Hi, I’m Marion Ryan, of OnlineBusinessGym and since 2007 I’ve been helping smart female service professionals to do business online, creating their websites, mentoring them and helping with the ongoing maintenance of their online presence.
But I’m thinking back to where it all began, 40 years ago…
When I was very young my dad opened a grocery store in North West London with a huge display of greengrocery outside. Every weekend and school holiday I’d be there early, helping him set up a vast array of exotic fruit and vegetables to entice passers-by. We took such pride in our work and loved to get creative with our arrangements, always looking to find the right combination of colours and textures.
I’m certain that’s where I got my eye for colour, structure and design, not to mention my attention to detail.
With a university degree behind me I went into property management. I loved my corporate career but it was the people bit that interested me so I did a sideways shift into training and then to qualifying as a coach in early 2000.
Soon I needed a website for my fledgling business and my brother, deciding it was time to make amends for various youthful misdeeds towards his little sister, put together my first coaching website around 2003. I loved my website but hated not being able to edit it myself. I didn’t understand the first thing about the internet so I never even considered I could learn how to do this myself.
Creating my First Website
Then one day in 2004 while loitering without intent on the web, I came across this strange new word – blogging – and as I explored what blogging was – I started to get really excited at the possibility of being able to quickly and easily create content myself. I started my first blog on Typepad in 2005 and shortly thereafter found a way to turn my blog (dynamic rolling content) into a website (a series of static and blog pages).
If I wasn’t the first person to do this I was certainly the first person I knew who’d done it and I’m almost certain that I coined the expression ‘blogsite’ – which incidentally is a term I’d never use now since, with the massive WordPress development we’ve seen in recent years, the lines have now blurred and many of us have sites that incorporate both dynamic and static content.
I loved my coaching business but my fate was sealed when one day a client said she was looking for a new website. I could hardly believe it when she said: My ideal web designer would be someone just like you.
The Penny Drops
From that point on I realised that this was where my great interest lay, and to this day I still get excited with every new client I work with.
The Promise I Give My Clients
My clients are mostly female service professionals – coaches, consultants, writers and alternative practitioners. I LOVE working with these smart businesswomen and discovering the uniqueness of their business. The promise I make to my clients is to listen to them and answer their questions, to learn about their business and the goals they have for it, to share my expertise and ideas with them and to create a website they, their prospects and clients love and importantly, which helps them attract more clients, automate their business and make more money.
You can see some of their websites on my portfolio page or read their testimonials here.
I hope you’ll enjoy looking around my site and if if you want to, get in touch via my Contact page. I love hearing from you and I will respond promptly, usually in under 24 hours. And finally, if you’ve not done so already, and would like to get my occasional updates, please drop your name and primary email in the sidebar optin.
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