Biz Magazine Features Wendy as local Mom-preneur to Watch
Get Online NOLA’s founder, Wendy Dolan, was featured in the May 2015 issue of Biz Magazine. The article celebrates The Ultimate Juggling Act between entrepreneurship and motherhood by highlighting seven New Orleans moms who are “drawn to take on the demands of two all-consuming occupations at once by a desire to control their own schedule, leave a legacy for their children or make a difference in the world (or a combination of all three) all are examples of real wonder women determined to leave their mark on the city they love.”
Find Wendy’s interview below, and click here for the full article.
TECHNOLOGY
FauDo and Get Online NOLA – Wendy Dolan
Founded: 2010 and 2013
Business: Get Online NOLA specializes in building affordable websites for local small businesses and nonprofits by offering a customizable gallery of web designs. Dolan also offers teaching workshops. “We’ve become a resource. It’s not just a one-time web build and we’re gone,” she says.
Success: Working from home, Dolan says she had such little overhead that she was profitable almost right away. From 2011 to 2012 her business grew by 100 percent. It grew by 50 percent last year. In October 2014, her husband was able to leave his job and come to work for the company. Dolan was named as one of the 100 most innovative, influential and active people in tech and entrepreneurship in Louisiana, by Silicon Bayou News this year.
The Journey: Originally from Houma, Dolan was working as an artist and graphic designer when she moved to Los Angeles with her husband in 2008. There, both worked as freelancers – she designing company websites while he wrote the code. “Eventually my husband got so busy that he began teaching me code so I could help,” she says. “From there, I was hooked – I used online resources to keep learning. When Dolan got pregnant in 2010, the couple decided to move back to Louisiana, where her husband took a job and she decided to focus on FauDo, a full-service marketing company that she had founded that year. “I soon found that there were all these businesses that really needed websites but couldn’t afford my services, so I thought, ‘I’ll do something they can afford.’” Get Online NOLA was born.
Kid: Kai, age 3
Finding Balance: “Working from home, I’ve had to become really strict about shutting off. From 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. every night I shut off my cell phone and do not check emails.”
Lessons Learned: “While the typical gap is 67 cents on the dollar, women in technology are earning more like 95 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts. After being surprised by my own love for coding, I’m now passionate about seeing more women consider themselves in different roles.”
Advice to Entrepreneurs: “Listen to your clients – to what they want and need. For me, that was so valuable.”
The Future: “Our big goal is to expand regionally. We hope to be in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Houma in the coming years.”
Photos by Cheryl Gerber
