Meet Heather Doering, Founder and President at Ace Strategies, an organization that finds, engages, and builds meaningful, lucrative relationships with ideal clients on the behalf of their business customers.
Heather Doering is an ‘ace’ marketing professional who is helping small businesses navigate through the digital space. She started Ace Strategies in 2013 to equip professionals and businesses to thrive in the industry. Heather was going through a divorce during this time and wanted to take care of her kids, both financially and emotionally. But this didn’t hold her back and only made her stronger. Looking back 8 years ago, she says, “The choices that I made, I did for the benefit of my kids but I would have made different choices if my goal was financial security”. Today, she is a successful businesswoman who also supports fellow women entrepreneurs.
Doering graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Back then, digital marketing didn’t exist, and she had no prior experience of how to run a business. It was a challenging journey that she was willing to take. Whatever she learned, she did along the way and through a group of trusted advisers she had by her side. However, it took a long time for Heather to figure out that she needed other people around her to support her and provide a fresh perspective on things. She made mistakes, but they only made her stronger. Talking about her company, she says, “Ace Strategies primarily focuses on consultants and coaches who serve people in business-to-business capacity”. They support individuals in corporate positions who are transitioning into starting their own business. Ace Strategies takes care of the marketing aspect for such clients. Currently, they have clients in the whole of North America and Australia. They launched a low-cost high-value membership in February this year. It offers a space and forms a community for the businesses to grow, especially during the pandemic as the people are isolated from each other.
Heather is also the founder of IN3 Network, a platform that helps women entrepreneurs launch and grow successful businesses through coaching, consulting, training, and education. She started the network in 2008 and it currently houses 1300 women members. It is a space for women to come together, collaborate, connect and support each other. This allows them to build interpersonal relationships and promotes a sense of community amongst them. Doering notes that although these organizations are independent of one another, the purpose that they serve is to build relationships between people.
What all started out as a means to fend for her children has now turned into a productive business enterprise for Heather. Her hard work and dedication towards building community relationships is commendable. This has also helped her overcome the challenges along the way. Leaving a message for the fellow women entrepreneurs, she says, “You can do hard things. There is so much you have to know to run a successful business and it doesn’t always feel successful. There are days when I woke up and thought, ‘Should I just close my doors and get a job?’. ‘You can do hard things’ is a reminder for those days that you can do things that are not easy and shouldn’t give up yet”. She believes that as women, we have too many responsibilities, particularly when we consider the difficult things we do for our children and the fact that we live in a society that isn’t always supportive of women in business. We can do the same difficult things for the company as we do in life when the odds are stacked against us.