Full Name: Lisa Shaughnessy
Company Name: Agility Marketing LLC
Position: Owner
Website/Blog: www.agilitysocialcues.com
Year Founded: 2012
Tell us about yourself and your business: I live in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington DC with my husband, son and two dogs. We’ve been here since 1998 so I consider it home. My background is in marketing, communications and customer relationship management.
I started my business, Agility Marketing LLC, about a year ago with the intention of providing marketing services to small businesses. But as I thought more about my business plan I realized I would rather provide marketing services to a smaller niche.
I’m always hearing people say to follow your passions so I decided to combine my love of fitness, marketing and helping people. I launched the website www.agilitysocialcues.com in March of this year as a one-stop online resource for fitness professionals to find marketing and social media information.
This is also my business website where owners of fitness businesses can see the marketing and social media services that I provide.
What inspired you to start a business? I enjoy coming up with marketing and customer engagement ideas and implementing them. I was a marketing and communications manager with a Federal Government agency and suggested ideas on how we could use social media within our agency to improve our customer engagement and communications. My management understood the basic concept, but put up too many bureaucratic barriers for me to implement it effectively. As my job became more creatively stifling, I started looking for outlets for my ideas.
Last fall, I noticed that the small gym where I worked out didn’t have a strong social media presence and their website was hard to find through online search engines. I saw that other fitness professionals that I followed and read their blogs had similar issues. It occurred to me that these are small business owners trying to get their fitness businesses started and don’t have time to learn everything they need to about marketing and social media. This is especially true with how quickly the online world changes.
I spoke with many fitness business owners who said they weren’t sure how to use marketing and social media to gain clients and let people know about their services. With that in mind I created my website with the tag line “The Fitness Professional’s Online Resource for Marketing and Social Media Information” ™
What is your favorite quote or saying? “You’re stronger than you think”
A friend told me this when I was unsure about being able to achieve a weightlifting personal record (PR) I was trying for. Although he was talking in the context of weightlifting, I realized that it also applied to personal and professional aspects of my life.
Mentally and physically I think we’re all stronger than we give ourselves credit for and need to remind ourselves of it.
What is one business goal for this year? Since I’ve been in business just a few months, I have so many! But probably my biggest goal is to sell at least 50 copies of my ebook on email marketing for fitness professionals. It will be available in August or September.
What would you say contributes to your success? The incredible support from my family. Without batting an eye, my husband supported my decision to quit my job and work on my business full time. In addition to my husband, my son, mom and sister have all been my biggest fans and given me feedback on ideas I’ve had for my business. Without their encouragement and unquestioned support I never would have been able to do this.
Also, since I’m a solopreneur, networking is a huge contributor to my success. I’ve joined associations and business groups that allow me to make connections, learn from other business people as well as get feedback on my ideas.
What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur? I will pass along the best advice I received – stop thinking about your idea and start implementing it. If you think that everything has to be “perfect” before you start you will never launch your business. Once you have a good outline of your services or a good prototype for your product, get them out there.
Are there any projects you are currently working on? I’m writing an ebook on email marketing. It has specific examples and ideas for fitness professionals on using email messages to communicate with their subscribers as well as the why and how of email opt-in bonuses.
How can people connect with you online?
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Tamyka – thank you so much for featuring me and giving me this opportunity! You are such an inspirations and I have learned so much since I started following you and reading your blogs.
Lisa
Lisa Shaughnessy recently posted..Marketing Q&A: Mark Ehnis, Co-Owner of PowerStrength Training Systems
It is my pleasure, Lisa! I’m honored to connect with women like you, truly passionate about what they do. I’m grateful I can open a platform for you to expand and connect with new people!