#GIRLBOSS Episode 5: Allie Dodds
If you’re into #supportingyourlocal, love watching local girl bosses channel their creative talent and want to know more about Allie Dodds, make sure to head over to our YouTube to catch the full chat in person.
If you’re a creative and aspiring #girlboss, start-uper or just love watching and supporting women in business then be sure to tune in to our YouTube channel (click me!) for more on this series - you won’t want to miss a single episode!
This chat game me the absolute warm and fuzzies - Allie Dodds is an amazing mum and ultimate girl boss who is able to prioritise her young family by doing business her own way. Talk about goals! She runs two businesses - Mama Nourish and Studio Dodds on top of being an absolute super star mum. Allie and I talk all things transitioning into business ownership, being the ultimate girl boss and her biggest business fuck up to date.
Mikki: So, you are a mum to your beautiful little boy, Leo - was starting a family a bit of a driving force for you to create a business that better suits your lifestyle and can you tell us of how being a girl boss helps you spend more time with your family?
Allie: Yeh for sure. Leo - I could talk about all day, but I know we’re not here to chat about him but he is so special and it’s funny because the timing of things, it’s like… it wasn’t planned to have a family at that time but things kind of happened and progressed and everything just felt normal, like everything just flowed. It was really good between my partner and then we fell pregnant and only found out kind of quite late in the pregnancy - I was 19 weeks when I found out so we were almost put in a position where we had to make decisions quite quickly.
Mikki: Because you were in Sydney, weren’t you?
Allie: We were living in Sydney! I was working full time for an agency, and family and the future and all of those sort of things weren’t really on my mind. It kind of led us to a point where we were able to decide really quickly - let’s move back to Brisbane to be closer to our family to have that support and it wasn’t until that time I think when I started maternity leave that I really started to think ‘ok, what do I actually want to do for myself?’ I had thought about having my own business before but not really sat with the idea because I was just in the normal corporate life where you just go about your day and you work for someone else and you get it done and you kind of walk away from work and that’s it. It wasn’t until that point where I was like I actually really do want to create something for myself! I thought I had a number of skills that I could tap into and learn more about and I’m really glad that things happened in that way even though they weren’t planned but I always think every thing happens for a reason, and that reason for me was figuring out being able to like go with him and sit with that idea of what can I actually do and create and I’ve been able to do that for the last 2 years since he was born and it’s been really special.
Mikki: That’s really cool. You’re a mentor at Gratitude Gang, can you tell us a little bit more about that and how you empower women through this initiative?
Allie: I think we’re in this moment where so many women want to create something for themselves. They might have an idea of what they want to do, or maybe they have no idea, it doesn’t really matter what stage they’re at, but I find that they want to know the know-how and how to create something that allows them freedom and flexibility and working for themselves, and not really knowing where to get started. That’s the position that I was in when I was on maternity leave, I was trying to look for something that I could do from home when my little one, whenever he came, and that’s when I came across Gratitude Gang through Angela Simpson - who had created it. I had chatted to her and it just seemed like the right opportunity to be able to connect with a number of women that were doing incredible things, to be able to tap into a network of women that are there to support you and help navigate what it is that you want to create, and how you can do it. Through learning everything that Ange had taught me I was able to then go on and teach that to other people and help empower women to create what it is that they want to create and tap into social media because we spend so much time on there anyway.
What we’ve discovered is that you can use social media as a platform for marketing yourself, doing content marketing, using attraction marketing, using all these different business skills that you might not necessarily know the know-how of how to do it and it’s allowed me to be able to learn it for myself and then go on and teach it to other people to do that.
Mikki: Ok cool, so how does it work? What is the Gratitude Gang because I always get confused... like how do you join this?
Allie: We have a few different options. Essentially we can help people in 2 different ways. We help people with either those that are wanting to create some kind of passive income as some people refer it to and by doing that you essentially get access to our community. We have a whole bunch of online trainings, and guidelines and basically a step by step system of how to use social media as a way of creating an income. The other way we help people, we have an online health system so we have a health program which is put together by nutritionists and life coaches and health coaches and yogi’s and personal trainers, all of these people that have come together to create this program where we get to help people with their health. I did personal training for a number of years as well, and I know that it’s not just about what you do in the gym, it’s not just about the foods that you’re eating and our approach is really holistically so we get to offer this whole holistic health program - the inner health hub - to mainly women but it’s open to anyone.
Mikki: We all know that mistakes are part of everything we do in life, I have had my fair share of fuck-ups that’s for sure, can you share with me some of your biggest fuck-ups - or if you have one that is quite memorable.
Allie: Yes, I do have one that’s memorable because it was when I was still in Sydney and I was working for a PR agency and I was a social media manager. I used to set up Facebook ads for clients and I set up a Facebook ad and I put the ad spend in, and normally this clients ad spend was $250.00 for a week for their ad, and I put it in with an extra zero… so it was $2500.00 behind this one post! I didn’t realise until the following week when I had ran the report to see the analytics of how the post had performed and I went in there thinking omg I’ve killed it, like I’ve done so good with this reach, the reactions, the comments, like this post has gone off! Like what did I do? I was so stoked, and it wasn’t until I went in and actually looked at the billing side of things and saw the extra zero and I sat in my chair for a little bit, like, ahhh I’ve got to tell my boss, I’ve got to tell the client, I’ve just spent so much of their money. Anyway, I went and told my boss and I think they had chatted to the client and nothing bad came of it but the client just had to cut back the next couple of weeks on their spending. That was I think one of the biggest fuck-ups I’ve had.
Mikki: So I know when I go online and I’m trying to find tips and tricks when it comes to content marketing, or creating a blog, or editing videos, there is just so much on the internet. What are some of the biggest gripes you have and what are some of the tips you can give our community when it comes to creating content and marketing for their businesses?
Allie: I think, if anything, starting from the outset if you’re new in your brand or business that you’re launching or you’re going down a new direction or kind of just want to a bit of a refresh, just take some time to really think about what your key brand messaging is and what you want your audience to know and feel about your brand and feel when they come to see you.
Don’t get mixed up in all of these different aesthetics, where you feel like ‘I’ve seen that brand do this - so I should be doing that’, it’s more about being authentic to you, and what you feel your audience would like rather than trying to please the masses.
I think too many people will try and put something out there where it’s like hey EVERYONE and it’s like just take a moment to actually think who am I talking to, and almost putting your post out there like you’re speaking to one person. Like, I know my gal, her name’s Sarah, and this post is going to Sarah kind of thing. You want people to feel like this is taking to me, this is written for me, so I can totally relate to this post. I think it comes down to not trying to be a huge perfectionist when you’re putting stuff out there particularly in the beginning because you can get caught in this trap where you’re like everything must look perfect and polished and then you spend too much time on something, then time has passed and you’ve gotten nothing done.
Mikki: So, a bunch of different apps and tools that you use to make your life a bit easier… what are some of your favourites?
Allie: I love Pinterest. I think a lot of people love Pinterest and have a billion boards. From a business perspective it is amazing. If you want to figure out the direction of your brand, or if you have some ideas, if you’re going to engage with a designer or if you’re going to engage with someone to help with branding, then start a board where it’s dedicated to your brand and you can pick up lots of inspiration from other brands that you see but not to copy them but to use as that inspiration and of bit of a guide. To be like, ok, I like this particular style and I get clients to do that as well. A client comes to me and they want a logo, they want something designed or they want a website, and I’m like ok that’s great. I’m quite a visual person, I can read a brief of what you want out of me, I would much rather see some kind of visual representation. So yeh I think Pinterest is amazing. This invoicing app, called Hello Bonsai, and essentially it’s really great for freelancers because you go in there are you can create a proposal, your proposal gets turned into a contract, your contract gets accepted by the client, that gets turned into an invoice and that creates a project. You can create tasks against that project. It’s just all in one - so streamlined. You can track your time against projects, you can put in your expenses against projects. I use an app called Over which is good for creating graphics and stories, stuff to put in your feed, and they come with templates so you can’t really go wrong. Like, I’ve seen something I like with this template style and I’m going to stick with it for a consecutive amount of posts.
Mikki: Keep it all consistent.
Allie: Exactly!
Mikki: I find it really hard to put my phone down. My business relies pretty heavily on social media as I think so many do. How do you stay off your phone and fully have quality time with your family? What little things do you practice?
Allie: I think I’m definitely still working on this. It’s definitely something I’ve become more conscious about, particularly as a parent. I know that if i’m sitting there on my phone and if Leo’s in the room, even though it might seem like we are spending time together, you can certainly feel like there is a disconnect and my energy isn’t completely with him. I’ve started to pick up on that and was becoming more and more aware of it. I wasn’t doing it intentionally. I want to give him all my attention when I’m with him. I definitely am working on trying to set more boundaries around that. I might put my phone in the kitchen and we’re out somewhere in the front of the house, just knowing that I don’t need to be checking it all the time. As much as it might seem like something seems really urgent or needs responding to, at the end of the day you’ll get to it. Just schedule time where you do go respond to messages or respond to emails. I came across an extension where gmail allows you to pause your emails. You can set time frames when they’re paused and then you can set the time where you can dedicate the next 2 hours, ok I'm in front of my computer, where I can respond to all my emails and action all my emails and they all come in at once. I think setting those kind of boundaries and scheduling apps like I mentioned before where things are already taken care of. Being more aware who I’m spending my time with. I notice it with my friends and we go out to dinner and i’m like nooooo I want to connect. It is so hard!
You can check out Allie over on her instagram @mama.nourish & @studio.dodds