Her Story
About Dena
I started my journey in 2022 as a freelance virtual assistant, and quickly evolved into roles as an online business manager and project manager, doing various behind-the-scenes work for businesses in operations and administrative areas. As my experience and knowledge progressed, I built my boutique agency to help support more founders, especially marketing agency owners. Now, as CEO and lead executive assistant, I focus on helping marketing agencies that do great work with clients but lack the infrastructure to truly manage their business operations smoothly. My approach is very personalized - we limit each assistant to no more than three clients because I prefer that our assistants have a one-on-one basis with them. Our work involves setting up CRMs, internal project management systems, team management, and project management. What I'm most proud of is the lasting impact - my very first client is still using the same processes and systems we built for her in 2022, which shows that what we created really stuck and made sense for where she's at. Last year, I completed a Goldman Sachs prestigious program that involved 12 weeks of rigorous internal business work with 300 women, including sessions in New York. Looking ahead, I eventually want to expand into creating a co-working business in Houston where founders and marketing agency owners can work together and build a community of like-minded individuals - that's my 5-10 year plan.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Dena
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to making sure that what we're doing for clients actually makes sense for their business and that they're using it well. Because anyone that's in marketing just hates anything operations, so we need to make it as simple as possible so that they want to use it. If we reach a point where this is making sense for them, that's a metric of success. Another thing is that they can bring more team members on without the stress of it. So once they start to build their team and the systems are working the way they're supposed to, that's another way that we measure success when working with clients.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
In terms of opportunity, there's a lot of marketing agencies that really do great work with different clients but lack the infrastructure to truly manage the behind-the-scenes of their business operations to keep things going smoothly, without them having to always be the bottleneck in their business. One of the biggest challenges right now, especially for marketing agencies who cannot afford to hire full-time employees, is moving them from just that solo entrepreneur mindset to building an agency. Let's build the infrastructure for you so that you could do what you do best, but times ten.
Keep Exploring
More Influential Women · Texas
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.