
Q. If someone was to create a TV show about you, what would it be about and what would it be called?
Ash: ‘The universe knows what you want”
I always feel like this is what I was meant to do, that this was the plan for me! I did everything except go in this direction for about 6 years, I had so many opportunities to do this but it never happened, until it all kind of just fell into my lap. I really think the universe had some sort of plan for me and it did everything it could to land me right where I need to be.
To keep up to date with Ash’s and her journey, connect with her on Instagram.
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