For some, a seat in the C-Suite is one major career objective.
Groomed and poised for the role, chief positions are an aspiration for those looking to help steer a company into the future.
Others land in the chief seat through a career change and an unexpected leap into destiny. For Rizzarr founder and CEO Ashley Williams, building a company from the ground up would require leaving behind a career in news to help curate targeted content for other companies.
With a strong network, the business has been able to reach new heights and is continuing to press for more.
A graduate of The University Southern California with dreams of being an on-air personality reporting for the news, the journalist moved to New York to work for NBC. Working more behind the scenes in production, the journalist still had dreams of being in front of the camera.
“As much as I liked it, at certain points, it really wasn’t what I wanted to do so I had to make the decision of how I was going to go into reporting if I really wanted to leave,” says Williams.
After applying nationally for jobs and not being able to land a new full-time position, the rising CEO took a job in Baltimore as a web producer. Determined to stay in the news business and applying for more than 600 jobs in a short time, she took a job in Baltimore as a web producer. After diving into the audio aspect of news, a conversation with her news director shifted her direction.
“I think she realized that I really wanted to do that and she gave me a shot to go out and do a video and it came out really good. So, she was like OK, you can do whatever you want.’ I bought my own camera, I didn’t have the station buy it and I just started shooting stories,” says Williams.
Next up, the journalist’s career led to a stint at USA Today. However, after a year, despite having the dream job, the journalist was not happy. Leaving the large media conglomerate was the next step. However, planning the perfect exit was key.
“That’s when I really started working on Rizzarr. When I lived in D.C., that’s when I started working on Rizzarr a little bit but I didn’t know what I was going to do with it,” says Williams. “I started a platform where I could have people from USC, people I know from interning, that I could have contributed to this platform and I can use my own entrepreneurial skills.”
Rizzarr, which gets its name from the Spanish word ‘rizar’ or ripple, uses its platform to help create a ripple effect in business with the help of content. After a chance meeting with an angel investor, the budding company began to see the highs and lows of business.
“I didn’t even know what an angel investor was. They’re considered to be kinder than a venture capitalist. They usually invest really early in the company’s stage. Once we started having conversations on what it would look like if we were to partner, I started to realize she had very different views on where the company was going to go and what we were going to do, so that ended up not working out.”
An Obama Administration pilot program in Virginia provided entrepreneurs who had left their job the opportunity to attend a class at a local community college and a small business center in the state. The program, whose participants’ names were chosen at random from a computer generated system, allowed entrepreneurs to enroll in marketing, sales, and other aspects of business.
“Luckily my name got pulled and I was there for about four or five months. At that same time, I was figuring out how we were going to build the platform, I needed tech people, I was able to get together a fetus version of the app with a tech person,” says Williams.
Launching the company in Michigan was a strategic business move. After weighing the expenses, Michigan provides a better opportunity to start than Virginia. Almost returning to the west coast, the entrepreneurial advances in her home state provided a clear answer. The business officially launched in January of 2015.
“It just made more sense to come home. The entrepreneurial ecosystem showed it was much better to stay at home,” says Williams.
Now, after six years of steady growth, the CEO has built a leadership team equipped to help take Rizzarr to the next level.
“I have really tried to focus on things that I know are not my best assets. With my COO, she’s older than me, she’s wiser than me and she has experience in operations and executive-type endeavors and sales. I really wanted her to be my COO,” says Williams.
The successful business has curated content for corporations like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Glassdoor, DTE Energy Co., Bridgewater Interiors, First Independence Bank, and Warby Parker eyeglasses.
Photo: Rizzarr founder and CEO Ashley Williams
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