Spotlight on Women-Owned Business: Ashley Mason, Founder and CEO of Dash of Social

The Ascent chatted with Ashley Mason, founder and CEO of Dash of Social, to discuss how she became an entrepreneur and her advice to other young female founders.

The road to launching a business can start with self-doubt and roadblocks, but if anyone is an example of perseverance (and the rewards you can achieve from hard work) is the founder and CEO of Dash of Social, Ashley Mason.

We sat down with Mason to discuss pursuing entrepreneurship at a young age and how she grew her marketing firm to reach six figures by the time she was 21.

Ashley Mason, founder and CEO of Dash of Social, a social media and content marketing agency. Image source: Author

Q&A with Ashley Mason

The Ascent: What inspired you to start your business?

Ashley Mason: I have been very entrepreneurial-minded since the age of 6 -- I was always trying to find ways to make money. Although I knew I wanted to own a business one day, I didn’t know what that business would be until September 2012, when I launched a blog at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school when I was 15.

I treated that blog as a part-time job and spent at least 10-15 hours on it per week writing blog posts, connecting with other bloggers, collaborating with companies, and more.

As I started to work with more companies to promote their products on my blog, I realized that many of these companies barely had an online presence. From my experience of using social media to grow my blog, I knew that it was imperative for companies to be consistent with marketing for awareness and growth.

Having an increased interest in marketing and wanting to help these companies out, I offered them pro-bono marketing services where I built marketing strategies, managed their social media profiles, coordinated influencer relationships, and more. I realized that marketing was something that I started to genuinely enjoy, which led me to take on casual freelance gigs by the time I was 17 years old and a senior in high school.

Ashley started her first entrepreneur endeavor, a fashion and lifestyle blog, at age 15. Image source: Author

After knowing for years that I wanted to own a business but just couldn’t figure out what it would be, it’s like a light bulb went on in my head -- I knew I wanted to own a marketing firm one day.

However, because of the narrative that society tends to force upon us, I always thought that I had to go to college, get a degree, build up a successful 20+ year career, and then launch my own business -- I never thought that I could do it at a young age.

That all changed in January 2016 when my mom was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, grade IV brain cancer, during my freshman year of college, when I was just 19 years old. For someone who was always so active, healthy, and full of life, her diagnosis made me realize that life is short, and we really don’t have as much time as we think we do to follow our dreams.

So if there is ever the “right time” to go after what lights you up, it’s now. From that point on, I worked hard to figure out what Dash of Social would look like and officially launched the company just eight months later, in September 2016.

Once I started my own company, I knew I never wanted to work for someone else. I hustled to build something that I was proud of, with my goal to be able to take it full-time once I graduated from college.

The Ascent: Was it difficult to start your business while in college?

Mason: For sure! Being a college student is like a full-time job in itself, so adding an (almost) full-time business on top of it was another story. In addition to going to school and working, I took care of my mom each morning by getting her up and dressed, feeding her, communicating with her nurses, etc., so I had to work my schedule around hers.

During the week, my days literally went from 4 a.m.-midnight because I just had so many things to get done with not enough time, and my weekends were full of work.

I always say that I was blessed with great time management skills, which helped me make sure I hit every deadline! But I also definitely didn’t have a “typical college experience” because of everything that I had on my plate, although I will say it was 100% worth it.

The Ascent: What can our readers learn from your experience starting/running your own small business?

Mason: If I can do it, anyone can! Although I’ve had a lot of success, I’m just a regular person. If you’re willing to work hard and keep going when you fail, you can do anything.

The Ascent: Have you always had a passion for marketing?

Mason: Not always. I never considered marketing as a career until I had to teach it myself when I wanted people other than my family members to read my blog. Once I started learning more about it, I realized just how much I love it.

While Ashley was working on her blog, she learned how to use digital marketing to grow her audience and spread brand awareness. Image source: Author

The Ascent: How do you manage your team and stay focused?

Mason: I’m super type A and have various organization methods to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. With Dash of Social’s team members, we use Asana to list their tasks and due dates, Slack to have quick communication, and Google Drive to keep all client documents in one place and hold weekly calls to talk about what they’re working on and what they’ve finished.

For myself, I thrive off of to-do lists. I also use Asana to keep track of all my tasks and due dates, but other things that I do involve putting together my own weekly to-do lists to outline what I need to get done that week and daily to-do lists to list what I need to get done each day. With my daily to-do lists, I break my tasks up into time blocks, so that I know what I should be doing at each hour.

The Ascent: What have been/are some of the greatest challenges you have faced as a small business owner? How did you overcome these challenges, or what is your plan moving forward?

Mason: To be truthful, I didn’t find starting, building, and growing a company to be difficult. What I’ve found to be the most challenging is “getting out of my own way” and believing in myself!

Starting a company so young meant that I dealt with a lot of imposter syndrome. Because I didn’t have corporate experience, I often doubted that I really knew what I was doing, even though I had years of experience from my blog.

I also have high-functioning anxiety, which means that my mind can really be my worst enemy sometimes, and I often find myself struggling with these:

• If a client randomly requests a phone call, I instantly assume that I did something wrong, and they feel disappointed.
• My mind doesn’t shut off, which means that I’m always thinking about work and things I need to do for work, even if I’m trying to relax.
• I’m known for saying yes to everything and overpacking my schedule because I’m worried that I won’t have enough work to do.

And similar situations. It’s also challenging to have a work-life balance, which I’ve been trying to get better at.

I have overcome imposter syndrome and work-life balance challenges by:

• Writing down my accomplishments and success so I can remind myself that I am an expert, despite what my brain may think.
• Delegating more tasks to my team members so that way everything isn't on my plate, which was my main reason for working a lot.

The Ascent: What tools have you used in your business that have made your business/your team more productive?

Mason: 17Hats, Asana, Google Drive, Slack, and Zoom have all been immensely helpful.

The Ascent: What one piece of advice do you have for other female SMB founders and leaders in your field?

Mason: It’s so hard to pick just one, so I just decided to share three tips for female entrepreneurs.

1. Daily networking: People talk about the importance of networking so much that it may make you want to roll your eyes, but it can indeed work wonders for elevating your business. If the people you meet don’t need to hire you directly, they will know someone who will -- and that’s huge. (Fun fact: I’m constantly networking in Facebook groups, which is where 76% of my clients come from).
2. Put people before profits: I’m always trying to find ways to provide value to others. I want them to read the content I publish and be able to get an awesome takeaway from it that they can immediately implement in their life or business. Whether that’s sharing marketing tips or talking about a lesson I learned, people love getting free info and will remember how much you help them. When you have the mentality of giving before expecting to get, that’s what will make people want to hire you -- because they appreciate all that you did for them leading up to that point.
3. Listen to what your target market needs and offer services that directly solve those problems: My bread-and-butter service, social media management, was put together because I constantly noticed my ideal clients sharing two different struggles relating to social media: They didn’t have the time for it and they would rather have someone else do it so they can focus on other parts of their business. This service solves both of those problems, which resulted in this being the most popular service that people hire me for. The same can happen for you! Identify a need and find a way to fulfill it.

The Ascent: What advice would you give young women or girls hoping to start their own business?

Mason: Learn, learn, learn! Entrepreneurship will be something totally new to you, and you won’t even know what you don’t know. Between contracts, pricing, marketing, and more, it will be up to you to learn everything on your own, which can be overwhelming.

Whether you read blog posts, attend webinars, listen to podcasts, or something else, find ways to learn something new every single day because that’s what will help you to get better and better.

I started Student to CEO to help young aspiring entrepreneurs with just that -- providing them with the resources, tools, and community, I wish I had when I started my business.

Follow your passion and start your business

Ashley had to overcome imposter syndrome, anxiety, and ageism to become a successful entrepreneur. She followed her gut and intuition to create a business that could help her balance college and taking care of her mom when life threw created bumps in her entrepreneurial journey.

At a young age, she found her purpose and put her goals into action. As Ashley says, "There's no right time to start a business," so take the first step and launch your dream business.