Caressa: My name is Caressa Flannery. I’m actually a native of Frederick, Maryland and I’ve had the luxury of owning two businesses here in Frederick. I’ve been in the advertising and marketing industry for 20 years, 20 years. It’s unbelievable, and basically through those two businesses I work with a lot of small businesses mostly on the local level, but some on the regional level as well. Create-a-Pulse Marketing, my one business, I’ve had for 12 years, and we provide web development, all kinds of graphic and marketing work, as well as event planning and social media. That’s kind of a big thing in the marketing realm right now. And then, as far as my other business, RelyLocal Frederick, started that in October of 2010, and that is a business that supports small businesses in the local Frederick County area with lots of different things, Internet marketing, social media marketing, PR and networking. And we do some co-op advertising. We have some partnerships with some other businesses in town that help benefit these small businesses as well.
Question: How did you get started with your small businesses?
Caressa: I got started 20 years ago – well, and being an entrepreneur, 12 years ago, actually, but I got started in the advertising and marketing industry and worked for a number of local companies in that arena. And when the economy kinda soured back in the 2000, 2001 time frame I ended up losing two jobs in the course of a year, so for me, I decided, you know, I don’t wanna have to do this over and over again. So, I have enough brainpower and smarts and connections that I could certainly do this and go this on my own. So, that’s what I did, and I started and launched Create-a-Pulse Marketing, and started with the web development, and that branched into a variety of other things.
Question: What are some challenges you faced in starting and growing your small businesses?
Caressa: Challenges are always gonna be prevalent in any small business. You’re always gonna come up against things that just quite don’t go right. I would say the biggest challenge that I’ve had to deal with personally has just been the ebb and flow and dealing with the ebb and flow of work coming in. Sometimes there’s really, really busy times, and then sometimes it’s a little more on the quiet side and you’re wondering, “Hmm, what’s going on?” But, for the most part, you kind of get through that and you learn to adjust, and in the downtime I’ve been able to do things like volunteer in the community and whatnot, so it kind of works itself out. I would say that’s probably one of the biggest challenges, because it’s ongoing and it continues on and on. Just dealing with the economic things that are happening out there, every small business is affected by it, so that’s probably another challenge that we all have to deal with from an economic and tax standpoint and whatnot. I would also say that time management, because I tend to be involved in a lot of different things, and I run a couple of businesses, that just being able to adjust my time and benefit, all of those things from a time standpoint has been a challenge for me personally. But, I’m a good juggler, so that ends up being a forte in some ways, too.
Question: As a female entrepreneur, have you faced additional challenges?
Caressa: I would say probably as a female entrepreneur the biggest challenge is that I’m in a technical world with doing web development and some of the things that I do as far as Internet and online marketing, not so much from graphics or – and that kind of standpoint, but just being in the technical world, when I’m spitting out things to people, they kind of look at you a little strange, like, “How do you know that?” you know, and you almost feel like they don’t totally trust you because you’re a female. And the majority – I would say the majority of people in this industry are – come from – it’s male predominant, let’s put it that way, so that’s – I wouldn’t necessarily say that that’s a bad thing. I think it’s – time has changed from when I first started. That was probably more so the issue, being a woman and being an entrepreneur, “Should we trust her? Should we go in this direction? Does she really know what she’s talking about?” And the great thing is, I absorb a lot of information. If I don’t know how to do something, I will seek a way to find out about what it is that – whatever the subject matter is, so I’m very resourceful in that way, and I tend to, if I can’t answer a question, I will find the answer. So, I think that people have come to appreciate that from being a solo entrepreneur as myself.
Question: What has been a proud moment for you in your growth as a business owner?
Caressa: Just recently I was awarded an amazing recognition through the American Advertising Federation, but on the local level I received the Silver Medal Award, and basically that’s more of a career-oriented award. It has to do with upholding advertising – well, advertising principles and things like that, but also creativity, and it also comes from community service and giving back in addition to success and your advertising career.
Question: How do you raise awareness in the community about your businesses?
Caressa: We are sponsoring events, getting our – the visibility out there, because what we want people to do is come to the RelyLocal site and see these local businesses that we have in the local Frederick community. So, we’re doing a lot of stuff in the community as far as sponsoring events and giving back to nonprofits, yet getting the visibility and the PR from that standpoint. And then, on a personal level, I have always pretty much been very altruistic and done a lot of community service, so giving back to the community, me, myself, people knowing what I do, it actually helps the businesses as well. It has not been difficult for me to get business, basically, because people know that I’m so engrossed in the community, and people have supported RelyLocal because of that as well. Even from the standpoint of someone who – a child, a teenager that is in high school, they need to do community service, because what it does it makes people well-rounded individual. It’s no different than that with an entrepreneur in a business. It makes you a well-rounded business owner, because you’re – it’s not all about you. You’re doing what you’re good at and what you specialize in, but yet you’re giving back to the community and making Frederick a great place to live and work, and I grew up here, so I’m very passionate about that. And I think all business owners really should take note of that type of thing and incorporate that somehow in their business.
Question: Who, in the business world, do you look up to?
Caressa: Jim Rohn as far as like a national person out there, Jim Rohn is someone that I have followed from an inspirational, motivational standpoint, you know, read his books and things like that. He’s got a rags-to-riches type of story, so I tend to migrate towards professionals like that who have persevered through challenges, basically. I’ve had to do that myself with some personal things that have happened in my life, and how you let that affect you in the business world and still have had success, so I think even people on the local level, local business owners that I know here in Frederick, those are the people that I admire the most, too, because of the fact that they have fought through challenges and still have made their businesses successful.
Question: What methods of online marketing have you found successful?
Caressa: E-mail marketing is very important because it keeps you out there in front of your clients on a regular basis and so they don’t forget you, basically. Social media is, in a way, like that, too, but social media has a little bit more engagement involved with it. We’re putting things out when it has to do with RelyLocal, or even the local businesses that we’re promoting, it’s with the intent that we want people who are seeing those posts to engage with them and engage with the content and the message that we’re putting out there. So, social media has been very effective for growing both of my businesses, Create-a-Pulse Marketing as well as RelyLocal. I get people contacting me through Facebook all the time, asking me, “Give me more details about what you do. Give me more details about RelyLocal. I need a website for my business. Can you help me with that? I’m planning this event. Is this something that you can help me with?” So, I get that a lot through social media, so, obviously, what we’re putting out there and the fact that we’re so visible, I think, has been very beneficial for both businesses.
Question: What other marketing materials do you use to promote your small businesses?
Caressa: I would say flyers, PDF type of things, because we deal so much with the face-to-face as well as the electronic that PDFs have just sort of been the mainstream type of thing, I mean, other than a business card and postcards and things like that.
Question: How do you balance work and life?
Caressa: The balance with it being the personal life, the business life and even the volunteer stuff, you know, the community that I do, there is a lot, and like I mentioned earlier with the ebb and flow of any business, sometimes it gives you the opportunity, when you do have downtime, to be able to give back to the community and be able to do some different things here and there. I also try to make time for my friends, for my family, my boyfriend, whoever it might be, just to – you’ve gotta have balance. You’ve got to have that balance. You can’t be work, work, work all the time, and I have to repeatedly tell myself that, because I can tend to be a bit of a workaholic, but the great thing is, with everything that I do and being a social person like I am, I blend a lot of things together, so if I’m out and about like with some friends, conversations could come up. I don’t try to do that, but conversations could come up and the next thing you know we’re doing business together, so there’s – you’ve always gotta have a balance. I like to get away and get – go on vacation here and there, too. I think that’s really important for any entrepreneur to do. To be in your office all the time or be meeting with people all the time and just be doing work all the time is not healthy.
Question: What advice would you give to someone looking to start their own business?
Caressa: The advice that I would tell somebody starting their own business is to go for it, to not give up on your dream. I mean, seriously, there are so many times even after I’ve started my business where I am like, “Oh, I can’t do this,” or, “Oh, I shouldn’t be doing this,” and I really think that that inner voice, you just have to squash it. You have to go for what it is that you – if you aspire to do whatever your passion is, you need to be passionate, first of all. You need to have that passion for whatever specific task or skill set it is and just go for it, because the best is yet to come, as they always say, and you never – you just never know. If you give up, you’re gonna give up a dream, perhaps, so I think it’s just really important to master that and be able to fight past and be focused and stay positive and stay the course. That’s what’s really important.
[Click here to watch the full “123Print Small Business Sense –Caressa Flannery” interview]
Check out the Create-a-Pulse Marketing official website: www.createapulsemarketing.com
Check out the RelyLocal Frederick official website: www.relylocal.com/frederick-maryland
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