Hi!

Hello blogsphere,

My name is Alexandra Ryan - also known as Ali Ryan and Ali Rose. For the purpose of this blog I'm just going to go with Ali.

I've decided to start a new blog all about going from an employee to an employer, from not having a clue about business to running my own, I hope to detail the difficulties of making it in the business world with some tongue and cheek posts as well.

Right now I am Managing Director of Goss.ie, an Irish celebrity news website with breaking showbiz news, red carpet interviews and lots of entertaining stories.

I also own a production company Sweet Rose Films, and I am an actress/writer/producer. I pretty much live a double life, and I thought it would be interesting to start a blog all about that.

Background

Just to give you some background.... I had a blog before, that's what started off my journey into the world of media now.

It was called MaggieRed.blogspot.com before eventually becoming MissRed.com. Started in 2011, I wrote posts about celebrity news and entertainment from my bed while I was in college studying New Media and English in UL.

I started to become addicted to blogging and would publish a post nearly every hour every day. Before the blog I had worked in SPIN Southwest as a news reader and a broadcast assistant on their talk show Spin Talk.

Before all of that I started off in customer care/sales. I worked in O2 customer care in Limerick initially in the business section dealing with business customers and their bills.

During my time at O2 I was still in college, and then in 2008 I started a work placement with the Limerick Post newspaper.

I was working 9-5 Monday to Friday there plus working in the evenings and weekends in O2, it was a pretty crazy work load but I'm pretty much a workaholic.

I loved my time at the Limerick Post, from writing features, to crime stories to interviewing dying artists, it was there that my love for journalism began.

Just as my work placement came to an end there was a promotion going in O2 for a sales person, this was right before the recession so the commission was huge (especially to a college student).

Despite being just 19 (with no sales experience) I got the job out of about 20 people. I won Sales Person of the month a few times and the comission was amazing.

After six months I headed off to Forli, Italy for my Erasmus. There I studied French (through Italian) and War Trauma Literature (PS I spoke no Italian).

As soon as I came back to Ireland the recession hit and my job at O2 was no longer there...

That's when I started working in SPIN and started Miss Red.

Starting out in National Newspapers

Just as it was coming up to my final year exams I sent my blog around to a few random newspapers/magazines around the country asking for a job.

The first to come back to me was the Evening Herald. They asked me to come down for 'a chat'.

When I got there the News Editor who had asked me to come up wasn't actually there - and no one knew what to do with me.

Another editor came up and said "write something", "like what?" I replied. "Just write something". That "something" became their page 3 the next day and tadaa I was hired.

Let me tell you this now, working in the newspaper industry isn't all that glamorous. One of my very first jobs in the Herald included me walking around Moneygall with a cardboard cut out of President Obama.

He was coming to visit Olley Hayes' pub and the editors thought I should talk to the locals and bring my cardboard cut out with me (as you can imagine the locals were soooo happy to see another journalist out there looking for a story).

At the time I hadn't seen my then boyfriend in about a week and we had booked a hotel to have a nice night together with a lovely meal all booked... I was too busy running around with Obama so that didn't really work out.

One thing I've learned so far is that if you want to be successful, if you want to achieve all of your goals - you have to make a lot of sacrifices. I still make them every day. And I know I always will.

A few weeks later the Diary editor left and they needed a new diarist (anyone who knows anything about the Herald Diary will know it's the toughest job in showbiz journalism).

I was brand new and not really experienced but randomly got the job. So a full year ensued of crazy long hours, celebrity chasing and little sleep.

A year later I got a text from an editor from the Irish Mail On Sunday "We have a job that I think might interest you..."

The Mail On Sunday

One month later I had left the Herald and started with the Mail and I loved it. It was the Sunday paper so a very different vibe to a Daily set up, and I had time to investigate stories, write big features and go to lots of events, it was perfect.

And the cherry on top? Six months into my new job I won the NNI (National Newspapers of Ireland) Award for Showbiz Journalist of the Year.

I was 22, and the youngest to be nominated in that category. I never expected to win but when I did it changed the way I looked at my career.

At 22 I had already achieved one of my main goals... to be an award winning journalist. I started to look at my life a lot differently.

A few weeks later I broke up with a long term boyfriend and started to re-focus my life a bit. I knew then there that there was a lot more I could do with my life, a lot more that I wanted to do.

It's weird being in the showbiz industry, and I think any journalist/actor/PR person would tell you that.

You go from one day looking at your TV dreaming of the chance to even get a glimpse of your idols, to suddenly having full access to them.

Since becoming a showbiz journalist I've interviewed some of my favourite people in the world - including Michael Fassbender, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Colin Farrell and Liam Neeson to name a few.

I went to two Harvey Weinstein parties in Cannes this year and danced with James McEvoy. Just a few months before I flew to LA to cover the Oscars and attended events with Selena Gomez, Katherine Heigl and Bill Clinton (randomly).

So sometimes I have to take a step back and realise how lucky I am, and how great this job really is. But as my time went on in the newspaper industry I felt disheartened, I felt a little empty - something was missing.

Six months or so after winning the NNI Award I was invited to edit the Mail On Sunday showbiz diary over in London - which I did for two weeks and loved it.

That was a seriously bizarre time which included sitting in the VIP area of a nightclub with Billy Zane eating caviar and drinking champagne, as well as sneaking out to Jonathan Rhys Meyers to ask him a question while he was having a cigarette (away from his agent of course).

The whole running around after celebs thing, trying to get a line from them became quite boring when I knew I was a great editor at heart and a great manager.

I had staff under me while I was in London, and I realised really quickly that I wanted to be my own boss. It's something I've always wanted anyway. But having to delegate tasks, edit and juggle a large responsibility at the same time felt really comfortable to me.

Oh and the day before I headed to London I directed my first short film... It was called Stuck and I wrote it, directed it, produced it and starred in it (like I said I'm a workaholic).

It was about a 16 hour shoot straight in the store room of Dublin night club Lillies Bordello. After a very intense, stressful day I was dying to do more.

There are two sides to me...Creative & Business - and I want both of those sides to merge together to create the perfect career (here's hoping).

After London I fully realised it was time for a change. MissRed.com was still going but I was on it a very small amount of time, I wasn't updating it like I used to.

I saw first hand what it was like to work for the Mail Online (both in London and LA) and I thought it was about time we had an Irish version.

So many sites we read contain stories about Kim Kardashian, Victoria Beckham, Tom Cruise... but there was no site here that wrote about Ryan Tubridy, Yvonne Keating and Rosanna Davison.

So the idea for Goss.ie was born...

All of a sudden I was handing my notice in and saying goodbye to a permanent contract, a seriously good wage package and a group of people that felt like my second family.

I had to give 7 weeks notice, so it really didn't hit me until the night of my leaving party. My heart was beating so fast and I found myself struggling to breathe properly, the size of the risk I was taking suddenly became a lot to handle.

On my last day in the Mail I walked up to my desk (which was always extremely messy, filled with papers from about six months before) and it was empty.

There was a massive lump in my throat as I put my coat on and started to walk away from the desk I sat at for two years.

My colleagues started clapping as I walked away and I started crying. That was my last day as an employee, and the beginning of my business career.

Goss.ie

Now five months later Goss.ie is doing insanely well. I'm not going to give away too many stats (a good business woman would know better) but we are beating our rivals and growing rapidly.

Most people have been shocked by how quickly we gained page hits and unique users, but we work our asses off (Werk Bitch and all that).

Myself and my business partner pretty much have been working 24 hours a day for the last four months.

It's been very stressful and very tiring but we took the risk to start this business because we believed it would work and we believed we could do it better than anyone else.

Remembering that passion and belief really helps when you're so tired you don't even know what day it is.

We are getting to where we want to be already and with advertising deals and new staff we are growing all the time.

Year one of a new business is supposed to be the most difficult, so I'm looking forward to the end of 2015 (here's hoping again).

Acting/Writing/Directing/Producing

In between all of this I had been spending a lot of time on my acting.

I have been acting since I was about 7, doing acting classes after school, doing school plays etc.

When I moved to Limerick from Dublin in 2001 I joined a stage school and attended that school for six years. So you can imagine, lots of dancing, singing and acting... I loved it.

I loved that all so much that in secondary school I wrote my own mini musical and performed it with my friends (there's a video tape out there with proof - which scares me a lot).

I had been writing short stories since I could remember. My parents always thought I'd be a singer or a novelist (yup I sing and play the guitar and piano too).

I have written over 200 songs I'd say at this point. So as a teenager I thought I'd be a singer or a songwriter.

But I've actually turned into a script writer. I starred in about six short movies last year right before and after I graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting.

I was reading so many scripts and started thinking... I could do that! (I think that about a lot of things by the way).

This time last year I had an idea about making a movie about a single girl in Dublin in her 20's (sounds familiar) and her struggle in modern Ireland from getting into bad relationships, losing friends, finding money to pay for rent, figuring out the right career and everything that goes with being in your 20's really.

That movie idea transformed into a TV format... and I'm happy to say after months and months of writing and re-writing and speaking to broadcasters I am making a small teaser for the show next month.

It's fully cast with a few familiar faces, and I can't wait to get started.

Since I have already explained that I'm a workaholic it won't surprise you that I am directing the teaser, which I've written and is also being produced by my production company (oh and I'm in it).

So basically....

So I have decided to start this blog to write about all my experiences not only as a business woman, but as a girl trying to achieve her dreams all before she turns 30 (I'm 24).

After I took part in a panel discussion for OPSH I realised there were a lot of people out there trying to start a business, or start a blog or just start to follow their passions.

So I thought it would be good to have a place where I can put down my own experiences and talk honestly about them.

From hiring and firing to understanding business plans to getting a crew together for a production, I want to share some bits and bobs from all the areas of my working life (werking really...)

For anyone interested in starting their own business, or interested in journalism or interested in the movie/TV industry, I hope some of these posts will be insightful.

If they are boring as hell, too self-involved or just shit then you know where the 'x' button is.

Ali

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